If there’s something that irritates me (and admittedly many things do), it’s when people misuse scripture. If someone is performing eisegesis (pronounced I-suh-gee-sys) it means they are reading into the text from themselves. That means bringing to the text their own views and experience, instead of performing exegesis which means seeking to read out of the text what the writer was trying to communicate.
I’ll give you an example: We might make Eve, Hagar, Deborah and many other females we meet in the Bible to be heroes of modern feminist theory. But that would be reading into scripture what we want to see and not reading out of scripture what the it is actually saying.
This is why so many take such care and time to look at the original language, political and social context, biblical context, syntax, literary allusions and so much more in investigating what God was saying to his original readers, and to us thousands of years later.
Sometimes commentators push scripture far further than it should go in their eisegesis and this is what I came across this weekend.
I was researching Malachi 2:16 (the famous passage on God hating divorce – so stay tuned for that later this week!) and in one commentary I read:
“marriage was designed as a social blessing to continue the race, to develop people spiritually and emotionally and intellectually, to soothe and sustain them amidst the depressing and difficult circumstances of life, and to enable people to function as the image of God, especially now in a sinful world (Gen. 1:27–28)…..The divine plan was simple and clear: one man and one woman becoming one united life (one flesh) throughout their earthly lives to fulfill God’s plan for his creation, significantly, to produce godly seed.” (Malachi Then and Now, Allen P. Ross, 2016:137).
Let’s be clear, there are many things I agree with here. Marriage was to provide a framework for spiritual development. The husband is to lead and present his wife to God, holy and blameless (Eph. 5:25-27). I also agree that marriage was to be between a man and a woman to be united as one flesh (Gen. 2:23-24). It was also meant to be, in God’s plan, a lifelong union but that God, through Moses, granted divorce in certain circumstances because we are sinful and broken (Matthew 19:4-9).
However, I cannot find biblical warrant for:
- Marriage being designed as a social blessing
- Marriage designed to develop people emotionally and intellectually
- Marriage designed to soothe and sustain them amidst the depressing and difficult circumstances of life
- Marriage being designed to enable people to function in the image of God
- The marriage union designed to fulfill God’s plan for creation.
Now, marriage is a social blessing. It is the basis of much social “glue” in that communities are made up of these family units. Family units extend and intermingle with other families, creating sinews through the whole locality that connect and strengthen the community.
So while that might be historically and empirically true, it pushes scripture too far to say that that’s what God’s design for marriage was. It may have been one of the benefits that God envisioned, but it is not communicated in the scripture we have.
Similarly, marriage (although I suspect not all marriages) develop people emotionally and intellectually, but I don’t see that in scripture either. And, while marriage does create the companionship that soothes and sustains, the Bible does not note this as a design feature of the institution.
Here are the big ones though. Ross states that marriage was designed to enable people to function in the image of God. I cannot begin to tell you how much I disagree with this statement. We are image bearers whether we are married or not. God created Adam in his image before he created Eve and he created Eve in his image before they were married. To suggest that marriage is the vehicle by which we can function in God’s image is nonsensical. It suggests we might be made in God’s image but we don’t function as such until we are married (let’s set aside all the faithful single people in the Bible, including various disciples). Also, the right and proper place for sex and producing godly seed is marriage. But that is not the only way that we, as God’s people, are God’s hands and feet in sowing the seeds to bring a harvest. All of us are brought into God’s family as co-heirs of the covenant given to Abraham. If the church only grew by being direct offspring, we’d still be in the Old Testament times.
When you couple this with Ross’s comment on marriage fulfilling God’s plan for creation, this makes for very dangerous territory. God’s plan for creation is to bring his people to him in the new heaven and earth where we will live with him in eternity under his direct sovereignty and blessing. Marriage does not fulfill that plan. Jesus does.
To link marriage to functional image bearing and fulfilment of God’s plan for creation is without biblical warrant, is erroneous and potentially damaging to single people’s faith. It exalts marriage to a place it should not be and casts singleness as being defective, less than others, and inferior.
Marriage is a good created for us by God, there is no doubt. It was the first relationship and throughout scripture, that marriage relationship is described as functioning as Christ and the church. But that is not to the exclusion of people who choose singleness (like Paul) or who are single not by choice but by circumstance (such as widow(er)s or for those for whom it just never happened).
The danger of these kinds of comments is that they provide fertile ground for both eisegetical reading of passages on marriage, singleness and divorce, and also teach readers, disciples and whole churches that marriage exemplifies God’s plan (A+ married people, God thinks you’re the best), and the only point of singleness is to be a waiting room until you get your act together (F- singles, thats a solid Fail from God).
It is also unhelpful for married couples. Because I know very few marriages that are perfect. The higher you exalt marriage and the outcome of godly kids, the greater the risk of fall, the greater the stress. What about those marriages that are damaging? Or unsafe? What about marriages where the couple are unable to have children? Where does this leave them? Or conversely, it leads marrieds into the sin of pride, looking down on singles with pity.
I am not saying that we should read the Bible with an alternate eisegesis – discounting marriage and exalting singles. What I am saying is that we should do the work to identify where we may be pushing scripture too far and attributing biblical warrant where it should not be. Let’s be careful to be clear about what is scriptural, and what is a blessing that we observe historically or culturally.
This blog is a very poor attempt to articulate something that I find bothersome and theologically damaging. It’s a brain dump so I hope you’ve been able to bear with me. These issues have been written about by others and far better than me. If you are interested in this, I highly recommend Danielle Treweek’s books The Mean of Singleness and Single Ever After.
And let’s remember God’s plan for creation is to bring the world to him, not through marriage, but through our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. We all are image bearers and function as such no matter what your situation. The Bible does not put riders on your functionality for his glory.
“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ,then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:26-29)