Regarding the Primordial Purpose of Marriage
I have three articles I’ve been working on developing here… but people keep asking me about why I view marriage in the manner I do. So here we are, an article developed in one sitting.
We’re going to begin this journey by discussing the shape of a mountain: the garden of Eden (Ez. 28:13-14). See, God operates the creation week musically. According to Gen. 1:2 the Earth was formless and void. So He proceeds to form in the first three days of creation and fill in the latter three days.
Day 1: Forms Heavenly Light → Day 4: Fills w/ 1. Sun 2. Moon 3. Stars
Day 2: Forms Waters → Day 5: Fills w/ 1. Sea Monsters 2. Fish 3. Birds
Day 3: Forms Dry Land → Day 6: Fills w/ 1. Beasts 2. Livestock 3. Creepers
Did you notice that? There’s a harmony that ascends and descends like a mountain:
1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. This is emphasized further by the phrase “Then God said” being used 9 times (3x3) in the text. The phrase “there was evening and morning” is used 6 times (3x2), which is also interesting considering how these threes lept off of the twofold “formless and void” problem.
There is also evidently the sevenfold harmony (1-2-3-4-5-6-7) that will likewise continue time and time again throughout scripture (seven speeches to create the tabernacle, seven Levitical feasts, seven years to create the temple etc). So why would God work so musically in establishing His creation?
One of the interesting things about the gospels is that it is one of the very rare occasions in scripture in which the angels sing; particularly at the birth of Christ. The Son is seeking to call His Bride back into harmony with Him through the music of creation. The Garden had to be a mountain, so that with man at its peak, God could speak to him there and then the man could bring that meaning down to the world. It begins that aforementioned harmony: Adam ascends the mountain, Noah ascends the mountain, Moses ascends Mount Sinai, Elijah ascends the mountain, Christ ascends the mountain, and John ascends the mountain. The top of a mountain is the peak: a point of singularity that sits by itself in the Heavens. The bottom of a mountain is vast and broad. I wrote in my previous article about Elisha and the She-Bears of Bethel (2 Kgs. 2:23-25) and how the narrative tied heavily into the marital relationship of God with His people as a continued commentary on the second fall of mankind (Eve’s adultery w/ the serpent). The ordering of the falls of man actually gives us a further explanation of this mountainous structure behind reality: the sanctuary at the top, the community at the bottom, and marriage as that which binds the two together. It is the marriage of Christ and His people that redeems mankind and allows us to worship God unveiled afterall.
Human beings are ourselves the children of Heaven and Earth and are shaped in a mountainous manner. Consider Gen. 2:4:
“These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.”
When Genesis uses the phrase “These are the generations of” it is commonly referred to in scholarship as a Toledot. What this means is that we are being given a familial record of sorts. The phrase is used immediately prior to giving us the familial line of Adam, Cain, Noah, Abraham, and Jacob to name but a few. So Gen. 2:4 is actually describing us as the children of Heaven and Earth and considering the two to be married together. This is why we must be created of the dust of the Earth and Spirit of God. The dust of the Earth isn’t one piece of dust, and nobody assumes that to be the case. It is a lot of dust, plural, that gets breathed up into one by the unifying Spirit. Like a mountain, we are simultaneously the broad base (dust) and the singular peak (Spirit) brought together.
Yet the woman must be made from the man’s rib. Why? Because Adam must be placed into a death sleep (תַּרְדֵּמָ֛ה), have his side pierced, and be resurrected as a prefiguring of our Lord, who likewise was put to death, had his side pierced to create His Bride, and was resurrected. She was not created from the head of man to rule over him, nor from his feet to be trampled upon by him. Rather, she was created from his side to walk alongside him, from underneath his arm to be nurtured by him, and next to his heart to be seen and adored by him.
Just as Heaven and Earth form a mountain together, so too do a husband and wife; both in a vertical and horizontal manner. On the vertical level, he is referred to as her head because he is as the Heavens and she is as the Earth. Like Christ, He must descend in order to redeem her. Consider momentarily, a story like Jack and the Beanstalk, in which Jack trades a cow that cannot produce milk (the dying feminine) for seeds, which grow up into a beanstalk by morning (masculine puberty). This beanstalk allows him to ascend into the heavens in order to steal the means (golden egg = money, golden chicken = income, golden harp = pattern of reality) to redeem his widowed mother (again, the dying feminine). He is operating on a vertical level in order to redeem her. Peter Pan likewise ascends Wendy Darling into the heavens in order to bring her out of comfort and safety into the risk of adventure.
Yet the wife redeems the husband on the horizontal level. This is why cities in scripture (and elsewhere) are associated with the feminine (Daughter Jerusalem, Bride Church). She is as the city and he is as the wilderness, untamed. Consider here how Snow White must redeem the seven dwarves (vices of men) in order for her to be resurrected by Prince Charming (who redeems after she, like Eve, partakes of the fruit). Or consider how Belle of Beauty & The Beast must leave the city to redeem the unharnessed aggression of the Beast after going into the chaotic wilderness.
There is a failure whenever one spouse is unwilling to experience the transforming & gloriously resurrecting nature of the other spouse. To love someone is not to expect them to conform to yourself, but to seek to ascend yourself to Heaven in light of their otherness. One day, if the Lord Wills I be married, I shall be called upon to love her at every waking (or non-waking) moment. To see her as glorious, beautiful, and far greater than I can ever treasure even at her most hateful. If she cheats on me, abuses me, or abandons me, I am called upon by God to see that He is using her to call me out on my unChristlike impatience with her sin; even though He has been longsuffering and patient with me while we were still sinners. His passion for us is so great that He went to the cross while we despised Him!
Eph. 5 commands us men to love that glorious wife as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. He loved His Bride eternally before their union or even her creation. So that command is just as much an imperative upon the presently single as it is upon the married. It is followed by viewing the Church as beautiful and without stain even when she may seem to fail; to view her through the lens of her Bridegroom. It is followed by taking that future bride into present considerations; whether they be of virtue, work, finances, purity, study, or any other pursuits made in her absence. When one does this, he becomes capable of properly harnessing his aggression in the service of her protection and provision. He becomes capable of experiencing her redemptive love: especially as manifested through our Lord’s Bride. She becomes a conduit in all times to help one ascend the mountain towards God.
As mentioned previously, I do believe marriage to be the second highest good within the Earthly realm; next to that of the sanctuary/Church. So I want to be careful here to state that marriage does not equal sex. Sex is a lower and less important good than marriage (though still vital to marriage of course). Your spouse retains their redemptive qualities and factors with or without the capacity to partake in the marital embrace. The sexual union should be seen as parallel to the Lord’s Supper; it is a re-celebration of the initial wedding vows that images on a microcosmic level the mountainous structure of that relationship. The unifying of seed into an egg is the same as the dust being gathered up by the Spirit. And so in the act of conception, the roles actually reverse and the woman becomes the heavenizing force and the man the Earthly force.
Anyways, I’m much less interested in discussing that than I am in discussing marriage in and of itself as that primordial means of resurrection. We pray that the Will of God be done on Earth as it is in Heaven because Christ gives His Bride her Earthly (horizontal) mission of redeeming the nations from their unharnessed aggression. If I love Christ, I love His Bride. If I love the Bride of Christ, then I shall act in a manner that is neither nagging nor critical of her in order to become a loving husband to my future wife.