The resurrected people of God will dwell in the New Heaven and New Earth. Contrary to popular Christian piety, the Bible does not envision humans floating away from the temporal order to an immaterial and disembodied heaven. Rather, Revelation describes the New Jerusalem as coming down from heaven (Rev. 21:2). The presence of God fills all creation as a cosmic Temple paralleling the way the Lord had earlier filled the Tabernacle/Temple. St. John records that the New Jerusalem, which will be like an arboreal Temple (i.e., a new Eden), will have no Temple. Rather, God and the Lamb will be its Temple (Rev. 21:22).1
Heaven is the Direct Presence of God
In this sense, it is not so much that humans leave earth for heaven, but that heaven and earth merge. Heaven is not a separate ontological realm, or physical created space. Instead, it is simply the unmediated presence of God. Daniel describes the ascension of the Son of Man as movement into the presence of the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7). Hebrews reinforces this point by noting that Jesus’s ascension into heaven is one into the presence of God (Hebrew 9:24). In the same epistle, the author reminds readers that heaven “is not a part of this creation” (Heb. 9:11). In other words, heaven is God’s direct and unmediated presence; it is not a distinct created realm.
In his Genesis Commentary, Martin Luther recognizes that there are three great estates: the family, the Church, and the state.1 God established each of these estates to channel creational goods to his creatures. Luther terms these primal and universal institutions of human life the “three estates” (status, ordines, regimina, stände). Later Lutherans, following the early-nineteenth century theologian Adolf von Harless, began calling them the “Orders of Creation” (schöpfungsordnung).2 Other modern theologians, however, divided the estates somewhat differently. When economic production split from the home during the industrial revolution, many Lutherans (including Dietrich Bonhoeffer) designated the “economy” as its own separate order.3
For Luther, the most primal Order of Creation is the Church, since it began when God gave Adam the Word before he had created Eve.4 This being said, it could be argued that there is no real estate of the Church until Adam could preach to Eve. For this reason, we will begin with the Order of the Family.5 The discussion below will provide an opportunity to flesh out many of the issues regarding the theology of gender as well as marriage and the family.
The Purpose of Marriage
In Eden, God established marriage for the propagation of the human race in order to fulfill the mandate of creation. Bearing and raising children was part of primal humans’ priestly calling. As John Walton notes, the first couple would be able to cultivate more and more land as they had more children. Eventually, the first family could have expanded the Garden until the garden-temple enveloped the whole of creation.6
The objective bodily presence of Jesus is a necessary corollary of the full assurance the gospel brings. In his earthly ministry Jesus was physically present with sinners and had fellowship with them through common meals in order to assure them of his eschatological verdict in their favor. Our physical bodies are our availability to one another.1 To pledge one’s self to another is put one’s self physically at the disposal of that other.
In giving the gospel-promise, God makes himself a servant and puts himself at the disposal of his creature (Phil. 2:7). God put himself at the service of his creatures first in the Tabernacle/Temple and its sacrifices in the Old Testament. Next the Lord assumed a body and became a human person in the Incarnation. He thereby continues his act of self-giving by making his bodily presence available through the Lord’s Supper.
I think the question of the continuing deification of the state in modern life is an interesting one. Ultimately, winning the argument about traditional marriage (by which I mean both the belief in man-woman marriage and also the indissoluble nature of marriage- i.e., no divorces aside from Jesus’ single exception) is a daunting task for modern Christians. It is a daunting task because even before the debate begins, Christians are faced with the fact that nearly everyone (including Christians themselves) already have a distorted understanding of marriage.
Prior to the modern era, the basic conception of marriage in Judeo-Christian culture was as an Order of Creation and an economic relationship. Since all property was tied up in land, and land was owned by families, marriage was a way of ensuring intelligent and rational means of wealth transference and (depending on the status of the family) political alliances. Theologically speaking as well, love was secondary in the definition of marriage. In Luther’s commentary on Genesis and in the Catechisms, he understands marriage as an Order of Creation established by God that defines the human self in this age. Here Luther echoed Jesus in Matthew.
Luther writes that God designed the world to function according to three estates after the Fall: marriage / family (including economic or civil life), the Church, and the government to curb evil. Everyone has vocations within these estates.
Similarly, the Roman Catholic Church understands marriage as both an something rooted in creation, and elevated by the order of grace. Though I may disagree with the Roman Catholic definition theologically, the commonality between it and the Lutheran one is clear: marriage is a reality rooted in legal, creational, and economic relationships. It isn’t about the subjective feelings or personal preferences of the participants. People in the pre-modern world, of course, did experience romance and love (it’s a universal human phenomenon), but such realities had only an incidental relationship to marriage. For perspective on this, read some of the medieval chivalric romances: the authors actually assume that love and romance are only incidental to marriage, or in very extreme versions, very nearly impossible within marriage.
Things changed in the 19th century. Since capitalism made wealth transference and generation possible without handing it down through kinship, western European and American society developed a new rationale for marriage. This rationale was companionship and romance, and marriage was therefore redefined as a public ratification of one’s subjective romantic feelings. After this, divorce became more common. Why? Because if one no longer experiences affectionate companionship with one’s spouse then the whole relationship ceases to serve its function. Hence, why not just move on? Of course there were still legal barriers to divorce, but after the 1960s and the advent of no-fault divorce, rates of divorce went off the charts. Moreover, the theory of companionship marriage also made same-sex marriage and other martial arrangements thinkable in new ways. If companionship and romance are the rationale for marriage, then why shouldn’t individuals of the same sex get married since they can obviously experience love and companionship as well as an opposite-sex couple?
This is why the same-sex marriage argument is so powerful in our context, even though at best it’s an exercise in the logical fallacy of “begging the question.” In other words, what advocates for same-sex marriage already assume is that same-sex relationships are the equivalent to heterosexual relationships. Consequently, denying gay men and lesbians the ability to marry is an act of discrimination. Same-sex marriage is a a matter of “marriage equality.” Nevertheless, the question remains: why can the advocates of same-sex marriage assume that there is an equivalency and appeal to this equivalency with such success? Because most assume that marriage is a public ratification of subjective feelings about another person- i.e., companionship marriage. Since most heterosexual individuals in our society already assume this, such an appeal works. If one, for example, believes that marriage is an Order of Creation and tied to specific heterosexual activities, then the argument doesn’t work. Also, if one assumes that marriage ordains certain goods that are tied to the sexual diversity of the persons involved and that these goods remain good irrespective of the subjective feeling of the partners, then the argument also falls apart.
But almost no one still sees marriage as an Order of Creation, and that’s why the same-sex marriage debate is not winnable for Christians in this society: we abandoned the correct understanding of marriage a long time ago. As a result, we can’t appeal to a model of marriage that even conservative Christians unconsciously don’t ascribe to.
This is a revised version of thoughts first posted May 14, 2013.
Image of Luther and the Three Estates from Bryan Wolfmueller, “Thinking Like a Lutheran: The Three Estates (Quotation Collection Post),” World Wide Wolfmueller, July 30, 2016, https://wolfmueller.co/threeestates/.
Because our bodily presence and trustworthiness are inexorably tied together in human experience, physicality represents a key manner in which humans inculcate fidelity. Physical intimacy within marriage best exemplifies this truth and is especially relevant to our study in light of the biblical motif of YHWH/Christ as the bridegroom to the people of God (Jer. 31:32, Isa. 54:5, Hos. 2:7, Eph. 5). Christians have always rejected pre-marital sex and adultery not only because of the destructive consequences of disease and heartache, but because giving one’s self physically over to one’s spouse is the ultimate pledge of one’s loyalty and fidelity. To give one’s body to another is to give one’s very being. If one gives their very physical being away haphazardly, either for the sake of a pleasant weekend or in an affair, how can ultimate fidelity ever be established?[1] If one gives away his very enfleshed self to anyone who strikes his fancy, nothing will be left over to give to one’s spouse as an ultimate pledge. This is why the explanation that an act of infidelity was “just sex” is never convincing to the wronged partner.
Therefore, bodily self-gift is a necessary means of giving assurance of fidelity to the absolute promise of Christ the bridegroom of the Church. It is not sufficient to treat the sacraments as small, symbolic tokens of love in the manner of a husband who occasionally gives trinkets to his wife.[2] Any relationship may be poorer without gestures like these small gifts, but a marriage is not a marriage in a biblical sense without fleshly consummation and unity (Gen. 2:24, Eph. 5:31). Through fleshly self-giving one “knows” (yada) one’s spouse, that is, they gain a real participatory knowledge of their very physical being. In the same manner, we can be no more certain of our justification and eternal life than to physically receive the very flesh and blood that was sacrificed for humanity on the cross (1 Cor. 11:26) and raised in anticipation of the general resurrection (Jn. 6:54). There is no ambiguity as to whether or not one is justified by the work of Christ when Christ himself is present and gives believers that same body and blood that was sacrificed for them on the cross. Just as baptism is a proleptic realization of the last judgment, so too paschal feast of the Lord’s Supper is the proleptic realization of the final bridal feast of the Lamb at the end of time (Rev. 19:6-9).
[1] Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997-1999), 2:91-2.
[2] Carl Trueman’s analogy for the sacraments. See: Carl Trueman, Grace Alone: Salvation as a Gift of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 213-4.
From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word (Lexham Press, forthcoming).
