Dialogue and Applications

Transcript (edited for readability).

All right, thank you very much. Have a seat. What we want to do now is to talk just a bit about what we've heard, give you a chance to ask some questions, and I'm going to be the MC. Obviously, Dr. Kleinig is our resource. My able colleague, Dr. Yanke, is also here, and we'll attempt to do the best we can collectively. So who wants to be first? Right over here.

This comes from an experience that I had with a member in my congregation who was living with an individual outside of marriage. And when I went and visited him with an elder, he contends that they were in a committed relationship, and that therefore they didn't need to go through, quote unquote, marriage. I use "marriage" throughout — can you define what marriage is? And I'm not sure whether it has to be in a legal way, or in the context of American society, or which, but I was kind of at a loss as to — I insisted that, look, marriage in our society has to be recognized as a public commitment to one another. I'm not sure whether I was right or wrong.

Did everyone hear that question back there? All right, okay. Excellent question, and one that properly involves all of us, because we all have maybe members of our families, children, grandchildren, who are living together outside of marriage. And all of you as pastors have been approached by couples that have been cohabiting and wanting to get married.

The best way of approaching that is unpacked by a missionary, a Lutheran missionary in Africa called Walter Trobisch — I should have brought it with me, T-R-O-B-I-S-C-H — and it's called "I Married You." Now, marriage is done differently in every society on the face of the earth, and the way we do marriage is different from what I described happening in the Greco-Roman world. And marriage is not just — it doesn't just have one dimension, but it's a process. You have getting to know, courtship — being engaged, being married. And then in marriage, then, sexual intercourse. The marriage isn't regarded as being valid until it's consummated. So it's a process rather than just a single event.

Now, Walter Trobisch found it immensely difficult to teach Africans in Nigeria Christian marriage, because the normal thing was that people would cohabit, and that was about the only thing they did. And when they became dissatisfied, they moved in with another man or another woman. So he found it very, very useful to go to Genesis 2, where you have God's description of what constitutes marriage. The right order of marriage is given in Genesis 2, where God says, "Therefore a man leaves his father and mother, cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh." And he said that these are like three sides of a triangle, or three legs of a stool — so you have leaving your previous family, and not just the woman leaving her father and mother, but the son — and this is where the problem lies in many marriages, boys who never cut their apron strings with mum or dad — leaving father and mother; cleaving, committing, to his wife, not the wife's commitment to him, but his commitment to her; and then one-fleshing.

So there's leaving, there's cleaving, commitment, and then there's one-fleshing, which is the sexual intercourse. And he managed to teach and persuade people that, okay, for a full, valid marriage you needed those three sides to be present. And there's the right way of entering the triangle of marriage, and there are wrong ways of doing it. Now, one of the wrong ways is starting off with one-fleshing — that's the wrong door. The right door comes with leaving, and then committing, and only then sexual intercourse. And so he would approach people living together and say, "Okay, you've entered marriage by the wrong door. For you to enjoy the blessing of God and the gifts of God in your marriage, you need to round it off, complete the triangle — you need to leave your previous family publicly." So there's the public leaving — and we have that in our marriage ceremony, where you have the father bringing the bride down the aisle, and the parents blessing the couple, handing her over to her new husband. So there's the leaving, there's the cleaving, the one-fleshing.

But he says it's not for nothing that the most essential part for marriage to work, as God meant it to work, is the cleaving, the commitment. Usually girls, women, are much more prepared, particularly in the present climate of opinion, to commit themselves to a man, but increasingly young men are reluctant to commit themselves to any one woman. Now, I don't know if that's helpful, but that's a very pastoral way of approaching that problem, and it's a way that I've used on quite a number of occasions, and I've never found any couple — at least any that wanted a Christian marriage — that bucked at it and didn't accept it as a gift from God.

If I could follow up on it — I think it's very wise pastoral counsel. I'm hearing from a number of pastors who say that because of the Obergefell decision in the United States — that's the same-sex marriage decision — pastors need to get out of the so-called marriage business entirely, and have nothing to do with the state institution of marriage. How would you approach that pastorally?

We stay in as long as we can. There's a strong push among some of our pastors to say, okay, we need to get out of the public marrying business altogether and offer only the blessing of couples — not to be authorized marriage celebrants. But that party hasn't prevailed. The dominant feeling in our churches is that we stay in as long as we can with integrity, but we emphasize the fact that we're not into promoting marriage as a mere civil matter, but holy matrimony — so that we don't just authorize marriages, but we sanctify couples in marriage. And hence the reading from Ephesians chapter 5, Christ loving the church, is an essential part of a Christian marriage rite.

That's very helpful. I've heard some pastors tell me, "Well, I can't be an agent of the state." And I've actually asked attorneys about this question, and it's true, we sign a document, but that simply says that the ceremony has taken place, along with the witnesses who subscribe to that. So I don't think we act as an agent per se in that case — that's been my counsel to them.

Yeah, and the Christian understanding is that you're not an agent of the state, but an agent of God, and the legal side is merely a sideline to that.

Over here too — you are, I think you are, go ahead.

[Inaudible exchange about a question needing to be recorded.]

The only thing that would change that is if the state started requiring the clergy to perform marriages that they could not in conscience perform. Obviously, until that happens — [and if it does] — must refuse that.

Pastor Bender. Thank you very much, good doctor. I was intrigued in the first hour when you were in Genesis 2, speaking about "it is not good for the man to be alone," and not exalting marriage over the estate of being single. I'm wondering — musing about that — if you can react to my own conclusion from some of what you said in that regard: "It is not good that the man should be alone" does not exalt being married above being single, but rather reinforces the notion that we were created for another — and that sometimes the Other is God himself, especially for the single person.

Yes, yes, yes. And one of the frustrating things about giving this kind of presentation is that so much needs to be unpacked. You need to take note that right at the beginning God says, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness." Now, the God we worship is not a Mohammedan god, a single solitary figure, but is the Holy Trinity. And so in some ways marriage reflects the life of the Holy Trinity, and involves us then in God's Trinitarian community — and we are involved in that both as married people and as single people.

Okay, it's not good for man to be alone, and it's not enough, therefore — part of that is, it's not enough for human beings just to have relationship with the animals and with plants. It's kind of hermit-like — we need other human beings. We were made for life with each other. And being single doesn't necessarily mean that we lead isolated lives — we live not just in relationship with each other, but Christians have always emphasized that we have brotherly relationships and sisterly relationships with other Christians, but non-sexual, celibate relationships.

See, part of the collateral damage that we have now is that I can't even talk to a woman, or have any contact with a woman these days, without it having sexual connotations. And it's even worse — I can't have a man as a friend and show any physical affection toward him without being automatically suspected of being homosexual. Part of the damage of the fall, sexually, is that this has become almost impossible. Now, in the church, we should be able to have male friendships without any sexual connotations. In the church, I should be able to relate to other women as sisters in Christ, but not in a sexual way. And what any people who have lived celibate, single lives for any length of time will say they need most of all is friendship — friendship with other men and also women. Single people need friendship, they need community, and without sexual complications.

Excellent. Other questions? In the very back — good, get the microphone, get some exercise, you didn't go running at noon, so…

Dan Torkelson, from St. John's in North Prairie. I want to say first of all what an answer to prayer it is to see you in your body here in America this year — we missed you last year, Dr. Kleinig, you had bypass surgery last year, so we're happy — right about this time, as I recall. The question I have, as one who's a parent of eight kids across a lot of ages, but two are now adults and in college — what are the implications of everything we've heard today for finding a spouse, for how to go about doing that?

[Someone off-mic]: I didn't hear, because my — [inaudible].

How do we go about that? What are the implications — do you have any practical advice?

There are three things I'd say. First of all — and I've heard the same thing many times — it's better not to be married than to be badly married. Can I say that again? It's better not to be married than to be badly married. Secondly, marriage is not a right, and sex is not a right, but it's part of God's blessing and grace. There's a wonderful proverb — I think it's chapter 18, verse 20-something — "He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and gains the favor of the Lord." Okay, it's not just having a wife. Luther puts it this way: everybody who's married has a wife, but not everybody who's married finds the wife that he has. You need to do a lot of looking to see the wife that God gives you. And all of that is not a right, but is a gift of grace.

Which leads me to the third thing. The temptation for us Christians is to try to manipulate, to matchmake, et cetera. Now, what is the best thing you can do for your children, to make sure that by God's grace they will have a good spouse? It is to pray about it — and to pray about it, and to pray about it, and to keep praying about it.

I'm disappointed — no, I'm not. Thank you very much. Maybe the time is coming when the church needs to be more of a matchmaking enterprise.

Yes, deliberately so. And I've heard some of our Doxology parents of young babies who bring them all to our gatherings — maybe we need to match these kids up for eighteen, twenty years from now. Actually, it's very interesting to teach in a society where the norm is arranged marriages. Now, I've done a lot of teaching in Southeast Asia, some of that in Malaysia and in India. Now, to the present day, in Indian Lutheran communities, most marriages are arranged, and what's interesting is how well they work. We have got the idea that romantic marriage — the kind of attraction-based romance marriage — is the best and only way by which we can enter marriage. Now, that's all right for those who are particularly sexually attractive and have a lot of sexual and personal self-confidence, but that disenfranchises about half of the human race, who lack both of those qualities. And the norm always has been, in human history, that marriages were arranged, not self-contracted.

Excellent, thank you. Mark, up here.

Thank you, Dr. Kleinig, for taking an extended period of time to talk about fornication — a lot of that was new to me, so I appreciate that. If I could, let me put out a scenario and ask you to reflect on it. We talked a little bit about the evangelical circles in your talk. I've seen and heard about some advice that pastors would give to kids — "Don't have sex until you're married, and then go have at it" — and it's not a recognition of how pornographically influenced, especially today, young people are. I think they were in my day as well, for them to bring that kind of pornographic mindset into a marriage and have the idea that it's holy because it's Christian marriage, while acting out some very, perhaps even harmful or abusive, things. So you've got these wives, in particular, who may be suffering from almost being degraded by their husbands, because they brought this mentality into it — but it's been de facto blessed, because they were virgins when they got married.

So if you could just talk about — is it helpful, in a pastoral way, to unpack that around fornication, and what guides husbands and wives within marriage? You said at the end that we don't have a list of actions that are acceptable, but is there something more we can tell people that guides their purity within marriage?

Yes, you touch on, I think, one of the most pressing problems we face. And just to complicate it a bit further — until modern times, it was normal for girls to get married almost immediately after puberty. So to have girls who were, say, around the age of 18 or 20 and unmarried was the exception rather than the rule. People married younger — at least girls married younger, men, unless they were upper-class, for different reasons tended to marry much younger than people do now. What we have now is a long period, for economic reasons, between puberty and financial independence, vocational independence, which makes marriage possible.

So one of the things we need to take into account is how difficult it is for young people to negotiate that big period of their lives, from puberty through to when they can reasonably expect to be married. Now, one of the things we can do is make it easier for our children to get married, in terms of financial support and so on, even while they're at college or whatever. But we need to recognize that we have a problem here, and that's new in human history as far as I can see.

The second thing is that there's a danger of pushing too hard on the fact that you've got to be a virgin until you get married. Negatives seldom produce positive outcomes, and to some extent you're delivering them to attack by the devil. What I prefer to do is to paint before our young people the positive vision of marriage — what does it involve, what is God's gift to us in marriage? Now, why was it that I remained a virgin until I got married? It wasn't because I was hammered by my pastors or parents, but because of the promise of Christian marriage, and the beauty of Christian marriage, and of chastity within marriage. So the positive picture of marriage protected me from the worst excesses.

But ultimately, we need to know there are two things. One is: the greatest thing that we can do to help our children is to pray for them, and not badger them, not be on their case — and to pray for them, even if they cohabit with somebody else, or as far as we're concerned go off the rails — not to write them off, but to keep praying for them and pray for them and pray for them and pray for them. That'll do more than any criticizing or wagging of fingers and so on.

But we need to make marriage easier too. One of the problems we have in Australia is that to get married is so expensive — it's not only the living together, now housing is so expensive, much more expensive than here in the US, in Australia — but the marriage ceremony itself. Sometimes families spend almost as much on the marriage as they do on the house.

Yeah, the marriage and the sense of the wedding ceremony. Now, the church can come in here and offer a good deal — a package deal. Okay, you provide the venue, you provide the meal, and that church is for their members — pastors don't charge at all for the wedding, the ladies cater for the wedding and so on — to make marriage more accessible to young people so that they can afford it sooner. We've got to be a bit more creative in helping young people negotiate what is a very, very difficult period of their life.

And you touch on another thing, which is that there is a danger — if we hammer this prohibition of sexual activity, or clamp down too much, that we push people deeper and deeper into masturbation and pornography, which is really available, which then twists young people and damages them, so that when they do get married they find it very difficult to engage in normal, natural, easy sexual intercourse, because of that pornographic scenario that keeps on imposing itself, not only on the person but on the relationship. So we need to provide help for the matter of pornography — without being puritanical about nudity and sex — we need to help young people and not hammer virginity so much that we push them from the frying pan into the fire.

In my mind, some sexual experimentation — and I use a rather delicate term here — I'm not saying it's a question of right or wrong, but is to be preferred to excessive indulgence in pornography.

Time for one quick last question. In the Old Testament, we know that there were some serious consequences for coming into God's presence in an unholy way — right, we see that with Nadab and Abihu and things like that. And St. Paul mentions this in 1 Corinthians in regard to the Lord's Supper, taking it in an unholy way. Is there any correlative to this when we talk about the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit?

Yes, and it is implicitly what I said — what Paul wants, again, in 1 Corinthians 6. He's speaking to young men who visit the local prostitutes, not only in the brothel but in the temple — temple prostitutes. And they say, "Look, the desire for sex is on the same level as the desire for food and drink, it's a natural thing, and it's a spiritually, morally indifferent matter, so there's nothing wrong with having sex with a prostitute." You can read the whole of it, but basically Paul's argument there is: no, that's not so, because your body is united with Christ's body, one spirit with him. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that means, in practical terms, that when you have sex with a prostitute you are desecrating God's holiness. And it means, in practical terms, that the wrath of God will come on you — there'll be inevitable consequences, you'll come under God's judgment. God's judgment leads you to repentance. So yes, there is a parallel — it does lead to the desecration of God's holiness, it does lead to the desecration of your body as the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is an act of sacrilege, and therefore it's a serious matter spiritually.

Actually, there's also a way of cleansing and sanctification. Yes, and that's the other side of it — that comes, that passage comes immediately after the passage which says, "Such were some of you, but you are washed, you are cleansed, you are sanctified." Now, you are sanctified — now don't mess that up, don't be stupid, don't throw away the good thing that you have for something that's worthless.

And we thank Dr. Kleinig once again for his teaching. Your brother — please greet the saints in Australia when you get back home, and we thank you so much for your teaching here today.