Thinking about Marriage with Scripture

Abstract

In this chapter, I articulate theological grounds, drawn from the way New Testaments texts relate scriptural texts to the identity and presence of Jesus Christ, for an approach to using biblical texts to think through a theological understanding of marriage and human sexuality oriented around the way human beings are identified relative to God and Jesus Christ in biblical narrative. In this approach paranetic texts are taken not as giving absolute rules but offering formation in reasoning about these matters of belief and practice in accordance with who God is, and who we are relative to God. The remainder of the chapter begins that process by looking at creation stories and the import of the way they identify humans relative to God for these issues.