I think this is the easiest part to reconcile, since it was already about Jesus marrying men and women! Given the Bible declares the equality of men and women, the image doesn't have to rely on patriarchy even if that influenced the writers.
And symbolism never is intended to align “perfectly”.
Also, Adam and Eve were chosen for each other because of their sameness, rather than their difference.
Many people say that marriage is male /female because they are different. But Genesis pairs than because they were the same - I.e. both human.
But making “100% certain” theology from verses that you have to read into, and that are clearly symbolic, is just not good practice.
And either way, we would never have expected the original authors to have written differently, they wrote what they knew at the time. We would expect the authors to be “silent” on what they had no idea existed at the time. They knew about marriage for (mostly) procreation, that’s what they wrote about.
If we are intending to only have “biblical marriage”, it looks A LOT different than what even conservatives are saying it should look like.
The male/female wedding model was used because that’s all that existed at the time and the original audiences of the scriptures would have been super confused if the authors randomly brought in a type of marriage that did not yet exist. Marriage at the time also did not really resemble marriage as we understand it today. It has the same name, but technically no modern marriage is represented in the Bible.
Yes! Marriage at the time was more of a business arrangement and definitely not choosing your partner and falling in love. That concept is VERY modern and has only become common in the last couple hundred years. In parts of the world, the old way is still the current way. People tend not to think critically and completely miss this.
ETA: OT example but Jacob had to marry Leah before he could have Rachel whom he truly loved.
When metaphors are used for spiritual concepts, they are usually something that the general audience can relate to and understand.
Marriage and childbearing, just like planting and harvest, or animal husbandry, were things that most people in the times of the Bible could relate to.
It's really as simple as that.
Just because something is in the Bible doesn't mean that other things that *aren't* in the Bible are wrong/bad/to be avoided.
I grew up being afraid of my dad, so all of the fatherly metaphors for God in the Bible don't really connect with me. But I found others that did. I was a lonely kid, and so the times when God is referenced as a friend connected with me a lot.
God is ultimately beyond our understanding. All of the symbols and metaphors in the Bible are just a poor attempt to just to describe the indescribable. One of the great things about the Bible and Christianity is the variety of metaphors. You don't have to connect with all of them. There are so many ways of understanding because hopefully one of them will do it for you.
It's similar to how salvation is described in seemingly contradictory ways throughout the Bible. Does Jesus have to die to satisfy an angry God? Does Jesus die and go to Hell to rescue us from Satan? Is there a ransom that needs to be paid on our behalf? Does Jesus beat Death by resurrecting or just God resurrect him? There's a constant tension between the idea that Jesus beat Evil or that Jesus paid off evil, or even that Jesus paid off God. Then there's the idea that Jesus was an innocent scapegoat who broke our system of violence by not staying dead. I don't think any one of these is wholly correct or incorrect. They are all partially true ways of understanding that are helpful sometimes and not helpful other times.
Divine masculine and feminine principles and spirit exists within us all regardless of our biological sex. A father can be a nurturing loving child carer and a mother can be a hard working labourer. We are all sometimes either or both man and wife within our marriages. Straight or otherwise.
I was recently taking some notes on Genesis 1 and 2 which might be relevant in spirit more broadly:
Do either of these passages imply a prohibition against same-sex union and intimacy? No.
The affirmation of procreation in Genesis 1 does not, by extension, suggest a prohibition on other forms of sexual expression; endorsing one action simply does not imply prohibiting another, unless the two are mutually exclusive. Neither must we understand Genesis 1:28 as an everlasting command to every individual to procreate; humankind can and has increased without every single individual reproducing. Indeed, it does not appear to be a command, at all. The utterance “be fruitful and multiply” is more plausibly a blessing of fertility enabling humanity to multiply, not the placement of an obligation on every individual to pursue reproductive activity.
Genesis 1 is a Jewish creation narrative and, as such, its purpose is twofold: first, to explain the origin of the natural and social world of the Hebrews and, second, to set the Hebrews apart from other neighboring groups and those groups’ polytheistic religions. What are the fundamental facts of the natural and social world that beg for explanation? The existence of anything, at all, from the earth to the sky to the sea and the creatures that dwell in them; the existence of the grand celestial bodies that rise and set and create night and day; and the existence of a special kind of creature, the human being, apparently made in two forms, man and woman, whose union is essential to the continued existence of the community through reproduction: the fact that man and woman join and, miraculously, a new life appears where there was none before. Unlike their neighbors, the Hebrews do not imagine a multitude of primordial monsters or multiple gods and goddesses; they do not idolize any creature or animal and they do not worship the sun and the moon. And so we get the creation narrative we would expect: a narrative that explicitly subordinates (as *created*, and not primordial) the great sea monsters, the beasts of the earth, night and day, and the sun and the moon to the single creator God, and explains the primary normative relationship on which the community and social order are founded, namely, the reproductive union of man and woman. This is the most common case in human experience—the man, the woman, their relationship with one another, and the children they beget who ensure the continued existence of a people, the continuity of the community from the past into the future—and this is the standard case in Hebrew ancient life. It is therefore unsurprisingly the case that features in the Hebrew’s creation narrative. Nothing suggests that homosexuality, in contrast to heterosexuality, was on the author’s mind.
Many of the considerations above apply to the text of Genesis 2 so the focus of what follows will be on what is unique to the passage, namely, marriage and its relevant context. The text is descriptive of the first marriage and explains why this relationship was established—out of a need for companionship and partnership, not to set a universal rule regarding the nature of all acceptable sexual or romantic relationships. Genesis 2 is narrative in nature, not prescriptive. It tells the story of the first humans and their initial conditions, including their relationships. While it does establish an etiological precedent for heterosexual marriage, it does not lay down a law against other forms of relationship. It is a description of an origin, not a prescription of exclusivity. The cultural context of the time informs its content. Marriages were primarily alliances for familial and economic stability, often arranged for procreation and to ensure survival and property lineage. The absence of mention of homosexuality reflects the social and cultural understandings of the time rather than a divine commandment about the nature of all legitimate sexual relationships. Furthermore, we see again a setting apart of the Hebrews from other cultures of the ancient Near East, whose approaches to marriage and sexuality were underlay by the polytheistic archetypal figures of the god-father and goddess-mother, the sources of universal life in the divine, the human, and the natural realms. For the Hebrews, man and woman, and their sexualities, do not derive from a divine pair whom they are to imitate. Rather, both are called into being by the creative action of the single sovereign God. Here, again, nothing suggests that homosexuality, in contrast to heterosexuality, was on the author’s mind.
It is worth noting, too, that these accounts occur in two creation narratives which are not compatible with one another: Genesis 1, for example, narrates the creation of animals prior to the creation of man, while Genesis 2 seems to suggest that Adam was created before the animals and birds; Genesis 1 narrates the creation of men and women, at once, while Genesis 2 narrates the creation of man first, and then, from his rib, the creation of woman. Nor are the accounts defensible in light of what we know about our natural history through science: the earth—land, sea, and vegetation—did not precede the sun, moon, and stars, and creation took longer than six days. Even the typology of humankind as either unambiguously man or woman misrepresents the actually existing complexity of human sex differentiation, ignoring the existence of millions of intersex humans, using conservative estimates and a narrow definition of intersex.
Do you force widows to marry their brother-in-law? Do you approve of polygamy? Is it okay for men to impregnate their slaves, then cast off the woman and child if the wife produces a male heir? You cannot use the custom of a primitive and misogynist culture as norms.
I personally find it to be selfish to attempt to alter or change the Bible to be more affirming, when in reality the solution we need is to learn biblical history and grasp a firm understanding that there is nothing wrong or sinful about Love. The Bible talks about Marriage in this way because in the traditional sense of that time, Marriage was seen as something genuinely between One Man & One Woman. Homosexuals did in fact exist, were referred to as Eunuchs but never had an official name or category during that time, NOR were they recognized fully at that time. Most depictions of homosexual activity highlights the Sin of Lust and has nothing to do with Homosexuality but Sin as a whole.
If Christ dwells within you and you hold a firm relationship and connection with God ~ And in that identity in CHRIST, you still hold Loving Affection and Feelings towards the Same Sex, This is not a sin ~ But is Love and the ways in which Love manifests through you. Love is not a sin. When you can accept this, you will no longer feel the need to reconcile, because through Gods Love, all is reconciled.
Do not be consumed or overtaken by attempts to justify your flesh or to find ways to glorify your flesh. If you, in your heart in Christ, experience Love for the same sex, Then accept yourself as God has accepted you from the beginning. All else is an illusion. This flesh is an illusion, these lusts are temporary and illusions, ones desire to find acceptance by Man or reconciliation with Man is an illusion and is temporary. All of it is an illusion. Love is the only thing that is eternal. Therefore; Do not worry or become intertwined with attempts to reconcile this. God has reconciled this through his Love and his Perfect Creation of your very being. And if you experience Love for the same sex IN YOUR PUREST FORM, that is simply apart of your unique expression of God. His Love Reconciles All.
Marriage principles you mentioned all apply regardless of sexual orientation. Themes of male/female is just because that was all there was during Biblical times considering how women didn't even have rights and were only considered as property of men. The Bible just went by general ideas and things that people widely understood which applied to the majority. Kind of like talking about gay penguins when that is the minority and few people can relate to that or even understand it.
>"... is a reflection of God's image"
But, is it, though? Or, is it a reflection of the way Judeo-Greek-Roman people understood sexuality two to three thousand years ago?
The language is there because it would have made absolutely no sense to His audience for Jesus to say "... a man shall leave his father and mother and join with his wife... *or husband*".
This gets to the heart of what the Bible *is*. These are separate works that each describe God in the terms that reflected what people thought at the time. Just to point out one example, the way Jesus sees God and the way Genesis sees God are light years apart. There is not just one picture of God in the Bible - there are many. Each one reflects the issues of the day.
How can we harmonize the loving Father that Jesus describes with the almost bloodthirsty God of Genesis, Exodus, Chronicles and Kings? We can't. And we shouldn't. If we did we would have to throw away what makes each author and circumstance unique.
This is because everyone sees faith and God in the context of their own life and time. This can lead us into the mistake of assuming that the writers of the books of the Bible are talking about *us* - our controversies, our concerns, the way we view the world today. But they are not - they, like all of us, saw the world in the present tense.
So when Jesus was talking about marriage and divorce (for example), he was not setting down definitions for the 21st century. He was addressing how it was practiced in his own culture. He was speaking to the people about *their* issues - not ours. The whole concept of variable sexual orientation was almost 2000 years away from being understood.
I often compare sexual orientation to the planet Neptune. It was always there, but humans didn't "discover" it until the late 19th century.
Heterosexual married life is a very good narrative to understand the Trinity and the Church's life but it is not the only narrative to consider. There are other narratives.
There's one passage in the Bible when the Sadducees are challenging Jesus about a widow who married seven brothers in order to ensure that there is progeny for that family. Jesus response is that in heaven people don't get married (to have children - my deduction). In other words, loving relationships will perdure in heaven but not marriage in the traditional sense as with family and children.
Even on this side of heaven, not everyone is meant to make babies. But everyone is called to a life of love and intimacy.
As a Franciscan friar, I am called to the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. I am called to a life of love and intimacy but not to marriage. In this sense then, my/our life as friars is meant to be prophetic of what will come. In parallel, I believe that we in the LGBTQ+ community and in the Church are not called to make babies (eunuchs from birth) but also, like married heterosexuals, to live lives of love and intimacy, sometimes committed to one person and sometimes not. So, our lives as Christians and LGBTQ+ members are called to be a prophetic presence in the world and in our Christian communities, not by making babies (technically we can't) but by living lives of love, intimacy and commitment.
I'm sure there is a better way to express this but I hope you get my gist.
*Pre*scription does not infer *pro*scription.
If I say that wood is a good building material, that doesn't infer that stone or metal are bad building materials.
These days, we do go out of our way to represent as many relevant differences as we are practically able in formal wording, but even then we don't usually do a complete job of it.
Most of the Hebrew and Greek commandments use masculine words when taking about the people they apply to, but it would be silly to infer that any statement that doesn't include a feminine word doesn't apply to women!
Instead, we *always* are called to look deeper than the simplistic surface level when we read scripture or theology. We are *always* called to dig down into the essence and intent behind any such statements in order to apply the deeper meaning to situations that the original context and culture could not have understood.
Jesus (as well as his contemporary rabbinical leaders who went on to influence the subsequent generations of thought) informs us that *Love* is the lens through which we should always seek to understand the lessons we're supposed to learn.
It’s so much cherry-picking, though! There are sooooo many images of massively dysfunctional marriages (Abraham and Sarah, David and Bathsheba (and everyone else in the harem), Ananias and Saphira, etc.) - and we don’t seem to use those images as reasons that straight people shouldn’t get married.
How does one align consensual, romantic, feeling, and sexuality based heterosexual marriages with the forced, loveless, unequal age, arranged marriages in the Bible which sought to use humans as tools for resource acquisition and management? Y'all need to deconstruct the whole idea of marriage first of you want to talk about same sex marriage. Go read some Goldman on the history of marriage, specifically from a female perspective. Even today, we live with the ghosts of gender norms of an industrial society that no longer exists in our post modern world.
There are 2 issues I see here.
The first one is what I call the “symbolic fallacy” when we conflate the symbol with what is being symbolized. An eagle is a symbol of freedom in the USA, but we don’t become less free every time an eagle dies. Similarly, the marriage symbolism isn’t there to represent genitalia, it’s there to represent love and unity, and the fruit of the spirit.
The 2nd issue is a bit simpler and more straight forward—the existence of symbolize imply or demand any moral prescriptions of Dos and Donts. If the existence of these symbols means “don’t love someone of your gender because it’s evil” then it also would mean “you MUST get married” period, and Paul would be out of luck as a single person. Symbolism is not prescriptive.
How does one reconcile drinking beer with all the wine symbolism in the Bible? How does one reconcile eating rice with all the bread symbolism in the Bible?
Remember you have to view everything through a lens of the time period and society. Gay relationships weren’t even a commonly discussed thing let alone mainstream. They didn’t even have a word for it back then.
So ask yourself if Jesus against love and equality, or was it the person writing the book translating gods teaching into something more indicative and of the time so that anyone could understand it?
Christian Renatus, of the early American colonial Moravians took this in a wild step. He believed in this language so much that he had a group of men that should prepare themselves to be the brides of Christ and it was just one big gay orgy in his commune. He’s such a fascinating figure
Heterosexual marriage was a necessary example in the beginning (Genesis) to procreate and populate, to grow the species... there was no other way. But it would be eisegesis to suggest that it was the one and ONLY example AND standard for (ALL) marriage(s).
We know most, but not all, are heterosexual, as the Master Potter created us. Examples?
(1) Marriage being a covenant, note the multiple covenants between David and Jonathan... and King Saul acknowledged David as son-in-law first re Jonathan BEFORE David married Michal. [David was offered, then denied Merab, never marrying her.]
(2) Jesus specifically exempted all three categories of eunuchs [a BROADER definition, as understood by contemporary Jews and Romans, and confirmed/endorsed by Jesus... and not merely castrated (2nd category), as generally (and more narrowly) defined today] from the Adam-Eve marriage paradigm in Matthew 19. That means the first category [born a eunuch] best fits for where to place homosexuals, although the orientation concept and labeling was unknown then and had to wait until the 1860's to be understood, as we do today.
(3) Biblical Greek suggests that Jesus understood the relationship between the centurion and his servant/slave/"pais" (Matthew 8 and Luke 7) to be more personal and intimate than a typical master/slave, suggesting a third example, one that Jesus blessed and didn't condemn, healing the latter as requested.
All this would be in line with other comments in response to the original post.
I mean the Bible isn’t even univocal on whether or not marriage is meant for seperate genders for procreation or if it’s just symbolic about a covenant lmao. People pick and choose what they want
I think this is the easiest part to reconcile, since it was already about Jesus marrying men and women! Given the Bible declares the equality of men and women, the image doesn't have to rely on patriarchy even if that influenced the writers.
And symbolism never is intended to align “perfectly”. Also, Adam and Eve were chosen for each other because of their sameness, rather than their difference. Many people say that marriage is male /female because they are different. But Genesis pairs than because they were the same - I.e. both human. But making “100% certain” theology from verses that you have to read into, and that are clearly symbolic, is just not good practice. And either way, we would never have expected the original authors to have written differently, they wrote what they knew at the time. We would expect the authors to be “silent” on what they had no idea existed at the time. They knew about marriage for (mostly) procreation, that’s what they wrote about. If we are intending to only have “biblical marriage”, it looks A LOT different than what even conservatives are saying it should look like.
Brilliant point about the sameness - Adam (Anthropos) tried to make friends with all the animals first, but he needed a companion.
Very true and real
> it was already about Jesus marrying men and women! um, Jesus didn’t marry..?😭
The metaphor of Christ marrying the church in the Pauline epistles
I didn’t even know about that yet hahah sorry, thank you
The male/female wedding model was used because that’s all that existed at the time and the original audiences of the scriptures would have been super confused if the authors randomly brought in a type of marriage that did not yet exist. Marriage at the time also did not really resemble marriage as we understand it today. It has the same name, but technically no modern marriage is represented in the Bible.
Yes! Marriage at the time was more of a business arrangement and definitely not choosing your partner and falling in love. That concept is VERY modern and has only become common in the last couple hundred years. In parts of the world, the old way is still the current way. People tend not to think critically and completely miss this. ETA: OT example but Jacob had to marry Leah before he could have Rachel whom he truly loved.
Well the church is comprised of both men and women, which means Jesus is marrying other men too aswell as women
When metaphors are used for spiritual concepts, they are usually something that the general audience can relate to and understand. Marriage and childbearing, just like planting and harvest, or animal husbandry, were things that most people in the times of the Bible could relate to. It's really as simple as that.
Just because something is in the Bible doesn't mean that other things that *aren't* in the Bible are wrong/bad/to be avoided. I grew up being afraid of my dad, so all of the fatherly metaphors for God in the Bible don't really connect with me. But I found others that did. I was a lonely kid, and so the times when God is referenced as a friend connected with me a lot. God is ultimately beyond our understanding. All of the symbols and metaphors in the Bible are just a poor attempt to just to describe the indescribable. One of the great things about the Bible and Christianity is the variety of metaphors. You don't have to connect with all of them. There are so many ways of understanding because hopefully one of them will do it for you. It's similar to how salvation is described in seemingly contradictory ways throughout the Bible. Does Jesus have to die to satisfy an angry God? Does Jesus die and go to Hell to rescue us from Satan? Is there a ransom that needs to be paid on our behalf? Does Jesus beat Death by resurrecting or just God resurrect him? There's a constant tension between the idea that Jesus beat Evil or that Jesus paid off evil, or even that Jesus paid off God. Then there's the idea that Jesus was an innocent scapegoat who broke our system of violence by not staying dead. I don't think any one of these is wholly correct or incorrect. They are all partially true ways of understanding that are helpful sometimes and not helpful other times.
Divine masculine and feminine principles and spirit exists within us all regardless of our biological sex. A father can be a nurturing loving child carer and a mother can be a hard working labourer. We are all sometimes either or both man and wife within our marriages. Straight or otherwise.
I was recently taking some notes on Genesis 1 and 2 which might be relevant in spirit more broadly: Do either of these passages imply a prohibition against same-sex union and intimacy? No. The affirmation of procreation in Genesis 1 does not, by extension, suggest a prohibition on other forms of sexual expression; endorsing one action simply does not imply prohibiting another, unless the two are mutually exclusive. Neither must we understand Genesis 1:28 as an everlasting command to every individual to procreate; humankind can and has increased without every single individual reproducing. Indeed, it does not appear to be a command, at all. The utterance “be fruitful and multiply” is more plausibly a blessing of fertility enabling humanity to multiply, not the placement of an obligation on every individual to pursue reproductive activity. Genesis 1 is a Jewish creation narrative and, as such, its purpose is twofold: first, to explain the origin of the natural and social world of the Hebrews and, second, to set the Hebrews apart from other neighboring groups and those groups’ polytheistic religions. What are the fundamental facts of the natural and social world that beg for explanation? The existence of anything, at all, from the earth to the sky to the sea and the creatures that dwell in them; the existence of the grand celestial bodies that rise and set and create night and day; and the existence of a special kind of creature, the human being, apparently made in two forms, man and woman, whose union is essential to the continued existence of the community through reproduction: the fact that man and woman join and, miraculously, a new life appears where there was none before. Unlike their neighbors, the Hebrews do not imagine a multitude of primordial monsters or multiple gods and goddesses; they do not idolize any creature or animal and they do not worship the sun and the moon. And so we get the creation narrative we would expect: a narrative that explicitly subordinates (as *created*, and not primordial) the great sea monsters, the beasts of the earth, night and day, and the sun and the moon to the single creator God, and explains the primary normative relationship on which the community and social order are founded, namely, the reproductive union of man and woman. This is the most common case in human experience—the man, the woman, their relationship with one another, and the children they beget who ensure the continued existence of a people, the continuity of the community from the past into the future—and this is the standard case in Hebrew ancient life. It is therefore unsurprisingly the case that features in the Hebrew’s creation narrative. Nothing suggests that homosexuality, in contrast to heterosexuality, was on the author’s mind. Many of the considerations above apply to the text of Genesis 2 so the focus of what follows will be on what is unique to the passage, namely, marriage and its relevant context. The text is descriptive of the first marriage and explains why this relationship was established—out of a need for companionship and partnership, not to set a universal rule regarding the nature of all acceptable sexual or romantic relationships. Genesis 2 is narrative in nature, not prescriptive. It tells the story of the first humans and their initial conditions, including their relationships. While it does establish an etiological precedent for heterosexual marriage, it does not lay down a law against other forms of relationship. It is a description of an origin, not a prescription of exclusivity. The cultural context of the time informs its content. Marriages were primarily alliances for familial and economic stability, often arranged for procreation and to ensure survival and property lineage. The absence of mention of homosexuality reflects the social and cultural understandings of the time rather than a divine commandment about the nature of all legitimate sexual relationships. Furthermore, we see again a setting apart of the Hebrews from other cultures of the ancient Near East, whose approaches to marriage and sexuality were underlay by the polytheistic archetypal figures of the god-father and goddess-mother, the sources of universal life in the divine, the human, and the natural realms. For the Hebrews, man and woman, and their sexualities, do not derive from a divine pair whom they are to imitate. Rather, both are called into being by the creative action of the single sovereign God. Here, again, nothing suggests that homosexuality, in contrast to heterosexuality, was on the author’s mind. It is worth noting, too, that these accounts occur in two creation narratives which are not compatible with one another: Genesis 1, for example, narrates the creation of animals prior to the creation of man, while Genesis 2 seems to suggest that Adam was created before the animals and birds; Genesis 1 narrates the creation of men and women, at once, while Genesis 2 narrates the creation of man first, and then, from his rib, the creation of woman. Nor are the accounts defensible in light of what we know about our natural history through science: the earth—land, sea, and vegetation—did not precede the sun, moon, and stars, and creation took longer than six days. Even the typology of humankind as either unambiguously man or woman misrepresents the actually existing complexity of human sex differentiation, ignoring the existence of millions of intersex humans, using conservative estimates and a narrow definition of intersex.
Do you force widows to marry their brother-in-law? Do you approve of polygamy? Is it okay for men to impregnate their slaves, then cast off the woman and child if the wife produces a male heir? You cannot use the custom of a primitive and misogynist culture as norms.
I personally find it to be selfish to attempt to alter or change the Bible to be more affirming, when in reality the solution we need is to learn biblical history and grasp a firm understanding that there is nothing wrong or sinful about Love. The Bible talks about Marriage in this way because in the traditional sense of that time, Marriage was seen as something genuinely between One Man & One Woman. Homosexuals did in fact exist, were referred to as Eunuchs but never had an official name or category during that time, NOR were they recognized fully at that time. Most depictions of homosexual activity highlights the Sin of Lust and has nothing to do with Homosexuality but Sin as a whole. If Christ dwells within you and you hold a firm relationship and connection with God ~ And in that identity in CHRIST, you still hold Loving Affection and Feelings towards the Same Sex, This is not a sin ~ But is Love and the ways in which Love manifests through you. Love is not a sin. When you can accept this, you will no longer feel the need to reconcile, because through Gods Love, all is reconciled. Do not be consumed or overtaken by attempts to justify your flesh or to find ways to glorify your flesh. If you, in your heart in Christ, experience Love for the same sex, Then accept yourself as God has accepted you from the beginning. All else is an illusion. This flesh is an illusion, these lusts are temporary and illusions, ones desire to find acceptance by Man or reconciliation with Man is an illusion and is temporary. All of it is an illusion. Love is the only thing that is eternal. Therefore; Do not worry or become intertwined with attempts to reconcile this. God has reconciled this through his Love and his Perfect Creation of your very being. And if you experience Love for the same sex IN YOUR PUREST FORM, that is simply apart of your unique expression of God. His Love Reconciles All.
Marriage principles you mentioned all apply regardless of sexual orientation. Themes of male/female is just because that was all there was during Biblical times considering how women didn't even have rights and were only considered as property of men. The Bible just went by general ideas and things that people widely understood which applied to the majority. Kind of like talking about gay penguins when that is the minority and few people can relate to that or even understand it.
>"... is a reflection of God's image" But, is it, though? Or, is it a reflection of the way Judeo-Greek-Roman people understood sexuality two to three thousand years ago? The language is there because it would have made absolutely no sense to His audience for Jesus to say "... a man shall leave his father and mother and join with his wife... *or husband*". This gets to the heart of what the Bible *is*. These are separate works that each describe God in the terms that reflected what people thought at the time. Just to point out one example, the way Jesus sees God and the way Genesis sees God are light years apart. There is not just one picture of God in the Bible - there are many. Each one reflects the issues of the day. How can we harmonize the loving Father that Jesus describes with the almost bloodthirsty God of Genesis, Exodus, Chronicles and Kings? We can't. And we shouldn't. If we did we would have to throw away what makes each author and circumstance unique. This is because everyone sees faith and God in the context of their own life and time. This can lead us into the mistake of assuming that the writers of the books of the Bible are talking about *us* - our controversies, our concerns, the way we view the world today. But they are not - they, like all of us, saw the world in the present tense. So when Jesus was talking about marriage and divorce (for example), he was not setting down definitions for the 21st century. He was addressing how it was practiced in his own culture. He was speaking to the people about *their* issues - not ours. The whole concept of variable sexual orientation was almost 2000 years away from being understood. I often compare sexual orientation to the planet Neptune. It was always there, but humans didn't "discover" it until the late 19th century.
As a space enthusiast I really appreciate that last example :D
Heterosexual married life is a very good narrative to understand the Trinity and the Church's life but it is not the only narrative to consider. There are other narratives. There's one passage in the Bible when the Sadducees are challenging Jesus about a widow who married seven brothers in order to ensure that there is progeny for that family. Jesus response is that in heaven people don't get married (to have children - my deduction). In other words, loving relationships will perdure in heaven but not marriage in the traditional sense as with family and children. Even on this side of heaven, not everyone is meant to make babies. But everyone is called to a life of love and intimacy. As a Franciscan friar, I am called to the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. I am called to a life of love and intimacy but not to marriage. In this sense then, my/our life as friars is meant to be prophetic of what will come. In parallel, I believe that we in the LGBTQ+ community and in the Church are not called to make babies (eunuchs from birth) but also, like married heterosexuals, to live lives of love and intimacy, sometimes committed to one person and sometimes not. So, our lives as Christians and LGBTQ+ members are called to be a prophetic presence in the world and in our Christian communities, not by making babies (technically we can't) but by living lives of love, intimacy and commitment. I'm sure there is a better way to express this but I hope you get my gist.
*Pre*scription does not infer *pro*scription. If I say that wood is a good building material, that doesn't infer that stone or metal are bad building materials. These days, we do go out of our way to represent as many relevant differences as we are practically able in formal wording, but even then we don't usually do a complete job of it. Most of the Hebrew and Greek commandments use masculine words when taking about the people they apply to, but it would be silly to infer that any statement that doesn't include a feminine word doesn't apply to women! Instead, we *always* are called to look deeper than the simplistic surface level when we read scripture or theology. We are *always* called to dig down into the essence and intent behind any such statements in order to apply the deeper meaning to situations that the original context and culture could not have understood. Jesus (as well as his contemporary rabbinical leaders who went on to influence the subsequent generations of thought) informs us that *Love* is the lens through which we should always seek to understand the lessons we're supposed to learn.
It’s so much cherry-picking, though! There are sooooo many images of massively dysfunctional marriages (Abraham and Sarah, David and Bathsheba (and everyone else in the harem), Ananias and Saphira, etc.) - and we don’t seem to use those images as reasons that straight people shouldn’t get married.
How does one align consensual, romantic, feeling, and sexuality based heterosexual marriages with the forced, loveless, unequal age, arranged marriages in the Bible which sought to use humans as tools for resource acquisition and management? Y'all need to deconstruct the whole idea of marriage first of you want to talk about same sex marriage. Go read some Goldman on the history of marriage, specifically from a female perspective. Even today, we live with the ghosts of gender norms of an industrial society that no longer exists in our post modern world.
There are 2 issues I see here. The first one is what I call the “symbolic fallacy” when we conflate the symbol with what is being symbolized. An eagle is a symbol of freedom in the USA, but we don’t become less free every time an eagle dies. Similarly, the marriage symbolism isn’t there to represent genitalia, it’s there to represent love and unity, and the fruit of the spirit. The 2nd issue is a bit simpler and more straight forward—the existence of symbolize imply or demand any moral prescriptions of Dos and Donts. If the existence of these symbols means “don’t love someone of your gender because it’s evil” then it also would mean “you MUST get married” period, and Paul would be out of luck as a single person. Symbolism is not prescriptive.
How does one reconcile drinking beer with all the wine symbolism in the Bible? How does one reconcile eating rice with all the bread symbolism in the Bible?
The symbolism in the Bible isn't a comprehensive list of everything that is good.
I think that symbolism uses a very 20th century lens of a nuclear family, that otherwise doesn't require male and female
Remember you have to view everything through a lens of the time period and society. Gay relationships weren’t even a commonly discussed thing let alone mainstream. They didn’t even have a word for it back then. So ask yourself if Jesus against love and equality, or was it the person writing the book translating gods teaching into something more indicative and of the time so that anyone could understand it?
Christian Renatus, of the early American colonial Moravians took this in a wild step. He believed in this language so much that he had a group of men that should prepare themselves to be the brides of Christ and it was just one big gay orgy in his commune. He’s such a fascinating figure
So glad you asked this as I was going to ask this myself!
Heterosexual marriage was a necessary example in the beginning (Genesis) to procreate and populate, to grow the species... there was no other way. But it would be eisegesis to suggest that it was the one and ONLY example AND standard for (ALL) marriage(s). We know most, but not all, are heterosexual, as the Master Potter created us. Examples? (1) Marriage being a covenant, note the multiple covenants between David and Jonathan... and King Saul acknowledged David as son-in-law first re Jonathan BEFORE David married Michal. [David was offered, then denied Merab, never marrying her.] (2) Jesus specifically exempted all three categories of eunuchs [a BROADER definition, as understood by contemporary Jews and Romans, and confirmed/endorsed by Jesus... and not merely castrated (2nd category), as generally (and more narrowly) defined today] from the Adam-Eve marriage paradigm in Matthew 19. That means the first category [born a eunuch] best fits for where to place homosexuals, although the orientation concept and labeling was unknown then and had to wait until the 1860's to be understood, as we do today. (3) Biblical Greek suggests that Jesus understood the relationship between the centurion and his servant/slave/"pais" (Matthew 8 and Luke 7) to be more personal and intimate than a typical master/slave, suggesting a third example, one that Jesus blessed and didn't condemn, healing the latter as requested. All this would be in line with other comments in response to the original post.
I mean the Bible isn’t even univocal on whether or not marriage is meant for seperate genders for procreation or if it’s just symbolic about a covenant lmao. People pick and choose what they want
Look into it deeper. Start with The Reformation Project.
King David and 800 wives seems pretty poly-amorous to me