Herman Bavinck on the Christian Family

The Origin of the Family

Bavinck notes that the biblical story of Creation casts the history of humanity as beginning with a wedding, the establishement of the first family. God reversed the chaos and emptiness of the primeval state of Creation by ordering it and filling it. This “six-day work project” (1) was for the ultimate purpose of providing a home for humanity, whom God would create in his own image. Bavinck says that everything we need to know about humanity is embedded in the creation account of Genesis 1.

God first created the man with a specific sex, a male, born from the dust of the ground and from the Spirit above, and so related to both the animals and the angels, yet possessing a unique place in the order of being as a body-spirit union. Though in the presence of God and the animals, this man was lonely. The creation of the woman was God’s solution to man’s problem.¹ The woman, like the man, is a special creature of God, bearing his image and likeness, and possessing her own sex—a female.

Bavinck says that there is an inseparable bond between man and woman, because woman is made from man—she is “bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh” (Gen. 2:23). The man precedes the woman in both time and in order, indicating relative, positional hierarchy in terms of role and duty. Each have their own nature, character, and vocation. The man’s task was to exercise complete obedience to his creator and to cultivate/protect the garden with wisdom and care.

Bavinck notes that these two responsibilities are integrally related. Yet, as an individual, man cannot complete his calling alone. The presence and work of the woman is necessary to exercise obedience to God’s commission for mankind.

Bavinck says that man and woman receive the same calling from God, but within that calling, each has a different task and activity, working in harmony as a “united sacred service” (7). The marriage between man and woman is by nature and design monogamous, and Bavinck notes that “no other love resembles God’s love so closely, or reaches such height” (7). The fruit of marriage is children, and, says Bavinck, in this three-in-oneness—father, mother, child in familial bond—lies the foundation of all civilized society. In other words, social harmony is trinitarian in nature.

The Disruption of the Family

Man and woman both sinned in the Garden, but Eve sinned first by succumbing to the serpent’s temptation, disbelieving God in her gullibility toward the tempter. Adam sinned subsequently, being tempted by Eve and succumbing to his own weakness of faith. Bavinck says that Eve fell because of covetousness—she wanted to be like God—and Adam fell because his love for Eve surpassed his love for God. There was now a reversal of order in the relationship between husband and wife: Eve took the lead, and Adam followed. Bavinck comments that their guilt expressed itself first in the form of shame, but this shame, though evidence of guilt, is also a blessing, for it is “a sign of an awakened conscience,”” showing that a person “retains something that disapproves of sin” (12). Shame that comes through a disrupted conscience drives a person to hide himself; nakedness becomes a hindrance because of the loss of innocence. “Losing the garment of righteousness made clothes necessary as covering” (12). Bavinck says that conscience, shame, and clothing are intimately related, and they are reminders of our original state and our fall from that state, “proclaiming humanity’s need for—and capacity for—salvation” (12).

Bavinck notes that the punishments for Adam’s and Eve’s respective roles in the Fall were not generically applied, but were commensurate with the nature and calling of each, and of their particular sins. Yet, says Bavinck, these punishments contain in them simultaneous blessings, that “preserve human beings outside Paradise for atonement through the cross” (12).

The Family Among the Nations

Bavinck surveys how sin had immediate effects on the family. The second generation of mankind is the story of a murder. The time of Adam and Eve to the Flood was a time of the growth of sin. After the Flood, Noah’s descendants were dispersed and isolated throughout the world, becoming frequent enemies of one another. As various cultures and customs developed, the life of marriage and family developed among them in different ways, both for good and ill.

Bavinck goes on to outline and summarize the basic theory of evolution and its view of the development of marriage and the family—from the promiscuity of free sexual relationships and communal children to the institution of monogamy and the family unit—and then criticizes it as false alternative to the biblical story.

On the evolutionary model, marriage and family were ingeniously invented and expertly constructed (20); yet, Bavinck points out, this notion is entirely without foundation. Bavinck says that recent studies (relative to his day) in anthropology and social history have shed light on the tragic effects that sin has on the family, and that the notion of promiscuity on the evolutionary model is on the Christian evaluation considered sexual immorality and a violation of the Seventh Commandment. “Even the nature of sin and the manner of sinning demonstrate that one is a human being and was originally created not in the image of ape, but in the image of God” (23).

Even with the long and pervasive history of the perversion of marriage and family as the result of sin, there is the “miraculous”² preservation of the home in “more or less pure form” (23), which cuts against the idea that marriage and family was an evolutionary development from promiscuity, through polyandry and polygamy, to monogamy. Home and family life are observed virtually everywhere. The natural distinction between man and woman has also everywhere been recognized, and the distinction in their respective roles and responsibilities have been practiced. At this, says Bavinck, we should not be surprised, for God “has preserved the natural love that he had planted in that heart, and thereby opened a fountain of pure happiness and inestimable blessing for earthly life” (27).

The Family in Israel

Bavinck says that the first table of the Law more clearly distinguishes Israel from the other nations than the second table, yet it is the second table that shows that the exclusive love for Yahweh manifests itself in the love of neighbor, which undergirds the legislation for marriage and family.

“Patriarchy existed among Israel from the earliest time” (30), in the household and in the nation. The husband/father possessed great authority and power. The other members of the household unit—wife and children, slaves and servants, even ox and donkey—were all his “property” (30). Yet, this fact alone does not entail that women and children were his “slaves,” for he does not stand in the same relation toward all his possessions. Bavinck says it is an argument from silence to say that the absence of laws describing the rights of wives and children infers that they had no rights or protection. This view, he says, is based on the evolutionary assumptions that nature is chaotic and disorderly and thus, everyman is for himself and against the other, and that only the state can impose the order needed to mitigate the chaos. But this, says Bavinck, fails to take into account, ironically, the human aspects of humanity: reason, conscience, heart, and soul. In fact, instead of concluding that the absence of laws establishing and governing the rights of wives and children entails their non-existence, the opposite is true: the more laws needed to detail those rights means that those natural rights have been increasingly violated and need legislation to preserve them. In Israel, the rights of the members of the household were established in the “mores,” not in the law.

Though she exercises many responsibilities, the wife achieves her “full honor” in the bearing of children, and she is instrumental in the admonition to nurture her children in the way of the Lord. The institution of marriage is a divine ordinance, a covenant that is “in principle and in essence monogamous and unbreakable” (34), yet because of the hardness of heart, polygamy and divorce were permitted in the law, but “were never the rule” (35). Marriage finds its greatest dignity in being the expression of God’s love for his people. God marries his people in covenant love and faithfulness, and thus, all acts of defiance against God’s holy character are seen by him to be acts marital unfaithfulness.

The Family in the New Testament

The miraculous virgin birth of Jesus is an unparalleled historical event. Both Mary and Joseph exhibited a trusting submission to the Law-Word of God in their hearts and in their actions. Neither were considered righteous by virtue of their filial relationship to Jesus, but because they did the will of God. Mary and Joseph kept Jesus’ divine birth concealed, and Bavinck speculates that only when Jesus “showed by his words and deeds that he was the Son of God…did they likely mention it to several trusted friends” (39). Jesus did not think it below him to submit to his father and mother, and in fact, his obedience to the Fifth Commandment “belonged to that righteousness that he needed to fulfill” (39). When the desires of his parents for him conflicted with his diving work, Jesus emphatically chose to honor his heavenly Father first. Nonetheless, he tenderly submitted to and cared for his earthly parents.

Bavinck says that Jesus’ family is the example of the Christian home. Jesus was neither married, nor was he a monk, but he engaged women with dignity and respect. Regarding the provision of divorce, for Jesus, it was not to be understood as a civil law stipulating that a man must divorce his wife if she is unfaithful, but a moral law that permits a divorce in that case. He also honored marriage, and reinforced the creation design for it as a normative institution.

Jesus also showed great love for children,³ and understood the bond between parents and children as something unbreakable. Jesus opposed the creative attempts of the Jewish rabbis to avoid the obligations that children carry toward their parents.

The apostolic witness is consistent with, and reinforces, Jesus’ understanding of marriage and family. Marriage is not a “Christian” institution; it is a creation principle, appearing among all peoples. The “Christian” family is a “family in fellowship with Christ” (45), having been corrupted and destroyed by sin, but now in Christ is renewed and sanctified, taking on a distinctive character defined by mutual love.

The moral situation of marriage and family had degraded significantly in first-century Roman culture. It is into this context that the confession of Christ and its influence on the family was manifest. Bavinck notes that “at first it frequently brought great division into the homes” (48). But ultimately, Christianity restored the institution of the family and deepened its impact through the preaching of obedience and love, which Bavinck says produced effects worthy of the miraculous. In particular, Christianity’s spiritual elevation of women in the church benefitted the home, bringing “to light once again the beauty and richness of the life of the soul of the woman” (50).

The significance that the woman acquired in the church affected her position in society…. She remained man’s helpmeet, but along with him inherited the same grace. (50)

In short, Christianity sanctified the home.

Dangers Confronting the Family

The ascetic movement represents, for Bavinck, one of the ways the principles of Christian family life were ignored, or at least misappropriated. Bavinck notes that the church never went so far as to deny the value of marriage and family as such, but they did err in thinking that abstaining from these things translated to a more holy existence, which, he says, constituted a departure from the instruction of Christ and the apostles.

At the same time, this asceticism and celibatism of Roman Cathoic clergy resulted also in the opposite effect with regard to estate of marriage: it was elevated to the status of sacrament, which, Bavinck, says constitutes a “direct contradiction” (54). Bavinck traces the irony of how this tension resulted in the denigration of women and promoted prostitution. This practice has always been around, but took on an “unusually grievous character and obtained a frightening growth” (57) in the nineteenth century.

Various “solutions” to the problem have been offered. Some think that prostitution should be regulated (not eliminated!) by the state, and with prostitution, think that marriage should also be more and more regulated by the state. On the other extreme, there are those who think that the institution of marriage is the cause of all the “misery in sexual conduct” (59), yet the irony of this position is that the state is still left to care for (regulate?) the children of illegitimate procreation. Others think that the liberation of the woman (feminism) is the key. And lastly, there are those who blame faulty structures in society and the unequal distribution of goods in the practice of capitalism. Bavinck shows that these views suffer from logical, socialogical, and theological fallacies.

Marriage & Family

Reformation begins within, says Bavinck, and thus it can begin immediately.

There has never been a time when the family faced so severe a crisis as the time in which we are not living. Many are not satisfied with remodeling, they want to tear things down to the foundation. […] All good, enduring reformation begins with ourselves and takes its starting point in one’s own heart and life. If family life is indeed being threatened from all sides today, then there is nothing better for each person to be doing than immediately to begin reforming within one’s own circle and begin to rebuff with the facts themselves the sharp criticisms that are being registered nowadays against marriage and family. Such a reformation immediately has this in its favor, that it would lose no time and would not need to wait for anything. Anyone seeking deliverance from the state must travel the lengthy route of forming a political party, having meetings, referendums, parliamentary debates, and civil legislation, and it is still unknown whether with all that activity he will achieve any success. But reforming from within can be undertaken by each person at every moment, and be advanced without impediment. (62-63)

And this inner renewal is consistent with nature.

Most changes currently being proposed to solve the sexual problem not only contradict Christian principles but also come into conflict with the facts and demands of reality. (64)

Christianity recognizes this, but sharply distinguishes between “sick” reality and “safe” reality (64). The distinction between man and woman is natural, and all reasonable discussion about human sexuality proceeds from this plain fact of nature.

…the man has always been a man and the woman has always been a woman. There is nothing mutable about this fact; we have only to accept it. It is not a work of the devil to be destroyed, but a work of the Father to be acknowledged. (64)

The distinction is necessary because it is natural, but still, it can be subject to the errors of “underestimate and overestimate” (65).

Bavinck goes on to spell out these errors with great perception and insight into the particular nature of men and women and how they constitute two different ways of being human, peculiarly indispensable for one another, fit for the marriage union. This implies that the unmarried state is unnatural, and there is no prohibition in Scripture against it, only a command for it. But this general command must be applied with reason and care. The Scriptures make provisions for the unmarried and celibate state, but these are not the norm.

Marriage is the “apex of human life” (74), but for many, the realities of marriage after the wedding become a curse and drudgery because of corruption. Bavinck says there are two direction one can go in the attempt to reform marriage. One is to blame the institution and not the man; the other is to recognize that each person bears the responsibility to honor marriage according to its divine design, and its failure is not to be located in the institution itself, but in its profanation.

No Christian says that the person is corrupted by marriage, but he confesses that marriage is corrupted by the person; the modern realist blames the circumstances, the institutions, the laws and ordinances, ultimately, God himself, while the Christian finds within his own heart the source of all impurity. (79)

In marriage, the sin most husbands are threatened by is that of unfaithfulness, and for the woman, stubbornness is her primary liability. Scripture addresses both of these tendencies. But the human heart resists these commands. Bavinck goes on to lament the rebellion against biblical marriage in his own context, and argues that the biblical vision for marriage is the only way to peace and freedom in the home, which is the foundation for peace and freedom in society.

Church and state neither invented nor instituted marriage; they can only validate it before God and before people. Marriage itself is of divine origin; he established the law for marriage, a law that binds every person, as well as the church and the state; he created it as a reflection of that most intimate fellowship that he in Christ enjoys with his church. (86)

Family & Nurture

God’s design for marriage includes the propagation of the human race. “Sexual difference and sexual relations therefore rest in God’s arrangement and are acceptable to him” (87). This position cuts against both asceticism and libertinism, two pendulums that tend to swing alternately through history. Asceticism denies the inherit goodness of sex and libertinism denies the moral boundaries of sex.

Procreation is imbued with moral significance, in that it “bestows existence upon a human being” (89). Bavinck notes that despite all the scientific research, sexual reproduction remains a mystery. There is a higher creative power at work in the establishment of a home and family; in this sense, human beings are mere instruments. The community of the family, itself, is something a person does not choose for himself, but existed already long before his existence. A person becomes a member of the natural family, not by consent, but by divine will, and this community provides “the basic shape of our physical and spiritual life” (91). Every family is unique in character, and some traits that are unique to a family are mysteriously passed down generation to generation, which ties a family together. “In former times this sense of family was far stronger than it is today, and it was the source of all sorts of obligations” (91). There is, at the same time, a remarkable diversity in the family that is in constant tension with the unity, which seeks an equilibrium in the father’s and mother’s leadership.

Thus, the home is the “first and best school of nurture on earth” (92), and not only for the children, but also for the parents.

Nowhere are that unity and community, that diversity and exchange, that forming element and that nurturing power encountered so richly as in the sphere of the family. In this respect, no art can improve upon nature, no science can improve upon life. (93)

The father’s role has been modified in society, but the essence of his office has remained unchanged because it is indestructible. He is still the head by nature, and if the husband is the head, then the wife is the heart of the home, and children are the glory of the marriage.

Bavinck points out that the nurturing effect of the family on children is even greater than its effect on the parents. While Bavinck celebrates the comprehensive attention being devoted to the child in his society, he, at the same time laments that the social activism for improving the lot of the child’’ has had negative consequences: the nurture of children has become more and more systematic; the theory of nurture is dominated by modern evolutionary science; nurture in the family has become more and more suspect, resulting in a greater dependence upon the state to shoulder that responsibility. In all these way, nurture takes on “a very artificial character” (105).

The family, on the other hand, is a natural institution, not conceived and constructed by man, but by God. It is not artificial, but full of life. The family cannot be imitated, nor can the nurture it provides be copied by any other institution, as hard as they may try. The family is the school of life. It is the “nurturing institution par excellence” (105).

Family & Society

Human society did not begin atomistically, but organically, arising from a marriage and a family. All the features and relationships in society were already present in seed form in the first family.

Authority and obedience, independence and subordination, equality and inequality, correspondence and variation, unity of nature and diversity of gifts and callings—all these have been present in the family from the very beginning, and in no sense came into existence as a result of sin” (115) […] That fact, however, does not constitute the family as equivalent to society; even as the acorn contains the oak in seed form, who growth requires various factors (soil, climate, etc.), so too society emerged from the family only gradually and under the influence of various circumstances. (114)

Societies are established either by voluntary (e.g., book club) or natural (organic) associations (e.g., nation). The organic society can develop along different lines, and so we can distinguish between the more narrow definition of “society” and the societies of family, church, and state. Bavinck speculates that had sin not entered the world, human society would be a patriarchal association of families, but the because of the effects of sin, the institution of the church and the state was necessary for human existence and survival.

Bavinck goes on to show how society developed through the instigation of the need for camaraderie (among men, especially) and from work as an inherent activity of human existence.⁴ Bavinck then discusses the power and material of labor, noting that the current age is not the only one where science and technology were wed to produce great advancements. He says that those who glorify the current era to be the the first in this regard is to be “in large part ignorant about earlier times” (121). Man is of the earth, and thus he works with the materials that the earth provides. He cannot create something from nothing, as God can, but he can take what nature supplies and turn it into something else that is serviceable to human desires through remarkable ingenuity.

Society itself, as an outgrowth of the family, is an “inestimable good” and a “priceless gift” from God, containing goods “whose value cannot be calculated in monetary terms” (124). Bavinck contrasts this attitude with those of his current day, which despises society, and sees in it the source of “every misery and malady” (124), with inequality being the greatest of these vices. Bavinck notes that the intense struggle against society is not directed on the abuses being committed, but on the foundations on which society rests.

And because the organization of society possesses its starting point and its stability in the family, the struggle against society ultimately leads to a struggle against the family, against the distinction and relationship of husband and wife, of parents and children, of those who are independent and those who are subservient. (127)

Bavinck notes the “strong push for independence and freedom” in society, and affirms that much of this project is consistent with the ethics of Christianity, which, “more than any other religion or ethics, has highlighted the value of human personality” (132). But this pursuit of increased rights and freedoms must be checked by the moral authority of the law of God. The recognition of natural and moral limits must qualify the what is meant by “freedom.” “The family is the nursery of love and inoculates society with such love,” says Bavinck (134). Therefore, any true reform in society must model the ethics of the family, which is nothing less than the practice of the law of love.

The Future of the Family

Bavinck saw in his day the degradation of the family in popular society, the most serious dangers to it being posed by the “new theories regarding marriage and family” (138). The state has replaced the family, wherein its citizens share equal rights within that one family. Marriage is antiquated and can no longer be maintained, since evolutionary anthropology leads to open marriages and free love. This results in a decrease in births, an increase in divorce, and unrestrained sexual activity.

Bavinck notes the irony in the powerful attempts being made to protect and preserve marriage and the family, to restrain men and honor women, and especially to protect and prepare children for their future. All of this indicates a desire for renewal in the area of marriage and family matters, which has as its basis acts of service done in love. For this very reason, the state can never replace the family, because the state is not the sphere of love, but only of justice. Nevertheless, the state has a judicial duty, as God’s minister, to protect the family.

The Marxists theorize that in a capitalist society the family would die because of decreasing wages and the increase of women and children in the labor force. After this dissolution of the family, the women would be liberated from slavery in the home to enjoy the same social independence that men do. But this socialist script has not played out like this. Wages have increased, there are less children and women in the labor force outside the home, and women still maintain their status as mothers and homemakers. Even among the socialists, there are men who recognize that the family must maintain its existence, even while property and goods become more communal.

Bavinck says that the family is undergoing a change from a “patriarchal family” to a “modern family,” where personal freedom and independence is highly valued (144). And even though some see this transition as the roots of the disappearance of the family, Bavinck reminds us that though the form may change, the essence is preserved. The nature of the family is more powerful than the “utopian theories of constructed about human society,” where the family is seen as a problem that must be overcome by a restructuring of society.

In his day, Bavinck saw the retreat from the city to the country as a sign of the failure of the communist ideal and the desire for authentic individualism, which runs contrary to the communist ethic. He also saw the trends in the training of girls (as domestic servants and as future wives) to be indicative of the preservation and maintenance of the modern family. Likewise, the privatization of property has ushered in new forms of family life, but it does not necessarily entail the dissolution of the family altogether, as some argue. After all, “private property is grounded not in human capriciousness but in human nature” (158). The privatization of property can easily be abused must not go morally unfettered; but the potential abuse of a thing does not by itself render it an evil. It is the ethic of the family that undergird the proper governance of private property. Bavinck concludes his work by affirming the perpetual existence of the family in the world until God achieves his intended purposes, since God is the one who conceived the family and who preserves it through time until the goal is reached, when “the shadow will make way for the substance, the symbol for the reality” (161).

My Remarks

Bavinck writes about marriage and the family with great warmth and passion. He has a remarkable ability to articulate a theological vision with such conviction and eloquence. My friend, Rev. Dr. Steve Jeffrey, says that reading Bavinck is to experience theology as “all dressed up in its Sunday best.” Bavinck effortlessly integrates the theology of the family into his assessment of the sociological and psychological trends of his day, and demonstrates a remarkable grasp of anthropology. He is very perceptive about the nuances of family life in the home as well as the complexities of society at large. He is able to interact with the theories of evolution, Marxism, socialism, and capitalism with penetrating and irenic engagement, being ready to acknowledge strengths of his opponents when merited. The breadth and depth of his learning is on display in this book, and it is impressive.

This book exposed me to Bavinck’s “organic worldview’’ (x), wherein the Triune God operates as the theological control of all other ideas. This theology-as-organism notion has really captivated me. I hope I will have a chance to read Eglington’sTrinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology, 17) to explore this further.

In any case, Bavinck’s cosmic theological vision is ever present in this work on the family.

Footnotes

1. “So the woman is the answer to the question that flowed from the man’s heart and across his lips. She is the answer to his prayer, the gift God so richly and lovingly bestowed upon him” (3). ↩

2. “It is a miracle of God’s grace and of the leading of his providence” (24). ↩

3. “Jesus loved children with a grand and profound love” (43). ↩

4. “…in work, a persons humanity comes to light” (118). ↩