Marriage and Family in Protestant and Evangelical Understanding

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation was a watershed in the history of the Western theology and law of marriage – a moment and movement that gathered several streams of classical and Catholic legal ideas and institutions, remixed them and revised them in accordance with the new Protestant norms and forms of the day. The Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican branches of the Reformation gave birth to three Protestant models of marriage. Like Catholics, Protestants retained the naturalist perspective of marriage as an association created for procreation and mutual protection. They also retained the contractual perspective of marriage as a voluntary association formed by the mutual consent of the couple. Unlike Catholics, however, Protestants rejected the subordination of marriage to celibacy and the celebration of marriage as a sacrament. The Lutheran tradition, from 1517 forward, developed a social model of marriage, grounded in Martin Luther’s doctrine of the heavenly and earthly kingdoms. Marriage, Luther and his colleagues taught, was a social estate of the earthly kingdom of creation, not a sacred estate of the heavenly kingdom of redemption. Marriage, John Calvin and his followers taught, was not a sacramental institution of the church, but a covenantal association of the entire community. The Anglican tradition, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, brought forth a commonwealth model of marriage. This model embraced the sacramental, social, and covenantal models inherited from the Continent but went beyond them. Marriage was at once a gracious symbol of the divine, a social unit of the earthly kingdom, and a solemn covenant with one’s spouse. Evangelical Christianity understands marriage and the family in light of biblical understanding and Christian experience. Christian marriage and family life is regarded as a sacred and creative calling by all Christians. It is a basic biblical teaching. Marital union in Christ appeals to divine grace for support and fulfillment of a natural union of a man and a woman.