This is the first of a five-part series on marriage. In Part I we will examine the underlying worldviews of Christianity and humanism as it applies to humankind’s relationships in the broader sense. Part II will more specifically examine the origins of marriage. In Part III we turn our attention to the nature of marriage under the Christian and humanistic worldviews. In Part IV we will examine the assault on the divine concept of marriage and the pathologies of marriage and relationships under the dominant humanistic worldview in America. In Part V, we will examine the consequences to society under the humanistic worldview of marriage and relationships.
The reader is cautioned to not consider Parts I and II as merely an academic and therefore optional exercise in understanding the radical assault on marriage in twenty-first century America. Rather it is a fundamental and integral prerequisite in understanding marriage and the conflict regarding marriage in the battle of worldviews in the twenty-first century.
Much of the material for this series has been excerpted from Ye shall be as gods which succinctly frames the opposing Christian and humanist worldviews with regard to human relationships in general and marriage specifically. [Johnson, Chapter 20, American Family – Marriage and Family.]
The Trinitarian relationship is a picture of God’s fundamental nature or being. Under the Judeo-Christian ethic or beliefs, man was specially created for relationship with God. We are also made for relationship with one another. These Judeo-Christian beliefs are supported by a thoughtful reflection on the history of humankind in which those permanent things and universals stand as unrelenting testimonies of the truth of this special relationship with God and with each other. This history also points to the hierarchical nature of the relationships of God, humankind, and nature.
The distinction between the respective worldviews of humanism and Christianity regarding relationships can be visualized in positional terms, i.e., vertical versus horizontal. For Christians, the primary nature of those relationships is vertical (hierarchical)—God’s being is shown by the Father-Son relationship and the relationship of Christ with the Church of which He is the head and we are the body. Because man was created in God’s image, the hierarchical pattern of relationships is evident in various entities throughout history— marriage, family, community, nations, and the Kingdom of God. Hierarchy implies authority, superior and subordinate, order, and rank. Furthermore, if society is to be understood, it must have structure, and structure requires hierarchy which implies distinctions.
Weaver called the “steady obliteration of those distinctions” the most significant omen of our time. Modern society embraces the humanistic perversion “…that in a just society there are no distinctions”, but this leads to a loss of cultural center and ultimately disintegration. And the most dangerous idea of modern society is an undefined equalitarianism which pretends to be the champion of justice but is the opposite. [Weaver, pp. 41-42.] In reality, humanistic equalitarianism is a thief of status, property, patrimony, and ultimately freedom. In such is not found justice.
Codes of behavior upon which cultures and societies must rest rely on fraternity and not equality. Fraternity resonates through history as it is the offspring of the seminal purposes of man— relationship with God and other men. The object of fraternity is other-directed and speaks of duty, congeniality, cooperation, and sense of belonging whereas equality focuses attention on self and results in egotism. Equality, rightly applied, is equality before God and the law. But under the humanistic worldview, equality has become a rapacious egalitarianism that imposes regimentation and leveling of circumstance which results in unnatural social groupings. One senses the relentless gravity of the humanistic worldview pulling society downward from hierarchy into a flat (horizontal) social plain and consequential mediocrity. Such humanistic regimentation and leveling of condition result in loss of a sense of belonging and place which leads to suspicion and resentment. From this we see the humanistic definition of equality as “…a disorganizing concept in so far as human relationships mean order.” [Weaver, pp. 41-42.]
If one reflects on the various descriptions of humanism through its definition, philosophy, application, and worldview, one can see the emphasis on the horizontal (egalitarian) and the sharp contrasts with the vertical (hierarchical) with regard to relationships in all spheres of family and society. By egalitarian is meant a belief in human equality with special emphasis on “social, political, and economic rights and privileges” and a focus on the removal of any inequalities among humankind. An examination of just a few of humanism’s principles will assist in developing this mental picture.
Chief among these leveling principles is humanism’s insistence on denial of God, a severance that encompasses both time and authority. In other words, God does not now exist nor existed before the appearance of the universe. Creation was a random process of nature; therefore, we are not subject to the authority of some creator.
A second example of the horizontal nature of relationships (and denial of hierarchy, rank, and order) in the humanistic worldview regards the nature of man. There are no giants upon whose shoulders we stand. Quite the contrary, contemporary man is the latest and greatest model that evolved from the slime pits of the past. As a product of evolution, humankind cannot be fallen nor have need of redemption. If man is not fallen, then there cannot be right and wrong, only different points of view. Man is his own master and owes nothing to a mythical God or the ancients. Humanism’s exaltation of self over family, denial of patrimony, emphasis on the present and the experiential, flexible and interchangeable values, life lived for the moment for there is nothing beyond, and deference to the senses represent a detachment from any hierarchical bonds of duty, obligation, patrimony, and the permanent things. There is no heaven above nor hell below and therefore no hierarchy, only a progressive and everlasting march to an unattainable and unknowable horizon that continually recedes into the distance.
In contrast to the humanistic worldview, Weaver described the hierarchical nature of family and its bond with fraternity.
The ancient feeling of brotherhood carries obligations of which equality knows nothing. It calls for respect and protection, for brotherhood is status in family, and family is by nature hierarchical…It places people in a network of sentiment, not of rights… [Weaver, pp. 35, 41-42.]
With this understanding of the contrast between the two worldviews regarding human relationships, we are now able to move into a more specific examination of the origins of the marriage relationship.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 305-307.
Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 35, 41-42.
