Chapter One: One Man, One Woman, One Flesh

This is another post in a series I plan to do about Kevin DeYoung’s excellent book What the Bible Really Teaches about Homosexuality. My plan is that for each of his twelve chapters, I’ll provide a short summary and a quote or two. (I’ll use his chapter titles for my blog post titles, too.)

My hope is that you’ll both be informed, and also that you’ll buy and read the book. Here.

Chapter 1. One Man, One Woman, One Flesh.

DeYoung proposes that God’s original design for marriage is one man, one woman, in a covenant relationship that is sealed by their physical union and which is capable of bearing children. He shows how traditional marriage is a symbol of God’s divine design in ways that other unions cannot be.

Now for a quote:

 “... monogamy makes sense only within this Genesis understanding of marriage. Apart from the complementarity of the two sexes there is no moral logic which demands that marriage should be restricted to a twosome… If marriage is simply the formation of a kinship bond between those who are committed wholly to one another, there is no reason why multiple persons or groups of people cannot commit themselves wholly to one another. There is no internal coherence to the notions of monogamy and exclusivity if marriage is something other than the reunion of two complementary and differentiated sexes…It’s because God made the woman from the man that she is also for the man (1 Cor. 11:8-9, 11-12). And it’s because the two – male and female – are divinely designed complements each for the other that monogamy makes sense and same-sex marriage does not."  (p. 31)