Foster/Tennant in their final chapter handle marriage and do so with a sort of flair that demonstrates the primacy they maintain for men and masculinity over and above women and their God-given place in marriage. For Foster/Tennant, marriage is essentially a tool to help men accomplish their mission in life and not much more. The authors speak of two rails which run on this track. The first rail is being in a gang with other men to help a man get there. The other rail, Foster/Tennant say, is having a wife. Of course, talking about two rails effectively makes brotherhood equivalent to marriage in terms of its nature and role in a man’s life rather than recognizing the fuller and more central nature of two becoming one in marriage. The reader might also get the impression that brotherhood, since it’s the first rail, is more important than marriage though Foster/Tennant don’t come right out and say that. Men like Jack Donovan likely would, however.
Throughout the book, Foster/Tennant are typically busy making claims without actually substantiating them in terms of real argumentation. The same is true here where various passages of Scripture are put forward as proof-texts but detailed treatment of the texts in question are typically not offered. The authors present two different kind of women in summary fashion as they are discussed in the Proverbs but focus very little on the comparisons made in any detail. So, the reader is left to infer what a ‘Proverbs 31 wife’ looks like and what kind of woman to avoid in finding a wife.
The authors then claim that whatever else one understands about marriage, a wife is only a complement to a man’s mission and not the mission itself. Remember that for Foster/Tennant their definition of mission is, “your best effort at wisely integrating your interests, skills, and circumstances into a personal vision for exercising dominion over what God has given you”. The definition Joe Boot has offered is “biblical theology externalized and applied to every area of life”. The differences are important because Dr. Boot’s definition is both more wide-ranging and more comprehensive. For Foster/Tennant, their vision is on the whole related to vocation rather than the understanding that all of life is mission in God to glorify him and enjoy him forever (WSC Q/A 1).
Foster/Tennant’s definition limits the nature of the mission in play. When all of life in obedience to God becomes the mission, a wife becomes not only a complement to man’s mission but also a central and integral focus of his life in loving and serving God. So, there is a sense in which a wife is the mission rather than a mere complement to it because everything is a matter of obedience to and love for God. After all, the Scriptures flat out say ‘to love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her’ (Eph. 5:25). Foster/Tennant aren’t interested in giving anything up because their idea of a man has other more important things to do.
Christ’s entire focus as the incarnate Messiah in establishing dominion on this earth was to give himself up for his own bride the church and Ephesians dictates a similar focus for men in marriage. The ‘great mystery’ of Ephesians 5:32 is the fact that as Christ becomes one with his bride so too a man and woman become one together in marriage to pursue a life in God as one. Note that a wife isn’t just a complement to her husband in terms of granting assistance but that they become one person together pursuing the mission of applying biblical theology to all of life.
Foster/Tennant then continue down the path of looking at marriage with their reductive mission. For the authors, a man should have a mission in play before he seeks a wife and women desire a man already on mission. Of course, as usual, these claims are provided without any evidence that they are either true or necessary for young men in finding a wife. But, for the Christian man whose entire life is already a matter of glorifying God and enjoying him forever why isn’t obedience to God enough for Foster/Tennant prior to marriage? What wife wouldn’t want a man that is obedient to God and loves him above all else?
The Scriptures provide no prescriptive command for a man to have a particular calling in life discerned prior to getting married and in fact the descriptive narrative of much of the Bible would seem to speak against what Foster/Tennant offer. Moses married Zipporah after fleeing Pharaoh while on the run for murder but before he is tasked by God to lead Israel out of slavery, a mission he didn’t exactly want to pursue in the first place (Exodus 2:21; 3:10). Jacob after stealing his brother’s blessing is sent away by Isaac to marry from the daughters of Laban because his mother couldn’t stand the thought of him marrying a Canaanite. Isaac blesses Jacob, clues him in to the covenant of his father, and Jacob has a dream along the way but his mission as such isn’t revealed as something he really pursues until after he was married, wrestles with God, became Israel, and in fullness not until after he was long gone as a patriarch given how his purpose was wrapped up in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bringing the world to Christ (Genesis 17:3-8; 28:1-4; 32:24-32; 35:9-12; John 8:56). Besides, as noted before, the Bible says what is required of a man. The Bible does not say, “Make sure you know what you’re going to do with your life before getting married”. Rather, the Bible says that the Lord requires a man to “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
Foster/Tennant would like to see men adopt a specific calling based on giftedness, interest, and skills but this ignores wildcards like circumstance and opportunity. Additionally, the sort of 1950s blue collar ideal of having a factory job, working for the same company for 40 years, and making sure your kids do better than you surely has an influence on how Foster/Tennant are considering something like this. Circumstances, opportunity, and life often cause change and men exist in seasons of life, so a person might spend only part of their life running a business, pastoring a church, working a corporate job, being a missionary, or any number of other things as their vocational identity and what God makes possible at any given time. Look at the life of Moses, first a royal son, then a criminal and fugitive, then a shepherd in the middle of nowhere, then a hesitant leader calling men out of slavery, then a leader of the people, and eventually one whose face shone with the glory of God. Was Zipporah merely an afterthought or just some kind of complement or helper in keeping Moses on task in running from Pharaoh and living in the middle of nowhere never to think of another calling or mission? Rather, Zipporah appears more like a woman that helped Moses remain faithful to his actual calling, ‘glorifying God and enjoying him forever’ (Exodus 4:24-26). Foster/Tennant’s advice might be something to consider for upwardly mobile people thinking they’re going to have a great career out of college, but what they present isn’t really true to the vast array of life callings and providential directions God often has for people. Furthermore, the pastoral advice the authors attempt to give just isn’t laid out anywhere in the Scriptures.
On occasion, Foster/Tennant seem to fuss with words rather than deal with what’s actually being said. Men are often referred to as incomplete without ‘their better half’ and while it’s certainly true that any man is fully made in the image of God without a woman we also know that the Scriptures matter-of-fact say that it wasn’t good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18). So, man was given woman and she becomes part of a man in their joining (Genesis 2:23-24). In other words, without a wife a man isn’t really what God designed for man to be once they are together. Even Christ himself has a bride. So, perhaps a crass consideration of man as incomplete is unwarranted but the deeper meaning of incompleteness is most certainly relevant in thinking about what it means to be man and wife together.
Foster/Tennant continue their reductive postmodern treatment of marriage by deemphasizing things that the Scriptures note as important. For Foster/Tennant, it’s just okay for a man to be “a little smitten” with an attractive woman that might make a good wife, but becoming infatuated or crazy about a woman is supposedly unmanly and ungodly. Yet, Jacob himself finds Rachel, kisses her on the spot, lifts up his voice, and weeps! Then, he immediately indentures himself for seven years in waiting to secure his newly found bride (Genesis 29:11; 18). Even the Proverbs talk about a man with a woman in love as something too wonderful to understand (Proverbs 31:19).
Foster/Tennant also claim that marriage is never a matter of finding one’s soulmate or that there is only ever one particular woman in the world for a man. The authors say, “Placing a woman on a pedestal like this, thinking of her as “the one” is enormously destructive and actually reflects the vestiges (and possibly return) of pagan thinking in our culture. It is yet another variant of androgyny…” Foster/Tennant are attempting to deny the notion of “true love” and in the process deemphasize the nature of the joining of man and wife together by God in love as found in the Scriptures. The authors also unwittingly reduce the woman in marriage to a mere companion or helper that can be easily replaced. Foster/Tennant are just wrong here and barking up the wrong tree. Eve in the creation account is the pinnacle of creation and the last created being God put in place in the Garden of Eden. Women are referred to explicitly as the glory of man just as man is the glory of God (1 Cor. 11:7). So, there is more here to think about in terms of who women are in marriage aside from the notion that they are merely a weaker vessel called alongside to help a man do his real work.
God only created one particular woman for Adam so in the paradigmatic case for marriage what Foster/Tennant say just isn’t true. Further, how would Paul apply the authors’ understanding of marriage on this point to the church? The Bible says that God predestined a particular people in Christ, foreknew each of them, called them, justified them, sanctified them, and glorified them (Eph 1:3-5; Romans 8:28-29). In fact, God not only chose a particular people as his singular bride in saving them, he also ordains and works all circumstances together for their good in seeing them come to and remain in Christ. Would Foster/Tennant answer, “Well, not really…”?
Foster/Tennant also amazingly omit any reference to Song of Songs in the entire chapter (or book!) and for obvious reasons. There, both bride and groom express love for one another that is at once intimate, dazzling, romantic, and obviously expressive of two people who think that they are made for each other. The full import of “My beloved is mine, and I am his” takes on a meaning in Christ and God that far transcends the baseless claims of Foster/Tennant in considering the full implications of God’s sovereignty when it comes to marriage (Song of Solomon 2:16). Now, of course, the secret things belong to God and discerning the woman God has for a man is not always simple or easy but the clear implication of Scriptures is that marriage is between a man and a woman that God arranges providentially between them. To say otherwise is to be something other than confessionally Reformed in terms of one’s theological outlook.
The pagan and postmodern view is one that is reductive and disallows the biblical nature of marriage, something Foster/Tennant do in spades here. There is even more in the way of problems with this particular chapter given the importance God has placed on the joining of men and women together in marriage. Foster/Tennant even go so far as to claim they know the subconscious desires of what women want in the closing section of their treatment of marriage! But, any critical review has to stop somewhere and by now readers have been made quite aware that It’s Good to Be a Man is not a book for young men to read in being a Christian man.
Next Review:
The Anti-Technological Stance of It’s Good to Be a Man
No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 1
No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 2
No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 1
No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 2
How Porn & Video Games Hijack Manhood
Two for One Day – How to Bear the Weight/Manhood Through Mission
The Excellence of Marriage