1. The Biblical Place of the Family Recognized Again⤒🔗

During the Reformation in the sixteenth century marriage and the family had a different place than what was generally accepted in the Roman Catholic Church at that time. We can make that clear by looking at the lives of the three great Reformers: Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. All three of them had served in the priesthood and as such had accepted celibacy as norm. All three of them married after they broke with the Roman Catholic Church. Luther married a former nun, Katharina van Bora, Calvin married the widow Idelette van Buren, and Zwingli also married a widow, the noble woman Anna Reinhart. In the churches of the Reformation those who held office no longer were obligated to accept celibacy. He was now allowed to marry and have children officially. That was a great gain. The catastrophe of celibacy had been the cause of the practice that many priests simply lived together with a woman and started families without being married. Everybody was aware of this and accepted this as normal. Circumvention of celibacy was enormous: in the diocese of Zwingli hundreds of illegitimate children were born who were fathered by priests. Even the popes participated in this practice. Pope Alexander VI blatantly allowed three of his daughters to be married in the Vatican. So Zwingli wrote in his forty-ninth thesis in his first theological speech in 1523: I know no greater frustration than this, that priests are not allowed to have wives but they are allowed to use prostitutes for money.

Even today the practice of celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church is a controversial topic. This is evident from the way many groups in this church took issue with the practice of forced celibacy during a visit of Pope John Paul II to the Netherlands.

However, there is more at stake than the case against celibacy when we look at the value of family and marriage by Rome and the Reformation. It appears that there is also a negative aspect, for Rome says that marriage is considered to be a sacrament. The Reformation denies that. Isn’t that impoverishing? What can be more beautiful than that we begin our married life and the starting with a family with the administration of a sacrament? It would be communication of grace. Why then does Luther initially act with coldness when he speaks of marriage as a “worldly thing”? Yet Luther is right! Roman Catholicism considers the celibacy of priests and the sacrament of marriage as being connected, albeit somewhat hidden. For Rome maintains that what they call the carnal, the lust, and the desire, are second rate.

So in Rome when a bride and a bridegroom give each other the sacrament before the altar, they will receive an increased portion of sanctifying grace. Then they will be able to love, not only with a natural love but also with a supernatural love. Therefore a man like Augustine could write that he would be an advocate for a situation where a husband and wife would have no sexual intercourse with each other. In that case the supernatural love would be the winner. If husband and wife cannot do that, well then they will have to take care that there will be children for the church! Today Rome still embraces that view on marriage and family. We do well to keep that in mind when we hear the pope’s words that are in themselves good, regarding the importance of the place of family. By God’s grace the Reformation of the sixteenth century has taken marriage and family out of the stifling atmosphere, which for centuries relegated family and marriage to a backseat.

2. Luther and the Family←⤒🔗

Luther emphasizes the bond between marriage and family. The family evolves out of marriage. Yet Luther continues to see marriage as a sacrament: an outward holy sign. Furthermore, marriage for Luther is a covenant. The basis and essence of a marriage is that one person gives himself to another and remains faithful, allowing no third party. In the third place, Luther sees the purpose of marriage as resulting in the bearing of fruit — that is the first and foremost office of the marriage. Of course, that also means that parents will be required to bring up their children in the right way. Marriage is sanctified by these three purposes.¹Luther likes to use the word “Hausregiment” in reference to the family.²

This means that parents are a kind of government analogous with state and church governments. Governments, so also that of parents, are characterized by the fact that they rule, and use discipline. According to Luther, bringing up children in the family simply means ruling over the children. Ruling by the parents in the family and especially by the father includes the governing function of the monarch, the state, as well as the governing function of the pastor, of the church. And Luther also emphasizes the analogy between government-state-monarch relating to the practice of discipline in the family. The family (miniature state) included, besides parents and children, also the male and female servants. The other reason for discipline is that it not only offers protection and safety, but more importantly it builds the family. (Luther points to Psalm 127 in connection with this).

That is also an essential element of a family: parents apply discipline but parents also protect and allow their children to grow physically and socially. This building of the family is a focal point for Luther. In a typical Lutheran way, he remarks: “We all have been created to imitate our parents. So having children and raising them has been ordained, prescribed and implanted in us by God. We see that in the way our bodies are made, the way in which the world functions.³

3. Place and Function of the Family According to Calvin←⤒🔗

Calvin chooses a different angle than Luther when writing about the family. Luther compared the family to a miniature state. Calvin typified the family as a “miniature church within the church” (la maison d’un fidele doit estre comme une petite Eglise)⁴. But that does not just happen automatically. Something else has to happen first. First of all, the family has a task to fulfill for the church, namely raising and bringing up children in the fear and discipline of the Lord. This includes that doctrines are not just taught but also practised, in the family, just as in the church. Calvin even states that God is honoured in the congregation only when he is also honoured in the family. Thus, raising children is not that insignificant then. Calvin draws attention to the enormous honour he bestows upon parents, when he deems them worthy to raise creatures, created in his image. This honour comes with the duty to give their offspring godly instruction. Not only because of being their parents but also because of their baptism and because of the covenant that God made with them. However, there is interaction between church and family. The family is supported and strengthened by the proclamation of God’s Word. Because, when the parents come home from the church service they should, if all goes well, be better able to handle the education than before. Calvin emphasizes that the family and the instruction within the family are important as they relate to the teachings of the church. The family lays the foundation for religious instruction and continues to build on it. Thus, the family serves the congregation. The church is always central in Calvin’s view of the family and the upbringing of the children. The church is the focal point of what happens in the families. The church then is also an example for the family. We can summarize Calvin’s view as follows: the family images the church, not the other way around as if the church is an image of the family. Whenever Calvin deals with the matter of the family and the upbringing of children, he always brings it back to the church. Questions regarding family and educational matters do not interest Calvin on their own merit, he always relates it back to the church.⁵

4. Continued Reformation and the Family: Wittewrongel←⤒🔗

In the sixteenth and seventeenth century the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands have agreed emphatically with Calvin’s view on the family.⁶Not only is that shown via the form for marriage, but also via the interpretation of the Heidelberg Catechism (in the “Schat-Boeck” among others), and via pedagogically flavoured works of Cats, Koelman, and others. Amsterdam preacher, Petrus Wittewrongel (1609–1662) has written extensively about the practice of the Reformed family.

Inspired by the Further Reformation in the seventeenth century, Rev. Wittewrongel wrote his more than 2,000 pages counting book “Oeconomia Christiana ofte Christelyke Huyshoudinghe.” Wittewrongel also emphatically endorsed Calvin by writing his book with the conviction that “neither the Country, nor the Church can ever do well if the reformation and the repentance of our sins are not first addresed in the families.” Wittewrongel begins his book with a discussion about marriage: after all, a Christian household requires a marriage and through a marriage children can be born. Only then, according to Wittewrongel, can we speak of a “complete household.” Marriage is an “ordinance from God” before the fall into sin.” Wittewrongel mentions three objectives for creating a family via the marriage:

• to make human life more pleasant: husband and wife keep each other company, offer help, and comfort each other;
• to be a remedy against “irregular desires of the flesh,” meaning, to avoid unchastity;  
• and to propagate the human race.” And what is more: propagation of the congregation by means of “holy seed”⁷

Thus, Wittewrongel mentions mutual help between husband and wife as the primary objective of marriage and family. He justifies this with the heartwarming, simple argument that Adam already needed “a helper fit for him” when he had not yet sinned. It is even more necessary after the fall into sin. And you get quite something: (s)he who marries receives a partner for life, who will be “closer and more loved” than a child. This does not diminish the enormous blessing of receiving children. Wittewrongel’s appreciation of the sexual relations within marriage is also refreshing. He points to Hebrews 13:4 when he states that within marriage it is not something dirty or unholy. The puritanical Wittewrongel also sees the sexual relations between husband and wife in the marriage as stimulating their loving relationship.

In his continued work, on the practical details of family life, Wittewrongel puts a lot of emphasis on the spiritual care for the church. He pleads for set times for praying, reading the Bible and meditating, singing of psalms, and going to church. The father should be the leader in the home. But the mother also has an important task: she has to encourage the father to fulfill his duties. Wittewrongel allows the mother to take over the father’s duties in the family if he neglects to do it or if he is not able to. That also the wife has to assist her husband in the government of the household and support him, is clear from God’s Word, as it is also mentioned in 1 Timothy 5:14: “I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households.”⁸

5. The Twentieth Century←⤒🔗

Until recently the view on marriage and family has not changed much in the Dutch Reformed Churches since the seventeenth century. Central elements we found by Luther, Calvin, and Wittewrongel have remained valid which we see, for instance, in the form for marriage. The form for marriage in the Dutch Reformed Churches names three reasons for marriage (de Bundel of 1938): The first reason is that they should assist each other faithfully in everything that belongs to this life and the life to come. The second one is that, if God gives them children, they will have to nurture them in the true knowledge and fear of the Lord to God’s honour and for their salvation. The third reason is that everyone might live with a good and peaceful conscience, avoiding all immorality and wantonness. It is remarkable that these reasons for marriage are quite similar to those of Wittewrongel. And still in 1952, a report by the Dutch Reformed Church, named “Marriage,” called the forming of a family a calling from God for propagation of the human race and the advancement of the gospel. As such marriage and family are to serve God, the church, and the neighbour.

The eminent, but certainly not truly Reformed pedagogue Langeveld was still an advocate for the family in the seventies. Within the family a child can grow and develop socially as in no other environment. Within the family he will learn to honour God in everything. Langeveld, in opposition to the state’s influence on the family, warns that the family should not lose its identity, or renounce its intrinsic value. The family is a result of the loving union of two people, seeking to glorify God in their loving relationship and to achieve perfection within it. Parenthood is not just an inevitable result of that perfect union, but implicitly a goal of the marriage between two people. From the decision to marry, a pre-eminently uniquely conscious decision, taken individually and together, the unique community is formed: the family.⁹

6. Conclusion←⤒🔗

Even though we have seen a decline in family values and many have changed their thinking and opinions regarding the family, beginning in the fifties in the twentieth century, there is no reason for us to distance ourselves from the biblical view on marriage and family as the pedagogues and theologians have expressed it since the Reformation and the sixteenth century. On the contrary, we associate ourselves wholeheartedly with this view, which is a thoroughly biblical one. We will agree with Douma¹⁰that even today it still applies that:

• family formation and marriage are both a blessing as well as a calling. Genesis 1:28 is still 100 percent valid: “And God blessed them (Adam and Eve). And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it’”;
• a family without children is still a normal family. It is not for nothing that the form for marriage says that the first objective of marriage is that husband and wife shall remain faithful and assist each other;
• forming of a family, marrying, and wanting to have children belong together. Not: taking children, but: desiring to have children, because that is intrinsic to marriage;
• marriage is an image of Christ and his church. Family formation is therefore part of what Christ deems necessary for his church.

There is no need here to indicate how the family has been devalued in today’s society. The family, once the cornerstone of society, is falling apart. That should be reason enough for us to oppose this trend, wherever possible and by appropriate means. However, we may not lose sight of the fact that the family is more than the cornerstone of society: it is also the cornerstone of the church of Christ.