The Covenantal Marriage: An Update

Late last year I wrote a three-part series on what I called “Covenantal Complementarianism.” In these articles, I sought to introduce the idea of applying the five-point covenantal framework on authority and submission within a Christian Marriage.

Applying this model corrects some of the abuses typical complementarians fall into regarding the authority of the husband and the submission of the wife. Further, and just as important, it maintains a balanced approach in that it does not seek to flatten out all God-ordained gender-based distinctions.

The five points of this model are summarized using the acronym THEOS (Greek for “God”).

Transcendence/presence of God
Hierarchy/representation/authority
Ethics/law/dominion
Oaths/sanctions
Succession/inheritance

Dr. Gary North describes the model in this way:

Who’s in charge?
To whom do I report?
What are the rules?
What do I get if I obey (or disobey)?
Does this outfit have a future?

I plan on revisiting these papers sometime in the next several months. There will be entirely new sections, sections will be expanded, points will be clarified, edits will be made, and more. God willing this will lead to at least a booklet.

One issue I have is the name. I have been studying the topic of complementarianism more fully over the last few years and it seems to me that the term is thoroughly owned by the views of the CBMW and there is little point in attempting to use, effectively, their term when I mean something foundationally different. Even then though, I also have my reservations about egalitarianism as a term as well. In light of this, I may just stick with calling this few the “Covenantal” view of authority. Nothing is decided at this point, but as often is the case, this is a war of words as well as a war of ideas.

At this time I wanted to share this update and link to these three articles.

Soli Deo gloria

Defining Terms (Covenantal Complementarianism Part 1)