Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 23:3 (Summer 2009)
Article: Marriage and Singleness as Teaching Tools of the Image of God
Author: William David Spencer

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PP 23:3 (Summer 2008) p. 5

Marriage and Singleness as
Teaching Tools of the Image of God

William David Spencer

WILLIAM DAVID SPENCER, the editor of Priscilla Papers, is co-author of the new book Marriage at the Crossroads: Couples in Conversation about Discipleship, Gender Roles, Decision Making and Intimacy (IVP, 2009), which explores what is common and unique among the egalitarian and soft complementarian perspectives of Christian marriage. He co-pastors Pilgrim Church in Beverly, Mass., and teaches theology for Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston.

I have often told my parishioners the biblical truth that we live in God’s schoolhouse. The world God created for us is a visual lesson of God’s existence and God’s watch-care over us. As one example, we are enveloped in a protective placenta of water vapor that shields us from the sun and filters its power down to a diffused treatment of rays that warm us; nourish us with vitamin D; dry the ground so we can travel and build our homes on it; grow the trees that replace our oxygen, the plants that supply our food, and the animals that serve us in a variety of ways; provide light by which we can conduct business; and, in short, make living possible. The complex interweaving of such conditions testifies to an intelligent Creator who has intentionally fashioned and shaped our environment so that “the heavens are relating the glory (or majesty) of God1 and the sky is announcing the production of his hands” (Ps. 19:1, v. 2 in the Hebrew Bible). In fact, there is a message that pours out through all the earth, according to Psalm 19:1-4, that is not audible and yet is an informative declaration of knowledge imparted by the very interwoven fabric of life itself.

A message of mutuality has been implanted in our relational nature

Arch Davis is a dear friend of mine who, in the 1990s through his organization Davis Systems, Inc., built supercomputers for a variety of institutions from the national laboratory at Los Alamos to the research centers of Princeton University. Arch was once invited to hear the late great pioneer on the investigation of the cosmic phenomenon called the black hole, John Wheeler, reflect on the structures of life. According to Prof. Wheeler, our earth is supported by no “turtles,” as in ancient myths, and by no immutable laws. Instead, when one peers down below the atoms, down below the quarks and whatever lies beneath them to the very bottom of the building blocks of existence, one finds a foundation of information that determines how everything in our world works. This underlying information, for example, dictates within our bodies how our cells r...

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