One of the hallmarks of early modern Protestantism was its view of the family as a “little commonwealth” – the most primal school of justice and mercy, morality and virtue, education and welfare in a Godly republic. Martin Luther called the marital household the “mother of all earthly laws.” John Calvin called it “the first covenant of a Christian community.” Anglican divines called it “the seminary of the republic.” All these metaphors were designed to underscore the early modern Protestant belief that a well-ordered marital family was an essential foundation of a well-ordered church, state, and society.[1]
[1] John Witte Jr. Church, State and Family: Reconciling Traditional Teachings and Modern Liberties, Cambridge Studies in Law and Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
God’s providence established pre-determined relational constructs such as the family, the church, and the educational sphere to achieve His grand earthly purposes. His people covenant with Him in forming families.
Teach the Children
- God as the great personal Creator who created the universe including man in His image is sovereign in a total way. All of life has real meaning purpose.
2. God has created spheres of authority of sovereignty, and jurisdictions, such as the family, church education, the arts, law, economy, and civil government. The state is not the foundation of, or the means by which the other spheres of life operate or exercise their authority.
3. All institutions of life find their origin and purpose in the character and created activity of God Himself; the family is the original, God-ordained relationship, and the foundation of society.
4. The role of the Church is to engage culture, and preach the Gospel, which is “Total Truth,” and its application to the whole of life.
Genesis 1: 26-28: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
