The Christianity Family
The family as a religious institution
It is clearly impossible to speak of The role of the family in Christianity without mentioning its religious role. As we have already pointed out the family is indestructible for as a creational institution it bears the image of the Heavenly Family, the Holy Trinity, One God in Three Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In addition, we have seen that the loving authoritative and submissive relationship between husband and wife constitutes a living image of the relation which unites Jesus Christ to his Church, the Church being the harbinger of the new creation. In the Historic Christian perspective, whether Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Evangelical or Reformed, the family is a Convenantal institution. The family is thus seen as an institution placed under the special protection of God. Since the end of the XVIIth Century this covenantal character of the family has in the West been replaced by the secular notion that the family is simply a contractual institution and, as such, dissolvable at will. This means that the vision of the family as a stable created form (like species in biology or the elements of chemistry) has been abandoned in favour of the notion that individuals (like the isolated atoms of Newtonian physics governed only by mathematical laws) can make (or unmake) the family at will. Thus the West has abandoned all sense of the sacred character of the family . This secularisation of the family is the fruit of the atheisation of Western thought. Today, with the legal recognition of so-called «homosexual marriages» we have gone a step further. We no longer even recognise the normativity of the natural character of the family.
As a religious institution the family has a temporal and practical (if not spiritual) priority over the Church. In the beginning, in the persons of our first parents, Adam and Eve, the family represented the Church. It is interesting to note that the first sacrifices, those of Cain
It is clearly impossible to speak of The role of the family in Christianity without mentioning its religious role. As we have already pointed out the family is indestructible for as a creational institution it bears the image of the Heavenly Family, the Holy Trinity, One God in Three Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In addition, we have seen that the loving authoritative and submissive relationship between husband and wife constitutes a living image of the relation which unites Jesus Christ to his Church, the Church being the harbinger of the new creation. In the Historic Christian perspective, whether Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Evangelical or Reformed, the family is a Convenantal institution. The family is thus seen as an institution placed under the special protection of God. Since the end of the XVIIth Century this covenantal character of the family has in the West been replaced by the secular notion that the family is simply a contractual institution and, as such, dissolvable at will. This means that the vision of the family as a stable created form (like species in biology or the elements of chemistry) has been abandoned in favour of the notion that individuals (like the isolated atoms of Newtonian physics governed only by mathematical laws) can make (or unmake) the family at will. Thus the West has abandoned all sense of the sacred character of the family . This secularisation of the family is the fruit of the atheisation of Western thought. Today, with the legal recognition of so-called «homosexual marriages» we have gone a step further. We no longer even recognise the normativity of the natural character of the family.
As a religious institution the family has a temporal and practical (if not spiritual) priority over the Church. In the beginning, in the persons of our first parents, Adam and Eve, the family represented the Church. It is interesting to note that the first sacrifices, those of Cain