by Martin Davie
I am grateful to Robert Thompson for taking the time to respond to my previous blog post in his new article ‘Marriage, Sabbath, Creation and Resurrection: A Response to Martin Davie on Marriage, Creation, and Fulfilment’ which was published on ViaMedia.News on 30 January.[1] I am also grateful for the care which he has taken with his response. I am, however, not persuaded by his response for the following reasons.
First, Thompson responds to my claim ‘that Genesis 1–2 establishes marriage as a fixed creational institution, such that later Christian discernment must conform to that original pattern’ by declaring that:
‘Rabbinic traditions preserve interpretations in which the first human (ha-adam) is understood as an undifferentiated or androgynous being, later divided into differentiated bodies (Genesis Rabbah 8.1; Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 61a). Whether or not one accepts these readings, their existence matters: they show that Genesis has not historically been read as offering a single, metaphysical definition of marriage.’
This argument is flawed in three ways