Endnotes
1 I. McEwan, Atonement (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001), 137.
2 W. A. Meier, Asherah: Extrabiblical Evidence (Harvard Semitic Monographs 37; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 195.
3 See By Age 24, Marriage Wins Out (August 11, 2008). The report combines evidence from fifty-nine polls between 2006 and 2008, including nearly 60,000 US adults.
4 Roger Scruton, Sexual Desire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986), 14.
5 Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic, 1992).
6 Christopher Ash, Marriage: Sex in the Service of God (Leicester: IVP, 2003), 73.
7 Stephanie Coontz, “The Future of Marriage” (January 14, 2008).
8 Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order (Leicester: IVP, 1994), 69 (emphasis added).
9 The Independent, April 12, 1999 (emphasis added)
10 Denis Alexander, Rebuilding the Matrix: Science and Faith in the 21st Century (Oxford: Lion, 2001), 81–91.
11 M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality (London: Penguin, 1978).
12 James Nelson, Embodiment (London: SPCK, 1979), 25–30.
13 For example, W. Meeks The First Urban Christians (Yale: Yale University Press, 1983), 97–103.
14 W. Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality (Yale: Yale University Press, 1993), 219 (emphasis added).
15 O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order.
16 Brigitte Berger and Peter L.Berger, The War Over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground (London: Hutchinson, 1983); quoted in Vigen Guroian, “An Ethic of Marriage and Family,” in Incarnate Love: Essays in Orthodox Ethics (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1987), 87.
17 O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 61.
18 O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 52.
19 See Christopher Ash, Marriage: Sex in the Service of God (Leicester: IVP, 2003).
20 P. Baelz, Ethics and Belief (London: Sheldon Press, 1977), 87.
21 Cf. Genesis 3:17: “To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat of it,” Cursed is the ground because of you….’”
22 A universal truth is something that is always, immediately, and everywhere true (e.g., that obedience always leads to blessing). A general truth is something that is usually but not always true in a direct and immediate sense (e.g., recognizing that righteous people experience undeserved suffering, as Job did).
23 J. S. Mill, On Liberty (London: Longman, Roberts and Green, 1859).
24 This is the great theme of so many of John Piper’s writings.
25 “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28; 9:1).
26 H.Thielicke, The Ethics of Sex (London: James Clarke, 1979), 4.
27 J. B. Nelson, Embodiment (London: SPCK, 1979), 90.
28 See Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Whoredom: God’s Unfaithful Wife in Biblical Theology (Leicester: Apollos, 1996).
29 One of the classic places where these “goods” or benefits or purposes of marriage are expounded is Augustine, On the Good of Marriage (esp. §32) in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3 (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004).
30 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.2.291–92 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958).
31 “This one—at last! Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. I shall call this one woman for from man she was taken, this one!” (my literal translation of Genesis 2:23, emphasising the delight of “this one!”).
32 Ash, Marriage, 116–19.
33 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1929), §3.39 (emphasis added).
34 Cf. how the famous actress Michelle Pfeiffer describes herself: “I’m one of those people who needed to have children. I needed to have that center to my life, that base” (The Times [April 15, 2000]).
35 P. D. James, The Children of Men (London: Penguin, 1992).
36 Oliver O’Donovan, Marriage and Permanence (Nottingham: Grove Ethical Booklets, 1978), 12.
37 Christopher Ash, Married for God (Leicester: IVP, 2007), 69–72.
38 Ash, Marriage, 185–99.
39 See especially Ephesians 5:22–33.
40 C. Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 8.
41 L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London: Pelican, 1979), 427.
42 G. Greer, Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (London: Picador, 1985), 217.
43 P. A. Mellor and C. Shilling, “Confluent Love and the Cult of the Dyad,” in Sex These Days: Essays on Theology, Sexuality and Society (ed. Davies and Louglin; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 54.
44 R. Clapp, Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options (Downers Grove: IVP, 1993), 49.
45 A. Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), cited in Mellor and Shilling, 56.
46 Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3.4.224.
47 Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 98.
48 M. Richards, “The Companionship Trap,” Women, Men and Marriage (ed. C. Clulow; London: Sheldon Press, 1995), 57.
49 B. Berger and P. Berger, The War over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 180 (emphasis added).
50 The Times (March 27, 1996).
51 Guroian, “An Ethic of Marriage and Family,” 107.
52 Guroian, “An Ethic of Marriage and Family,” 114.
53 E. Schillebeeckx, Marriage: Human Reality and Saving Mystery (London: Sheed and Ward, 1965), 12–15.
54 T. Stafford, Sexual Chaos (Downers Grove: IVP, 1993), 31.
55 Walter Schubart, Religion und Eros (Munich: Beck’sche, 1941); quoted in Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.4.126 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958).
56 Stafford, Sexual Chaos, 61.
57 C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (London: Fount, 1977), 101 (and see all of chapter 5).
58 Lewis, The Four Loves, 105.
59 Andreas J.Köstenberger, God, Marriage and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundations (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004), 201n1.
60 Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001). See also Thomas E. Schmidt, Straight and Narrow? Compassion and Clarity in the Homosexuality Debate (Downers Grove: IVP, 1995).
61 See Christopher Ash, Teaching Romans (London: PT Media with Christian Focus, forthcoming).
62 This conclusion is adapted from Christopher Ash, Married for God (Leicester: IVP, 2007), 165–68.