Marriage, Children and the Calling of Parents
The fuller vision the case grows out of: marriage, children as heritage, and parents as stewards of an eternal soul — a posture, not a rule.
DRAFT — awaiting editorial review.
It begins with a blessing, not a rule
The protection of the conceived child grows out of a fuller vision of marriage, children and parenthood — and that vision has been so widely forgotten that the argument sounds strange without it. The treatise draws one line at the outset and holds it: recovering a high view of fruitfulness is not laying a law on consciences. Many godly couples walk long roads of infertility, delay or loss. What is being recovered is a posture — receiving children as God’s good gift rather than treating fertility as a hazard.
God’s first recorded word to the first married couple was a blessing tied to fruitfulness: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Calvin reads fruitfulness as a gift dispensed by God — “we are fruitful or barren in respect of offspring, as God imparts his power to some and withholds it from others” — and Luther calls it a matter of plain faith: couples “can be certain that God does not lie.”
The confessions make it a matter of definition
This was no private opinion of a few strong-minded Reformers. The Westminster Confession (1646) defines marriage as ordained “for the mutual help of husband and wife; for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and of the Church with an holy seed; and for preventing of uncleanness” — and the Second London Confession of 1689 takes the clause over almost word for word.
Notice two things. This is the confessions’ definition of the institution, subscribed by our own Presbyterian and Baptist forebears. And the increase of mankind stands alongside mutual help, not above it: three ends, none ranked as the whole. Gouge, Augustine and Chrysostom fill out the same picture — with the treatise carefully noting that Chrysostom named procreation as one true end of marriage, not its only good.
Heritage and grief — and both halves of Baxter
Scripture never treats the child as an interruption. “Children stand out among all our possessions with a pre-eminence which cannot be questioned,” wrote Spurgeon on Psalm 127:3. The counterpart, all through the Bible, is grief at their absence — Hannah wept; Elizabeth rejoiced that God had “taken away my reproach” — never contentment engineered by design. And the couple who cannot conceive are objects of the Lord’s tenderness, not anyone’s reproach.
Precisely because the tradition prized children, it refused to make them the whole of marriage. Baxter calls a godly seed “the end of the institution of marriage” — and, asked whether the elderly and infertile may marry, answers yes without hesitation, “because there are other lawful ends of marriage, as mutual help and comfort.” Both halves guard against opposite errors: against reducing marriage to companionship alone, and against making procreation the measure of a marriage’s worth.
Stewards of an eternal soul
The vision reaches its height in the raising of children, not merely the having of them. Edwards: “Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ.” Mather told a woman awaiting childbirth it would be “too Unnatural” to complain of the state God’s laws of nature had brought her into; Murray tied the bearing of children to inheriting the promise made to Abraham.
At conception God entrusts to a mother and father a human being who will outlive the stars. Parents do not own their children; they are stewards charged to receive, protect, provide and raise in the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 22:6; Ephesians 6:4) — and that stewardship begins at conception, not at birth. To put the newly conceived at risk for comfort’s sake is a failure of the first duty God gives to parents.
A positive vision — openness, trust, and what this asks
The Christian home is meant to be marked by openness to life resting on trust in a sovereign, good God — the God who opens and closes the womb, who knows our children before they are formed. To receive children as He gives them is not recklessness; it is faith applied here as everywhere else.
This does not mean a couple may never, in wisdom and prayer, have reason to space the children God gives. Scripture lays down no rule of numbers, and the treatise lays down none. But there is a great difference between prayerful ordering by means that put no conceived life at risk, and the surrounding creed that fertility is a problem to be switched off for twenty years. The one is Christian freedom exercised in faith; the other is the spirit of the age in the language of responsibility. What the treatise asks is the recovery of a posture: to receive again, as gift, what our fathers in the faith received as gift — and to guard it as they did.
Questions to sit with
- The treatise calls for a posture, not a rule. What would change in how your household — or your church — speaks about children if that posture were recovered?
- How would you comfort a couple walking the road of infertility with this material, without adding any burden to them?
Go deeper
Further material on this subject from allied abolitionist ministries (these links open external sites):
- Abolitionists Rising — resources on family and discipleship (Abolitionists Rising)
Check yourself
5 questions on what you have just read. Answering is what makes it stick.
1What does the treatise say it is recovering — and what is it NOT laying down?
- A rule about the number and timing of children; it binds every conscience
- A posture that receives children as God's gift; it lays no rule of numbers on any couple's conscience — correct
- A preference for large families over small ones
- A law requiring all couples to have children
The distinction is made at the outset and held throughout: "Nothing here should be read as a rule binding the timing or number of a couple's children upon their conscience... What is at stake is the disposition of the heart toward the gift itself."
2What three ends of marriage does the Westminster Confession (24.2) name?
- Romance, companionship and stability
- Mutual help, the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and the preventing of uncleanness — correct
- Procreation only
- Property, inheritance and alliance
The confessions name three ends and rank none as the whole — the increase of mankind stands alongside mutual help, not above it. The Baptists of 1689 adopted the clause almost word for word.
3When Baxter was asked whether the elderly and infertile may marry, what did he answer?
- No, because marriage exists for children
- Yes without hesitation, "because there are other lawful ends of marriage, as mutual help and comfort" — correct
- Only with special permission
- He declined to answer
Both halves of Baxter guard against opposite errors: children are a true end of marriage, and a union that cannot bear them is fully a marriage still. The distinction is not between the fertile and the infertile, but between a heart that receives the gift and one that has learned to fear it.
4When does the stewardship of parents over their child begin, according to the treatise?
- At birth
- At baptism or dedication
- At conception — correct
- When the child can respond to teaching
At conception God entrusts to a mother and father a human being who will outlive the stars. Parents are stewards, not owners — and the first duty of that stewardship is to receive and guard the life entrusted (Proverbs 22:6; Ephesians 6:4).
5How does the treatise distinguish faithful family planning from the spirit of the age?
- Any planning at all is unbelief
- Prayerful ordering by means that do not put a conceived life at risk is Christian freedom; treating fertility as a problem to be switched off for twenty years is the age's creed in the language of responsibility — correct
- Only natural methods are permitted, in all circumstances
- Couples should never consider their circumstances
Scripture lays down no rule of numbers, and neither does the treatise. Where there is real cause to wait, methods that carry no risk to a conceived child are available — the difference is the posture: trust in the God who opens and closes the womb, or fear of the gift itself.