Biblical and Theological Foundation of the Family

4. Family as the Carrier of the Covenant

91 chapter 4 FAMILY AS THE CARRIER OF THE COVENANT h If the family was to carry out its function of transmitting unimpaired the covenant from generation to generation, it had to ensure that both the ethos of the covenant and all its specific details were faithfully “handed over” to the next generation.1 To do this, the family had to acquire a precise form and structure by which this task could be accomplished. Within the covenant , human sexuality and the family played a significant role which would ensure the survival of the covenant. They were no longer merely the instruments by which human life was physically continued. Rather, as the well-known Jewish philosopher Hirsch noted, the nascent human life born to the family had to be shaped and formed so that the person would be conformed to God. This required that the family be structured by informing principles which were derived from the covenant itself. In 1. It should be noted that the word “tradition” comes from the Latin wood traditio meaning to “hand over.” The purpose of tradition in the Biblical and ecclesiastical sense is to guarantee the unimpaired transmission of truth from one generation to another. It is a principle of conservation by which the original data and their meaning are preserved from distortion. It also prevents subjective interpretations from being passed on which would usurp the place of objective truths that have been acquired. 92 Old Testament this chapter we will examine how the structures of family life enabled the child to encounter the reality of God and to realize more fully the imago dei. Family as “Sanctuary” and the Hallowing of Time The family in the Old Testament can be seen as the sanctuary in which the covenantal life was experienced by each child through the hallowing of time. Abraham J. Heschel brings out the importance of this concept of “hallowed time”: To understand the teaching of the Bible, one must accept its premise that time has a meaning which is at least as equal to that of space; that time has a significance and sovereignty of its own.... Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness of time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.... On the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness of time.2 It is increasingly difficult to understand this concept because time has been thoroughly instrumentalized in the modern period. It is something to be controlled and used to achieve specific goals and enhance productivity. The hallowing of time is a concept foreign to the modern understanding, which sees time as a possession, totally at the disposal of the individual. But with the loss of the sacredness of time, the consequences are predictable. Inevitably, the loss of the sense of hallowedness is extended to both place and person, something which is easily witnessed in the contemporary world. A process of instrumentalization takes place in which all three (person, place, and time) are seen merely as objects to be used. In contrast, Israel’s understood that life (and time) was fundamen2 . A. Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1951), 6–10, quoted in Judaism, ed. A. Hertzberg (New York: George Braziller, 1962), 119. As the emphasis on the distinction between “different seasons” and/or “different times” has all but collapsed in the modern world, even within the Christian community, there has been a wholesale loss of the sacredness of time, which ultimately has resulted in the loss of sacredness in other spheres (including the sacredness of life itself). Family as Carrier of the Covenant 93 tally a gift that was informed by the laws of God. This is the essential point of the creation narrative. As a contingent creature, Israel was called to remember and rejoice in her Creator through specific periods in which she relinquished her time and offered it back to the Lord. To be in covenant with Yahweh required that the whole of life be shaped by His commands. Essential to this was the structuring and hallowing of time. The experiencing of hallowed time within the home would present the child with the understanding that his very life was always to be lived within the matrix of God’s design. The very fact that time was fundamentally a gift oriented towards God would bring the child...