Pastoral Adriel Sanchez sat down with Dr. Dani Treweek, author of Meaning of Singleness: Retrieving an Eschatological Vision for the Contemporary Church, to discuss singleness and the church today, specifically considering Paul’s words to the church in Corinth on marriage and eschatology—the study of the Last Days.
Pastor Adriel Sanchez
I’m excited to have a conversation with you about the church and singleness—something that is sort of a controversial topic today and an area where I feel like there's probably a lot of room for growth for church. I would love for you to just unpack what is the proper theology of singleness, if you can, in our short time together.
Dr. Dani Treweek
Well, I never married as a single Christian myself. Have a lot of single Christian friends, men and women, not just never-married men and women, but divorced, widowed, same-sex attracted, opposite-sex attracted. There's lots of context of being unmarried in the church today, but the common theme that seems to bind a lot of these single Christians together is this the sense of where do we fit, how do we fit and how is this church family as much our family as it is everybody else's?
There's all sorts of things that we could do in our churches to kind of fix that in the short term. We could run more events, we could change the language we use, so on and so forth. But unless we actually have grappled with what God's word says is the goodness, the dignity, the purpose of singleness in light of the gospel and in light of the eternity that we're all heading towards, then, making those changes is good in the short term, but I don't think they're going to produce long-lasting change.
Jesus says in Matthew 20 that, in the resurrection age, they neither marry nor be given in marriage, they'll be like the angels. If we aren't going to be husbands and wives in eternity, where we will be our most fully perfected human souls relationally, then what dignity or meaning or significance or goodness does that give to not being married in this age as those who live in the overlap of the ages?
Pastor Adriel Sanchez
It's interesting that you say that, because I think that there's a sense among some that the single life is not really the whole life. You know, there seems to be a disconnect there, at least. And as you were talking about singleness and this eschatological vision, it did make me think of 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul is almost saying, “okay, you know, if you need to get married, if you want to get married, fine, but…” And there, when he talks about singleness, he does tie it to this kind of eschatological vision. And he ties it to the coming of the new creation, the consummation of history, which we're still living in this age of tension now. We're still looking forward to the return of the Lord Jesus and so forth. And so I wonder if you could speak to how that particular passage plays into singleness and the eschatological vision.
Dr. Dani Treweek
Really, what is going on in that passage is deeply eschatological. That is his framework. He talks at one point: because of the present distress, I think it's better to remain as you are. Was that a particular crisis going on in Corinth or in the empire at the time? Was it a famine? Was it persecution? Was it sickness? Or was it kind of the present distress of being the eschatological times we're in? In the end, I don't think it matters much because the rest of what Paul says there is very much, “This is what I mean, brothers: The present form of the world is passing away. The time is short.” He's very much framing his discussion here on the fact that we do live in what I call “the awkward meanwhile” between Jesus's resurrection and his return, where we are still very much creatures in this good-though fallen creation. We are here. We are not yet in the new creation. And yet, Paul will tell us in Colossians 3, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above and not on earthly things.
So we're meant to be here, living here, but in light of where we're going and the future Christ is already secured for us. And so to cut a very long story short for me, that actually holds out what I think Paul does in 1 Corinthians 7 and other places in Scripture. He holds out marriage as a wonderful, good, unique, vital relationship for all sorts of reasons in this creation. And yet at the same time, he can say: And not getting married is really good for these reasons. And in fact, you know, at one point he says he thinks it's better not to get married.
We just don't grapple well with the idea that Paul actually has a really high view of singleness. But, also, that really high view of singleness is held alongside a really high view of marriage. This isn't a zero-sum game where if we talk well about one, we have to diminish the other one. Paul basically says in 1 Corinthians 7: Singleness is great, marriage is great, get on and serve Jesus.
Recognize the fact that being unmarried gives you a particular opportunity to invest in the kingdom, which is what Paul echoes in 1 Corinthians 7: 29–35, where he talks about the undivided devotion of the single person. But my argument in my book is actually that there is not just an instrumental value to singleness, but there's a unique dignity that belongs to being single as that which kind of points towards that eternity we're waiting for when none of us will be married to each other.
So just as I look at my friends’ marriages and that's meant to set my eyes on eternity, my prayer is that my friends will look at my singleness and sort of see a little glimpse of, oh, that's where we're all heading. And that's going to be great.
You can listen to their entire discussion on “What the Church Misses About Singleness” on Sola Media’s YouTube channel.
