Book Review
Courtship for Christians
Her Hand in Marriage
by Douglas Wilson
Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 1997
(95 pages; $7.50, paper)
reviewed by Kevin Offner
I have been working with single adults through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for nearly fourteen years now, and for some time I have been convinced that something is seriously wrong with dating in America. It has been painful to watch scores of twenty-somethings long to be married, only to be burned by dating as it is practiced today. Dating simply does not prepare one well for marriage.
Dating’s problems are legion. It does not encourage sexual purity before marriage. It does not teach singles the importance of commitment, agape-love, or the subservient role that one’s feelings should play in a male-female relationship (even some of the most godly Christian singles hold the worldly expectation that one day they will develop good “chemistry” with someone, “fall in love,” and then marry). It is not an effective tool in helping singles decide whom to marry. It is not conducive to deep friendship, and, because of its exclusivity, it often enervates the larger Christian community to which the singles belong.
I have been encouraged by many of the recent books by Evangelicals that seek to address the current unhealthy state of dating. Some of the better books are: Dating with Integrity, The Myth of Romance, True Love in a World of False Hope, and the very popular (it has been on the best-seller list of Christian nonfiction paperbacks for months now), I Kissed Dating Goodbye (by Joshua Harris). All of these books make important points. They are especially good at proclaiming agape-love as commitment and not (primarily) a feeling. They also stress the importance of friendship between the sexes, and they warn of too much one-on-one exclusivity. These books are good—I use and recommend them.
But I can’t help thinking that none of these books goes deeply enough. Each of them takes dating as a given and then tries to tweak it in some way, injecting it here or there with biblical principles of holiness. But this seems like trying to put Band-Aids over a deep wound, or trying to fill a bad cavity instead of pulling the tooth. I have begun to believe that dating needs more than fine-tuning—the time has come to promote a radically different alternative.
I recently read Her Hand in Marriage: Biblical Courtship in the Modern World by Douglas Wilson, and it left me stunned. This book goes right for the jugular by showing how unbiblical the mindset behind contemporary dating is. The book is radical. The book is conservative. After reading it, one is left with only two options. You either laugh out loud, call it absurd, backward, and unrealistic, and kick yourself for wasting time on such stupidity, or you realize that something profound has just been communicated, something that gets you rethinking along biblical lines not only dating but also marriage and the family. It calls for a paradigm shift in the way one thinks about preparing for marriage.
The Old Testament Model of Courtship
The Bible, Wilson believes, teaches that God created men and women for different functions within the family. There is not androgyny; rather, the sexes are distinct; and there is order. “Men are created and called to initiate, and women are created and called to respond.” In marriage, the husband is the head of his wife, and the wife is to submit to her husband. God has placed parents in authority over their children, and children are to obey their parents.
In the Old Testament, a female, under normal circumstances, was always under protective male authority, either the authority of her father or the authority of her husband—there was no in-between time when she was independent and autonomous. Furthermore, a father was responsible for his daughter’s sexual purity: if she was found not to be a virgin on her wedding night, her father would be publicly shamed.
In preparing for marriage, sons and daughters should be trained differently by their parents. “A son is reared up for independence. He is trained to leave, while still respecting his parents’ godly counsel. A daughter is brought up to be transferred from one state of dependence to another. Sons leave; daughters are given.” Wilson devotes two chapters to discussing how parents can best prepare their sons and daughters to fulfill their future roles as husbands and wives.
Kevin Offner is on the staff of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He has written for Re:Generation Quarterly, Critique, Student Leadership Journal, and First Things. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife Amy. They are members of the Presbyterian Church in America. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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