By Gregory Coles. Greg holds a PhD from Penn State, is a Senior Research Fellow at The Center, and is the author of Single, Gay, Christian, No Longer Strangers, and The Limits of My World.
Last week, my church had what we call a “reading service”: a ninety-minute Sunday read-aloud through six or seven chapters of Scripture, interspersed with songs and prayers and artistic reflection. It’s one way we try to remind ourselves that most of the Bible’s original recipients heard it read aloud in the context of community, instead of reading it as isolated individuals.
On this particular Sunday, we read Matthew 14-20 aloud—and, to help make the reading experience as lively as possible, we chose to read from The Message.
Before I go on, let me say up front that I’m an admirer of both The Message and its author, Eugene Peterson. Critics of The Message sometimes object that it isn’t a “translation,” and they’re right. It’s a paraphrase of Scripture that expands on the original text by incorporating interpretation and commentary. Much of the time, I think Peterson’s expansions are quite good. Even when I think he gets things a bit wrong, I’m still grateful for the way he sparks my spiritual imagination by prodding at the possible meanings and applications of the text.
But once in a while, I stumble across an interpretation in The Message that seems dramatically off base. I find myself wondering, If somebody as smart as Eugene Peterson is interpreting this passage this way, how many other Christians might be doing the same?
I’m especially attentive (and especially concerned) when the misinterpretation I encounter has to do with marriage and singleness, since I care rather a lot about how these topics are handled in our church communities. That’s why I found Peterson’s portrayal of Matthew 19:10-12 so distressing:
Jesus’ disciples objected, “If those are the terms of marriage, we haven’t got a chance. Why get married?” But Jesus said, “Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace. Marriage isn’t for everyone. Some, from birth seemingly, never give marriage a thought. Others never get asked—or accepted. And some decide not to get married for kingdom reasons. But if you’re capable of growing into the largeness of marriage, do it.”
Here’s how the NIV translation handles the same passage:
The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
One of the key words for interpreting this passage is the pronoun “this.” Pronouns usually get their meaning by pointing us back to something spoken or written earlier on: the antecedent of the pronoun. In this passage, there are two places where the antecedent we choose for “this” totally transforms Jesus’ meaning:
- In verse 11: “Not everyone can accept [this word].” What is “this word” that not everyone can accept?
- In verse 12: “The one who can accept [this] should accept it.” What is “this” that we should accept if we can?
Peterson interprets the passage as if both of these “thises” point to marriage:
- In verse 11: “Not everyone can accept [this word]” means “Not everyone can accept [marriage].”
- In verse 12: “The one who can accept [this] should accept it” means “The one who can accept [marriage] should accept it.”
The problem is, a close reading of the passage yields a nearly opposite interpretation. Let’s look at the possible antecedents that precede each use of “this”:
- In verse 11: The closest possible antecedent to “this word” is the disciples saying to Jesus that “it is better not to marry.” If we look further back, our next choice of antecedent is one of Jesus’ comments about divorce and remarriage. Since it’s unlikely that Jesus is saying his restrictions on divorce and remarriage are optional, our best choice is to see “it is better not to marry” as the antecedent of “this word.” Jesus isn’t talking about marriage but about the goodness of remaining unmarried. This also helps to explain why he immediately goes on to describe three different types of unmarried people.
- In verse 12: The potential antecedent that comes immediately before “The one who can accept this should accept it” is Jesus’ statement, “There are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” If we want to look further back for a different antecedent, we could pick one of Jesus’ other comments about eunuchs or the disciples’ statement that “it is better not to marry.” No matter which of these options we choose, this this from Jesus has to be about singleness, not marriage.
In other words, if we follow the antecedents, here’s what these two verses say:
- In verse 11: “Not everyone can accept [this word]” means “Not everyone can accept [the goodness of singleness].”
- In verse 12: “The one who can accept [this] should accept it” means “The one who can accept [remaining unmarried for the sake of the Kingdom / the goodness of singleness] should accept it.”
My concern here isn’t just that Peterson gets these pronouns wrong, but also that he elaborates from his misinterpretation to make his point even more dramatic. Instead of simply (wrongly) saying, “Not everyone can accept marriage,” he has Jesus say, “Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life.” Instead of simply (wrongly) saying, “The one who can accept marriage should accept it,” he has Jesus say, “if you’re capable of growing into the largeness of marriage, do it.” In both cases, he exacerbates the misunderstood pronouns with an argument that marriage is a fundamentally more mature and larger vocation than singleness. He injects the passage with claims that those who remain unmarried are less mature and are incapable of “growing into the largeness of marriage.”
To be clear, as I’ve argued at length elsewhere, marriage offers lots of beautiful largeness and lots of opportunity for maturity–but so does singleness! And it’s the beautiful largeness and potential maturity of singleness, even more than marriage, that Jesus has most directly in mind in Matthew 19:10-12.
Again, I’ve got lots of admiration for Peterson and The Message, so my purpose here isn’t simply to criticize either one. Rather, I think Peterson’s misstep here is notable because it speaks to the way so many of our Christian communities have (mis)read Matthew 19. It’s contributed to a world where too many people are describing singleness as “plague” and “bondage,” trying to “pray the single away.” The main reason I want us to rightly interpret passages like this one is so we rightly approach the single people in our midst.
I’m delighted to report that part of what made this particular Peterson passage so jarring to hear read aloud at church was how poorly it fit into my own church community. We had several unmarried people reading and leading us from the front of the room on that particular Sunday: never-married folks and no-longer-married folks, people who are single because they don’t feel called to marriage and people who wish they could be married. In my church, we love and celebrate each one of these beautiful unmarried siblings in the faith.
Jesus didn’t tell unmarried people that they’ve settled for immaturity or chosen a smaller vocation. Neither should we.