One of the major points that Stackhouse makes is that the biblical imagery (Bride of Christ) is referred to the Church as a whole and not to individuals.  It is therefore not appropriate to speak of God as marrying you or me.  It IS appropriate to say that he is marrying all of us together.  One blog http://fustianist.wordpress.com/2007/09/18/my-thoughts-exactly/

says this:

 

(1) The Church is the bride of Christ.
(2) I’m a member of the Church.
[(3) Members of wholes share the features of the whole.]
(4) Therefore, I’m a bride of Christ.

 

The blogger says, "This argument is valid. That is, the only way to rationally challenge the conclusion is to deny one of the premises. As it happens, it’s not to hard to find a premise to deny, since (3) is obviously false (as the examples I gave in my original post should have made clear). Note that I’m not claiming that it’s never true that members have the same feature as the whole of which they are a member. In fact, quite often they do. All I’m saying is that this universal principle is false. So if you want to argue that a member shares a feature with the whole of which it is a member (e.g., that both individual Christians and the Church are brides of Christ), you’ll have to find some other premise(s).

 

Stackhouse says that "...it gives me the homoerotic creeps to declare that I am “in love with” another man." and that

"A gender lens is interesting here, for a lot of men feel as I do (many have told me so), while many (not all) women seem to love telling Jesus that they are in love with him."

 

Now, I must admit that when I was younger in my Christian faith every time I've sang songs or told Jesus that I was "in love with him" I would think that that was kinda homoerotic.  But then I was brush it aside and say to myself, "That's not how I mean it. What I mean is something more along the lines that I want to follow after him passionately and know him in a oneness as I draw close to him."  I would also think that the "Church understands it's own language here--it knows what it means."

 

As it stands I don't think I'm in agreement with Stackhouse still. 

 

First, when I think of "the bride of Christ,"  generally, I think "corporate body" and not atomistically--the individual (Stackhouse says that the biblical imagery is ALWAYS in reference to the corporate body and NEVER in reference to the individual.  Doing so usually results in some pretty whacked stuff he says).  However, I've never really had a problem with referring to individuals as the "bride of Christ."  For example, let's say that we as a local body of believers sing a song that says, "**We** are in love with you Jesus."  When I say, "We" I am also including myself in this.  Thus, I am saying, "I am in love with you Jesus."  Scot McKnight responded with this, "I’m not so sure it is that easy to distinguish the group from the individual; to me it is this logic: if in this case (group), so also in the individual case (you and I). If the Church is the Bride, I am “bridal” to the degree that I am in the Bride." 

 

It seems to me, ultimately speaking, that Stackhouse, in order to be consistent could NEVER sing "**We** are in love with you Jesus" yet that seems to be OK by him as it is always OK for the corporate church to refer to itself/herself/themselves (plural) as "in love with Jesus."  Is there something wrong with my reasoning here?  Please refer to my links to get a better grasp of what I'm saying here if you are having any difficulties in understanding what I'm saying.

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Tom

 

So, when I hear the term "in love," I think of it in the context it has always had. To try, then, to relate that term to my personal walk with Jesus is to make more of my walk with Him than is possible; I simply cannot be in love with Jesus as I am in love with my wife, and all the spiritualization of intimacy and terms between Jesus and me is not going to help make possible the transfer.

 

The term "in love" is meant to convey something very particular, and if the precise meaning of the phrase "in love" is to retain its meaning, there cannot help, then, but be the negation of the transfer of this expressing into the spiritual. If we wish to express a deeper meaning of love for Jesus, let us find another term and not render meaningless the one we have called "in love."

 

As to the Stackhouse issue...

 

The same meaning of "in love" applies whether it is an individual or a corporate using the phrase; that is, to be in love is to connote something about relationship as we experience it in the natural. It makes no difference, then, to speak of the Christian or the Body of Christ as being "in love" with Jesus.

 

Yes, the body is called the bride (I cannot think off hand of any one person in Scripture being called the "bride"), and yes, there is a marriage between this bride and the groom (Jesus), and yes there is an intimacy shared between them as a union in which none other can justifiably partake. We must maintain consistency, however, when we talk about the spiritual love between the bride and the groom that exists in this spiritual marriage. We can transfer the concept of bride, groom and marriage from the natural to the spiritual, but we cannot transfer the meaning of being "in love" from the natural to the spiritual. Why? Because, as they say, the analogy cannot stand on all four legs.

 

Our marriage to Christ--our being the bride and Him being the groom--is never meant to convey the exact same relationship, including all the anemities, that a man and a woman have when they are (happily) married. We can say, however, that natural marriage is a type of our marraige to Christ, but we obviously make adjustments when we transfer the natural to the spiritual. For instance, the communion sacrament conveys spiritual intimacy between Christ and His bride as sex does in the natural between a groom and his bride, but no one is going to step up and say, "I just love having sex with Jesus." The concept of sex is just too far away from the concept of communion to transfer from the natural to the spiritual.

 

It's very hard (if not impossible) to conceive of trying to relate to God, particularly for a man, in a way that conveys being "in love" with Jesus. There's simply no way to transfer into the spiritual what a spouse experiences by being "in love" in the natural. The concept of "in love" is reserved for relationship in this natural world and not the spiritual. What I think we can conceive, however, is the love we start out with in our walk with God growing stronger and deeper. The correlation, then, between love expressed in the natural transfered to the spiritual is found in this: love God with all of our heart, all of our mind, all of our soul and all of our strength.

 

Starkman

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Starky Baby:  For instance, the communion sacrament conveys spiritual intimacy between Christ and His bride as sex does in the natural between a groom and his bride, but no one is going to step up and say, "I just love having sex with Jesus." The concept of sex is just too far away from the concept of communion to transfer from the natural to the spiritual.

 

Brandon: We HAVE mentioned on these boards in the past concepts such as "spiritual orgies."  Here's what Modes said back in the day:

 

 

So.  I don't think it's outta the question to use "erotic speak" or "erotic language" to speak of an individual's or the Church's relationship with God in Christ.  That's just the implication of what it means to be the bride.  The groom will have such an interpersonal relationship with the bride that to say, "I'm in love with Jesus" is probably somewhat of an inadequate articulation of that which transcends it. 

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(o)

Starky Baby, I think what Modes meant by "echo" is that sex is a foreshadow or foretaste of the sort of ecstasy that we will experience in the age to come.  Wikipedia defines orgasm as:

 

 

I have to agree with Modes that any ecstasy that we experience in the life to come will be more intense and penetrating than anything we experience here.  And yes, this means physically as well, as we are not now nor will be disembodied persons.

 

Also, agape has been elevated in the Christian tradition front and center over and above/against the other loves, philia, storge and eros.  This need not be and as Grenz has pointed out agape without the other elements of storge, philia and eros is, both impoverished and impoverishing just as those other aspects of love would be without agape.