"If marriage were primarily a Christian institution, you would find it only existing in times and places where Christianity has had influence."

If the only God there is, the Christian God, instituted marriage at the beginning of human civilization, then marriage is a Christian institution regardless of whether or not the societies that recognize it have retained the worship of Jehovah along with it.

Marriage is a divine institution, for all people, it is not a Christian institution. Just as self, family and government are divine institutions with specific protocol from God, so is marriage.

Many believers, mature ones at that, have somehow failed to learn the basics regarding divine institutions. Often, as seen above, the mix Christian or ecclesiastical institutions with divine institutions.

Marriage is not Christian, it is divine. One might pause and ask, isn’t Christian and the divine the same. No. But the divine and Christian are.

What do I and others mean. Take government. Government is not Christian, but it is divine. It stems from God’s protocol for human/civil order. On the other hand the Lord’s Supper is a Christian institution and it is only for, Christians. Hence, its being a Christian or ecclesiastical institution.

Just as we, as believers, participate within our government as believers we also participate in marriage as believers with a unique and higher protocol from that of all other humans. Yet government nor marriage is limited to believers, it is for all people. They, too, participate, with government by God’s sanction, simply not as Christians but as members of humanity.

The distinction is critical and the article, I find, is exceptional in its understand of both what marriage is and its value to government. It makes a superior argument in comparison to many others.

I think I must stand corrected.

David,

Aside from the classification you made, the points in your statement do underscore what the article states, namely the properties of the institution of marriage and its validity must stand.