Ask Doug: How Important is Theological Agreement with a Potential Spouse?

The Ask Doug Question: For a marriage how important is it to have agreement on theology and to what degree? Should a reformed Christian require reformed theology views in a spouse? Assuming agreement in theology is important and 100% agreement in a new relationship is unlikely, where is a good place to draw the line for essential theological beliefs?

 

4 Comments

  1. I agree with the principle (which I’ll drastically oversimplify in this comment) that Reformed guys marrying non-Reformed girls is OK, but Reformed girls marrying non-Reformed guys isn’t so much OK. Just as long as everybody is aware of and thoughtful about the fact that for every Reformed guy who marries a non-Reformed girl, there’s a Reformed girl who won’t have a Reformed guy to marry. So for the sake of charity, encourage your sons to “buy local,” theologically speaking, or at least shop local before making the trek to CuteArminianChicks-R-Us.

    The older I’ve gotten, the more theologically particular I’ve gotten, and at every step of that journey I’ve been very conscious of the fact that, statisticswise, I’m shooting myself in the foot as far as the hope of getting married goes. And yet I keep merrily reloading and blasting away more toes, and I leave that numbers game up to the Lord. I did have someone encourage me once to keep my requirements simple — that Reformed ought to be enough, and I shouldn’t be picky about issues like paedocommunion. That all seemed well and good until I imagined the scenario in which my poor imaginary husband was the victim of a “You want to STARVE my BABIES?!?!?” hissy fit, and I decided maybe I’d better keep that one on the list of nonnegotiables. ;-)

  2. I was curious why he chose the Apostle’s Creed rather than the Nicene Creed? Not that I think this invalidates the sum of his comments in anyway.

  3. Kai Elliott says:

    For some reason, I can’t see any video, or hear any audio from this page.

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