Family: The Domestic Church
Considering the writing of Joseph C. Atkinson
I am a longtime reader of blogger The Bionic Mosquito who uses books on Church history as a framework for exploring issues of an ecclesiastical nature. He positions himself in the center of the several branches of the historic Church and is a very reasonable and stimulating resource.
I find his approach so helpful that I intend to apply something similar in considering Biblical and Theological Foundations of the Family by Joseph C. Atkinson. Dr. Atkinson is a professor at the John Paul II Institute for the Family at Catholic University of America.
I came across this book as part of my Anglican seminary studies. My thinking about the nature of the marital union was already deeply affected by the Theology of the Body – a series of discourses which Pope John Paul II delivered a couple of decades ago.
I found Dr. Atkinson’s research and bibliography to be broad, rich and ecumenical. In his comments about the book, Anglican scholar Craig Bartholomew said,
“Dr. Atkinson insists on approaching the question of the family in relation to scripture in terms of what I have come to know as tota scriptura, so his theology of the family emerges out of an examination of the canon of scripture as a whole and this in my opinion is absolutely correct. I like to think of scripture as the field in which is hid the pearl of great price but in order to excavate that pearl and to keep emerging again and again into the presence of Christ. You must dig, and dig Dr. Atkinson does. He grounds the family in creation, as do scripture and Jesus, and thus attends closely and attentively to Genesis 1 and 2.” *
Dr. Atkinson’s writing is, thus, and extension of Theology of the Body – an outworking, if you will. Just as Dr. Bartholomew found delight in the premises and scholarship of the book, we will find the same as we launch forward.