An Old-New Way of Thinking about Singleness
The Meaning of Singleness: Retrieving an Eschatological Vision for the Contemporary Church, Danielle Treweek. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023. Softcover, 313 pages.
According to Dani Treweek, “Christian singleness is routinely portrayed as not simply abnormal, but aberrant” (p.46). She quotes popular evangelical preacher and writer John MacArthur who once said that singleness is “the most devastating attack on marriage today…Singleness is an assault on marriage” (p.84). Douglas Wilson is quoted saying that Christians should only be thankful for singleness the way they would “thank God for bad financial news, or a cancer diagnosis, or any other true affliction” (p.74). It’s often the case that we expect a single person to want to be married and anyone who doesn’t must be either gay or weird. Treweek aims to challenge that way of thinking.
The Meaning of Singleness is a reworking of her doctoral dissertation. It’s published by an academic press. To be honest, there were times where I had to stop and look up certain words. It’s not easy reading. But it has an important message and in this review I want to summarize it for you. If you like being challenged with deeper reading, then by all means have at it, but I wouldn’t expect most readers to persevere through it.
Treweek’s case begins by arguing that our contemporary Christian understanding of singleness has been more influenced by the world than we’d care to admit. Secular thought and principles have heavily influenced the way we regard singleness as deficient and marriage as normative. She writes, “…it would be a mistake to think that the schemes of thought that have shaped any contemporary or historical Christian view have been exclusively Christian in their character and grounding” (p.87).
But she doesn’t propose to develop something entirely new in response. Treweek sees theology as partly an exercise in retrieval. It’s good to think about how singleness was regarded in church history, in biblical exegesis, and in Christian theology. Of course, those who have preceded us need to be critically considered – and she does that. The outcome of this is that Treweek observes that, whereas most Protestant thinking on singleness has been exclusively based on protology (the doctrine of the first things, i.e. Genesis 1-3), much earlier Christian thinking also took into account eschatology (the doctrine of the last things). In the new creation, all Christians will be single. Shouldn’t that have some impact on how we think about singleness now? The meaning of singleness is partly found in the fact that single Christians in this age are giving us a picture of the future awaiting all of us.
Treweek isn’t arguing that singleness is superior to marriage. Her aim isn’t to downplay the significance of marriage either. She writes that marriage has its own way of pointing ahead to the beautiful new creation in that it points us to the “eternal union between Christ and his church” (p.231). Rather, she’s contending that singleness and marriage have equal value and meaning for Christians.
There are two other ways she speaks about the meaningfulness of being single. The first has to do with procreation. Whereas married Christians are usually more focussed on biological procreation (parenting), singles ought to focus on the spiritual procreation involved in discipleship. The other has to do with the embrace of celibacy. By embracing sexual celibacy, spiritually mature Christian singles proclaim with their lives that physical gratification is not “equivalent to true happiness [n]or necessary for human flourishing” (p.268).
I found it to be a fascinating read which stretched my thinking. In fact, it was the best Christian book I read in 2024. The only negative I’ll mention is that she quotes an author taking God’s Name in vain on page 24. Otherwise, this is a great challenge to the contemporary portrayals of singleness “as either an exceptional miracle to be embraced, a problem to be solved, an interim period to be endured, or a tragedy to be lamented” (p.218).
Originally published in Clarion 74.05 (April 11, 2025)
