Customer Reviews

A Model for Marriage: Covenant, Grace, Empowerment and Intimacy

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I highly recommend this book for engaged couples, married couples, and pastoral care workers. I also recommend it for textbook reading in colleges and seminaries. Jack and Judith Balswick pour their gifts, experiences, energy, wisdom, knowledge, and hearts into this accessible but rich work on married life. The Balswick's are egalitarian in their view of marriage but that shouldn't stop complementarians from reading this valuable resource. I enthusiastically recommend the book because of the thoughtful integration of social sciences, theology, and their own marital journey. I believe both egalitarians and complementarians will benefit from reading this monograph. Their vision of marriage being grounded in light of trinitarian relationships provides significant relational depth and differentiation from a uniquely Christian perspective.

I have had the wonderful opportunity to study under both Jack and Judy at Fuller Theological Seminary. This work culminates their entire careers as educators and authors. This work offers their most significant theological work (based on Trinitarian Theology) for marriages. They stand firmly committed to their theological assumptions and interact fully and purposefully with sound and robust marriage and family models (namely Bowen Natural Systems Theory). They construct a model that honors both the theology and Bowen dimensions of their model. I highly recommend this work.

My Fiance and I are using this book with our pre-marital sessions with our Minister. This book has some wonderful concepts and insight! However, the only issue we have found with it is that it is a very "heavy" read. We often can only read a chapter at a time and then need time to "digest" what we've read. The book has a tendency to get into too much detail about various theories, but the summaries at the end of each chapter help to clarify the terminology. It's a wonderful perspective on the newer concept of "two whole individuals coming together as one" instead of the traditional concept of "two halves becoming a whole". A really good read on modern marriage perspectives while still acknowledging the traditional views as well.