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Many of the Psalms record intense personal (spiritual, social, physical) struggles of the Believer. They reveal a very personal relationship with God- an individual relationship. The 16th Century Protestant Reformation was a major source of today’s strong belief in the “Individual“, especially, in the individual’s right to freedom of conscience and choice. However, basic aspects of today’s Western, American understanding of the “Individual” are not Scriptural or Reformed.
Biblically, every individual person is created in the image of God and therefore, has infinite worth. Each individual has faculties for spirituality, reasoning, creativity and morality. All these characteristics are what make each individual a human being, a living soul. There is one other faculty: communality.
Although the individual has infinite worth, God (his) creator declared it is not good for the individual to be alone. See Genesis 2:18! The solitary, autonomous, self-determined “individual” celebrated and valued in Western Culture is not Biblical. S/he was never intended by God to exist; We are each created with the ability and the need to live with others, in covenant (committed) community. The Creator (in His Law) directs us to what these communities are to be. These social units, known to Neocalvinists as “Spheres”, are not intended to be an aggregate of individuals, who voluntarily associate in ways and times in order to meet their individual needs and separate when they do not. These Spheres are permanent committed social units.
The following summary is normative or ideal. There are exceptions to the Norm.
First, men and women are meant to live together as husband and wife, i.e.- in Marriage. These individuals are, in fact, to become and live as “one flesh”. Next, married individuals are normally to be fruitful- have children, and live together as families. When the sons marry, he and his wife begin another family, but these family units are intended to live, ideally, as one extended, inter-generational Community. Next, these extended families assemble and live together as the Covenant people of God, a Community of Faith (That originally was a Tribe of Israel, today it is a local Church)
Individuals can not become and fulfill what God created and gifted and called each of them to be when they live alone. We find our individuality, our life, when we lose it for the sake of the Spheres: Marriage, Family, extended natural Family and Church. Each of them has God-given or “creational” norms or boundaries. Each Sphere has its own inner working or system, with members fulfilling various functions or roles. Each Sphere has a God-given or creational purpose, which the members work together to fulfill. Each Sphere has its own authority (known as “sovereignty” to neocalvinists) and while they cooperate, they must not usurp or interfere with each others, i.e.- they must respect each other’s sovereignty. The Church must respect the extended Family, the extended family must respect the “primary” family and it must respect the Marriage at the heart of it all. None of the Spheres is absolute nor autonomous from each other or God.
The primary function of each Sphere, of all Spheres, is to act as God’s agent in the world, obeying God’s mandate to fill the earth, care for it and continue His work of cultivating it for the common good of all who inhabit it. This is the Cultural Mandate.
To the end of fulfilling the “Cultural Mandate”, other Spheres will naturally arise- voluntary associations of individuals for the production and distribution of goods and services. In addition, voluntary associations will naturally arise for Education, Communications, the Arts and Recreation. None of these Spheres, extensions of the original Marriage, Family and Church Spheres, are autonomous either, but cooperate with each other and function according to the Law of God, accountable to Him.
There is one more Sphere: Civil Government. It is not to usurp or interfere with any of the other Spheres. It is not to fulfill the purposes assigned by God to Marriages, Families or the Church or any of the extended Associations. It’s function is to see to it that “everyone plays by the rules” (God’s rules). It is to facilitate cooperation, and work out disagreements, between all the Spheres. It is to pass and enforce legislation and laws to that end.
Because all the individuals involved in the Spheres are sinners, none of the Spheres will function perfectly. They are "systems "which have a "life" of their own and may very well malfunction or fail. There will be injustice- transgression of God’s Law and oppression, in these Spheres. This is systemic evil. Christians must work for the redemption of these systems. Civil Government is to restrain such injustice wherever it may occur in and between the Spheres. One of the functions of the Church is to remind the Civil Government of its proper responsibilities and that it, too, is a servant of God, under His Law. This is "speaking truth to power".
The “individual” becomes “all he was meant to be” only within the commitment of Marriage, Family, Church, Social and Business Associations and the Civil Government. The individual is truly free only within the confines of a covenant relationship, with all other individuals, in these Spheres. (That is not bondage. It is bonding.) God never intended the individual to be autonomous.
All of the above is a simple sketch of a very important concept. It iis a Biblical Ideal and one Christians should get serious about implementing. The Biblical concept of Sphere Sovereignty is a guide for civic life and public policy. It is the framework for Biblical Social Ethics, the pursuit of the so-called rights of autonomous individuals is not.
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