A highlight so
far of this International Catholic Congress of Anglicans (And let no one
misinterpret my affectionate humor this week – this is an excellent and
edifying conference.) has been Stephen Noll’s excellent talk on marriage after
the Obergefell decision and how we Anglicans, along with other Christians,
should proceed now.
His talk covered so much
ground, yet in a succinct manner, that I dare not try to excerpt it. Instead, with the gracious permission
of VirtueOnline, I repost it in full.
---
Holy Matrimony: After
Obergefell
A Presentation to the
"One Church, One Faith, One Lord" International Catholic Congress of
Anglicans in Ft. Worth, Texas
July 13-17, 2015
By The Rev. Prof. Stephen
Noll
Professor Emeritus,
Trinity School for Ministry
Chairman, Task Force on
Marriage, Family, and the Single Life, Anglican Church in North America
One gratuitous cut in the
recent actions by The Episcopal Church was the deletion of the title
"Solemnization of Holy Matrimony" from the revised canon on marriage
and its replacement with "Celebration and Blessing of Marriage." Such
a cut is fitting, I suppose, since what the new Episcopal rites are celebrating
is neither holy nor is it matrimony. One cannot solemnize that which is
repugnant to the explicit teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ and the conciliar
wisdom of His Church through the centuries.
Jesus and Holy Matrimony
Holy Matrimony is the
unique teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Pharisees came up to him
and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any
cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from
the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave
his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become
one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has
joined together, let not man separate." They said to him, "Why then
did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?"
He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to
divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. (Matt 19:3-8)
The Pharisees' question
was a legitimate one, even if offered in bad faith. The Law of Moses
constituted a political covenant, in which sinful men and women sought recourse
from unhappy and harmful marriages. All societies in history, even Christian
ones, have made some provision for divorce and subsequent remarriage.
But Jesus' reply goes
behind the Law: "from the beginning it was not so." He then goes back
to the foundational texts in Genesis: "God created man male and
female" (Gen 1:27) and "the two become one flesh (Gen 2:24)."
Let's look at these two texts in reverse order.
The author of Genesis
(let's call him Moses) concludes the tale of "Adam in Search of a
Wife" thus: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother
and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (Gen 2:24). This
sentence is normative for the institution of marriage, let's call it matrimony.
Matrimony is political in that when a man and woman wed, they form a new
family, a new building block of society. Matrimony is generational, in that
this new family derives from its forebears and generates heirs. It becomes a
link in the "begats" of human history. Matrimony is sexual and
procreative: it is the "cleaving" of the opposite sex partners
that results in a new creature, a son or daughter. It is in this way that the
woman "helps" the man's "loneliness" by becoming the mother
of all living. Hence it is fitting that "matrimony" honors the
mother. On the other hand, sexual activity without the possibility of
procreativity -- and this is clearly the case with homosexuality -- is an
abomination.
Up to this point, I
suspect the Pharisees agreed with Jesus, but Jesus doesn't stop there. He takes
them one step back to the real beginning in Genesis 1:
So God created man in his
own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them,
and God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and
fill the earth and subdue it"
(Gen 1:27-28).
The climax of the six-day
creation is God's deliberate creating and blessing of man in his own image,
that image being dual and complementary, male and female. Jesus sees in this
prior creation and blessing something that goes beyond the political,
generational and sexual foundation of matrimony. That something has to do with
the unique Person and action of God. St. Paul refers to that something as the
"mystery that is between Christ and the Church" (Eph 5:32), and I
believe Jesus intended to ground monogamy in the relational unity of the
Godhead, the Holy Trinity.
God creates and God
blesses, from which Jesus concludes: "What God has joined together, let
not man put asunder." It is God's special presence that makes Christian
matrimony holy and makes the marital bond unbreakable. This truth may not have
been obvious to first-century Jews, who permitted divorce and even polygamy,
but after the coming and teaching of Jesus Christ, the Church taught that holy
matrimony is the lifelong bond between one man and one woman.
The encounter of Jesus
and the Pharisees repeated itself in the patristic period. Roman law and morals
affirmed monogamy and the patriarchal family as "natural"; however
pagans were lax with regard to divorce and (male) promiscuity. St. Augustine
reflected the classic position, for the Western Church at least, in his
identification of three "goods" of marriage:
• procreating the family (proles)
-- Augustine linked the obvious natural good of begetting and raising children
with the tempering of promiscuity which accompanies family life;
• maintaining faithful
conjugal love (fides) -- Augustine speaks of the natural companionship
of the two sexes, even after childbearing years.
• forming a sacred bond (sacramentum)
-- holy matrimony creates a new covenant relationship between the partners with
God and in that sense grace perfects nature. In his beautiful wedding sermon
from prison,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
describes the movement from betrothal to espousal in this way:
As God today adds his
"Yes" to your "Yes," as he confirms your will with his
will, and as he allows you, and approves of, your triumph and rejoicing and
pride, he makes you at the same time instruments of his will and purpose both
for yourselves and for others. In his unfathomable condescension God does add
his "Yes" to yours; but by doing so, he creates out of your love
something quite new -- the holy estate of matrimony.
While the Reformers
objected to some of the medieval developments of marriage, including its
inclusion in the seven-sacrament system, they accepted Augustine's typology of
goods, as is clear in the Marriage Preface in the Book of Common Prayer.
Strange as it may sound, the Prayer Book statement about "avoidance of
fornication" is an affirmation of the sacredness of marriage for those who
remain sinners redeemed by grace (simul justus et peccator).
The other main change at
the Reformation was the shifting of many marital matters from the clergy and
church courts to the magistrate. This change is not as drastic as it may seem
since the Reformers looked to a "godly prince" or a national church
that would affirm and support the Christian understanding of marriage. In some
cases, the state was actually more conservative than the church. Cranmer's
liberal revision of the divorce canons was ultimately rejected by the
Elizabethan Parliament.
The Ethic of Intimacy and
the Obergefell Decision
The description of
matrimony as I have sketched it here has been the historic understanding of
Western society. That description now has a competitor, which I call "the
ethic of intimacy." The English sociologist Anthony Giddens (The
Transformation of Intimacy, 1992) defines the ethic of sexual intimacy in
this way:
• Sexuality in its modern
usage does not mean "two sexes" (the Latin root of "sex"
means "to cut in two") but rather plastic sexuality.
"Plastic sexuality is severed from its age-old integration with
reproduction, kinship and the generations."
• Plastic sexuality
makes possible confluent love, the opening of one person to another for
the purpose of self-realization and self-enhancement. Confluent love is often
expressed in terms of spirituality and justified in terms of human rights.
• Whereas romantic love
fastens on one "special person," confluent love is realized in
one or more special relationships and hence may be monogamous or
polyamorous.
• The special
relationship has no external supports and must continually be negotiated in
a rolling contract. Lest intimacy slide into codependency, each partner
in such a relationship must be willing to grow or break apart at any point.
• Traditional marriage
has no special claim on intimacy and in fact is often an instrument of codependency
to be overcome.
In Justice Kennedy's
majority opinion in Obergefell, the Supreme Court has, in effect,
enthroned the ethic of intimacy as the law of the land. This observation is
counterintuitive since Kennedy employs the trope of "marriage as a
fundamental right" to, in effect, outlaw marriage. The social commentator
Russ Douthat notes this irony in his analysis:
Kennedy's opinion ... is
relentlessly upbeat about how "new insights have strengthened, not
weakened" marriage, bringing "new dimensions of freedom" to
society. But the central "new dimension of freedom" being claimed by
straight America is a freedom from marriage -- from the institution as
traditionally understood, and from wedlock and family, period.
The normalization of
homosexuality and same-sex marriage is not the root cause of the revolt against
marriage in the West today but merely a symptom. The ethic of intimacy has
infiltrated the whole of its culture and institutions. Simply look at a
"PG-13"-rated movie or TV sitcom. Note that a popular U.S.
ex-President is a notorious womanizer. Note the prevalence of the "hook-up
culture" among Western university students, the proliferation of
"no-fault divorces" and the disappearance of marriage as a norm in
Europe and among the poor in America where 70% of inner-city families are headed
by a single woman.
Note, finally, that the
progressive churches in the West are piling on, invoking the blessing of God on
the ethic of intimacy. The logic of The Episcopal Church's "Task Force on
the Study of Marriage," which recommended the canonical redefinition of
marriage, fits hand in glove with Kennedy's argument in Obergefell.
Defending and Restoring
Holy Matrimony after Obergefell
For those of us who
believe that holy matrimony is instituted by God and is not revisable by man,
the Psalmist's question arises: "if the foundations are destroyed, what
can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3). This is a difficult and pressing
question for church bodies and for individual clergy and laity. It is early in
the post-Obergefell era, but let me make some provisional suggestions.
Bearing Witness to Holy
Matrimony
"You will receive
power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (Acts
1:8). It is the Church's duty to bear witness to God's natural and spiritual
purposes in marriage. It is also important for those in the Anglican tradition
to make clear, in light of teaching and practice to the contrary, that we stand
in the authentic tradition of the historic church. For this reason, the
Anglican Church in North America has recently issued a statement which includes
"Bearing Witness to Holy Matrimony" (http://anglicanchurch.net/?/main/page/1060).
It is also the church's
duty to teach disciples to observe all that Jesus commands (Matt 28:18). It is
a sad fact that Western churches have frequently failed to teach and practice
our Lord's standard of Holy Matrimony. We must redouble efforts to catechize on
this subject.
I might add that it will
be important for churches at all levels to make clear in their foundational
documents their doctrine of marriage, as this will give evidence of their
religious freedom under the U.S. Constitution. Please look carefully at "Seven
Things All Churches Should Have in Their Bylaws" from the Alliance
Defending Freedom (http://www.speakupmovement.org/Church/Content/userfiles/Resources/church_seven_bylaws.pdf),
as well as recent two recent webinars by Gammon & Grange and The Christian
Legal Society.
Restoring Church
Discipline
The issue of admitting
same-sex married couples to the sacraments has recently arisen and will
continue to do so. In my opinion, we must recover and apply -- discreetly but
firmly - the disciplinary rubric of the Book of Common Prayer, translating
"notorious evil-liver" in terms of the person whose manner of life is
publicly contrary to the gospel of Christ. Such church discipline cannot be
directed only at same-sex couples. There are many cohabiting couples and
unrepentant divorcees who worship in our churches and present themselves for
marriage and the sacraments.
Once again, let me add
that there is a practical need for churches to establish formal membership and
disciplinary policies and procedures. Discipline begins with the clergy, and
clearly the churches will need to have adequate canons in place to deal with
any clergy who violate Christian principles either in their manner of life or
their ministries.
Taking Back Holy
Matrimony from the State
Matrimony is a public
institution but not necessarily a state institution. The recent ACNA statement
avers:
Marriage is established
by God for the procreation and raising of children and for the good of society.
For this reason, governments have an interest in marriage and have delegated
authority from God to protect and regulate it. But no court, no legislature and
no local magistrate has the authority to redefine marriage and to impose this
definition on their citizens.
After Obergefell,
the question that faces us is: since the state has redefined marriage, what are
we to do? One immediate question has arisen concerning the clergy: should they
continue to officiate on behalf of the state, or should they encourage couples
to obtain a civil marriage and then come to church for Holy Matrimony? And if
clergy become conscientious objectors to state marriage, why not the couples
seeking to be married?
Equally challenging will
be the matter of divorce and remarriage. Since the state has abandoned any
pretense of maintaining the marital bond, is it not incumbent on the church to
adjudicate -- again pastorally but firmly -- cases of willful divorce and
unrepentant remarriage?
Forming a Pro-Marriage
Movement
In recent days, many
commentators have drawn parallels between Roe v. Wade and Obergefell
as judicial fiats that both reflected and sought to influence social trends in
the USA. On the one hand, the parallels between the two decisions are sobering:
42 years on, Roe v. Wade still stands, and millions of abortions are
still performed. On the other hand, the pro-life response to Roe has
maintained a steady witness and has influenced public opinion in directions
that are reducing the practice of abortion, though incrementally.
It will be necessary for
a pro-marriage movement to form in response to Obergefell. It will have
its own internal challenges and continuing attack from the progressive Left. It
will have to formulate its fundamental focus, which I think will probably
center around the issue of procreative sex and the right of every child to have
a father and mother. I hope that it can join forces with the pro-life movement,
since the issues of marriage, conception and birth are interconnected in God's
design.
Finally, let me comment
on the conciliar nature of this response. Leading up to the Obergefell
decision, there were a number of joint statements from a wide spectrum of
Christian churches and leaders and others such as Orthodox Jews and Muslims
(see the last section of the ACNA Bearing Witness statement). There is also a
broad pro-marriage consensus in the Global South as is witnessed by recent
statements of Anglican leaders. If this consensus can work together, pray
together, and repent together, I would hope that, with God's help, our churches
and society might turn back to a saner and better understanding and practice of
marriage as it was intended by God "from the beginning."
END
I wish I could repost the
instructive question and answer afterward as well. It addressed the legal situation in Canada and
Australia. If I happen to come
across it, I will append it to this post.
