Bible Shy?
The House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in England recently published what they described as 'a teaching document' on marriage.  This article considers some of the shortcomings of that document and first appeared in New Directions, November 1999.  It has been slightly amended for the international audience of the Internet.
 
"Bible not found.  Do you want to continue searching at the beginning of the document?"

For those who don't use a word-processor, I should explain that this is the message you get when you use the  "search" facility and the word you're looking for isn't there.  And seeing it recently, I began to understand what the Apostle Paul felt like in Athens.  He had gone sightseeing and found a city full of idols.  I, on the other hand, had been searching Marriage: A Teaching Document from the House of Bishops of the Church of England, and hadn't found a single specific mention of the Bible.  And where Acts 17 says of Paul "his spirit was provoked within him", I think I know how he felt - not just shaken, but stirred.  Hence this article!
 

Teaching
The work in question is published by Church House Publishing in London and was recently sent to all English Church of England clergy.  In the Preface it says, 

"The House of Bishops considers it timely on the eve of the new millennium to reaffirm the Church of England's teaching on marriage.  We have sought to relate this teaching to the pastoral needs of people in our communities today, so that they might approach marriage with confidence."
There are, then, three clear and worthwhile aims: inspiration (of those approaching marriage), application (to their situations) and confirmation (of the Church's teaching).  But sadly, this booklet fails to achieve them.
 

Whose Teaching?
One reason for this failure is that Marriage follows the same diktat that seems to govern all official Anglican documents in this country: "Why use three words when ten will do?"   Reading it is like chewing biltong - a major effort for a little nourishment.  It subtitles itself as A Teaching Document, but it fails to be ‘a document which teaches'.

Arguably, it might qualify as ‘a document which contains the teaching'.  But then we come to the question of precisely whose teaching it contains.  Time and again, Marriage refers to "the Church" as if it were an entity which has, in and of itself, the capacity (for example) to "understand" (p 14), hold "convictions" (p 15), "condemn" (p 16) and "decide" (pp 17,18).  This view of the Church is, of course, one which many people hold.  However, it is not - or has not been until now - the official self-perception of the Church of England.  On the contrary, this church recognizes what the man in the street knows - that the church can, and occasionally does, err in what it teaches, and that therefore it is not enough merely to refer to "the Church" in a document which expresses the church's teaching.
 

Church or Bible?
Because of this human proneness to error, the position adopted by the English Reformers was that Scripture determines, and indeed judges, what "the Church" teaches:

"General Councils ... may err, and sometimes have erred, even in the things pertaining unto God.  Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture."  (Article XXI of the Thirty-Nine Articles)
Even the Creeds were only accepted by the reformers because "they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture" (Article VIII).  Marriage alludes to the emphasis placed on Scripture by "the reformers of the Church of England" (pp 14-15, though without explaining who they were to the uneducated who might read this ‘teaching document').  But you would never guess the significance of this from a booklet in which "the Church" is referred to twenty-five times and the Bible is never named once.  Even the single reference to Scripture would not suggest that this was the source of the Church of England's teaching.  Nor would the quote from Scripture on page 1 (which is not even in quotation marks), the other two brief allusions on the same page, or the two words quoted on page 13.  (And what non-churchgoer would know the meaning of "Eph 5.32"?)

Throughout, it is "the Church" which has a view on marriage breakdown (p 14), "the Church" which condemns domestic violence (p 16), "the Church" which decides whether remarriage after divorce should be officially solemnized (p 17), and so on.  However, since the teachings of "the Church" are not founded on anything other than ‘what the church teaches', the door is left open to fundamental change:

"Should the Church as a whole decide upon an alternative [to safeguarding the understanding of marriage as a ‘lifelong commitment' by refusing to solemnize remarriage following a divorce], it will be on precisely the same principles that have guided it up to this point ..." (p 18)
The principles which follow, however, are not those of what the Bible says, but simply that marriage is "an unconditional commitment for life" which may, nevertheless, sometimes not work out and which may, therefore, require some input from "the Church itself".
 

Church or Jesus?
This failure to acknowledge the foundation of the church's teaching also leads to the most extraordinary feature of this "teaching document" on marriage, namely the complete absence of any reference to what Jesus taught.

The booklet does attempt to tackle the difficult pastoral problem of divorce and remarriage.  But rather than posing the problem in relation to Jesus' words found in Scripture, the reader is referred to the words of the English marriage service:

"All Christians believe that marriage is ‘indissoluble' in the sense that the promises are made unconditionally for life.  ‘For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance': these well-known words, used for many centuries, are decisive for what it means to undertake marriage [emphasis added].  Some strands of the Western Church have concluded from this that a divorce decree is ineffective and a subsequent marriage invalid in the eyes of God.  The reformers of the Church of England did not believe that this was taught in Scripture, and they did not teach it in The Book of Common Prayer."  (pp 14-15)
This presentation is, of course, both tendentious and disingenuous.  First, it is the Christian understanding of the lifelong nature of marriage which determines the wording of the promises, not the other way round.  Second, those who hold to the (majority) view in the Western Church that divorce and remarriage are not possible do so because they believe this is what Scripture teaches, not because of the wording of the promises that express this teaching.  Third, the attitude of the English Reformers was based not on a failure to find a certain viewpoint in Scripture, but on a positive endorsement both of the overall teaching of Jesus and, specifically, of the Matthean and Pauline ‘exceptions'.  The prayers in the Book of Common Prayer marriage service, for example, observe that God himself "didst teach that it should never be lawful to put asunder those whom [he] by Matrimony hadst made one" (emphasis added).  Also the Homily of the State of Matrimony recognizes that where there is strife between a married couple, "yet they are of necessity compelled to live together, which yet cannot be in quiet together" and makes reference to "that law, which forbiddeth that a man should cast out his wife, what fault soever she be cumbered with" (emphases added).

Rather than presenting honestly what Jesus said, and calling the reader to engage with that, the question of remarriage after divorce is ultimately presented as a matter of personal choice:

"In some circumstances to marry again after divorce ... may be responsible, prudent ... and emotionally wise."  (p 17)

 "In this situation it is for the partners ... to decide whether to marry."  (p 17)

 "When a Christian in this situation has judged it appropriate to marry again, the Church has been willing to respect that decision ..." (p 18)


And although it is asserted that "the Church" has a rôle in deciding whether such a remarriage should take place "in the context of church worship" (pp 17, 18, 24), the grounds for all such decision-making are left unclear because the relevant Scripture is left unspoken.
 

'Self-Determination' or ‘Sin'?
Moreover, there is no suggestion that, should a couple decide not to marry, the godly alternative is to live separately.  Indeed, one feels that the word "fornication" would be an unwelcomely intrusion into this report, as would the admission that "unfaithfulness" really means "adultery".  Instead of the Church Militant we get the Church Hesitant:

"The relationships of couples who live together without being married are of many different kinds. Some are short term and experimental; some have serious long-term hopes; some are already stable and enduring. Sometimes a couple intends marriage in the future; sometimes they feel negatively about it, either because of personal insecurities or disappointments which they have brought from the past, or from a suspicion, which our culture tends to reinforce, of formal and binding ties. Some couples agree on what their expectations are; some cannot discuss them freely together, so that each is uncertain of what the other has in mind.  Whatever may be your case, the Church would like to help you address and resolve any questions there may be in your mind about your relationship, which may become a source of grave anxiety if they are not addressed."  (p 21, emphasis added)
One would need to be the goddess Kali to deal with so many instances of "on the one hand this and on the other hand that"!  And the conclusion is equally timid:
"But it may be, in fact, that you have resolved the question of your future between yourselves already, that you are quite certain of your lasting commitment to each other, and are living naturally together among your friends as husband and wife. Even so, the Church would encourage you to make the public stand that is implied in your way of life, expressing your promises to one another and praying together, as others pray with you, for God's assistance."  (p 22)
This is ‘Nimmo-speak': the stage-caricature vicar, eager as a spaniel to please and verbose to the point of incomprehensibility:
"The worshipping community, which is ready to welcome you in celebrating and learning of God's love, is the proper supportive context for the personal relationship at the centre of your life to flourish."  (p 22)
Indeed, the language throughout this document is hardly appropriate for the typical reader.  The average sentence contains twenty-six words and the longest, on page 18, a massive eighty-five!  I am left asking myself who reads this stuff (or perhaps more to the point, who proof-reads it).
 

Pastoral Crisis
Marriage is far from dead as an institution, but it is critically ill.  Most couples who live together eventually split up, illegitimate births are commonplace, the divorce rate is enormous.  People do not know what marriage is, and therefore they do not know why they should marry, how they should prepare for it or how they can make it last a lifetime.  Indeed, Marriage acknowledges that there are many siren voices today:

"... our culture ... discourages us from making binding and public promises [and] ... is generally unsupportive to any kind of commitment" (p 10)

"... society ... inculcates a false idea of freedom as lack of attachment, and fosters all kinds of misleading fantasies about sex" (p 11)

 "... society imposes heavy pressures on marriage" (p 15)


The intention to tackle these problems is only to be commended.  But Marriage fails to deliver.  It is a ‘teaching document' of the church which doesn't teach the truth guarded by the church.  And this is not only because it is fuzzy in its reasoning and verbose in its presentation, but because it lacks the courage of biblical convictions.

Yet do we really need it?  We already have the Bible.  And for those who need further encouragement, there are also a few hundred years of church tradition.  Let those who teach, teach and exemplify that.
 

John Richardson
29 October 1999

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