Just twenty-five years ago this past August, Mary and I underwent
our wedding. I use the verb “underwent” advisedly. We would have preferred a
small, quiet occasion with family and a few friends; but it was not every
weekend that a curate of the Cathedral Church of St John the Baptist got
married, and the Dean, the Very Reverend Edward C. W. Rusted, informed me that
our chances of having a small wedding were about as good as Prince Charles’s.
(This was three years before His Royal Highness met Lady Diana Spencer.) So
Mary and I were saddled with a grand event, with no less a personage than the
Archbishop of Eastern
Our wedding day finally arrived. I am not sure that any couple remembers very much about their wedding; my own memories of the show are almost a total blur. I say, almost. There is remarkably little scope for muddling the Prayer Book’s wedding service. But what little scope there was, the Archbishop managed to stumble into it. Mary and I exchanged our vows and our rings, then we knelt on the step before the Archbishop, and joined hands. His Grace bent over us, wrapped his stole around our hands, and declared: “Those whom God hath joined asunder….” Mary suppressed a giggle; I looked up at His Grace, and saw the face of someone who knew something was not quite right but couldn’t figure out what it might be. Behind him, his chaplain was hissing, “Joined together, joined together!!!” The Archbishop winced and hurriedly corrected his statement of the formula. So I guess Mary and I were not divorced at our own wedding, after all.
Marriage is a mystery. Just ask anybody who has ever engaged in marriage
counselling. They know that marriage can often feel like a very great mystery
indeed. A mystery in the sense of a whodunnit – except that in the marital
mystery, the question to be solved is not whodunnit
so much as howdunnit. And answering
that question has been the dominant, almost the exclusive concern of Christian
literature about matrimony. It is like reading the final chapter of an Agatha
Christie novel, where the Hercule Poirots of canon law explain the conditions
necessary for a marriage to be valid and the Miss Marples of pastoral
counselling explain how a marriage can be made to “work”.
But I have been asked to talk about the theology of marriage; and when a
theologian faces a mystery, he or she sees a rather different sort of puzzle
than canon law or pastoral counselling sees, and investigates a rather
different sort of question. Not whodunnit,
nor even howdunnit, but whydunnit. That is to say, the
theological investigation of a mystery has to do with meaning and significance
– with meaning and significance in the context of, and by reference to, the revelation
of God in Christ. A “theology of marriage,” then, will consider matrimony in
relation to the creative economy and saving purpose of the three-personed God.
As it happens, the theological investigation of marriage – of marriage
as a mystery – takes its warrant from the Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5,
beginning at verse 21. There, Paul (or one of his disciples) exhorts husbands
and wives to be subject to one another, and then invokes the relationship
between Christ and the church as the rule and example that married couples
should follow. He says:
Husbands should love their wives as they do
their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates
his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does
for the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will
leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh.” This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the
church.[1]
Matrimony is “a great mystery”. The howdunnit tradition of canon law and
pastoral counselling has admitted as much; but here, as elsewhere in the
letters of Paul, the word “mystery” (musthrion)
does not have the sense of a puzzle to be solved. A mystery is a truth about
God’s dealings with humanity which was once secret or hidden but is now public
knowledge in the Church. Both dimensions – once secret, now revealed – need to
be kept in mind. A mystery is a public secret,
a truth hiding out in the open, right in front of our noses. Paul himself makes
this very point in his Letter to the Romans when he speaks of “the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed”.[2] The Letter to the Ephesians uses the word “mystery” in this sense.
Thus marriage is “a great mystery” in the sense that it always represented the
Son of God’s relationship with the holy people of God, though its meaning was
hidden or secret until Christ appeared and disclosed the secret. So marriage – in particular, marriage as blessed
in and by the Church – somehow represents, symbolizes, signifies, or, yes, even
“sacraments” the public secret of the Son of God’s relationship with the
community of the faithful.
This Pauline viewpoint informs a statement made in the Exhortation which
opens “The Form of the Solemnization of Matrimony” in the Prayer Book. After
declaring the reason for the assembly, “to join together this man and this
woman in Holy Matrimony,” the Exhortation sets forth the nature of matrimony –
it “is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency,
signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church.”
This brief statement comprehends the two thematic cornerstones of Christian
theology as a whole. For it grounds “this holy estate” in the divine economy of
creation and, drawing on Ephesians 5.32, refers it to the saving mystery of
Christ. I do not think we will find a more genuinely theological statement of
what marriage means.
For comparison’s sake, it is worth taking a look at the Exhortation which introduces both forms of “The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage” in the BAS. It describes the significance of marriage in these terms: “Marriage is a gift of God and a means of his grace, in which man and woman become one flesh. It is God’s purpose that, as husband and wife give themselves to each other in love, they shall grow together and be united in that love, as Christ is united with his Church.” In contrast with the Prayer Book Exhortation, this BAS formula is far less compressed; indeed, it is positively unbuttoned. But it touches the same bases. It refers to the economy of creation when it says that in matrimony “man and woman become one flesh”. This is an allusion to Genesis 2.24, the conclusion of the second creation narrative. Having recounted how God formed the woman out of the man, the author states: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” This is the very verse quoted in Ephesians 5.31. Like the Prayer Book, the BAS Exhortation also alludes to Ephesians 5.32 when it says that the matrimonial partners should be united in love “as Christ is united with his Church.” So the Prayer Book and the BAS pack the same theological meaning with respect to marriage: it is a mystery of the creative economy and saving purpose of God.
But theology is not only a matter of packing for the journey into God;
it is also a matter of unpacking as much as the Church needs at each
way-station on that journey. So what does it mean – what does it mean at this
present stop on the way into God – to say that matrimony is a state of life
“instituted of God in the time of [human] innocency, signifying unto us the
mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church”?
First, a reminder about mystery, about the open-endedness of mystery.
Because we are creatures in time and space, we draw lines in the sands of
history to mark the point at which something became real or true for us. That
point may not coincide with the event which made that something be. For
instance, many of us here were baptized when we were infants or very young
children. That made us be Christians; but Christianity – and the meaning of our
own baptism – did not become true or real for us until many years later. We
were already Christians; but at some point we became Christians – we both
consciously accepted and deliberately chose to be what we already were. Some of
us who are married or in a long-term relationship might say the same about our
lives with our partners; there was the wedding, and then – weeks, or months, or
years later – we realized what we had done, and embraced the truth of the fact.
The union did not begin with that embrace of its truth; it simply became a
truth that was real for us, in the sense that we now understood what the union
meant. In theology, such experiences are microcosms of God’s economy of
creation and salvation.
In the Letter to the Ephesians, the “great mystery” that Paul (or a disciple of Paul) applied to “Christ and the church” is the precept which seals the second creation story, after God creates woman and unites her with Adam: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” It is clear that the reason for quoting it lies in the second clause, “and the two will become one flesh.” The Pauline argument is undoubtedly sexist in orientation, for it takes the husband as the cynosure and norm of marriage – it is he who should love his wife as he does his own body, and who therefore loves himself in loving his wife. In this respect, the author may be missing the point of the text he (and I think we may safely say he) was citing. In Genesis 2.24, it is the two that “become one flesh”. The text does not say that wife becomes part of the husband, by being folded or assimilated (so to speak) into his life without remainder. Rather, the text suggests that the man and the woman mutually constitute “one flesh” and together form “one body”. The author’s sexism at this point probably reflected contemporary norms; but it also served his theological purpose. For Ephesians – and indeed Pauline literature in general – cannot concede that the relationship between Christ and the church is a union of equals. Christ always has the initiative; it is Christ who makes us members of his body, not we who make him a member of our bodies. But even as we acknowledge that truth, it is worth remembering that, by quoting Genesis 2.24, Ephesians is recognising its authority. Which is to say, Genesis 2.24 is the rule by which the union – yes, the marriage – of Christ and the Church is to be understood, even as marriage is now to be understood in light of “the union that is betwixt Christ and his Church”. And Genesis 2.24 implies mutuality of the married partners in being “one flesh,” not the subjugation of one partner to the other. Just so, the initiative of Christ is not for the purpose of keeping us in subjugation, but for the purpose of enabling our dignity as “participants of the divine nature”.[5] Anglicans might reflexively wince at the notion, but the great tradition of Christian spirituality still bears witness that Christ is as much our lover as our Lord; and if the analogy with marriage, on the basis of Genesis 2.24, has any authority, it means that we have become one flesh with Christ the lover, as much as servants of Christ the Lord or siblings of Christ the Son of God.
Any one
who has done marriage preparation will know that the statement, “and the two
will become one flesh,” can cause problems and even be a rock of offence. Oddly
enough, in my own experience as a parish priest, it has usually been the groom
who gagged on this statement, not the bride. On inquiring why, the answer I
have most frequently received has to do with issues of personal independence
and even, on occasion, with what may be called the metaphysics of individuality
– how can I still be me if I exist in somebody else and somebody else exists in
me? This same objection also happens to work when we talk about the baptized as
members of the body of Christ – the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and
His Church. There are moments when dogma comes in handy; and this objection is
one of them. I do not say that I have always responded to the offended grooms
by quoting the dogmatic decree about the person of Christ promulgated at the
council of
In the case of the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and the Church,
which is based upon the hypostatic union that is the person of Jesus Christ,
the Christian tradition says that the divine Word participates in our humanity
so that we human beings might participate in his divinity. Marriage is a
mystery and signifies this greater mystery insofar as the mutual participation
of the partners in one another’s life is what constitutes the marital union.
But then we may ask what that union is for, what is the purpose of the mutual
participation. Here the Anglican tradition, in common with the wider tradition
of western Christendom, has given a fairly consistent answer – though the
priorities within this answer have shifted. The Marriage Exhortation in the
English Prayer Book from 1549 through 1662 sternly noted that marriage is “not
to be enterprised, nor taken in hand,” except “reverently, discreetly,
advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for
which Matrimony was ordained.” And those “causes,” or reasons, are three in
number:
1. “for the procreation of children, to be
brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord”;
2. “for a remedy against sin, and to avoid
fornication”; and
3. “for the mutual society, help, and comfort,
that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity”.[6]
Each of these three “causes” has a foundation in the Scriptures. The
first, regarding “the procreation of children,” is derived from the divine
mandate to the first humans, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth”
(Gen. 1.28). The second, regarding marriage as “a remedy against sin, and to
avoid fornication,” takes its cue from Paul’s concession that “it is better to
marry than to be aflame with passion” (1 Cor. 7.9). The third cause, regarding
“the mutual society, help, and comfort” that husband and wife each “ought to
have of the other,” draws its warrant from the creation of Eve to be Adam’s
“helper as his partner” (Gen. 2.18-24). If the scriptural warrant for the
second cause (“for a remedy against sin”) is obvious; the warrants for the
other two are less so. This suggests that the exhortation is drawing on another
source, in which the reasons for matrimony and their scriptural justifications
had already been worked out. As it happens, this source is Augustine of Hippo’s
treatise De bono conjugali (“On the
Goodness of Marriage”). Augustine identified three “goods” which justified
marriage: offspring, mutual faithfulness of husband and wife, and “the
sacrament,” by which he meant the union’s indissolubility.[7] He
also argued that matrimony was for the taming of lust unto continence;[8]
but he associated this point with the larger good of mutual faithfulness. But
Augustine himself was not consistent in the priority of these three reasons. In
his mature commentary on the book of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram
IX.7.12) Augustine refers his readers to De
bono conjugali, but gives the three goods in different order, viz. mutual faithfulness, offspring, and “the
sacrament”. And in fact, that is the very order in which Augustine actually
discusses the reasons in The Goodness of
Marriage itself. For he starts the work by saying that the mutual
friendship of husband and wife is a sufficient reason for marriage. The
procreation of children he considered to be “the one and only worthy fruit of
sexual intercourse, not of the union of man and woman”.[9]
The list of “causes” for matrimony in the 1662 exhortation may have replaced
indissolubility of marriage with “a remedy against sin,” but it is undoubtedly
Augustinian in perspective and in detail. The Marriage Exhortation in our own
Prayer Book of 1962 remains planted in the Augustinian perspective, but dropped
the rather sour second “cause,” that matrimony was meant to be “a remedy against
sin,” and introduced a new cause, which it placed first: “Matrimony was
ordained for the hallowing of the union betwixt man and woman”; then followed
the procreation of children, and finally, still third, “the mutual society,
help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity
and adversity”. By contrast, the Exhortation in the BAS rite places almost all
its emphasis on the third of these three reasons: “The union of man and woman
in heart, body, and mind is intended for their mutual comfort and help, that
they may know each other with delight and tenderness in acts of love”. The
procreation and nurture of children is subjoined in brackets to this note. We
have come full circle to where Augustine started his own treatise on marriage –
the mutual friendship of the partners is the sufficient reason for marriage.
If marriage is a matter of friendship, it almost goes without saying
that it must be a special kind of friendship. For it is more than an
association; it is a union. In the usual course of human relations, friends
remain two distinct, even separate lives; according to the Scriptures and the
teaching of the Church, married partners become “one flesh,” that is, one life.
It is tempting to say that sexual intercourse is what makes the difference
between the friendship of association and the friendship of marriage. But
though the Church certainly blesses the sexual intercourse of the partners, it
does so as only one dimension of the union as a whole – and it is the whole union,
in all its dimensions, that the Church blesses in the name of God. This is
where we may need to return to the image of the mystical union between Christ
and the Church and consider it as a model for marriage, even as marriage served
as the model for the image of the mystical union. We may still sing (if we
must), “O what a friend we have in Jesus” – so long as we realize that Jesus is
not just a pal; he is a partner. His friendship is that of union, not of
association; and though there is no sexuality involved in this union, yet he
and the community of the faith, the Church, “become one flesh” in the mutual
participation of one life together. Augustine spoke of “the fullness of Christ”
being he the Head and we his members, together.[10]
There is now no other Christ; the person of Jesus alone, without his body the
Church, is Jesus impaired – just as the Church alone, without Jesus, is the
Church impaired, even unsaved. So it is with marriage: it is the bonding of two
partners in a single life, with the faithfulness of each to that one life lived
together and in common. Whatever other qualifications we might choose to make –
whatever other qualifications we might choose not to make, – this remains the foundation of the great mystery
that is marriage.
There is, of course, one qualification in particular which gays and
lesbians have challenged the Church to cease making – and that is, the
qualification which insists that marriage can only be the union of a man and a
woman, simply because gay and lesbian couples cannot produce babies. The
challenge has real merit; because the stated reason for excluding gays and
lesbians – that they cannot procreate children – would also mean that the
Church could not marry heterosexuals who, for whatever reason, are incapable of
having children. But in fact the Church has never excluded post-menopausal
women from entering into marriage.
It may well be that the propagation of the human race is a divinely
ordained reason for sexual intercourse; but we need to ask whether it is therefore
the sole justification for marriage. Such an argument flies in the face of the
tradition flowing out of Augustine, and makes nonsense of the mystical union of
Christ with the faithful. It is also an argument which offers aid and comfort
to the modern world’s obsession with sex – with who’s doing what with whom. But
as we have already seen, Augustine taught that “the mutual society, help, and
comfort, that the one [partner] ought to have of the other, both in prosperity
and adversity” is a sufficient, even a definitive, reason for marriage – and
that sexual intercourse and the procreation of children are secondary goods,
the absence of which is not an impediment to the union of partners. Two women,
or two men, may give one another “the mutual society, help, and comfort, that
the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity,” as
surely as a man and a woman may do; and in Augustine’s account of marriage, as
well as in Genesis 2.24, mutuality is what matters, not the gender and sexuality
of the partners.
Finally, there is the issue of Christ’s union with his Church. The image
endures; and it endures precisely so far as Augustine’s argument for
partnership as a sufficient reason for marriage continues to govern the image.
For then Christ is understood to be the faithful lover and partner of his body
the Church – the whole Church, males and females, together, without respect to
any cultural-linguistic stereotypes, whether of gender or of sexual
orientation. The image of “the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his
Church” takes it cue from the story of creation, where the other is not created
in the first place to bear children but to be “a helper and partner”. If that
is the case, the sex of the partners is not the issue; it is their mutuality,
“the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the
other, both in prosperity and adversity”. And where that is possible, is it
impossible that the mystical union betwixt Christ and his Church may serve as
grounds for helping the Church to imagine the possibility of blessing the union
of man and man and woman and woman as well as that of man and woman?
[1] Ephesians 5.28-32.
[2] Cf. Romans 16.25.
[3] 1 Corinthians 10.3-4.
[4] BAS, Eucharistic Prayer 4, p. 201.
[5] 2
[6] The wording differs slightly both in EngBCP 1549 and in EngBCP
1552: “Duly considering the causes
for which Matrimony was ordained. One [1549: cause] was the procreation
of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and praise
of God. Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid
fornication, that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry
and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body [1549: that such
persons as be married might live chastely in matrimony, and keep themselves
undefiled members of Christ’s body]. Thirdly, for the mutual society, help, and
comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and
adversity.”
[7] Augustine, De bono conjugali 32. Augustine never explained why he identified the indissoluble nature of marriage as “the sacrament”. He was perhaps thinking of the Latin version of Ephesians 5.32a: “Sacramentum hoc magnum est.” If this was the passage Augustine had in mind, it is not marriage itself (as the BCP exhortation asserts, in closer conformity with Ephesians) but its indissolubility that signifies the eternal union of Christ and the Church.
[10] Cf. Augustine, Discourses on
the Gospel of John 21.8: “Let us therefore rejoice and give thanks: not
only have we been made Christians, but Christ.
Do you understand, do you grasp the grace of God that is upon us?