Category: ecclesiology

Within Western culture, marriage has become a social institution in which civil government, the state, has an interest and plays a role. This has not always been the case. In its origins marriage was religious, and only in the past few centuries—as modern nation-states have developed—has the state become involved in issuing marriage licenses and recording marriages for the good ordering of society….

…  there has emerged a level of disconnect between civil and religious marriage. They are no longer, nor have they been for some time, of one piece. The question is how significant the disconnect is, and whether the state has both the authority and the latitude to redefine civil marriage to include same-sex relationships.

2016 CRC Committee to Provide Pastoral Guidance re Same-sex Marriage (majority report)

This committee returns repeatedly to the distinction between “religious marriage” and “civil marriage.” This is an unfortunate distinction and serves to cloud the issues before us. The distinction has been drawn in the wrong place by the committee. The distinction is not between religious marriage and civil marriage but between two different kinds of religious marriages, one that occurs in a context informed by the Christian faith and one that occurs in a context that is informed by a non Christian faith. The fact that some of these marriages happen in the civil realm doesn’t negate that a religious marriage is occurring. It only means that the civil realm is now the container for a marriage that is consistent with a differing religion.

When marriages occur in the Christian context there is one parameters of law that is informing what constitutes a marriage. In the Christian religion the law informs us that in order for a marriage to occur you need one of each sex. In the pagan religion of the civil realm there is a different parameter of law that is informing what constitutes a marriage. In the pagan religion of modernity the law allows for a “marriage” to occur between matched sets (but stay tuned because yet more differing combinations are sure to be legalized in the near future.) Now, what is important to keep in mind here is that the law that legislates the allowed parameters in each context is inescapably religious and therefore each context likewise is inescapably religious — the so called “civil” as much as what is admitted as “religious.” In this case laws defining who and who cannot be eligible partner combinations for marriage.  We have to keep before us in this conversation that the source of any law,  regardless of what realm we are speaking of, when invoked as an authority to define parameters, at that very point takes on the color of religion.  The Civil realm and civil marriages are religiously saturated. We have to keep before us that

1.) Governments make law — In this case the law that says two people of the same sex can get “married.”

2.) Law always has its source in some god or God concept —  Government’s that make law are inescapably religious.

3.)  Law is inescapably religious — A people’s or realm’s (civil) source of authority is it’s God and so it’s religion.

So, we say again, that the distinction we need to be discussing is not the distinction between civil realm marriages and religious marriages as if the civil realm marriages are not inherently religious. The distinction that needs to be made is between marriages shaped and informed by the Christian religion and marriages shaped and formed by some other religion.

Finally, we, as Christians, would say that as the State is God’s minister to do us good (Romans 13) that we answer the question of whether the state has both the authority and the latitude to redefine civil marriage to include same-sex relationships, with a decided negative. The State has no authority or latitude to rebel against God. The State has no authority or latitude to throw off the Christian religion in the family realm. The State has no authority or latitude to seek to arise to the most high to fulfill its aspiration of being god walking on the earth. As God’s spokesman the Church would do well to remind the State of Nebuchadnezzar’s folly and penalty when it seeks to legislate reality by its own fiat word.  The State has no authority or latitude to deem itself anti-Christ.

And neither does the Church.

“This is not all, however, that needs to be noted. Especially in this era of hypercharged rhetoric surrounding marriage, it is good to be reminded that, revered as marriage is from a Christian standpoint, it is not the be-all and end-all of human relations or society. Jesus certainly “honored marriage by his blessed presence at the wedding in Cana,”9 but Jesus also noted that “those who are considered worthy of a place in that age [to come] and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”10 Similarly, the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 contextualizes marriage as a penultimate good—that is, good as it meets the needs of those being married, but a good which may detract from single-minded devotion to “the affairs of the Lord.”11 Marriage, from a Reformed perspective, is creational; it is not eschatological.

2016 CRC Committee to Provide Pastoral Guidance re Same-sex Marriage (majority report)

1.) One wonders what examples the Committee would adduce for ‘hypercharged rhetoric surrounding marriage’?

2.) We must keep in mind that it is God Himself that instituted Marriage. It was God Himself who said, “It is not good that man should be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him.” It was God Himself who then created and presented the Woman for his marriage companion. This Genesis account gives us God’s hyper-charged rhetoric surrounding marriage and we would do well to consider God’s rhetoric.

3.) The fact that marriage is transcended in the eschaton proves exactly what when it comes to Marriage in this epoch?

4.) In the same I Corinthians 7 passage that is cited here as proof that marriage is not the “be all end all of human relations” we also read,

“…let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. ³ Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.”

But the Apostle was probably engaged here in hyper-charged rhetoric, I’m sure.

Also consider that in this I Corinthians 7 passage the Holy Spirit inspired St. Paul communicates that singleness is a gift. This would communicate that God is pleased to grant this gift to some people but the norm remains marriage.

5.) Somehow it is concluded then that marriage is creational and not eschatological as if those two are sealed tight compartments that don’t have anything to do with one another. We must keep in mind that as God had the eschatological end in mind in His creation all creation is imbued with the eschatological. The creational realm reaches towards the eschatological precisely because the creation came from the hand of God, who, in His creation fashioned it for its eschatological end. One simply cannot conclude that somehow marriage is less important because it was only made for creation.

Second, Marriage was most certainly not made only for creation unless we misunderstand that Marriage does enter the eschaton via the Marriage of Christ and His bride, the Church. This wedding feast of the Lamb reminds us that Marriage here cannot be overestimated in terms of importance. God deigned to picture the relationship between the Son and the Church in the eschaton by giving us Marriage in creation.

Certainly, Marriage is not the be all end all of human relations but it is a model that God uses to communicate essential and indisputable truths such as marriage is defined as one woman for one man.

“The word homosexuality is still in wide use as a general term to describe same-sex sexuality; however, the word homosexual as a noun applied to persons is no longer considered respectful by the majority of those it once aimed to describe.  For that reason we do not use homosexual as a noun in this report.”

CRC Committee to Provide Pastoral Guidance re Same-sex Marriage (majority report) 

Yes, and Pedophiles resent being called “Pedophiles.” Necrophiliacs resent being called “Necrophiliacs.”

The unwillingness to use a perfectly legitimate word to speak of sodomites and lesbians is indication that the battle was lost before it was even started. Are we now going to allow the perverse to instruct how nomenclature will be used for everyone else? If it is not even allowed to use a perfectly legitimate word how can it ever be the case that the Church will stop the politically correct agenda in the Church?

Part of the problem here is the fact that Christians who remain chaste but are same sex oriented are still self identifying themselves in the same category as people who do not remain chaste and are also same sex oriented. Christians who are chaste but still struggle with a same sex orientation should just refer to themselves as “Christians.”

It is interesting to know that the word “homosexual” was invented by the early homosexual movement in 1860s Germany to accomplish the impossible goal of sanitizing the movement that was naturally associated with the word “sodomite.”  In order to escape the negative branding, a new word, “homosexual,” was invented to replace the term “Sodomite.”  “Homosexual” was intended to sanitize the lifestyle defined by the practice of sodomy, but instead the word “Homosexual” became so corrupted in the public mind that the movement eventually felt compelled to abandon it in favor of “gay.”

Keep in mind that whoever controls the language controls the conversation. This committee, with its instructions informing us that we must separate same sex marriage from homosexuality, and now informing us that they will not use the word “homosexual” (and so signalling that we should not either) because it is insensitive looks to be an attempt to control the language and so control thought.

“Consistent with our mandate and synod’s understanding of pastoral advice, we are asking that this discussion of same-sex marriage be separated as much as possible from church conversations about the broader question of homosexuality.”

CRC — Committee to Provide Pastoral Guidance re Same-sex Marriage
(majority report)

This is like requesting that the discussion of water be separated from conversations about its wetness or that discussing playing Chess be separated from conversations regarding the differing Chess pieces or that discussing funerals be separated from conversations regarding dead people. This is Bill Clinton testifying before the Grand Jury saying,  “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is,’ is.” It is to ask people to participate in Wittgenstein language games. It puts the Zen in Zen Buddhism.

One suspects that the reason that this request is being made is that the Committee knows that their work can only be advanced as long as the reality of what is being discussed is shielded from our thinking, or, alternatively, there was no possibility for them to make progress in their work if they had to deal with homosexuality head on.

Certainly same sex marriage can happen apart from homosexual behavior but study Committees are not formed and large sums of money are not spent in order to give advice on statistically insignificant occurrences.

Face it … where there is same sex marriage there you find the broader question of homosexuality. To ask that people separate these out from one another is to ask them to hear the sound of one hand clapping.