Marriage as God-joined Covenant
To begin let us look at the distinctive character of the sacrament of marriage, using the Book of Common Prayer marriage rite as a source for theological reflection (as the ancients said, lex orandi est lex credendi; the rule of prayer is the rule of belief; liturgy embodies theology).[i] The current definition reads: “Christian marriage is a solemn and public covenant between a man and a woman in the presence of God” (BCP 422). [ii]
Christian marriage is related to but distinct from civil marriage (or civil unions), as covenant is related to but distinct from contract. As Rabbi Sacks put it in his keynote address to the Lambeth Conference 2008: “In a contract, two or more individuals, each pursuing their own interest, come together to make an exchange for mutual benefit. So there is the commercial contract that creates the market, and the social contract that creates the state. A covenant is something different. In a covenant, two or more individuals, each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, come together in a bond of love and trust, to share their interests, sometimes even to share their lives, by pledging their faithfulness to one another, to do together what neither can achieve alone. A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship. Or to put it slightly differently: a contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to form an 'us'. That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.” [iii]
What kind of covenant is marriage? Marriage is a God-joined covenant of two persons vowing exclusive fidelity and self-giving love for life, as language in the marriage rite makes clear: it is a “joining together in Holy Matrimony,” it is “bond and covenant,” a “holy union” (424) of the spouses “in heart, body, and mind.” (423) It involves “promises and vows” (425) which are “witnessed and blessed” (423) by God and present human witnesses (it is a public covenant). The vows include a declaration of free consent “to live together in the covenant of marriage.” Marital living together means much more than mere cohabitation, for to “have” and to “hold” this person as spouse means to promise and vow “to love, comfort, honor and keep him or her, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others be faithful as long as you both shall live” (424); this consent is subsequently solemnly ratified in the actual marriage vow, which involves a public declaration—a performative utterance which accomplishes in the saying the act it describes—that the speaker “takes” (both understands and claims) the one whom he or she faces and whose right hand is being held “to be my [husband or wife], to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.” The exchange of rings is a further sign of the vows by which the persons “have bound themselves to each other, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (427) The ring is a “symbol of my vow” to “honor you” with “all that I am, and all that I have” in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (427)
The invocation of the name of God indicates that it is not only the promises the spouses make to each other that seal the union—much less the official pronouncement made by the Celebrant (428)--but God, in whose name the celebrant pronounces. Thus at the climactic moment following the exchange of vows and the pronouncement of marriage the Celebrant (echoing Jesus) warns: “Those whom God has joined let no one put asunder” (428).” Thereupon the Peace is exchanged and prayers are said, the first of which has this telling phrase: “Look with favor …upon this man and woman [these persons] whom you make one flesh in Holy Matrimony” (429, my italics).
If then “Marriage is a God-joined covenant of two persons vowing exclusive fidelity and self-giving love for life”—must it be that the two persons are necessarily male and female, or necessarily two?
[i] This is a common Anglican practice and is used by both opponents and advocates of the blessing of same sex marriages. See, for instance, the Bishop’s Task Force on Marriage of the Diocese of Los Angeles, “Some Questions and Answers: Same Sex Marriage and Holy Matrimony” (October 2008): “Like all our prayer book liturgies, ‘what we pray is what we believe’. Our liturgy is the proclamation of our doctrine. When we use the prayer book and celebrate marriage as Episcopal/Anglican Christians, we say something about how we understand marriage and make a profession of faith.” See also Bishop’s Bruno’s letter referencing the study. Essays on liturgical resources in Catholic, Orthodox and Reformation traditions may be found in Eugene Rodgers, ibid., 45-70; see also Rodgers’ essay in the same volume, “Sanctification, Homosexuality, and God’s Triune Life,” especially the section entitled “Sexuality as Narrated Providence in Eastern Orthodoxy,” 238-242. Rodgers comments, “Gay and lesbian relationships must wait upon a churchly form--call it sacramental if you think of marriage as a sacrament—to give their holiness ecclesial shape, just as heterosexual relationships had to wait centuries for the church to integrate them fully into its life with heterosexual marriage forms. Conservatives are right to complain about what you might call unformed love: we must mine Scripture and tradition under the Spirit, who will enact new rules for us.” Rodgers continues, “If we want to see the Rule enacted who is the Spirit, we need to look to the liturgy—especially liturgies that tell stories of lives ruled by the Spirit, or inspired by the Rule.” He particularly cites the Orthodox Order of Crowning, in which “the appeal to God’s providence emerges from a catena of biblical and saintly examples, so that the economy of salvation of the couple before the congregation is incorporated into the economy of biblical history.” For more on the Orthodox ceremony see Paul Evdokimov, from “The Sacrament of Love: The Nuptial Mystery in the Light of the Orthodox Tradition” in ibid. 179-193.
[iii] Sacks, ibid., 3.
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