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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2010
Legalisation of marriages with a deceased wife's sister (MDWS) was once controversial among Christians. The pattern of Presbyterian pronouncement on MDWS – initial dogmatic assertion (accompanied by debatable claims about their long-standing traditions), strong initial claims about the teaching of scripture, apocalyptic fears about possibly drastic social consequences of liberalisation, and later muted acceptance – is also reflected in the English Reformed Churches' discussions of divorce and remarriage. The author notes both the inexperience and ill-preparedness of church bodies for the debates, accompanied by initial dogmatism disproportionate to their experience of the subject, and the diversity of opinion on divorce and remarriage held by people who shared a common approach to scripture.
The tone of discussion and the manner in which dialogue takes place is in itself part of the church's witness just as much as what is said. Truth and unity must be seen as equally important: faithfulness to God requires both orthodoxy and orthopraxis. Unity is founded on relationships rather than holding the same opinion on all matters. This is based on the relational unity of God the Trinity. In seeking scriptural guidance, the Christian community must read scripture together rather than individualistically.
Acts 11–15 provide guidance when re-evaluating deeply held convictions, but purported analogies between the acceptance of Gentiles in the church without requiring them first to conform to the Jewish requirement of circumcision and the acceptance of other conduct require close examination.
1 Brown, Charles J., The relationships which bar marriage, considered scripturally, socially and historically: being a respectful address to the Non-Conformist Ministers of England by Ministers of the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1871)Google Scholar.
2 ‘Attitudes to Marriage, Divorce and the Remarriage of Divorced Persons in the United Reformed Church and its Predecessors 1830–1992’, University of Birmingham Ph.D. thesis, 1993.
3 The Royal Commission of 1848 (re MDWS): ‘Some persons contend that these marriages are forbidden . . . by scripture. If this opinion be admitted, cadit quaestio’.
4 Banister v. Thompson [1908] p. 62; R v. Dibdin [1910] p. 57; affirmed sub nom. Thompson v. Dibdin [1912] A.C. 533.
5 I use this term to refer to the denominations covered by my Ph.D. research.
6 Apart from a passing reference to the implications of decriminalising homosexual conduct, it had not been debated by the councils of the churches I researched.
7 Thielicke, H, The Ethics of Sex (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co Ltd, 1964), p. 269Google Scholar.
8 Olsen, V. N., The New Testament Logia on Divorce: A Study in their Interpretation from Erasmus to Milton (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Siebeck), 1971)Google Scholar.
9 Goldring, Richard, ‘Divorce and Dissent: Free Church Attitudes to Divorce and Remarriage 1910–1937’, Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society 5/10 (June 1997), pp. 622–32Google Scholar.
10 Winnett, A. R., Divorce and Re-Marriage in Anglicanism (London: Macmillan, 1958)Google Scholar.
11 e.g. Bishop Charles Gore explained to the Gorell Commission that new methods of biblical criticism had caused him to re-evaluate his views. Goldring, ‘Attitudes to Marriage’, p. 254.
12 Cadoux, C. J., Catholicism and Christianity (London: Allen & Unwin 1928)Google Scholar; The Case for Evangelical Modernism (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1938); The Historic Mission of Jesus (London and Redhill: Harper, 1941).
13 Cranfield, C. E. B., The Bible and Christian Life (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1985), pp. 229–35Google Scholar. The quotations come from the working party paper, to which minor revisions were made before it was republished in the 1985 book.
14 Windsor Report, para. 2.
15 Ibid., para. 3.
16 ‘First Person: The Windsor Report – A Failure of Nerve’, Baptist Press (19 Oct. 2004).
17 British Council of Churches, The Forgotten Trinity (1989–91), vol. 1, para. 4.2.3; Zizioulas, John, Being as Communion (New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985)Google Scholar.
18 John Zizioulas argues to similar effect in Being as Communion.
19 Andrew Walker, ‘The Concept of the Person in Social Science: Possibilities for Theological Anthropology’, in British Council of Churches, The Forgotten Trinity, vol. 3, p. 153.
20 British Council of Churches, The Forgotten Trinity, vol. 1, ch. 4; vol. 2, ch. 6.
21 Moltmann, J., The Trinity and the Kingdom of God (London: SCM Press, 1981), p. 199Google Scholar.
22 Kasper, W., The God of Jesus Christ (London: SCM Press, 1984), p. 305Google Scholar.
23 ECUSA, To Set our Hope on Christ, para. 1.5.
24 Bosch, D., Transforming Mission (New York: Orbis Books, 1991), p. 483Google Scholar.
25 World Council of Churches, Ecumenical Considerations for Dialogue and Relations with People of Other Religions (Geneva: WCC, 2003), para. 12Google Scholar.
26 Ibid., paras. 18–19.
27 Ibid., para. 23.
28 Ibid., paras. 20–1.
29 Ibid., para. 22.
30 See pp. 181–2, Context.
31 Bosch, Transforming Mission, p. 487.
32 Ibid., pp. 484–5.
33 Windsor Report, para. 62.
34 Grenz, Stanley J. and Franke, John R., Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), p. 68Google Scholar.
35 Windsor Report, paras. 59, 67.
36 To Set our Hope on Christ, passim.
37 Windsor Report, para. 32.
38 Windsor Report, para. 68.
39 The URC followed a comparable process between 1997 and 2000 (two years of debate, followed by a General Assembly resolution in 1999 setting forth a proposed statement of the Church's position on homosexuality, followed in turn by debate of such statement in the subsidiary councils of the church) but led neither to the result Mohler fears nor indeed to any clear declaration. The ‘formal action’ (Assembly Resolution) did not ‘settle down’ and ‘make itself at home’, in that the subsidiary councils did not accept the proposed policy statement, in my view because, as a single composite resolution it was vulnerable to attack for being either too conservative or too liberal. The result has been that in the URC there has been no formal policy on homosexuality during the period since the 2000 Assembly.
40 Windsor Report, p. 69.
41 Goddard, Andrew, God, Gentiles and Gay Christians: Acts 15 and Change in the Church (Grove Ethics Series, 121; Cambridge: Grove Books, 2001), p. 9Google Scholar.
42 Ibid.
43 ECUSA, To Set our Hope on Christ, paras. 2.0, 2.1, 2.10.
44 Ibid., para.2.10.
45 Ibid., para.2.10.
46 Goddard, God, Gentiles and Gay Christians, p. 5. He was not considering ECUSA's response itself as his work predated that.
47 Ibid., p. 9.
48 Ibid., p. 11.
49 ECUSA, To Set our Hope on Christ, paras. 2.18–2.22.
50 Goddard, God, Gentiles and Gay Christians, pp.19ff.
51 J. Humphreys, ‘The Civil Partnership Act 2004, Same-Sex Marriage and the Church of England’, Ecclesiastical Law Journal (Jan. 2006), pp. 289ff. This can be found online at: www.sarmiento.plus.com/cofe/humphreys.html.
52 ECUSA, paras. 2.10–2.11.
53 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism.