What Is Marriage?
Part of a 7 week course called "Sense and Sensuality" by Rev. Gary Blobaum
The Meaning of “Is” Let’s say your twenty-something son or daughter comes bounding into the kitchen with an eager: “What’s for dinner?” “Well,” you say, rubbing your hands with anticipation, “Trustworthy protein is first on the menu, honey, for the sake of your body tissues, of course. And for your further protection, a second course of fats and carbohydrates. You won’t have to worry another minute about maintaining a constant body temperature. There’s more! To enhance trust in your metabolism, a magnificent spread of vitamins and minerals! Think how your neural pathways will flourish! Oh, I know I’m tantalizing you, dear, but a strong appetite is good for your health and, as a result, builds social institutions where trust can thrive.” “I asked what’s for dinner; not what dinner’s for,” your twenty-something mumbles. Now let’s say you came expectantly to the ELCA Social Statement on Human Sexuality with the question, “What is marriage?” The document answers: Marriage is one of the “social structures that enhance social trust” (p.28). Huh? You need further explanation, so the document goes on: “Central to our vocation, in relation to human sexuality is the building and protection of trust in relationships…We are called therefore to be trustworthy in our human sexuality and to build social institutions and practices where trust and trustworthy relationships can thrive” (lines 36,37and 40-43). |
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You might suffer the same bafflement as your twenty-something. You were wondering what marriage is; instead the document gives you an earful about what it supposedly is for. There is a method here. If the Social Statement told what a marriage is and then told what a same-sex relationship is, we would immediately see the stark difference between them. We would know at a glance: a same-sex relationship cannot be a marriage.
But even qualitatively different relationships can serve similar purposes. Thus by encompassing both marriage and same-sex relationships under a supposedly common purpose, the document prepares us to accept these dissimilar relationships as equal. The document groups marriage and same-sex relationships together as “social structures that enhance social trust.”
The idea that marriage is about “fostering trust in order that individuals and society might flourish” (551,552) is about as scintillating as a menu of vitamins and minerals. We have already noticed that the ELCA, in its study documents, has managed to perfect the language of a textbook in Community Health. If all you had to go on were this Social Statement, you wouldn’t know if you were getting married or signing up for AmeriCorps. “Marriage…is intended to protect the creation and nurturing of mutual trust and love as one foundation of human community” (641-643). Great, I can’t wait to get married so I can help shore up the human community!
And then they perform the sleight-of-hand. Same-sex relationships also “provide the necessary foundation that supports trust and familial and community thriving” (745-747). Ah, so marriage and same-sex relationships accomplish the same purpose; they must equally be God’s way of blessing human life. We have not considered what a marriage is compared with what a same-sex relationship is, but because they appear to have the same function we are led to equate them. But are they the same thing at all? Most importantly for the future of the church: are they both marriage?
Now say your twenty-something bounds into the kitchen asking, “What’s for dinner?”
And you say, “Take a whiff.”
From the deck comes the smell of grilled salmon, from the oven comes the scent of sweet potatoes, and on the dining room table champagne sparkles in candlelight. You have answered the question and still left room for the imagination. That’s what the Bible does when it tells what a marriage is: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” “One flesh:” what an intriguing description of what happens in a marriage! You won’t find the words “one flesh” in the textbook in Community Health. Nor will you find them, outside of a single verse from Genesis quoted without commentary, in the new Social Statement. The ELCA has created a Social Statement on human sexuality which considers the biblical description of marriage (a one-flesh union) irrelevant to the meaning of marriage.
Why does the Social Statement itself not even mention the term “one-flesh,” let alone integrate that biblical description into its understanding of marriage? Why does it ignore the defining characteristic of marriage as the Bible understands it? Why does the Social Statement refuse to explore the meaning of marriage as a one-flesh union? Why? Because a one-flesh union is what a same-sex relationship cannot possibly be.
The Social Statement’s discussion of marriage was framed in such a way as to prepare us to accept same-sex relationships as equal to marriage. Marriage is considered “one foundation of human community” (643). You thought marriage was the foundation of human community? That is what Luther thought as well. Luther tells us that God wishes to honor marriage and “to maintain and govern it as a divine and blessed estate because… he has instituted it above all others” (Large Catechism). But that is the old Lutheran thinking. Now we are told “same-gender couples…also provide the necessary foundation that supports trust and familial and community thriving” (743-747). By avoiding any discussion of what marriage is, by giving attention only to what marriage secondarily does, the Social Statement has fabricated a conceptual umbrella large enough to cover both marriage and same-sex relationships. But let us now ask what the Social Statement refuses to ask: What is marriage?
One Flesh: Mystery of Life, Image of God
Is marriage a “social structure” (p.28)? Only in a derivative sense. Marriage is a social structure only because it is first a divine creation through which God structures human life. Inasmuch as they are responsive to moral guidance, human societies support marriage as the foundational structure of human community. But they do not create that structure. (The 2004 Massachusetts law approving gay marriage asserted that the government creates marriages; the legal tradition, however, has consistently held that the state merely recognizes marriages.) Marriage was created by God, not by society. Marriage is God’s idea; not a human idea. A same-sex relationship, on the other hand, is a “social structure” pure and simple. It is not God’s idea; it is a human idea.
That marriage is God’s idea is clear from the account of the first wedding in the Bible: God fashions the woman in such a way (“taken out of man”) that the woman and the man may unite as one flesh; and it is God who brings the woman to the man (Genesis 2:18-24). God conceives of the first wedding and then officiates it. That Jesus attributes the idea of marriage to God is made clear when he draws out the implications of the Genesis account: “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mark 10:9). Marriage and its structure originate with God, not with human society.
There is an old Yiddish saying: “Marriage is a covered dish.” Indeed, we smell the salmon on the grill, the sweet potatoes in the oven, and the champagne on the table, but these only suggest the feast. Marriage is a lifelong discovery of another human being and a lifelong journey into the deepening wonder of what two human beings become together. A Lutheran theologian (Edith Humphrey) has said: “There are whole worlds in the one we love. Within the heart are unfathomable depths. Each human is a microcosm of reality.” One could almost say we squander our astonishment on the riddle of the universe; any marriage is far more mysterious than the natural world itself. St. Paul put it this way: “’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…” (Ephesians 5:31,32).
That mystery begins in the complete surrendering of one’s body to another, and the complete having of another’s body, through the consummating of marriage as a one-flesh union. The two become one. The promise made at the altar is “spoken” bodily as two human beings hand themselves over to each other.
The mystery deepens through the discovery that this mutual surrendering and mutual having is a reflection of the humble and glorious love within the Holy Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mutually surrender to each other and mutually have each other as three persons who cohere in the one Being of the Trinity. The reason marital love reflects Trinitarian love in its surrendering, having, and oneness is that humans are made in the image of God.
Finally, the mystery embraces us wholly in the discovery that mutual surrendering and mutual having is how Christ loves us. Christ surrendered himself wholly into our hands at the cross and possesses us entirely through our Baptism, having purchased us with his blood (“You are not your own; you were bought with a price.” I Corinthians 6:20). In Holy Communion Christ gives himself to his beloved in his body and blood such that Christ and the beloved become one flesh. That is why Paul exclaims about marriage: “This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32).
In its plodding language about “social support and social trust” (631) and other matters of civic usefulness, the Social Statement analyzes vitamins and minerals but leaves the feast untouched. Nevertheless marriage in the Bible offers a banquet of spiritual meaning. There is a reason we used to call it “holy matrimony.” The marriage relationship is spoken of as “holy” in I Corinthians 7:14 and in I Thessalonians 4:4. But neither the Social Statement nor the study document that preceded it ever describe an intimate relationship as holy. By contrast, the study document twenty-seven times describes intimate relationships as “healthy.” In the new ELCA, the holy is reduced to the healthy, the Biblical to the medical, the spiritual to the sociological, and the mysterious to the useful.
The 2009 Churchwide Assembly itself demonstrated this impoverishment in Lutheran thinking. ELCA pastor Mark Chavez writes: “Bishop Mark Hanson appointed an ad hoc committee at the churchwide assembly to deal with proposed amendments to the social statement. One amendment proposed adding clear and strong language about marriage from the last social statements on marriage by the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America (two of the three churches that merged to form the ELCA in 1988), including:
“’Marriage is a structure of human life built into the creation by the Creator. It builds upon our creation as male and female (Genesis 1:27). Sexual differences are of God’s good design, intended to bring joy and enrichment to human life as well as to provide for procreation. The essence of marriage is that in the act and relationships of marriage two persons become one flesh (Genesis 2:24).’
“The ad hoc committee recommended the amendment not be adopted ‘because the proposed substitution does not incorporate or build upon the foundational premises which are important for the coherence and consistency of the document [the 2009 social statement].’ The assembly agreed with the committee – the ELCA cannot teach about marriage as the predecessor churches did because of its new foundational premises.
“What are the new foundational premises? The committee cited ‘God’s unfailing trustworthiness in our social relationships and in our social institutions’ and that marriage is ‘a social structure…’ Note how the committee focused on the human side, not the Divine… Note also how different its language (and the language of the social statement) is from a sentence in the earlier social statements rejected by the assembly: ‘Marriage is ordained by God as a structure of the created order.’
“The assembly made it clear that it didn’t have ears to hear the witness of the two main churches that formed the ELCA, not to mention Scripture’s clear Word.”
Go to What is Homosexuality?
But even qualitatively different relationships can serve similar purposes. Thus by encompassing both marriage and same-sex relationships under a supposedly common purpose, the document prepares us to accept these dissimilar relationships as equal. The document groups marriage and same-sex relationships together as “social structures that enhance social trust.”
The idea that marriage is about “fostering trust in order that individuals and society might flourish” (551,552) is about as scintillating as a menu of vitamins and minerals. We have already noticed that the ELCA, in its study documents, has managed to perfect the language of a textbook in Community Health. If all you had to go on were this Social Statement, you wouldn’t know if you were getting married or signing up for AmeriCorps. “Marriage…is intended to protect the creation and nurturing of mutual trust and love as one foundation of human community” (641-643). Great, I can’t wait to get married so I can help shore up the human community!
And then they perform the sleight-of-hand. Same-sex relationships also “provide the necessary foundation that supports trust and familial and community thriving” (745-747). Ah, so marriage and same-sex relationships accomplish the same purpose; they must equally be God’s way of blessing human life. We have not considered what a marriage is compared with what a same-sex relationship is, but because they appear to have the same function we are led to equate them. But are they the same thing at all? Most importantly for the future of the church: are they both marriage?
Now say your twenty-something bounds into the kitchen asking, “What’s for dinner?”
And you say, “Take a whiff.”
From the deck comes the smell of grilled salmon, from the oven comes the scent of sweet potatoes, and on the dining room table champagne sparkles in candlelight. You have answered the question and still left room for the imagination. That’s what the Bible does when it tells what a marriage is: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” “One flesh:” what an intriguing description of what happens in a marriage! You won’t find the words “one flesh” in the textbook in Community Health. Nor will you find them, outside of a single verse from Genesis quoted without commentary, in the new Social Statement. The ELCA has created a Social Statement on human sexuality which considers the biblical description of marriage (a one-flesh union) irrelevant to the meaning of marriage.
Why does the Social Statement itself not even mention the term “one-flesh,” let alone integrate that biblical description into its understanding of marriage? Why does it ignore the defining characteristic of marriage as the Bible understands it? Why does the Social Statement refuse to explore the meaning of marriage as a one-flesh union? Why? Because a one-flesh union is what a same-sex relationship cannot possibly be.
The Social Statement’s discussion of marriage was framed in such a way as to prepare us to accept same-sex relationships as equal to marriage. Marriage is considered “one foundation of human community” (643). You thought marriage was the foundation of human community? That is what Luther thought as well. Luther tells us that God wishes to honor marriage and “to maintain and govern it as a divine and blessed estate because… he has instituted it above all others” (Large Catechism). But that is the old Lutheran thinking. Now we are told “same-gender couples…also provide the necessary foundation that supports trust and familial and community thriving” (743-747). By avoiding any discussion of what marriage is, by giving attention only to what marriage secondarily does, the Social Statement has fabricated a conceptual umbrella large enough to cover both marriage and same-sex relationships. But let us now ask what the Social Statement refuses to ask: What is marriage?
One Flesh: Mystery of Life, Image of God
Is marriage a “social structure” (p.28)? Only in a derivative sense. Marriage is a social structure only because it is first a divine creation through which God structures human life. Inasmuch as they are responsive to moral guidance, human societies support marriage as the foundational structure of human community. But they do not create that structure. (The 2004 Massachusetts law approving gay marriage asserted that the government creates marriages; the legal tradition, however, has consistently held that the state merely recognizes marriages.) Marriage was created by God, not by society. Marriage is God’s idea; not a human idea. A same-sex relationship, on the other hand, is a “social structure” pure and simple. It is not God’s idea; it is a human idea.
That marriage is God’s idea is clear from the account of the first wedding in the Bible: God fashions the woman in such a way (“taken out of man”) that the woman and the man may unite as one flesh; and it is God who brings the woman to the man (Genesis 2:18-24). God conceives of the first wedding and then officiates it. That Jesus attributes the idea of marriage to God is made clear when he draws out the implications of the Genesis account: “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mark 10:9). Marriage and its structure originate with God, not with human society.
There is an old Yiddish saying: “Marriage is a covered dish.” Indeed, we smell the salmon on the grill, the sweet potatoes in the oven, and the champagne on the table, but these only suggest the feast. Marriage is a lifelong discovery of another human being and a lifelong journey into the deepening wonder of what two human beings become together. A Lutheran theologian (Edith Humphrey) has said: “There are whole worlds in the one we love. Within the heart are unfathomable depths. Each human is a microcosm of reality.” One could almost say we squander our astonishment on the riddle of the universe; any marriage is far more mysterious than the natural world itself. St. Paul put it this way: “’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…” (Ephesians 5:31,32).
That mystery begins in the complete surrendering of one’s body to another, and the complete having of another’s body, through the consummating of marriage as a one-flesh union. The two become one. The promise made at the altar is “spoken” bodily as two human beings hand themselves over to each other.
The mystery deepens through the discovery that this mutual surrendering and mutual having is a reflection of the humble and glorious love within the Holy Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mutually surrender to each other and mutually have each other as three persons who cohere in the one Being of the Trinity. The reason marital love reflects Trinitarian love in its surrendering, having, and oneness is that humans are made in the image of God.
Finally, the mystery embraces us wholly in the discovery that mutual surrendering and mutual having is how Christ loves us. Christ surrendered himself wholly into our hands at the cross and possesses us entirely through our Baptism, having purchased us with his blood (“You are not your own; you were bought with a price.” I Corinthians 6:20). In Holy Communion Christ gives himself to his beloved in his body and blood such that Christ and the beloved become one flesh. That is why Paul exclaims about marriage: “This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32).
In its plodding language about “social support and social trust” (631) and other matters of civic usefulness, the Social Statement analyzes vitamins and minerals but leaves the feast untouched. Nevertheless marriage in the Bible offers a banquet of spiritual meaning. There is a reason we used to call it “holy matrimony.” The marriage relationship is spoken of as “holy” in I Corinthians 7:14 and in I Thessalonians 4:4. But neither the Social Statement nor the study document that preceded it ever describe an intimate relationship as holy. By contrast, the study document twenty-seven times describes intimate relationships as “healthy.” In the new ELCA, the holy is reduced to the healthy, the Biblical to the medical, the spiritual to the sociological, and the mysterious to the useful.
The 2009 Churchwide Assembly itself demonstrated this impoverishment in Lutheran thinking. ELCA pastor Mark Chavez writes: “Bishop Mark Hanson appointed an ad hoc committee at the churchwide assembly to deal with proposed amendments to the social statement. One amendment proposed adding clear and strong language about marriage from the last social statements on marriage by the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America (two of the three churches that merged to form the ELCA in 1988), including:
“’Marriage is a structure of human life built into the creation by the Creator. It builds upon our creation as male and female (Genesis 1:27). Sexual differences are of God’s good design, intended to bring joy and enrichment to human life as well as to provide for procreation. The essence of marriage is that in the act and relationships of marriage two persons become one flesh (Genesis 2:24).’
“The ad hoc committee recommended the amendment not be adopted ‘because the proposed substitution does not incorporate or build upon the foundational premises which are important for the coherence and consistency of the document [the 2009 social statement].’ The assembly agreed with the committee – the ELCA cannot teach about marriage as the predecessor churches did because of its new foundational premises.
“What are the new foundational premises? The committee cited ‘God’s unfailing trustworthiness in our social relationships and in our social institutions’ and that marriage is ‘a social structure…’ Note how the committee focused on the human side, not the Divine… Note also how different its language (and the language of the social statement) is from a sentence in the earlier social statements rejected by the assembly: ‘Marriage is ordained by God as a structure of the created order.’
“The assembly made it clear that it didn’t have ears to hear the witness of the two main churches that formed the ELCA, not to mention Scripture’s clear Word.”
Go to What is Homosexuality?