The Bride

"The traditional viewpoint makes our families inherently part of the sacred order of things, a consistent part of, and continuous with, what the church says, is and models to the world."


I here revisit the topics of the bride of Christ and human marriage. To the extent that churches do not honor Christian marriage in its historical, first and lasting meaning they mar their witness about Christ and the way he honors his church. The one is our example to understand the other.

If we say that men may marry men, or women women, or that marriage is not that important and Christian men and women can casually cohabit and have affairs or divorce for convenience just like their worldly neighbors, we do not have an example to use in illustration when we talk about Christ and the church. We also have lots of people not as happy as they ought to be, in a matter that should be joyous, even profoundly so, the joining of women and men.

So then, consider this a plea, pleadingly pleaded. If you still hold to the historically orthodox, biblically attested view of matrimony, hold fast to that. If you have left it, return to it. The witness of the church depends on it, in that else, we cannot use the example of the Bride in either way it can be used, either to affirm human marriage using the church for its model, or to explain the church using references to human marriage. If we countenance unmarried couples who by rights ought to be married, or 'married' couples ineligible to marry each other in light of scripture lensed by tradition and experience, then much of what we say, on either score, turns into nonsense.

The problem for unity is that some churches have thrown away Christian marriage while some still understand it: Marriage, rightly so called, is a sacred institution with certain immutable guidelines attached to it, and it may be understood in light of the holy example of Christ living and dying for his church. It is, like Christ and the church, a joining of very different things into something new and glorious. The church that discards that view will of course see itself, and other churches, in a different light from those churches that retain the traditional viewpoint. The traditional viewpoint makes our families inherently part of the sacred order of things, a consistent part of, and continuous with, what the church says, is and models to the world.

I said elsewhere that the dispute over the legitimacy of gay marriage (viewed as a Christian rite) is a difference that cannot be reconciled. There is no ground for discussion left on either side of this doctrinal chasm. I see no reason to reconsider that conclusion, for nothing new has come to light. It is a watershed issue of our time and a thoroughly schismatic development. In terms of essentials and nonessentials of the faith, this can hardly be classed as adiaphora. It touches on who we are and who Christ is.

I hope that the churches that remained true to the traditional view of marriage in regard to homosexuals will take the opportunity to consider what has become of their view of marriage in other areas, such as extramarital conduct and convenient divorces. Our witness to the nature and importance of marriage should be all of a piece. Our witness is strongest when it is fully consistent. The gay marriage question should serve to focus our attention on the entirety of the question of what marriage is and how we conduct ourselves in it.

Of course the world outside the church may do as it likes, and generally does. This is not about secular policies and laws and customs. I have little to say about marriage as it exists after the world twists and distorts it, for it is just another thing seen along the broad easy road this world takes to its destruction.