Luther offers Church a way out of its dilemma concerning same sex marriage.

The debate over same sex marriage has divided not only society but has also deeply divided the church.  The two positions seem to be intractable.  As a result of the votes by the Lutheran Church and congregations, congregations and individual members have left the church in significant numbers.  The Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) is haemorrhaging as members and congregations leave.  The debate within the church has been complicated as one side presents the argument in favour of same sex marriage largely in terms of rights while the other side claims that their position is scriptural and accuses the church of abandoning scripture.  Tragically both sides believe God is on their side, but for very different reasons.  At the moment there seems to be no way of bridging the divide while the leadership of the church has dissolved into silence.  Luther, I believe, may offer the church a way out of this dilemma.

Luther makes it clear that marriage is not a sacrament but a rite.  He also is clear that marriage is a social issue and belongs to the realm of creation and therefore the responsibility of the temporal authorities.  He is emphatic that the Church cannot and should not make rules, or canon laws, concerning marriage.  He believes that the church has no right to impose its laws on society.  His position does not mean that marriage is not created by God.  For him marriage is part of the created order and it like the rest of creation, is to be managed by the temporal authorities and not the church.  God has placed temporal authorities over creation and thus also over marriage.  This position is a radical departure from that of the Roman Catholic Church as well as the Protestant churches.  Even though his position on marriage is about 500 years old, it comes as something refreshingly new for the church.

The debate to define marriage within society is a perfectly legitimate activity according to Luther.  Society is the sphere where rules and laws concerning marriage are to be enacted.  The problem for society that affects its understanding of marriage is that there have been significant changes in the area of sex.  A major change that has not been fully appreciated by the church took place in 1960 when the US government approved the use of the birth control pill.  With the introduction of the Pill the function of sex changed.  Humankind was now in a position to avoid or at least delay one of the basic biological functions of sex, namely to propagate the species.  The Pill and other forms of birth control allowed sex to become a recreational activity.  Anyone who lived through the 1960s and 1970’s is aware of the change of attitude to sex when slogans such as “Free Love” were bandied about.  A significant outcome of the so-called sexual revolution was that love and sex became separated.  TV shows have picked up on this phenomenon, and in some ways legitimatized it, with the so-called “one night stand.”  As these changes became part of the social understanding of relationships the understanding of marriage changed.  This change is reflected in the steep increase in the number of couples who decide not to get “married” but rather live in a common law relationship.  The British Columbia government has noted this change and in March 2013 they brought in a new law that states that after 2 years together the couple are referred to as spouses and that if there is a separation then the usual divorce laws apply to the division of property.  Ironically Mark Shields on the PBS Newshour (March 29, 2013) noted that it is the gay community who are now lobbying most aggressively for marriage. 

Given Luther’s position that marriage is the responsibility of the temporal authorities, what is then left for the Church?  To accept Luther’s perspective on marriage means that the Church is going to have to give up on certain issues and positions and define much more clearly its place in society?  One major issue that the Church needs to acknowledge is that it cannot legislate for society.  The church in the West and particularly in the USA has persisted in holding a belief that its values and beliefs are to be those of the whole society.  It has sought to encourage the temporal authorities to legislate its position for all citizens.  The pursuit of this goal has been to bring together a disparate group of churches.  The “right wing” of the Church who in the past could not accept the Roman Catholic Church as being Christian and the Roman Catholic Church which believed that it was the only Christian Church has now found common ground.  Ironically some conservatives and fundamentalists are putting forward a position on marriage which comes very close to a sacramental understanding. 

The problem facing these two church groups is that there is a deeper issue driving them.  This coalition has a view that was rejected in Europe with the Reformation and the rise of independence movements.  The Roman Catholic Church has obviously not given up on the concept of the Holy Roman Empire in which the church was the pre-eminent power in Europe.  It assumed that the civil authorities would obey their demands and make their beliefs and policies the law of the land.  This is not dissimilar to the position held by some conservatives and fundamentalists.  In the USA Calvinist theology has shaped much of the church.  There seems to be echoes of Calvin’s Geneva in the attempts of some evangelical and fundamentalist to legislate their beliefs and values for society as a whole.  These two groups have now found common ground around a number of issues, marriage being one, in seeking to have their beliefs and values legislated for the whole of society.  They have difficulty in imaging a society in which the church is not the dominant force.  The outcome of this approach has been that the church has become the hand maiden of the state and the clergy its servants.  The tragic outcome has been that the church has had its credibility seriously compromised.  In a recent UK poll only about half of those polled trusted the clergy to speak the truth (http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2013/03/31/uk-poll-points-to-mistrust-of-clergy-lack-of-moral-leadership)

Luther offers a way for the church to deal with the confusion surrounding the debate over marriage and particularly the issue of same sex marriage in the church.  His view is very simple.  For him marriage is the sole responsibility of temporal authorities.  The church he claims has no right to enact any canon laws to regulate marriage, a view that runs counter to the way the church has been addressing the issue.  To accept Luther’s view means that the church needs to take step back from the course it has been blindly following and acknowledge that the best it can do is address issues to its membership and not to society at large.  The church needs to give up its pursuit of imposing its views and beliefs on society and let society make its decisions about marriage and leave responsibility for this issue with the temporal authorities.  By entering the social debate the Church has allowed this social issue to wreak havoc among its members.  The implication of following Luther’s proposal means that the church must step away from the debate concerning same sex marriage.  For Luther this debate belongs in the temporal realm and not in the Church.  But here Luther’s understanding of life as paradox assists the members of the church.  In a paradox two opposites are held in tension and when they are held together there one finds the truth.  However, when one side of the paradox is stressed to the exclusion of the other, then that side of the paradox becomes false.  Paradox has been fundamental to Lutheran theology and is one of its greatest assets.  Paradox, for example, is at the centre of Lutheran theology of the bible, the sacrament of the altar and the Christian life as being fully saint and fully sinner.  Christians live constantly a paradoxical life in the world.  According to Jesus his followers are in the world but not of the world.  Christians are members of both realms.  As important as it is for Christians to be a member of the Church, it is equally important that they participate in the state and engage in societal debates.  They do this as responsible Christians and not as agents of the church who seek to impose the will of the church on society.  By failing to live in the paradoxical tension of being citizens of two realms and trying to merge the two, the church has opened itself up letting the world enter into its realm.  The disagreements of society have now morphed into conflicts in the church, for example the same sex marriage issue.  Issues that are the responsibility of the temporal authorities have been adopted by the church with tragic results for the church and its members.  Ignoring the paradoxical nature of the Christian life and resolving the tension of the paradox in one direction has had serious implications for the church.  If the Lutheran Church had only listened to Luther!

What then is the place of the church in the married life of members?  If the church adopts Luther’s stance, does it leave the church without a credible place in the lives of couples?  Where do same sex couples fit into this new stance of the church?  Note that the questions address the church and its members and not society and its actions.  The church in parts of Europe has already done this work. In some countries couples have a civil marriage ceremony but then those who so desire, return to the church for a blessing.  But what does it mean to bless a couple? 

Blessing, I believe, has to do with covenant.  The bible describes a number of covenants God has with the people of Israel and through those covenants God offers God’s blessing on the people.  Covenant is more than a legal contract binding of two parties: the biblical covenants are at its heart about relationships.  In the covenant God promises to be the people’s God and the people promise to be God’s people.  The people covenant to live lives shaped by God’s promises and promise to serve God by serving the world.  Luther described this latter aspect of the relationship with God in his interpretation of the first commandment that we “fear, love and trust God above everything.”  According to George Forell, Luther’s ethic is best described in terms of “faith active in love (Galatians 5:6).” 

By turning the issue of marriage over to the temporal authority the church is free to invite all couples, which includes same sex couples to come to the altar and enter into a covenantal relationship with God, one another and the community.  The essence of the covenantal relationship is agape love.  It is the love of God for us as expressed in the life, death and resurrection of God’s son, Jesus the Christ.  Entering this covenant with God, the couple is called upon to live that agape love in their relationship with one another.  This covenantal agape love shapes the life of the Christian in all his or her relationships.  As the Christians way of life it honours and respects God and in the marriage relationship, the other.  In Christ there is no distinction in how this love is expressed in relationships by the Christian since according to Paul there is neither “male nor female (Galatians 3:27).” 

To invite couples to the church for a blessing is to invite them into a covenantal relationship.  To be blessed by God is an expression of the covenant which the couple seek by coming to the church.  They, with the help of God, seek to live out in their relationship this agape covenantal love with one another.  This covenantal agape love is expressed in relational terms as trust.  It has always interested me that the Lutheran vows do not emphasize love, but trust.  Not only does the couple promise to trust one another, but they promise to trust till death parts them.  Trust is the essence of a covenantal marriage relationship whether of heterosexual or homosexual relationships.  For the Christian it is not the legal documents required by the state that constitutes marriage based all too often on a rather shallow romantic love but covenantal trust.  The promise, with God’s help, to trust to death is important is essential since trust can never be subject to conditions.  To set a limit on trust is to undermine it from the moment of promise.  To promise to trust the other for 5 years will cast doubt upon the relationship since one will never be sure that one can trust the other the next day.  When relationships are built upon trust rather than a romantic sense of love then there is a freedom in the relationship that allows a person to be angry and upset with the other and probably not feel very loving toward the other, but a person can still, in spite of those feelings, trust the other.  Couples coming for counselling when there has been an affair the one who has not had the affair would nearly always state that, not love, but trust has been broken.  At its deepest and most profound meaning, covenantal agape love is expressed as trust. 

A covenantal relationship with God and with one another is a dynamic relational process which at times can be very messy.  The problem for the Christian is that the old Adam must die.  Luther commented that in baptism the old Adam is drowned only to find that he can swim.  Whether in Israel’s covenantal relationship with God or a married couples relationship with one another there are times in which the old Adam and Eve swim to the surface creating problems.  In the life and death of Christ we see the depth to which God goes to deal with our old Adam and Eve by offering forgiveness and acceptance and the restoration of trust.  In Christ we identify the very essence of healthy relationship processes in which trust can be restored through confession and forgiveness.  Forgiveness is a process at the heart of a covenantal relationship of love.

By freeing the church from the societal process concerning laws about marriage, the church has the option of inviting all who desire to enter into that covenant to come to the altar.  Since the church no longer has anything to do with marriage and the laws concerning marriage, it is open to invite all couples, both heterosexual and homosexual to enter into a covenantal relationship with God and one another.  Such an invitation is an expression of the church’s hospitality rooted in God’s hospitality to all.  By leaving the questions concerning marriage to the temporal authorities as Luther suggests, the church would no longer be distracted and would be free to focus on its mission and ministry in and to the world. 

It would appear that Luther offers the church a way of thinking about its response to all married couples without having to enter into the debate.  His position expressed about 500 years ago is both profound sublime.  Unencumbered by the divisive and conflicted debate surrounding marriage the church is free to be again the heart, arms and feet of Jesus in and to the world.  What Luther suggested was similar to a proposal put to the churches by the Province of Alberta in the early 1980s.  At that time when I served on the National Council of the former ELCC we received a letter from the Government of the province of Alberta requesting input from churches.  The Province was trying to deal with problem of licensing clergy to officiate at marriages.  There was a growing demand for marriage licences from an increasing segment of the population belonging to other than Christian world religions.  But the Province was also dealing with a proliferation of smaller Christian’s communities who were also demanding marriage licences for their religious leaders.  The Province was not sure how to proceed with these demands.  They presented the churches with two options.  The first was that everyone have a civil marriage and then could go to a church if they so desired, and the second option was to continue with the present system.  The national council of the ELCC voted to support the first option but the reactivity from churches in Alberta made the government maintain the existing licensing system.  This, I believe, was most unfortunate not only for the government but also for the church.  The first option which would have been consistent with Luther’s understanding that marriage is a matter for the state.  If this proposal was accepted it would have made a clear distinction between the role for the state and that of the church in marriage.  By rejecting this option the Church and state continue to be tied together in an unhealthy and unholy alliance.  Furthermore, the Church has become embroiled in the controversy of same sex marriage and its mission and ministry seriously compromised.