‘FORSAKING ALL OTHERS’? Love and Commitment in the Christian Way

Introduction

I take it that there are several purposes to this day. We hope to grow in our faith in Christ. We want to assist the church to assist us in integrating our sexual lives with our spiritual lives. We want to explore and own the tension between ecclesial expectations with regard to sex, and our own experiences and desires. We pray that in all our dialogues we will make the gospel more credible, and the church more like the inclusive ‘body of Christ’ it already potentially is.

Central to the Christian understanding of sex is, of course, the institution of marriage, and this has become for many, a great ‘stumbling block’. In this first session I shall be commending marriage, but commending it in a way that makes it ‘good news’ for Christians whether they are married, no longer married, not yet married, straight, gay or bisexual. In the 2^nd session (and following closely the Sexuality Working Group’s brief) I look at ‘intimate relations’ that are not marriages and assess these as contributions to Christian holiness.

1. Forsaking Marriage?

‘Forsaking all others’ expresses the requirement that married men and women remain exclusively, sexually faithful to one another, forever. Yet there is a growing feeling (found also in the churches) that it is marriage itself, rather than possible extra-marital partners, which should be forsaken. Why is this?

People are marrying later than ever before, 30 for men, 29 for women. I haven’t noticed a revised theology of chastity that takes the lived experience of today’s pre-marrieds with the seriousness that attentive neighbour-love requires. All that testosterone! All that progesterone! Marriage doesn’t appear to suit them. In 2000 only 51% of women in Britain between 18 and 49 were married.[1] The married will soon be a minority. About 80% of people who marry live together first. Couples choosing to marry clearly don’t think it wrong to anticipate the benefits of their chosen ‘estate’. The high level of divorce, about 40% of marriages, is evidence of marital dissatisfaction, of increasing intolerance of perceived marital unhappiness, and is certain to undermine further the lingering expectation of a new generation that marital commitments really are lifelong. Christian commentators and broadsheet journalists tend to overlook the gains discernible among the great shifts surrounding marriage in the last 50 years. While there is just criticism of easy divorce and the consequences for children of marital breakdown, do any of the critics really want to go back to rigid gender roles and separate spheres, to women’s dependence on men and restricted employment, to the paterfamilias exercising his patriarchal power? A few Christians do, of course, want this, and it is up to the rest of us to ensure their’s is not the only Christian voice to be heard ‘supporting’ marriage. A more honest way is to acknowledge the ambiguous legacy of the distant, and the immediate, past. Gains in women’s equality and employment, in the slow overcoming of patriarchy, in the rise of something called ‘companionate’ marriage, have to be offset against the losses that include too many avoidable marital break-ups and the heavy price likely to be paid by children in non-intact families.

While it has long been understood that marriage has functioned to control sexual expression, and especially the sexuality of women, the work of Foucault on surveillance shows how effective internalised social control can be. The idea of ‘disciplinary power’[2] is an important key to his thought. He believes that the social arrangements for the expression of sexuality, such as marriage and indeed the institution of heterosexuality itself, are arrangements of disciplinary power whereby sexual expression is directed into approved forms and activities. The challenge of Foucault and the people known as ‘constructionists’ to Christians is to re-examine where the line is drawn between divine institution and social coercion. If it is found that present social expectation is little more than bourgeois practice uncritically mediated and deeply assimilated by the churches, the gospel of liberation cannot sit comfortably with it.

So far we have touched on present day social practices, and one particular social theory in the answer to the question why people may be forsaking marriage. But there are also theological reasons. Christians have to admit that there are major elements of biblical and traditional teaching which have contributed to the growing rejection of marriage and which are frankly unserviceable in any attempt to proclaim the Good News. An obvious example: the New Testament repeatedly requires wives to submit to their husbands in everything. This expectation has been responsible for incalculable harm done to women and children in the home, and has perpetuated male, patriarchal power. The author of Ephesians three times enjoins husbands to love their wives but does not consider wives capable of loving their husbands, thereby diminishing the very personhood of women.

2. Who are the Marriage Avoiders?

There are many ‘marriage avoiders’ around today. For some their experience of marriage has been terrible. They don’t want to repeat it. For some their experience of their parents’ marriage makes them wary; for others the gap between the experience and the rhetoric of undying love is an ugly invitation to hypocrisy that should be resisted. There is undiminished male reluctance to assist with domestic responsibilities, leading to the phrase that invites instant recognition by married working women, ‘the second shift’.[3] Some see romantic love as literally the stuff of fiction, a marketed delusion.[4] There are some who see marriage as a constraining ‘cosey coupledom’ which inhibits love of neighbour and love of friendship because of its narrow focus. And there are people who find that marriage is used against them. There are lesbian and gay couples, some of whom would marry, only to be told that marriage isn’t for them because you have to be straight to be committed to one another for life.

The first thing to say to marriage avoiders is that they are in good company. Far from feeling excluded from a church because of its obsession with marriage, they should feel a sense of solidarity with almost all the saints! St. Paul, as everyone knows, regarded marriage as a concession to the randy, believing that it was a ‘worldly affair’, and that partners would be ‘pulled in two directions’, (1 Cor.7:34) finding it impossible to please each other and please the Lord. How often is the warning of Jesus (in Lk.20:34-6) heeded that ‘The men and women of this world marry; but those who have been judged worthy of a place in the other world, and of the resurrection from the dead do not marry, for they are no longer subject to death’? Marriage, for the Jesus of Luke’s gospel, is ‘worldly’, just as it is for Paul. There is a strange convergence[5] here between ancient male saints and contemporary radical feminists here. They all think marriage is a bad thing. It causes nothing but trouble and tension, and it may even rob you of your eternal destiny!

I suggest it is very necessary to hear the pessimism of the Bible about marriage. There is a realism here about its limitations that strikes a postmodern chord. There is a difference surely. Suspicion of the institution of marriage was quickly turned into suspicion of the carnal body that engages in so-called marital acts. But it is possible to extricate suspicion of the institution from suspicion of the body as compromising the soul. Many modern marriage avoiders are not at all suspicious of their bodies or their sexuality. The way is open to devise a marriage-avoiding lifestyle which need not lack erotic expression.

3. The Big Shift: Marriage as a Rule, or Marriage as a Norm?

For all that I have commended marriage avoidance, and I think that today’s marriage-avoiders choose an honourable path, I think there are theological possibilities for marriage that have barely been discovered or articulated. These possibilities depend on the distinction between marriage as a norm, and marriage as a rule. For this distinction, and an awareness of its possibilities for what I have called 'an inclusive theology of intimacy'[6], I am influenced by Joseph Monti's excellent work Arguing About Sex[7]. The confusion between norms and rules, he claims, is an ‘analytic mistake’ that is constantly being made. A major flaw in the denominational conversations about sexuality over the last 30 years is said to be the ‘collapse’ of ‘the distinction and distance between norms and rules’. So, what is the distinction, and why is it so important? Norms are distanced from the moral life; rules operate closer to home. Norms, he says, become operational for the Christian community in metaphor, symbol and sacrament. Norms disclose and generate ‘values for orienting the moral life’: rules are ‘proximate’, providing guidance ‘in particular situations and circumstances’. When the two are confused ‘critical moral reflection becomes confused and dysfunctional’.

Some further explanation of these abstract ideas is doubtless necessary. There are levels of moral discourse. Norms are foundational, and are embedded in the deep history of religious traditions. Norms are general; rules operate in particular circumstances. These are two distinct levels. Mediating between them is another level, the level of principles. An example of a norm is ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ Any conduct inconsistent with this norm could not (or rather, should not) be countenanced in Christian ethics. But the principle needs application in real circumstances. When the lawyer asks Jesus ‘But who is my neighbour?’ (Lk.10:29), prompting the telling of the parable of the good Samaritan, we could say he wanted Jesus to translate the norm into a rule. Jesus didn’t do this, but instead told a parable that illustrates the norm. This is what Monti means by norms becoming operational in metaphor, but here a parable. The lawyer’s reply to Jesus’ question, ‘The one who showed him kindness’, might be said to generate the principle, ‘It is always right to act kindly’. Even so a rule does not materialise. The lawyer is told to ‘Go and do as he did’, leaving the circumstances and application of the norm to the lawyer to work out for himself.

An example of the possible confusion between norm and rule is the norm ‘Always tell the truth’. This is a norm so deep that it helps to form character and promote moral goodness. However if the norm is appropriated ‘as an absolute rule of literal speech - a regulation of literal behaviour in any and all circumstances, the norm becomes dysfunctional. Since preference for a literal understanding of moral norms has become ‘a modern idolatry’, the dysfunctional collapse of the difference between norms and rules is difficult to prevent. Marriage is a norm, but not a rule - ‘In upholding the norm of heterosexual marriage as a rule of behaviour in any and all situations and circumstances, many denominations are making the same analytic mistake of confusing ethical norms and moral rules.’[8]

The relation between norms and rules allows flexibility in the way obedience to the rule through moral decisions gives expression to the regulating power of the norm. While marriage remains the ‘official’ norm of sexual behaviour for Christians, the embodiment of the values of the norm may, it turns out, reside in relationships other than marriage. This is a further important feature of Monti’s argument. The ‘orbit of the norm is flexible enough to sometimes change what has traditionally been included and excluded’. Using marriage as an example of a norm, he claims

It is possible to argue that in principle, and on the basis of abiding and effective values of love and commitment revealed by the norm of marriage, that sexual intimacy may be morally responsible in certain material conditions and situations other than marriage and heterosexuality because the same values are being effected as goods. In these cases, the sacramental effectiveness of the Church’s norm has been extended functionally to these states of affairs.[9]

There is a high level of abstractness to Monti’s lengthy formulations, so I want to shape these ideas in my own way. There is in Christianity a norm that full sexual relations take place in marriage. This norm is expressed in the sacrament of marriage, just as the norm of neighbour-love is expressed in the sacrament of holy communion. Should Christianity abandon this norm, so the argument runs, it would become something else. The norm communicates values, ‘marital values’. Two of these are that intimacy is best experienced as an expression of love, that love-making is, among other things, an act of commitment, and mutual self-giving. In conveying these values, the norm generates principles.

Something else needs to be said about rules. In some cases rules are obvious, in others less so. ‘Never rape another person’ seems to me a good rule, whether or not it is derived from the principle ‘Honour vulnerability’ or directly from the norm of neighbour love. Rules have to be applicable to situations, or they won’t be applied: they won’t be recognised as relevant. What Christian sexual ethics generally refuses to face is that the explosion of novel personal ‘situations’ out of the closet and in the public domain which, prima facie, are simply not covered by rules which were formulated for different situations and different times. Adults remaining unmarried until their 30s, postmarried (and very uncelibate) people, cohabiting couples before, after and without reference to marriage, lesbian and gay people forsaking the closet, bisexual people talking about their preferences, women and men trying sado-masochistic practices consensually, and, if Gareth Moore is right, in an understandable and prophetic revolt against the revolting façade of romantic love that the churches should take seriously.[10] The claim is not that such practices are particularly recent, but open discussion and expression of them, and their exploration in various media, is a recent and welcome phenomenon. All such people are likely to be alienated by being told that if they are not married the church cannot condone their sexualities or themselves. If however, the values generated by the norm of marriage are allowed to permeate to them through principles, to rules that do make sense in these situations, then the marital norm is upheld, and contact between Christian teaching and those who are marginalized by it, is rebuilt.

4. ‘Norm-ative’ Models of Marriage?

Let us construct a definition of the marital norm and inquire whether it may be able to ‘normalise’ deviant expressions of sexuality (i.e., most of them, according to the marital rule). It will incorporate the best elements of the marital tradition, and it will eliminate the worst. We will then apply it to different people with a variety of sexual needs, preferences and expectations. The marital norm, let us say, is first and foremost, a covenant between two people, witnessed and blessed by God. The love of the partners for one another will be a symbol of the love of Christ for the church. The sacraments of the church provide pre-linguistic enactments of divine love. Norms derive, among other sources, from the experience of the sacramental celebration and reception of divine grace. For the majority of Christians marriage is just such a sacrament. However the norm of marriage is not dependent on its identification as a sacrament, for the meaning of marriage in the Christian faith is identified with the sacrifice of Christ’s very life, and so with the doctrine of atonement and the celebration of the eucharist. ‘Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for it’. (Eph.5:25) However, a covenant between God and ourselves cannot be one between equal partners, whereas a covenant between two people must be. The norm must be firmly egalitarian, and therefore anti-hierarchical and anti-patriarchal.[11]  Shared love is not the same thing as cosey coupledom. The love each partner has for the other can enable both of them to extent their love outwards in family, church and society. Marriage does not require us to lose our identity but to give it and receive it back enriched, in loving relationship.

I think it is helpful to speak of the marital norm as a sacrament of love.[12] Let us say a sacrament is a special way by which God enables us to receive divine grace. At its best the marital norm enables the partners to give themselves sacramentally to each other within a framework of mutual acceptance, commitment and non-possessive devotion. Of all the seven sacraments in the Western Catholic tradition, marriage is the only one that is not administered by a priest. The grace of the sacrament continually requires the mutual co-operation of the spouses. The marital norm is a communal partnership. Christian faith is faith in the triune God: that is, God's life is a loving communion of distinct Persons who keep their separate identities as Father, Son and Spirit. God offers us a reality where we keep our differences as separate persons while still accepting each other in love. Heterosexual sexual intercourse, where conception is a possibility, requires the marital norm for the good of children. Aquinas condemned fornication as a sin, not because it was a sexual misdemeanour, but because it was likely to disadvantage any child that might result from it. The marital norm, like faith, is an open-ended and voluntary commitment. Like faith it has to be continually renewed. If then, one partner should by their behaviour renounce their vows toward the other, then that deep personal bond between them is broken, and no amount of metaphysical hot air about marriage being indissoluble will mitigate the existential pain of break-up. The churches should simply recognize, both out of common-sense and compassion that some marriages will end. The Christian practice of forgiveness and reconciliation has undoubtedly saved many marriages. But entrapment in loveless or violent relationships on the spurious grounds of indissolubility or metaphysical permanence is theologically intolerable and pastorally disastrous.

5. Marital Values and Sexual Practices?

These elements of the marital norm belong to a mainstream understanding of marriage, even if they (obviously) have not been, and may not yet be, elements of real marriages. How might this norm illuminate the sexual behaviour of, say, the following groups of people: i) adolescents; ii) people living together before. or instead of marriage; iii) postmarried people; iv) lesbian partnerships, and v) gay partnerships?

i) Adolescents. The distinction between a norm and a rule illuminates adolescent sexual behaviour by treating marriage as a norm to aspire to, rather than a licensed framework for sex that excludes all others. Even for devout Christians some of the elements of the marital norm just described are lofty. The theological learning that might be required here (to understand marriage as a sacrament, say) is matched by the experiential learning required to prepare for it. Since all practical learning these days proceeds experientially, some early sexual experience may need to be regarded as the acquisition of self-knowledge, involving the cherishing of one's partner(s). To regard adolescent sexual experience in this way is not to condone early penetrative intercourse, but to recognise that a theology of chastity has to have sensible grounds and to recognise that most people today, if they  marry, do not do so until they are nearly 30. In this regard, the Anglican bishops' commendation of 'the principle of proportion' (‘the level of sexual expression should be commensurate with the level of commitment in the relationship’[13]) is wise. Sex is for marriage, but marriage requires a great deal of preparation and prior experience. In this respect, it is like preparing for a professional career. The marital norm is sufficiently broad to justify sexual experience among those preparing for it.

ii) People living together before marriage. I make an important distinction between two types of cohabitation. Nonnuptial cohabitation avoids marriage, and may be a conscious alternative to it. Prenuptial cohabitation intends and anticipates marriage.[14] The distinction between a norm and a rule illuminates the growing phenomenon of cohabitation. The rule identifies prenuptial cohabitors as fornicators. It fossilizes the moment of the beginning of marriage by identifying it with the wedding. The norm calls prenuptial cohabitors to solemnize the state of affairs into which they have already entered, with a ceremony. Indeed, since betrothal is historically a beginning of marriage, and no church currently offers cohabiting couples a betrothal ceremony, I think that such couples should be regarded as already married. In this case the norm is capable of simple extension to a whole class of (mainly) young people who would otherwise be excluded by marriage affirmed as a rule.

People living together instead of marriage. In this case the situation is quite different. Since nonnuptial cohabitors are avoiding marriage it is hard to see how their relationship could ever be somehow subsumed under the marital norm. However the distinction between a norm and a rule may be pastorally useful in counselling nonnuptial cohabitors by, for example, identifying the presence of marital values in an 'pre-marital' relationship (say, mutuality, commitment to one another and to children) and suggesting that the journey to solemnization is an appropriate one to take.

 iii) Postmarried people. There has been much discussion of the pastoral maltreatment by the churches of divorced people. For some of these people a second marriage may be desirable, whether or not a church can be found to recognise or solemnise it. But what do the churches say to those countless postmarried people who do not wish to marry again? If they commence sexual activity, does the rubric of fornication come into play once more? I suggest that some of these people may simply enjoy release from the norm, or that, in their case the norm be temporarily suspended. Relationships involving cohabitation or semi-cohabitation ('living apart together') may well be appropriate in this stage of life. Reduced commitment to a new sexual partner (say after bereavement or abandonment by a former spouse) may enable healing and further self-knowledge to take place before plunging into a new marriage. The temporary nature of such arrangements will ensure that the marital norm is not impugned, and if conception is possible, commitment to children should be firm. 

iv) Lesbian partners. The distinction between a norm and a rule suggests the further extension of the norm to encompass a further group of people that is generally alienated from mainstream Christianity. Elizabeth Stuart provides a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the subject of lesbian and gay marriages from the all-important perspectives of lesbian and gay theologians themselves.[15] She finds that the verdict of lesbian theology on marriage is very clear: where patriarchy is the theory, marriage is the practice. The feminist virtues such as mutuality and equality cannot thrive inside it. Issues of monogamy and of friendship (including the extent of its sexual nature) re-emerge in lesbian theology, but enthusiasm for marriage is pretty sparse. The question which arises is whether the norm of marriage is able to be extended to them by being made sufficiently attractive and desirable (a different question from the question whether lesbian Christians themselves desire this). There clearly are marital values embodied in lesbian partnerships, which warrant the official blessing of God precisely because God is already clearly present in them. While the churches, and lesbian women themselves may be unwilling to take this step, it remains a possibility whose time may yet announce itself.

v) Gay partners. Gay theology, says Stuart, is not very interested in marriage either. The issue of monogamy (versus non-monogamy) has been more pressing: while monogamy for several writers has been an ideal state, marriage has been seen as a heterosexual institution. Several writers have taken up the notion of covenant or ‘covenanted union’ in relation to gay partnerships, but Stuart shows that, while these unions are regarded as, or equivalent to, marriages, there is considerable reluctance to admit this. Alternatively, committed gay relationships are said to sacramentalise God’s reign or to be particular manifestations of friendship. But this equivalence to marriage is very significant. The reluctance to own sacramental partnerships as marriage may be due more to the use of marriage as a weapon against gays, by excluding them from it, than an antipathy towards it among gay men which leads to the failed attempts to construct satisfactory alternatives.

There are two ways of bringing lesbian and gay partnerships within the marital norm. First, the institution of marriage might be broadened in order to embrace and include them. That would also be a matter for civil law and canon law. It would also require making explicit a covenant theology of marriage that would apply to all people who marry within Christian faith. Commitment, fidelity and steadfast love are among the values to be realised by all married people because, ultimately, these are the values which embody God’s love for the world, and the love of Christ for the church. The conception of children will belong to straight marriages only, but children are not a requirement of Christian marriages, and childless couples are sometimes better able than married parents to practice neighbour-love more widely. Second, the churches would need to adopt and authorize appropriate liturgies. Although these would be little different from the ones currently in use, authorization may never happen. Patient advocacy will be necessary for several years yet.

The second way is to adopt the approach that marriage is valued by the Christian community for the values marriage exemplifies. These values reveal divine love in their partial realization in actual relationships. To the extent that marital values are exemplified in longterm relationships, those relationships resemble marriages (even though they are not), and they should be honoured as such. This way, if it were to be adopted, would begin a transformation in the way the people of God are able to accept not only some lesbian and gay unions, but some informal and common law marriages between straight couples. On this view relationships other than marriage can be honoured and valued, not by pretending they are marriages, but because marital values are ‘norm-ative’ for them. Inasmuch as relationships express marital values, they conform to the marital norm, while they do not of course conform to the marital rule. There is room for much Christian sexual morality to be excitingly recast in this way.

A further advantage of extending the marital norm theologically and liturgically to some lesbian and gay partners (assuming it happens) is that alternatives to marriage (e.g., acts of blessing or recognition of partnerships), or alternative sexual moralities not based on marriage (but on e.g., justice-seeking, right relation) are avoided. Also avoided is the search for alternative theological categories and descriptions which represent marriage in a manner appropriate to gays only. In this sense the extension of the marital norm is conservative with regard to the Christian tradition and ‘hope-ful’ (in the strong theological sense) that the sacrament of marriage will one day embrace some of those people who are currently marginalised by it. Marriage has undergone profound changes in every epoch, changes that Christians in previous epochs would have found unsanctionable. What is unsanctionable now may yet become tomorrow’s orthodoxy.

© Adrian Thatcher  06/02/2002