Читать книгу Living in Love and Faith - Bishops of the Church of England - Страница 14

God is love,

and those who live in love

live in God

and God lives in them.⁵

So begins the service of marriage celebrated in countless churches across the country. Believing that God is love, Christians have seen marriage as a gift of God in which God’s life-giving love can be known.

Marriage is ‘an honourable estate’,⁶ a way and state of life that supports and brings good not only to those who enter into it but also to the lives of the children who belong to it and the life of society as a whole. It is one of the forms or conditions of human living in which God’s gift of life and love is communicated to the world.

In this chapter we explain the form and content of the Christian understanding of marriage as the Church of England has received it, drawing particularly on some of the texts that shape its common life – the formularies, canons and liturgies of the church, and other key sources of influence, as well as the Bible from which they all derive their inspiration and authority.

We are conscious that, as ‘part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church’,⁷ the Church of England’s doctrine of marriage shares in a common tradition among the churches. We are also conscious that some Anglicans, and some Christians in other churches, contend that this understanding of marriage is ripe for developments that allow people of the same sex also to receive its blessings and disciplines; and we recognize that in some churches developments in doctrine and practice are taking place. We will be engaging with such proposals, as well as different perspectives on sexuality more generally, and on the place of gender in human identity itself, in the rest of this book. In this chapter, however, attention is focused on the tradition the Church of England has received: its scriptural basis, and as it is set out in its liturgical and other texts.

Marriage is discussed from a variety of perspectives in the book. For example, marriage in contemporary society is described in Chapter 5 (here–here). Chapter 10 (here–here) considers marriage and the experience of women. Chapter 12 (here–here) explores marriage as a rule of life as well as Jesus’ teaching on marriage. A discussion of marriage and the Bible can be found in Chapter 13 (here–here). And in Part Five, Scene 1 there is a conversation about marriage (here–here).