This paper is a response to some misleading media coverage of debate concerning the proposed A Prayer Book for Australia at the General Synod meeting in July 1995.
We have written this leaflet because the recent General Synod debate about the Marriage Services in the proposed A Prayer Book for Australia (APBA) has been misrepresented and misunderstood.
Stephen is an Anglican Minister with 26 years of experience, presently the Anglican Minister in Maroubra, a parish in the Diocese of Sydney. Marion has worked beside him during that time, which included eight years in East Africa. She was a third time Sydney representative at the 1995 General Synod which approved APBA. She moved the amendments which changed the First Order Marriage Service in the draft copy of APBA as it was presented to the General Synod for its consideration.
We seek to answer three questions -
Were changes necessary?
Yes, but not as a form of payback1 for the defeat suffered on the floor of General Synod by Sydney delegates in the debates about the ordination of women in past years. There were more important issues at stake in the 1995 debate about APBA.
Both First and Second Order Marriage services in the draft APBA contained consents and vows that were the same for both husband and wife. This completed a process of removing gender distinction that began with the Second Order Marriage service in An Australian Prayer Book (AAPB).
The Book of Common Prayer of 1662 (BCP), which remains the benchmark for doctrine in the Anglican Church of Australia (ACA), clearly differentiated husband from wife in the service it called the Solemnization of Matrimony - he was there to love, comfort, honour and keep the woman he wished to marry and she was there to obey, serve, love, honour and keep the man who would be her husband. He promised to love and cherish her and she promised to love, cherish and obey him.
Because there was only one, internally consistent, marriage service in BCP, there was only one theology of marriage in the Anglican Church it served.
The First Order marriage service in An Australian Prayer Book (AAPB 1) preserved the gender differentiation of the Book of Common Prayer but AAPB 2 (the Second Order service) did not. Did AAPB have two theologies of marriage within its covers? Some say yes, others say no. Whatever the result of that argument, it is clear that AAPB introduced the notion of choice into the options offered by its services to both marriage celebrants and prospective husbands and wives.
As proposed, both orders in A Prayer Book for Australia (APBA 1 and 2) offered forms of consent and vows which made no distinction based on gender. Theological unity was restored but the notion of choice was lost. The price paid was a theology of marriage that was unacceptable to us because we believed it to be unbiblical and at variance with BCP, the acknowledged standard for doctrine in the ACA. So an amendment to APBA 1 was proposed.
As proposed, both the man and the woman promised to love and to cherish. Although the original amendment proposed by Marion was itself amended in debate, a measure of gender differentiation was introduced into APBA 1.
As a result, the man now promises to love and to cherish and the woman responds by promising to love, cherish and honour. While still not as clear as we would like it to be, this amended form of the vows has at least two virtues. It avoids the word "obey" with all its difficult connotations and it reintroduces a level of choice (albeit by resurrecting a difference in theology between APBA 1 and 2). The word honour was agreed to on the basis that it picks up the concept of a wife giving due honour to her husband which is part of The Preface to APBA 1.
A second amendment to APBA 1 deleted a vague rubric 15 referring to the reading of one or more passages from Scripture with an address to follow. In its place, rubric 13 from AAPB 1 was inserted. This rubric says that one or more passages of Scripture may be read but gives specific suggestions as to what they might be. It adds that a sermon declaring the duties of husband and wife may be preached but then says that if no sermon is preached, Ephesians 5:20-33 at least must be read.
This leaves open the question of what the duties of husband and wife might be but, in our view, the reference to Ephesians suggests very strongly that whatever they are, that is the part of the Bible where they will be most clearly described.
What relational issues are at stake in this discussion?
We are committed to a view of the marriage relationship that we know is unfashionable but which we believe to be biblical and vital.
This relationship must be openly declared in the marriage services of the ACA if its allegiance to biblical authority as stated in its own Articles of Religion (included in APBA) is to have any credibility and if the newly married couple are to take their place unambiguously in the Anglican Christian community. Further, we believe that those communicant members of the ACA who wish to express this view in their own celebration of marriage should be afforded this option by their own denomination.
This view of the complementary relationship of two equal but different human beings, male and female, united in marriage, is set out in many ways from the beginning to the end of the Bible. As suggested by the second amendment, we believe it is most clearly taught in Ephesians 5.
Of course, Ephesians is not primarily about marriage nor is Ephesians 5 a description of a marriage service. In Ephesians 5:20-33 Paul is speaking to people who are already married. He is addressing the question of how they should manage those existing marriages in a way that best reflects their new commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
At the heart of what Paul says is the idea of marriage as a living illustration of the relationship Christ has established, through his death and resurrection, with the church - as ChristÉ so the husband - as the churchÉ so the wife. We believe that it is reasonable to draw the conclusion that the relationships of Christ to his church and a husband to his wife are bound together here to enable each to contribute towards the understanding of the other.
A careful examination of verses 22-24 is necessary at this point.
It is hard to get an English translation of Paul's Greek to correctly convey his thinking. First of all, there is some dispute over the meaning of the word translated head (NIV) in v.23. Then, the words subject (RSV) and submit (NIV and TEV) in reference to wives in vv.22 and 24 translate a Greek word that has many uses. For example, it occurs in v.21 in reference to both men and women. Again, it appears in v.24, but this time in reference to the church. In fact, when translating from Paul's Greek into our English, we have to add a word in both vv.22 and 24 to make sense of a word he omitted in his original.
We believe that the use of the word submit (NIV) to describe the relationship of a wife to her husband is a legitimate way of coping with this omission.
The difficulty of deciding what this word means remains.
It occurs often enough, not only in the Bible but in other literature. For example, elsewhere in the Bible it is used in Luke 2:51 to describe (approvingly) the relationship of the teenage Jesus to Joseph and Mary. There, NIV says Jesus was obedient to them. This reference highlights the problem because no one seriously suggests that this is the kind of submission that should characterise a woman's attitude to the husband God has provided for her welfare. Use of the word outside the Bible in military contexts suggests an alternative. There, it has the sense of establishing the discipline of order.
So, perhaps it is better to see that by using this word, what Paul wants from both husbands and wives is a willingness to recognise that there is a certain order in God's creation and sexual differentiation is part of that order.
They must work out their marriages and their roles within those marriages in a way that does not threaten to do violence to this order for God's world.
We believe that this order is a creation order which remains in place despite the subsequent upheavals of Genesis 3. Its expression in marriage is vital to the preservation of the fundamental function of marriage to act as a living parable demonstrating the relationship that Christ has established with his church.
Were the amendments a backward step?
It cannot be a backward step to restore Bible truth when it has been lost. Nor can it be backward to restore the option of acting out that truth to those among God's people who wish to do so.
We freely admit that the amendments we have defended are contrary to the tenor of the times but C.S. Lewis reminded us all long ago that to move with the times is to move away - and that is what we do not want the ACA to do, either from the Bible or its own theological roots.
In a way, this is a debate about relevance, but issues of relevance demand a prior choice. To what do we want to be relevant? If it is to the times, then by all means let us seek among the sociological and pphilosophical pundits of our times for goals, values and attitudes that we want to enshrine in our written liturgies and practice in our aassociation together.
But if we want to be relevant to the purposes of God as set out in the Bible, then we will seek to conform marriage to the order God has established for his world because marriage as instituted by him is the foundational first step towards the establishment of ordered human society.
What could be more forward looking in anticipation of his kingdom coming than that?
- Stephen and Marion Gabbott
Glossary
AAPB An Australian Prayer Book, 1978 (The green Prayer Book).
AAPB 1 First Order marriage service in AAPB (likewise AAPB 2, etc.).
APBA A Prayer Book for Australia - the new prayer book endorsed by General Synod in July 1995. This 'liturgical resource' cannot be used in a diocese unless it has first been adopted by the Synod of that diocese.
APBA 1 First Order marriage service in APBA (likewise APBA2).
BCP Book of Common Prayer (1662). Under the Scriptures, along with the Thirty Nine Articles, the BCP is the doctrinal and liturgical benchmark of the Anglican Church of Australia according to its Constitution.
Articles of Religion Usually known as "The Thirty Nine Articles", these are 39 statements of Christian truth as understood by the reformed Church of England. The Articles date from 1562 and are printed at the back of BCP, AAPB and APBA.
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Footnote 1 - as suggested in some media reports
Stephen and Marion Gabbott now serve at Christ Church Bangkok, where Stephen is the Vicar.
Anglican Church League, www.acl.asn.au