Joint Synod Committee for Inclusivity
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What Is God Doing with Marriage? Working
Group Discussion on Marriage April 23, 2005 Augsburg College,
Minneapolis The
Question In Christian circles
today, if we ask “What does God intend for marriage?” many leap from their
seats to answer, guns blazing, running to the rescue of one ideology or
another. Some of these theological desperadoes may fire more accurately and
efficiently than others, but in the end the place invariably gets shot up
with our interpretations of Scripture, and somebody ends up getting hurt.
This is because we typically address the question as criminals, as those who
would attempt to steal the answer from God. As Lutherans—no, as
Christians—we should know better. Lutherans are taught that God’s intention
becomes known to us through God’s revelation in the crucified and risen
Christ. God’s intention is revealed through suffering and the cross, through
faithful engagement with the lives of God’s people as they are lived. This
revelation is both the beginning and the end of our theology, and so it must
form the beginning and end of whatever it is that we call “Christian
marriage.” Therefore we wish to
drop the inherent pretension of the question, “What does God want us to do
with marriage?” and instead ask, “What is God already doing with marriage?”
If our justification is by faith alone—if it is true, as Luther writes, that
this doctrine “alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends”—then
we realize that God’s work in human marriage is out ahead of us. God’s work
is not confined to those structures we presume are the spaces of divine
operation, but is active outside and beyond our road maps for God. New signs
of life are frequently found in unexpected places. It is thus within a
framework of wonderment, excitement, and expectation that we ask the question:
“What is God doing with marriage?” Click here for a report of
our discussion. |
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Discussion Report from the "The Changing
Institution of Marriage" "The 'Biblical View' of Marriage" |