Two Teachings — Here, There, and Everywhere (Part 1)

Editors’ Note: This is the first of a three-part series; these essays will appear sequentially this week.

Part One

Is there a contradiction?

“Does this violate the law of noncontradiction?” This was a question someone posed to me after I published a series of articles last month following the 2024 General Convention. The articles explored the changed approach to the Book of Common Prayer in the constitution, the memorialization of the prayer book, and Communion Across Difference (Part I, Part II, and Part III).

One argument that I made is that the Episcopal Church has two teachings on the nature of Christian marriage. I made this claim on the basis of two things: first, the decision to add gender-neutral marriage rites to the prayer book alongside the current marriage rite; and second, General Convention’s repeated claims of “the indispensable place that the minority who hold to this Church’s historic teaching on marriage have in our common life, whose witness our Church needs.” As my interlocutor noted, these teachings are in clear tension with one another. In fact, they are contradictory.

Is that true? And if so, is that a serious problem?

The following essay is presented in three parts. Part I looks at this question posed by my friend about the law of non-contradiction and the fact that this challenge is one that face well beyond the Episcopal Church. Part II will explore the theology of communion that was given by the Second Vatican Council, most especially in the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis redintegratio) and how this can be seen to already be at work in the Anglican tradition. In this third and final part of this essay prompted by the question of the contradictory teachings that are found in many of our churches, I want to look forward with the aid of St. Augustine and see how his ecclesiological insights that have been embedded in the ecclesiology in the West might resource us as we seek to navigate the way forward.

The Episcopal Church’s Contradiction

The typical formulation of the law of noncontradiction says this: “contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time.” Thus, x = 2 and x = 3 cannot both be true at the same time in the same context.

The two principal doctrines of marriage at work in the Episcopal Church (and there are likely more than these two) do not actually run afoul of the law of noncontradiction. The traditional claim is that (as the 1979 prayer book puts it) “Christian marriage is a solemn and public covenant between a man and a woman in the presence of God” (p. 422). What are the alternative claims as presented in authoritative texts in this church?

First, the Declaration that couples must sign before having their marriage solemnized does not contradict this statement. There is a lot that this statement does not say. But it also does not contradict the prayer book’s current marriage liturgy. But when placed alongside the previous declaration, the new Declaration passed in 2018 removes a number of particular claims about Holy Matrimony:

Clearly, the changes are many and substantive. Gone is the declaration that the couple seeks “the blessing of Holy Matrimony in the Church”; gone is any “solemn declaration” by the couple about the nature of marriage”; gone are the particulars of who can be married (in fact, there is nothing in the new statement about how many persons constitute a marriage); gone is the declaration “we believe,” replaced by a distanced “we understand the teaching of the church”; gone is the declaration that one of the purposes of Holy Matrimony is “procreation.” I would wager that the degree to which the new declaration mutes and neuters the previous declaration is likely of concern to those well beyond the minority who continue to be convinced of the prayer book’s traditional teaching on marriage.

Despite all this, however, the new declaration is not in direct contradiction with a traditional doctrine of marriage.

Similarly, the revision of the section on Holy Matrimony in the Catechism also avoids the violation of the law of contradiction:

Holy Matrimony is Christian marriage, in which two people enter into a life-long union, make their vows before God and the Church, and receive the grace and blessing of God to help them fulfill their vows.

This further specifies some of the vagueness of the canonical declaration by clarifying that matrimony is between “two persons” (not more). While it is vague, it too does not contradict the doctrine of the current marriage rite, though, like the revised declaration, it obviously says much less. In fact, this revision sits in a trajectory of revisions that mute the liturgical language about marriage after the 1662 English prayer book (for a recounting of some of the history, see my article “Contraception’s Authority: An Anglican’s Liturgical and Synodical Thought Experiment in Light of ARCUSA’s ‘Ecclesiology and Moral Discernment’” in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies).

The gender-neutral marriage rite that was authorized by the 2024 General Convention to be added to the prayer book (if passed again on a second reading in 2027) is a relatively conservative revision to the current marriage liturgy — at least compared with the various versions of same-sex marriage rites and general-neutral rites that have been variously authorized for use in the Episcopal Church. The surgical revisions remove any mention of man and woman and replace them with either persons or husband, wife, and spouse. The basic biblical doctrine about marriage remains, though shortened and expressed with less felicity: “The joining of two people in a life of mutual fidelity signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church, and so it is worthy of being honored among all people.”

The contradiction formally appears when you get to the choices that can be made about husband, wife, and spouse. The fact that one can chose husband or wife in both instances means that the new rite permits an expression of marriage that directly contradicts the teaching of the current marriage liturgy.

The doctrine of the current marriage liturgy formally excludes other approaches to marriage in its basic formation of the nature of Christian marriage as “a solemn and public covenant between a man and a woman in the presence of God” that was both “established by God in creation” and “signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church.” Not only does this exclude marriage between persons of the same sex, but the new marriage rite also presses into the items I have listed that were removed from the Declaration that couples must sign.

A particularly noteworthy revision in the new marriage rite is the removal of the natural theology claim that marriage was “established by God in creation.” It is at this point, I think, that the crux of the disagreement between those who hold the two teachings rests. The claim about natural theology gathers up matters related to the nature of human persons and the divine purpose of the physiological differentiation of the sexes. One way to pose the question is this: What does it mean to claim that the union of husband and wife that is named “holy matrimony” was established by God in creation, while the rite for the union of two persons of the same sex also calls itself holy matrimony but does not claim that such a union was established by God in creation?

This is a question worthy of more serious discussion in future conversations about Communion Across Difference and in Communion-wide discussions.

The ACNA’s Contradiction

The Episcopal Church is not the only church dealing with the haziness created by the presence of contrary teachings. The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), whose origin directly concerns a clear affirmation of a traditional doctrine of marriage (among other issues), has not avoided two contradictory teachings, both formally and unofficially.

The clear example of two formal teachings is the ordination of women to the priesthood.

The Province shall make no canon abridging the authority of any member dioceses or networks (whether regional or affinity-based) and those dioceses banded together as jurisdictions with respect to its practice regarding the ordination of women to the diaconate or presbyterate (Article VIII.2).

The ACNA has taken a rather interesting approach to this question. The episcopacy is explicitly reserved only to men. But male-led dioceses are free to determine whether women may be ordained both to the diaconate and to the priesthood.

Further nuances are found in various parts of the ACNA. For example, the Diocese of the Carolinas (whose bishop, Steve Wood, is now the Archbishop of the ACNA) permits the ordination of both men and women to the diaconate and the priesthood. However, the diocese allows only men to be appointed as rectors of congregations (see the diocese’s canons).

My conversations with friends and colleagues in the ACNA has also highlighted other significant theological differences that in other contexts have also been church-dividing: the nature of the sacraments and the sacrificial character of the Eucharist; the extent to which the liturgy is constituent of Christian worship or an accoutrement that has been used to the extent one determines its utility (i.e. Protestantism with more frills!); and the compatibility of five-point Calvinism with the Anglican tradition in general and the Catholic stream specifically. Certainly, others could be listed.

I have yet to be convinced that the argument about whether the blessing of same-gendered sexual unions and whether woman can be ordained are not equally substantive theological disagreements. They clearly are church-dividing: the ACNA was born out of disagreements on human sexuality, and the ordination of women is a sticking point in talks between the ACNA and other churches. The examples abound in other parts of the church.

Neither those who advocate a traditional teaching on marriage nor the traditional official position in the ACNA on the same have any unanimity on the legitimacy of birth control within Christian marriage or even the question of whether it is permissible for a Christian couple to make a conscious choice to refuse to have children. It was Rowan Williams who famously posed the thought experiment in his provocative essay “The Body’s Grace” (1989). He writes: “In a church which accepts the legitimacy of contraception, the absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous texts, or on a problematic and non-scriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures.”

One might disagree with him that the typical “condemnation” passages are not as ambiguous as he suggests or that any theology that wants to consider the physiological differentiation of the sexes is not necessarily narrow nor crude. But his question is nonetheless a deep one: if procreation as one of the classical goods of marriage is necessarily excluded from the picture, this has a major implication for how one makes moral judgments about non-procreative sex.

Dr. Philip Turner, a former ethics professor at General Theological Seminary, would explain that the traditional Christian view of marriage included the following five strands: man and woman; undertaken by mutual consent of the heart, mind, and will; lifelong; monogamous; and open to children. Remove any one of them, and the rope unravels. This is slightly different than the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, which judges any act that renders impossible the procreative possibility of any sexual act “intrinsically evil” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2370).

The proper ordering of human sexuality and the question of who can be ordained to Holy Orders are different questions, to be sure. Nonetheless, they overlap to the extent that both positions include a claim about anthropology and the divine purpose of the differentiation of the sexes. The one is a question about what sort of actions may be blessed by the church, with cascading implications about Christian anthropology. It is essentially a moral question with anthropological implications. The ordination question is primarily ecclesiological. It gets to a different but no less fundamental question: Is that person a priest? And thus, are the sacraments celebrated by that person valid and regular? When it comes to the episcopacy, the question grows more serious: Is the church properly ordered in this or that place? If one made an erroneous judgment about who may be ordained, I would find it difficult to accept the judgment that such a mistake would be a moral one. Rather, it would be an error of theological judgment.

It is also not simply a matter of biblical authority. Many of the arguments on human sexuality by the ACNA and GAFCON will include a claim that a progressive view on sexuality is clear evidence of a rejection of the authority of Scripture. One could reply that Scripture seems no less clear on whether women should have authority in the church.  But anyone who has read the most serious engagements with both contested matters will know that this is far more complex than simply a question of the authority of Scripture. This is another point that deserves more serious engagement across the Communion.

The charge that a person who believes in the ordination of women or in the possibility of same-sex marriage has necessarily rejected the authority of Scripture full stop must be nuanced. Such an approach paves the way for the judgment of simply being “out of communion” with such a person or ecclesial community. The logic would seem to be that a rejection of the authority of Scripture is a rejection of a basic tenet of the Christian confession, which one might claim is formal heresy, justifying a declaration of being “out of Communion” and thus excommunicated in some sense. But this is a sweeping and serious kind of judgment that is given a very helpful nuance by the ecclesiology of degrees of communion that I will explore in Part II.

There, I will explore the theology of communion that was given by the Second Vatican Council, most especially in the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis redintegratio) and how this can be seen to already be at work in the Anglican tradition.