The theological principles refer 14 times to the biblical concept of making a covenant. The SCLM offers most of the details about this concept in a bullet-point section called “Renewing the Church’s Theological Reflection”:
Vocation: People are called into long-term committed relationships, as a vocation;
Covenant-making: Loving faithfulness can participate in and reflect God’s own covenantal commitment to God’s creation;
Households: Covenants create households as “schools of virtue” for life-long formation in spiritual discipline nurtured by divine grace….
Perhaps Rowan and the CoE will follow suit like with kicking out procedures. No doubt it will be Non-obligatory at first just like WO and bishops et alia, eh?
Is Baptism a sacrament or a covenant?
To my understanding as a lay person a sacrament is “an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible Grace.” Grace is unmerited, free gift from God. So that being accepted in the body of Christ, as a child of God, is a unilateral act of God, unmerited by me, an invisible grace, and baptism as a sacrament is the visible sign of that grace.
Again, as a lay person I understand a covenant as an agreement or a contract between two parties. In case of a “baptismal covenant” I agree to do certain things and God agrees to accept me in the body of Christ. It is a bilateral transaction.
So to my mind baptism cannot be both a sacrament and a covenant It is either a sign of unilateral Grace, or it is an act of bilateral covenant.
Yet, the leading paragraph of the TEC SCLM states that:
“The Christian life is rooted in the sacrament of baptism, … Every covenant and commitment we make as Christians offers an opportunity to live out our baptismal covenant in new ways.”
Am I confused or is the TEC SCLM confused?
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Fruitfulness: Faithful love in relationship enables the offering of countless gifts to the wider community that would not be possible in the same way apart from that relationship, including: lives of service, compassion, generosity, and hospitality
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This point that glosses over what Marriage is and why it is different from having a really good friend. Guess they don’t want to go there…
“Faithful love” is simply not enough in order to redefine or replace the covenant of marriage.
I could “faithfully love” any one of my sinful proclivities but it is still sin nevertheless. The “means” cannot justify the “ends” in this sexual experimentation. And, “long-term” commitment establishes nothing about the nature/essence of these relationships. Again, I could have a “long-term commitment” to any type of disordered lifestyle – but that does not make it rightly ordered and it certainly does not make it analogous to marriage biblically defined.
The Bible and created order (natural law) requires sexual complimentarity to even begin discussing what marriage IS.
All this talk of “Covenant” and “Covenanting”, but we don’t want no stinkin’ Anglican Covenant…
Can I covenant with my dog? Can I covenant with more than one person?
#4, haven’t you heard? Our understanding of “sexual complimentarity” is culturally-conditioned. That’s what I was told–forget the procreation and survival of our species; “natural order” as you say–I’m simply so stupid I’ve been brainwashed by all that.
Were I intellectually superior, I would consider “sexual complimentarity” the ability to put anything anywhere, even round pegs in square holes, or making exits into entrances. And all of it should be “blessed”…
All of these bullet-points apply equally well to multiple partners. Wouldn’t it be interesting if Dierdre Good, Cynthia Kittredge, Eugene Rogers and Willis Jenkins addressed point by point Robert George’s recent paper, “What is Marriage?”.
This is all camouflage to cover the inability to justify the unjustifiable. We have seen this sort of doublespeak over and over haven’t we. And it sound so…..pious, so sanctimonious! Larry