New Zealand Anglicanism shifted from a firmly-held “marriage cannot be dissolved” to “a couple when getting married should intend to stay together”. ALL references to Marriage-is-like-Christ-and-His-church imagery were completely removed from the three different rites available for getting married in the 1989 New Zealand Prayer Book. Even the Church of England’s own Common Worship rite has removed all but the tiniest single vestigial allusion (quoted above) to what was clearly once a dominant biblical paradigm for marriage.
What once again is clear when those who say the debates are not sourced in prejudice about homosexuality, but are about integrity to scripture and tradition, is that whilst a sea change has occurred in the understanding of marriage, they have only begun to register an issue when the direction heads towards committed same-sex couples.
In the discussion about whether gender difference is essential to marriage it is clear where the inner logic of the trajectory of Christian marriage changes leads, and that the Church of England bishops’ statement is on the wrong side of that trajectory.
FWLIW this is completely untrue in the CofE. The 1662 Prayer Book remains the normative form of common prayer (though perhaps not the usual form of common prayer in most parishes).
Common Worship introduced changed wording but did not, and made no claim to, change doctrine.
BTW one often encounters in an astonishing variety of contexts the little saying, “lex ordandi, lex credendi” (meaning more or less, ,”the rule of worship is the rule of faith”).
In an age of fairly relentless liturgical revision it’s often used by modernist liturgists to suggest that the church’s doctrine changes with every liturgical revision. This, regardless of the church’s actual formal affirmations of, or means of reflecting upon, doctrine. (Fairly notoriously TEC clergy often say this about the 1979 baptismal liturgy).
As one might imagine the original context (namely the thought of Prosper of Aquitaine) out of which this slogan was drawn, doesn’t imply any such thing.
Prosper wrote against the semi-Pelagians in favour of an Augustinian view of grace. He argued that lex ordandi – meaning, God’s command through St. Paul in 1 Tim 2.1-4 to pray for all men – makes it clear that conversion is God’s work and not man’s. In other words – the church’s following of this Scriptural command in her intercessions shows that the semi-Pelagians were wrong on grace. Or – in Prosper’s full form – “that the law of praying may establish the law of faith”.
It’s lightly geeky and probably tedious but if you want to know more the seminal article is:
Paul De Clerck, Trans. Winger, Thomas M. (1994) “Lex orandi, lex credendi”: The Original Sense and Historical Avatars of an Equivocal Adage, 178-200. In Studia Liturgica 24 (2).
PDF available [url=http://www.mendeley.com/download/public/8142113/4285552113/93850a57d906991a2f1b273eea3852aa3307ed63/dl.pdf]here[/url]
Or in brief – lex orandi – originally makes a Scriptural argument (the Lord’s command in 1 Timothy 2 to pray for all) – to which the church’s universal practice of intercession bears witness.
It’s NOT an argument aiming to show that liturgy alters or establishes doctrine, or even that liturgy in general shows the church’s faith, nor an appeal to church tradition. It’s about the Lord’s command in Scripture and the church’s faithful witness to that command.