Category Archives: Marriage

The mutual love of husband and wife

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Richard Baxter spells out the mutual love that a husband and wife must have for one another:-

I pray you, next tell me my duty to my wife and hers to me.

The common duty of husband and wife is,

1. Entirely to love each other; and therefore choose one that is truly lovely.… ;and avoid all things that tend to quench your love.

2. To dwell together, and enjoy each other, and faithfully join as helpers in the education of their children, the government of the family, and the management of their worldly business.…

Puritans on male leadership

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According to J.I Packer, the Puritans advanced four arguments confirming the rightness of male leadership as adumbrated in Milton’s ‘he for God only, she for God in him’:-

  1. The argument from creation: the man was made first, then the woman, and the woman was made to benefit the man as a suitable helper for him.
  2. The argument from the story of the Fall: the woman was first in the transgression, and God decreed in judgement that henceforth her husband should rule over her.
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Cohabitation

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Cohabitation in the 20th century

This is the title of a report by Dr John Hayward and Dr Guy Brandon of the Jubilee Centre.  It provides an analysis of recent statistics derived from the British Household Panel Survey.

There are about 2.3 million cohabiting couples in England and Wales today, and that figure is expected to rise to 3.7 million by 2031.  With age at first marriage now delayed to a mean of 32 for men and 30 for women, cohabitation is for some a prelude to marriage and for others an alternative.…

Adelphopoiesis: ‘the making of brothers’

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It is interesting that both human rights activist Peter Tatchell and politician Adrian Trett have asserted that in times past the Christian church has actively endorsed same-sex marriage.  And in both cases they have appealed as their sole source of evidence to John Boswell’s book The marriage of likeness: same-sex unions in pre-modern Europe.

Boswell argued that the ancient rite of ‘adelphopoiesis’ should be regarded as equivalent to same-sex marriage.  It would follow, then, that sections of the modern Christian church are denying its own history when it opposes same-sex marraige today.…

Same-sex marriage: not near so much like a ball

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“I should like balls infinitely better… if they were carried on in a different manner… It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order of the day.”

“Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a ball.”

(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)

Peter Tatchell and Peter D Williams recently discussed the question of same-sex marriage.  Tatchell is, of course, a well-known human rights activist and supports same-sex marriage. …

Ten reasons not to legalise same-sex marriage

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Writing for the Christian Medical Fellowship, Dr Peter Saunders comments that there is increasing pressure in Britain to permit same-sex marriage.  The question for many has become how (not if) the law should be changed.

Dr Saunders gives ten reasons why the law should not be changed:-

1. Marriage is the union of one man and one woman

Throughout  history in virtually all cultures and faiths throughout the world,  marriage has been held to be the union of one man and one woman. …

Catholic abuse scandal – is celibacy to blame?

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The Catholic clerical abuse scandal is, of course, very bad news: first and foremost, for the victims, second for the Catholic church, and third for all those – inside and outside the Catholic church – who find themselves tarnished by real or imagined association.

The recent remarks of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, to the effect that it is homosexuality, rather than celibacy, which lay behind the abuse of children, has led to indignation in many quarters.

My belief (and I’m speaking from long experience in health care generally, and knowledge of long-stay ‘institutions’) is that enforced abstention from heterosexual relationships leads to an increase in the incidence of deviant sexual behaviours.…

Song 7:9b-8:7 – Aspects of love – sermon notes

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The Song of Songs is a strange, unique, beautiful book.

Strange – partly because God isn’t mentioned from beginning to end.

Unique – because it is the one book of the Bible that gives a sustained and detailed celebration of love between a man and a woman.

Beautiful – because it does all of this in wonderfully imaginative poetry. It has every right to be called ‘The Song of Songs’, the greatest love song of them all.…

Children need fathers

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A recent change in UK law means that women in same-sex relationships can now register both their names on the birth certificate of a child conceived as a result of fertility treatment.

Instead of the usual allocation of one mother and one father, one would suppose that the child would therefore have two mothers in the sight of the law.  However, this will not be the case: a birth certificate will be used which, instead of having a ‘mother’ and a ‘father’ section, with have two ‘parent’ sections.…

Remarriage after divorce

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The Christian church has never reached agreement over the question of remarriage after divorce .

The Catholic church, taking a sacramental view of marriage, has held that a marriage is indissoluble, whereas the reformed churches rejected the concept of indissolubility.

Cranmer had proposed a revised Canon Law (1553), which would have provided for divorce on the grounds of adultery, malicious desertion, prolonged absence without news, attempts against the partner’s life and cruelty.

Some of the issues to be considered are:-

1.…