I'm not entirely sure I'd quite put it like that, lest I get chucked out of the church.
The sacraments (which I take to be an outward sign of an interior grace) clearly do have value and efficacy in themselves, but not on anywhere near the same level or of the same character as the inward grace. They are the nutshell rather than the nut's kernel. That is quite a protty thing to say - it is, for example, how baptismal regeneration can be regarded by 19th century evangelicals as conditional on faith: the external sign is a call to and promise of faith, but that faith must later be realised for the baptism to regenerate. On marriage my view is that the committment and relationship is what makes a marriage sacramental (i.e. graceful) in character rather than the outward sign of the beginning of that relationship (a church service).
It's also quite protty - puritan or dissenting even - to feel that a marriage ceremony isn't something that the church necessarily needs to control, or at least doesn't need to present in a ritualised context. That's also quite consistant with the practice of the early and medieval church, which doesn't always seem to have treated marriage as a sacrament.
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-11 11:35 am (UTC)The sacraments (which I take to be an outward sign of an interior grace) clearly do have value and efficacy in themselves, but not on anywhere near the same level or of the same character as the inward grace. They are the nutshell rather than the nut's kernel. That is quite a protty thing to say - it is, for example, how baptismal regeneration can be regarded by 19th century evangelicals as conditional on faith: the external sign is a call to and promise of faith, but that faith must later be realised for the baptism to regenerate. On marriage my view is that the committment and relationship is what makes a marriage sacramental (i.e. graceful) in character rather than the outward sign of the beginning of that relationship (a church service).
It's also quite protty - puritan or dissenting even - to feel that a marriage ceremony isn't something that the church necessarily needs to control, or at least doesn't need to present in a ritualised context. That's also quite consistant with the practice of the early and medieval church, which doesn't always seem to have treated marriage as a sacrament.