... if the spiritual graces of modesty, submission, and fidelity are missing from our ceremonies, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Pastors must reckon with the fact that we are responsible for the abandonment of those timeless elements of wedding liturgies which led the bride and groom, their families, and all those assembled, to think sober thoughts about God's commands concerning marriage, and to plead for His grace to fulfill those commands. In such a climate, is it any wonder so many of our marriages end in dissolution?
The wisdom that God gave the church in past centuries can help us regarding marriage ceremonies today. For hundreds of years, pastors have presided over wedding ceremonies in such a way that the God Who instituted marriage was honored and His Word proclaimed. Great care was taken to "tie the knot" with precision and nothing was left to chance. By their habituation to the words of the liturgy, each successive generation was reminded of God's timeless truths governing this union of man and wife.
....
Tim Bayly then go on to highlight significant parts of the traditional wedding ceremony used for nearly five centuries and first published in 1549 in the Book of Common Prayer. Besides being an intriguing post, it can lead us in repentance for our arrogant and hasty throwing off of a Biblically solid tradition.
Here is a further part of the Bayly blog with regard to fertility in marriage:
ReplyDelete"Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife; for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and of the Church with an holy seed; and for preventing of uncleanness."
It's discouraging to see how many contemporary marriage ceremonies lack any statement of these purposes. In the past, one of these purposes was occasionally left out of the liturgy, but this was not due to any opposition to the Biblical basis of that purpose; rather, certain ecclesiastical leaders, squeamish about explicit references to sexuality, left the "preventing of uncleanness" unstated. [Footnote 8] But even then, no one would have thought of leaving out of the liturgy all mention of the purposes to which God ordained marriage. There is a different kind of attack on the purposes of marriage today, though, and this attack seems to have staying power.
Back while serving as a pastor within the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA), I was studying our Book of Confessions and discovered that the Westminster Confession's chapter on marriage had been altered; in 1953, all reference to "the increase of mankind...and the Church with an holy seed" had been deleted. [Footnote 9] Since making this discovery, I've often wondered whether our reluctance to rehearse the Biblical purposes of marriage might not be tied up with our uneasiness over the place of fertility in God's plan for sexuality?