No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
In The Divine Imperative, Emil Brunner has recorded this conviction: ‘The crisis in marriage is a wholly new phenomenon.It presents the Christian ethic with the most serious and the most difficult problem with which a Christian ethic has to deal…. What an ethic has to say on this question shows whether it is any use or not.’ That the problem is a serious one is clear from the frequency with which various aspects of it make ‘news’; that it affects all the churches and perhaps most urgently the national churches of this country is equally evident that many, even within the ministry of the Church of Scotland, are theologically unprepared for its discussion has been demonstrated in many Presbyteries in recent years; and it is clear too that, while discussion has hinged upon remarriage of divorced persons, this is only one side of a large, complex subject, very close to the practical work of the ministry and, for the most part, as yet theologically unexplored. The lack of serious discussion of marriage is in striking contrast to the discussion of baptism, yet, as a matter of practical concern for ministers and people it surely ranks at least as high in urgency. At the moment one cannot hope to do more than introduce some aspects of marriage for discussion on a theological level.
page 31 note 1 Brunner, E., The Divine Imperative, p. 340.Google Scholar
page 32 note 1 The Booke of the Universall Kirk (Maitland Club), i, p. 30.
page 32 note 2 Knox's Works (Ed. D. Laing), 4, pp. 149–57.
page 32 note 3 The Booke of the Universall Kirk, i, p. 54.
page 32 note 4 Dickson, and Edmond, , Annals of Scottish Printing, p. 199Google Scholar. McCrie, C. G., Public Worship of Presbyterian Scotland, p. 104, n. 22.Google Scholar
page 32 note 5 McCrie, loc. cit. pp. 373 ft.
page 32 note 6 Mitchell, A. F., The Scottish Reformation, pp. 123–127.Google Scholar
page 32 note 7 References to ‘The Forme of Mariage’ are to Knox's Works, 4, 198–202.
page 33 note 1 Patrick, D., Statutes of the Scottish Church, p. 39.Google Scholar
page 33 note 2 ibid., pp. 157–8.
page 33 note 3 ibid., pp. 39, 64, 72, etc.
page 34 note 1 McCrie, loc. cit., p. 376.
page 34 note 2 Knox's Works, 4, 198
page 35 note 1 Selwyn, E. G., First Epistle of Peter, Essay II, particularly pp. 419 ff.Google Scholar
page 35 note 2 Brunner, E., The Divine Imperative, pp. 345–346.Google Scholar
page 35 note 3 Berdyaev, N., The Destiny of Man, p. 84.Google Scholar
page 36 note 1 Berdyaev, N., The Destiny of Man, pp. 294–306.Google Scholar
page 36 note 2 Vischer, W., The Witness of the Old Testament to Christ, p. 55.Google Scholar
page 37 note 1 The phrase is repeated word for word in the Form of Solemnisation of Matrimony in the Book of Common Prayer.
page 38 note 1 Brunner, E., The Divine Imperative, pp. 350–356.Google Scholar
page 39 note 1 Gen. 22.17–18.
page 39 note 2 Jer. 23.3.
page 39 note 3 Archbishop Hamilton's Catechism (Ed. Mitchell), Chap, xiv, fol. clxiv.
page 39 note 4 ibid., loc. cit.
page 40 note 1 Calvin's Institutes, Book 2, Chap. 8, Sect. 41–3.
page 40 note 2 ibid., Book 4, Chap. 13, Sect. 3.
page 41 note 1 Calvin's Institutes, Book 2, Chap. 8, Sect. 42.
page 41 note 2 Nygren, A., Agape and Eros, Pt. 2, pp. 19, 20.Google Scholar
page 41 note 3 Gill, E., Autobiography, p. 221.Google Scholar
page 41 note 4 Cp. Berdyaev, loc. cit., pp. 83–4. ‘The great task of man has always been not to destroy but to sublimate sex … Man sinks low overcome by the unregenerate force of sex, and rises high through sublimating it.’
page 42 note 1 A recent and valuable contribution from an Anglican standpoint is D. S. Bailey, The Mystery of Love and Marriage.