Intimacy and Inference: a Comment on GS 1430

Intimacy and Inference: a Comment on GS 1430

by Adrian Thatcher

There is widespread disappointment, even amazement, that the bishops of the Church of England have decided to delay permission to use the Prayers of Love and Faith [PLF] in public worship. The decision was based on the publication of three papers, written for the House of Bishops by the Faith and Order Commission.[1] Thankfully the theological quality of these papers, or rather the lack of it, has already been exposed. Liberal progressive Christians will want to consult these responses.[2] There is still a lot more to say, however, and in this blog I offer some further reflections on the handling of the doctrine of marriage. In a separate blog I reflect on how Jesus is side-lined and the Bible over-valued in GF 1429.

Sexual Intimacy and the Sense of the Faithful

The authors are content with the flawed document GS Misc 1407,[3] which contained what became known as ‘the Nine Theses about the Doctrine of Marriage’. One of these theses is ‘Marriage is for bearing and raising children’. Another is ‘Marriage is the proper context for sexual intimacy’. While the first will be seen by almost all Christians as one of the purposes of marriage, it is not the only one. Some young Christians marry to devote themselves jointly to the service of God, expressly avoiding having children. Are they improperly married? Others marry who are incapable of having children. In both cases the aim of having children is set aside. Other goods than procreation are available that make couples want marriage, and (if they are eligible) churches generally honour their wishes.

Living in Love and Faith  reported that, even among Anglican or Roman Catholic Christians, 82% thought that ‘pre-marital sex’ was ‘rarely wrong’ or ‘not wrong at all’.[4] A more promising response than telling these young Christians they are wrong is to invoke the good Catholic principle of the sensus fidelium (the sensing or sense of people of faith) and to consider whether this overwhelming majority might teach the bishops something different.

But the blithe assumption that ‘Marriage is the proper context for sexual intimacy’ confuses continence with chastity. Holding to it would require celibacy from more than 50% of never married and once married adults in Britain at any one time. Substituting ‘sexual intimacy’ for ‘sexual intercourse’, is an even more extreme version of the old adage ‘no sex before marriage’ because when a straight couple has sexual intercourse, they, and everyone else with the gift of language, know what it is they are doing. Substituting a medical term with a social one might make talk of erotic activities more discussable, but with the obvious consequence that ‘sexual intimacy’ now bars the unmarried from every other type of sexual contact as well. There are countless, creative ways of being intimate with each other. Is marriage now a precondition for a kiss and a cuddle?

The Goods of Marriage: not ‘What?’ but ‘Where?’

The Nine Theses are misleading generalizations that function to cover the long absence of serious doctrinal work on Christian marriage. Our authors, repeating the mistakes of GS Misc 1406, report a ‘theological divergence’ about the goods of marriage. The divergence is that

some traditions in the Church have been prepared to identify and affirm certain goods such as faithfulness, stability, and mutual support wherever they are found, even when they do not exist within marriage as defined by the Church. Others, by contrast, hold that such goods cannot be abstracted from marriage and therefore cannot properly be named or celebrated outside it (para. 12; also para. 21).

The puzzle here is what might be meant by saying that the goods of faithfulness, stability and mutual support ‘cannot be abstracted from marriage’? There are countless relationships where such goods are present. The very existence of these relationships refutes the insistence that such goods belong to marriage alone. Is there some particular characteristic of these goods only to be found in legal versions of marriage recognized by the church?

Is there perhaps a blockage in the flow of divine grace towards all other relationships displaying faithfulness, stability and mutual support? Is there evidence of an abiding supernatural quality residing in Christian marriages alone? Hardly. The confinement of the goods of marriage to marriage devalues the relationships of all unmarried people where the presence of these goods is demonstrated daily. And, about those many Christian marriages where the goods of marriage are marked by their absence, nothing is of course heard.

Unsafe Arguments from Inference

The authors make clear the concern of opponents of the PLF that attendees at a public act of worship that includes the PLF, might mistakenly conclude they had witnessed a marriage when they had not. What is at stake here is inference. The church must now guard itself from providing a (liturgical) occasion where inferences might be made, however tenuous and unjustifiable, by theologically unsophisticated worshippers, that they are witnessing a marriage when they are not. The blessing of a same-sex couple must not be allowed because witnesses of the blessing might think a wedding is going on. ‘it is impossible to escape the reality that the use of the PLF is liable to be received, however unintentionally, as ecclesial endorsement of the relationship being blessed… (para. 14).

But the more serious, actual inferences about same-sex couples are made, not by unsuspecting and naïve attendees at public worship where the PLF are said, but by the authors themselves and their advisors. This is where they make an egregious mistake. They say opponents of the PLF give as their reason for opposing the prayers in public worship that such use ‘inescapably communicates affirmation of the relationship being prayed over, including its sexual dimension’ (para. 18, emphasis added). Since only the married, in their view, can enjoy sexual intimacy, and only straight couples can have children, the inference is drawn that same-sex couples are having sex, and having the wrong sort of sex, because it is not about having children. It would be ‘doctrinally incoherent’ (para. 65) to bless any relationship that was contrary to doctrinal teaching. This is all summed up in para. 81:

The Church’s teaching, as reflected in its formularies, maintains that sexual intimacy is rightly ordered only within marriage between one man and one woman. When a rite publicly blesses a same-sex couple, and does so without any indication that same-sex sexual expression may be morally problematic, there are many who conclude the effect is to normalise something that the Church has taught is inconsistent with its doctrine.

Two inconvenient and overlooked consequences follow from this teaching. If it holds for same-sex couples it holds for straight couples too. The vast majority of Christians who ask for marriage are already in a state of serious sin. They engage in sexual intimacy outside marriage. Is this pointed out? Is confession required? What penances might be appropriate before a marriage can happen? Is marriage to be refused, as blessings are to be refused on same-sex couples, because unsophisticated worshippers attending an authorised wedding might make the mistaken inference that the church condones sex before marriage? Are some sexual sins graver than others because they are committed by persons who are not straightforwardly straight?

The ‘gift of marriage’, according to Common Worship, ‘brings husband and wife together in the delight and tenderness of sexual union and joyful commitment to the end of their lives’.[5] Here is a sentiment (and doubtless a prayer) affirmed by all present whenever a marriage service is conducted. Sadly, though, not only do many marriages not make it to the end of life of one or both parties. Some marriages are irredeemably awful – sites of patriarchy, sexism, power and control, violence and abuse, fear and terror. The evidence for these unfortunate circumstances is overwhelming and growing, and the suffering – physical, psychological and spiritual – can be unbearable.[6]

Why draw attention to this sad circumstance? Because, in the case of same-sex relationships, inferences are being drawn about the sex life (if any) of the couple, whereas in the case of straight marriage, no inference is drawn about sex at all. It’s all delight and tenderness. Unfortunately lots of straight sex, inside as well as outside marriage, is ‘morally problematic’ too. Sex might be violent, or exploitative. It might preclude having children. The church doesn’t want to know about this – it really doesn’t – yet in the case of same-sex couples it sinks into an immoral prurience and curiosity.

Opponents of PLF now want to protect anyone even from imagining what same-sex intimacy might be like. In practice, they may want instead to protect their own prejudices and dark imaginings from scrutiny.

Adrian Thatcher is an Anglican, Editor of Modern Believing, Trustee of Modern Church, and Honorary Professor of Theology at the University of Exeter.

Notes

[1] GS Misc 1429, ‘The Nature of Doctrine and the Living God’; GS Misc 1430, ‘The Doctrine of Marriage and the Prayers of Love and Faith: Texts and Contexts’; GS Misc 1431, ‘The Exercise of Discipline and Exemplarity in the Church of England: The Case of Same-Sex Civil Marriages’.

[2] Professor Mike Higton responding to 1429 –https://viamedia.news/2025/11/17/cries-of-suffering-a-response-to-the-nature-of-doctrine-and-the-living-god/

Professor Andrew Davison also responding to the paper on doctrinal development – https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/14-november/comment/analysis/analysis-beware-of-doctrinal-development

Professor Nicholas Adams giving a general reflection as a member of FAOC – https://substack.com/home/post/p-179105864

A response to each paper by Fr Thomas Sharp on Via Media (https://viamedia.news/category/doctrine/)

[3] I critiqued this paper in the blog ‘A “Theological Vision” or “Myopic Homophobia’?” https://modernchurch.org.uk/adrian-thatcher-a-theological-vision-or-myopic-homophobia

[4] House of Bishops of the Church of England, Living in Love and Faith. London: Church House of Publishing,2020, p. 81, citing the British Social Attitudes survey of 2018.

[5] Common Worship Marriage Service, Preface. https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/marriage#mm094 .

[6] Elizabeth Koepping, Spousal Violence Among World Christians: Silent Scandal, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021; Rachel Starr, Reimagining Theologies of Marriage in Contexts of Domestic Violence, Abingdon: Routledge, 2018; Rachel Starr, ‘Marriage and LLF, Modern Believing, 64.1, 2023, 17-25.