Love and Marriage: Thoughts before Utah

This has been a very busy few weeks in various Internet forums concerning marriage equality. Much of the conversation has been at a high level, so high that some have bemoaned the lack of a glossary; while others have just dismissed the theological speculations as having little impact beyond the few who are interested in such things. However, in the interest of continuing understanding, I want to draw attention to several of these essays -- many of them in response to the Report of the Task Force on the Study of Marriage (henceforth TF), or responses to those responses. I do this realizing that General Convention is almost upon us; and I regret not having had the time to draft this response earlier.

The Anglican Theological Review is hosting a conversation page with links to the original TF Report, as well as to a paper by Bauerschmidt et al (henceforth MCC both for the paper and the group of authors) and the responses to it from three academic theologians, and the further response and counter-response. The ATR link page is kept updated, so I simply link to it above, rather than to each individual item on the menu. I am grateful for the acknowledgment in Guiliano's response to Tanner that the original MCC's presentation of Augustine was really more Augustine-as-received-and-finessed by the later church. It certainly wasn't pure Augustine. More on that below.

More helpfully, Craig Uffman has written what I regard as a very helpful essay in constructive theology on the issue. I am particularly taken with his thinking on eschatology from an ethical perspective, shifting from the teleological/deontological split towards something more satisfying and in keeping with a theology that moves in a Godward direction (again more on ethics below).

Then my brother-in-Christ Thomas Bushnell contributed a long response to Craig's essay, in which I think he too advances the discussion in helpful ways; in particular as he raises issues about the unmentionable ("sex!") as central but neglected in the discussion, and provides a very good unpacking of Aristotle's language of causes, which has played a part in marriage conversation ever since the scholastic theologians retrofitted (if that's the right word for an ancient idea lost and rediscovered) Aristotle's notions onto an Augustinian substrate -- rather revising Augustine in the process. (This revisionism is part of what the MCC adopts; to my mind it produces an ethical disaster; but as I say, more on that anon.)

Finally, one of the MCC authors, Jordan Hylden has responded to my earlier piece in response to MCC, claiming that I just don't understand the issues involved. On the contrary, I think it is Hylden and the others in the MCC who fail to grasp the points that the Task Force paper was making, and read into it arguments that simply are not there. As is usual, much of his criticism of my paper asks why I didn't address things I didn't address, and alleges a failure to deal with the real issue, to which I will come very shortly. I promise.

Such pieces add little to the actual conversation, but I am grateful to Hylden for helping me to see where the real divisions lie. These are in areas of ethics and metaphysics, philosophy and moral theology. Which means they are important.

A philosophical difference
One of the chief differences in approach between the TF and MCC lies in the distinction between marriage as an institution and marriages themselves as real instances of a phenomenon. (Those familiar with medieval debates will recognize this as related to one in which William of Ockham was involved.) The TF made this point in its overall thrust towards focusing on the moral values that make a particular marriage holy, rather than in what might make marriage holy as an institution. The TF stresses that moral action is particular, not general, and that it resides in the human heart and will. This also plays into the distinction concerning the various goods or ends of marriage (about which more, from an ethical view, below). Philosophically, this is the difference between idealism and realism. And the MCC and the TF are coming at the issue from these profoundly different perspectives, respectively.

This comes to a head in the discussion of procreation, which appears to be, for many, the stumbling block. From the TF perspective, procreation can be understood as a purpose or good or end of marriage as an institution but need not be understood as such for an actual or particular marriage, and may be an impossibility for any number of specific actual marriages. It seems glaringly obvious to the TF that procreation can take place apart from marriage, and marriage from procreation. It is fine to say, as we have, joining the consensus of the church, that procreation should take place within marriage, but we have rejected the valuation of any given marriage as somehow being less than marriage when the couple do not, or cannot procreate. Many on the other side of the debate also appear to reject that valuation, but their rejection does not seem to follow logically from their basic premise, and to jibe with their rejection of same-sex marriage (at least in part) because it cannot ever even conceivably be "open to life" (as the Roman Church puts it; in a view that is at least consistent in also rejecting contraception.)

This distinction between ideal and real, universal and particular, seems to me to be obvious, and it is embedded in the BCP liturgy with its conditional language concerning procreation ("when it is God's will"). I have come to believe that some will not embrace this obvious reality, in part, because they do not want to cede anything that might appear to allow the marriage of persons of the same sex, for whom procreation is not on the table. But it is equally not on the table for a mixed-sex infertile couple, or a couple advanced in years (for whom even the Roman Church allows marriage, in the one non sequitur in its otherwise consistent teaching). There is a gap between an "ideal" (or virtual) fertility imputed to all mixed-sex couples and the "real" fact that not all mixed-sex or any same-sex couples can procreate. The fact that procreation is ideally a purpose for the institution or establishment of marriage has absolutely no impact on the fact of the a real couple's marriage being fully a marriage, whether they procreate or not. After all, even when procreation happens, it happens some time after the wedding; and there is no suggestion that the marriage isn't a marriage until it has produced offspring. On the contrary, the declaration that the couple are married comes where it does because they have joined hands, exchanged rings, and made their solemn vows -- this is what makes them married. And this is why the TF emphasizes the vows as constitutive of the marriage.

The idealist vs. realist divide is not so great as that between the Ptolemaists and Copernicans, but it is a distinction that runs through the discussions on marriage, and shows up in how the two sides treat the holiness of marriage. The TF holds that marriage as an institution is not our concern. The "institution" or "estate" of marriage is neither good nor bad in itself. (It should be obvious that the "estate" also cannot procreate!) The TF holds that the moral good of marriage is found in the actual marriages themselves, not in some ideal. The virtue of marriage exists in real marriages, or it does not exist at all. Which leads me, at last, to another look at the ethical issues.

The ethical divide
The Task Force sketched out an ethical basis for conversation that was summed up by Kant as treating people as ends-in-themselves, not solely as means-to-an-end. (Hylden wrongly characterizes this as a conflict between Kantian notions and utilitarianism, apparently due to his misreading of the word "utility" in the TF paper, where it is meant in the spirit of how Augustine speaks: in terms of a man's "use" of a woman -- a notion we find objectifying. However, utilitarianism is about a good deal more than mere utility or purpose, and wasn't even on our radar, though we would indeed rule it out as a satisfactory ethic for marriage.) And, of course, the TF is aware that Kant does not disallow the instrumental use of others -- a waiter serving my meal, for instance -- so long as we also respect that service, and that person as an end-in-herself. People may serve one another, but they are not to be objectified as mere appliances.

Part of me regrets that we ever brought Kant into the discussion. It was only because he phrases the ethical issue so clearly. The Task Force paper was certainly not arguing for a wholesale adoption of a Kantian system; for one thing, I don't think his Categorical Imperative on universal maxims is entirely satisfactory. But this one point on treating people as ends is an excellent expression of an idea that is central to Christian morality. We could have left Kant out of the discussion entirely, and simply focused on the same principle as incarnated in the teaching of Hillel, Jesus, Paul, Buber, and Bonhoeffer under a different (or the same) terminology. (Bonhoeffer neatly incorporates this Kantian principle into his social theology -- as essential to sociality -- and his Christology.) Or, in the language of the Baptismal Covenant, respecting "the dignity of every human being."

So this isn't a divide between modernism and tradition, but between a gospel ethic (about which more below) and one nourished by scholasticism.

Unfortunately the Kant reference sent some, such as Hylden, and Don Reed, a philosophy professor whose work Hylden cites, off into 18th and 19th century Enlightenment territory, and the portrayal of the whole discussion as a clash of world-views between classicism and modernism, or communitarianism and liberal individualism -- which is very far from what we intend, and also far from what we actually state, in ethical terms.

The real ethical divide is not between Kant and Bentham (whose utilitarianism -- "the greatest good for the greatest number" sadly forms a substrate of much of modern culture, popular and formal.) The real divide is between what is known as deontological ethics (focusing on duty), and teleological ethics (focusing on ends or goals). These are broad categories, and within each there is a range of thinking, some of it quite contrary even within the group. So, on the duty side you can find, for example, both Divine Command ethics and Kant; while on the goals side you can find utilitarians, but also those who, like the MCC tout a form of ends-based morality that is more or less redolent of Aquinas, based largely on Aristotle. Natural Law ethics falls into this category, and this seems to be the angle from which many on that side of the debate are operating. The MCC have, as I noted, followed Aquinas in dressing Augustine up in Aristotelian clothing -- but my contention is that this suit doesn't really fit, and is inconsistent with Augustine's thinking.

And the problem lies in the fact that the MCC doesn't distinguish between Augustine's original language of "goods" or "fruits" and the Aristotelian language of "ends" or "causes." So the TF and the MCC are speaking different ethical languages. MCC doesn't distinguish between "goods" and "ends"; yet this was the primary point of the TF paper, and it doesn't register in the MCC because they don't appear to see the difference as amounting to anything. Hylden's baseball analogy doesn't really help things very much, beyond perhaps revealing why he doesn't grasp what the TF is saying. He is focused on instrumentalities and levels of performance, about doing good things well, rather than being good and allowing happiness to flow as grace, rather than as the results of works. In this he begs much the same question as Aristotle, for whom it is obvious that justice, courage, and so on are virtues to be practiced, and that happiness lies in the skillful employment of these virtues. But this is not really quite the way Augustine sees things. There is a world of difference between arete and agape.

For it is one thing to speak of procreation, for example, as a goal or end, and quite another to accept it as a good that can, in most marriages, take place. The MCC seem to be presenting procreation as what Aristotle would call a final cause: this is the reason marriage exists. The problem with approaches using such causality, particularly final causality, as Brother Thomas points out in his very helpful examination of the failings of causal language when applied to moral issues, is twofold: it is difficult to fix the absolutely final cause (reason a thing exists) for many things or activities; and it is difficult to attach moral valence to that cause even when you can fix it. Does one play baseball so as to win games, to "play baseball well," or for fun, or for exercise, or to entertain, or to make a six-figure income? The "reason baseball exists" may include all of these things speaking of the institution, but for any particular player of baseball only one or two may apply; and the player may or may not achieve her goal, or be capable of achieving it, whatever it is. Perhaps that person shouldn't play baseball -- which seems to be Hylden's conclusion in his baseball analogy: same-sex couples shouldn't marry because they cannot achieve the principle end of marriage. But this is, as I hope most people used to following these debates can see, begging the question: the assertion that procreation is an "end" of marriage as an institution and in the actual marriages, in a causal sense. That is the very point we contest. We hold that procreation is a blessing that comes to some of those marriages in which it is possible. It is a purpose for the institution of marriage that may or may not be realized, as the BCP say, "when it is God's will." And as it is conditional, it simply cannot be final.

Obviously, it is easy to argue that procreation is not the final cause of marriage -- child-rearing holds a better claim. There is clear evolutionary evidence that marriage helps stabilize the child's environment for growth to maturity; ideally, that is. In the real world, the moral end is not just child-rearing, but, as the BCP stresses, raising a child in the knowledge and love of the Lord. It makes little sense to say, "Every child has a right to be raised by her biological parents," and a great deal of sense to say, "Every child has a right to be loved and cared for, and her parents have a duty to do so; but if they are unable so to do, the child has every right to an alternative upbringing." A good marriage is a context for good child-rearing, whether the child is born to the parents, or adopted. I will reflect below further on the question of the relative moral weight of these two options. And with that in mind, let me turn to the ethical principle that the TF has advanced.

A gospel ethic
The primary ethic the TF discerns in the teaching of Jesus and Paul is what I call Gospel Altruism. This counters the essentially egoist leanings of Aristotle, for whom the main focus is on happiness and "being good." For Aristotle, even self-sacrifice for the sake of ones friends is primarily good because it ennobles and leaves behind a good name -- these are the ends, the teloi.

The altruistic ethic of Jesus is different. When, for example, the rich young man asks Jesus what good deed he must do to inherit eternal life (Matt 19:16ff), Jesus affirms first that "goodness" is with God alone. He then cites duty to obey the divine commandments, expanding on some of the commandments from the Decalogue by adding part of what he regarded as the Summary of the whole Law, to love ones neighbor as oneself. Thus far Jesus in in perfect sync with a deontological ethic of Divine Command. When the man says he has done all this, Jesus ups the ante by saying perfection will only be found in abandoning all his wealth to the poor, and dedicating himself as a disciple. Only a total self-offering can perfectly save the self. In the altruism of Jesus, to lose is the only way to win -- at the end (eschaton) in the kingdom of God: to lose this world only for the sake of the next and final world.

This is the ethic of one who came to serve, not to be served. It is the ethic that stands in response to the ancient question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" It is summed up nowhere so clearly as in Jesus' own exposition of the Golden Rule. I have written extensively about this ethic elsewhere, so here simply note that it is oriented towards the other (altruistic) and positive: it is a commandment to do as one would be done by; not to do good to another so as to receive good in return. There is no goal of recompense in this formula; in fact, Jesus, throughout his teaching, sees doing good in order to get something in return to miss the point. For example, one with this worlds goods is to invite the poor to dinner, precisely because they will not be able to return the favor. (Luke 14:14) The "end" is in the act itself, and in the one to and for whom the good is done; the end and the good are one. (This is the import the TF were attempting to give by using the Kantian formula.) There is, of course, a reward for this good, but it is eschatological, not teleological. It is about the final cause, or ultimate end of humanity, why humanity exists.

Humanity came into existence as the earthly image of the transcendent God. The transitory purpose was to fill the earth and subdue it. But the ultimate end for humanity is "to enjoy God for ever," as one Catechism puts it. God is, of course, the perfect altruist. God is all gift, without any need at all. As creatures, humans do have needs, but the blessedness of God is expressed in human beings when they too give of themselves in mutual service to others, the abundance of one supplying the need of another, bearing one another's burdens in a shared life. In marriage, this is embodied not in the objectifying use of each other but the mutual gift of each to the other. We treat other human beings as ends in themselves because they are the earthly embodiment of the image of God, our final end.

As Augustine put it in his essay On the Trinity (8) the ultimate purpose of all human action is the contemplation of God. But the TF view affirms that as "no one has seen God" in this world, God has given us each other as images of God to practice on -- to take baby steps as children of God; to learn to love God by loving each other, as God loves us, altruistically. As the great theologian of love, John the Divine, reminds us, "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen." (1John 4:20) And as the ultimate love of God is revealed in the Paschal mystery, so too human beings best express that love in acts that reflect that self-offering.

The principle applied to marriage
This is one reason that Paul picks up on Jesus' Summary statement, "Love your neighbor as yourself," as part of his excursus on marriage in Ephesians 5. As the TF noted, this excursus is not so much to show that marriage is an embodiment of the divine love, as that the divine love is the template upon which marriages should be based -- reflecting the sacrificial love of Christ. (The passage in question is part of a fairly standard sequence of moral advice to households, mirroring and expanding on that in Colossians 3; Ephesians does make more of marriage; but perhaps not so much as some people think.) The great mystery of marriage and its relation to the church is the mystery of self-giving love revealed in Jesus Christ, expounded on earlier in Ephesians (2:13-14) concerning another case of the two becoming one: how Jesus, in his own flesh, has broken down the division between Jew and Gentile. The Apostle's message for married couples, as for parents and children and slaves and masters, is the same as Jesus' own answer to the question about loving the neighbor: "Go and do likewise." That is Paul's conclusion, directed to husbands and wives before he completes the household table setting with advice to children and parents, and slaves and masters.

The original TF paper expounded on the significance of Ephesians concerning this ethic of altruism, but a few additional words are perhaps of use here, to take up, for example, the ethic that ought to inform Christian celibacy. If celibacy is approached as a kind of Aristotelian egoism -- merely to be noble from an ascetic point of view -- it is hard to see how it jibes with the Gospel value of altruism. Only when the celibate has made this choice so as to be of service to others, free from responsibilities to her spouse so as to serve the church, does it rise to the level of Christian virtue. As Paul counsels in 1 Corinthians 7, this is about having an undivided mind focused on "the affairs of the Lord." It is also a conscious choice not to procreate, but it has often in the Christian tradition been cast as a form of marriage, in which the celibate is married to the Lord -- sometimes explicitly so with a wedding band. And, perhaps it goes without saying, the estate of celibacy was held to be morally superior to that of marriage throughout much of the church's history. This is, in particular, an element of Augustine's world-view that scarcely makes an appearance in today's discussions.

Altruism is also important in how adoption, rather than procreation, figures as a dominant image in the Pauline corpus and the life of Jesus (as Virgin-born and foster-fathered). It could well be observed that a same-sex or infertile couple who adopt children and raise them are making an altruistic ethical choice superior to that of biological parents raising their own children; since in doing so one set of couples is fostering the future possibilities of someone else's genetic heritage, while the biological parents are sheltering their own. Again, as noted above, it is the quality of child-rearing that is ultimately important, and there is no question that good child-care is better than bad, and the insistence that children being raised by their biological parents has either an ideal or real virtue is spurious and unsustainable.

These are just a few of the additional implications to an embrace of an ethic of Gospel Altruism. The Task Force report tried to lay out some of this in relation to marriage, and some still seem unable to grasp how this works. I hope this further explanation helps to clarify.

What about sex?
Brother Thomas also said some very good things about sex in his essay. One thing he notes is that sex is usually pleasurable, or ought to be. We need not buy into an ethic of hedonism, however, since pleasure has its place in the "mutual joy" of marriage. The stress is on "mutual" and this fits in with an altruistic ethic when sex is understood not as the "use" of another (the language of much of the tradition), but as the gift of oneself to another. The greatest pleasure in sexual relations is the giving of pleasure to one's spouse, and as each make this gift to the other, "all their occasions shall dance for joy." Of course, the question of "what sex is for" presumes we know "what sex is." And that itself has changed over time.

One of the problems with sex, as with marriage, is attributing to it a final cause (procreation). In reality, procreation is one of the possible fruits of some sex. A Venn diagram would likely be helpful here and I'm sure you can picture it: the three circles are sex, procreation, and marriage. They do come together at the center -- but there is plenty of territory outside that center including some areas where there is no overlap at all. People can deplore sex outside of marriage, or sex within marriage in which procreation is avoided, but sex is still sex, and its ideal purpose or final cause may be different in different minds. So the Natural Law view that there is an intrinsic necessity that sex be open to procreation does not jibe with reality.

A little natural history is probably in order. There was a time when people didn't know that sex was connected with reproduction. The earliest humans likely just thought that most women naturally gave birth at a point in their lives. That was very long ago. Even Adam, still in the Garden, called Eve the mother of all living, and they had to wait to leave the garden and take up agriculture before they put two together to make up one. It was likely agriculture and animal husbandry that brought about the next great observation, connecting sex with procreation. But the theory that explained the process involved attributing the main responsibility for procreation to the male, who planted his seed in the fertile soil of the woman, where it would grow and develop. (Of course, they didn't know that seeds are actually embryos, and the real male contribution is pollen, but theories are theories and reality is reality.) What, under this theory, did the woman provide? Well, the wise observers saw that the flow of menstrual blood stopped with pregnancy, so it must be the blood that was used to construct the growing embryo. This was the dominant thinking in most human cultures for millennia, even up to the invention of the microscope, when the first to look at sperm thought they saw little cows and horses in the respective samples.

This "spermist" view was, to a large extent, the reasoning behind much of the opposition to things that might either confuse or waste the "seed." Polyandry, male homosexuality, sex beyond the time of a woman's fertility, and a man's "use" of other than the "natural" even with his wife came to be seen as wrong. (For the latter, see Augustine, Good of Marriage 12.) Sex was, for most of human history, something men did, mostly to women, sometimes to other men (Leviticus can't conceive of sex in any other way, so it condemns men treating other men like women.).

But as with Ptolemy and Copernicus, we now know that this isn't how sex works. I doubt that many today would support Augustine's doctrine on the mechanism of transmission of original sin (if they even know of his peculiar speculations about sex in Eden, and the willful membrum virile). Moreover, many Christians (even members of church bodies that teach otherwise) no longer hold that sex within marriage without the purpose of procreation is wrong, whether grave or venial. (The view that sex must have procreation as an intended end, and should cease at a certain age, was looked at as "one of those great things they did in the old days" even by Augustine, who admired the asceticism of his forebears; though even he saw that intimacy with one's wife "beyond the necessity of begetting is pardonable" [ibid.] though as with all sex in the postlapsarian world, marred with concupiscence.)

So a principle rationale for the condemnation of male same-sexuality in the tradition is based on a false premise, and a standard to which most no longer hold themselves.

Closing thoughts
Where does this leave us? I sense that the academic debates hosted by the blogs and the Anglican Theological Review and The Living Chuch are not likely going to convince anyone who has contributed to them, probably few that read them. There may, however, be some play among the deputies and bishops who will be gathering in Utah in just under a week. But I don't think it will be the essays or debates that change their minds, if they change. It will be the human face of love.

The claim has been that we must "do the theology" in order to make any changes in our discipline -- and whether you like it or not, the theology has been done, on both sides. I'm grateful for Brother Thomas' essay on the Emperor's New Theological Clothes for pointing out the obvious historical truth that the church does not "do the theology" before acting. Normally it is quite the opposite. After all, the church was content not to have a spelled-out theology of the Trinity for over two centuries, and a (literally) fleshed-out theology of the Eucharist had to wait almost a millennium, and even then the debates continued with sharp differences of opinion.

This is not to say that theological work should not continue, as it is important work. But it is after-the-fact work, work of explanation and understanding, not of action. And, it is hoped, the theological reflection is both rigorous and accountable to the actual evidence of reality, rather than spinning off into idealism. It is up to the church to decide between the world of scholastic categories and the ethics of the gospel. It will be in the lives of married couples -- mixed- and same-sex, that we will see the virtues Jesus valued; or not at all. One of the fruits of this debate is that many have come to grasp more about marriage from their experience of same-sex couples than they ever understood before. This may be how such couples best serve the church. To those who are aghast at such an assertion, I simply point out that it would not be the first time that the stone rejected by the builders proved to be just what was needed to hold the building up.

In the meantime the issues surrounding marriage may really be so simple a child can understand. For instance, here is a dialogue between a father and his five-year old child:

Child: Daddy, why do people get married?
Father: So that they can have children.
Child: But Uncle Jim and Aunt Barbara are married, and they don't have any children.
Father: Well, they love each other very much.
Child: Oh, that's o.k. then.

Is it really as simple as that? This is a dialogue I think St Augustine would have recognized and agreed with; even Aquinas in his better moments would have nodded and smiled. More importantly, so, I think, would Jesus. I would hope such a dialogue would find as friendly response in the episcopal palace and the academy -- for if it does not, I think those who inhabit those cloistered spaces may have missed the point entirely. I pray the point strikes home in Salt Lake City.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Faithful Readings

I would like to conclude my response to Ephraim Radner’s review of Reasonable and Holy with a few comments on his views of my biblical hermeneutic. Perhaps the strangest thing in this strange review is that Radner appears not to recognize what I am doing as entirely within the range of the classical Biblical interpretation. I suspect his assumption must be something like, “If your result disagrees with the doctrinal tradition, then your technique or method must diverge from the exegetical tradition.” I may be putting words into his mouth, but this is the only premise that can make sense of his further comments. Taken on its own, as a premise, it is clearly false, as many people using identical exegetical methods, at various stages in the history of engagement with Scripture, have come to very different conclusions as to its meaning and application.

However, the least accurate characterization Radner makes of my biblical approach is to call it “Liberal Protestantism.” Liberal, perhaps, but only in the sense that Richard Hooker was liberal in comparison with Walter Travers. Protestant, but only in the sense of the classical Anglicanism of the Elizabethan Settlement, or the Evangelicalism of Luther, and certainly not in the mid-19th to mid-20th century meaning of the word. If seeking a cohesive message from Scripture — such as my own that its sufficient purpose is salvation through grace by faith in Christ (an aim Radner seems to find less than fruitful, as he puts save in scare-quotes!) — then he is equally guilty of such an appeal, when he criticizes me for not developing a “larger scriptural vision” along the lines of John Paul II. If anything, Radner’s approach, and what he appears to be asking me to do, is more along the lines of the liberal protestant academy of the late 19th century.

To take one example, which I referred to in the earlier post: Radner accuses me (I think) of misrepresenting Rob Gagnon on the question of Jesus’ use of porneiai. Here is Radner:

...On the issue of whether Jesus actually says anything about homosexuality, [Haller] attacks Gagnon on his reading of porneiai in Mark 7:21ff. as possibly implying homosexual practice.

Haller provides some straightforward initial questions, ones that are worth noting, and then pursues his general theme of same-sex references in the Bible as being primarily aimed at cultic prostitution. One might think that Gagnon is a rather silly man on this basis. But the reader is never told that Gagnon himself doesn’t put much weight on the very argument Haller attacks (half a paragraph, on a verse he questions as “authentically” Jesus’ in any case), while Haller, on the other hand, deals with the question at length (four pages).

First of all, to the accuracy of Radner’s characterization of Gagnon. From his reference to my book, one would think this was Gagnon’s only statement on what Jesus thought about homosexuality. In fact, it is the only text Gagnon can attempt to twist so as to put an actual condemnation of homosexuality (in his mind) into Jesus’ mouth. Gagnon, after all, is capable of such astounding statements as, “Jesus, both in what he says, and what he fails to say, remains squarely on the side of those who reject homosexual practice.” (B&HP, 228, emphasis mine) So much for actual fidelity to the text! However, I was addressing Gagnon’s earlier statement:

...No first-century Jew could have spoken of porneiai (plural) without having in mind the list of forbidden sexual offenses in Leviticus 18 and 20 (incest, adultery, same-sex intercourse, bestiality). The statement underscores that sexual behavior does matter. If Jesus made this remark, he undoubtedly would have understood homosexual behavior to be included among the list of offenses. (ibid. 191-2)

Contrary to Radner’s assertion, Gagnon expresses no doubt whatsoever that porneiai “undoubtedly” includes “homosexual behavior.” In addition, Gagnon holds very lightly indeed any doubt he may have that this verse is an actual statement by Jesus (“If Jesus made this remark...”) — for Gagnon, Jesus damns if he does say it, and damns if he doesn’t. This is a bizarre combination of Jesus Seminar color-coding and pure eisegesis — hardly what I would call sound scholarship. And yet this passage from Gagnon is quoted widely as a definitive summary of Jesus’ position on the subject, including in the Church of England’s House of Bishops’ position paper, Some Issues in Human Sexuality. Do I think Gagnon a “rather silly man.” No, but perhaps a dangerous one, whose agenda is at all costs to spin either what the Scripture says or what it doesn’t into an overarching message of disapprobation.

+ + +

I, too, of course, do have a “larger Scriptural vision,” though it may be that Radner cannot grasp it because he doesn’t share it. He dismisses my hermeneutic based on the “Summary of the Law” as if it were not in fact “a consistent moral ‘principle’ (discerned somehow as divine)” by which we are to understand the Scripture. I think that is exactly what it is, and from the mouth of Jesus himself.

This view is not some modern concoction out of Liberal Protestantism, as Radner thinks, nor is it a means simply to dispose of difficult passages, but the means to place them in their proper perspective in the over-all plan of salvation. This principle of biblical interpretation is the basis of Jesus’ and Paul’s own engagement with Scripture — and it is the font that waters the best reflections of the early church. As Saint Augustine put it,

Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up the twofold love of God and neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. If, on the other hand, a man draws a meaning from them that may be used for the building up of love, even though he does not happen upon the precise meaning which the author whom he reads intended to express in that place, his error is not pernicious, and he is wholly clear from the charge of deception. (On Christian Doctrine 1.36[40])

As Augustine later says, it is better to be accurate than not, and error should be corrected. But let the correction itself by clear and sound and specific — and not like the dense circularity of Gagnon, or the flippant dismissal of Radner.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Understanding God

SJF • Last Epiphany 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.+

Paul the Apostle, in that beautiful passage we heard today, acknowledges the incompleteness of our knowledge about God. “We know only in part,” he assures us, and even what we do know is like a reflection in a dusty mirror, a dim vision of the heart of reality that is too much for our eyes to take in.

The simple fact is that, as the old hymn said, the full truth of God’s love — for God is Love — “is broader than the measure of man’s mind” — beyond our full comprehension.

Have you ever tried to get a good look at the Empire State Building from 34th street? Well, if you have, you know you can’t see much. Standing at its base, you are too close to take it in — it is so overwhelming. Even from across the street you are still too close, and if you get further away other buildings will obstruct your view. The only place really to get an idea of how tall the Empire State Building is is to go blocks and blocks away, or even to Brooklyn or New Jersey — where you can then see it rising far above all of its neighbors.

Well, if this is true of a human construction, how much more of the creator of the world and all that is in it? We know from our reading of Scripture that Moses talked with God face to face — though even then we also know that God must have toned down his glory so that Moses would be able to converse with him. The one time Moses asked to see God in all his glory, just prior to the passage from Exodus that we read this morning, God told Moses he could not bear it and live, and so God made Moses stand in a cleft of the rock, with God’s own hand upon him until the fullness of God’s glory passed by, and only then did God take his hand away and let Moses see God’s back — the back of God’s glory — and that was enough to cause Moses’ face to shine with the reflection of that divine light. And ever after Moses had to wear a veil over his face, so that even this reflection of the back of God’s glory would not be too much for the people to bear.

And in our Gospel today, three of the apostles witness the revelation of God’s glory manifest in Jesus on the mountain-top; but even then the cloud of God’s presence mutes and filters and overshadows the dazzling scene — so that they might not be struck dead at the sight of God’s full glory revealed.

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So how can we come to any understanding of God? Well, first of all, as the doctor said, “Take two tablets and call me in the morning!” Moses comes down from his meeting with God, his face glowing from the encounter, but also bearing those two tablets of the covenant in his hand, God’s word, written by God’s own hand, ready to be delivered to the people. In this we may understand all of Scripture to be meant — all of the Word of God delivered to us in the Law and Prophets and Writings, in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and their letters, and the visions old and new.

And yet, just as the people couldn’t bear to look at Moses’ face, so too people then as now find even the second-hand glory of God’s Word in Scripture hard to understand — it will come as no news to you that there are as many different interpretations of Scripture as there are believers. There is an old Jewish saying that if you don’t like how your rabbi interprets the Scripture, you can always find another rabbi; and that in a room with five rabbis you’ll find at least six different interpretations. The same is surely true of Christians as well.

In fact, Christians can’t even on the whole agree on what the Bible is, let alone what it means, as Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, and Protestants disagree about which books of the Old Testament are to be included in the Bible — books accepted by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox as a part of their Bible are considered Apocrypha (suitable for reading but not for doctrine) by Anglicans and Lutherans, and not even included at all by Protestants. That’s why you’ll find different editions of the Bible with different books in different places, and sometimes going by different names.

Beyond these differences in the content of Scripture, in what the Bible is, we come to the various interpretations of Scripture. And here too, there is wide difference of opinion both between churches and within them. Every church will have a different understanding, or many different understandings, different shades of interpretation.

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So, how do we know which we should follow? Ultimately that question is rhetorical, as surely people will follow the interpretation that makes sense to them, that seems to speak to them, or else, as in the saying I quoted before, they’ll go off to find another rabbi — or priest or minister or church.

But I think there is some guidance to be found in what Saint Paul says in that passage from First Corinthians, about the need for love as the standard by which we judge whether our understanding and interpretation is in accord with God’s will. For as Paul says, even if he could speak as eloquently as an angel, or in miraculous tongues, or with powerful prophecy, or with an understanding of all mysteries and all knowledge — if his understanding and speaking and teaching were not based on love, it would all be for nothing. If his teaching or preaching or his prophecy did not ring the note of love, it would be like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And what kind of teaching would that be?

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Saint Augustine of Hippo was one of the early great expounders of Scripture. He had been a young man-about-town, living the high life, but he experienced a conversion and became a Christian towards the end of the fourth century. (He credited his conversion to the prayers of his mother, Saint Monica, and you can see them conversing in our stained-glass window in the corner.)

Augustine had a fundamental rule when it came to interpreting Scripture, and it was based on Saint Paul’s advice, under the governance of the love commanded by God — the love of God and neighbor. Augustine wrote: “If it seems to you that you have understood the Scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by this understanding you do not build up the twin love of God and neighbor, then you have not understood them... If on the other hand you have made judgments about [Scripture] that are helpful for building up this love, but for all that have not said what the author you have been reading actually meant ..., then your mistake is not serious, and you certainly cannot be accused of lying.” (On Christian Doctrine 1.36.40.)

This was Augustine’s standard, and it was wisdom then as now. Does how you read the Scripture, understand the Scripture, and teach the Scripture build up — or to use the old word, does it edify? Is your understanding set upon the firm foundation of the love of God and neighbor? That is a sound foundation, and Augustine makes clear that even if your interpretation of the Scripture might depart from what Moses or Isaiah or Saint Paul himself may originally have intended, you will not go far wrong if that interpretation leads to a greater love of God and neighbor. Love is the key that unlocks the Scripture, and that is true all the time, not just on Valentine’s Day!

For ultimately, love is God’s message, what God has been trying to get across to us from the very beginning — from the very first time God wrote with God’s own hand anything down to instruct the people, on those two tablets of stone, which I hope you will notice in the first tablet, the first four commandments how we are to love God (honoring God alone, not having idols, respecting God’s name, and keeping the Sabbath) and in the final six telling us how we are to love our neighbors (by honoring our parents, not killing, cheating, stealing, lying, or coveting).

And if we needed any further instruction, after all of that, Jesus himself provides us with a summary of the law of the two tablets as the very instruction that Augustine would later take as his key to interpreting the Scripture: to love God with your whole self, and to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two, as he said, hang all the law and the prophets — that is, all the rest of Scripture.

As another old hymn puts it, “What more can he say than to you he hath said?” Do you want to understand the Scripture? Do you? Let me repeat to you what God himself says in today’s Gospel in reference to Jesus, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”+

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Thought for 11.12.09

One of the tragic discontinuities in the Western Christian Tradition, since Augustine anyway, is the notion that the universe at hand (that is, as we know it) is simply not as it ought to be. This offers a neat way to avoid any data that might actually be at our disposal in favor of unrealized (and unrealizable) idealistic hopes and dreams. That this worldview is not one Jesus would have comprehended ('the kingdom is among you') is bypassed in the interests of privileging some of what is "natural" over and against other things equally "natural" (but deemed "fallen"). And the choice is sometimes quite arbitrary, depending on whose cow is sacred, and whose ox is gored.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Coinherent Bishop

An online conversation with a bishop, friend, and colleague sparked a few thoughts about ministry, particularly the ministry of bishops. What I will say here applies to all of the "ordered" ministries of bishop, priest, and deacon, but also to the wider ministry of the whole people of God. Indeed, my fundamental thesis is that no ordered ministry properly functions apart from the people of God.

Drawing on the language of Trinitarian theology, one can say that any ordained ministry is coinherent with the other ordained ministries and with the ministry of the faithful. For the purposes of this brief reflection, I will focus on the episcopate, and its coinherence with the church. Certainly we've had enough of incoherent bishops of late, from the abreactions of Durham to the megalomania of Pittsburgh, as well as somewhat less than pellucid prose from the chair of Augustine.

The bishop is, first and foremost, also a priest and deacon — one of the best arguments against per saltum ordination lies in this coinherent reality. That is, the bishop exercises both the gathering and teaching ministries of the priesthood, as well as the missional and prophetic ministries of the diaconate — and note as well that all of these ministries subsist in relation to the whole people of God: calling together the assembly which is the church (the ekklesia), teaching and convicting them and leading them in prayer with boldness and spirit, and sending them forth to do the work of God in the power of that self-same Spirit. It all hangs together.

Or it hangs separately, as Franklin observed. For when any of the ordered ministers of the church takes it into his or her mind to be a loner, unless their witness is ratified by the Spirit acting in the life of the church, repenting as they did at the sign of Jonah (his preaching), the very singularity of the act, and the lack of reception, reveals the misguidedness of the solitary or schismatical motion.

This is one of the reasons that episcopal acts, even those undertaken by a validly consecrated bishop, are of no effect if exercised apart from the church. The "power" or authority of a bishop is not a personal power exercised for the church, but the corporate power of the whole church exercised through that person. This relates to the doctrines of the Incarnation and Atonement. As William Law pointed out, Christ did not suffer and die in our place (that is, we still all suffer and die) but for our sakes. He did this having assumed unto himself all of human nature; that is, our flesh and blood, from the womb of his Blessed Mother. He was not simply a representative human, but all of humanity itself, human Being itself, together with God's Being in one person.

So too with the ministers of the church, perhaps especially bishops who are called upon in many circumstances to be the voice of the church to the larger world (though I note that this is a ministry they share with deacons, and still as deacons, priests), it is vital they recall that they speak in the church's true accent, rather than merely their own. The bishop is coinherent with the whole body of the church, and acts not in its place, but as its instrument. One of the positive notes in the proposed Ridley-Cambridge draft of an Anglican Covenant, is the recognition of the role of bishop's personal ministry not only in Synod, but "collegially and within and for the eucharistic community." (3.1.2-3) The bishop is not a monarch, but a minister. His or her "power" is not magical and individual, but derives entirely from the larger church of which she or he is an integral part and organ. Otherwise it would be Harry Potter instead of Henry Potter!

The bishop acting outside or apart from the church as an episcopus vagans is like an electric fan unplugged from its source of power. Its blades may show some signs of movement in a strong wind, but are of no effect in actually generating a breeze. And the same is true of any minister, ordered or lay, who amputated from the body of fellow-believers attempts still to function as an organ of the body.

We are, in the long run, all in this together. Lone wolves go hungry. And shepherds are nothing without their sheep.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Friends, Romans, and Pagans

Over at Hobdee again, I was challenged on my assertion that natural law arguments derived from pagan philosophy form the major part of the traditional case against same-sexuality. One need only look at Aquinas to see a typical example; while he of course mentions the Scripture to support his argument, his primary appeal is to natural law.

Such an appeal to pagan concepts of natural law as opposed to Scripture on this issue go back to St. Paul himself in Romans 1, in his only extended comment on male homosexual acts. (As those who have read my book will know, whether he is referring to female homosexual acts or not is an open question; it is as likely, and more consistent with the argument he is making, if the reference is to women who "exchanged the natural use" by allowing their husbands, as the rabbis would say, "to turn the table" and make use of "penetration by the other way" -- at least that is how Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo understood Paul.)

Paul himself critiques all of this behavior on pagan grounds, concerned as he is in this chapter with the pagans to whom he refers: those having failed to perceive God who is evident in nature and are convicted on the basis of their own understanding of and failure to abide by "natural law" derived from Stoic philosophy.

Jewish biblical law, as I hope most of you know, does not forbid lesbianism, nor "turning the table" between husband and wife. So Paul's appeal here must be to an extra-biblical law, in order to frame a cogent argument — since he is speaking of those "outside the law [of Moses]." This is also why NT Wright and others who read Genesis into Romans 1 are mistaken — the Gentiles to whom Paul refers didn't know Genesis, but, as Paul argues, should have been able to see what was right from nature, to which they did have access. That's point one of Paul's thesis. He then, of course, goes on to point two: blast those who relied on the Law of Moses for salvation.

That is the whole object of Paul's case, after all, in Romans: Gentiles are not saved by following natural law, Jews are not saved by following the Law of Moses — because no one is perfect in following any law at all. Law cannot save. All are saved, Jew and Greek alike, not by their own conscientious following of any law, but by Jesus Christ, and him alone, by grace through faith.

That is Paul's Gospel.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Fruit of the Rule of Love

a review of Find Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart; by the Women of Magdalene with Becca Stevens. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008

The Rule of Saint Benedict is commonly credited with being one of the instruments by which Western civilization was supported and maintained through some difficult times in its early middle age. The Rule’s sanity, generosity, and above all, charity, are the means by which a community of persons can foster stability, through inward conversion from inordinate focus on the self towards living with and for others.

The remarkable elasticity of the Rule led to many adaptations and revisions — and reforms — down through the years. But I think that none even of the most ardent revisers or reformers would ever have conceived that an adaptation of the Rule would bring new life to scores of women who until that transformative encounter had been living on the streets as prostitutes and drug addicts. But as the old song says, grace is amazing.

A little over a decade old, Magdalene is a two-year residential and support community for women coming out of correctional facilities or off the street, from lives marked by abuse, prostitution and addiction. It began with the Reverend Becca Stevens, Episcopal chaplain at Saint Augustine’s (Vanderbilt University). She conceived of creating a safe place for women, a place not merely as a house but as a home. We all know there is a difference, a crucial one.

We also know how sadly true it is for the church both to get and to give the second-best (“I’m buying a new microwave so I’ll give the old one to the church...” You know how it goes.) Becca insisted that this home would be properly furnished, with decent furniture and a real comfortable living room, and bedrooms with beds with clean sheets. It would also be located in a residential district; not just outside the prison doors or the city gates. Soon one house grew to two and then another, as those who lived there truly found new life. Magdalene has expanded to include programs helping male first-time offenders understand and come to terms with how demeaning their use of women is, and the harm they do in contributing to a brutal system. Thistle Farms, a nonprofit maker of all-natural body care products, was launched in 2001. It is named for the hardy plant that is the sole survivor on streets the women walked in their former lives — and again in their new lives as angels of mercy helping other women to move from the old life to the new.

In Find Your Way Home the women of Magdalene recite their Rule and tell their story. In some ways reading this tender volume is like being present at a Greater Chapter, where by tradition the members of the Benedictine household would hear their Rule and reflect on it. True to Benedict’s own injunction that the youngest shall be heard, this collection of voices reflects the range of participants in the Magdalene households.

A major feature of these households is that they are not “run” so much as lived in. Although there are staff and volunteer supporters, it is the women themselves who form the community and learn to work out their differences within that community by following the Rule and living into it. Such is its generous charity that women who had been hardened by abuse — both by others and of themselves — have found themselves transformed by love.

The Rule itself, broken down chapter by chapter into short segments, is a wonderful adaptation of Benedict’s charitable and sane spirit. The reflections by the women of Magdalene that follow each section of the Rule form a powerfully moving recitation. Remember, for many of these women this will be the first time they have lived in a real home or experienced love from another person, or in some cases for another person. Imagine the experience of a woman fresh from prison being given a key to the front door and a room of her own with clean sheets on the bed. Well, you don’t have to imagine — her testimony is there for you to read. And it will move your heart.

I am tempted to cite other of passages but instead I simply urge you to obtain a copy of this short book. I began reading it on the subway on my way to a diocesan meeting and found tears running down my face as I read of the gratitude that woman felt on being given a key, as she knelt down to kiss the floor of her new home. There are many such moments of healing, thanksgiving, and transformation in this little book. It is a reassurance that God is at work.

The Rule of the women of Magdalene has something to say to us all as well. By that I mean all Christians, but particularly in these days of tension in the Anglican Communion, it is well to remember that Gregory the Great, who sent Augustine to England and so in some sense founded the Church of England, was an admirer and first biographer of Benedict. And so I will end this brief review with one of the chapters of the Rule to which I think it would do us all good to attend:

Chapter 8: Let God Sort It Out
In community our job is not to judge or say, “I told you so.” We trust that God will sort things out, so we don’t have to second-guess every decision someone else makes.
We are here to love one another in the most radical way possible, without judgment, and to pray that others can love us in the same way.
We give drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry, comfort to the sorrowful, clothing to the naked, and companionship to the imprisoned and dying. We wash one another’s feet.

Couldn’t the Anglican Communion learn something from the women of Magdalene? They have surely grasped an aspect of the life-saving, life-giving Gospel that many of us seem to have forgotten. It is not too late to learn from the thistle and its farmers, not too late to follow the example of the woman who loved much, rather than the Pharisee who sat in judgment.

— Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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You can hear more from the women of Magdalene at the new blog, Voices of Thistle Farms.

Update on Sundry Matters

Well... the old computer has been replaced, grudgingly, by a new one with Windows Vaster... uh, Vista. I am experiencing some of the expected quirks and quibbles, though not enough to keep me from working. Most importantly, I've been able to make use of some of my favorite antiquated software by applying Compatibility Settings from the dim ages of operating systems past. (If there is any reason for my reluctance to make the Mac switch, it is my fondness for these archaic but helpful utilities, which some day, if the switch becomes inevitable, I will find still run under a Windows Emulation of Some Sort.) Meanwhile, discovering things such as the disappearance of the Parallel Port (and the need to find a USB-to-Parallel adapter cable so I didn't have to buy a new printer as well) have kept things interesting. Much gleaning of the internet has led to being able to install software people said can't run under WinVista. I really do pity the less than computer savvy: I've been at this since the days of hexadecimal code and machine language, and am not terrified to go under the hood if need be; but I can see how this whole thing is a nightmare for anyone less adept at the mysteries.

I am still struggling with Facebook, and find it to be interminably slow if it loads into Firefox at all. I've checked with Firefox folks and they suggest a virus, but I don't think that's it, as I've used all the virus scanners on the market and they come up negative. I get notes from people via Facebook but am very frustrated not to be able to respond in my preferred browser. Facebook runs and runs faster on IE, which I don't like just on principle, and I begin to think it is something about Firefox, or Facebook, or the two together.

In the meantime, the good news is that I have been able finally to finish my manuscript (Reasonable and Holy) and deliver it to the Editor -- or rather, to her office, as she has had a bad fall and twisted an extremity; prayers for Suzie if you please! But it is a load off my mind and onto someone else's for the time being, though I expect to receive it back with the usual suggested emendations and corrections, as well as urgings t'wards transitions, expansions and contractions. But for the meantime I can turn my mind to other things, grateful that my old computer was sufficiently "backed-up" so that I literally only lost the sentence I was working on when the old thing went [blink] and disappeared into Computer Sheol. (No computers go to Heaven. A few very good ones might end up in Limbo, or an internet cafe just off the Elysian Fields, or perhaps in the Valhalla Public Library, but not heaven. That goes for Macs too.)

I'm packing now for a trip to California, to visit with the San Franciscan brethren and lead a retreat, and preach next Sunday at St John the Evangelist in that fair city. While there I hope to see a few of the sights (and sites) and a few other friends from church and/or blogosphere.

My last very brief post unleashed a cataract of comment, though I think it has slowed to a trickle at this point. I will have some access to Ye Olde Internet while in San Fran, but hope to spend my time there not glued to the phosphorescent or liquid-crystalline, but take part in the actual more than the virtual, so updates to this blog and to any comments will not happen with alacrity, and depending on the Daemons, if at all!

Finally, I commend to all the last article by the Rev Dr Richard Norris, appearing in the current issue of Anglican Theological Review (Summer 2008), on Homosexuality, Ethics and the Church. I was very honored back at the turn of the century to have worked with Dick Norris and others on a statement of Hermeneutical Principles commissioned by the Bishop of New York in response to Lambeth 1998; and even further flattered when Dick asked me to take a look at and offer comments on an early draft of what now appears at last in print. Sadly, it is unfinished, though there is much to think about in the essay as it stands, and the responses from various thoughtful contributors, in what amounts to a posthumous Festschrift. The volume as a whole is a very helpful ethical reflection. As Augustine heard the child sing, tolle lege.

Until my return, unless something truly momentous comes up, Hasta luego...

Tobias Haller BSG

In God’s Image

[This essay appeared in somewhat different form in Fellowship Papers 1989, the occasional journal of the Catholic Fellowship of the Episcopal Church.]

“Some persons view what is happening as a breakdown in fundamental relations between the sexes. Others view what is happening as a breakthrough to a nonsexist understanding of human beings who are all made in God’s image.” Rachel Wahlberg, Jesus and the Freed Woman (NY/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1978), p.2.

The greatest difficulty in the debate on sexuality is the lack of a rigorous, systematic theology. I will not attempt to develop such a theology here, but offer a possible starting point, in response to one particular flaw in current thought on the subject.

That flaw is apparent in the way in which some have been interpreting a biblical text: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1.27) The interpretation, developed by different authors, can be expressed simply as this: that the image of God is only perfectly reflected in the union of male and female. As one bishop (Bennett Sims) once put it, “. . . the divine image in humanity is incomplete without both man and woman.”

At first glance this seems rather harmless and orthodox. Similar views have been expressed in Jewish and Christian circles in the past. “Said R. Eleazar: A man without a wife is not a complete man, as it is written: “Male and female created he them...” (Yebamot 61f) Karl Barth, adopts the notion that the divine image is only fully present in the relationship of man and woman, which he calls, “the true humanum and therefore the true creaturely image of God.” (Church Dogmatics, III/2, p. 587f.)

In Barth’s case and others, such notions stem from an effort to provide the traditional sexual ethic with a theological underpinning. This working backwards from an evolved cultural moralism to a divine mandate simply will not work. A moral theology of sexuality must respect the theology of the divine and human nature—not the other way around. Such efforts go back to Augustine of Hippo, who wrote,

...the woman, together with her own husband, is the image of God, so that the whole substance may be one image, but when she is referred to separately in her quality as a helpmeet, which regards the woman alone, then she is not the image of God, but, as regards the man alone, he is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him in one. (De Trinitate 7.7, 10)

Not only is this view illogical, but it rests upon incorrect reading of Genesis. Moreover, many ideas developed from this starting point are questionable, if not positively harmful. I will try to describe the implications and offer a response.

Looking to the text

The text is frequently misquoted as, “God created man in his image, male and female.” This reading forcibly applies the modifier, “male and female,” to the image of God. It implies an androgynous God, a God both male and female, rather than the God who is beyond and above categories, and Christ “the image of the invisible God,” in whom “there is neither male nor female.” (Colossians 1.15; Galatians 3.28)

A key to understanding the concept of being made “in his image” comes later in Genesis (in a passage that is omitted from the Eucharistic and Daily Office lectionary, and so has probably never been read by most Episcopalians):

When God created man, he made them [singular in Heb.] in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them [both plural] Man [Heb. Adam] when they were created. When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth... and he had other sons and daughters. (Genesis 5.1-4)

Adam is used here both as the name for humanity, and the personal name; it is important to note that the creating and naming apply to the whole species. Now as to Adam’s own fatherhood and image, he had fathered Cain and Abel, both male, and had other sons later, yet only Seth is described as being “in his likeness, after his image.” Seth’s sex therefore cannot be the key to his likeness (since he shared it with others before him), but some other quality (which is not explained). Perhaps the phrase means nothing more than “after his own heart”; that human beings are particularly dear to God, as Seth was dear to Adam. In any case, Scripture makes it clear that while all of God’s children, both male and female, are in God’s image and likeness, in Adam’s case only Seth among his children bore that quality—and it wasn’t because of his sex.

After all, just as Adam had sons before Seth came along, so too God created creatures with sexuality before creating human beings. (Genesis 1.22) If God had intended sexuality—maleness and femaleness (what some people call “gender” but which is better called simply “sex”)—to be especially expressive of the nature of God— it would have been better to save it for humanity.

For if sexuality were somehow chiefly or especially expressive of the divine image then we would be forced to adopt the notion that all of the animals and many of the vegetables are also created in the divine image. There may be some comfort in this for those who see God as a great Life Force rather than as the Creator of all that is, seen and unseen—including the “life force.” But sex isn’t what makes us uniquely God’s children. For what we share with the image of God is something which we believe to be unique to us as human beings—something shared by all of us yet complete in each of us. What is it? The Catechism says it best—and I would refer everyone to it before they make any more comments about our relation to the divine image—“What does it mean to be created in the image of God? It means that we are free to make choices: to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God.” Free will and love, not sex, is our share in God’s image.

All and each

Likeness to God is not simply something shared by all of humanity, but is a quality resident in each individual human. Jesus echoes this when he warns, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren you did it to me.” (Matthew 25.40) Every person is in the image of God, and we either honor or reject that image in our day-to-day behavior in relation to individual human beings. The plain meaning of our text is this: God created humanity “in his image”; God created both male and female, men and women. Each person is made in the image of God, and shares in a likeness to God that has nothing to do with the individual’s sex. The image is complete in each: it is, if you will, holographic. It is like the presence of Christ in the eucharist, in which the bread, though divided, remains — in each fragment — the whole Body of Christ. Each individual partakes of that Body in the same way that each individual shares in the divine image: wholly.

Generalizing the divine image and dispersing it to collective humanity opens a door for acts of oppression against individuals. Those who say they love God but hate those who bear God’s image are liars. (1 John 4.20) Equally, those who say they love “humanity” while hating individuals have fallen into a theology of the “mass man”—and the idea that God’s image is somehow best expressed by a married couple partakes of this error. It is easy to practice benevolence to groups and societies; it is often difficult to deal with individuals with tolerance and love.

Perhaps the gravest error arising from this identification of sex, or the union of the sexes, with the divine image is the way in which it effectively denies the Incarnation as defined by the Council of Chalcedon (BCP pg. 864). I’m sure Karl Barth would have been appalled to have this pointed out to him. Jesus Christ, in his divine nature, is the image of God. His human nature, which he shares with us completely and perfectly, derives entirely from Mary his mother. If Christ’s humanity is perfect and complete, he encompasses all that is human. He was a man, yet he partakes of human “substance”—that which he shares with all humanity—from Mary, a woman. His sex cannot be an essential or substantial part of his—or our—human nature, but is an instance of the “scandal of particularity” or what the philosophers would call “accident” as opposed to “substance.”

As Irenaeus said in his great work Against Heresies

If [Jesus] did not receive the substance of flesh from a human being, he neither was made man nor the Son of man; and if he was not made what we were, he did no great thing in what he suffered and endured... The Apostle Paul, moreover, declares plainly, “God sent his Son, made of a woman.” [Gal 4.4]... Superfluous too in that case is his descent into Mary, for why did he come down into her if he were to take nothing out of her?” (III.22.1f)

An Episcopal priest once told me Jesus couldn’t have been fully human if he wasn’t married; so, therefore, he must have been married, secretly. One shudders to think what the Council of Chalcedon would have done with that one.

Jesus, a man, in his human nature is of one substance with Mary, a woman, and with every man, woman and child—with all of humanity. Any theology of the imago dei which neglects Jesus Christ as its perfect exposition will be fatally flawed.

Relations and symbols

What does the Scripture tell us about the relations between male and female, on the symbolic level? Paul develops an analogy in Ephesians 5.21-33 between the relationship of Christ with the church and a man with his wife. The unity in love and obedience which exists in the “one flesh” of a man and woman reflects the mysterious relationship of love and obedience between Christ and his body, the church. There is no suggestion that “male and female” (or man and wife) have anything to do with God’s divine nature, or our human nature. Paul is building upon what for him was a natural hierarchy of love and obedience which could lead to a transcendent unity: a man loves his wife because through the sexual act they “become one flesh”; and no one hates his own flesh. Note that in conclusion Paul refers the whole concept to a higher plane, and even implies that sexuality exists merely to provide such a symbol! “I am saying that it [i.e., the “one flesh” of Genesis 2.24] refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

To conclude, human nature transcends individual sexuality, which is a part of the physical creation we share with animals and plants, and was created as a means to “fill the earth” (Genesis 1.28). Sex is an attribute of the individual person, not of human nature. Every person is either male or female; humanity as a whole is neither.

The divine nature is beyond sexuality; God is neither male nor female. And we too, when we become children of the resurrection, will be even as Christ is, in the place where there is no more “male and female,” no more “marrying or giving in marriage” because we will no longer need the sexuality that was created for “mutual joy..., help and comfort..., and... procreation.” (BCP pg. 423) “Those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more.” (Luke 20.35-36) As Aquinas said, “Types and shadows have their ending... “ When Love comes, and when we are in that Love, we will no longer need sexuality. Because “when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.” (1 Corinthians 13.10)

Lest anyone accuse me of dualism, or being anti-body, let me set the point straight right now. Dualism certainly exists in the church: the love-hate relationship theologians have with sexuality and generation (“the realization of the divine image” versus “the root of strife, partaking of the nature of sin”) is an outgrowth of the two creation accounts in Genesis. In the first (1.28) sexuality is part of the blessed order; in the second (3.16-4.1) it becomes tainted with pain and mortality. I do not go along with either of these extreme positions. You want dualism? You want a linkage of sex and original sin? You go to Augustine of Hippo! See, for example, Civ. Dei, XIV.15-26. The unfortunate split between will and emotion, and the linking of sexuality and original sin are both results of the Pelagian-Augustinian debates. Once Augustine decided that sexual reproduction was the means by which original sin was transmitted, it became all too easy to lay the blame for the sin upon the means by which it passed from generation to generation. Augustine goes so far as to say that it is the erect male member which transmits original sin (Sermon 151). For Augustine, sexual activity is still tainted even in a faithful marriage, even when procreation is expressly intended. Besides that, he finds the whole thing extremely distasteful. “I know of nothing which brings the manly mind down from the heights more than a woman’s caresses and the joining of bodies without which one cannot have a wife.” (On the Nature of Good 18)

I feel sorry for Augustine, in a way. He was largely a victim of a neoplatonic view of the world, unable to accept the dynamic tension of life between what St Francis de Sales called the Will of God (what God wills in the depth of God’s being) and the Good Will of God Done (the day to day realities, including the pains and failures necessitated by free will, ultimately redeemed by God). Augustine, poor man, couldn’t help confusing the imperfect with the bad.

God didn’t say creation was perfect. God did not create a perfect world, but a perfecting world. God did not create perfect beings, but created beings that were capable of becoming perfect because they were made in God’s image—having the power to choose. It was in right choosing that the road to perfection lay. Had humanity chosen obedience, they would have achieved perfection. Through the Fall they lost that ability until the time when God too became human. With this redemptive act, human beings once again become capable of reaching perfection in Christ and through Christ. All creation is awaiting the perfection of humanity, for when human beings take up the task for which they were created, the world can then be perfected. (Romans 8.19-23.) The significance of the Incarnation and At-one-ment affirm that the “happy fault” of Adam was not an incidental episode of salvation (or creation) history. Only through “one man’s obedience” could perfection be realized, a perfection realized “once and for all.”

No, God didn’t say creation was perfect; God said it was good, except for one thing: loneliness. (Genesis 2.18)

I think sex and sexuality are great. They are good, a part of God’s creation. But like a lot of other good things they are imperfect, earthly, and transient. That the risen body will be unlike the “body of death” is a promise of hope. Many things that we think are great now, many “creature comforts,” many things valued in the church, like prophecy and knowledge, will pass away. Love will remain.

Tobias Haller BSG

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In Response to Rick

Dear Rick,

You misunderstand my point about "Hate the sin; love the sinner." I am not suggesting a simple converse, i.e., that if you love the sinner you must love his or her sin. That is a straw man. What I am saying, based on careful observation of the history of the practice, is that those who say they are merely critiquing the sin quite often end up attempting to take the role of God in judging the sinner, and punishing her. Certainly we are called to work against sin, but Jesus' sole advice on the subject is to work against it in ourselves, not in others.

As to desires, it is perfectly appropriate, as you suggest, for the Buddhist to see all of her desires as something to be suppressed and denied, or even better ignored, as the Zen school might say -- desires need not be wrestled with because they do not exist. ("no mirror, no dust.")

The Christian tradition, beginning with Augustine, appears to make a similar claim -- perpetuated in Anglican formularies -- that concupiscence is itself a partaker in sin. (The Jewish tradition, on the contrary, asserts that desire, while it may be "evil," is actually crucial in building up the world; a notion not unlike that found in Greek mythology and philosophy, in which Eros is the beginning of creation.)

Jesus' counsel is that we work on our own desires rather than trying to fix others; in fact he singled out that one desire -- the urge to "fix" others -- for condemnation. His harshest critique was directed against those who, while not entering the kingdom themselves, obstructed others by establishing a system in which people who were unable to abide by the rules so imposed gave in to despair. To cause despair in others, leading them to come to think they cannot live a Christian life, is a very serious matter. From Christ's standpoint, the most serious. By establishing and perpetuating (on very slim evidence) a tradition that proscribes the fulfillment of human desire in morally analogous ways (faithful, monogamous, permanent), to a large portion of the population (larger than many believe), on the basis of unproven concepts of natural law or the cultural traditions of a pre-scientific world, thereby leading to despair or separation from the Church for many who would seek to live a moral life on the basis of what Christ actually taught, is, as I say, a perilous and un-Christ-like course.

I do not deny that natural law has its uses. But if one is to employ it, one must be very careful that the "nature" informing the conclusions be accurate. Sound principles of logic must come into play. This is where science and human reason come in.

The problem with the Vatican's pronouncements that same-sexuality be singled out as "objectively disordered" is that it assumes to know the "order" or "purpose" for which sexuality exists, and state that same-sexuality of its nature does not fulfill that order.

Science (and human reason) challenge that claim. Leaving aside language of "purpose" (end, or goal) it is at least clear that sex does not in fact have a sole function; and that these various functions are separable in nature and, if you will, by "design." The Roman position, deriving from an inherited faulty understanding of human anthropology and biology (that the male is the "active" principle in human reproduction and the female a passive vessel, to cite only one aspect of the erroneous basis for the so-called natural law tradition), is logically incoherent, and morally flawed. Science will not tell us the "purpose" of a given phenomenon, but it can tell us when there is clearly more than one "function" possible, and logic can then open other possibilities for discussion as to purpose, end, or goal. (Of course, the tradition actually acknowledges multiple "ends" or "goods" for sexuality; but then arbitrarily says they cannot be separated from one another. As I have already shown in my previous articles, not only can they be separated, but they are -- by nature! The mouth is used for eating and speaking, and it is well not to do both at the same time. The male sexual organ also has multiple uses, and I dare say is also best used for one or the other. You see -- there is no logical basis for an "inseparability" of functions.)

I have, as I say, spelled this all out in great detail in the other articles I have posted. I have pointed out precisely why it is logically incoherent to hold that the "purpose of sexual acts is procreation." (When sex was wrongly understood as the planting of a seed in fertile soil, male homosexuality was seen as a grave fault, and female homosexuality went unmentioned -- this in itself reveals a major flaw in the "moral" understanding of sex.) You have responded to these with the same reassertions again and again, never once offering any clear evidence for the truth of the traditional and flawed "natural law" argument other than its mere restatement. I'd be glad just for a simple answer to the question, "Why can the various functions of sexuality not be separated?" or "Why is a same-sex relationship more culpable than an infertile mixed-sex relationship?" I have yet to receive an answer.

By the way, have you noticed how the very notion of "purpose" is itself an instance of concupiscence? A Buddhist, at least of the Zen school, would say that purposefulness is itself a result of desire, and hence flawed. Given we are not Buddhists, I have articulated the "purposes" of same-sexuality as the establishment of stable relationships, the care of children (though the Vatican thinks this impossible, too), the gift of one person to another (also denied by the Vatican, which sees same-sexuality as inherently "selfish" -- though without explanation) and so on. These are all functions and/or purposes. Who is to say these functions or purposes are less "moral" than mere breeding -- which, when separated from these other purposes is hardly commendable in and of itself. (It has long been noted that in elevating procreation to a position of prominence, the tradition inadvertently assigned moral weight to a biological function we share with animals. It is the human capacity for love, fidelity, and self-giving that has moral value, not the capacity to breed. More questions for you: Does breeding gain a moral value when carried out by persons? If so, what is the moral value? What is moral about it?)

Speaking of the Vatican, I reviewed the document "The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons" yesterday. It is full of logical fallacies and begged questions; assertions dressed as truths. It also indulges in some very questionable theology. (The relation of the society of persons in marriage to the inner life of the Trinity is, for example, a wild notion when applied to sexuality. One would think the suggestion of linking sex with the relationship of the Father and the Son would send up red flags all over the place! Yet this is blandly suggested in the document. The notion that the image of God resides in the society of male and female, also advanced by John Paul II, is a direct contradiction of orthodox doctrine, as spelled out in Aquinas. This is the phenomenon I have noted before: the tendency to do bad theology when seeking to bolster an argument against same-sexuality -- and a sure sign the argument is faulty.)

So, Rick, that is the lay of the land. I reject the Roman teaching on this subject as logically incoherent. That does not mean you and others are barred from accepting it; but you must do so on the basis of faith in the Magisterium rather than on the basis of reason -- unless you can provide a reasonable argument that stands up to examination and doesn't beg the question. If you would like to assay a response to any of the questions I raised above (in boldface), I'd be glad to see what you have to say.

Tobias Haller BSG

7. Remedial Reading

Previous articles in this series (The Sex Articles — see the links in the sidebar) examined the various “causes” or goods or ends of marriage, as laid out in the preface to the marriage liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer, and how these same goods or ends might conceivably find a place within the context of a same-sex relationship. I have argued that such a relationship is capable of providing mutual joy, comfort, and human society no less than a mixed-sex marriage, and is capable of fulfilling some of the ends of procreation, certainly no less than an infertile mixed-sex marriage. In the previous article I addressed the symbolic weight assigned to marriage in the Christian tradition and explored a number of ways in which similar symbolic value can be borne by a same-sex relationship that is equally loving, permanent, and faithful.

I have noted that our present Prayer Book marriage liturgy reintroduces these arguments in favor of marriage — arguments which had been removed in the 1789 revision (the prevailing rationalism of the day felt a supporting case for the institution was unnecessary). However, one of the “causes” from the 1662 version (in use at the time of our ecclesiastical and civil independence) was not restored. This is ironic, because it is the “cause” with a strong scriptural basis, playing a significant part in the most extensive biblical reflection on the institution of marriage, and offering a rationale for the continuance of an institution to which the apostolic church in general gave otherwise only luke-warm endorsement. This is marriage as a “remedy for fornication” — as described in Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians (7:1-9, which I cite here from the Authorized Version):

Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment. For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

This passage is significant for a number of reasons, not least for the way Paul describes celibacy as a gift not all possess. Paul recognizes that sexual desire is not only powerful, but that it has an appropriate outlet for those who lack the gift to contain themselves in celibacy: marriage. It is in large part from this biblical source that we see marriage described in the Anglican tradition (Articles of Religion XXV, XXXIII) as a state of life allowed in Scripture. The purpose of the authors of the Articles of Religion was not to find Scriptural validation for an institution that had existed in most human cultures in one form or another (validation was dealt with in the expansive Preface to the marriage rite); rather it was to distinguish marriage from the Two Sacraments of the Gospel, and to assert that it was permitted to clergy.

Paul similarly explicitly permits, rather than commands, marriage, and clearly wishes all could be celibate, as he is. But he recognizes the inappropriateness of demanding celibacy from those incapable of living within its constraints.

From the Pauline perspective, then, marriage is, among other things, a license to have sex. It authorizes something that without such authorization would be sinful. It is, in short, for the vast majority of people, who approach the altar as former virgins, a way of blessing sin — and thereby removing its sinfulness. They are permitted to perform (or continue to perform) what before would have been (or was) sinful. Marriage may not cover a multitude of sins, but it covers at least one: fornication (loosely, and from a biblical perspective rather incorrectly, defined as “sex outside of marriage.”)

Stopping the allowance

So can a similar allowance be made for same-sex relationships? Some will at this point say that same-sex relationships cannot be permitted now because they were not “allowed” in Scripture then. They hold that the prohibitions on homosexuality render such an approbation permanently impossible. I will address these negative texts more extensively in the following reflections; here I want to deal with the absence of approbation rather than the purported prohibition.

To understand the biblical (especially the Pauline) view, we must recognize that marriage was a civil institution, a civil option for Jews and Christians. Paul, in particular, recognizes it as the civil option, as well as the moral one, as it counters promiscuity and prostitution (both legally permitted and regulated under Roman law, though widely held to be moral failings). Paul allows participation in this civil institution of marriage even if he does not encourage it.

Same-sexuality fell into the same category as prostitution under Roman law — regulated and in some cases permitted, but seen, especially by Stoics and other moralists, as a failing. Same-sex marriage was not a civil norm in the cultures amongst which Judaism and Christianity came into being. Although same-sexuality existed in many cultures of the ancient world with which Judaism and Christianity were familiar — including, in spite of the protests, Jewish cultures — the phenomenon of lifelong and exclusive same-sex relationships was very rare (or to be more precise, rarely recorded, so that there is little evidence of it), and civil recognition in the form of marriage even rarer. Mixed-sex marriage, on the other hand, was a recognized institution — and although the differences between Jewish, Roman and Christian marriage customs were in some conflict (as Jewish law allowed polygamy and divorce, and Roman law forbade polygamy though it allowed concubinage and divorce), the early Christians accepted the Roman rule and Jewish ideal of monogamy, but frowned upon concubinage and divorce, largely following the opinions of the more moralistic philosophers and legislators of the time.

Thus the marriage of which Saint Paul speaks is marriage as it existed in the civil state, under Roman hegemony, which in the time of Augustus and Tiberius exalted values of hearth and home — even if the emperors themselves often failed to live up to the principles in practice. There was, in Paul’s time, no equivalent for same-sex marriage, even had he been of a mind to recognize it.

Applying old advice to a present situation

So it is very unlikely that Paul understood or grasped the possibility of people wanting to live in a life-long same-sex union. Some have suggested that Paul was aware of sexual orientation, but I find there to be little evidence to support even this claim, let alone any awareness of whatever same-sex marriages might have existed. There are still, after all, a few skeptics around even today who deny that sexual orientation exists, or who say that there is no need to grant “special” recognition to same-sex relationships since all people are free to marry a person of the opposite sex. (It is especially ironic that some who on one hand will deny same-sex orientation exists will on the other posit that Paul knew about it and rejected it.)

Regardless of such glib dismissals, many others have recognized that homosexual orientation, and the desire to which it gives rise to express one’s a love for a person of the same sex in a physical way, is not any more likely to be combined with a gift of celibacy than is heterosexual orientation. (Some conservatives claim that homosexual men are “by nature” more promiscuous than heterosexuals. Their evidence derives largely from anecdotal evidence, or discredited research.) But many have noted — even among the conservatives who reflect upon this issue — that it is irrational as well as unjust to suggest that gay and lesbian persons should be held to a standard in effect stricter than the one applied to heterosexuals; that is, to demand permanent celibacy for all gay and lesbian people, especially while tolerating less than punctilious observance of the same biblical standard for mixed-sex couples, many if not most of whom engage in premarital sex, occasional affairs, or serial monogamy through the unbiblical provision of divorce. For even if many people are promiscuous, there are others who wish to be faithful.

A more tolerant view within church or state does not necessitate the recognition of same-sex relationships as either marriage or matrimony, that is, as either civil or sacred in exactly the same way and to the same extent as mixed-sex marriage. But some form of recognized permanent commitment can be seen to be appropriate as an application of Paul’s teaching that “it is better to marry than to burn” to a situation which Paul himself may well have found inconceivable. Some, such as the Rev Fleming Rutledge, have reflected on the question in this way:

I have great respect and reverence for people who maintain celibacy if they are unmarried, divorced or widowed. This certainly remains the classical Christian standard. However, I do not believe that many people are granted the gift of celibacy. Even St. Paul, who put a high value on celibacy, recognized this in his teaching on marriage. I therefore believe we must find a way to support healthier lifestyles for Christian gay people who are beset every day by invitations to participate in the anonymity and promiscuity of the street, the bathhouse, the bar and the club. We will do well, I think to make an honored place for the devoutly Christian gay people who sincerely want fidelity and stability in their lives insofar as that is possible for them. These couples are in the distinct minority and it seems to me that we should support them in their wish to carve out a more responsible style of life. I therefore agree (I think) with those who say that we should be discussing the possibility of some sort of blessing for gay couples who fit this description not because the culture is demanding this, but because the church has been thinking about this for some time now. (From a December 2003 presentation to a parish facing division on the issue of homosexuality).

Although she stops short of supporting same-sex marriage, then, Rutledge is willing to recognize the human damage caused by unreasonable expectations or requirements, and the moral danger of a double standard (as evidence shows only a “distinct minority” of heterosexuals actually adhere to the rules of stability and fidelity). However, if “marriage” can be understood in the many forms the institution has taken (some of which would now be held to be immoral if not illegal) it appears to me that it is quite possible to apply Paul’s allowance — “If they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn” — to a situation he would not have been capable of imagining — at least in his own time.

WWSPD

What would Saint Paul do — today? Is this a reasonable question, and to what extent are speculations about what Saint Paul might have thought or done — apart from what we actually know he said or did — relevant to the present discussion?

We do not know what Saint Paul would say today, assuming he were supplied with all the relevant information concerning human sexuality and psychology of which he was ignorant. Doubtless Saint Paul, in his own culture and time, would not have applied this rule of “let them marry” to same-sex couples. There is no evidence that he had any awareness or understanding of sexual orientation. On the contrary, his only extended comment on male homosexuality in Romans 1 describes it as an unnatural perversity attendant upon idolatry. (Aside note: I follow Saint Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.20, in thinking “their females” who have “exchanged the natural use for the unnatural” are not lesbian. Rather, they are women who allow their husbands to use the opening that is “along side the natural” i.e., generative, one; the husbands then, having abandoned what is “natural with females” turn on each other and “similarly” take advantage of this newfound versatility. This is how Augustine reads the passage, and in support of this reading I suggest it to be unlikely for a biblical or rabbinic Jew — and Paul was both — to think lesbian sex and gay sex are “similar” — one was subject on rabbinic grounds to chastisement, the other on biblical grounds to capital punishment. Saint Augustine himself regarded lesbianism as a far less serious matter than male homosexuality: see Letter 211.14 where he refers to women’s “shameful frolic and sporting with one another” as unseemly for married women and thus much more out of place in nuns! Similarly, the [vague and inaccurate] term sodomy classically referred to all sorts of non-procreative sexuality whether between men and women or only between men, or men with animals — but with very few exception not generally to lesbian sex. “Homosexuality” as a category including men and women is a relatively modern invention; the Mediterranean cultures of the ancient world regarded lesbian sex as in quite a different category altogether from male homosexuality — as, indeed, these cultures regarded women and men very differently in most aspects of life.)

Still, some argue that Paul knew about homosexual orientation and intended explicitly to reject it. Those such as N.T. Wright and R. Gagnon, who argue that Paul must have been familiar with Plato’s Symposium, and Aristophanes’ myth to explain varieties of sexual orientation (or at least preference), are on very shaky ground, as Paul’s writings reveal little or no familiarity with Plato — as if he would take such pagan (and satirical) speculation seriously even if he were familiar with it! However, Paul may have known nothing of Plato at all, as Plato was, outside of Alexandria, long out of fashion in the philosophical world with which Paul was likely familiar — including that of the Stoics, whose thinking is consistent with (though not necessarily a source for) what Paul concludes in Romans 1.

Rather than making questionable surmises about what Saint Paul might say, given his particular gifts and limitations, we should instead look to him for the moral value of what he said, concerning the role of sex within the context of the only kind of faithful, life-long sexual relationship with which we know he was familiar, as a means to cement the relationship and prevent wandering outside it.

Now that we have a better and more accurate understanding of the reality of sexual orientation (quite apart from whether it is genetic — which is actually irrelevant to the discussion), it makes more sense to apply the underlying principles of Paul’s teaching accordingly, much as we apply other underlying principles of scriptural wisdom to changed cultural contexts.

It seems to me that it is better for the church, and for society, to encourage the recognizable biblical virtues of fidelity and mutual support in same-sex relationships, than to hold all gay and lesbian persons to a rigid standard few heterosexuals are able to maintain.

A summary

Thus far I have examined the traditional rationale for Christian marriage and sought to examine the ways in which this rationale can be applied to same-sex relationships. There should be no doubt that from the secular perspective of civil marriage, the state has no compelling interest in prohibiting same-sex marriage any more than it would have in prohibiting mixed-sex marriage in which the couple is incapable of having children. On the contrary, the civil interest in a stable society represents a positive rationale for the provision of civil marriage to same-sex couples, as a preventative to promiscuity (to the extent, of course, that people remain faithful to their vows: no covenant will of itself cause obedience).

When it comes to children, there is no indication (on the basis of many studies and meta-studies) that same-sex couples are any less able to raise their own, adopted or foster children than mixed-sex couples, regardless of any biological connection with the parents. Society provides ample role models apart from biological or foster parents — and in any case many children spend much of their childhood and infancy under the care of adults other than their parents. Need I also note that Scripture provides one particularly striking example of foster-fatherhood. Clearly an increase in the number of stable same-sex couples could be a boon to finding loving homes for unwanted or orphaned children.

When it comes to the religious and moral values imputed to marriage, I have shown that the ability to bear children is universally held to be optional — that is, no Christian tradition of which I am aware requires fertility prior to allowing marriage, or childbirth within marriage as a condition for its continuance. Procreation is thus not an essential element of marriage.

I have demonstrated that the concept of fleshly union is ambivalent, and that the argument against same-sexuality from a purported complementarity of the sexes is specious; and that same-sex couples can enjoy a mutual union that expresses joy, delight, and the self-giving love that is the object of marriage. I have shown that such relationships are capable of bearing symbolic weight in reflecting the goodness of God in relationship to the church, but more importantly the ideal of Christian love within the church. Finally, in this essay, I have reflected briefly upon the stabilizing influence that the recognition of same-sex relationships might provide within ecclesiastical as well as social contexts.

Although I have touched upon them briefly in these essays and in the responses to the many comments these articles have elicited, I have not directly addressed the purported scriptural objections to same-sexuality, which some would hold to render moot all of the discussion up to now. In the next sections of this reflection I will address the content and force of the scriptural case — both against and for same-sexuality — at greater length.

Tobias Haller BSG

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The Scriptural discussion begins in the next section of this series, Scripture and its Witness.

Further Update: This post and those that follow, expanded and supplemented with much additional material, form part of Reasonable and Holy, published by Seabury Books and available on order from Church Publishing Incorporated.