Theses on Sex and Christian Ethics
There’s been some great conversation on sexual identity and ethics in theological blogs recently: genuine back-and-forth, mainly on the issue of same-sex relations, from a thoroughly Christian commitment. I post a few of these comments for the record:
- Kim Fabricius started it off with his Twelve propositions on same-sex relations and the church. “For all Christians, as the drama unfolds, the question must surely be this: How, as embodied and sexual creatures, do we live in the truth and witness to Christ?”
- Halden Doerge just posted eight other theses on sexual identity and Christian ethics, more hesitant than Kim’s but not finally decisive. In any case, his hesitations are precisely the right ones.
- Douglas Knight has called our attention to Oliver O’Donovan’s careful words on homosexuality as a theological question by posting excerpts (1, 2) of O’Donovan’s sermon, Good News for Gay Christians. O’Donovan’s take is thoughtful (as always) and creative, and his focus on “good news” is indispensable.
Thanks to all these folks, wherever they fall on the issue, for illustrating clear and faithful dialogue on such an important matter.
1 February 2007 |
tags: Theological Ethics
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I have to say that I’ve never found the “what social structures were around for Paul to condemn” argument to be that convincing (see various portions of Kim Fabricus’s propositions 3-9). The extermination camp, I take it, is a uniquely 20th century social structured form of murder, but we wouldn’t take the Bible’s commands against murder to fall short of condemning the Holocaust. I am not at all trying to make the absurd claim that homosexuality is an evil on the level of the Holocaust, but the hermeneutical principle is the same in both cases, I think. Paul appears to condemn homogenital acts, which, even if they did not occur in the same social arrangements now as then, nonetheless still occur. (I wonder also if the Greek of Romans condemns men lying with “men” rather than “boys”, as one might expect if his target was the specific social arrangement of pedarasty.) I am inclined to say that if he condemned homogenital acts then, they are condemned now. Of course, this is a totally different claim than the condemnation of homosexual persons. I do not want to make a quick post seem a glib dismissal of the struggles and questions of homosexual Christians (and those – hopefully all of us – who love them). Lord knows its hard enough to be chaste when the Bible clearly endorses your sexual orientation, after all. But this one particular angle of dealing with the difficulty strikes me as unfruitful.
I find them half-convincing. I haven’t done a close enough look at these texts myself, but I suppose the question is whether Paul really is condemning homogenital act qua homogenital acts, or if he’s condemning homogenital acts qua instances of particular social structures. These sorts of arguments tend to take the latter, in which case I think the argument follows. But that first step needs to be examined, and rarely is.
Ditto on not having examined the texts in detail. It just seems to me that an awareness of anachronism in our assuming Paul is talking about a modern social structures rarely makes room for (what to me seems to be) the necessary self critique of avoiding the anachronism in our assuming that Paul has a modern awareness of social structures. Actually, even given modern awareness of social structures, I’m not sure that the argument holds. Your average homophobe will probably have in mind modern social arrangements of homosexuality, but probably would not hesitate to extend that to ancient Greek practices if he found out about those, too. But, this is all criticism on a level of high abstraction, since I haven’t examined the texts in close detail, either.
I guess my potentially oversimplified response to the Knight essay is that if the gospel prohibits homosexuals from loving a person of the same sex then it is simply not good news for them.
I agree with his claim that the gospel’s being good news does not mean that it offers easy comfort or reassurance. It requires asceticism, sacrifice, even martyrdom. I get that.
Surely, gays and lesbians, if they wish to be disciples, must submit themselves to the purification of their desires, they must submit to the discipline of sexual asceticism. I think his point that the gospel must mean the same thing for everyone is exactly right (though he misinterprets its implications for this discussion.) lesbians and gays must take up their cross when it comes to sexuality (which is not just desire for a particular type of sexual experience, but is the desire for a particular type of integrated, holistic relationship) just as heterosexuals do, but this does not mean they can never relate sexually to another person—it means just what it means for heterosexuals: there is holy sex and degrading sex.
If this is not true, then one of two things are true: either homosexuals are under a massive self-delusion about the reality of their existence (much in the same way that a person who thought she could fly) or the gospel is not good news: God means for homosexuals to suffer and experience deprivation in a way that God does not demand of any other group of people.
The author’s claims about it being un-christian for homosexuals to too strongly identify as homosexuals seems shady to me. This sounds much like the way members of dominant groups tend to speak about members of minority groups. White people think it odd that black people are make such a big deal about being black, not realizing that their whiteness is normative and authoritative. Men say the same about women etc. And heterosexuals tell homosexuals not to identify too strongly as gay, not recognizing that their heterosexuality is affirmed and asserted every day of their lives.
Also, the fact that this gay consciousness is historically new is itself a fact that is morally neutral. The same could be said of the position and self-understanding of women in the Western world. The same was said by Gutierrez of the poor peoples of the middle of the 20th century, who asserted their existence and subjectivity in an unprecedented way: he calls this the “irruption of the poor onto the stage of history.”
I personally think that the emergence of gay consciousness has everything to do with feminism and new a lessening of the hegemonic authority and inevitability of patriarchy and strict gender dualism, and with that, the fact that marriage is more about love and personal compatibility than survival, property, etc. Which are good things, I think.
If the expression of homosexual desire, even in its purest form can never be holy, it would seem to me as though its expression should in some way impede human flourishing and communal well-being. It would seem to me that for people who experience themselves as being homosexual, life-long celibacy should produce a life holier, more service oriented, more loving, more alive, more integrated into society, etc than one spent in loving partnership.
So, to conclude an unintentionally long post, if celibacy is not “good” for the homosexual—in the way that holiness is “good” for all people (not easy, but truly good and truly life-giving), then the gospel is simply not good news for homosexuals.
Katie, this is fantastic. I know it’s the end of the semester, but let’s hash this out as I have time. I have some questions on what you’ve said that I’ll try to write down sometime over the weekend.