AN EDITED
VERSION OF A LONG AND MUCH-SEGMENTED E-MAIL CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE LATE HUGH
DEMPSTER AND PRISCA TURNER. IT WAS BASICALLY ABOUT THE BLESSING OF SAME-SEX
UNIONS.
It took
place over a period of months, between the 1998 and 2001 synod votes in the
Diocese of
After some unsystematic exchanges which
were not recorded, it became clear that a significant discussion was
developing. Hugh wrote:
First
of all, Prisca, thanks for a response that actually paid some attention to what
I had said. I was anxious in that comment to respond quickly, yet reasonably
briefly, to the question of a biblical basis for this dialogue. I therefore
borrowed a few bits from a longer piece I’ve been working on, and probably
didn’t connect them well enough to make my reasoning clear.
In
my ongoing conversation with you, I want you to face the issue in a different
way.
Prisca replied:
Yes, I too am glad to get down to some real Scriptural argument, and
recognise that this little window is not easy to fit everything into,
especially as some of us type quite slowly.
There
is indeed a biblical basis that (in my opinion) compels (good word!) such a
dialogue as ours in this Diocese on blessing same-sex unions and other matters
about the treatment of homosexuals. Let me give two references (out of many):–
Luke
10:25-37: The Good
Samaritan story is given to define “neighbour” in the summary of the law –
“Love God, and love your neighbour.” What we often don’t notice here is that
Jesus’ example of a neighbour, who loves and is to be loved, is a person
despised and vilified by those in his audience, as one who does not keep all of
God’s laws. Indeed, for that community, a “good” Samaritan is an oxymoron!
Surely that is the intended message in this parable. (I sometimes imagine that,
were Jesus telling the parable in our culture, it would have become “the Good
Homosexual”!)
With all due respect, Hugh, your reasoning here is a bit off-beam.
First a little NT
background. To ask a self-styled Rabbi to define the ‘whole duty of man’ was to
test his claim to be a real Rabbi; the Greek says that the ‘lawyer’ was trying
to see what Jesus was made of. Dramatically enough, the Lord refuses to be
examined in this way, and makes the questioner look foolish by causing him to
answer his own question, thus demonstrating that his theory at least is quite
sound. When he tries to ‘justify’ himself, he is shown to be insincere, for he
was not wanting to know: he knows what he should be doing, but he wants to
wriggle out of it in practice. I haven’t heard many sermons which bring out
this personal drama, or emphasise the words “DO this, and you will live”, but
myself tried to do this in my article called ‘...And Your Neighbour as
Yourself’, published in CRUX as long ago as 1969. There is far more going
on here than the enunciation however pointed of a moral platitude. Was the Lord
seriously suggesting that we are any of us capable of going out and simply
keeping either of the two great commandments just because we know we ought to?
Not in the mind of any sinner who really knows himself!
Nobody was thinking of
the Samaritan as someone who, whether as active or passive ‘neighbour’, was
wanting to overturn any part of the ethical demands of the Law. The contempt
was inspired by a conviction that that community read the Law in a debased
copy, and worshipped in the wrong place. The ‘lawyer’ will have been quite
clear that HIS copy was a perfect one; so Jesus shows him a fictional Samaritan
whose reading of his debased copy was good enough to make him a better Jew than
some Jews. EVERYONE would have known the answer to the question “Is it right to
have homosexual relations in any context at all?”, and it would have taken the
form, if we want to use this passage in the matter, “What is written in the
Law? How do you read it?”
It is not possible to leap from the obligation
to treat everyone as a human being with basic needs to an obligation to baptise
all forms of behaviour in which people may wish to indulge. We may not neglect,
starve or torture the likes of Clifford Olsen for his sexual orientation or the
way it has manifested itself, but equally we owe him, and them, no praise,
petting or public recognition. Not all our wants are good and beautiful, and
not all of them are real needs. Our faith has never agreed that all human
beings are owed even legitimate forms of sexual happiness, for example. The
Good Samaritan supplied the victim with rescue, antibiotic, emollient,
bandages, ambulance service, food, lodging and a worry-free convalescence; he
did not leave money behind saying, “And when he’s recovered sufficiently to be
thinking about his sexual orientation again, here’s enough cash to call the
right kind of escort service to suit him!”
Matt.
25:31-46: In this
parable of the last judgement, Jesus identifies himself with all the hurting
people we have encountered – the hungry and thirsty, the sick, the prisoner
(and the homosexual?) – and our fate hangs on the way we respond. “What you did
(or did not do) to the least of these my brethren, you did (or did not do) to
me.”
This is a very common modern
misunderstanding of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Last year I sat
through a whole Synod that was based on it. Our Lord simply cannot be
addressing us, or anyone who has actually read this parable, about OUR OWN
judgement. That is not to say, of course, that we should not bother with works
of mercy; but certainly we should not be anxious if we are not perfect in them,
for “Who then shall be saved?”
However, even if the
modern popular view is right, where in this catalogue is the expression of my
sex-drive? It is all about basic human needs that are of the esse, not necessarily of
the superadded bene esse, of our lives. Wrestling with the difference
between wants and real needs is perhaps never so painful as in matters of the
heart, but all my single friends have to do it, and when widowed I shall have
to do it again. Why should people with homosexual desires alone be exempt from
the struggle?
And
how have gays and lesbians been treated, over the past centuries, by our
Christian society? Despised, rejected, condemned, shunned, excluded from
community, murdered, driven to suicide – just for being what they are. We have
in fact made life so miserable for them that (until fairly recently) most have
felt it essential to conceal their identity as gay or lesbian – to live their
whole lives “in the closet.”
What is honestly your authority for this opinion?
Is
this the way we would choose to treat Jesus?
I submit that there is a very strong
biblical basis for dialogue (and action!) on radical changes in the way
Christians have traditionally thought about and treated their homosexual
brothers and sisters.
The point is the same with the Sheep and
Goats: “what you do to the least of these ...” – i.e., no one is so
insignificant as not to merit your loving care. (Is this a “modern misunderstanding”?
I don’t know what you mean by that. I haven’t been able to read your file – don’t
think I can handle the languages.
The amount of ancient
language is small, the argument pretty clear without it. I supply a
translation; most people I believe could make it all out. Anyhow, the main
contention in this paper is that there is nothing whatsoever in the passage
about Christian conduct or how we who are in Christ are going to be judged. It
is about the judgement of those who have never had the chance to embrace the
Cross. Since I wrote it it has occurred to me that it may even go so far as to
say that ONE SINGLE work of mercy would suffice to save such a person.
Certainly there is nothing there about a perfect record of such works, nor can
it legitimately be used to beat good works out of Christian people.
The “loving care” again has nothing whatever to do
with many of our felt wants, everything to do with basic need.
And
again, there is nothing here explicitly about sexual orientation.
Precisely so. There is nothing implicit either. What does that say
about its significance? It says among other things that our life, for time and
eternity, is infinitely more complex than our genital urges: I am far far more
than my heterosexuality, which except insofar as I use it responsibly and in
accordance with God’s will, or not, has no lasting significance at all.
The
other side of my argument is the observation that (to say the least)
homosexuals have not been treated kindly in our society. You need my authority
for that opinion? I would have thought it is pretty well known these days. I
read newspapers. I listen to gays and lesbians. I read what some of them have
written about their lives. And I use my imagination. (Surely the “closet”
option is familiar? What if the world were reversed, and we heterosexuals were
the closeted ones? If I daren’t go to church, or anywhere public, with my wife – in fact, daren’t let anyone suspect I have a wife, on penalty of
maybe
losing my job, my welcome in church, perhaps even being beaten up on the
street? It doesn’t sound like a life anyone would choose.) If you really want
specifics, I do have a few files of clippings and other documents which I can
dig out (they’re not very well organized).
I admit that I had
thought that you were referring in part to history, including late Roman and
medieval history. The sources are frequently misread.
None of us can be in favour of cruelty to anyone; but it is important to
get this particular case into proportion. Is objection to particular types of
behaviour unkind? How many people are genuinely badly treated for simply being
homosexual, i.e. having a set of desires/temptations not shared by the
majority? All you men, of any orientation, should try being a person housed in
a female body in most times and places where the Gospel has never taken firm
root!
As for us heterosexuals, there was an experiment done by
medieval Christendom which lasted several centuries (Rome is still a bit
hungover from it still!) whereby a big enough closet was made to stuff into it
ALL, priest or lay, who experienced ANY form of sexual desire.
I
conclude that the way gays and lesbians have been treated in our society – and
especially by Christians, ostensibly in obedience to God’s law – is pretty
clearly in violation of the law to “love your neighbour,” especially
considering the spin Jesus puts on it in those two passages. (This is the part
glossed over too quickly in my earlier posting.) That is to say: the
traditional interpretation of those Bible passages which explicitly condemn
homosexual behaviour has led to a world in which a smallish group of people
(gays and lesbians) don’t count as “neighbours,” deserving of our love. This is
the fruit borne from that tradition. “By their fruits you shall know them,”
Jesus said in another context (about false prophets). If the fruit does not
meet the law of love, then I conclude that there is something wrong, something
false, in that tradition.
It is frequently said
nowadays that Christian teaching has produced this evil fruit. Given that no
society has ever thought homosexual desire and behaviour to be unequivocally
good, and that without even one biblical text contra observation shows them to be biologically bizarre, that is
extremely doubtful. Societies always look, left to themselves, for some visible
enemy: the unregenerate heart must after all have someone to hate. Sometimes,
though by no means always, the object to hand may be homosexuals. It is no part
of New Testament ethics to hate or harm anyone. That applies to those who
persecute me for any cause: I must still treat them well: the whole Christian
ethical tradition has always said so. The tradition is not to blame, but sinful
people are, if individuals are abused. The musical score is wonderful, the
performers are usually imperfect.
It
is in that sense that I claim a biblical basis for re-examination of that
tradition – which is what this dialogue is all about. (And another little
insight, as I reread that sentence: I have been trying to formulate a basis for
change in that tradition – and realize that what I have given here is
incomplete for that. But it is, perhaps, a basis for re-examination of
tradition – a basis for dialogue, as Gerry had put it in the beginning.)
Again, we are not
discussing the necessity for kindness to anyone, nor do we usually think that
there must be special indulgence to anyone to make up for harshness in the
past.
Is
my reasoning still off-beam? I hope I have made myself clearer than I did in my
first try. And I do welcome criticism, as long as it can lead toward truth.
In
the Good Samaritan story, my interest was not in the “personal drama” between
Jesus and his questioner, nor in “the enunciation ... of a moral platitude,”
but in the story’s cast of characters. Why did Jesus make his hero a Samaritan?
It seems to me he must have been deliberately making a point: in the story, the
“good” guys acted badly, the “bad” guy did it right. I.e., we, and those whose
status we respect, are not necessarily “better” than someone we consider
“inferior”. (This theme turns up often in the gospels – e.g., passages in which
Jesus is criticized for associating with “tax collectors and sinners.”)
I was not actually implying that you, Hugh, had failed to get the point,
but attempting to set the scene a bit. The Lord is sparring with someone who
assumes his own superiority over this upstart would-be Rabbi. Jesus had never
been to
I
am not sure I completely understood all of your comments, but they didn’t seem
to quarrel with this interpretation. (Of course, I am not suggesting any direct
connection with homosexuality. The link is simply that our culture regards
homosexuals as “inferior,” somewhat as NT culture did Samaritans.) I am contending that there is a biblical basis for reconsidering the
church’s attitude to homosexuals. The two examples I have put forward were the
parables of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and the last judgement (Sheep
and Goats, Matt. 25:31-46).
The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matt. 25 probably needs to be
left out of it, as referring to the judgement of the heathen. In any case,
whoever is ministering or not ministering to whom in the Parable, the ministry
itself as in the Good Samaritan story is described in terms of serious and
central needs of the needy.
It seems to me, Prisca,
that you haven’t been thinking, as you express your public opposition to the
blessing of same-sex unions, about Jesus’ attitude to the Samaritan in the
Parable in Luke 10. He criticized the religious people, but showed the social
outcast as doing the will of God. Shouldn’t we similarly side with the
homosexual, who is the outcast in our society? I am concerned about the humane
treatment of such people.
In that
parable, as the setting shows, the Lord is dealing with, not ordinary Synagogue
members, but prominent and powerful clerics, for whom He reserved His severest
strictures. It is therefore legitimate, if it is legitimate to try to bring the Good
Samaritan up-to-date in our Diocesan situation, to ask about the attitudes of
our ecclesiastical equivalents to, say, those conscientiously unable to endorse
homosexual acts. Our Chinese Christians got behind the mike at our climactic
Synod literally in tears, at the prospect of the ruin of their testimony and
usefulness in their own culture. Are they and others being treated humanely?
I too noticed the strong role played by our
Chinese members on Resolution 9. My “attitude” to them (and to all those
holding the same position), begins with a question – Why?
Why Such
a Reaction to Homosexual Acts?
Why not?
Not only does opposition to homosexual acts chime with the united witness of
the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Septuagint version (which adds an
allusion in Ez. 16), the Intertestamental literature, the Fathers, the
Reformers and all Jewish and Christian ethicists until perhaps thirty years
ago, it encompasses very large numbers of ordinary people in the pew (and
outside all pews). It is not possible to attempt to put a whole
three-thousand-year-old culture and tradition suddenly on the defensive and to
cherish the illusion that there will be no reaction.
This takes me back a decade or more to the time when the homosexual
issue began to emerge as a public debate (about the time the Gay Games came to
I too was
very greatly affected in my thinking by the holding of the Gay Games in our
fair city. I was in the position of leading the Council of Christian Churches
of Greater Vancouver through a time when there was a violent public clash
between secular indifference on the one hand and an hysterical ‘Christian’
reaction (expressed in a full-page ad. in the papers) on the other. We (and I,
under siege from the media as a prominent Anglican because of the holding of a
‘Service of Welcome’ in my cathedral) had to produce a measured yet principled
response in a real hurry. We then had, not many months later, because of our
constitutional commitment to “Biblical and Traditional Christian Ethics”, to
ask the member
Up to then, my position was simply
that I had not particularly studied any texts about the matter; but I took it
for granted that there were some, for it would be curious indeed if the God of
all creation had had nothing explicit to say about behaviour which was so
plainly unbiological. Perhaps as an emotionally mature wife and mother (by 1987
I had been married 25 years) the ‘wrongness’ was plainer to me than it could be
to any man: I cannot remember a time in my adult life when I have not known
that if there was anything worthwhile for men in homosexual acts, there was
certainly nothing for the female of the species, whose sexual maturity and
satisfaction depends on a specifically feminine experience unattainable in such
acts. (This was in my thinking and feeling quite independent of any desire for
children, which was completely absent from my conscious mind when I was
married.) This instinct may go far to account for the fact that there always
seem to be an even smaller number of females than males at all interested in
lifetime homosexual relations, and that where there are no children lesbian
‘unions’ are even less stable. I still believe, or have come round to believing
again, that we have no need of any texts at all to know from observation that
homosexual acts are biologically bizarre, and that this is so quite apart from
the fact that they cannot lead directly to offspring. I believe, and have gone
into scholarly print to this effect, that half of the Pauline argument in Rom.
1 has to do with the ‘biologically bizarre’ aspect of the thing, but that of
course Paul sees no conflict between what the late Chief Rabbi of Great Britain
called some years ago “the law of God” and that of “nature” in genital
relations.
Out of my formulation in the press
and in a letter to City Hall (we did not quote Scripture or say anything about
sin against God in this context) came the beginning of my own study of the explicit
biblical references. Hence my eventual published paper, which circulated for
some years with an introduction which I attach as a Word file. Some Christian
people in this city thought us compromised, but we did not want to spoil our
case by appeal to Biblical authority and spiritual standards with people for
whom these were of no account.
We thought, and said to City Hall, that one more Indian boy on the street with
Aids after the Gay Games was one too many.
Ostensibly, this strong feeling was based on the Biblical condemnation
of homosexual activity.
As I have
said above, the Christian reaction was quite varied, and based on varied
grounds.
But my immediate reaction to this was, and continues to be, one of
disbelief. I find it simply not credible that a few obscure texts from
Leviticus and elsewhere had moved people so strongly. The Bible, after all, has
a lot to say about sins of many kinds (most of which receive a great deal more
Biblical attention than this one), and even more about doing what is right.
Issues of justice and love, for example, of fair sharing of wealth, and of care
and concern for the disadvantaged, are far more prominent in the Bible, but do
they draw the same kind of emotional attention? Hardly. A telling comparison is
with usury, condemned in about as many Biblical passages as homosexual
behaviour. How is it that the same protesters seem content to live in an
economy whose very basis is the earning of maximum rates of return on one’s
invested wealth? Where are the energetic, emotional protests against banks and
the stock market?
I intend
to split off some of my reply to this point into a new posting: See Shades of
Marcion. Here I shall take up the matter of usury. The medieval church
condemned usury in all its forms on the basis of “a few obscure texts”. The ban
on taking money at usury was maintained for at least a millennium, in a
Christian culture which had at least as well-thought-out and articulated a
theology of the Just Wage, the Just Price, the Just War and so forth as ours.
We have absolutely no monopoly on Christian consistency in this or any other
sphere. The people would not soil their hands with it, leaving all
money-lending (which developed societies have always used and needed) to Jewry
(ironically enough). There was a tremendous amount of “emotional attention”
paid to all such economic matters, very much less to personal and relational
ones.
The justification, or
rationalisation, for our modern practice is a distinction between usury and
interest (though that distinction seems to be to have broken down briefly in
our economy in the early Eighties!). The “Are we talking about the same
phenomenon?” argument really is relevant here. Usury in the Bible was indeed
usurious, the rates being so crippling that personal slavery for debt was often
the rapid result. And this was at times when inflation was so low that it took
centuries for any to be discernible. The modern argument would be that that
kind of lending is what is forbidden. For ourselves, isn’t the principle behind
the prohibition that we may not enslave anyone in any way for our own profit?
That is a far more far-reaching demand, it seems to me, than a disapproval of
lending at interest. It may be doubted whether you, Hugh, or any of us, could
move an inch in modern life without using our present financial system. We do
it every time we shop, put money into the bank, or draw a salary or pension.
A much better parallel might be
contraception, with its strong personal and relational component. Until a few
decades ago the whole Judaeo-Christian tradition condemned it: the problem had
always been to keep the population up, and it was assumed that Scripture said
the same. Meanwhile as TB of the ovaries vanished from the Western world,
ethicists were forced to rethink the ban. It could be said, and still is said
in one very significant Christian denomination, that the fact that there is
nowadays not a peep out of anyone about its use in Christian marriage is simply
a measure of how wickedly self-indulgent we all are. Except that God in His
wisdom said nothing at all about it, but rather instructed married people to
meet each other’s needs lest worse befall them. And yes, sundry methods,
including intrauterine devices, were known to the ancient world.
The Early Fathers, always required
reading for Anglicans (they were what Hooker primarily meant by Tradition),
were eloquent against contraception on the ostensible basis of two Old Testament
texts. They were eloquent against homosexual relations on the explicit basis of
the Leviticus and other texts. They were also eloquent against abortion, about
which there are strictly speaking no texts at all: they said that it was
murder, involving the destruction of a person made in the image of God; it was
not far from their minds that it was nearly always fatal to the mother, who was
in the same category. The need to keep the population up was not a minor
consideration to them in any of these judgements; but they can be shown to have
been unbiblical in only the first case.
I can only conclude that the emotional reaction against homosexuality is
triggered by more than the Biblical texts. By what, then? I suspect that the
driving force for anti-homosexual feeling and protest is something much more
visceral than intellectual or even moral;
There is
another possible kind of reaction to reckon with, and that is one rooted in a
deep spiritual conviction.
… that the energy flows from a “gut” sense of discomfort, even
revulsion, at the very thought of physical intimacy with a partner of one’s own
sex. I find at least some hints of such feeling in my own experience – my
initial reluctance to deal with the issue, for example.
Yes, I
agree with you that there is a visceral reaction on the part of most of us, and
that we have to be careful that we are not blinded by this to any facts. Some
even react pathologically to the idea of heterosexual relations! In the late
Eighties I knew less detail than I do now, and as I learnt more had to
discipline myself to peel off, as it were, my emotions from my thinking in this
as in other spheres. The more we know about the nature of the homosexual ‘act
of love’ (which, when all’s said and done, in the male case involves entering
an exit) the more careful we have to be about simple disgust. At the same time,
isn’t it reasonable that people who are not disembodied spirits, but who only
ever know one another in this life in bodies which are of one sex or the other,
should experience a reaction which is tinged with emotion? Some people have an
entirely principled objection to a situation in which their growing children
may be encouraged to think of this kind of relating as being on all fours with
heterosexual relations, or to come to their local parish church and be ‘turned’
by their friendly neighbourhood Anglican priest. Nor do we think an emotional
reaction of disgust and horror peculiar in a victim of sexual abuse.
I think that there are circles where
more information about the physical facts would not come amiss: probably not
apocryphal is the tale of the dear old lady who couldn’t understand what all
the fuss was about in connection with gay men’s living together; it turned out
that her definition of ‘gay’ was ‘unable to beget children’…
Another possible factor is cultural: what have people learned from the
way others in their society think about and treat homosexuals? From long ago, I
remember just one line of a song, I think from “South Pacific.” Children, the
song said, don’t naturally dislike those of another race – “They have to be
carefully taught!” When I see the Chinese members of our Synod, and the
Africans of Lambeth, more strongly opposed than others to some accommodation
with homosexuality, I wonder whether their culture has taught this lesson more
strongly than ours. This is something I haven’t yet discovered, and would be
interested to learn.
As far as
I can see the main cultural factor is that homosexual expression is an
epiphenomenon of extreme affluence, and always has been. Third World bishops,
for instance (not to mention a majority of
As for children, they surely do not
need to learn cruelty and hatred of visible difference from anyone. They need
to unlearn them and learn Christ, like parents. They are no more noble than
savages are.
So my attitude to others with whom I disagree is to seek the reason why,
in the expectation that one side has something to learn from the other. The
biblical arguments (that I expect to be offered) do not satisfy me, for at
least two reasons: the one given above, that other biblical teachings are not
pursued so eagerly, and the one I have been putting forward in the rest of this
conversation, that this particular teaching seems to produce results that
violate other, more certain, biblical teachings.
This
encapsulates another point which I shall take up in detail under separate
cover, as it were.
Why Such a Reaction to Homosexual Acts? Contd.
Hugh Dempster writes:
Oh
dear! Here was I, thinking that over the Christmas “lull” I’d be able to put
together a response to earlier comments from Barclay, and now it’s now, with
that still undone and the flood-gates opening again. Well, I’ve known all along
that there are many facets to this subject, and that a simple discussion of one
topic would perforce branch out before long into a bunch of other tracks. Let
me start with a few brief quibbles on Prisca’s last posting. Yes, I too am all
behind...
Prisca
had asked about my attitude to the Chinese members of our Synod, who spoke
strongly against Resolution 9.
Actually I did not mean yours or that of any ordinary person in the pew,
but rather church leaders such as are in conflict with our Lord in the context
of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Our Chinese members were particularly
distressed, and said so.
I
began by wondering why they took that position, and Prisca responded:
Why not? … It is not
possible to attempt to put a whole three-thousand-year-old culture and
tradition suddenly on the defensive and to cherish the illusion that there will
be no reaction.
I am moving here to the reasonableness of such a reaction not merely on
their part, but on that of any church person. Hence my title.
I don’t expect “no reaction,” but the rest
of Synod was about equally divided pro and con;
Synod had not really had any time to think about Resolution 9,
particularly as it was amended just before it came before us. The ‘debate’ was
extraordinarily superficial.
I
was asking why the Chinese reacted so differently. If the
“three-thousand-year-old culture and tradition” you speak of is the
Judeo-Christian teaching, then both groups presumably have been exposed to that
(the Chinese, perhaps, not for so long), and it would not seem to explain the
difference. (If you meant instead the Chinese ethnic culture, that’s another
story. In that case, you would seem to be accepting that their position (and
yours?) is based primarily in culture, not the Bible.)
I think that the Chinese position is grounded in reason first, their own
pagan culture second, and the Bible has reinforced these for them only very
recently. They cannot commend the Gospel in Chinese culture with sex-ethics
like that, they are saying. I strongly suspect that even tolerance for all such
differences is the fruit of a long exposure to the Gospel with its
revolutionary concept of the value of every human being. The reaction grounded
in culture is to be found everywhere and at all periods, quite independently of
any Bible.
When
I previously made the suggestion that culture might be a factor (and that
children aren’t naturally racist, but must be so taught), Prisca replied:
As far as I can see the main cultural factor is that homosexual
expression is an epiphenomenon of extreme affluence, and always has been. I am
taking a long and broad view, having studied the thing historically as well as
geographically. It has been an upper-crust and affluent thing always and
everywhere. Third World bishops, for instance … cannot see why the Church
should be rent asunder over what they view as the emotional problem of a tiny
minority in the affluent West. …
This was overwhelmingly the majority view
of ALL the bishops at Lambeth.
As for children, they surely do not need to
learn cruelty and hatred of visible difference from anyone.
I should perhaps have said, soon after they
cease to be toddlers and abandon parallel play.
I
question both of these assertions, and the
The premiss here is that there is something inherent in some human
beings called “being homosexual”. Where do we suppose it to be located? In the
genes, the chromosomes, the psyche? Are we supposing that there has been a
major psychological shift in the makeup of human beings?
It would be good (I plead again) if we
could be clear that what we are talking about is the acceptance of a particular
kind of behaviour as feasibly pleasing to God in Christian people, not some
state of mind or emotion which does not manifest itself in action.
I
have no data at hand about children and racism, but have certainly read
accounts of small children playing happily with others of different race, and,
if questions arose (“Mommy, why is Bobby’s skin so black?”), being satisfied
with very simple answers. Maybe the answer is that children must be taught
either way – to accept, or to hate.
I think that I want to assert that children are sinful too. Where do
their parents get wickedness from, to pass it along to them? But this is
another hare to be set running: call it the Perfectibility question, if you
like.
Finally,
on usury (which I had put forward as a parallel to homosexuality – not that the
issues are similar, but simply that both are uniformly condemned by scripture,
in about as many passages), Prisca’s response noted changes in attitude through
history and gave some reasons for these – and seemed to accept the result. But
hold on! If we switch back to sexuality, shouldn’t those be my lines, which she
would be opposing? Why should a historical change in attitude away from the
Biblical position be acceptable in one case and not in the other? Again, this
would suggest (as I have come to suppose) that the Church’s traditional view on
sexuality is indeed based on something more than the Biblical texts themselves.
I am saying that the phenomenon is NOT the
same as what is condemned in the Old Testament but unmentioned in the much more
urban setting of the New (significantly interest-earning is accepted by Our
Lord in the Parable of the Talents, if one wants to be exact!). Hugh, you have
not taken me up about your own involvement in the system, but you are not
telling me that you live detached from it? Have you taken all your pension
money, turned it into gold and stuffed it into a sock under the bed? Would you
not give someone who needs it a mortgage? Tell me how, and I will gladly yield
to your scruples if I could thereby get you to think more tenderly of mine!
I have a whole string
of topics pending: I hope that you agree that we have to make this discussion
less unwieldy?
More later!
Shades of
Marcion, or Is Scripture Divisible or Unclear?
Early in the Second Century there arose a
theologian called Marcion. He thought that there were two Gods in the Bible, a
punitive, angry, legalist God, and the Christian God. On this basis he ‘outed’
all of the Old Testament, most of the Epistles and large parts of the Gospels
as sub-Christian, leaving as Scripture really only the ‘Gentle Jesus meek and
mild’ parts of the Gospels. His view was rejected as aberrant before he died,
but never died with him, for it has been popping up again at intervals ever
since. It is actually in modern terms a variant of anti-Semitism, for it
flourished among the ‘German Christians’ during the Third Reich. Article VII
was written to contradict the Marcionite heresy. It states among other things
that in the New Covenant we are still to obey “those commandments which are
called moral”.
Why
was Marcion mistaken? First and foremost, one cannot disentangle two ideas of
God from one another in revelation: they are completely interwoven, the idea of
His love and the idea that out of love He gives us standards and is angry when
they are broken. Marcion ignored the teaching of Jesus Himself, that His Bible
was one, and that the apostolic witness too was to be inspired and one with it.
He ignored the position that is Dominical, Pauline and that of the writer to
the Hebrews, that Christian people are obliged to ‘fulfil’ all of the Law which
remains unfulfilled in the Person and Work of Christ, and in the power of the
Holy Spirit to follow His example of a perfect obedience to its demands. He
went in for ‘DIY’ integration, or non-integration, of Scripture; the Church
said that the broad method of approaching the diversity within Scripture was
already contained within Scripture: Jesus was the supreme authority over the
whole, the interpretation of the Old Testament was to be governed by that of
the New, and the meaning of the whole caboodle, whatever that was reverently
found to be, was to be believed and obeyed.
Furthermore,
Article VI states, again in accordance with catholic doctrine, that Scripture
contains perspicuously all that everyone needs to know about salvation (which
as you all know includes sanctification and glorification in the New Testament
view). Article XX says that the Church has no right “so to expound” one passage
of Scripture “as to be repugnant to another”. It adds that the Church has no
authority to require anyone to believe ‘extras’ (e.g. the necessity of
baptising sinful behaviour as a part of being ‘loving’) which are not
demonstrable from Scripture.
It
is in accordance with the catholic view of Scripture that as great a New
Testament scholar as the still-living C.F.D. Moule said in my hearing when
lecturing on Romans, “The Jew attempted to keep the Law in order that he might
be saved; we are saved in order that we may keep the Law.”
But my immediate reaction to this was, and continues to be, one of
disbelief. I find it simply not credible that a few obscure texts from
Leviticus and elsewhere had moved people so strongly.
To comment
first on “a few”: why should the number of texts matter? The First Great
Commandment rests on fewer passages still. Is it therefore to be taken less
seriously? Does the plethora of passages uncomplimentary to adultery make
adultery ‘worse’ than my idolatry of self?
“… obscure”: the Hebrew texts, like
most of the Torah, are linguistically completely straightforward; no ancient or
modern version has any difficulty with them, and all versions are wholly
serviceable for those whose Hebrew is growing rusty. The Early Fathers, reading
their Bible in Greek or a version of that, knew that they were about consensual
penetration of the male by the male.
“…
from Leviticus”: the Two Great Commandments have as their source that book and
Deuteronomy, from which the Lord quoted them as part of His Bible and
authoritative for us all.
“… and elsewhere”: the “elsewhere” is
with one exception Apostolic, and the Apostolic references contain
back-reference to parts of the Torah. They too are clear to good Hellenists, if
not always well translated in the modern English versions.
The Bible, after all, has a lot to say about sins of many kinds (most of
which receive a great deal more Biblical attention than this one), and even
more about doing what is right. Issues of justice and love, for example, of
fair sharing of wealth, and of care and concern for the disadvantaged, are far
more prominent in the Bible, but do they draw the same kind of emotional
attention?
This is an
interesting distinction, but not a Biblical one. Exercising sexual restraint
and purity is not separate from “doing what is right”, but a vital aspect of
it. Sexual and other standards are held together, indeed fused, throughout
biblical ethics. What is this “justice and love” which does not encompass all
of life? We started out in this discussion with a passage which makes love, for
God and man, the all-embracing category. Has it now become a small thing?
As for the “emotional attention”, it
depends where you are. Certain concerns are a preoccupation in left-liberal
circles. These, because we are human and find it hard to get our minds round so
much material (plus the fact that biblical ethics condemn us all!), bleat about
them all the time, but are silent in the face of our modern epidemic of
unchastity, it seems to me.
Biblical ethics are very
even-handed, it seems to me, on the Left and the Right.
I have just done a search of the New
Testament terms for just/unjust
and cognates. Those prepared to look at the results, perhaps with a good
translation to hand, will see that there is no vital distinction within them
between justice, goodness, righteousness etc. and their opposite negative
equivalents.
So my attitude to others with whom I disagree is to seek the reason why,
in the expectation that one side has something to learn from the other. The
biblical arguments (that I expect to be offered) do not satisfy me.
Shouldn’t
we all be expecting to learn more from Scripture all our days? Particularly if
we are open to having our assumptions challenged by what we find there?
… for at least two reasons: the one given above, that other biblical
teachings are not pursued so eagerly…
I am open
to hearing in what way my life and thinking need correction. I go to church
partly for this.
… and the one I have been putting forward in the rest of this
conversation, that this particular teaching seems to produce results that
violate other, more certain, biblical teachings.
This
brings us smack up against the question of what love for neighbour is, and how
it relates to the revealed will of God.
That needs a new discussion.
Is There an Analogy with the Good Samaritan?
Hugh wrote:
Continuing
my conversation with Prisca… By way of reprise, this started with my claim
(against a denial) that there is a biblical basis for reconsidering the
church’s attitude to homosexuals (as we are trying to do in this dialogue). The
chief theme I have in mind is Jesus’ frequent alignment with “inferior” people,
the poor, the outcast, the foreigner, the despised. (In effect, I guess, the
“preferential option for the poor” of Latin-American theologians.) Homosexuals,
in today’s society, surely fit in that category – and this, I claim, needs to
be considered over against those scripture passages which condemn homosexual
behaviour. The two examples I put forward were the parables of the Good
Samaritan and the last judgement.
First, about the Good Samaritan.
The note that the ‘good neighbour’ was a Samaritan (two
So far we agree.
It is therefore legitimate, if it is legitimate to try to bring this
up-to-date in our Diocesan situation, to ask about the attitudes of our
ecclesiastical equivalents to, say, those conscientiously unable to endorse
homosexual acts...
I’ve been trying to understand this sentence
as raising a question about the parallel I draw between the parable and our
situation, but can’t make it come out to any question I believe you would ask.
The end part, about attitudes (perhaps mine?) to those “unable to endorse homosexual
acts,” I can respond to, but not really in the context of the parable. (In that
context, it would translate into attitudes to those unable to endorse
Samaritans – perhaps the “prominent and powerful clerics” you mentioned as
targets of Jesus’ severest strictures.) I’ll therefore make that a separate
response message.
I was trying to say that the connection with homosexuality in general
and our Diocesan situation in particular is so tenuous as to be nugatory. We
are asking whether a particular lifestyle is one which God can ‘bless’.
Were not Samaritans then and homosexuals now
similarly despised? That’s essentially the connection. I agree with that last
sentence as a fair statement of the question we are addressing (except perhaps
for the unfortunate word “lifestyle”). But then you go on to make
characterizations which, it seems to me, beg that very question.
Our Lord’s ideal Samaritan is of course to be assumed to be exemplary in
his life in general: his ‘inferiority’ is a religious/ethnic thing not tied to
something universally agreed to be sinful. In the episode of the Woman at the
Well, the Lord was prepared to challenge a real-life Samaritan about sex-ethics
where these were the issue. But they or any other form of ungodliness are not
even remotely the issue in Lk. 10.
To
make this comparison does not, I think, “leap ... to baptise all forms of
behaviour.” And it means that your “cash to call the right kind of escort
service” is actually attached to the wrong player in this little drama – your presumed
homosexual should be playing the part of Samaritan, not victim. :-)
When you say “tied to
something universally agreed to be sinful” or “any other form of ungodliness”
in arguing against my linking of the Good Samaritan story with homosexuality, are
you not by implication assuming that same-sex relations in particular cannot be
blessed by God? I am not sure about the specific issues separating Jews and
Samaritans (they worshipped on different mountains, for one?), but would not
Jesus’ hearers assume that the “Samaritan lifestyle” could not be blessed by
God? And would we perhaps (in the light of this parable) disagree with that?
Again, you say that the Samaritan of the story “is of course to be assumed to
be exemplary in his life in general.” Would not the opposite be assumed by
those hearers? Would they not consider the label “good Samaritan” an oxymoron?
Wasn’t that likely Jesus’ point in casting his story as he did?
I am saying that the teaching of the Parable has everything to do with
the meeting of fundamental human need, and absolutely nothing to do with any
messing about in bed of any variety! (Yes, there is an oscillation,
within the Parable and in our thinking about it, between the active and passive
senses of “neighbour”. I am primarily concerned at this point to emphasise that
certain kinds of satisfaction are quite distinct from basic human needs, and
the duty to meet them, which together create human rights.)
Yes (if you must put it that way), but it
also includes a striking warning against denigrating (or excluding from your
“neighbour-hood”) certain others just because you think God can’t bless them.
As I indicated before, I set this story alongside other passages in which Jesus
aligns himself with people “beyond the pale” – most often “tax collectors and
sinners” – and is criticized for so doing. My argument supposes only that many
Christians today treat homosexuals in much the way Jews of Jesus’ time treated
Samaritans. Is that not a legitimate analogy?
I think that a number of points need to be made. Your remarks are in
inverted commas.
1. You state “this started with my claim (against a denial) that there is a
biblical basis for reconsidering the church’s attitude to homosexuals (as we
are trying to do in this dialogue).”
Actually we are not doing that, as you later admit: we are asking
whether homosexual relations are a possible Christian behaviour which God can
‘bless’. We are not talking about anybody’s ‘orientation’ as such. (Sometimes
this may be at odds with actual behaviour, or prove to be so in the long run.)
2. “The chief theme I have in mind is Jesus’ frequent alignment with
‘inferior’ people, the poor, the outcast, the foreigner, the despised. (In
effect, I guess, the ‘preferential option for the poor’ of Latin-American
theologians.) Homosexuals, in today’s society, surely fit in that category –
and this, I claim, needs to be considered over against those scripture passages
which condemn homosexual behaviour.”
Even if it were granted that our society really oppresses homosexuals,
it is not homosexuals as such, or our society, which are in question in our
Diocesan situation. Isn’t it clear, furthermore, that, for example,
wife-beating is generally disapproved? We do not conclude that wife-beaters are
thereby rendered fine fellows subject to cruelty and gross misunderstanding,
and that the Good Samaritan is analogous to them. By this far-fetched method,
absolutely any behaviour could be smuggled into our reasoning as admirable, or
at least venial.
3. “I’ve been trying to understand this sentence (about The Lord’s
reserving His severest strictures for religious leaders) as raising a question
about the parallel I draw between the parable and our situation, but can’t make
it come out to any question I believe you would ask. The end part, about
attitudes (perhaps mine?) to those ‘unable to endorse homosexual acts,’ I can
respond to, but not really in the context of the parable.”
The Samaritan in the parable is shown to be exemplary by contrast with
two highly-educated religious professionals, who signally failed to obey the
Law which Jesus’ interlocutor has just established as representing the whole
(horizontal) will of God for mankind. To get these people even more into
context, we need to understand that these were individuals who were really in
earnest about their religion. No doubt we are meant to understand that there
was a purely selfish, ordinarily human, motive for their neglect (i.e. the
brigands who notoriously lurked in the caves and boulders above the
I want to say that if
there is a current and local parallel to these religious officials, it is much
more plausibly with the attitude which ignores the obvious distress of ordinary
church members, in favour of a doctrinaire insistence that because I am high up
in the Church I know better what God wants done. I do not refer to you, Hugh,
or to ordinary members of Synod…
4. “When you say ‘tied to something universally agreed to be sinful’ or
‘any other form of ungodliness’ in arguing against my linking of the Good
Samaritan story with homosexuality, are you not by implication assuming that
same-sex relations in particular cannot be blessed by God? I am not sure about
the specific issues separating Jews and Samaritans (they worshipped on
different mountains, for one?), but would not Jesus’ hearers assume that the
‘Samaritan lifestyle’ could not be blessed by God?… Again, you say that the
Samaritan of the story ‘is of course to be assumed to be exemplary in his life
in general.’ Would not the opposite be assumed by those hearers? Would they not
consider the label ‘good Samaritan’ an oxymoron? Wasn’t that likely Jesus’
point in casting his story as he did?”
Actually my reference is to an assumption which would most certainly
have been shared by absolutely everyone at the time of the telling of the
Parable. We need to be completely clear that neither the Lord Himself, nor any
of His contemporaries who were in any kind of position of authority, whether
Jew or Samaritan, could possibly have countenanced, let alone practised,
same-sex relations. Not only could He not, for logical reasons already stated,
have been thinking about vindicating Samaritans, as opposed to rebuking Jews.
(For a really telling ‘exemplary neighbour although’ he could have chosen a
much more spectacularly despised Gentile, after all. The Jews really did think
of the Gentiles as a bunch of immoralists.) This teaching is much deeper than
our typical modern sociological, horizontally-human, concern. He chose as a
lay-figure for a story about love for neighbour someone who stood for an
hereditary religious/ethnic enmity going back at least five centuries, because
the Law was held in common: and reading it in an inferior copy, not to mention
worshipping in the wrong place, are shown in the story to be no bar to pleasing
God. ‘How do you read it?’ is a very pointed question!!! There was mutual
contempt and institutionalised avoidance between two old communities, into
which people were born and out of which there was no exit. They occupied
different lands and had two separate
Perhaps it would help
our discussion to put homosexual relations into their Biblical context. They
keep company with child sacrifice, incest, adultery, murder (Leviticus); (as an
aspect of sexual immorality in general) with wicked schemes, murder, adultery,
theft, false testimony and defamation (Mt. 15); with every kind of vice,
violence and wickedness in Rom. 2; with general unchastity, idolatry, adultery,
theft, ruthless acquisitiveness, intoxication, defamation, and swindling (I
Cor. 6); with parricide, matricide, murder, adultery, slaving, fraud and
perjury (I Tim. 1); and by implication with all the other ‘works of the flesh’
in Gal. 5. They would certainly not have been attributable, or attributed, to a
Samaritan qua
Samaritan by the most hostile Jew.
5. “[The parable] also includes a striking warning against denigrating (or
excluding from your ‘neighbour-hood’) certain others just because you think God
can’t bless them. As I indicated before, I set this story alongside other
passages in which Jesus aligns himself with people ‘beyond the pale’ – most
often ‘tax collectors and sinners’ – and is criticized for so doing.”
I really don’t know anyone in my church who denigrates, excludes
socially or thinks of as ‘unblessable’ homosexual or any other persons.
Didn’t the Lord, in his mostly private but
occasionally documented chats with the Quislings and Street People actually
always get them to align themselves with Himself? His love, reflecting the love
of God, was never a soft thing. Repentance and faith with power for amendment
of life were part of the offer, without which there was no ultimate blessing.
There was no question of what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”.
6. “My argument supposes only that many Christians today treat homosexuals
in much the way Jews of Jesus’ time treated Samaritans. Is that not a
legitimate analogy?”
Even if the premiss be granted, no, except in the most remote and
subsidiary way. I have tried really hard, but find the analogy really too
convoluted.
Is Sex-experience a Basic Human Need?
About the Sheep and
Goats:
We have already agreed
that whoever is ministering or not ministering to whom in the Parable, the
ministry itself as in the Good Samaritan story is described in terms of serious
and central needs of the needy.
The “loving care” again has nothing whatever to do with
many of our felt wants, everything to do with basic need.
Yes and no. It isn’t about satisfying greed,
but our bodies have a way of making us “feel want” whenever we suffer a “basic
need.” Hunger and thirst (which are mentioned in the parable) are felt wants,
signalling our basic needs of food and drink. Companionship may be both a want
and a need (for, say, the sick or prisoner). And of course, what about our
sexual drives? They are surely a basic need for our species, and (probably
therefore) are given to us as fairly urgent wants. So I think that distinction
may not be quite as clean as you suggest.
Yes, the visiting of people in their sickness or imprisonment does look
like a care for them as social beings. Certainly, to reiterate my earlier
distinction, human contact and the sense of being cared for by other people is
of the bene esse, if not of the esse, of most
people’s lives most of the time. For the very young or otherwise vulnerable it
may make the difference between life and death in particular cases. However, we
need to remember that the infirmary and other place of sickness, let alone
prison, have been and still are by no means necessarily places where one got
fed, or cared for in other basic ways, unless someone cared enough to visit
there. So I do not think that those parts of the Parable can be used to argue
for the basic nature of the need for companionship. Absolutely essential in the
action of the Good Samaritan was the brave and sacrificial act of physical
rescue: this is why the Parable is sometimes expounded (however
methodologically unsoundly!) as an allegory of Christ’s rescue of the sinner,
who is mortally wounded and powerless to help himself.
Our whole tradition
teaches that for companionship, affirmation and personhood we always can, and
sometimes must, do with God only.
That we have been
programmed to desire sexual union so as to propagate the race is clear. It is
incidentally clear that homosexual ‘union’ is an exceedingly roundabout method
of arriving at the same result. The Creation Mandate to ‘fill up the earth’
used to be regarded as justification for the view that, to quote Humanae Vitae, “Every
marriage-act must be open to life.” We cannot conclude that all without
exception are called to do their bit, nor outside the Roman obedience do we
nowadays make the command mean that all the married have a duty to have as many
babies as they possibly can in the time.
If we are talking about
our longing for sex-experience or any aspect of it, it may be so overwhelmingly
strong (in many women the desire for awakening comes before the desire for
children, and conceivably the second is always qualitatively different in the
two sexes) that the little difficulty that nobody has offered us marriage is
experienced as terrible deprivation by individuals. I have many younger friends
who live with very much pain because of this. The short-term, or sometimes lifelong,
pain is the greater for believers because they do not feel free to assuage it
in unworthy ways. They are quite clear what they want, and tell the Lord about
it frequently and with tears, but must like all of us accept that when the
answer is still “No” or “Not Yet” what they are feeling is a want not a need. I
have never known any rational Christian to die under this particular
deprivation, or to consider that God, the Church or society have failed to
grant them some sort of abstract ‘right’ to sexual enjoyment.
There is a Christian virtue called Acceptance wh