More Perfect Union? another view (i)
Hither follows a really articulate and conscientious review of Alan Wilson'sMore Perfect Matrimony? by Martin Davie. Martin was for several years Theological Secretary of the Council for Christian Unity of the Church of England and Theological Consultant to the House of Bishops. He offers a comprehensive analysis, and his comments on the nature of marriage, and whether this is a matter of theological 'indifference' are specially important. Because it is longer than my usual blog posts, I offer it in two parts; the second is hither.
Introduction
The Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Wilson, has go known equally the bishop who has broken ranks with the official policy of the Church of England by arguing that there should be complete credence by Christians of same-sex relationships and that 'marriage'[ane] between two people of the same sex should be viewed as a theologically valid class of Christian marriage.
This is not the outset book written by a Church of England bishop in support of aforementioned-sex relationships. Back in 2000 the then Bishop of Swindon, Michael Doe, argued for a more than accepting attitude towards such relationships in his book Seeking the Truth in Honey. However, since 2000 the cosmos of Civil Partnerships and the legalisation of aforementioned-sex activity 'marriages' have increased the pressure on the Church of England to alter its position on sexual ethics and its view of matrimony and there is no doubt that Alan Wilson's book will become widely seen every bit providing a manifesto for such a change in the same style that Bishop John Robinson'due south volume Honest to God became the manifesto for the 'new theology' back in the 1960s.
This being the case, it is incumbent on those who believe that information technology would be incorrect for the Church of England to alter its teaching nigh sexual-ethics and marriage to explain why they are not persuaded by the arguments put forward by Wilson and the purpose of this review is to provide such an explanation.
The argument that Wilson puts forward in More Perfect Spousal relationship has a number of strands.
- (Affiliate two) Developments in biology mean that we tin no longer view human beings in simple binary terms as either male or female and this in turn means that we can no longer see same-sexual practice orientation as 'unnatural' or 'intrinsically disordered.' This means that we are free to gauge same-sex activity relationships by exactly the same criteria equally heterosexual ones. 'Do they display virtues of permanence, stability, mutual honey and fidelity? Relationships are better judged by their fruit than past their configuration' (p.34).
- (Chapter iii) Equality is at the center of the biblical story, 'the ground bass of the Bible story from the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem' (p.53). The refusal to accept same-sex marriage is a refusal to accept equality in a way that is akin to the refusal of the South African state to take non-white people as equal citizens during the apartheid era.
- (Chapter 4) We need to read biblical verses in relation to their particular historical and literary contexts and in relation to the message of the Bible every bit whole. The history of Christian attitudes to slavery and corporal and death sentence betoken us to two means of approaching the Bible. There is the 'narrow gauge' approach that focuses on particular texts and there is the 'broad gauge' arroyo that approaches these texts, and where necessary qualifies them, in the light of the Bible's overall teaching.
- (Chapter 5) The 'clobber texts' that have shaped the way that Christians have viewed homosexual people (Genesis nineteen, Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, I Corinthians half-dozen:9 and 1 Timothy i:x) do not, on close exam, provide a clear condemnation of aforementioned-sex relationships today. Furthermore, they have to exist read in the light of Jesus' teaching nearly a tree being known by the quality of its fruit (Matthew 7:16-eighteen) and this means reading the Scriptures in the light of God's honey. 'The Scriptures cannot behave bitter fruit. The discipline that enables Christians to hear the word of God co-ordinate to the beloved of God is not woolly liberalism, only obedience to the New Attestation injunction to discern the spirits and make love our aim' (p.81)
- (Chapters six & 7) Both in the Bible and in our gild the forms that union have taken and the understandings of the nature of marriage have changed and developed. In the Bible marriage in its various forms is 'an externally defined social establishment that is drawn upon to illustrate God's relationships with his people, nearly which regulations are made, but, more than importantly, its spiritual and relational aspects developed beyond considerations of sex, gender or children' (p.99). The history of marriage in our society shows us that union 'is non divers past Church or State, but by the lives of people who marry co-ordinate to the social and personal mores of the time and place' (p.121). The medieval idea of wedlock as an 'indissoluble sacrament' has go an 'empty shell' and has been superseded by the Puritan concept of it as 'personal partnership of equals' (p.121).
- (Chapter 8) The global Church building should adopt a Romans 14 approach to issues of sexuality by allowing dissimilar approaches to co-exist. This would enable the churches 'to be agents of common understanding and reconciliation rather than creating hate and breach betwixt themselves' (p.146).
- (Chapter ix) Same-sex activity marriages will enrich rather than diminish the institution of marriage. The distinctive affair that should marking out a Christian marriage is non the sex of the couple involved, or whether their relationship is open to the procreation of children, but 'the quality of self-giving love between the parties' (p.163), something that is equally possible in a same-sexual practice 'marriage.'
Strand ane – the statement near biology.
If we now consider each of these strands in plow we notice, firstly, that Wilson's argument that we can no longer view human beings in simple binary terms for biological reasons is flawed both scientifically and theologically.
ScienceIt is flawed scientifically for a number of reasons:
- Every bit the Pilling report notes 'the great majority of human beings are unambiguously either male or female in terms of their chromosomes and the master and secondary sexual characteristics that their bodies brandish.' The variations in human brains to which Wilson refers (page 26 fn. 4) do not negate this truth. Estimates of the number of people with intersex weather condition very between 0.018% of the population to i.7% depending on the definition of intersex that is used. It is therefore illegitimate to entreatment to intersex weather condition, as Wilson does, to fence that we can no longer recall of being either male or female as the human norm.
- The existence of gender identity dysphoria (in which people experience they are trapped in a body of the wrong sexual activity) and same-sexual activity attraction does not disprove a binary male-female divide since the vast bulk of people with gender dysphoria and same-sex attraction are biologically unambiguously either male or female and the vast bulk of people with same-sex attraction view themselves as either male or female.
- Biologically, human sexuality is oriented towards reproduction. The sex organs of the man body are designed in a way that leads towards the procreation of children and human sexual allure works on the biological level to bring well-nigh procreation. When human beings go sexually aroused they become aroused in a way that is designed to bring virtually reproductive intercourse. Furthermore reproductive intercourse requires the action of both sexes. That is why same-sex couples cannot accept children of their ain and accept to rely on either adoption, egg donation or surrogate motherhood.
- What Wilson dismisses as the 'Janet and John' view that human beings are either male or female is in fact, according to biology, the overwhelming man norm and the basis for human sexuality. An alien company encountering human being beings for the first time would view them as a species that exists in two sexes and which requires two sexes to reproduce.
- Wilson goes confronting the available prove when he says that attempts to change people'due south sexual orientation have 'near universally failed'(p.28). At that place were a series of well documented reports from the 1940s to the 1970s of successful therapy to help people deal with unwanted sexual attraction. The controversy about such therapy ways that there have been no controlled randomized trials in this area since then, but such evidence as there is suggests that such therapy can be successful in the case of some people, including people who are definitely homosexual rather than bisexual.
TheologyInformation technology is flawed theologically because information technology ignores the articulate teaching of Genesis 1 and 2, echoed in Romans v:1-two, and reiterated by Jesus in his instruction on spousal relationship (Matthew xix:4, Mark ten:six) that God chose to create people equally male and female. Wilson ignores these texts totally in spite of the fact that they are fundamental to biblical anthropology and have been fundamental to subsequent Christian anthropology. Wilson has to face the question: if he no longer thinks that nosotros should view human beings in binary terms and then what does he call up we should do with these texts?
It is also flawed theologically because information technology takes no business relationship of the Autumn. The Bible and the Christian organized religion teaches us that we live in a world that is non as it should be and that this fact is reflected not just on the spiritual level, but on the biological level equally well. That is why, although human beings were designed by God to see, hear and walk in that location are people who for congenital, medical or adventitious reasons are blind, deaf or lame. The fact that Jesus came and healed the blind, the deaf and the lame indicates that how things are in a Fallen globe is not necessarily how God intends them to be. Similarly, the fact that some people feel a disjunction betwixt their bodies and who they truly are and the fact that some people are sexually attracted to those of the aforementioned sexual practice does not mean that this is the result of the diversity of creation rather than a effect of the Autumn.
Strand 2 – the statement about equality.
Turning to the result of equality, the cogency of Wilson's argument depends on what is meant by equality.
In Scripture all man beings, regardless of their sex, race, or course are created by God in His image and likeness and they have the possibility of participating in God'southward eternal kingdom through the work of Christ. It is this equality to which St Paul refers in Galatians 3:28 and which gives every human being an intrinsic dignity which demands respect. That is why the outset Christians gradually came to practise away with the markers that separated Jews from Gentiles (such every bit the Jewish food laws and the requirement for circumcision) and why Christians are (or should be) opposed to sexism, racism or course based oppression.
All the same, it does non follow from the intrinsic dignity of every homo on the basis of cosmos and redemption that all human desires (all the same strongly felt), or all forms of human sexual activity, are equally acceptable earlier God and therefore should equally exist accepted past the Church. If this was the case it would be impossible to brand sense of what Jesus says about the desires of the human heart that defile people in God'due south sight (Matthew 15:19-twenty, Mark 7:21-23) and it would likewise be impossible to make sense of the numerous biblical commands and injunctions that say that certain forms of behaviour (including sexual behaviour) are unacceptable for God'south people.
Wilson'due south statement that it is incorrect to try to 'detest the sin, only love the sinner' because it is a failure of love to fail to take 'anyone'due south cocky-identity seriously' (p.47) is problematic because this is in fact exactly what God does. In the words of St Augustine, commenting on Romans 5:eight:
…in a mode wondrous and divine, he loved u.s.a. even when he hated u.s.. For he hated the states when we were such equally he had not made u.s., and yet considering our iniquity had not destroyed his work in every respect, he knew in regard to each of us, to hate what we had fabricated, and to dearest what he had made. (Tract in John 110)
What Wilson is doing is confusing dearest with acceptance and affirmation. According to classical Christian theology, love, whether God's love for us, or our consequent love for other people, is not simply about acceptance and affirmation. Information technology is instead desiring that someone should flourish as the person God made them to be and taking the appropriate action to achieve that stop. It follows that if, equally Christian theology has traditionally claimed, human beings were created by God to engage in sex solely within a married human relationship within someone of the contrary sex, information technology would be a failure of love to simply assert or take someone in a aforementioned-sex relationship. This would not encourage them to undertake the change necessary to go the person God made them to be.
Strand 3 – how to read the Bible.
On the consequence of how nosotros should read the Bible, Wilson is right to debate that we need to read detail texts in their literary and historical context and in the low-cal of the Bible's overall message. Unfortunately what he does not seem to have registered is that the overall message of the Bible is one that leaves no space for the affirmation of same-sexual activity sexual relationships.
This is a point that is well made by the American writer Michael Brown in his book Tin can you exist Gay and Christian? He asks the question why there are simply a tiny number of biblical verses that straight address the issue of same-sex sexual relationships. His respond to this question is to draw an analogy with a volume of recipes for sugar free puddings that has an introduction that explains why sugar should be avoided. The volume would not need to constantly say 'no sugar' considering this would exist the betoken of the book. In a similar way, he says:
The Bible is a heterosexual book, and that is why it does not need to constantly speak confronting homosexual practice. It is heterosexual from beginning to end, and my heart truly goes out to 'gay Christians' trying to read the Bible as 'their book.' For them information technology cannot be read as information technology is; information technology must be adjusted, adjusted, and changed to fit homosexual couples and their families. In short 'gay Christians' must read God-canonical homosexuality into the biblical text since information technology but isn't in that location.
And this is the design throughout the entire Bible in book after volume.
- Every unmarried reference to matrimony in the entire Bible speaks of heterosexual unions without exception, to the point that a Hebrew idiom for spousal relationship is for a human 'to take a married woman.'
- Every warning to men near sexual purity presupposes heterosexuality, with the married man oft warned not to lust after another woman.
- Every word about family order and structure speaks explicitly in heterosexual terms, referring to husbands and wives, fathers and mothers.
- Every law or education given to children presupposes heterosexuality, as children are urged to mind or obey or follow the counsel or example of their father and mother.
- Every parable. Illustration or metaphor having to exercise with marriage is presented in exclusively heterosexual terms.
- In the Old Testament God depicts His relationship with State of israel as that of a groom and a helpmate; in the New Testament the epitome shifts to the marital spousal relationship of husband and wife as a picture of Christ and the Church.
- Since there was no such matter equally in vitro fertilization and the like in biblical times, the only parents were heterosexual (it nevertheless takes a homo and a woman to produce a child) and there is no hint of homosexual couples adopting children.
The Bible is a heterosexual book, and that is a uncomplicated, pervasive, undeniable fact that cannot be avoided, and, to repeat, this observation has zip to exercise with a disputed passage, verse or give-and-take, it is a universal, all pervasive, completely transparent fact. (pp.88-89)
Because this is the instance, whether you engage in a 'narrow guess' study of the specific texts that speak about aforementioned-sex sexual activity, or a broad gauge study of the Bible as whole the bulletin is the same. Because of the style that God created human beings as male person and female there is no legitimate space for such activity, let alone for same-sex 'marriage.'
[i] Some readers of this review may find the quotation marks round references to aforementioned-sexual practice 'marriages' offensive. I apologise for the offence, simply it is necessary to keep on marking out that from a traditional Christian view betoken these are not truly marriages (as the BCP spousal relationship service puts information technology 'and so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's word doth allow are not joined together past God; neither is their Matrimony lawful') and the apply of quotation marks is ane fashion of doing this.
The review continues with role ii hither.
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