The view that some of the best things here appear in the comboxes is exemplified by the recent discussion on morality and faith between Struans and Servuis Fidelis. With their permission I have ransacked the boxes and am putting up their views for wider consideration. Struans first. Jess
Sin is separation from God, and we are all sinners.
I have always felt uncomfortable with lists of sins, as if there is a fixed list such things. That is not to say that there are not obvious things that are sinful, but rather that any list might imply that there is a closed canon of sins, as a list would be of a fixed length. I don’t really think that the language works that way for a lot of people, where ‘sin’ means something from a list, but if we say that sin is separation from God, then that means so much more.
Now, writing that isn’t meant to be some slippery slope away from resisting the temptation to sin (i.e. to be sinful), but rather as a preamble to what I want to write about homosexuals.
I think it would be wrong for people in the C of E to bang on about and promote ‘gay marriage’ in church without reference to the rest of the Anglican Communion. That would amount to tokenism in my view. The first woman priest was Florence Li, ordained in China in 1944, and look at the time lag before the C of E has come (is to come) to women bishops – there are many parts of the Anglican Communion where female ordination is not an issue, and that is at it should be before the C of E attempts any change. It is disrespectful to others in the Anglican Communion not to do so – even places in Africa are reasonably mixed as regards this gender issue – Rwanda and South Africa being examples of provinces where females are able to be ordained.
Some of those who rant and rave against the idea of ‘gay marriage’ – as opposed to taking a more considered view, whatever their conclusions – seem to think that such a thing would mean endorsing a view that those in such a union would therefore be marked out by the church as ‘not sinners’. That is nonsense – gays who marry would be sinners, just like the rest of us.
So, why would such people be sinners? What is ‘the sin’? Well, I don’t want to have a list of sins, as I mentioned above. It is God who judges us – it is God who knows what the totality of that list is and what it isn’t – not humans.
In the meantime where is the harm in providing the legal protection for a committed relationship? Call it something else than marriage if you want – I take a utilitarian view on the matter, rather than indulging in the tokenism of labels. I am not someone who ‘believes in equality’ – I believe in God – and God knows we’re all different, not equal. For those who want to burrow deeper, I will not shy away from the issues if people want to reply to me in the comments. However, let us also look at today’s newspapers: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10637532/Being-homosexual-is-only-partly-due-to-gay-gene-research-finds.html
All Along the Watchtower 
The first thing that occurs to me here is, if we are to get rid of the idea of having some sort of defined ‘list’ of sins, how exactly will we know when we are straying from the path that God wants for us, and thus becoming further separated from Him? Obviously there is no fully exhaustive list, and grey areas do exist, but without some sort of guide as to what kinds of behaviour are and aren’t sinful, where do we look for instruction, that we may grow in holiness?
Conscience is a very good starting point, but consciences can become clouded, and need to be formed – if one were to say that conscience alone can be our guide, I think a quick look around at the huge variety of contrasting positions people take on various issues based on conscience alone would seem to undermine such a stance.
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As you will see when this series of posts unfolds, a lot of your points are covered. Jess has arranged for there to be seven posts in this series between me and SF.
In a nutshell, let me answer your main point by saying: church, and group discernment. I can hear the ‘ah, buts…’ already. But read on as these posts unfold.
S.
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As you will see when this series of posts unfolds, a lot of your points are covered. Jess has arranged for there to be seven posts in this series between me and SF.
In a nutshell, let me answer you main point by saying: church, and group discernment. I can hear the ‘ah, buts…’ already. But read on as these posts unfold.
S.
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Ah okay, that is fair enough – thank you. The ‘ah, but…’s are indeed there, and great in number, but I shall stay tuned to see how it all unfolds on both sides 🙂
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An interesting and timely discussion. I look forward to reading the rest of the discourse. In my own estimation the question of “gay marriage” is no question at all. Man can redefine anything he wants (and will if the prophetic words of Scripture are considered accurate). However man’s redefinition does not affect the essential nature of what is established. In Christian marriage it is not what man joins together but God. The right of deifinition resides within His realm of authority not ours. Even if the church desires to do so it cannot with any authority redefine something which God has already set.
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Struans, I realize we have taken this conversation along a certain path which will be interesting when get to the areas where we are at present. Then, I will be able to comment with refreshed mind to your latest comments which are not posted as yet.
However, it strikes me that there are also other lines of argument that neither of us has yet explored that might also be quite interesting in themselves: order vs. chaos; harmony vs. disharmony, unity vs. disunity, etc. In other words does God incline the human soul and the Church to seek truths that seem written into our DNA to seek that which is higher rather than that which is lower? To seek beauty and renounce the ugly? I think that if we are trying to incline ourselves toward the perfection that is God then God has given natural man something that is innate in his soul. That we are attracted to do those things which lead to the lesser state of both extremes seems to be what one might call ‘natural’ sin or a disordered ‘fallen’ state: a sin against the Will of God Who placed within us an orientation of goods in their proper order. For a Church to relinquish its role to seek the higher for the lower seems an abandonment of ultimate purpose in helping the Christian oppose the forces that work against this natural inclination for a purely selfish enjoyment or self-fulfillment. It has no supernatural goal as an end to its action and has not its eyes to ultimate end.
What think you, Struans? Is this a line of future argument that you might like to explore?
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Yes, I think we could have an interesting discussion there, if we avoid the obvious differences in our respective approaches.
I have some further points to make too, which I can make later as well…but let me note them briefly here:-
(i) the role of the law (canon or state)
(ii) teleology: something I keep coming back to, but here the question for me is not so much ‘is teleology real’, but rather ‘how can we know God’s purposes at all’.
However, lets see if the others come up with any interesting lines of discussion that we’ve not been over. 🙂
S.
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I agree and my questions above, of course speak to your (ii). 🙂
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Good. Plato, Aristotle, here we come. Perhaps Kant and Hegel too?
S.
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Comrade Struans makes the same point that i do. Gays are no less sinners than the rest of us. There should be no questioning that.
Should the state sanction gay marriage? If it does, it makes it seem to the world that this is OK. But its not OK. I think what comrade Struans is getting at is this….Should the state bar gays from legal marriage. It is not against the law to sleep with your neighbors wife. It is not against the law to bow down befor graven images.
Because one can doesnt mean one should.
Gays can have their ceremonies and what ever all they want. Sholud the state grant them legal status? I say…No.Enough is enough.
Are states going to legalize gay marriage….Yes
Many states in the USA have legalized it.
What to do about it? Ask Jesus to come in and sup with you.
All one can do is get baptized in the holy spirit, then go where the spirit leads you. The time is at hand. Wickedness is now legal. God will be coming for his church. Get born again and lead your friends and family to Christ is all one can do. Let he who is filthy be filthy still.
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I did not state “no less sinners” and try to quantify sin.
S.
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– gays who marry would be sinners, just like the rest of us.—-Comrade Struans
I took that to mean gays are sinners just like the rest of us. Which they are. Amongst sinner, i am chief.
I say let gays alone, but dont let them legally marry.
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I was using a digital approach: sinner or not sinner. I took you to be saying that I was taking a more sliding scale approach in trying to quantify a persons distance from the divine.
S.
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Struans, I am delighted that this series of exchanges is being rescued from the comments section; it deserves it.
I take the point about the danger that a list of sins can lead to an overly-legalistic attitude – that is that if something isn’t listed, then it isn’t a sin.
Here, it is a shame that the sacrament of reconciliation is so infrequently practised by the Anglican Church – and, lest I be thought to be making a merely sectarian point (as if!), I would add that it is an equal shame that more Catholics do not practice it. It is an excellent antidote to legalism, and a very good, practical way of helping Christians examine their consciences.
Yes, we are sinners and we all fall short, but if we do not know what that means – that is what are the standards God expects of us – then it is hard for our spiritual advisors, and ourselves, to correct those shortcomings.
On the gay marriage issue, your own bishops seem to feel that clergymen ought not to marry each other if they are of the same sex. Some of their clergymen feel this is unkind and inconsistent; what are your views here? C
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Perish the thought, my dear friend C, lest anyone think that you have a sectarian bone in your body. In my experience converts from England to Rome are some of the nicest and sweetest people, especially to their friends who continue to uphold the building of the Kingdom of God according to the truth of the Anglican formularies.
My own views on this recently decided matter are at present that we should move on from this debate on homosexuality to things of greater substance in the building of the Kingdom. I loyally subscribe to the decisions made by the recent synod, of course. As time progresses, we shall see where the road takes us. You will have noted, of course, that synod did not declare its current position infallible, or even definitive.
S.
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It will be interesting to see if your church agrees with you. This, from our local Anglican bishop, is interesting:
http://t.co/nwLy7JtoOx
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Yes, interesting. Frankly, I wish greater things would now be looked at. The ‘equality brigade suffer’ from the same short-sightedness as the ‘socialism brigade’ – namely one of universalism.
If having equal incomes is so important to socialists on a moral basis, then why is there no policy proposed for our wealthy nation to pass wealth to those less wealthy foreigners who live abroad?
The same principle applies to all this equality stuff – why keep banging on about it in the UK when more money and time could be used to better effect abroad.
In my view, people on the left of politics are blinkered by two things: envy and the ‘something must be done’ syndrome of knee-jerk action.
S.
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Equality of opportunity is a worthy goal, even if impossible to achieve; equality of outcome is utterly impossible.
When I was young I went to a grammar school. It provided the route out of a poor Merseyside working-class household. It provided that route for quite a few of us, but not, of course, all. The grammars were abolished in the name of equality. Now almost no one from my sort of background can get to when I am. That is equality for you – in its name no one gets out.
When I was at university, Oxford had many students from lower middle class backgrounds and the State sector, now it has to try very hard to get far fewer. This, again is an achievement of equality. From Wilson through to Major no Prime Minister came from a public school; now they all seem to do so, as do most members of the Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet.
If the heads of public schools had any decency, they would erect statues to Anthony Crosland and Shirley Williams, the saviours of their system.
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Two points:-
(i) the professionalisation of politics is a disgrace – that’s why, I think, it’s full of public school people – not because of those schools per se, but rather that they will tend to come from richer background, and to afford to get on the low pay ladder that is the young persons lot in a professional political career…so it’s not the schools – I was fortunate to go to a boarding school, but people thought my family was rich – absolutely not: my parents were both semi-orphans who came from nothing, and because they spent money on schools we were broke
(ii) the theological objective of every human being able to flourish is what we should hope for that leads to the situation of families from poor backgrounds having their children development not blocked for want of money, it is not because of some belief in equality
S.
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Usually in religious, legal, ethical thinking issues are resolved with reference to a thing’s goodness. Is gay marriage good? I think so. Insofar as it is, for gays, a most satisfying way to live. What am I saying? Well, the descriptive component of moral distinctions is logically independent of God will’s: God approves of this way of life because it is, in a purely descriptive sense, appropriate for me. But the prescriptive component of those distinctions is constituted by God’s will. God is not some arbitrary tyrant but rather God demands only of his creatures that they should live in what will be, for them, the most satisfying way. We can then say that God is good meaning, descriptively, just this; any prescriptive or evaluative component in “good” as applied to God will be subjective, it will express our approval of the sort of thing God does; the God-based objectively prescriptive element in moral terms as applied to human actions can have no non-trivial application to God. This is how this has to be, if one is to avoid a rather embarrassing dilemma–Euthyphro’s. Of course, this only maintains coherence if there are some instructions(sacred text) about how to live the most satisfying life, then one can infer indirectly from these instructions so as to complete his or her required and ultimately satisfying life. The problem of course is: how do we get the right exegesis? Surely, we must go beyond the mere quotation of Scripture and attempt to put things together, right? That is, why is something right or wrong?
In this vein, the oh so familiar story: “Love the sinner, but hate the sin.” falls terribly short of going beyond mere Scriptural quotation. I mean, is gay marriage even a sin? I can quote Scripture that condones stoning raped women. (Deut. 22. 23-24) I doubt a woman being raped in a public space and not being able to scream as she is being raped is sinning, huh? And I am sure Bosco has some gem passages for us as well. And citing that proscriptions against gayness have very ancient roots does not do in the slightest either. Was it for this that ancient Greek and Latin texts have been canonized, have been deemed classics, so that we moderns may all the more thoroughly forget their very different moral compass and misrecognize the ancients for ourselves? Not to mention appealing to tradition here is to commit at least two fallacies: appealing to authority and begging the question. (1) Tradition says such and such. So, tradition is right. Okay, argument, please. 2) Well, gay marriage was wrong in the past. Therefore, it is wrong in the present. Beg. The. Question.) Of course, if someone is willing to do away with the rules of reasoning to maintain his or her point, then I cannot imagine how this conversation will be fruitful in the least.
Furthermore, the argument that marriage means straight marriage, by definition, finds that gender discrimination and sexual-orientation discrimination is built right into the institution of marriage; therefore since marriage itself is permitted, so too must be barring same-sex couples from it. Discrimination against gays, the proponent of this argument holds, is not an illegitimate discrimination in marriage, indeed it is necessary to the very institution: No one would be married if gays were, for then marriage wouldn’t be marriage. By this logic, marriage is to be nothing but an empty space, delimited only by what it excludes–gay couples. And so it has all the marks of being profoundly prejudicial in its legal, religious, ect, treatment of gays.
In any case, there are some good religious arguments against gay marriage (John F. Kippley comes to mind) and some good religious arguments for gay marriage (Margaret Farley comes to mind), they need not sidetrack us here for once the Scriptural warrants in any of these arguments, pro or con, are put into their early Church context the picture that emerges is one that is not nearly black-and-white. In fact, I think it reveals that there is a serious need for revision on this issue within the Church proper. (I am for gay marriage, for those curious about my stance. :)) But, more importantly to this thread, it makes the “sin” of gay marriage much more difficult to categorize as either contrary to loving God or contrary to loving man, and if it does not fit in either category, then what are we discussing.
God bless
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Thank you Pancakes – I enjoyed reading that. I hope we can provide mutual reinforcements in the battles ahead!
S.
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Thank you, brother, for the kind words. Yes, I believe we can! And must! 🙂
God bless
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It is good to have you spell out so clearly what I tend to think of as the modern relativistic view. Let me try to outline why, interesting as it is, it seems to me ultimately unconvincing.
Your conception of good seems to be grounded in what suits our feelings. Those who campaign for the lowering of the age of consent and for ‘man/boy love’ use just the same argument; it feels good for them. They counter the argument that the power-dynamic makes this wrong by saying that that is a prejuduce, and that children know if they ‘love’ someone, and know ‘what feels good. So it seems to me that your definition is an inadeuqtae safeguard against the further slide of our society into a version of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Where does God say what you say here?
” God demands only of his creatures that they should live in what will be, for them, the most satisfying way.”
An adulterer tends to find adultery a satisfying way of life, ditto a burgular; how would you respond to their quoting this as a defence?
What is it you think Jesus is saying when he demands that we repent and seek the kingdom of God? It seems to me you may come close to the old gnostic idea that we are meant to find within us some inner reality which, when we conform to it, makes us ‘happy’. If so that is not what I, or indeed, and more importantly, most Christians have understood Jesus to have been saying.
It may be pure coincidence that it is only in our consumer-driven society that some wise folk have arrived at the view that Jesus is saying ‘do what makes you geel good’, but it may be simply that folk aee projecting onto Jesus something they need to think he is saying.
I am unsure why you think Christianity is prescribing how we live a ‘satisfactory’ life and define the word in relation to our own fallen wishes. God sets out clear as anything the things which are bad for us to do, and the things which we ought to do; we have trouble with both sides of that, and always wish to define it is anthropocentric terms.
The old saws about Deuteronomy and Leviticus were answered so long ago I find it difficult when people still trot them out as though they haven’t. We are not bound by the Jewish dietary or penal codes; we are by the ten commandments and what Jesus and the Apostles tell us. They do not tell us we should stone raped women; they do tell us marriage is for life between one man and one woman and that buggery is sinful. This may not please you, but it is what is said and what the Church has always said. You wish to be a Christian on your own terms, why, so do we all as we are sinners. But we are called to repent of our sins, amend our ways and follow what Jesus and the Church he founded says. Again, it does not say we shouldn’t eat shell-fish and has nothing to say on killing women; it does on homosexuality, fornication and divorce, hence, of course, the usual attempts to confuse the issue by throwing in the stoning business.
Active homosexuality contravenes God’s commands. If you maintain it does not, you have to explain why. The usual way is to try to maintain either that the Pauline texts do not mean what they mean, which requires you to explain why it is only in recent times that people with an agenda, who do not speak koine Greek in everyday life or live in a society which does, know what these texts mean better than those who did both of those things and had no agenda?
Why is something right and wrong? It is because God defines those things for us, and lest we slip into what we always do – which is the attempt to use our intellects to define away sine, He founded a Church which has a long tradition of telling us that right and wrong do not change their meaning because we’d prefer it if they did.
You drag a very large and smelling red herring across the path when discussing marriage. Civil partnerships give gay couples all the legal rights of marriage, so arguing they can only have those rights in a marriage is not the case. Marriage means what it means, civil partnerships mean what they mean, so why the insistence that the one must mean the other, but not that heterosexuals can have civil partnerships? It is preceisely because marriage is very far from an empty space that many of us object to empying it of the meaning we all know it has.
God’s love for us is not, as some say, unconditional. Were that so, there would have been no need for the Incarnation, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. God wants us to repent of our sins and follow His ways. Those ways are clear, as is the reluctance of sinners like us to follow them. We do no favours to anyone when we blur that path by arguing that we are free to redefine what the Church has always considered sin as ‘not sin’ because we want it to be so.
If it is enough that we should be happy in our lifestyle, just why was the Incarnation necessary, and what was the Atonement all about? Jesus suffered bitterly and died a broken and bleeding figure on that Cross, and to think he did so so we could be happy in our chosen lifestyle seems a bit of a lame denouement. GRSS
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Hear, hear. I don’t think Christ cares a wit if we are happy or not in this life. But He cares “to His death” about our happiness in the next life.
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I see Strauns has written an itneresting comment on your piece, which I must digest if I can.
I have to confess I find it difficult, as it seems to dissolve commonsense points of view into something of a quagmire of words. Probably me not being bright enough any more (if ever). GRSS
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It’s not an uncommon for the troops to get confused in all the smoke of battle. 🙂
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That’s why we need officers to command them, SF 🙂
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Thanks for the reply, Geoffrey.
I am confused as to how you think I am being relativistic here. I think you will find that argument hard to come by, for at least one reason: I am not a relativist on morality; I am an objectivist. 🙂 So, I think you might be confused about what I was saying in my previous comment.
I can only assume, since you did not address these things, that you accept, delightfully, a rather embarrassing dilemma and that you are perfectly content begging the question and appealing to authority? 🙂 If so, I don’t think that right reason can enjoin any conclusion you derive from those foundational premises, no matter how apparently sensible.
Now, as to the dilemma–Euthyphro’s–has stark alternative consequences, I am sure everyone knows them, only if we assume, as I believe you do, that moral qualities come in one piece, as atomic units, which must simply be assigned to one place or another, as being either wholly independent of or wholly constituted by the will of God. But in fact we can take them apart. It might be that there is one kind of life which is, in a purely descriptive sense, most appropriate for human beings as they are–that is, that it alone will fully develop rather than stutn their natural capacities and that in it, and only in it, can they find the fullest and deepest satisfaction. It might then follow that certain rules of conduct and certain dispositions were appropriate (still purely descriptive) in that they were needed to maintain this way of life. All these would then be facts as hard as any in math or physics, and so logically independent of any command or prescriptive will of God, though they might be products of the crreative will of God, which in making men as they are, will have made them such that this life, these rules, and these dispositions are appropriate for them. But further God might desire or even require that men live in this appropriate way. This adds an objectively prescriptive element to what otherwise would be hard, descriptive truths, but in a quite non-mysterious way: God wants us to seek him, as the Bible proclaims.
So, when in the John’s Gospel Jesus says, “I am truth,” he indicates that in Him the true, the genuine, the ultimate reality is present; or in other words, that God is present, undistorted, in HIs infinite depth, in unapproachable mystery. Jesus is not the truth because his teachings are true. But His teachings are true because they express the truth which He Himself is. He is more than words. And he is more than any word said about him. The truth which makes us free or fully satisfied is neither the teaching of Jesus nor the teaching about Jesus. Those who have called the teaching of Jesus the truth have subjected the people to a servitude under the law. And most people like to live under a law. They want to be told what to think and what not to think. And they accept Jesus as the infallible teacher and giver of a new law.
But even the words of Jesus, if taken as a law, are not the truth which makes us fully satisfied or free. And they should not be used as such by our scholars, teachers, and preachers. They should not be used as a collection of infallible prescriptions for life and thought. They point to the truth, but they are not a law of truth. Nor are the doctrines about Jesus the truth that liberates and satisfies one’s being. The very early Church forgot the word of our Gospel that He is the truth; and claimed that her doctrines about Him are the truth. But these doctrines, however necessary and good they were, proved to be not the truth that fully satisfies one’s soul. Soon they became tools of oppression, suppression, of servitude under authorities; they became the means to prevent the honest search for truth–they split the soul between loyalty to the Church and sincerity to truth.
It is the dignity of Protestantism that it exposes its adherents to the insecurity of asking the question of truth for themselves and that it throws them into the freedom and responsibility of personal decisions, of the right to choose between the ways of the skeptics, and those who are orthodox, of indifferents, and Him who is the truth that satisfies. For this is the greatness of Protestantism: that it points beyond the teachings of Jesus and beyond the doctrines of the Church to the being of Him whose being is the truth. How do we reach this truth? Following commandments, accepting doctrinal points, etc? No. By living out of the reality which is Jesus who is the truth, making His being the being of ourselves and of our world.
As for your long appeal to authority, let us imagine that Jesus had answered the question of the religious leaders about his authority by asking them about the sources of their authority! They could have replied easily and convincingly. They could have said, “The source of authority is our conscecration according to a tradition which goes back without interruption to Moses and Aaron. The sacred tradition of which we are a link from the past to the future gives us our authority.” The scribes could have talked of their learning and that they are experts in the law. And what if they had responded to Jesus, “Which is the source of your authority? By what authority have you turned against the religion as it has been given to us by Moses and by all generations since his time?” But Jesus did not ask them this question, did he? He asks, “Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?” An answer to the question of authority is refused by Jesus, but the way in which he refuses the answer is the answer. There is one authority, for me, and I must keep myself open to the power of Him who is the source and negation of everything which is authority on earth and in heaven.
As for Paul, we have already travelled that road, I think. 🙂
God bless
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Thanks you for such a full response; let me try to pick my way through.
I may well misunderstand you. For me it is quite simple. If Jesus and the Apostles label x a sin, then it is a sin in all possible contexts; there is no context in which it become OK for us to do x; for me, relativism is saying that there are contexts in which x is, or may have been a sin, but now we know there are contexts (our context) in which it isn’t. That was what I thought you were saying; if you weren’t, apologies.
I am very happy appealling to authority – the authority of Scripture as read in the light of reason and tradition; I like giving a vote to our ancestors as well as to ourselves 🙂 If you rely just on your own reason, you are on a one-legged stool and will be unstable.
Right is defined by God in Scripture, and we have no other access to it save by the Grace of God; there is, for me, no dilemma here at all. Mankind is fallen and incapable of knowing what is right and wrong; left to itself it would still be killing each other, raping women whenever it could, killing children and resembled Hobbes’ ‘state of nature; hang on, that does look like a pretty good description of Syria now, and a host of other places. Of course man would like to think there was some standard of his making, but there is not; there is only what God reveals to us. God, as a loving Father, wants what is best for us; we as disobedient children think we know what that is; the evidence against that last is so strong that only a wilful child would continue to maintain it; we, mankind, are that child.
Is this arbitrary? No, God, who is omniscient, knows why what is good is good, and our job is to follow, not quibble over what is and is not good. He has given us all the information we need. Why should we obey? Because, if we know God, we know He is goodness. If we do not then we know there will be consequences, but God wants us to be free to choose to take them; many will. God is goodness, goodness does not exist apart from him, it is not something he adopts, it is His nature; it stems from the love that is the Trinity, and which overflows into the Incarnation and the desire to save us from sin. Plato and Aristotle’s dilemma does not exist for Christians – as certainly Augustine and Anselm more or less imply; I am less familiar with Aquinas, but recall reading somewhere that he didn’t tik much of the dilemma either.
Certainly God wishes us to seek his face, but he has given us a pretty good description of how to go about it.
When you write:
“Jesus is not the truth because his teachings are true. But His teachings are true because they express the truth which He Himself is” I agree, but that means that his teachings are the truth all the same – and we are bound to follow them as best we can. Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it. I see little evidence for the statement that most people want to live under a law – few do so voluntarily, and that is why our society, which has abandoned the more drastic ways of securing obedience, generartes so many of them.
We are not different, as Protestants, from Catholics here. We are bound by the truths enunciated by Jesus, truths we know only through tradition; we apply our reason in ways which, some would say, Catholics have not had to, but nonetheless, Christianity is not new-minted in each of us, and if we have wisdom, our ancestors had it too, and we shall commune with them as well as with our own era.
I am not clear what you mean by living out the Gospel, if that does not include the command to repent of our sins and do the best not to sin any more? We are not told we can redefine our sins, argue with God over what is and is not sinful, and generally behave as though we have eatern of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; that is Adam’s sin, which we commit; it is from that, above all, that we pray to be saved.
Jesus did not turn men from the Law of Moses, as he clearly told the Pharisees. The traditions of Jesus – which include Scripture itself, bind us to repent and to follow Him. We do not follow Him if we clearly disobey commandments set in stone.
The difficulty with your line is the one we see in John’s letters – the spirit-filled man, Diotrephes, who will not accept even the authority of the Apostle because of what he feels he is being commanded to do.
We are not free except in Him. His commands are few but clear, and we disobey at our peril.
I have done my best to deal with your points, and cannot say I will have satisfied you, but I have had an ejoyable time so doing.
With blessings
GRSS
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Geoffrey, thanks for the comment. 🙂 I’ll do my best to respond as concisely as possible.
You say: “If Jesus and the Apostles label x a sin, then it is a sin in all possible contexts;”
This is precisely what I am attempting to get you not to say! 🙂 You are trying to devise a code for society as a whole from pronouncements which were addressed to individuals or small communities that were intended to separate them from the rest of society through love. This is true both of the ethics of Jesus and of the ethics of St. Paul. Both Jesus and Paul preached an ethics devised for a short interim period to a small community of believers in a specific cultural context. We cannot, therefore, expect to find in what they say a complete ethical system for a continuing society. For one, Jesus is concerned not to expound a self-sufficient code, a list of sins, so to speak, but to provide a corrective for Pharisaic morality, a corrective which is partly a matter of bringing the point of the Pharisaic rules into the picture and partly a matter of showing how the rules must be construed if the kingdom of God is the focus. Hence the only form of prudence is to look to God’s kingdom. Period. In fact, I think this is one of the greatest misunderstandings of Paul: he shouldn’t be taken to be issuing injunctions on anything other than an interim basis to a small group of people in a specific cultural context. Why? Because we are to be looking to God’s kingdom. (Paul and I disagree I am sure about the nature of that kingdom.) Of course, in my mind, this kingdom is not just heaven, but is this world as well, in all its anxieties, ambiguities, and insecurities, and a willingness to find the source of courage, Christ, in order that we might meet these challenges. That is, we need a powerful reality that is stronger than death.
Luther gets close to speaking in this way about sin and God. For Luther, forgiving him all his other faults, the true transformation of the individual is entirely internal; to be before God in fear and trembling as a justified sinner is what matters. What matters is not the action done or left undone, but the faith which moved the agent.
You continue: “there is no context in which it become OK for us to do x; for me, relativism is saying that there are contexts in which x is, or may have been a sin”
Of course, sin varies upon context. That seems a matter of straightforward empirical fact. For instance, there are cultural differences regarding moral principles. (However, that, in my mind, does not entail ethical relativism.) Here again, I see Jesus as pointing beyond our world to a better world, both better in heaven and on earth, in a cultural context far removed from our own cultural reality. Jesus expressed himself in that idiom–how could he not?–and His message is couched in those assumptions and that language. But Jesus’ message was not about *THE* world, nor was Paul’s, really; insofar as it was it was a message of hope, of forgiveness, of an idea that love is stronger than death. Jesus’ message was always about Jesus as the Christ surrendering himself in love, re-conciliating and re-uniting humans to each other and to God through the Cross and Resurrection. So, within this understanding, sin and not sin are not obvious instances of good and evil, but are very primitive ‘goods’ or ‘bads,’ not sufficient for a full-blown morality, but they give us a hint as to the objectivity of morality. For instance, moral goodness, as Jesus knew so well, has something to do with the ameliorating of suffering, the resolution of conflict, and the promotion of human flourishing. That is to say, there are universal moral principles, which impartial reason draws us to, based on common human nature and a need to solve conflicts of interest and flourish, which are independent of any command of God. However, they are products of the creative will of God which, in making men as they are, has made us such that this life, these rules, and these dispositions are appropriate for us. Some sin qua sin, if it represents an understanding of sin that is contrary to the best reasoning, sympathy, scientific insight, and the most basic ideas of moral goodness, *MAY* not be a sin, which in the case of gay marriage, I don’t think it is a sin.
You continue: “I am very happy appealling to authority”
The ancients are brilliant, with great insight, and can be immensely helpful in offering historical context and in shifting one’s perspective. However, when special interests are present, the authorities lack relevant information, and the subject itself is controversial, one should be careful not to fall into a fallacy. And I think you have fallen hard on this one, my friend. 🙂 Your appeal to authority here is kind of like me taking the word of lawyers who say that no-fault insurance will raise rates and lower the quality of insurance.
You say: “Right is defined by God in Scripture”
This is question begging. You are using as a premise some form of the very thesis at issue. That is, what is right according to God is exactly what we are trying to figure out.
You continue: “Is this arbitrary?”
I think you are missing the force of the argument. God is goodness, I agree, but the dilemma is precisely the sort of thing that challenges that idea. To skip over it, as a non-issue, is intellectually dishonest. Of course, the consequence of saying that the description of God himself as good reduces to the rather trivial statement that God loves himself. It also seems to entail that obedience to moral rules is merely slavish conformity to the arbitrary demands of a capricious tyrant. Of course, saying that God loves something because it is good has the surprising consequence that moral distinctions do not depend on God any more than, say, mathematical ones, hence we can simply close the theological frontier of ethics. Of course, I quite like my alternative because it seems I avoid both of these horns. 🙂
You continue: “I agree, but that means that his teachings are the truth all the same – and we are bound to follow them as best we can.”
You should have read on, good brother. 🙂 I went on to say, “They point to the truth, but they are not a law of truth.” (I answer further below. Two birds with one stone. 🙂 )
You say: “We are bound by the truths enunciated by Jesus, truths we know only through tradition”
I am saying that I don’t buy this. Jesus says, “I am the truth.” This is not a doctrine, but a reality. This is not a proposition, which can be true or false; people may have truth or not, but how can they be truth, even the truth? The truth the writer of John speaks of is a true reality, not the ordinary meaning of truth.
Many Christians like their tradition just like many secularists like their tradition. They point to something that goes back to the Church Fathers, or to the popes, or to the Reformation, or to the makers of the American Constitution, or their favorite Enlightenment thinker. Their church or their nation or their atheistic sect is their truth, so they have all the truth one needs to be going on with and do not worry about the question of truth. Would Jesus tell them perhaps what he told the Jews–that even if the church or the nation or the sect is their truth, that the truth they have is not the truth which makes them free and saved? Certainly there is no freedom or salvation where a nonchalance subsists about the truth of one’s own beliefs. There is no freedom or salvation where there exists an ignorance and rejection of foreign ideas and ways of life. There is only Satanic bondage where one’s own truth is called the ultimate truth. For this is only an attempt to be like God, an attempt made in the name of God.
You ask: “I am not clear what you mean by living out the Gospel”
Partaking in His being. He says, “Abide in me and I in you.” The truth which saves us is the truth in which we partake, we are a part it and it is a part of us. It is a recognition of the fullness of Christ, by being governed by that reality which is present in Christ. You won’t learn this in the form of propositions which you can write down and study. But you can meet The Truth in any number of ways–He can appear like lightening in the dark. It may be through the Gospels that you meet the truth or a lecture or book or sunrise. Many people encounter the truth without knowing His name–as He Himself said.
You continue: “We do not follow Him if we clearly disobey commandments set in stone.”
My God would never condescend to write in stone. 🙂 Of course, you have God shoehorned in again, whilst telling me that your version of His truth is the Truth.
Also, revelation is not so explicit that you can make such absolute commands out of it. You had to work, as do all hermeneutics, by inference from general assumptions to those absolute commands, which means that you cannot reasonably ascribe to revelation any more complete an absolutism than an atheist could construct using the same empirical data. And, really, what value is there in unqualified absolutism anyway? None, to my mind.
You say: “who will not accept even the authority of the Apostle because of what he feels he is being commanded to do.”
I would rather be that man than be seduced into a truth which is not truth qua truth. In every serious doubt and in every sense of hopelessness, there is an energy for truth. If I did not follow Jesus, I would ask, as Pilate did, “What is truth?”
You say: “We are not free except in Him. His commands are few but clear, and we disobey at our peril.”
Christ is the focal point insofar as in Him we have a life which never lost communion with God, a life that never quit the merging of love with all beings.
John’s gospel and the whole of the NT tells us that the truth which liberates is the power of love, for God is love. So, I distrust any claim that is contrary to this, any claim where I don’t see the truth united with love, for the truth takes hold of us only when love has taken hold of us.
God bless
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It seems as though you go to the other end of the pendulum from the Catholics I knew when young; they talked of nothing but sin and the wrath of God; you seem to have no definition of sin and never mention the wrath. It is hard, reading you, to know why Jesus bothered.
You seem to be saying that the Cross does no more than show to man how he should not behave; where is the redemption in that? What is it from which we need redeeming?
I know you do not accept that what Jesus and the Apostles said was sin is sin, but that, my friend, is something of a problem for you and those who think like you; you are, perhaps, hoping God is amenable to your argument. I do not see, from Scripture, that that is how God proceeds. The Ten Commandments are not, as Servus has commented, ‘the ten reasonable suggestions’ which you can take or leave according to context; is there is a context in which fornication, adultery and stelaing are not sinful?
You theorise that Jesus and Paul meant their ethics to be situational; I cannot see any Biblical warrant for that view.
Where, in your view, is God’s wrath, and what is sin? What is it from which we need forgiveness?
I am all for God being love, but does not love hate that which is evil and wish to cast it out? Where, in your version of our faith, is that hell of which Jesus speaks more often than he does of Heaven?
The pendulum always swings too far, and just as I used to criticise Catholics for never saying anything about the love of God, my criticism of you is that you leave out the warth of God. Love does not tolerate sin, let alone attempt to edefine it, so yes, I agree that where the truth and love do not coexist, I distrust. Your God seems a construct of your imagination, a fragment of the God who is revraled in Scripture, modified to take away the parts that make you feel uncomfortable.
It is better to own the discomfort, for it has in it a lesson.
GRSS
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The Cross shows us that love is stronger than death. Through the Cross, God gave us a new reality that transforms the old reality.
To be human is to be a sinner, to understand this point is to know that it requires no further elucidation. To know this is to have the courage to affirm that love is stronger than death, to see creative possibilities that can enact love in justice, that is, to use whatever power we have to create more equitable, just structures in our society. That is to say, we experience the Christ when we participate in God’s Yes to life and love, beyond the ambiguities of yes and no in our ordinary lives.
Sin is not seeking God, which manifests itself in many ways, some of which are outlined in Scripture. But the sin is not the action, but the motive of the act. Could theft be non-sinful, dear friend? Certainly, think of a scenario. ( A boy stealing food for his sick mother.) Could adultery be non-sinful? Certainly, think of a scenario. (A woman lets herself be “used” by a burglar to protect her children.) And the list could go on.
As for hell, hell is wherever Satan is, as Milton once said. Hell could be in the Ukraine right about now. It is total absence from God; willed lonliness that lasts as long as one wills it too last.
As for my God, my God manifests in and through Jesus; Jesus the human sacrifices is humanity on the Cross. I don’t pray to Jesus, but to Christ, to Him who sent Him. “He who believes in me, believes not in me but in Him who sent me…”
God bless
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Again, my thanks for the interesting engagement.
Your dirsr sentence makes sense, but is not what we are told from Scrpture or tradition; it is as though you have grafted on a meaning you need it to have to an act which means far more, and has been taken by Christians in all ages to mean far more.
There are no circumstances in which adultery or theft are not sinful, although there are some in which that sin is more easily forgiven; we do ourselves and the world narm when we attempt to use the hardest of cases to excuse what is much more common. Is the implication of your had cases that the much more common scanario of adultery is OK? If not, why not say so?
Jesus is not separate from Christ, they are the same hypostasis.
Your conception of sin seems a very modern one, unknown to Jesus, Paul, or indeed, anyone before the new age thinking of the modern era.
Hell, Jesus tells us, exists, and it is not just in this world. We see, in Scripture, those burning in torment, and we cannot, much as we want, wish it away. If we do that, when we encounter it at the last, we are far more likely to have to endure it.
It seems, as I say, that you have a conception of sin which has nothing to do with what Christianity has always taught.
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You are welcome. I have enjoyed it, I must say. I will be brief as possible. 🙂
If Jesus is someone besides God, we cannot and should not pray to Him. But he who sees Him sees the Father. I should be clear that believing in Him does not mean believing in Him. None of His superior qualities–neither His religious life, nor His moral perfection, nor His profound insights–make Him an object of faith or the ultimate authority. On this basis, He says, He does not judge anyone. If He did, he would be a tyrant who imposes Himself and His greatness on others, thus destroying instead of saving them. I hear too much Christian preaching of Jesus where those preaching try to force upon those listening something great besides God. I hear you talking of Jesus of Nazareth, but nothing is left in the face of Jesus the Christ which is only Jesus of Nazareth. I keep pointing you to the Cross, but you keep telling me: “But what about this saying or this law or this doctrine or this tradition?”
I suppose you think we Christians can boast that we have the word of the Lord? Did we not receive the message through men, and are not we who heard it men? And does that not mean that the message, while it went through the mouths of those who said it and through the ears of those who heard it, lost its power to cut into our world and our soul? The Church and its servants in all periods made it a matter of law and tradition, of habit and convention. They made it into something we believe we know and have tried to follow. It does not cut any more into our ordinary world. Like the prophets with whom Jeremiah fights in our text, the ministers of the word have ceased to ask, to cry for, a word from the Lord. They claim to have it as their possession, the words they say are not a word from the Lord.. We have received it. But as it has been distorted in the mouths of the preachers, so it has been resisted in the ears of the listeners, that is, in all of us. We hear it, but we cannot perceive it. As Christians we do not reject it, but it has lost its voice, that voice with which God spoke into the hearts of the prophets, that voice with whcih the Spirit spoke into the hearts of the disciples. We hear the words which have been said before. But we do not feel that they speak to our situation, and out of the depth of our situation. They may even produce torturing doubts and drive us to ask passionately for a word from the Lord against what we have received as the Word of God, in Bible and Church. For there is no word from the Lord except the word which is spoken now. How can we get such a word that is spoken now and is spoken to us? By being open to it when it comes to us! So much Christian faith is dead faith, a faith of reading off decisions of councils and points of doctrine, a faith that equates law with Christ, a faith that thinks the Cross is about sin rather than love. I think far too many people worship the Bible rather than Christ.
Hell is real and it is total absence from God, but it is not permanent, in my mind, and it is not a place.
Sinning is not loving. Period. If you don’t have love, then you are in a state of sin. What else is there to know about it?
Thanks for your kindness and God bless
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When I see that Cross, I see the place where God paid the price for our sins; what do you see?
I’m not clear whether you believe Jesus is God. If he was nothing but a man, then his sacrifice avails nothing; if He is who Christianity says He is, it avails everything.
Paul, like the Apostles, placed great stress on the tradition of Jesus, and it is that tradition which we keep, not that of the Pharisees; without it, we don’t even know that the Bible is what it says it is, because, of course, it nowhere states what should be in it, or even that it should exist. So quite how you manage without that tradition is unclear to me 🙂
I understand that to your mind hell is not real, but that is not what Jesus says, and we have to go with the latter.
Sinning is certainly not loving, but not all not loving is sinning; I can dislike cats intensely, but that is not sinning 🙂 Mind you, disliking dogs might be another matter.
It is always a pleasure to exchange views with you.
GRSS
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I see Jesus sacrificing his humanity. I see a man in whom God had manifested Himself without limit committing Himself to His Father’s hands.
Jesus is Christ.
Hell is real.
The Cross and the Resurrection are the thing.
Sin is not loving Him and loving what is not Him.
God bless you, brother
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God demands only of his creatures that they should live in what will be, for them, the most satisfying way.
There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof is death.
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Man can define Marriage legally as between two men, but the Catholic Church can not. The marriage has three parties and one witness. The Vows are made to God by the man and the woman, the sacrament of matrimony is created by them and by God in co-operation, the priest is a witness, a couple stranded on an island can make their vows before God and they are married, they can when they find a Priest can normalize their marriage, but they are married. Marriage is impossible without God’s co-operation because man can not get a ladder tall enough to put a gun to God’s head.
Will Gay Marriage be preformed by Churches, yes. But it is horse of a different colour. The Soviet Union tried to make the New Soviet Man, it did not happen, no matter the blood spilled, It is impossible to change man’s internal core nature.
As for lists, contracts and lawyers are necessary so both parties know what is expected for them. Without contracts business can not be done, not for evil reasons, but by assuming the other party will do what you want. Ignorance is a killer in business and ignorance in the Business of God is a killer too, we need contracts. I like guard posts on the side of a mountain road and I like lists, check lists in aircraft keeps you alive, shouting out your check list at the top of your lungs when on fire, keeps you from panic, the fire may not kill you but the panic absolutely will. I like lists..
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You may like lists, and of course, you can have your lists to guide yourself. Lists can be very helpful – I do not discount that.
I do not know what you mean by the ‘Business of God’ – it sounds like some form of selling spirituality to me, but I don’t think you mean it in that way.
As for the church of Rome, and it’s inability to do something – well, what’s new? 🙂 Thanks for the comments Tom – I do find what you say interesting.
S.
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Struans, there was a point in this first post that bothered me somewhat and I did not single it out as it seems a small detail. The point comes from your sentence that contains, “ . . . who rant and rave against the idea of ‘gay marriage’ – as opposed to taking a more considered view . . . “
Whether intended or not as a ‘one-upmanship’ or a serious comment I let it lie. However, it brings up the idea that you, yourself, seem to give much weight to as do I: i. e. discernment.
I and others, I am sure, are also engaged in this activity as anyone should. The question that begs to be answered is to what makes your discernment process a better model than the ones we might use and if it is, then would you be so kind to reveal it to us?
For my own use, I tend to use as a guide the saints and their writings on how to discern rightly from where our inclinations arise. A sample of the Rules for the Discernment from one such saint I will link for you here though I have picked up helps from many different spiritualities and am more inclined to Carmelite Spirituality though I utilize many others as helps as well: http://www.sofc.org/DAILY/discernspiritsI.htm
If you see this method outmoded and less reliable to a better discernment, then I am curious as to what modern approach is more valuable in coming to a ‘more considered’ approach to issues regarding morality and thus directed to the avoidance of sin.
Thanks in advance, for it puzzled me then and I did not comment immediately yesterday, as it is another avenue perhaps worthy of discussion at another time. No biggie, but color me curious. 🙂
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I wasn’t ‘having a go’ at you with that comment re ranting and raving. I was rather thinking of the knee-jerk reactions out there whose logic is either to refer to literal readings of the Bible as equal to an ultimate divine revelation, or equating ‘homosexuality’ with being a euphemism for anal sex which ought to be resisted. That sort of thing. The tiresome arguments of a schoolboy.
Now, discernment: without knowing how you discern, I wouldn’t like to make a qualitative assessment. I am content with the view that you have come to a discernment of the will of God that gay marriage is wrong (or whatever the subject matter might be). What I am less content with is that you would then (no doubt) want to tell me that if I think such a thing is right, then I am wrong. It is about how both of us can be right. Although, of course, I would also wish both of us not to claim definitively or infallibly that we are right. This takes us into an area where I want to explore more. I can hear you throwing both your hands up in the air already! Let me get to the other more recent posts to answer some of the comments there – I think they look at some of these very issues. In the end though, its not just about ecclesiology, but rather the nature of truth – and what can mean to say, as I do, that the Truth of the Trinity is truly divinely immutable.
To your specific point on saints. That is coloured by your church which has its own way, separate to the Orthodox and Anglican view of saints. So if you limit your discernment to RC approved people, that is a limitation of working in the walled garden patrolled by the Roman Curia. That is not to say that saints cannot be helpful, but rather than looking at them for tips or signposts as to ‘what is right’, I see their help as being pointers (along with many other pointers) to that Truth in a Trinitarian life. Perhaps I can recommend a book I like again: Beyond Majority Rule by a Jesuit priest called Michael Sheeran. It’s about the Quakers specifically, because they have made discernment the be all and end all to the exclusion of doctrine, but nevertheless it is a good book to read as to a model of practical discernment, when built on top of a devotional life that tries to embody in a person that Trinitarian Way, Truth and Life.
S.
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I guess the short answer is that yes, we might explore this in time but it is going to me more complex than what I had envisioned the discussion to be. 🙂
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