Continuing Discussions Down Under

I've been engaged in a sometimes interesting, sometimes slightly frustrating, Internet conversation on Peter Carrell's blog. It's on the usual topic, same-sex marriage, and I became involved because one of the commenters there alleged as how he had refuted my "trenchant argument" in Reasonable and Holy concerning the necessity of procreation for marriage. His response involved an appeal to the subjunctive, noting that an infertile mixed-sex couple would be capable of procreation if they were capable of procreation, while a same-sex couple would be in a different class. As I noted in my response, this does not actually address the issue of whether procreation is essential to marriage, but only restates that there is a difference between same- and mixed-sex couples, a fact which, on the ground of the participants, no one I know of contests. "Virtual procreation" is essentially meaningless both on logical and moral grounds, and returning the discussion to the relative sex of the couple is circular argument. Even Dr Radner gets into the discussion at one point, and I welcome the opportunity for further conversation with him.

The conversation then quickly moved on to what I regard as some rather thin but fulsomely expressed arguments alleging some kind of likeness between a mixed-sex married couple and the Persons of the Trinity, but I found these suggestions to be confusing if not erroneous (as to Trinitarian doctrine.) Again, no one is arguing that there isn't a difference between a same- and a mixed-sex couple as far as the relative sexes of each couple is concerned. The point of debate is whether this difference constitutes a reason to restrict marriage to mixed-sex couples. It seems that "being able to be analogized to the Trinity" is not a requirement. It is really not ultimately a possibility as the Trinity is not fully analogous to anything in the created order.

As far as the "difference" in the Trinity goes, my argument is that any individual is "different" from (or as the English say, "to") any other; that the difference between the Father and the Son is relational, not substantial (to be technical, a difference in hypostasis, not ousia, in which each is personally distinct by relationship yet each is by nature "God") just as the difference between spouses — as spouses — is relational (a spouse is a spouse by virtue of relation to the other spouse, yet still complete in themselves as individual persons each of whom is by nature fully "human") and that this is the case regardless of the gender of the spouses.

There are a number of other side-streams and assertions in the conversation, including a brief foray into the thesis that the original human was an androgyne split in two (as in Plato's Symposium), but as I note that view does not hold up to a close reading of Genesis 1-3 or how the text was used in the NT references to it.

I commend the whole conversation to those with the patience to wade through it. I hope it provides more light than heat. I continue these conversations largely because they reassure me that I'm headed in the right direction. As I've said before, it isn't for me to convince the prosecution, but the jury.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG