Why I'm Here

Tomorrow, November 22, is the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, but also the 50th anniversary of the death of C S Lewis. Lewis was a storyteller, a poet, an apologist, and a scholar. He was also a Christian who managed to put into words some of what Christianity might mean in a mid-century context. He had his faults, to be sure, his blind spots, as all of us do. But his vision, when he got it right, was "spot on."

It was largely as a result of discovering his work in the mid 60s, along with that of Teilhard de Chardin (and there's an unlikely combo for you!) that I was led back into Christianity from a kind of earnest agnosticism and romantic orientalism. I'm not about to launch into a chorus of Amazing Grace, but boy, I'm glad I found Lewis (the Narnia books and then the "Space Trilogy" before launching into his apologia and polemics). After a fashion, he saved my life... or at the very least helped to make it what it is. To God be the Glory, and thanks for giving the world C S L.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
icon from earlier this year, tempera on panel

Hidden in (Not So) Plain Sight

One of the more interesting discussions at the recent conference I attended in South Africa concerned the nature of homosexuality in those parts of Africa where its presence is most vehemently denied or persecuted. Several of the lay and clergy leaders from those areas indicated that “homosexuality” was widely seen as some kind of alien import. They allowed, however, that as long as a man was married and had children, a concurrent sexual relationship with another man could — while still being viewed with opprobrium — likely be given a pass. Such a man would not be labeled as “homosexual.”

This reminds me, of course, of the situation in many communities even in the United States — thinking in particular of some Latino and African-American communities — based on their cultural construction of homosexuality. That is, a “man who sleeps with men” might well not be seen as “homosexual,” while an effeminate man or sissy-boy might be described as such even if he is a virgin and completely heterosexual in his orientation.

This is in part due to the confusion of the many variable axes that combine in human personality to define one’s identity. It isn’t just a matter of male and female (biological sex, and allowing for the reality of intersexuality), but of feminine and masculine (cultural or societal gender), attracted to one’s own sex or the other (sexual orientation), and so on. The simple fact, put simply, is that many gay men are not effeminate, and many effeminate men are not gay.

More importantly, the African situation reminds me of how it is that David and Jonathan’s relationship (with the emphasis on Jonathan’s attraction and attachment to David) can also be covered from perception as a same-sex relationship (which it no doubt is, regardless of whether acted upon erotically). The fact that both are “manly men” and warriors, both married (in David’s case we have quite a bit of evidence along that line), shields them — in cultures that cannot distinguish sexual orientation from notions of gender — from any suggestion of being what C.S. Lewis so revealingly called pansies. (The Four Loves, 62) While it is questionable to attempt to craft a psychological profile at such a remove, it is fair to say that David’s relationships with women all seem to be based either on the desire to possess and control or some kind of political or dynastic interest (as indeed may be true of his relationship with Jonathan in taking advantage of the latter’s attraction to him), while the relationship of Jonathan to David appears to be one of deep and lasting love. At least that is the language of the text. “Pansies”? No. Oriented towards a romantic relationship towards each other?” Very likely yes. At least David is not reported to have shed any tears over his female partners, and Jonathan’s testimony of complete dedication and what the text reveals as “love at first sight” is amply clear.

The role of choice

The question, “Is homosexuality natural or a choice?” also came up at the Conference in South Africa. The implication is that if it is a choice, it is a wrong choice, or at the least a choice that need not have been made, or could have been made otherwise. In earlier times it was assumed that the choice was a conscious act to choose wrongly — a perversity: doing deliberately and willfully what is known to be wrong.

Most gay and lesbian persons do not feel their orientation to be a choice, but something about which they become aware at some point in their life — just as do heterosexual persons of their sexual orientation. Most people, it seems, do not have much of a conscious awareness of sexual attraction in very early childhood, and begin to become aware of sexual attraction later in childhood or in early adolescence.

At this point the question of choice arises: do I choose to accept my inclinations? to act on them? to suppress them? Some people choose celibacy, while others choose relationship.

This leads me to reflect on the question, “Is choice a bad thing?” Aren’t we blessed to be chosen by the one who chooses us for life? The language of choosing and taking to oneself is intimately (!) connected with both salvation history and the life of human relationships; so much so that marriage is held to be an image of God’s relation to God’s Chosen.

Can this apply to same-sex relationships? Let me take another look at the relationship from Scripture that is often held up (and at the same time denied) as being homosexual, to which I alluded above: the story of the love of David and Jonathan. This is clearly a relationship between two men, but some do not see it as sexual in nature. It is true that sexual acts are not clearly recorded (though in a few places suggested) in the text — but this is true in large part of the Scriptural attitude towards descriptions of sex, which are usually veiled in metaphor or euphemism.

But let me start with a strongly negative view of the relationship between David and Jonathan from the text of Scripture itself. Jonathan’s father Saul verbally assails his son, when he says, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your confusion, and the confusion of your mother’s nakedness.” (1 Samuel 20:30) Jonathan’s choice, is of course a choice, but it does not come from perversity. He has no wish to see the kingdom of his father fall to confusion, and to see the swift end of that dynasty. But Jonathan knows that he had little power not to chose the one whom he has chosen; the one to whom he knew his whole being to be bound when he first laid eyes on him, the one whom he loved as his own soul. (1 Samuel 18:1) This covenanted love (1 Samuel 18:3; 20:8,16,41-42; 23:18) was the greatest love he would ever know, the love for which he would eventually risk everything (1 Samuel 20:33) and lose his life; this wonderful love surpassing the love of women. (2 Samuel 1:26)

Was Jonathan wrong so to choose? I don’t think so.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

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Unrecognized Love (2)

I want to say a few more words about Jonathan and David based on the comment stream in the preceding post. First of all, let me clarify that my distinction between love and friendship is based on the one that C.S. Lewis made some years ago. While he went too far in his efforts to draw hard boundaries between “the four loves” — failing to recognize how in actual usage there is significant immigration and emigration between the lands of Eros, Philia and Agapé in particular — his distinction between love and friendship is very usefully applied to the relationship of David and Jonathan. Ironically so, as it occurs in a passage in which Lewis was attempting to downplay any suggestion of Eros in that relationship. His mistake lay in trying to separate the categories of Eros and Friendship completely, even while he recognized that they can and do overlap. Beginning with that logical paradox, Lewis wrote,

[We] know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best... In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious “nearness by resemblance” to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God...

The homosexual theory therefore seems to me not even plausible. This is not to say that Friendship and abnormal Eros have never been combined. Certain cultures at certain periods seem to have tended to the contamination. In war-like societies it was, I think, especially likely to creep into the relation between the mature Brave and his young armour-bearer or squire. The absence of the women while you were on the war-path had no doubt something to do with it. In deciding, if we think we need or can decide, where it crept in and where it did not, we must surely be guided by the evidence. (The Four Loves, 91ff)

The passage degenerates into some rather dated language which demonstrates Lewis’ inability to distinguish homosexuality from effeminacy — really, Jack, “Pansies”? — an all too common cultural failing. The traditional patriarchal mind is horrified by the idea of a man acting like a woman, of a man treating another man like a woman, or of women acting independently of men. Ultimately, for the culture-bound heterosexist, homosexuality is “all about Eve,” and he finds it difficult to grasp that sexuality, biological sex, and gender identity are three different axes or spectra which may describe any individual person. For instance, not all gay men are effeminate, and not all effeminate men are gay — even though belief in the converse is the basis for much cultural homophobia or heterosexism, even today. It is this same cultural understanding that explicitly underlies the one biblical legal prohibition against male same-sexuality: it is understood and expressed as one man treating another like a woman. No mention is made of a man treating another as a man! Such sexual egalitarianism is inconceivable to a culture in which sex is about “use” of one by another.

In the present instance, Lewis is unable to conceive of David and Jonathan as homosexual because for him homosexuals are, as he says, “pansies.” Moreover, while intentionally setting out to “defend” David and Jonathan, Lewis outlines precisely the points of evidence which are key to reading their story. In addition to the “warrior setting” into which Lewis grudgingly and censoriously acknowledges that Eros “creeps” or can “contaminate,” the rest of the tale matches Eros far better than Friendship, by Lewis’ own description.

Jonathan and David are not simply two men brought together because of an intense common interest. They are in fact always talking to one another about their love — and it is the two of them against the world; or at least against Saul and the Court. The story begins with Jonathan’s intense attraction to David as David; he loved him as he loved his own soul, apparently on their first encounter. There is no such thing as “friendship at first sight” and this cannot be conceived simply as great admiration for a brave and daring military action. It appears that David eventually reciprocated this love — perhaps the only relationship in his life without ulterior motives. This is Love writ plain for all who care to see it. Call it “Platonic” if you will; but recall that Platonic love is based on Eros. Eros need not necessarily entail sex, since sex is one culmination of Eros but not its necessary companion, and sometimes is a stranger to it.

Finally, I want to take note of the discomfort factor that arises for so many when this possibility or reading is raised. It may stem from a need to protect the Scripture even from a hint of approbation of such a relationship. As Hooker taught, not everything in Scripture is of God, and this is an historical, not a doctrinal or legal passage. Why cite it then? Because it provides to gay men a positive image of a deep and caring love story, which happens to find itself enshrined in the tradition; and it represents and reflects the actual issues before us far better than the cultic legal prohibitions whose applicability to our present concerns is tendentious at best.

Meanwhile, it is the abreaction to the suggestion of a possibility that is so telling. Whether those who suggest that it somehow tarnishes or reduces or contaminates this love even to suggest the possibility of an erotic element are driven by heterosexism, homophobia, or mere prudery, I cannot tell.

But in closing, let me just point out that the biblical literature definitely and explicitly “eroticizes” the love of God for Israel and Israel for God — both in its successes and its failures — and no one seems to be bothered by that, or feel that it “diminishes” that love. If the church can model its relationship or that of the individual Christian with Christ upon those images, there is no reason for gay couples not to recognize in Jonathan and David something admirable for their own loving and self-giving relationships.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Popular Religion: Risk and Opportunity

"Popular religion" is very much a part of our culture, and that includes our churches. I can guarantee that if you were to scratch the surface of many members of your congregations, and not a few clergy and bishops, you might find some rather astonishing theological opinions, especially concerning such things as the "life of the world to come."

I know this tension between popular religion and dogmatic orthodoxy also exists in the Roman Catholic Church -- alongside the dogma a very rich personal and popular devotional life thrives, and it is not always "orthodox" in its underpinnings. (I can remember the nun who told our Catechism Class about the salvific value of a mother's tears, carried by an angel to the Virgin Mary who put it in the scale to weigh it against the wicked heart of the distraught mother's son! Talk about unconscious syncretism — that even resonates with the Egyptian Book of the Dead!)

Perhaps this is in part a result of being heirs of an established church (whether legally or culturally — so that includes "big" churches like the Roman Catholic, and Lord knows that there is plenty of "popular religion" in countries where the Roman Catholic Church is dominant). I suspect as well this may happen in liturgical (rather than confessional) churches a bit more frequently. People become used to being part of the church's worship, its general atmosphere as opposed to official doctrines, and it may or may not touch their lives otherwise beyond The Three Sacred Elements of the Transitional Rites (you know, Water, Rice, and Earth in the Hatch, Match and Dispatch role the church has so long taken.)

In the long run I approach this in much the way C.S. Lewis did: which is to ask, How much worse off might such people be — even with their less than perfect grasp of the doctrinal rudiments of the faith — if they were not exposed to the church at all? And so we clergy keep on hatching, matching and dispatching — but I hope in as honest and rich and faith-filled a way as possible, not giving into the temptation to substitute popular pious platitudes for the sometimes hard doctrine. We are not, after all, a society of perfect people, but pilgrims. As long as the guides keep their heads on straight, not giving in to the sentiment that passes for faith, we will be moving in the right direction, under the shadow of our banner, the Cross of Christ.

But that takes perseverance — the "popular" course is popular for a reason —it's easier. A few weeks ago, Archbishop Barry Morgan delivered the Hobart Lecture here in the Diocese of New York. One of his themes was clerical honesty: especially in times of loss and tragedy resisting those pious platitudes that are so easy and attractive and tempting; and which reaffirm those troubling aspects of sentimental and popular religion. What does "He's gone to a better place..." have to do with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead? As Morgan challenged, is it really at all true that "God never gives us trouble without giving us the strength to bear it..." when we are surrounded by evidence to the contrary?

I commend the lecture to you -- it is good, bracing, reading and touches on this whole question of sentimental religion vs. a faith that can face the facts.

Peace and joy, and a Glorious All Saints Day upcoming! (I've got three rounds of Water to deal with three of the newly Hatched!)

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Reading Rowan — Part the Second

I ended the first section of this reflection on the Archbishop of Canterbury with reference to Truth; and I would like to focus on that theme in his second section. I will do that by sharing with you some of what I said to the Archbishop at the meeting in Anaheim.

Being True to Oneself

I deferred a call to ordained ministry for a number of years in large part due to the “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy that was in place in the Diocese of New York. I felt I could not in good conscience function in such a regime — in part because of the value I place on openness, authenticity, and honesty in pastoral ministry — and I could not imagine ministering effectively under such circumstances. With a change in that policy by the newly elected bishop, and a change in attitude reflected in the House of Bishops itself at the 1991 General Convention, I knew that it was time to answer that call. Little did I know that I would end up serving in a congregation 90 percent of whose members are from parts of the Anglican Communion in which I would not be able to serve with such honesty. In part because I preach the gospel and treat my personal life as a fact on the ground, as I think any pastor should, allows most of the members of the congregation to do the same. They support me, and my partner of 29 years, in our ministry with them; and they treat him with respect they would any clergy spouse. The women of the parish make cakes for his birthday, and people always ask after him when he is away on business.

However, as with all ministry, this is not ultimately about me: it helps the gay and lesbian members of my parish to be themselves as well. They come from parts of the world where they could only do that literally at the risk of their lives and safety, and more importantly, might never cross the threshold of a church.

This is an important witness to the Gospel, in the ultimate rule and moral standard that Jesus gave us: to treat others as we would be treated, to love our neighbors as ourselves. And to do that, we must be ourselves, reveal ourselves. Being forced to live in the closet — or even choosing it as the easier way — is a fundamental violation of human dignity as well as an almost gnostic violation of the embodied truth of persons in their integrity and identity.

I am reminded that the motto of the Anglican Communion, in the words surrounding the Compass Rose: “The Truth Shall Make You Free.” One of the principles of Ubuntu, a concept which has occupied so much of our thinking and working at this session of General Convention, is that we cannot authentically be ourselves unless we are in relationship. My question is, How can we be in authentic relationships if we are not open and honest about ourselves from the outset? If we are all wearing masks, it is not a meeting of true self with true self, but a masquerade, a game of mask facing mask, reflected “in a glass darkly.” What would happen; what wave of opportunities for new ministry might break forth across the Anglican Communion if we were to take off our masks — all of us? What would happen if we were to be set free by truth for Truth? I am reminded of an eponymous line from CS Lewis’s great novel, “How can we truly know and love each other face-to-face, until we have faces?”

What is Truth?

That is what I said, more or less, to the Archbishop. And of course, any discussion of truth, either with or without a capital T, is bound to be dicey. Let me say, first of all, I reject relativism: that is, I think truth has to do with reality; though perceptions can and will differ, I think there is something that is perceived. I also accept that certain things I believe to be true cannot be proven but must be taken on faith — such as that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer of the world. I believe other truths can be demonstrated: such as that committed, life-long, monogamous same-sex relationships are not only not sinful, but capable of showing forth the grace and love of God.

While expounding the truth, or what one believes to be true, can certainly lead to division, I also believe — and this is where I differ most sharply with the Archbishop — that it is expounding the truth that leads to unity rather than being in unity leading to truth. Let me be more precise (which may also serve to lessen the gap between me and the Archbishop somewhat) — it is first of all a question of knowledge, of what we believe to be true; in short, an epistemological question. How do I know anything at all, let alone whether it is true or not? Relationship is clearly an important aspect of knowledge — I learn from others, both human others and “the other” in the form of the sensible world, as well as the ultimate Other, God, through God’s self-communication in revelation and most particularly in the person of Christ. And I refine my knowledge (that is, I learn) in communication with those others, in listening to those others, and come to know what I believe to be true in that forum and interchange and relationship. And out of this there grows a form of dynamic community. This is how truth both leads to and fosters community, truth-speaking in dialogue and listening leading to understanding, and community (as opposed to division) fostering that conversation. As Paul said to the Ephesians, “So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” One’s truth can only be heard if there are those willing to listen. Uncertain trumpets and ears not geared to hear are equally obstacles to the task of evangelism: a task which reveals the need to speak as well as to listen, and which itself testifies to the fact that, “All have not heard,” and that the Truth must be communicated and spread. The church as a whole and in its members is, after all, “called” — it is assembled by the proclamation, and then gives rise to yet more proclamation, in the sending forth to spread the Evangelical Truth.

It seems to me that the Archbishop may be calling “unity” what I am calling relationship or community. But he appears to me to have a more limited notion of the institutional forms in which such unity might be incarnated. He wants a tighter and more regulated union as opposed to what he dismisses as a federation — and yet it seems to me that federations work very well, or at least as well as more tightly unitary entities. Benedictines and Franciscans both have a lively sense of identity and community, incarnated in very different structures. And I cannot help but note that given the Anglican Benedictine heritage, it might be good to remember the essentially autonomous nature of each abbey — living a common rule but individually governed, with only a superficial ecclesiastical structure at a higher level of management, an arch-abbot whose primary task is to check in once and a while at each abbey to see how well they are following the Rule they hold in common, but exercise as individual foundations. Sounds like the Anglican Communion to me!

My concern about “unity giving rise to truth” lies in awareness of how central control can quash the very sensibility, adaptation to local circumstance, and experimentation through which truth is often perceived, expressed, and more widely received. Monolithic entities — especially when they think they already have the truth or even are infallible — tend not to be open to correction, reform or development; they often do not listen to the corrective warnings of the child who sees the naked emperor. It is very easy for unity and unanimity to lead to self-deception; even to conspiracy and repression of the truth. Sanhedrins often are not good at accepting input, even from some of their own number.

The Elephant in the Room

Let me take up for a moment the old parable of the blind men and the elephant. In their touching and feeling they think they are engaged with different things rather than one elephantine entity: a rope, a tree, a pipe, a wall, a fan. If they remain out of communication with each other they will of course continue in this misunderstanding. But they do not need to form a “union” or “unity” in order to come to a better mind — they need communion or community: in short, to communicate with each other, and the precise form of that communication — federal, synodical, or monarchial, is irrelevant. In the world of modern networking, a distributed and open communication system may be preferred over a central administration.

Of course, they must also have some prior concept of “elephanticity,” even if it is a vague or second-hand report of heffalumps or oliphants. Thus they build not only on their individual experiences but on their own past knowledge, gained from community, of an idea of an elephant. Had they no knowledge of an elephant, who knows what strange joint vision they might construct, without any relation to the reality of which they each had only partial experience.

But, and here I may be treading over into paradox and an Anglican koan — what if it is the elephant who is blind? What if it is the elephant who has no ability to form a concept of itself? How do you tell an elephant it is an elephant? How can the elephant know the truth of its own elephant-self without the help of those blind but sensitive witnesses whose limited knowledge can only be perfected in communion, yet without which communion cannot come to be. Mustn’t the elephant construct a self-identity as a unitary entity from the evidence of the individuals reporting on its aspects? It seems to me that the Anglican Communion — indeed the whole church — is best approached as an entity that has no understanding of itself apart from the understanding of its individual members, who jointly seek understanding: truth communicated leading to unity.

To use another analogy: Consciousness itself emerges from the bicameral nature of the brain: our brain is not a unitary entity, but a consortium of independent clusters of activity, cooperating with each other to give rise to self-awareness. The church is a body with many members, contributing different faculties to the whole in organs of sense and motion.

E Pluribus Unum

It is obvious that the church does not simply spring into existence fully formed. The One is formed by the community of the Many. It grows by the addition of new members. It is, as we ourselves are, woven in secret, knit together from various components with which it is equipped, to come together and grow together in Love. Perhaps the Anglican Communion needs a refresher course in Ephesians, to understand how telling the truth can lead to unity and communion, while duplicity (the dual-minded opposite of community) can produce only an appearance of unity, the masquerade of which I spoke, a false-front facade of an edifice that is empty at its heart, a Temple forsaken by the Spirit who does not simply bestow all truth, but who leads us into it.

This is why the so-called Listening Process is so important: and it reveals, to some extent, Rowan Williams’ own trust in an emergent unity — that is, if unity were necessary for dialogue, why treat dialogue and listening as a means to encouraging unity? This gives me hope that in the actual working out of things it may be that the Archbishop is an idealist and the Vicar is a realist, but we are both dealing with the same entity under it all. That is, we are looking at the same church from two different angles; and both of us are committed to the Listening Process as a means to a better end.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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The Wrong Glue

Several sources report the Archbishop of Canterbury as having said he is looking for a more "cohesive" Anglican Communion.

And right there we have the nub of the problem. Cohesion is the natural process by which the identical molecules of a substance are bound together. It is distinguished from adhesion, in which different particles are held together.

It is an important distinction. The various provinces of the Anglican Communion, although sharing a great deal in common, are not simply identical units stamped from the same mold. Even on this continent, Mexico, the U.S., and Canada have their own distinctive character as churches, and are from from identical in many respects.

+Rowan has spoken time and again of his anguish lest the Anglican Communion be nothing but a federation. He really does appear to want a single unified world-church, made up of more or less interchangeable subunits. In his current remarks, he laments that the Anglican Communion as it was 20 years ago may not survive. That seems to me to be self-evident; but his proposal to move towards a more centrally organized entity than we had 20 years ago is not necessarily any more faithful to the Gospel, and involves as fundamental a transformation (if not more so), as a movement to a less centrally organized entity than we had 20 years ago. The movement towards networks less rigidly structured seems wise in trying times.

As I've noted before, there is a model for a world-church: the Roman Catholics have it down pat. As an entity, the Church of Rome is cohesive, bound by a single central canon law and government, a teaching authority, and all the rest that goes with it. Some four centuries ago the Church of England said No to this model, and set about to be a national church, governed within its own context — not without much pain. This reality brought to the larger church such things as the common cup and the vernacular liturgy — gifts the Church of Rome reluctantly and only finally accepted within living memory — as well as things like a married clergy and ordained women which she has yet to accept. And what has the world-church brought to Christendom in her role as the Sole Western Developer of Doctrine (as Newman saw it)? Papal infallibility, the Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption.

I hope the ACC, in its meetings this week, will not exchange the Anglican birthright for a "pot of message" — as C. S. Lewis once punned. Let them remember the motto of the Anglican Communion, inscribed around that precious compassrose: The Truth Shall Make You Free. (Emphasis mine.) It is for Freedom and in Truth that we bind ourselves together — in adherence to the Truth of Christ we shall be one, not because we are all the same (for the compass points in all directions), but because He is One, and we are One in Him.

Let Him be our Unity, not some man-made Babel of a Covenant, whose meaning is already shattering into a hundred tongues, and which offers cohesion only as adhesion by coercion.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Responsible Journalism

I have just about "had it" with The Living Church. The well-spun reporting has been an annoyance for some time, and the editorials for even longer. But the March 15 issue reaffirmed my sense that the continual pot-stirring — coupled with less than accurate reporting and whining opining — is not serving the church well, even if it is keeping the circulation of the magazine going. People like controversy — at least the readers of TLC, anyway — but I think the kind of writing that regularly appears in the magazine these days is not serving the church well. As I noted in the former post, the questers after truth may think they are doing well by the church; but when they are less than accurate, and argumentative to boot — well, I don't see how this serves anyone well.

For example, in David Kalvelage's editorial column in this issue, we are once again treated to more hand-wringing about a lack of General Convention's formal adoption in recent years of a resolution affirming the uniqueness of Christ. O.K., to each his own issue, I suppose. I find the BCP to be more than adequate as a statement of the theological position of the Episcopal Church, and don't feel the need for General Convention to act as a theological assembly. In fact, I don't really think I want General Convention to act as a theological assembly!

However, what really annoyed me in Kalvelage's essay is his misquotation of the Presiding Bishop. He writes

In an interview with Time magazine, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori described Jesus as "a vehicle to the divine."

Note the placement of the quotation marks. Here is what the Presiding Bishop actually said; this being, by the way, the entire answer to the question:

Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?

We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.

Some may say the difference between "a" and "our" is trivial. I don't think so. But I'm also ready to admit I don't like the language of "vehicle" — or of "getting to heaven" for that matter. But to put this answer in "my" language would be to say, "Christians understand Jesus as the means by which we are saved." Is that really unorthodox? I don't think so; in fact, I think it a fairly trivial observation that Christians believe themselves to be saved by Christ; that we "know God" through Jesus Christ. That's what makes us Christians.

It is the second part of the PB's response that raises the most hackles in certain circles, however. But does it rightly so? Do we in fact believe that "God cannot act in other ways than through Jesus" or that "God is unknowable in other ways than through Jesus"? That does not seem to be in keeping with the biblical witness either to God at work with the people of Israel, or even among the Gentiles through their perception of God at work in the natural world, as Paul said in Mars Field — though, of course, he also wanted to show them a more excellent way, and invite them into his "vehicle"!

There is, of course, also a more Christocentric way to read this doctrine; one that brings Christ back to the center; and I do think it a better reading than what the PB provides — so I'm not letting her off the hook entirely. (Then again, this was an interview, not an encyclical letter or a doctrinal thesis! And, to be fair, TLC is not a theological journal, and I'm finding fault with a misquotation in an editorial.) However, fair's fair, and just as it would have been better for Kalvelage to leave off the quotation marks or move them over by a word, so too it would have been better for the PB to affirm the doctrine that Christians also believe that Christ is the means by which God acts whenever God acts, and that when the world knows God — whenever and whereever God is known — it is Christ at work bringing the knowing. There are plenty of modern exponents of this notion, so one need not rely on the traces of this understanding in John's gospel, and in Paul's reference to the water-providing rock of the desert as "Christ." God in Christ is at work in spite of our ignorance of that work. All who are saved by God are saved by Christ.

This way of seeing God's saving work has some venerable tradition to back it up, as the early church wrestled with the issue of the virtuous who died before Christ's coming in the flesh, or who died after his coming but before hearing the saving gospel's proclamation. But as I say it has modern exponents such as Karl Rahner. Even C.S. Lewis, much beloved of evangelicals, cast his own metaphorical version of this in the final volume of the Narnia series, in which he reaffirmed the old doctrine that earnest seekers after God are found by God — God "overlooks" their specific errors on the basis of their general quest. God is, in fact, too big to put into any of our boxes.

And for that, I think we can all be grateful.

—Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Some thoughts on unity and division

Over at Jan Nunley's blog, there is a lively discussion between her good self and Matt Kennedy. It is the usual case of dueling Scriptures, but it seems to be going on in a good spirit, without recrimination. As I was cited briefly, in light of my forthcoming book on the subject (now in page proofs) I felt the need to make a comment, regarding matters raised, in particular regarding Leviticus 18 and Romans 1. The book addresses these things in exhaustive (and I hope not exhausting) detail. But in the world of the bite-size blog, I did want to approach my larger concern about how our current disagreements are affecting the church.

The Leviticus passage explicitly only applies to men, and at that only to Jewish men or those living in the Holy Land. That is what the text says. Broader application is reading into the text; which, of course, many have done. But then we move from sola scriptura to the authority of the church. I recognize the authority of the church in this regard, but, as an Anglican, also admit that the church can and has erred, even in matters of faith and morals.

Romans 1 is not about life-long committed same-sex relationships. It may or may not refer to female same-sexuality; some of the early church fathers thought not; a few and more later ones did. (Again this gets into the church as interpreter, rather than the text itself.) The text alone, taken as a rhetorical whole, is about the perils of idolatry: what happens to idolaters as a result of their idolatry. At that, the same-sexuality it describes is not that of commitment, but of lust, disorder, and orgy. The "context" does not apply to Christian couples.

I realize Matt disagrees with my interpretation of Scripture. But that is my freedom as a Christian, a member of the church, and I am far from being alone in my interpretation. Speaking personally, I take this to be a part of what Paul was addressing in Romans 14:14. I do not, by this, mean to be placing a stumbling block in anyone's way, and if my freedom is leading anyone to transgression in judging their brothers and sisters, I regret that. I can only counsel they consider that the creation of factions and divisions over disagreements as to what is right or not lies at the heart of Paul's concern for the well-being of the church; and the way forward, according to the Gospel, is to take an attitude of forbearance, and restraint of judgment of others, while leading a life of holiness in one's own understanding, without giving -- or taking -- offense, so far as that within us lies.

If I am mistaken in my understanding of Scripture, along with those who take Scripture as I do, I trust that God forgives me. I place my ultimate reliance not in my own understanding or performance, but upon the assurance that God forgives those who err, even when, perhaps especially when, they do not know their error. And I think that goes for others, too.

In the meantime, the question seems to me to be, What leads to peace and the spread of that gospel? -- the gospel that is not about works of righteousness through the Law, or careful observation of its strictures (which cannot save) but rather upon the mercy of God and the love shown to those who also bear Christ's name, and to those who do not yet know him. Are we presenting a face to the pagan world that would make them at all desirous of coming to know Christ?

So that, for me, points to the whole question of division and disagreement in the church. And that brings me back to the current mess in the Anglican Communion, and the quest towards greater unity through the establishment of a Covenant that will bind the churches closer together than affectionate means seem to have made possible. Christopher, ever insightful, has commented at his blog about the perils of placing any unifying authority in the place of Christ, who is the only legitimate head of the church. Not the Pope, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, not even the English Monarch. Seeking unity in some edifice other than God-in-Christ and Christ-in-us is precisely the error of Babel. It is the creation of a self-sufficient unity that has no real foundation. And the movement of Anglicanism away from its pilgrimage orientation (as C S Lewis said, as friends facing a common object of adoration outside of ourselves) towards preoccupation and infatuation with our own unified edifice, is an ecclesiastical error of the worst sort.

It strikes me that these two things go together: it is all about power over others, to make them conform to ones own understanding, rather than living under the grace that tolerates the misapprehension that befalls us all. The libido dominandi, in ecclesiastical form, will not bring us to Christ. The Law cannot save. We are called rather to accept that the kingdom of God is among us, realized in our love for each other in Christ, not in the structures and strictures we may connive to foster greater unity. There can be no greater unity than that which binds up the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit -- the ground of all being, the creator not only of this world, nor even of all worlds, nor even only of the universe, but of every possible universe that is or might be. If we are to be one as Christ and the Father are one, we must simply open our hands to recieve that unity, which is and always will be, not of our own doing, but a gift from God.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

More than meets the eye

A meditation delivered by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG at Trinity Church San Francisco, September 13, 2008

Julian of Norwich wrote: “Suddenly the Trinity completely filled my heart with the greatest joy. And so, I understood, it will be in heaven, without an end, for those who come there, For the Trinity is God; God is the Trinity. The Trinity is our maker. The Trinity is our keeper. The Trinity is our everlasting lover. The Trinity is our endless joy and our bliss, through our Lord Jesus Christ and in our Lord Jesus Christ. This truth was shown in the first showing and in all the showings, for where Jesus appears, the blessed Trinity is understood, as I see it.”^[4]

More words have been spoken, more ink spilled, and probably more blood shed on account of the Trinity than any other Christian doctrine. I alluded to this in my first meditation. So I want to follow through, and I hope deliver on something of what I promised, in thinking about the Trinity not so much doctrinally as liturgically, in particular the ascetical disciplines of religious life, and the gift of contemplation.

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First of all, I start with the assertion that the Trinity is not a doctrine, but a Person — in fact, three Persons. “Trinity” is the name of the God whom we worship, the God we then know — insofar as we can know God — as Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit — and we get that Name from the liturgy of Baptism: told by Jesus to do it to the ends of the world, not to think about it. We worship before we understand, before we know. Like the Athenians, we worship a God to a large extent unknown — yet faith and grace support our worship even with the partial knowledge we have. God has not left us entirely clueless, as Paul told the Athenians. As Julian reminds us, God gave us as it were an ABC, so that here on earth we can have a little of the knowledge that we will have in full measure in heaven.

The first thing we gather from the Baptismal ordinance is that God is One in Three, a love so powerful it could not exist simply as a singularity but had to be more dynamic — and paradoxical. And so we give our God the name of Trinity, for this is the only way we have to grasp the hem of the transcendent garment. For though there are many doctrines about the Trinity, many unpackings of the meaning of this name, the Trinity God’s-self is not a doctrine to be discussed but a mystery to be contemplated.

Now, in liturgical theology — unlike a Hercule Poirot story — a mystery isn’t a puzzle we can figure out if given enough clues. No: mystery stems from the Greek word for sacrament — not something to be solved with the little gray cells, but to be experienced as an exercise — an askesis — of the whole self, with, as George Herbert said, the heart bearing the longest part.

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A mystery, a sacrament, is something that brings us beyond the surface to some deeper or higher reality — effectively, so that it becomes a means to experience it. There is more than meets the eye in a sacrament: some inward reality to which the appearance directs, draws, invites, and brings us. The water of baptism and the bread and wine of the eucharist reveal truths that words cannot express, truths not simply assented to with the mind, but experienced with the self — living truths from the hand of the one who is living, loving Truth.

This doesn’t mean that theologians give up trying to understand or communicate these truths in other ways, though the effort is like translating poetry into prose. Often, rather than deepening our understanding only confusion results. Worse than that, over the years theologians’ efforts to define exactly how (and if) baptism regenerates, or how bread and wine can (or can’t) be at the same time the Body and Blood of Christ have led to division and persecution in the church. And if we are to apply the touchstone, “By their fruits you shall know them,” it appears we have been wandering in a forest of very bad trees. How often have we forgotten the wisdom C.S. Lewis encapsulated in his brief epigram, “The Lord said, Take, eat; not Take, understand.”

The same is true of efforts to “explain” or “understand” the Trinity — and I am not about to add to the succession of failures. Rather, I invite you to approach the Trinity today and every day much as you do the eucharistic bread and wine, as a sacrament to contemplate and experience rather than as a proposition to analyze. Just as the bread and wine of the eucharist are not about baking and wine-making (though these arts have a place in bringing the sacrament to fulfillment) so too the Trinity is not about precise definitions meant to rule the limits beyond whose bounds we stray into the dangerous territory of heresy. Our efforts at understanding, our doctrinal formulations and creeds, for all their usefulness in defining boundaries, are at best thumbnail sketches of the Being and Loving and Doing who lies behind and beyond all that is.

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I mentioned askesis — asceticism — in passing a few moments ago, and I want to expand a bit on that. The popular mind links asceticism to not doing things — but the root meaning of the word is an exercise or practice, or as we might say, a discipline. The point of ascetical poverty, for instance, is not impoverishment — the absence of possessions — but the freedom from attachment to them, the ability as Saint Gregory the Great once said, “to make use of the things of this world without being ensnared by them.” I recall that a monk to whom I sent a membership pin for a church group returned it with a kind note saying his community didn’t pin anything on their habits. This has remained a wonderful image: religious are people who aren’t pinned down, people who are truly alive and free because they have given themselves to the One-in-Three, the source of all life and freedom. In a way, the ascetic knows things best, for she will have them in perspective, at arm’s length far enough away to be seen, reflected upon, and made proper use of as needed, without worrying whether there will be enough — because all of it is a gift. At the same time, the ascetic will be one close to God, thoroughly known by God, able to participate in the divine life that does not consist in the abundance of possessions, but in the transparency of personhood.

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True asceticism is a kind of disciplined awareness of relationships freed from the desire to possess, awareness of relationships between the self and the other, that other who is God or neighbor, or God in neighbor. And this awareness, cultivated through discipline, may explain the paradoxical spiritual richness that ascetics experience in spite of the sometimes external austerity of their lives, enjoying the rich harvest of contemplation — which is, in some ways, the simplest liturgical act which we undertake, when we remove our worldly shoes and kneel on holy ground before a flame that burns but does not consume. In these moments the soul is stilled and receptive before the One-in-Three who Simply Is Who Is.

Contemplation is not to be mistaken for passivity, as if the contemplative were simply an audience-member looking on with the view to diversion. On the contrary, diversion is just what contemplation isn’t. Just as the world mistakes poverty for impoverishment, it looks at contemplation and sees stasis. But no, the contemplative is inwardly active at the level of the soul, participating intimately, not static but ecstatic: absorbed in the divine other; and ascetic: exercising inwardly, fanning the warmth of that divine spark, dancing with God, experiencing God’s revelation not only in rumination over words from the past, but hearing new promises spoken in their personal present, or read by that glowing flame that burns but does not consume, savoring the words written long ago on stone and parchment, and exulting in the wordless words inscribed on their very human hearts.

Thus absorbed in the holy Trinity, we come to know God; but we also come to know ourselves. As Julian of Norwich said,

for our soul sits in God in true rest, and our soul stands in God in sure strength, and our soul is naturally rooted in God in endless love. And therefore if we want to have knowledge of our own soul... we must seek it in our Lord God in whom it is enclosed.^[56]

And so the dance goes on!

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As I said before, the discipline of prayer and presence is related to detachment — not being pinned to things. Look at what happens when liturgical things are pinned down: in Corinth, for example. Paul warned them about being caught up in disagreements that made them forget the reason for their worship and their fellowship. His warning holds for us today, for we too live in the “already but not yet” that lies between creation and culmination; the urge to want to pin things down in a time of uncertainty is great; labels are so tempting and categories so seductive.

Whenever the church gets so caught up in seeking to define or limit the means of grace that it forgets about the hope of glory, and thereby obstructs or withholds their grace-giving power, the church is in trouble. From what we can tell about the church in Corinth this was a congregation that never did quite “get it.” And what they didn’t “get” was that the sacraments and the gifts of the Spirit point us beyond themselves and ourselves to God. Sacraments are means, not ends. People are ends, not means. And the Corinthians had it backwards. By the end of his association with them, Paul was ready to tear the whole thing down and start over! They had turned the eucharist into a dinner party, and come to see speaking in tongues as an end in itself. They got caught up in the personalities of the apostles instead their teaching. They were, strictly speaking, shallow: caught up in the surface — pinned to it, if you will — and could not see beyond what meets the eye, all the while considering themselves especially profound and holy. They were so worried about idolatry, that their very worry became an idol in itself. They missed the truth that the difference between an idol and a sacrament is that the sacrament is a means to something greater, while the idol is an end in itself. Those who worship idols, however holy they appear, are clipped to the level of what meets the eye, like water-beetles skimming the surface. What is needed is the true gift of contemplation, which can look past the reflective surfaces, past the flickering lights, past the water even, so that the one who contemplates can see the everlasting rocky foundation of the stream-bed below.

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In the end, contemplation is the liturgy of heaven. Because there is always more to God than meets the eye, even the eye of faith, we will never be bored with God the Trinity. The Trinity has been doing that inward dynamic dance of its own self-subsisting uncreated existence, God simply being Who God Is in uncontainable joy and love, from before time and for ever. And we are invited, nay plucked from our wallflower seats to join that dance, to contemplate and participate in that divine energy, that love that drives the sun and the other stars. That is what we are doing now, here, together, in this place. Our gathering is an opportunity to look at the record of God’s saving deeds, and humanity’s struggling, stumbling, and sometimes surprisingly graceful efforts to respond. But by starting with the Trinity, we focus not upon the saving story of what God has done, but with the untellable reality of Who God Is.

Corinth shows us how not to proceed — but even in their failure there is guidance. I said that the Corinthians were pinned to surface issues. The problem was that they were looking at the wrong surfaces. They were looking at walls when they should have been looking in each other’s faces.

For, however much the natural world can tell us about who God is, however much is revealed about God in the mighty acts of grace and salvation, however much is captured in the words of theologians, the most powerful and revealing thing God has ever done was to create creatures bearing the divine image and likeness; and then, in the fulness of time, to become incarnate in that same image of Who God Is. If we want to know what God is like, we can do no better than to look at each other, at our brothers and sisters, each of whom is a living, breathing sacrament of God. And in them and through them we will find God, and in God we will find ourselves, all enclosed, as Julian said, wrapped in the threefold love of God the Three-in-One.

This is where the askesis of chastity comes in: for the chaste soul treats the other with the respect due a child of God, never as a means, but always as an end — not just a way to God, but God’s real presence. This is why Paul concludes his appeal to the Corinthians by urging them to agree with each other, be at peace, and kiss each other. When we have quieted our family struggles in the church, calmed the reflecting surface so that recognizable likenesses emerge, we can then take the next step, beyond the mirror’s surface, to see Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who is himself the perfect revelation of God.

Coming to agreement and peace in the church will mean further detachment, giving in and giving up — to use the fancy phrase, it will mean the sacrifice and oblation of ourselves. Each of us will have to step off our own little pedestal if we are to reach each other and face each other and embrace each other in the holy kiss of peace: it is no accident the Peace comes at the center of our liturgy. Each of us will have to take off those worldly shoes, to tread on holy ground.

In this very action our divine likeness is revealed, and the sacramental mystery bears fruit, enabled by the gift of the Holy Sprit. This is what Jesus did in becoming one of us. This is what Julian experienced when she chose to find no heaven other than that which is revealed in Jesus Christ, and him in his passion.^[19] This is what God did in risking to create creatures that would be capable of being truly free — which means being capable of rejecting their Creator. In the paschal giving of ourselves to one another, in the setting aside our own needs for the sake of one whose need is greater, our resemblance to God emerges, and we become recognizable as what we are meant to be: the children of God.

In embracing our brothers and sisters we are re-enacting and celebrating and contemplating the cosmic turnabout when Love Divine came down and lived among us as one of us, and we penetrate beneath the surface and see beyond what meets the eye to what enlivens the mind, touches the heart, and lifts up the spirit. We encounter and contemplate the Trinity: Who God Is in all richness and infinite variety. As Julian said,

I am he, the might and goodness of fatherhood; I am he, the wisdom and the lovingness of motherhood; I am he, the light and the grace which is all blessed love; I am he, the Trinity; I am he, the Unity; I am he, the great supreme goodness of every kind of thing; I am he who makes you to love; I am he who makes you to long; I am he, the endless fulfilling of all true desires.”^[59]

For the Trinity is: the Giver, the Gift, and the Giving — the one great God, so in love with the world that creation itself will not be complete until the Triune Name is carried to its ends, and everything that has breath praises the Lord in the never-ending dance of contemplation whose center and whose music is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.+

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The numbers in brackets refer to sections of Julian's Shewings.

Why We Talk

Fellow blogger The Country Parson sent me a thoughtful note on the series of articles I've been writing on the sexuality debate. I'm posting it here as well as in the comment section, along with a response, because I think it is helpful to explain why I am pursuing this discussion, and why I am doing so in this way.

Tobias,

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I regularly read your postings and appreciate the sagacity with which they are offered. I suspect, but do not know, that my position, like many of my colleagues, is quite different because I care for a congregation that could have split and didn't. It meant entering into conversation with the "other side" with lots of questions, few answers and plenty of patience to hear people out. Some, of course, did leave, a few in white hot temper. But most stayed, and I bet that most priests in most places have faced pretty much the same in their own ways. So keep it us. Your arguments are worthy and sound. They can be a part of the cutting edge of a new direction, but they cannot do the heavy lifting required to bring the greater church along after them. That requires another kind of effort.

Your brother in Christ,
CP

I want to thank CP for his thoughts on this. I by no means want to suggest that I would cut off dialogue with any even of the most conservative among us.

At the last General Convention I had an extended, semi-public, late-night, and to a large extent alcohol-fueled, discussion with a leading English Evangelical. He came on very strong, and so did I. Yet there was no animus or animosity in the conversation, but rather conviction on both sides, and I did not let him off the hook or allow him to give in to easy slogans or rest unchallenged in his "orthodoxy." In fact, I met him on his own Evangelical ground, and towards the end of the evening he was in tears of gratitude for my not having simply given up on him but pressing the conversation. He said he had never encountered an American Episcopalian willing to actually debate or even discuss the issue at the level of seriousness it required. I heard the next day from another English Evangelical who was present at this discussion (mostly silent and on the sidelines but observing keenly) that this had been a profoundly important experience for his colleague.

It is with the same kind of seriousness — and a soupçon of humor here and there, in, I hope, the best Anglican tradition! — that I am attempting to lay out the argument here, in part by taking the Scripture with the seriousness it deserves, and the very close reading it requires. That Matt Kennedy is taking my efforts seriously and responding in kind (though perhaps with less humor; but that's another matter!) is, I take it, a good sign. There are even points on which we agree, it seems. And both Matt and I will receive nods of approval from those who agree with us on the points on which we disagree, and who are already more or less convinced of the rightness of their point of view. Others, less convinced, may be swayed one way or the other, in part because the conversation is serious and raises issues that have too often been passed by in more general discussions.

I do understand the parochial situation --- and it is not all that different from my own. I do not focus on these issues in my preaching and pastoral work, but neither do I make them a secret. My congregation has more basic concerns about life and morality — and I think rightly so; for like CS Lewis (through whose writings I came to my adult reconversion to Christianity) I do not feel that the sexuality is the most important locus of morality. Following Lewis, and as I said to the Anglican Evangelical, taking a position of judgment against sisters and brothers represents perhaps a far greater sin in the eyes of God than the sins against which one rails. The presumption of judgment, of taking the role of judge rather than as fellow defendant, is a poison which is racking the body of the church --- as it has from the days of Christ himself and the apostles. The object of this judgment, in our day, is homosexuality, rather than in former times questions of circumcision, food offered to idols, gentile status, vernacular liturgy, episcopal authority, Trinitarian doctrine, the common cup, and any of the many points upon which members of Christ's Church have attempted to distinguish themselves from other members of the same body. In this series of articles I am trying to raise awareness of the ambiguities and uncertainties that could render strict judgment on this issue less secure — to hold open the door of humility and charity that might allow some who seem very certain of the sins of others to understand that they might be mistaken.

Tobias Haller BSG

6. Clash of Symbols

A section of the continuing reflection on sexuality begun with Where the Division Lies.

In this essay I will examine an additional feature of marriage: its use as a metaphor or symbol for the relationship between Christ and the Church (or between God and Israel). This will include a reflection on the nature of symbolism, the extent to which reliance on such symbols can be helpful as well as misleading, what it is about marriage that serves as a symbol of these relationships, and whether that quality can be applied to same-sex relationships as well.

The ambivalent nature of symbols

Much has been said and written over the years about the nature of symbols, and their relationship to what they symbolize. Part of this discussion involves sacramental theology. It is fair to say that all sacraments are symbols, but not all symbols are sacraments. Beginning with the broader category, I accept the standard definition of a symbol as something that stands for something else. Symbols (in order to function as such) have some likeness or relationship to what they symbolize, and/or some common context which allows them to be understood as signifying something other than themselves. Thus, a king and his royal authority can be symbolized by a crown, a crest, or a throne — though none of these would be effective as symbols in a society that had neither kings, crowns, crests or thrones. The degree of relatedness between a symbol and its object — for example, between a king and his headgear — can be quite remote as long as the culture understands the connection between them. But outside of the culture in which a symbol makes symbolic sense, it may be unrecognizable, or require explanation — and thus be ineffective as a symbol.

Moreover, one symbol may have a different or even contrary meaning in another culture, and other cultures may have different symbols to represent the same object. One need not go as far afield as the Cargo Cults or the mysterious soda-bottle of The Gods Must Be Crazy to find examples of ambivalent symbolism. It is well known that hand gestures (as a form of active symbol) are just as variable as language — and a gesture that is acceptable or innocuous in one society can be obscene or offensive in another. Symbols are as often conventional (not “natural”) as they are ambiguous (not “clear.’)

A sacrament, for the purpose of this discussion, is a symbol that does more than effect a mental recognition in the observer, but actually effects a real change. Even here the “natural likeness” is not essential for a sacrament to do its work — wine is visually more like blood than bread is like flesh, yet both serve in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Yet in some cultures bread is an unheard of novelty rather than a daily staff of life, and wine may similarly be an exotic substance. And as one ecclesiastical wag once put it even in his Western context, “I have no difficulty in believing that the eucharistic host is the Body of Christ - but I do have difficulty recognizing it as bread.”

Picking up the royal imagery above, and recalling all of the fuss and bother concerning its misplacement in The Prince and the Pauper, the Great Seal of England in a real sense embodied a kind of sacrament — the real present power of the monarch in an efficacious manner — yet the Pauper used it to crack walnuts! The crucial note here is that even with a sacrament, its sacramental nature must be discerned. Even so-called “natural” symbols can be misunderstood apart from a cultural context, through which they are invested with efficacious power.

It is not my concern here to debate the question of whether marriage is or is not one of seven sacraments (as in the Roman Catholic teaching), but rather to reflect on the function of the marital relationship as a symbol for the relationship between Christ and the Church, or in the Hebrew Scriptures, between God and Israel. I think at the very least we can recognize that unlike the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist, a marriage does not effect the real presence of the relationship between Christ and the Church; rather the grace of marriage (if we are to take it as sacramental) concerns the love and fidelity of the couple, which is analogous to or metaphorical of the love of Christ for the Church. This is, in short, a poetic symbol.

Finally, it must be acknowledged that symbols — even sacramental ones — have clearly defined limits. Even in the undoubted sacraments, we do not believe that all bread and wine is holy because Christ instituted that some bread and wine should be the means to experience his anamnesis. I raise this as a preventative to any suggestion of idolatry, in which the symbol comes to supplant what it symbolizes. Idolatry, as someone once said, is treating things like God and God like a thing. I would also suggest that idolatry can consist in treating things about people as if they were divine, and treating the truly divine image of God in humanity as if it were merely a thing. In the present context, it is possible both to make too much of marriage, and too little.

Marriage as ambivalent symbol

Several biblical authors use marriage as a symbol for the relationship between God and Israel, and Christ and the Church. But, as with many of the issues surrounding sexuality, the picture is far more complex than mere equivalence. Not only is marriage only one of many symbols for this relationship, but the marriage symbolism itself is ambivalent, capable of standing for both good and bad relationships between God and God’s people.

There are many earthly phenomena — and Jesus assures us (Matthew 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:35) that marriage is an earthly phenomenon! — that the biblical authors use (in addition to marriage) to represent the relationship between God and Israel or Christ and the Church: monarch and people, tree and branches, father and children, shepherd and sheep, master and slaves, head and body, cornerstone and building. These symbols all depend on the cultural understanding of those to whom they speak. As noted in an earlier portion of this series of essays, the Letter to the Ephesians collects and intertwines a number of these symbols, in addition to marriage. As Paul himself recognizes, his blending of these symbols gets a bit confusing, as he spins out the various cultural themes of leadership and authority, the relationship of one to many, the nature of organic or bodily union, and love and care.

Thus the Scripture does not single out marriage as a unique symbol for the divine/human relationship — and one can carry the analogy or symbol too far — as some have suggested Paul does — as if women should literally treat their husbands as if they were God. Nor should one carry away from this symbolic usage the notion that because marriage is a symbol for the divine/human interaction it is therefore in itself divine — it remains, according to Jesus, a terrestrial phenomenon. (Luke 20:34-35) So to confuse the symbol with what it symbolizes is a category error. More than a few theologians have of late wandered off in a direction more suggestive of pagan notions of hieros gamos than is warranted by strictly orthodox theology. This includes suggestions that the relationship of a male and female somehow more perfectly embody the imago dei than either does individually. This is very shaky theological ground upon which to tread, as I noted in an earlier section of this series, for it undercuts the doctrine of the Incarnation. Much as I may disagree with him on other points (especially when under the undue influence of Aristotelian science), this is a matter on which I am concur with Aquinas. (ST I.Q93.6d)

It is also important to point out that in addition to the multiplicity of symbols for the relationship between God and people, Scripture uses all sorts of marriages as analogies for equally various divine/human interactions. While Paul uses the marital relationship to reflect the love and care of a husband for his wife (“as his own body”) in Ephesians, there are less positive images to be found elsewhere.

Perhaps most importantly, the prophetic literature uses polygamy as an image for the relationship of the one God with many worshipers, or many peoples. Thus God is portrayed as a Middle Eastern “Lord” (Ba’al — the Hebrew root for marriage is related to this word for “Lord,” explicitly contrasted at Hosea 2:18 with “my man.”). As such a Lord, God is portrayed as having more than one wife in Jeremiah 3 and Ezekiel 23. These relationships, as well as Hosea’s relationship with Gomer and the (possibly other) woman of Hosea 3, reflect the failure of God’s people in the failures of these various sexual relationships. So close is the affinity (in the Hebrew mind) of idolatry with harlotry that it is on occasion difficult to tell when the text intends literal harlotry rather than figurative. (The most frequent use of the root for harlot in the Old Testament is as symbolic of or in connection with idolatry.) We ought also to note that the putative author of the Song of Solomon was notorious for the range of his sexual interests — yet that did not prevent the Rabbis and medieval churchmen from spiritualizing the account into a rhapsody for the devoted soul’s love for God. The male in this analogy is free (as he was under Jewish law) to have multiple female partners, but each woman is to be singularly devoted to her husband. In the medieval Christian adaptations of this text, it was not found at all strange for men to cast themselves as “The Bride” of Christ.

The use of this symbol

The question is: Given that heterosexual relationships can be used as such multivalent symbols, positive or negative, single and plural, and even with a degree of sexual ambiguity, can faithful, monogamous, life-long same-sex relationships also serve in symbolic capacity — towards good? I will explore the negative imagery in later reflections on Leviticus and Romans, but will note here that the same linkage between idolatry and harlotry is made there between idolatry and some specific forms of same-sexuality. But what might a faithful, loving same-sex relationship (as opposed to the cultic activity described in Leviticus or the orgiastic in Romans) stand for as a symbol — not in the cultures of those times, but in our own?

It is clear that the prevailing biblical symbol for heterosexual relationships is intimately (!) connected with the assumption of male “headship” — thus the related analogies with master and slave, head and body, and so forth, assume a cultural notion of male authority, likened to the authority of Christ over the church. So powerful is this imagery that men become “feminine” in relation to God — as C.S. Lewis noted in his emendation to the conclusion of Goethe’s Faust.

But what of Christ — who voluntarily (and temporarily) assumes the position of a subordinate — not only in the great kenosis of the Incarnation, but in the symbolic act of the Maundy footwashing — while remaining Lord and God? When Jesus assumes the position of a servant to wash his disciples’ feet, he is also assuming the position of the woman who washed his feet with her tears. It is no accident that Jesus uses this powerful acted symbol to show his disciples the danger of assuming the position of authority over rather than assuming the position of service to. (It is perhaps ironic that in the Roman Catholic Church only men are to take part in the Maundy ritual as either foot-washers or as those whose feet are washed. How much more powerful a symbol it would be if a bishop were to wash the feet of women?)

Jesus is secure in his knowledge of himself, yet is free to set aside the role of authority to assume the role of a slave, a role played elsewhere in the passion narrative by a woman. As is obvious, in a same-sex relationship there are no stereotypical sex roles for the partners. They are, like Jesus, free to take upon themselves, in a dynamic interchange, various opportunities to love and to serve. This flexibility is no doubt one of the reasons same-sexuality is seen as a threat to entrenched systems of automatic deferral to culturally established hierarchies. Like Christianity itself, same-sexuality “turns the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) by challenging the “natural” roles assigned by culture. Same-sex couples are thus capable of being truly natural symbols for the mutuality of equals, free from the traditional roles assigned by the culture to men and women. Whether the culture sees this as a threat or a promise will depend upon what they value.

Further, as procreation is not an end for same-sex relationships, the relationship itself become the locus for its intrinsic goodness: that is, it is not dependent on the production of a result extrinsic to the relationship itself. Thus the partners do not serve as means to an end, but as ends in themselves — all being done for the good of the other, in mutual submission and love. Thus same-sex unions can be symbols of mutual dedication to the beloved, rather than as utilities geared towards some other goal or end. In this sense, same-sex unions function analogously with celibacy as signs of an eschatological end to “how things have always been” — upsetting the old dichotomies of “slave or free, male and female.”

Nothing in this is to suggest that all same-sex couples are successful in this kind of mutuality, or that a mixed-sex couple is not equally capable of it (when they are willing, like Christ, to set aside the presumptive roles granted by culture). My purpose here has been to show that, as with marriage, it is the quality of the relationship, not its mere existence, that serves as a symbol.

We find the locus of that symbol in the moral purpose of sexuality, which resides in mutual joy and respect, and the enhancement of society both between the couple and in the larger world. This is an enactment of the human moral mandate towards love and fidelity, mirroring the love and fidelity of God; and this is a moral value of which same-sex couples are capable. Procreation, on the other hand, does not have any moral value in and of itself, though it can be accompanied by the moral values I have just elucidated. But in itself it is a biological process, not unique to human beings. Procreation alone — divorced from its moral context as part of a loving human relationship — does not symbolize anything of moral value.

Thus the symbol we have before us — the union of a loving couple regardless of whether they are fertile or not — is consistent with the Gospel, with its mandate to love one’s neighbor as oneself. As this mandate can be applied to marriage (Eph 5:28) so too it can be applied to faithful, monogamous, life-long same-sex unions. Such unions can be symbolic forces for the upbuilding of society based upon this divine mandate. It is to that upbuilding that I will turn in the next section of this series of essays, as I examine the final traditional “good” of marriage.

Tobias Haller BSG

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The series continues with 7. Remedial Reading.

Further Update: This post and those that follow, expanded and supplemented with much additional material, form part of Reasonable and Holy, published by Seabury Books and available on order from Church Publishing Incorporated.

Screwtape to Wormwood, 2006

My dear Wormwood,

I want to pass along a brief note in recognition of the wonderful work you are doing with the Anglicans these days. Anglicans in general have been rather bland fare for quite some time, but your introduction of some new condiments has a spiced things up quite delightfully. I don’t think I’ve experienced such delectable invective since the late 19th century. Of course, it can’t hold a candle to the Reformation, but it does show signs of promise for a sumptuous feast.

But first of all, credit where credit is due: and much of it must be given to Glumsnaggle, our new IT manager, for the way in which he has managed to transform the Internet from a useful tool for communication into a positive cesspool of trivialization, mischaracterization, libel and slander — and my old favorite, assertion masked as argument. Oh, I never tire of that one. Fortunately, neither do they! Of course, he merely had to guide the process, but it has assured him a place in the Lowerarchy, and I hear he may even be on the Dishonors List.

Along the line of credit where due, I must say you appear to have taken a leaf out of the Enemy’s book, and are becoming positively creative. You have got your patients to the point where they are simultaneously claiming and rejecting authority (of any and all sorts, no less!) without seeing the contradiction. You’ve got them taking each other’s arguments at the very worst, and picking nits like there’s no tomorrow — true enough for some of them, as they will soon discover when they arrive in the Infernal Kitchen.

Just a bit of avuncular advice as you continue your work: by all means keep them focused on themselves, and on institutional questions — Who Gets to Be In Power. I mean, you can be creative as you like with the details, but the “tried and false” methods are always best to Fall back on. I think I do not need to remind you of the First Principle of The Tempters’ Manual, “Remember the Apple.”

Which brings me to my central concern: this unfortunate attention on the part of some of your patients to these so-called Millennium Development Goals. It would really be most unhelpful to our cause to have them actually do the things the Enemy wants them to do, to set aside self-obsession and do something about disease, poverty, ignorance, and so on. Anything you can do to persuade them that these MDGs are just “secular” will be to your advantage. I had a lovely curried Goat last night — one of the Old Souls that I’d kept in reserve; and you know, he still didn’t get it! As I savored him bite by bite, he kept whimpering, “But when did we see you hungry or thirsty or in prison...” Delicious.

So, Nephew, in closing, I advise you to apply yourself to this two-pronged approach: play up the institution and downplay what it is actually meant to accomplish, as it could turn out to be a disaster for us if this movement catches on.

Your Uncle,
Screwtape

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— Tobias Haller BSG, with thanks to C.S. Lewis

Living Stones

Some years ago I preached at Grace and Saint Peter's, Baltimore, on the feast of their Dedication. I just discovered that the sermon was published in the Summer 2005 issue of The Anglican Catholic (XVII). It begins:

It is a great pleasure to be invited once again to stand in the splendid pulpit of this beautiful church; especially on this day when we give thanks for its dedication as a place set apart for the worship of Almighty God. In giving thanks, we are called to think not only of the spiritual gifts that abound in this place, but about the hard facts of its physicality: the reality of its very stones. And in doing so, we face a mystery revealed both in the creation of the universe, and in the new creation which began with the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

This mystery finds its eloquent metaphor in one of the most contradictory images in all of Scripture: the living stones which Saint Peter invites us to become.

Now, in folklore and fiction, from the petrified souls who glimpsed Medusa's writhing hairdo, to poor Han Solo carbonized in Star Wars, being turned into stone is a curse, a symbol of death, coldness and finality.

So it may seem odd that Saint Peter should suggest that we be turned into stones. And so he stresses that the stones we are to become are living stones. That's another image altogether, equally familiar from legends and tales. My favorite instance is C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As you may recall, the land of Narnia has been cursed by a wicked witch, so that it is always winter but never Christmas, and she has turned all who oppose her into stone — frozen statues, who only come back to life when the Great Lion Aslan comes to revive them with his breath.

Enjoy the rest...

—Tobias S Haller BSG