On Original Mortality

The following is my more considered reflection on some issues raised by my friend Bosco at his Liturgy blog.

One of the things that divides Eastern from Western Christian theology concerns how they regard the concept of Original Sin. The Western concept, largely developed by Saint Augustine of Hippo, is that the Fall led to a kind of contamination of human nature and humanity, robbing humans of the immortality they possessed by nature (as made in the image of God) and so rendering them subject to death, and stained with an inheritance of guilt that is passed along to each person born, a stain of guilt that has to be washed away in Baptism.

The Eastern church never adopted this view. It accepts that the Fall brought sin into the world, and that the effect of the sin is death; but it regards this as a consequence of the Fall without any inherited actual guilt. So the East doesn't think of it as transmission of something (like some kind of fluid passed along), but as an event with the logical after-effect of becoming subject to death

Both East and West (the West more explicitly) appear to accept that the original humans were immortal, and lost that quality with the Fall. It is doubtful whether this stands up to a close reading of the Scriptural text, nor is it necessary in order to preserve a doctrine of Original Sin, Western or Eastern, and the equally Pauline testimony that through that sin death entered the world, and that, in Adam, all die.

Looking at the mythological portrayal in the text of the creation accounts, Adam and Eve are denied access to the Tree of Life, and so lose immortality. Immortality, then, is not portrayed as something they had by nature, but because they had access to the Tree of Life. Every other human since, who never had access to the Tree, shares in the consequence of Adam's Fall. Nothing is portrayed as being "transmitted" because this is not about passing something along but about losing something.

In spite of the Scripture's mythological portrayal, the Western church (at a council in Carthage in 418 — with Augustine present, pressing his theology of original sin, a distinctly Western view later reaffirmed and codified by the Council of Trent) anathematized the notion I presented above, instead alleging an original inherent or natural human immortality that was lost due to the Fall, as the removal of, or alteration in, some aspect of human nature. I prefer the Scriptural view that the only entity immortal by nature is God, and that human immortality was (and will be again) a gift from God, a gift that could be lost, as indeed it was (in Adam) but which can also be restored (in Christ). This also makes good typological sense of immortality restored in Christ through the “tree of the cross.”

One way of looking at this involves thinking about the nature of God as the uniquely self-subsistent entity, the only One totally independent of all other entities. Immortality is an aspect of this independence, as the East sings in the Kontakion of the Departed, "only thou art immortal, the creator and maker of mankind." The Fall consisted in large part of Adam and Eve seeking that same independence — in their case, independence from God — in order, as the text says, to "become like God." The true human theosis cannot be achieved in such a bold, aggressive move, but rather involves — in the course of salvation history — the eventual jointure of our human nature with the divine. This union is a work already completed in Christ, who through the kenotic abandonment of what was his by right, became — in union with humanity and human nature — dependent and subject to death, "even death on the cross." And as Christ shares in our humanity in this way, we also come to participate in the divine life through our union with Christ.

The notion of original mortality is also coherent with the Genesis 1 commandment to the primeval couple, "be fruitful and multiply" — identical to the commandment given the non-human creatures, about whom no suggestion of immortality was ever made, nor does the Genesis 2-4 account offer any explanation for a "Fall" for the non-human world. The reason this commandment reflects mortality rests on the fact that progeny would not be needed if the couple were immortal; indeed, fertility and immortality combined would lead to eventual massive overpopulation of any finite space. Moreover, this is also coherent with the teaching of Jesus in Luke 20:35-36, where he explains that those who attain the resurrection to eternal life do not marry, exactly because they are immortal — no one will die, so no one will need to be replaced by a descendent.

All of this seems to mesh with a notion that the primal Fall lost something that the original humans had by grace, not by innate nature; and that the effect of that loss falls on their heirs and assigns not as a substantial inheritance — the presence of an inherited sinfulness distilled into their nature — but as the absence of something. If you think of it as a possession an ancestor had and then lost — say, a deed to a silver mine — it is easier to understand that the current poverty of their heirs is due not to something passed along, but precisely to something not passed along, as a consequence of that original loss. It is, effectively, about disinheritance.

None of this is to fall into the Pelagian view that Augustine was combatting at Carthage, and in which I think he went too far in his effort to find a mechanism for the workings of original sin as a substantial inheritance. I think ordinary life, and again the Scriptural text, reveal that human beings tend to sin by nature. The myth tells us that the primal couple commit the original sin while they are in Paradise. The sin is in their heart before it is in their hands. If they were naturally incapable of sin, they could not have done so; so there must have been in them a natural drive to the self (a theme beloved of Augustine, and surprising that he missed in his effort to pin all this down) is there from the beginning. It was the assertion of the human self, in its drive to become self-sufficient and independent of all else ("like God"), that it lost the likeness it already had, and the fellowship with God that allowed it access to immortal life in God's presence.

— Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Marriage Inequality

The dominant biblical understanding of marriage in the Hebrew Scriptures was based on inequality, in which a man ruled over a woman (or several women), but was himself free to indulge his sexual appetites with other women, so long as they were not married to another man. This inequality is reflected in the language used to describe marriage: throughout the Torah and beyond, the husband is "the lord" (ba'al) of the woman; for a woman to be "married" is to be "governed" (be'ulah) or to "have a lord/master" (be'ulat ba'al).

But it was not always so. This inequality can be regarded as a consequence of the curse delivered to Eve after she and her husband ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge: "He shall rule over you." But it was not so in the beginning, when equality reigned, an equality recognized by Adam in his exclamation of joy upon his first encounter with Eve — the one like himself; taken, as the figurative interpretation has it, from his side — as one to stand beside — rather than from his head or his foot, to rule or to be ruled.

Hosea (2:16) recognized this in his portrayal of the loving God speaking to his unfaithful but redeemed spouse Israel: "On that day, says the LORD, you will call me, 'My husband,' and no longer will you call me, 'My Baal.'" The word Hosea uses for "my husband" is "ishi" — the same title the primeval couple shared in Eden (ish and ishah — man and woman, husband and wife). This expresses their fundamental equality, as God intended.

Karl Barth held that a husband is only a husband in relation to his wife (an assertion complicated in German, as in Hebrew, because Mann and Weib have this ambiguous double meaning.)  The double meaning actually reveals more than Barth intended: for a single man is a man, a single woman is a woman; but a married man is still a man, and a married woman still a woman — though now married, joined in a union and relationship of equals.  The quality of "being married" has to do not with the sex of the person or the pair, but on the covenant of relationship that exists between them. In German one can say "Mann und Mann" or "Weib und Weib" with all the ambiguity intact. For a married man or woman is married because of the plighting of a troth and mutual pledge of exclusive fidelity — the exclusivity, as Jesus observed, harking back to the necessarily exclusive first married couple; but the fidelity, as he also taught, is the essential meaning of marriage. So it is not the relative sex-difference that constitutes the marriage, but the mutual swearing of faithful love. This is one of the reasons that opening the institution of marriage to same-sex couples is both a recovery of a Creation principle of equality, and an eschatological realization of the ideal relationship between God and the People of God, based on love, not domination. This is one of the things marriage equality can reveal to the church, for so long mistakenly serving the notion of male dominance.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Sabbatical Leave: How Jesus Dealt with the Law

Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one thing; Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy it?” And they were filled with madness; and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus. (Luke 6:9,11)

One of the major conflicts between Jesus and some of the religious leaders of his time concerned the nature of Sabbath observance. It is good, first of all, to acknowledge that this dispute is not, as sometimes portrayed, a conflict between Jesus and Jews. This is a dispute among Jews on a Jewish question, concerning a law which they all would have agreed was a Jewish law. That is, although the principle of the Sabbath went back to creation itself, the ordinance to do no work — to stop, for that is the root meaning of the verb from which Sabbath likely derives — was part of the Law given to Moses on Sinai.

Where Jesus differs from his interlocutors in this conflict is in his moving outside the formal definition of the Sabbath as a time to cease all activity. Jesus recasts it as a time in which to perform acts which he holds to be virtuous in themselves: not mere work but actions that are “good” in that the works represent, in themselves, a thing that is undeniably good: release from bondage — a central theme in the Jewish story. In short, Jesus does not see the Sabbath as an end in itself, or a restriction to be maintained apart from a larger context.

In various of the encounters Jesus has over the Sabbath, he offers differing explanations, and engages in classic rabbinic debate. For example, in Matthew 12 there are two successive arguments about the Sabbath. In the first, his disciples are eating grain they pluck as they walk along (technically not a violation of the Sabbath as it does not constitute harvesting; but Jesus does not engage that quibble). Jesus offers two responses to those who object to this action: he cites David’s violation of the temple-bread taboo, and the present day violation of the Sabbath by the temple priests who go about their work within the sacred precincts. Jesus responds that “here is something greater than the Temple,” making use of a standard rabbinical exegetical tool, qal wa-homer (light to heavy, “then how much more,” identical to the classical rhetorical device a fortiori). Jesus raises the bar with a biblical citation, that God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6), and asserts that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. (Mark’s version [2:27] of this controversy includes the important transitional teaching based on the sequence of events in Genesis 1, that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” as the reason, again all the more, that the Son of Man should be its Lord.) This "greater than the Temple" theme may be seen as a part of a general anti-Temple trend in the Jesus tradition (one shared with some contemporary sectarian movement such as the Yachad at Qumran), but it also begins to establish a context: that things are good and virtuous as they serve the furtherance of God’s will for human well-being, not simply in and of themselves. Even the Temple is good only in so far as it is not misused, but remains available as a "house of prayer" rather than a "den of robbers."

The point is emphasized in the following scene. Here (in Matthew) it is the opponents who pose the question about whether it is right to heal on the Sabbath. Jesus responds with another qal wa-homer comparison of the rescue of a sheep from a pit with the healing of a human being. The pericope of the woman in Luke 13 (16-17) is treated in a similar way: if you are kind to your domestic animals, releasing them to be led to water, how much more ought you to rejoice in the liberation of a woman from bondage to illness — noting once again the theme of delivery from captivity so central to the People of God.

In all of this it is possible to see how Jesus contexualizes and even relativizes the commandment to cease work on the Sabbath, by holding that acts — particularly acts of deliverance, restoration, and human flourishing — that are good are still good even when done on the Sabbath. That is, they do not become bad because they are done on the Sabbath, and it is not the Sabbath that makes them good, but the good acts which give honor to the Sabbath. Perhaps in giving honor to the Sabbath the works become even more virtuous. His opponents have come to see the Sabbath as an end in itself, not as a context for doing good, but only about "not doing" or ceasing from doing, regardless of how good the action.

In the same way, some see marriage as an end in itself, rather than as a context for the flourishing of loving human relationships, and a sanctified means (though not the only means) for liberation from the primal situation of isolation. Observe that according to the account in Genesis 2 (taking Jesus' lead in noting the sequence in Genesis 1) that people are not made for marriage, but marriage is made for them: that is, the human comes first, and marriage is instituted as a solution to the problem of human isolation, and that only after the first attempt to find a mate for Adam among the animals.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Plain Speaking About Genesis

The first few chapters of Genesis do not indicate God’s restrictive plan for the sexual conduct of humanity. They have nothing to say about marriage other than to offer an explanation as to why it is that at least some men and women are attracted to each other, and to describe their union as indissoluble. The former is explicit in the text itself, and we have the latter on the very highest authority.

The first few chapters of Genesis consist of contradictory and inconsistent creation accounts cast in the language and culture of their times. They do not describe either history or nature with any degree of accuracy whatsoever. Does this mean I deny their divine inspiration as the opening chapters of the written word of God? By no means! However, the chief divine inspiration — it is pure genius — is in providing two facially contradictory accounts of the same events side-by-side precisely in order to prevent us from taking them literally — even if we did not already know that they were not literally true on the basis of other evidence, historical and scientific. Even absent history and science no one should ever have made that error, for the witnesses do not just not agree, they contradict. (This is not the place to critique the peculiar credence that Scripture can contain no contradictions. Suffice it to say that belief derives from some source hungry for certainty and unable to deal with complex reality and ambiguity.)

To press these accounts into literal applications, as some have done to place limits upon later developments and better understandings, is as false and pointless as taking the visions of Ezekiel or the parables of Jesus as if they were historical accounts rather than exemplary and inspired teaching. That the primeval human was split to form the sexes is a fabulous construct meant to explain attraction between the sexes. It will not stand as “fact” though it has its own “truth.” But it did not happen that way, and the one who told the tale knew that very well, leaving unanswered the obvious problems such as where Cain’s wife came from. He simply wasn’t bothered, as the goal was primarily geared to answer a single question — why do men and women leave their homes to start their own families. Aristophanes did the same thing in Plato’s Symposium, though more broadly acknowledging the range of human emotional and sexual connection as his culture understood it; but there is no reason to think he intended it as natural history any more than the author of Genesis did his mythological tale.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Marriage as an Image

In cultures, social and theological, where women were seen to be essentially or circumstantially inferior to men, and in need of male possession or protection (by father and then husband), the imagery of Christ and his bride, the Church, made a good deal of sense. As cultures have changed to a more equalitarian view of the relationship of men and women, in marriage and in society at large, the resonance of this imagery, and perhaps its relevance, comes under question.

This is to some extent a cart and horse phenomenon. That is, marriage had long existed as an institution in which husband was "lord" over the wife — reputedly from the time of the Fall! — and so it was a natural image for God's fatherly and spousal protection of Israel, or Christ's headship over the church. In other words, the Hebrew and Christian authors were making use of a well-recognized social institution as an analogy for the relationship between God and the People of God. (And obviously drew on other analogies, such as the relation between king and people, master and slave, and parent and children.)

However, as it has been said in a similar context, it was not so in the beginning. Had the Fall not happened, bringing with it the dominion of male over female, the original equality of the man with the woman as the helper suitable to him — literally his clone, taken from his side to stand at his side, and neither above him nor below him — would have been maintained, and another image for the relation of God to the People of God (as God's image and likeness?) would have prevailed.

So it is with the slow emergence of notions of the equality of the sexes, it may well be time to find both (1) how the image of a more "equalist" marriage might still well mirror the relationship of God to the People of God, and (2) how this marks a return to the state of life in the Garden, where God was walked with as a friend whose image and likeness one rejoiced to share.

Seen in this light, marriage as it has evolved reveals deeper and perhaps more redemptive truths than those to which we have been accustomed, in particular in our relationship with one who has told us we are not to call him "lord" but "spouse" (Hosea 2:16), as we are no longer servants, but friends. (John 15:15).

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 02.07.13

Why is it that the people who want to insist that Adam and Eve present us with the sole, divinely ordained pattern for human marriage, do not similarly insist that all follow the sole, divinely ordained diet God specified for human nutrition (Genesis 1:29)?

TSH

WO is me...

I don't often repeat a post on this blog, but given the recent discussions on the Ordination of Women (in particular to the Episcopate) roiling the Church of England, I think it timely to repeat this post from 2007. The Eve of the Dormition seems an appropriate moment.

ONE WAY TO TELL if a proposition is correct or not is to see if the reasons advanced in its favor contradict other propositions already accepted.

It seems clear that one of the reasons the Roman Catholic Church gave up on trying to find reasons for its opposition to the ordination of women — now simply forbidding further discussion of the matter — must be the realization at some level that the reasons advanced against it were leading into erroneous waters.

It took them a while to reach the stonewall position. By 1976, in the official commentary on Inter Insigniores (1976), the leadership had come to realize the shakiness of Fortress Reason: “It is well known that in solemn teaching infallibility affects the doctrinal affirmation, not the arguments intended to explain it. Thus the doctrinal chapters of the Council of Trent contain certain processes of reasoning that today no longer seem to hold.” An interesting confession; yet still they were reluctant to stop trying to defend the position, and soldier on with arguments in support of the faltering cause: “But this risk has never stopped the magisterium from endeavoring at all times to clarify doctrine... Faith seeks understanding, and tries to distinguish the grounds for and the coherence of what is taught.”

Unfortunately, Inter Insigniores itself contains arguments, most of which apart from the unassailable “we’ve always done it that way” have now been dropped in favor of the total stonewall. Let me give an example from this document of the kind of disorder into which rational minds can descend in the interests of maintaining the status quo.

The priest is a sign, the supernatural effectiveness of which comes from the ordination received, but a sign that must be perceptible, and which the faithful must be able to recognize with ease. The whole sacramental economy is in fact based upon natural signs, on symbols imprinted upon the human psychology: “Sacramental signs,” says Saint Thomas, “represent what they signify by natural resemblance.” The same natural resemblance is required for persons as for things: when Christ’s role in the Eucharist is to be expressed sacramentally, there would not be this “natural resemblance” which must exist between Christ and his minister if the role of Christ were not taken by a man: in such a case it would be difficult to see in the minister the image of Christ. For Christ was and remains a man.

Leaving aside the fact that women are as “perceptible” as men, this leads to a kind of sacramental receptionism (in which the believer’s perceptions are what render the sacrament valid). This reduces the sacrament from an objective reality into a subjective experience. It also puts an undue focus upon one aspect of the priestly person: his (or her!) sex. Why, after all, should sex be any more determinative of perceiving Christ — if perception were the sine qua non for the validity of the sacrament — than any other quality. And isn’t a woman more “perceptible” as Christ than a loaf of bread is as his flesh? Personally, I don’t find the figure of a paunchy octogenarian cardinal to be as “natural” or immediate a reminder of Christ as a younger and more ascetical woman.

Which is, of course, my fault. For I should be able to see Christ in every member of Christ’s body, for Christ is in them. It is not Christ’s maleness that is of significance, in the Eucharist or in anything else, but his humanity, which obviously includes his maleness, but just as obviously is not limited to or by it.

Which brings us to the serious doctrine this position contradicts. For it is taught that what is not assumed (by Christ in the Incarnation) is not redeemed. And Christ assumed the whole of human nature. Otherwise how could women be saved? Christ assumed the totality of human nature when he became incarnate, and as the Chalcedonian Definition affirms, he received that totality of human nature solely from his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. And she was, obviously, a woman.

I first noted this contradiction with the Chalcedonian Definition, and the implications for the ordination of women, over twenty years ago. I am very pleased to say that some of the theologians in Eastern Orthodoxy — who hold the doctrine of the Incarnation very seriously and also highly honor the Theotokos — are beginning to see the implications as well. The summer 2002 issue of Anglican Theological Review included a number of essays from an Orthodox/Old Catholic conference that raised this question.

Facing the contradiction

Let’s look at the issue more closely, by asking what relationship sex has to human nature. The nature of any class must be something possessed by every member of that class. As Hooker says, “Now if men had not naturally this desire to be happy, how were it possible that all men should have it? All men have. Therefore this desire in man is natural. It is not in our power not to do the same...” (Laws, 1.11.4) The desire to happiness is thus a part of human nature. But what about sex? “Having a sex” is natural to all human beings. But the actual quality of being male only applies to men; being female only to women. So it is part of the manly nature to be male, the womanly nature to be female. But when human nature is considered as a whole, including both men and women, the specific sex is left to one side as a quality of the individual or of the class of men or women, and only the generic quality of “having a sex” applies to human beings. Maleness or femaleness applies only to individuals, and not to human nature as a whole. So, the “natural resemblance” argument already having been defeated both on objective grounds and on the grounds of a proper understanding of the nature of the sacrament, we are left with an assertion that there is something about maleness, as a human quality, that is required for ordination.

And this is where the conflict with Chalcedon arises: for the Council affirmed that whatever it is in human nature that is of saving importance (since that is the object of the Incarnation) came through a woman — the Blessed Mother of God — and she could not confer what she did not possess. Ergo, the male character is not essential, but accidental. Even if Christ’s maleness was necessary for the fulfilment of prophecy, there is no natural reason to think this carries over to the ministers of the church. To do so is to attach a greater significance to maleness than is warranted.

Some twenty years ago, I wrote the following brief comment in the style of Richard Hooker, addressing these questions. I think it still holds up, and so I offer it here, for the first time in the blogosphere:

They say that women may not receive the benefit of the sacrament of order. But how is this; seeing that they may receive the benefit of both of the sacraments ordained by Christ, and may be, as they will admit, the ministers of baptism, which is the prime sacrament of the church’s very being; and seeing that they may alike receive the benefits of the other sacramental rites of the church, in confirmation, penance, matrimony, and unction; wherefore then are they incapable of receiving benefit of this one only sacrament of orders? Is it that they are incapable of receiving this grace, as if they were a material unfit to receive the impress of a seal? What is the grace? and what that receives it? Is there somewhat in male humanity that exists not in the female? Is it not rather that male and female are qualities of the individual person, and not of collective human nature? For humanity as a whole is neither male nor female, but each individual is either one or the other. To say otherwise were an error, since we know that all that is of human nature in woman comes from man, as Eve was taken wholly out of Adam; and further, all that is in human nature resides in woman, for Christ’s humanity came to him wholly by way of his blessed mother, and she could not bestow that which she did not possess: and finally both man and woman come from God as made in God’s image. (1Cor 11.12) So if they say that either humanity or divinity is the form or image that a woman cannot possess, they are mistaken, for she has it both by nature of birth; and further by the grace of baptism whatever of the divine image is marred or obscured in man or woman is restored to its original likeness. Finally, we hold that the grace of the sacraments comes not from the ministers who perform the rites associated thereunto, but from God; and that the lawful performance of a sacramental rite assures us of its validity and of the grace imparted thereby.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Dueling Epistles

Much is being made of the publication of two letters from two primates of the Anglican Communion: the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Both of them are well worth reading and say important things from their different perspectives: the Archbishop properly speaking in the role and to the end for which he feels responsible: to preserve the unity of the Anglican Communion; the Presiding Bishop properly speaking for the historic and continuing independence of the Episcopal Church concerning its internal affairs, while remaining Anglican in the same way it has from the beginning. To vastly oversimplify, Rowan appears in the role of loving parent of unruly children instructed that they will have to stay in their rooms without TV until they can get along with the rest of the family. He is very even-handed in laying down what he clearly thinks is the law. Katherine’s response is a reminder and reassertion that this role-play is in itself an assumption of a power not granted in an entity not yet constructed.

So, in its own way, this epistolary exchange incarnates the larger debate on the nature of the Anglican Communion itself, and whether it should continue as a fellowship of autonomous churches or morph into a more tightly governed structure, such as that proposed by the draft Anglican Covenant.

Some commentators are engaging in a bit of revisionist history when they seek to portray in the foundation of the Episcopal Church a desire to serve as a branch or outpost of the Church of England, which indeed the colonial churches had been, answerable to the Bishop of London, prior to the War of Independence. There may well indeed have been a few individuals who thought that way at that time. However, the bulk of the evidence shows that the emerging Episcopal Church of the late 18th century wanted nothing from England but bishops — that is, they wanted bishops (to remain Episcopal) but knew the church would not be English — and indeed if they were unable to obtain the episcopate from England they were happy to go to other quarters. Indeed, it is ironic that the principled Tory Seabury ended up going to Scotland, while the Patriot White held out for England, pressing other Patriots such as Jay and Adams in that cause. But however bishops were obtained, the documentary evidence shows that it was bishops that were wanted and not any kind of continued governance from England — a cordial relationship, yes; but governance, no.

On the contrary, great pains were taken in the new land to militate against any such divided loyalty. As the preface to the 1785 Constitution of the Episcopal Church stated as its first “Whereas” — “in the course of Divine Providence, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America is become independent of all foreign authority, civil and ecclesiastical...” This language was echoed in the Preface to the first American Book of Common Prayer in 1789.

Nor were the English particularly interested in ecclesiastical entanglement with this new independent church in America, playing what is best described as an affectionately avuncular role. In witness of this, the Act of Parliament permitting Canterbury the ordination of American bishops contains this important proviso:

Provided also, and be it hereby declared, that no person or persons consecrated to the office of a bishop in the manner aforesaid, nor any person or persons deriving their consecration from or under any bishop so consecrated, nor any person or persons admitted to the order of deacon or priest by any bishop or bishops so consecrated, or by the successor or successors of any bishop or bishops so consecrated, shall be thereby enabled to exercise his or their respective office or offices within his Majesty's dominions.

Hardly a “continuation” of the Church of England, and rather a blow even to the notion of communion itself — usually understood as involving recognition and interchangeability of ministers — or to the ahistorical notion that a “bishop is a bishop for the whole church.” In fact, this proviso echos the language of the ancient canons that required bishops to confine themselves to their own sees and not meddle about extramurally.

But back to the dueling epistles: some, such as Diana Butler Bass, see this as a turning point — something’s got to give, and the Communion will never be the same. She may well be right, and I think that is unfortunate. I wish Rowan had exercised the wisdom of a truly loving parent, when from his perspective the children started acting up, to let them be, rather than to formalize their quarrels — and his Pentecost letter continues on that road of mildly vexed and punitive paternalism. It may have effect: It is so much easier to have consensus when those who disagree are removed from the conversation; but then, as with Caroline’s “ball without dancing” — it will not be near so much a conversation. Or a Communion.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

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Up a (Family) Tree

Ephraim Radner has published a typically wordy review of Reasonable and Holy in The Living Church. I have to say I am disappointed, not because the review is dismissive, but because I had hoped for more engagement with the issues and conclusions I present. Instead, Radner spends much of his time dealing with form rather than content. (It is a poor critic who blames another workman’s tools.) Plainly Radner does not like my conclusions, but he addresses only two or three of them in any detail. I will be making a longer response as time permits (I am in the midst of completing several major projects, and will be traveling on Anglican Communion business next week). However, I want here to examine just one of the assertions Radner makes. It is revelatory of the extent to which the heterosexualist mind-set, dazzled and misled by an eisegetical “larger scriptural vision” is prevented from engagement with alternative ideas, or, it seems, the actual text.

Radner states,

The central element of procreation in marriage, for instance, is bound up with the character of Israel’s calling in fallen (and the Fall has no place in Haller’s scheme) human history — genealogy — and ought not simply to be examined in terms of this or that individual person or couple (a rather modern obsession).

I will leave to one side the fact that I examine at some length the traditional imagery of both marriage and harlotry in the role of Israel in salvation history (pp. 53-56). Mindful as well of the apostolic injunction “not to occupy [myself] with ... endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is known by faith,” (1 Tim 1:4), I nonetheless feel it necessary to challenge Radner’s assertion here — or what I can make of it.

For while it is obviously true that procreation and genealogy are linked, the crucial observation from the New Testament, in the two places where genealogies figure, is that procreation — at least heterosexual procreation — is not at issue. Both Matthew (1:1-16) and Luke (3:23-38) reach their climax in an essential subversion of heterosexual procreation: Matthew sweeps aside all of his carefully constructed line of fatherhood to turn his attention to Mary, and then to describe the virginal conception. Luke, emerging from the revelation of Jesus Christ as Son of God at his baptism, presents a reverse genealogy that culminates in the affirmation that the first Adam was also Son of God. (As I note in Reasonable and Holy, the three most important persons in salvation history — Adam, Eve, and Jesus — are not the result of heterosexual sex; and, again contrary to Radner’s careless reading, I cite the traditional patristic and medieval reading of Mary’s role in the reversal of the Fall, as the “new Eve,” as a crucial factor in a sound understanding of the place of procreation in the work of God. See pp. 30-38) Taking all of this, as I do, in the context of John’s words about those who are born “from above” (John 3:3 )and not “of the will of man,” (John 1:13) I think I have expounded a sound biblical picture, consonant with the actual text — even if it must dissipate the Radnerian mirage, typified by his dismissive and anti-incarnational conclusion. Ultimately it is about individual persons — and this is no “modern obsession” but at the heart of the Christian faith.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

An Irish Interlude

It was a cool fall evening in the city that constantly grows in size — “because it’s always Dublin.” The light streaming from the pub windows created an island of warmth and welcome. Within, the usuals were in place. Connor the tale-teller stood leaning with his back to the bar, one arm resting on the rim, while the other held his pint aloft. A thin man in his mid-fifties, he had worn many hats in his industrious life — estate agent, salesman, amateur journalist — in all of which his ready wit and smooth tongue had served him well. As he began to speak, most eyes in the pub turned towards him.

“There was once an ancient people ruled by priests. And every year they would hold a great sacrifice out on the plain that spread before their chief city. The priests would select a calf, and slaughter it by slitting its throat, and then butcher it and roast it on a great fire. The people would then be served portions of it — a mout’ful or two at most for each of the lot of them.”

He paused to take a sip of his porter, licked his thin lips, and continued.

“But after many years, the priests grew lax in their duties, and as the population grew the people complained they were not being well served. They demanded a change, and the priests were only too happy to oblige — them havin’ grown weary of the task. And so they devised a way to accomplish the sacrifice with minimal burden to themselves.”

He paused again, this time to take a last long draught from the pint. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his skinny throat at each swallow. He then set the emptied pint on the bar, and with a demure gesture declined another. The denizens of the pub leaned expectantly closer.
“Now listen what I’m tellin’ you,” he continued. “The priests would sprinkle the calf with spirits, and set it alight with a torch, and shoo it off into the crowd of worshippers. And they’d each have a knife or a blade of some sort, and as the poor beast ran wild, they would poke and hack at it until it was dead, and then they’d cut off a bit and have their mout’ful of the sacrifice.”

“The sons of bitches,” a loud voice boomed from the far end of the pub. The crowd turned their attention from Connor to the large, stooped man seated at a table by himself. Before him were a handful of dead soldiers: five empty whiskey glasses. “The sons of bitches,” he intoned again. Suddenly aware that he had drawn the attention of the crowded pub, he raised his reddened eyes to gaze on them with a mixture of accusation and appeal.

“The priests and brothers — what they did to those children in their care. Hophni and Phinehas, I tell you, Hophni and Phinehas. And the bishops are as bad if not worse. An Eli every one of ’em, turnin’ a blind eye, and coverin’ up when they oughta’d rooted out the evil from their midst. There’ll be hell to pay, I tell you.”

The crowd shifted uneasily in the silence. Connor began slowly to make his way toward the door.

“It used to be said that Ireland was the old sow that ate her farrow,” the burly man continued. He clenched the edge of the table with his outstretched arms. “But it was never Ireland. It was the church; it was always the church. Damn them to hell. Damn them all to hell.”

Connor, by this time, was at the door and soon out on the quiet street. A light rain, more a mist than rain, was falling. The street-lamp opposite, with its rain-born halo, seemed to him to be held out in benediction. “Damn them all to hell,” he said, as he turned to walk into the darkness.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
November 27, 2009

with thanks to the spirit of James Joyce, who appears to have paid a call in the wee hours of this morning

Thought for 11.12.09

One of the tragic discontinuities in the Western Christian Tradition, since Augustine anyway, is the notion that the universe at hand (that is, as we know it) is simply not as it ought to be. This offers a neat way to avoid any data that might actually be at our disposal in favor of unrealized (and unrealizable) idealistic hopes and dreams. That this worldview is not one Jesus would have comprehended ('the kingdom is among you') is bypassed in the interests of privileging some of what is "natural" over and against other things equally "natural" (but deemed "fallen"). And the choice is sometimes quite arbitrary, depending on whose cow is sacred, and whose ox is gored.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Truest Life

A sermon from Saint James Church Fordham

Proper 22b 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
For the man there was not found a helper as his partner.+

The second chapter of the Book of Genesis presents us with a marvelous example of God’s generosity and care, and the extent to which God’s children have the responsibility to make decisions, and how God abides by those decisions once they are made.

You no doubt remember the events that lead up to the events described in our reading from Genesis today. God created Adam from the clay of the riverbank, breathing into him the divine life and spirit. And God planted the beautiful garden of Eden, and placed Adam in it, to tend it and care for it as God’s gardener. And God looked down upon this peaceful creation and instead of smiling at its goodness, frowned slightly and shook his head a little. And for the first time in the whole narrative up to that point God said that something was not good.

And what was that? Was it something God had made? No; it was something yet unfinished, something yet to be made. “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” And taking more clay, the same stuff he’d made Adam from, God set to work.

Now, this next part of the story is something many people forget, so I’m glad it was included in this morning’s reading. For what was it that God made out of that additional clay? Not another human being, but rather all of the animals of the field and the birds of the air. And God brought all of these creatures to Adam, for Adam to name, approve and accept. But Adam did not find among them a helper meet or suitable to be his partner.

Only then did God put Adam to sleep and take, not more clay this time, but some of Adam’s very own body, to make for him a helper suitable to be his partner, one like himself. And Adam recognized this kinship immediately, and rejoiced that at last here was one like him, another human being, one who could truly be called his mirror image, bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh.

The wonderful thing about this narrative is that God gave Adam such respect, and abided by Adam’s judgment as to who in all creation was to be his helper and partner, one truly like himself. God did not force Adam to be content to live alone as a solitary hermit in a garden. God did not force Adam to be happy with just the animals to keep him company. God did not take offense when Adam shook his head at all of these other creatures, and found none to be a suitable partner for him. God did not force Adam to accept them, and didn’t get offended and say, “Who do you think you are to turn down what God has provided.”

Rather God allowed Adam the freedom to choose the one who was like himself, his own flesh and blood, as a partner and a helper. God used no force in this: but allowed freedom, revealing, as our Gospel hymn said, that “force is not of God.”

+ + +

Well, you know the rest of the story. Adam and Eve lived in the garden only for a short time. One of those animals Adam had rejected as an unsuitable helper and partner perhaps didn’t take too kindly to the rejection. It was the creature God made with some of the leftover clay, the kind of animal any child knows is the easiest thing to make with a lump of clay — just as the Gary Larson cartoon shows God at his work table rolling out the snake and saying, “Gee, these things are a cinch!” Cinch it might be, but it opened up a whole can of worms! The serpent wriggled in and did his dirty work, sowing the seeds of discontent and pride, taunting with the fear of death, tempting with the promise of divinity, leading Adam and Eve to disobedience. The serpent dangled temptation before them, and they bit.

And so the caretakers got evicted from the garden. And for thousands of years human beings continued to stumble about in their ignorance and pride. Humanity lived under the fear of death, yet unable to escape it, no matter what they did, alternately sinned against and sinning, unable to find righteousness even though God tried time and time again to show them how, by giving them the Law and inspiring the preaching of the Prophets.

God would not, you see, simply force people to be good, any more than God forced Adam to accept Eve. God wanted people to be good from the inside, good from the heart, not just coated over with a whitewash of proper behavior, but deeply loving, deeply just, deeply free — and deeply responsible for the choices they made in that love, justice and freedom.

Just as God had a few false starts in creation, so too there were false starts in this re-creation. God first gave the people a law written in stone, and the people disobeyed it and rejected it. God sent the people prophets, but they ignored them or mistreated them. God gave the people kings and most of the kings turned out to be worse than the people!

But finally, in the fullness of time, God decided to do something similar to what he had done way back in Eden. God would not this time send the Law. God would not send a prophet. God would not send a king, at least not the kind of king people were used to. God would not even send an angel.

God would instead give to humankind one who was human, a human being like Adam himself, but one who was also divine, one who was God incarnate. God would choose incarnation — being made flesh — our flesh.

So as of old when God took the raw material from a human being, from Adam, this time God took from the flesh of a young woman named Mary all that was needed to make the one who was for a little while to be made a lower than the angels, one not ashamed to call men and women his sisters and brothers, for he shared the same human flesh as they — as we. “He sent him down as sending God; in flesh to us he came; as one with us he dwelt with us, and bore a human name.”

+ + +

The human name he bore is Jesus, which means Savior. The divine name he bore is Emmanuel, which means God is with us. He was and is our Saving God who is with us, who shared with us in mortality and pain, shared the weakness of human flesh, so that he might redeem and save that human flesh. He suffered death so that he might destroy death for ever, and destroy the one who, as the Letter to Hebrews says, had the power of death, the same devil who ages before had snaked his way in, to ensnare and enslave humanity by their fear of death.

Jesus, our Savior and our God, is also our brother, for he taught us to call his Father our Father. We who share in the flesh of Adam also share — through Jesus — in the Spirit of God. The old serpent can do nothing to us any longer if we do not let him. He’s done his best to do his worst, and he failed utterly when Jesus broke the power of death and was raised to life again. And we who are united with Jesus in his death, are also given the power to rise with him in his life.

We can still refuse God’s offer. God respects our freedom too much to force us to follow the path he so desires for us. And there are those who would rather listen to a serpent’s lies than to God’s own truth. There are still some so possessed by their fear of death that they have forgotten how to live. We look at a world in which we see that all things are not under human control — disease, crime, famine, and injustice still seem to rule. Some seek long life or wealth, or pleasure or fame, but rarely find lasting happiness. But we also see Jesus, the human one who suffered, the human one who died, who gave up everything and yet who through the power of God triumphed over everything, and now is exalted over all things.

We too can confront all the shallow promises of the world, promises offered in the devil’s accent, to find that none of these things will answer our deepest need. In none of these things can we find our true and final happiness whatever the snake may say to the contrary. It is only in Jesus — God from God, light from light, true God from true God, that we recognize our own truest human self — the perfect image of humanity made after God’s own image and likeness. God offers us the option, and will not force us to choose life rather than death. God invites us to find our truest life in him, and has shown us the way, but he will not force us on that path.

In this is our hope, our freedom, and our challenge. As we make our choices, let us always remember the promise of our Gospel hymn, and choose rightly:“Not to oppress, but summon all their truest life to find, in love God sent his Son to save, not to condemn mankind.”+

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Thought for 09.28.09

Fruits and Consequences

There was an interesting short news story on NPR this morning concerning the drying-up of the Mesopotamian paradise long thought to be the historic background to the Garden of Eden. And it got me thinking whether the tale in Genesis 3-4 doesn't preserve an authentic memory — not of a change in location, but of climate.

Moreover, it strikes me that even if human interaction with the Garden didn't lead to its drying-up — though perhaps there is a hint in Cain's metier as a "tiller of the ground" and the movement from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist linked with the end of Eden — it strikes me that in our contemporary situation it is precisely our recent treatment of our "island home" that is rendering our being kicked off the island all the more likely.

We have plucked many fruits from the soil of this world, and may within the next century reap the harvest due to those who slash and burn. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, fruit for fruit, and "fire next time" in a slow bake, and hunger sore. Thus famine follows intemperate feast.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Musings after Repose

Well, I’m back from Convocation, none the worse for the restful time, but facing all of the usual residua to which that meeting gives rise: photos, videos, minutes, reports, updates, usw.

Meanwhile, over at the Old HoBD Corral, I’ve been having a discussion on the Prevailing Issue, and why it (discussion) is so difficult. I’ve observed that many among the “Reasserter” side of things seem content to reassert what they believe to be the True Answer to the problem; and rarely seem willing to discuss the issue in anything approaching a rational argument, moving from agreed upon premises to conclusions in logical steps. As the name implies, they usually articulate a reassertion of the premise/conclusion in circular form. And that is a logical fallacy. (It may be true, but it is illogical).

If this leaves us at an impasse, it is because the reasserters are unwilling to “do the theology,” as they often accuse the progressive / reappraiser side of doing. In fact, what I’m suggesting is we all need to do some reappraising together. When folks simply forbid reappraisal, we end up with a situation such as that in the Roman Catholic Church, which in regard to the ordination of women has confessed that the theological rationale of previous years was insufficient, and recognized that the more recent theological arguments were tending towards dodgy ground; and so finally ruled, “End of discussion.”)

In our situation, I think it is more helpful to engage the issue, as indeed I have gone to pains to do in Reasonable and Holy: to look at the various tele* or goods of marriage, as variously defined in the tradition, to see if a same-sex couple is capable of achieving those ends or enjoying those goods. It is, it appears to me after my study, possible to answer that question in the affirmative.

It is also helpful to look at the larger question, “What is the telos of the human being?” — about which there is considerable consensus in the Christian tradition, from both sides of the Catholic/Protestant divide: to know, love, serve and glorify God and to enjoy him for ever. And we have been taught that we achieve or thwart that end in connection to how we treat other human beings, likewise made in the image of God. This is why the theology of the imago Dei, and the recent distortions in that theology (in an unwise attempt to frame a theological defense of traditional marriage) are so important.

Now, this is not to place all of the blame on one side. Much of the argument on both sides has consisted in people talking past each other, mouthing their conclusions and waving their catch-phrases as if they were self-evident truths. This is why I try to engage people in going back to the first principles upon which we actually agree and then working forward in stepwise fashion, to see where we might end up. This necessitates a willingness to adopt up front the Anglican doctrine of humility: that we have no doubt erred, and may well err again.

For some on both sides, as well, the topic is ended, the book closed, there is no further reason for discussion. In the face of that reality, there can be any amount of dust shaken from plenty of heels, a parting of the ways — or a willingness to agree to disagree. Many in the Anglican Communion seem willing to adopt that kind of “watchful waiting” approach; it seems to be the hope of the Archbishop of Canterbury (more on this later) and the sense of “moratoria” (instead of “prohibitions”). Still, even in holding out this possibility for change Canterbury and the communion moderates are offending both those who want to see the church adopt an amended view on The Subject, and those who see such an adoption, or even its entertainment, as departure from the faith once given.

One of my interlocutors at HoBD suggested I was unwilling to adopt “first principles” myself, but I suggested that what he was offering as premises looked like conclusions to me. I rejoined that to find common ground we must get behind those conclusions to find something more basic. He offered one such principle, upon which I can agree as a basis for discussion, a classical concept well in keeping with the style of first principles: “The scriptures are ‘God’s word written’ and therefore normative for matters of salvation and Christian life.”

Although this statement itself requires a good bit of unpacking (and I look to Richard Hooker for the classical version of that task) it is something I can and do fully accept and affirm. In similar language it forms part of the Lambeth unpacking of Chicago’s Quadrilateral.

Where he and I part company is not on this fundamental premise, but on the conclusions we draw from it. So examining the arguments by which we reach these conclusions, the logical steps and inferences (and the related and sometimes unstated premises upon which they rely), would be a helpful form of engagement. Of primary importance is getting those other unstated premises out on the table. Sometimes these unstated premises are seen to be self-evident, but my experience is that they form another part of the obstacle to clear thinking.

One of the things we clearly disagree about is not whether the Scripture is a “normative” (I prefer the old language of “sufficient”) guide to salvation and moral living, but whether Scripture actually addresses The Issue upon which we disagree: is same-sex marriage possible, and if so, is it moral?

These are not easy questions, and any argument from Scripture or Reason or Tradition is going to be complex, as there is no explicit prohibition (or approbation) of same-sex marriage in Scripture; Reason alone is unlikely to provide a clear answer acceptable to those who think Scripture is clear; and Tradition, while generally tending one way, is also mixed. This is why a glib conclusion, either way, while tempting, will not settle the argument.

I am content to continue the discussion. As a starter, I want to comment briefly on one of the unspoken corollary premises of the reasserter position: that Genesis offers us a “one size fits all” divine pattern for all human sexual relations.

I address this assertion at some length in R&H, as well as the discontinuities of this premise with significant aspects of the tradition, but I want to raise an additional question here, concerning taking Genesis as a template at all, that is, questioning the very premise. Why is Genesis seen as a template for all sexual relations but not for any or all other human activities? Why, for example, do we allow other forms of industry than agriculture? (Given that was Cain’s metier and industry was the invention of the offspring of Lamech’s polygamous unions.) Why do we allow women to use anaesthesia in childbirth? (Roundly opposed on biblical grounds in the Victorian era, until Victoria herself made use of it.) Why aren’t we all vegetarians? (Yes, I know God changed the rules in Genesis 9, but if we were so keen on living in accord with God’s original intent, vegetarianism is the most biblical answer.) More importantly, Why, if the subjection of women to their husbands is a result of the fall, has it taken the church so long to recognize women as restored to their antelapsarian state as equal collaborators?

These seem to be to be questions worthy of reflection in opposition to the view that the patterns laid out in Genesis are necessarily the only options available to the children of Adam and Eve, the children of God and siblings of Christ.

However, if there is no willingness to engage these questions, if we are simply at a standoff — none of us able to convince the other of the truth of our position, or even to discuss the matter with some degree of mutual care and willingness to perhaps change our minds — then our challenge is to see if we are able to live together in harmonious disagreement, and wait for time itself slowly to winnow truth. I am certainly willing to do so, as I think there are far more important matters facing us, about which we do have significant agreement, and our efforts and resources would be well spent in their pursuit. Such as the mission of the church to restore people to unity with each other and God in Christ.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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* A helpful correction from Bill Carroll

Institutionalized

Once again I'd like to report on some continuing discussion over on the House of Bishops / Deputies list. My correspondent surmised that the burden of proof on the "presenting issue" lies with folks like me, who are seeking a change. I think there's a certain reality to that, but while I agree that those like me who argue for change have a task to accomplish, I see my primary role as offering a defense, and that the real burden of proof is on the prosecution: to prove that condemnation is warranted. We further went back and forth a bit on the issue of seeing things through other people's eyes, or at least with the other person's worldview. While I'm not sure that is ever completely possible (as we may be seeing with what we wrongly assume to be the other person's lenses) I think it is incumbent upon us all to try as best we can to remove our spectacles, even if we cannot exactly wear each other's, as we look at the scripture and tradition with reasonable minds. It struck me yesterday that the scripture is to some extent like an old piece of furniture that has received many coats of finish over the years, and we tend to see it primarily in the light of the most recent coating. There are, however, those telltale dings and scratches that reveal there is more to it than first appears, and in some cases even reveal the original wood underneath it all. The case in point took form in a question about whether I could affirm the language of the Preface to the marriage liturgy, that marriage was "established by God in creation." When talking about the creation account in Genesis 2, we of course tend to hear it as being about marriage, in part due to Jesus bringing it up in the context of the challenge concerning divorce, and for being reminded of this whenever we officiate at a wedding. But "marriage" in the days in which Genesis was composed was not the same as marriage even by the time of Jesus (due in large part to the introduction of Greek and Roman concepts and civil regulations), nor are the norms of marriage from Genesis or the first century the same as those by which marriage came to be defined in the patristic, medieval and reformation church(es). To take two details from those later traditions: the scholastics taught that the sacrament of marriage could only take place between baptized persons, and that it was consummated through sexual intercourse. Looking back to Genesis in this light, this would mean that Adam and Eve were not "married" under the first rubric, nor under the second until after the Fall. Perhaps more strikingly, moving to the time of Jesus, it means that Mary and Joseph weren't married under either! This just goes to show how difficult it can be simply to say that the bond and covenant of marriage was "established by God in creation." Almost every word requires some bending to fit: what do you mean by "marriage" - "established" - and for that matter, "creation"? As a matter of fact, I am more comfortable with the older language which said that marriage was "instituted of God in the time of man's innocency." (Generic "man" of course!) But even this phrase is not entirely well-set, nor at all constant, in our tradition. Cranmer creates his rite somewhat in the face of the Lutheran view (of marriage as "a matter of the town hall") in reworking material from German and Sarum texts. But the declaration as it stands in the preface is at odds with the language of the Articles, which defines marriage as "an estate allowed" rather than "instituted" or "established." (Cranmer's dilemma was that he wanted marriage to be "holy" but not a sacrament, except as "so called.") From an American perspective, it is important to note that Cranmer's language about the "institution" of marriage was itself entirely absent from the American BCP until it crept back in in 1892 -- so it is not a constant element of our own Prayer Book tradition, though it appears in the present prayerbook in what I regard as a less probable form. (I mean, is marriage a "creature" or something human creatures do? I can certainly see sex as intimately connected with creation, but marriage, as an institution, surely must have arisen at some point when human beings became capable of making such commitments, no?) In any case, to determine what this somewhat lofty phrase means (or what I take it to mean, which may not be what others take it to mean), I would tend to back up a bit and say that I can affirm that Genesis 2 appears to be — not a literal history, which I think few would accept it as, and I doubt the author(s) intended it to be — but a tale of beginnings, explaining why things are the way they are. Why is it than men leave their parents and are joined to their wives? This is, after all, the "moral" that appears explicitly at the end of the chapter. And as we proceed into chapter 3, we find answers to similar questions: Why does childbirth hurt? Why do people do bad things? Why do we die? Why don't snakes have legs? So I would cast my answer to the question of whether I can affirm the phrase in the preface to the marriage liturgy as, "Yes, with certain understandings of what is being said." The question we all face today — a question for which the author of Genesis 2-3 provides no answer, and to whom it might likely never have occurred — is, Why is it that some men and some women leave their parents' home not to join with one of the other sex, but rather to cleave to one of the same sex? Aristophanes, living in a Greek culture in which at least one form of homosexuality was approved, and others common if not approved, provided a jocular explanation in his creation story at the drinking party Plato recorded. But within the Jewish tradition, which took little note of homosexuality (and tended to deny it existed within its own confines) and an early church that saw homosexuality primarily in terms of pederasty, our inherited tradition tended to come up with other answers both literal and figurative: it is plain perversity (they know what is right but deliberately choose to act otherwise) or it is a malady or an illness. Paul appears to have thought it was a delirium induced by idolatry. The Alexandrians (Jewish and Christian) appear to have linked it with the use of cosmetics and the absurdity of grown men shaving their faces. However, in more recent times, people have been bold to offer yet other explanations, and to take some comfort in the larger lessons of love and self-giving apparent in the teaching of Jesus (and Paul in alternative moments); and also to witness to the lives of people who do not appear to be perverse, disordered, ill, idolatrous, or overly given to cosmetics. I think further that it fair to say that on this topic there is a range of response in the churches: from condemnation, through dissuasion, toleration, affirmation and celebration. I think The Episcopal Church for the most part is balanced now somewhere between toleration and affirmation. My hope is that the work I have done, both in writing and engaging with those with whom I disagree but whom I respect and share a commitment to the Gospel, may help us through the tensions of the coming days, perhaps to emerge in a better place. Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Secretary of the Usury

One of my first jobs ("between engagements" as a budding New York actor, back in the early 70s) was working as a "pit clerk" in the NY Mercantile Exchange. These were the primitive days of slips of paper and chalkboards, with one lonely video monitor in the corner. As pit clerk, I would stand in the hole in the center of the table, and when a sale in a futures item (Argentinian Beef and April Potatoes were big, I recall) the broker would scrawl it on a slip of paper, and I would grab it and time-punch it, and hand it to another clerk outside the table to post on the blackboards. The point, as I soon learned, was that no one really wanted to end up with the Argentinian Beef or the April Potatoes. They were dealing in futures, not the actual cattle or spuds; they wanted to make a profit on the potential commodities, and had no interest in getting stuck as butchers or greengrocers, to say nothing of making a stew of things. Of course, someone always did end up holding the actual product. But this was a market driven entirely by expectations, not realities. This is where I formed most of what I believe about economic theory. I say all of this just to lay my cards on the table, as having no other expertise in the matter.

O.K. So we're in a big economic meltdown. I, for one, am not surprised. And although I remain optimistic for the long haul, I am skeptical that any of the proposed Bail Out Plans or other efforts at manipulation will be of any help in settling the churning waters of the world economy. I say this for several reasons.

First of all there is the general idea that lending money at interest is bad. It used to be called usury, and was considered a very serious crime, and what's more, sin. Eventually, through the work of folks such as Adam Smith, it came to be seen that lending money to people to produce goods and services actually contributed to the "wealth of nations." So far, so good. The problems really started to arise, in the present instance, with mortgages: the idea that people should borrow money to buy a house. Unlike a factory or farm that actually produces goods or services -- and so contributes to the actual net real value of things -- a house is a house, and it will only increase in value due to extraneous factors, such as the neighborhood "improving" or the resident actually adding a dormer or a deck. In fact, left to itself, the average house actually begins to lose its value due to accumulating damage. The purported value increase is due to inflation, not a real increase in value. Even Baileys' Savings and Loan bought into this "increasing value" myth, and I suppose as long as it was small scale and operating as a cooperative venture for mutual small-scale benefit in a limited population, it could work.

But human nature being what it is -- which is to say, fallen -- greed steps in, and some are not happy enough to say "my money is in Joe's house" but want to make money out of money. You may remember Mr. Potter. They are not in it for the cooperation, but the profit. But there can be no real profit when there is no real increase in value. So this is where the Ponzi Scheme that is our modern economic world begins. We move from a goods market to a credit market: it isn't even about what money represents anymore (goods and services), it isn't even really about money simplex, but about the virtual money called "credit." And so we develop more and more virtual — and less and less real — vehicles for investment: futures, options, indexes; and then futures on indexes and options, and all sorts of other self-referential mechanisms further and further removed from any real value based on either labor or product. The juggler keeps adding to the number of things in the air all at once.

As the chaos scientists assure us, self-referential systems are prone to chaotic fluctuation, and small inputs can produce paradoxically large outcomes -- and vice versa. Such systems become literally uncontrollable: so all of the efforts to pump money into the most chaotic part of the system (mortgages and credit) may have little or no effect on our present or future situation — or too much, or contradictory.

I am no economist, but even I can see when things have gotten far out of hand. We need a major attitude adjustment. As with the whole insurance business (another area where the machinery is now geared to profit and the maintenance of a top-heavy institutional structure rather than the mutual sharing of burdens) we need a radical overhaul, to get away from the notion of making money by lending money, unless that money is used actually to produce some goods or services. We need to shut down trading in ephemera, and get back to reality.

I realize this radical proposal has all the chances of the proverbial snowball in Sheol; but I offer it nonetheless. I have stood in the Pit, and seen how and when it went wrong.

Tobias Haller BSG

Further on Salvation

As additional thought growing out of some questions on my earlier post, concerning Paul's theology of salvation, and how universal it was or wasn't.

I think Paul makes (what would later be articulated more clearly) a distinction between salvation, justification, and sanctification. In his system of thought, just as all were stained by Adam's sin, so all are redeemed by Christ. All means all. It isn't about "each" but "all" -- not about individuals but rather about the whole of humanity, which, from a rabbinic understanding was "present" in Adam. And so in Christ, the new Adam. "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."

This is where the distinctions between "faith in" and "faith of" are important, and it's sad to see the NRSV has drifted in the former direction when the latter, as found in the KJV, makes more sense. (Note most especially Gal 2:16,20 3:22) It is the faith of Christ -- his faithfulness unto death -- that saves us.

Salvation is, in this sense, literally "healing" -- that is, healing the wound of sin that has affected the whole of creation, all of humanity, and with which we suffer willy nilly. We recover some of this sense of the meaning of "salvation" as healing when we speak of "the only Name given under heaven for health and salvation..." This is the opening of the door to eternal life.

Justification is another matter, and begins to involve the response of each individual to the free gift; it involves going through the door. This is where personal faith in Christ comes in. (Rom 3:25-26; cp 4:16) Not all will accept it, but all have been made capable of accepting it.

Sanctification follows, again as God's gracious offering, and is entering the room and maybe even sitting down! Or better, falling before the throne...

It is part of our task to distinguish between the sufficient belief in salvation for those who explicitly have chosen Christ and the possible hope that Christ is big enough so that all can find him and be found by him -- maybe the latter ones not even knowing it is Christ who has saved them until they come into his presence revealed in glory. I prefer to follow Paul into that realm of possibility that "all shall be made alive," while keeping one foot well-planted in the sufficient security that "all who call upon his name are saved." This, to me, seems to be where the best evangelism comes from, leaving the door open and reaching out beyond it; as, indeed, Christ did when he left his Father's side to come to us. As "little Christs" we are honored to assist in spreading that word, and the greater the graciousness of our speaking, the more will be won, and the further the word will spread...

Tobias Haller BSG

Relativism and Universalism

Two of the most common accusations directed these days at The Episcopal Church is that it tends towards a relativistic ethic and a universalist view of salvation. I'm concerned to clarify these terms a bit, for they seem rather vague. I tend, myself, towards absolute moral standards tempered by an ethic based on certain biblical principles elaborated by Jesus and Paul. And I hope for universal salvation, but hope is not belief.

That being said, some further clarity is warranted. As to what moral relativism might look like, would this qualify: "I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean." (Romans 14:14 )? I would call that "subjective" — and I suppose one might see subjectivism as a subset of relativism.

But I also think that the actors, situation, intent, and so forth have to figure in any moral or ethical judgment — there are very few acts that in and of themselves are always morally wrong regardless of these other factors.

To use the late Richard Norris' example, it is o.k. for a surgeon to stick a scalpel into someone, but not for an assassin. The act of "knife insertion" is only deemed moral or immoral on the basis of these other factors.

To take an example closer to home, you could not, if shown a photograph of a couple engaged in heavy necking (or more), be able to tell simply on the basis of the photograph if this was a moral or immoral act. You would need to know certain things concerning them and their relationship with each other, and possible others, to make such a determination. But once these other things are known, it is possible to make an absolute judgment, and to stand by it: for instance, assassination and adultery are always morally wrong. (Utilitarian, teleological, or consequentialist ethicists might fudge on these both, given the circumstances; I would rather stick, as Bonhoeffer himself did, with the notion that sometimes wrong acts have extenuating circumstances, but that they are still wrong, and those who commit them are responsible for them. Thank God, God forgave even those who crucified him, and they were about as wrong as wrong gets.)

Which brings me to universalism. Would this, also from Paul, qualify: "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." (Rom 11:25-26)?

Paul makes a compelling case for universal salvation (the healing of the wound of sin; not the same thing at all as "going to heaven" whatever that unbiblical phrase might mean), and he bases it on his understanding of the universality of sin itself. It is reciprocal: "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Cor 15:22) Just as we did not fall under sin on our own account or by our own actions, so too we are not saved by our own efforts or actions. It is the faith of Christ (even unto death), not our personal faith in Christ, that saves us (from eternal death).* He is the savior, not we ourselves.

That's how it works, folks, and it is a great mystery.

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* With due regard to the shades of meaning in pistis Christou.

Tobias Haller BSG

Thought for 06.21.08

What shall it profit you if you gain a whole world church at the cost of your true self?

It seems to me that the effort to transform the fellowship of autonomous national and provincial churches known as the Anglican Communion into some kind of centrally governed world church is placing more of a burden upon the existing structures than they can either bear or even bear with.

The real danger is that of Bovarism. Madame Bovary is probably the most misunderstood novel ever written — people see it as a kind of romance (and if one is to judge from the film adaptations, that is how it is almost universally played). But it is not a romance, rather an anti-romance: a study in the damage caused by romanticism. The "heroine" could have been perfectly happy in her life had she not filled her idle hours with reading romances, and imagining that this was what "love" was about. In fact, her ordinary life as the wife of a modest middle-class doctor could have been as loving as she was willing to make it. Instead, she embarks upon one failed and tawdry exercise after another, until at last even her suicide is botched -- instead of downing the swift and romantic cyanide she gobbles the nasty and corrosive arsenic; and even as she dies she is robbed of romantic death as the lyrics of a bawdy street song float through the window.

"Bovarism" is this tendency to live in a romanticized world, in which real joy is bypassed in exchange for an unattainable and impractical ideal; real joy is destroyed by romantic ambition.

The Anglican Communion can continue to function as it has — a bit disorganized, even dysfunctional, at times, yet still able to do much good. Or it can quest after becoming something it never need become, nor very likely can become.

Tobias Haller BSG

Good as Gold (1)

The Place of the Golden Rule in a Spirituality of Ethics
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
A decade or so ago I took part in a discussion on morality in which I asserted that the Golden Rule was a sufficient standard for determining moral behavior. An interlocutor asked, “Is the Golden Rule really adequate?” I responded glibly that we had the assurance of Jesus to that effect. On further reflection I continue to believe in the sufficiency of the Golden Rule as at least a touchstone for moral discernment and at its best a call to moral action that stretches our capacity. In short, it represents a spiritual response to the call for an ethical life. In this paper I will examine salvation history and explore the Golden Rule in its context, origin and implications. In conclusion, I will examine the morality of judgment in the light of the spiritual system articulated.

The Nature of the Good: God, the Universe, and Everything

I begin this exploration by observing that the account of the Fall in Genesis is not history — certainly not natural history — but sacred story. Much theological thought, even in the post-Darwinian era, and even among non-Fundamentalist thinkers, has been hampered by neglect of this distinction. This does not mean that the story is to be discarded or disregarded; language, which is based on symbols, is essential to communication. The moment we move from things themselves to the names we give them we have stepped into a symbolic world; how much more with larger concepts for which no underlying “thing” can even be said to “exist.” We cannot escape the story, nor should we, as long as we are aware that it is to be used as story and not pressed into use as natural history. The “freedom from myth” agenda of some theologians is both doomed (as language itself partakes of symbolism) and to some extent pointless, rather like translating poetry into prose. Poetry bears truths that prose cannot articulate; but at the same time, to press the symbols into service as facts is to mistake their purpose and their meaning.
Natural science assures us, beyond reasonable doubt, that there was no age of perfection from which humans fell through sin. Rather than seeing the Genesis accounts in that way, it is more helpful to see the story of origin, as other theologians on closer reading have done,⁽¹⁾ as a kind of “upward” fall from innocence through knowledge: the place where the wages of sin and the cost of freedom merge. Seen in this light, there is a deep truth behind the sacred story (or rather stories) portrayed in Genesis, consistent with the truths revealed in natural history, and the two ways of knowing shed light upon each other, as I will demonstrate.
A summary of the argument
God (who is Self-Giving Love), begins that creation by allowing that-which-is-not-God to come-to-be. The culmination of that creativity is in God’s bringing to being creatures made in the image of God. In accomplishing this goal God was constrained by a limiting condition: God would not coerce beings into this likeness. Since God is loving and free, the creatures bearing God’s image would have to become capable of love and freedom. So God created a universe in which selfless love might arise, as it must, only from selfishness: only creatures that are self-interested, that become aware of that self-interest, and — through the life of God in the world, in the Incarnate Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit — become able to set that self-interest aside, have achieved the other-interested, self-giving love characteristic of God. They become children of God fashioned after the express image of God, Jesus Christ (Col 1.15). For God to create free creatures, the world needed to be placed under bondage to self-interest first. (Rom 8.21)
The Trinity as Basis for All Creation
Within God the Trinity-in-Unity, the One-who-is-Good (Mk 10.18, Lk 18.19), the intimate self-giving of the Persons to each other subsists in perfect unity without confusion: the Three are One and yet remain Three.
In the beginning, God created the universe of beings. This is the self-giving of the Father through the Son and in the Spirit. These created beings are good in their being (Gen 1.31) — that is, they need not do anything in order to be good. The creatures are sinless (unconscious of sin, void of will), and praise God simply in their being. (Ps 148.1-10) The moment these beings begin to act, they act with self-interest, although not conscious of self; this initial self-interest is entirely innocent and completely passive. The first creatures (energy and matter: Gen 1.3-10) endure and have identity solely because they possess two interrelated properties: identity, because the universe is not infinitely divisible but has a quantum structure; and endurance, because in accord with physical laws they cease to exist upon physical dissolution.⁽²⁾ The principle of self-interest or perpetuation-of-self is solely physical at this point, coalescing in stars, planets and waters, and only governs the object itself: the physical self endures so long as it is recognizable as self, that is, as an entity. This principle governs the formation of simple objects, and more complex entities such as crystals. The survival of the physical self is determined solely in the relation of structure and material with the environment. Forms that are better suited to the conditions of their environment will survive longer under this principle.
In the second stage, entities evolve that not only form enduring structures, but are capable of replicating these structures. This is the beginning of what may be called, even in its simplest forms, life. In sacred account, this is represented by vegetation, the simplest form of life known to the Genesis author. (Gen 1.11) The primary law that governs evolutionary self-perpetuation through self-interest takes effect at this point: the living self endures in itself and in its generative and regenerative capacity to sustain and replicate itself. (Of course, replication produces not the self itself, but another self, another entity.) Living things survive because they are suited to and take advantage of the environment in which they live, and those better suited and better equipped to take advantage have a higher statistical opportunity to survive and reproduce. That they reproduce means that they can replace themselves over time with their progeny. With the emergence of life (and reproduction) comes death: a sacrifice in individual endurance more than compensated for by the capability of self-replication in progeny. Survival and evolution at this primitive stage is still driven entirely by external and environmental factors. There is no libido dominandi at this point (or at most a libido far below the level of intent; a drive without a driver, if you will), simply the tendency for living things to continue living and reproducing, those best adapted to the environment tending to dominate only in the statistical sense.
The third stage is the period of sensation, arising in some plants and the simplest animals, in which creatures begin to take active part in their own survival through the sensation of pleasure and (primarily) pain, though they would not be identified as such (there being no consciousness present to so identify them).⁽³⁾ The sensing self operates on the basis of pleasure and pain to maximize its survival and the survival of itself-as-species. The sensing self reacts to the physical world automatically — no consciousness is posited: the higher plants turn towards the sun; the hydra’s tentacles withdraw at the touch of a needle. In the second half of the third stage animals with more developed nervous systems evolve, and complex behavior and instinct emerge, and with them the first intimations of consciousness. This period also marks the emergence of what physiologists call “the serpentine brain” — the neural structure comprising much of the brain in primitive organisms, but which has endured in the core of the human brain, in such processes as the limbic system. The conscious self operates on the basis of choices still largely determined by biological drives conditioned by pleasure and pain, now identified as such.
The fourth stage marks the dawn of consciousness-of-consciousness, or self-consciousness.⁽⁴⁾ This is the point at which the self first becomes aware of itself-as-self, eventually leading to awareness of the other-as-other-self. It is also the point at which the human takes on the image of God, patterned after the Second Person of the Trinity, the logos who represents the capacity to discern self and other, to reason, and to love. The Latin term equivalent to logos, ratio, is helpful here, for a ratio requires at least two terms: in this case the self and the other.
But this is also the moment of open potential to the Fall. With the recognition of the great division between the self and the other, the pang of disunity comes to birth, and with it the awareness of the libido dominandi. To pick up the earlier analogy, a driver finally takes the driver’s seat. This is also the point of the arising of the divided mind, or the sense of duality (the mind driving the body: an image common to psychology and philosophy alike, and returned to again and again in imaginative literature and art.⁽⁵⁾)
To return to the language of our sacred story, it is as if all of Genesis 2 and 3 are compacted into one moment, “the fruit with its seed in it” (Gen 1.11). First comes the human recognition of isolation (Gen 2.20), the optimism of union with the other (Gen 2.23), the sorry realization that inner self-interest is still alive in the serpentine brain (Gen 3.1), the tragic impossibility of seeking to become like God (who is Perfect Self-Giving, Perfect Love) at the prompting of self-interested motives (3.5-6), and the shame of exposed imperfection and separation, for which self-conscious nakedness is the powerful symbol (Gen 3.6-10). This is the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The self experiences for the first time the guilt and shame of the choice for self-interest, which is the root of sin falling from likeness to the perfectly self-giving God.⁽⁶⁾
It would be wrong to mark the drive to self-interest as inherently evil (in the popular sense of the word), however. Not only is it to some extent a necessary felix culpa, but, as I have shown, a necessity in the development of complex organisms capable of achieving freedom, and it is an integral part of God’s creation, and hence good. The Rabbis (Genesis Rabbah 9:7) believed that the human being had both a good and an evil inclination (the yetzer-ha-tov and the yetzer-ha-ra‘), both of which were declared “very good” by God (Gen 1.31). To explain how the “evil” inclination could be good, the Rabbis answer, “If it were not for this inclination, a man would neither build his house, marry a wife, father children, nor conduct business.” As we have seen, the inclination to self-interest has been behind the process of evolution prior to and leading to human life. But in spite of the positive outcomes of self-interest, the self (upon self-consciousness) also becomes tragically aware of the urge towards an asymptotic altruism and self-sacrifice, goals towards which it is called but which it can never achieve on its own, an inner awareness of what will eventually be recognized as “the divine likeness” (as humans begin to apprehend God’s self-revelation) combined with a realization of how far short the unredeemed self has fallen. The self-conscious self is no longer governed by purely physical or biological forces, but though incapable of escaping them, becomes responsible for its actions and aware of the discontinuity in itself.
Because of the heritage of evolution, the self-conscious self will always to some extent incline to choose for itself rather than the other, experiencing guilt and shame as a consequence, but incapable of fundamental alteration. At this point the concept of law as custodian or fence against abuse emerges (Gal 3.23). This law is not “natural” in the sense of describing how things happen (as the “law” of gravity); on the contrary, law is inherently unnatural for it points not to what is but to what should be. (Rom 7.9-10) The natural law of gravity governs the fall of objects; the natural law of self-interest — even as it guides the rise of more complex and ordered forms in concert with the pressure of the physical law of entropy leading to chaos — governs how far short falls the humanum from the divine image of perfect self-giving. These natural laws are, strictly speaking, non-moral in themselves. There is no “natural” moral law.
This principle was long ago recognized by Maimonides (The Eight Chapters, VI): there is no natural or “rational” moral law, though there may be generally accepted principles, which are cultural constructs or divine ordinances. All so-called law is given, whether by God or human reason, and hence is positive.⁽⁷⁾ Two arguments against this view can be raised. First, Kant states that “self-love” cannot be a universal law, because a person in suffering might choose suicide on its basis, and if this were applied as a categorical imperative universally life would cease. (Groundwork, 53-54) This argument fails as a reductio ad absurdum which assumes a case in which all are suffering and choose escape through suicide. It also ignores that death is an ineluctable part of the functioning of the law of self-interest among living things, and that life evolves and develops through the means of selective death, in accord with the physical law of entropy.⁽⁸⁾ Second, it is argued, on the basis of Rom 1.20, that Paul regarded the prohibition on idolatry as an exception, since nature teaches that there is a creator-God behind the visible world. However, knowing God does not necessarily render illicit the worship of lesser gods. That principle was established in the positive law given at Sinai, expanding upon what may be “naturally evident” — that God is one — by limiting worship to this One alone. The Rabbis generally held the prohibition on idols not to be natural, but to have been among those laws given to Noah, an event recorded in the Oral rather than the Written Torah. (Mekilta on Exod 19.2, Sifre Deut 40, Sanhedrin 56a) The Rabbis are firm in stating there can be no sin nor crime unless an explicit warning and prohibition has been given in advance, i.e., a positive law: “The Lord does not punish unless he has previously declared such-and-such an action to be an offense.” (Sanhedrin 56b)
The problem with law, and its failure in bringing about unity among people, and between people and God, has already been exhaustively explored by Paul in Romans and Galatians, and Jesus in his tirades at the “Pharisees,” and need not be discussed at length here. Paul and Jesus were well within their religious tradition. The idea of the heteronomous law as ultimately ineffective without inner and autonomous conversion lies at the core of Ezekiel’s image of hearts of stone and hearts of flesh, (Ezek 11.19-20) and Jeremiah’s “law written on the heart” (Jer 31.33). The Rabbis too looked to a day when even Torah would pass away: when Messiah would come. (Niddah 61.b, Avodah Zarah 9a), the written Word of God would be fulfilled in the Living Word of God. The law could be a custodian and a guide, but more than law would be needed to lead humanity from the serpentine coils of self-interest into the gracious light of self-giving. The law would always be a well to which one would have to return time and again after each fall and repentance; what was needed was a means of grace like a spring of water welling up from within, so that one might never thirst again. (Jn 4.13-14) The law could only supply a sacrificial system that involved daily repetition of the same rites (Heb 10.11), which could never do away with the fundamental discord that sounds through human history like a cipher on an organ. What was needed was an intervention that would alter the system “once and for all.” (Heb 7.27)
So the fifth stage is punctuated by the Incarnation/Crucifixion/Resurrection, the “Christ Event” that marks the central point in salvation history, empowering the Flesh-Restrained-By-Law to be reborn in the Spirit (Rom 7-8). From an eternal standpoint, which is to say, God’s standpoint, God only performs a single mighty act of self-giving which to us (in the world of time) appears as a sequence of acts. The act of kenosis which begins Creation finds its definitive exposition in the Incarnation and its telos in the Cross, the ultimate Self chooses (and chooses to become one with) the ultimate Other — the creaturely order, particularly in the human — and experiences death-to-self, which is the antithesis of all that the evolutionary process has been built upon. In the Incarnation/Crucifixion/Resurrection we behold the self-giving of the Son in obedience to the Father by the power of the Spirit, the hinge point of the universe, the At-One-ment where God’s self-giving in Christ opens the way for transformation of a universe that until this point has known only self-assertion, self-preservation, and self-interest. This is, to return to our sacred vocabulary, the flowering of the Tree of Life, the Cross of Glory, balancing the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the eschatological sign of celibacy (Mt 19.12) Jesus overcomes the natural law of biology (self-in-progeny) and in the sign of the Cross overturns the natural law of self-preservation by giving himself for the life of the world.
In the Resurrection/Ascension the selfish universe is offered a Way towards redemption, by incorporation of the human (as the universe’s organ of self-perception) into the Body of Christ; as the old patristic tag stated it, “God became human that humans might become divine.” Following quickly, with Pentecost comes the self-giving of the Spirit from the Father through the em-Bodied Son (the Church), and the Christ-conscious self is enabled to self-sacrifice through incorporation in Christ, and the charismatic indwelling of the Spirit. The Christ-conscious person has put on Christ (Rom 13.14) so that it is no longer the old self that lives, but Christ that lives within one. (Gal 2.20) By incorporation into Christ, the human creature enters the life of the Trinity, where each member becomes one as the Father and the Son are one in the Spirit, (Jn 17.20-21) without division and without confusion or duality. (Col 3.10-11; 1 Cor 15.28)
This first section has demonstrated that only self-interest could build the world of the flesh through EVOLution; and that only perfected other-interest could build the world of the Spirit through LOVE. The maxim of other-interest given by Christ is summed up in the Golden Rule, which I will examine in the next section of this essay.

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Notes
Note 1. Charles Williams’ He Came Down From Heaven is one such eloquent examination of the “wound of knowledge,” the creation of “otherness” and the miracle of love as the source of healing. Note as well Bonhoeffer’s analysis of the cost of coming to the “knowledge of good and evil.”[^]
Note 2. An analogous “creation” at the human level is the Great Pyramid: it endures precisely because its design encourages its endurance — well-designed pyramids don’t fall down, and their shape is ideal for resisting wind erosion. The pyramid builders no doubt based their structures on the sand dunes whose identity and endurance served as a model. I note in passing that the identity of an entity does not (as in the case of a sand dune or an ocean wave — or a human being) reside in the material of which the entity consists at any one moment; but in the enduring interrelation of many changeable parts in an identifiable whole over time. One of the most valuable insights of process theology lies in this distinction.[^]
Note 3. It can be observed that for one period in the history of the world Jeremy Bentham was perfectly correct in his assessments.[^]
Note 4. It is impossible to determine exactly at what point the fourth stage is entered. While it has been traditional to limit this fourth stage to humanity, questions raised by science and as yet unanswered to universal satisfaction concern when “humanity” begins, and whether other advanced creatures are self-conscious as we are. At this point there is, as far as I know, no firm evidence of consciousness-of-consciousness among other animals, however intelligent they may appear. It is important to avoid anthropomorphism, and reading “altruism” where there may only be an instinct to preserve the species, as in the behavior of the lapwing which “sacrifices” itself to protect its nest. It is, however, incumbent upon us in our treatment of all animals that we at least accord the possibility they may feel and be aware of more than we know.[^]
Note 5. The twentieth century was notable for its contributions to the artistic analysis of the divided mind. A recent example is the film “Being John Malkovich.”[^]
Note 6. This notion departs from Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the primary separation recognized as between “man” and God; I view the primary separation leading to the sense of sin to be between the self and the other. I would suggest that self-consciousness emerges in human history before God-consciousness develops. The first humans could not conceive of God before they could conceive of themselves and their fellows-as-others. This is the one point at which the Genesis-myth does disservice to the actuality of human history: there was no Eden in which God and humanity enjoyed easy familiarity, and which the Tree of Knowledge undid. Consciousness of (and hope for and faith in) God as unity only comes out of the pain of disunity.
I am also attempting to steer clear of the “privation of being” language used in Thomistic theology, and adapted in some modern ontological-existential theologies (i.e.,Macquarrie). My focus is on God not as Being but as Love, Giver-of-Perfect-Gift (Jm 1.17), most especially God’s Triune Self poured out in creation, redemption, and sanctification. Moreover, my philosophical roots do not permit me to see “being” as a quality of which an entity can have more or less.[^]
Note 7. See also Rom 1.32, Acts 17:30-31 for the positive nature of so-called natural moral law.[^]
Note 8. The importance of extinction in natural selection, and selective cell death in embryonic development are well-attested examples of this seeming paradox at work.[^]