On Originalism

Originalism is a useful tool in determining authorial intent, but apart from that it is self-defeating as a legal philosophy. To understand the intent of the framers of a document by examining the original meaning of the words they used in the context in which they wrote is so obvious as scarcely to need defense. To give a trivial example, if you want to understand a first century BC text in Latin you had best begin by realizing that first-century BC Latin is neither fourth-century BC Greek nor twenty-first-century English, and the cultural contexts of these different languages also play a role in any attempt at discerning what, for instance, Julius Caesar was writing about. Just because the US Constitution is written in English doesn't mean any of the words have the same meaning they do today. I can guarantee that not one of the authors intended "arms" to mean "snub-nose revolvers" or "tactical nuclear weapons" when asserting a right not to be infringed by the state.

So originalism has its purpose as a hermeneutic tool. But it is less helpful — perhaps disastrous — when it is raised to the level of a philosophy, or worse, ideology. The notion that the Constitution should be set in 18th-century stone, and be inapplicable to later circumstances is belied by the fact that the document provides for its own amendment. The framers were intelligent men, aware of the fact that language changes, as do the times. To suspect they regarded their words as inviolable and unalterable, fixed in meaning and application only to what they intended, is to attribute an almost sacral quality to the Constitution, which is nothing short of idolatrous. I will confess I imagine that even some of the authors of Scripture itself would be shocked to think people of a later time would regard what they intended as topical advice to be unalterable divine mandate for all time. How much less would the men of Enlightenment America regard their efforts to be immutable and fixed for all time?

So go to the sources, read the contemporary commentary, study the lexicons and dictionaries by all means. But remember these are but the starting points for understanding and application. If the Constitution is to live — let it live. Do not suffocate it in the bonds of originalism's lack of imagination and understanding.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

NT Wright: Wrong Again

NT Wright is a distinguished scholar in the area of New Testament studies, but when he gets off his primary topic and into the muddy waters of the marriage equality debate he does not serve either himself or his reputation well, particularly when his comments are off-the-cuff in an interview. That being said, it should be expected that any competent scholar would be able to avoid the shoals of error upon which Wright founders in this conversation.

And a strange conversation it is. Wright begins by launching into an ill-informed and curmudgeonly argument about the meaning of the word marriage. His claim is that applying marriage to a same-sex couple is a total novelty — not just in English but across all cultures — and implies that the effort to give it that meaning is similar to word-torture by Nazis and the Politburo. Marriage, he claims, has “always been male plus female.”

He is obviously wrong when it comes to English; perhaps he is to be forgiven for not having heard of the 19th century “Boston marriages” in Durham. But as a scholar he is distressingly ill-informed when it comes to the language of Scripture. It has to be admitted that the Hebrew and Greek texts do not have a simple word for the concept of “marriage” — or for “husband” or “wife” for that matter, as the common words are simply the words for “man” and “woman” or (in the case of men, the equivalent of the word “lord.”) The Hebrew words for “marriage” normally revolve around the concepts of taking or carrying off — a relic of which still exists in our marriage rite as each spouse “takes” the other. And this language was applied to same-sex couples in the rabbinic tradition: it is used in Sifra Aharei Mot 8:8 in its interpretation of what Leviticus forbids in terms of the practice of the peoples distinguished from God’s people. “A man married a man and a woman a woman, a man married a woman and her daughter, and a woman married two men.” The word translated “married” here is the same used in Scripture in Ruth, Ezra, and Nehemiah. So the Hebrew mind was capable of wrapping itself around the notion of same-sex marriage, even while disapproving of it. Whether such marriages actually were a part of the Egyptian and Canaanite societies is beside the point, though if they were that would undercut Wright’s thesis as well.

So Wright can assert his counterfactual on word usage as much as he likes, but marriage not only has been used to refer to same-sex marriages for millennia, but it is now part of civil law in many countries. His response: “Simply at that level, I think it’s a nonsense. It’s like a government voting that black should be white. Sorry, you can vote that if you like, you can pass it by a total majority, but it isn’t actually going to change the reality.” Obviously he is also unaware that the English word “black” derives from the Anglo-saxon blæc — meaning “white.” (Think “bleach”). But let that pass.

More serious is Wright’s assertion that what he calls “complementarity” of “pairs that work together” lies at the heart of the created order. But it seems very odd to talk of “heaven and earth” and “sea and dry land” as “working together” in the way a man and a woman do. I have no doubt that the narrative shows a man and a woman working together — but I do not see any evidence that heaven and earth or sea and dry land “work together”; to say nothing of the many other “binaries” in Genesis 1: light and dark, fish and birds, plants and trees — to say nothing of the triads such as the sun, moon and stars. Wright is either just straining to read something into all of this to support his exclusion of same-sex pairs (which, after all, are also pairs who work together!) or indulging in a reading that would be more appropriate to the I Ching, which does indeed conceive the cosmos as being built up from opposites.

Moreover — and again Wright should know this but his antipathy towards marriage equality appears to have induced some biblical blind spots — the “marriage” portrayed in Scripture is not complementary or balanced. The institution of marriage in both Testaments is tilted strongly towards male privilege and power. This is why in the allegories the husband figures God or Christ, and the wife the people of God or the Church. It is true that there are some passing descriptions of real marriages where some sort of mutuality is enjoined or enjoyed, and the Pauline tradition attempts gingerly and modestly to even the scales ever so slightly, but when it comes to imagery the balance tips to the man, away from the woman.

In the final section of the interview Wright show all the signs of frustration at a lost cause. I can almost hear him holding his breath at the end, after a final foot-stomp. He compares the movement for equal marriage to the pressure towards war in Iraq (and why is it that all of his comparisons are violent and over the top). He seems to think that being on the wrong side of history is a statement about trends and pressures. History doesn’t force things, it records them. In this interview, Wright is wrong about history as well as being on the wrong side of it.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Thought for 6.4.14

When we approach the Scripture, we bring to it all of the many traditions and past understandings that can obstruct our seeing what the text would reveal if we could approach it with new eyes. It is like a beautiful wooden cross that has been given coat after coat of varnish, so that what we see is the varnished surface rather than the beautiful grain of the wood beneath.

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

Unequal Measures

Reading Martin Kuhrt's response to Steve Chalke reminds me of the basic problem I have with the dyed-in-the-wool (and apparently wool-over-the-eyes) hermeneutic of the conservative evangelical movement. The main problem lies in the fact that they apply a very loose and freewheeling reading to the Scripture, a "reading" which actually wanders very far from what the text says, all under the cover of being particularly faithful to it.

Thus they go on and on (joining conservative catholics) about Genesis 1 and 2 revealing a divine plan for all sexual behavior, even though, as the text makes abundantly clear, it is speaking of two individuals (how after all could the man be "alone" if there were others?). They continue to misread Jesus' words on this text as some kind of pronouncement on complementarity when it is in fact a dissuasion from divorce, again in reference to the pair becoming a unit. It is particularly ironic that at least some conservative evangelicals have swallowed the pill of remarriage after divorce (the actual substance of Jesus' teaching) by means of the very "progressive" reading of Scripture and church history that they reject when applied to same-sex marriage.

The hermeneutic that Kuhrt seems to call for, in his rejection of a "progressive" hermeneutic (such as that which Augustine advocated in Of Christian Doctrine -- that all Scripture must be interpreted in the light of the Great Commandment to love God and neighbor; and which it is also fair to observe is the general hermeneutic applied through most of Christendom, at least to other texts) would ultimately require approval of slavery, condemnation of the consumption of unkoshered meat, and an end to the modern investment banking system, at the very least. In short, the conservative evangelicals either lack the conviction of their alleged hermeneutic or they are simply hypocrites. In either case it is the employment of unequal weights and measures.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A Note on John 4

The story of the Samaritan woman in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel has formed a part of the readings at Evening Prayer this week. This has led me to reflect once again on that curious middle: the question of the woman’s husbands. I don’t have time for an extended essay but want to flag a thought to which I might return later for elaboration.

I have long felt that when Jesus says, “The one you have now is not your man,” he is referring to himself. I checked a number of commentaries on John’s Gospel and discovered that my view may be a novel one — and yet it seems rather obvious to me. First to the commentaries, then to my sense of things — again very briefly.

Most of the commentaries put the focus of this section of the encounter on the woman and her moral status. Arguments are raised as to whether the rabbinic “three husband rule” applied to Samaritans — or even if it was a rule. Allegorical interpretations also come to play: reflective of a supposed pantheon of five Samaritan deities — the sixth being the God of Israel imperfectly accepted. Even further afield an allegory of the five senses as opposed to the sixth sense of the Spirit has been suggested.

All of this seems rather far from what appears to me to be going on in this encounter. First of all, this is John’s Gospel — an intense theological work rather than a mere historical record. In addition, certain key words and phrases with emphatic meanings in John’s language show up in the passage in question — not just in the part about the husbands, but throughout the pericope. Crucial among these words is one used by Jesus in his response to the woman: Now.

Second, the whole passage is about Jesus — note how he keeps turning the conversation back to himself. In a way it reminds me of the joke about the actor at the cocktail party, who after going on and on about himself, finally says to his host, “But enough about me. What did you think of my performance?” On this ground alone a detour-with-badinage into the woman’s marital life seems quite beside the point if in the end it does not turn back to Jesus — as do the surrounding passages that make up this dominical sandwich.

In the first case Jesus asks for water but then displays himself as the source from which a living spring will well up to eternal life. In the third case the issue about where to worship is settled by a pointed now (again, the hour coming and here), and in the person of Jesus the Messiah. In between is this seemingly off-topic persiflage about “her man.” Why would Jesus ask for her man if she didn’t have one — as she says she doesn’t. (The ambiguity is exacerbated for us because the passage does not use a distinctive word for husband; it would seem that if she was living with a man, he would be, well, her man even if not her husband, if such a distinction could even be made.) And so the one she “has now” is Jesus — right then and there by the well of Jacob — and he isn’t “her man” because she has not grasped him for Who He Is, or accepted him as He Who Is... yet.

So, in each section of this short three-act play, the focus begins with the woman and her concerns but turns back to Jesus. This triple construction is not at all foreign to the Johannine way of thinking or constructing (e.g. Way, Truth, Life), and the whole incident fits in well with, and has echoes of, the other encounters in which Jesus reveals his true identity to people who do not seem at first to grasp what is being revealed to them — in particular in contrast to the Baptist, who does recognize and testify. Note the dialogue with Nicodemus in the preceding chapter; and also more significantly the verbatim resonance of the woman’s “Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob?” with the later “Are your greater than our father Abraham?” — which leads in the end to another of the great “I Am” proclamations. John 8:53,58).

In short, then, I think it misses the point to read this passage as about the woman’s marital history, and obscures the reason Jesus raised the question in the first place: as a way to point her back to himself. Which is, as I remind us, the stated purpose of John’s Gospel. (20:31)

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Scriptural Exhaustion or Inclusion

There are two primary ways to read Scripture. Both are “literal” in that they focus on the text itself, but they differ in how they attribute meaning to the text. The exhaustive view believes that a single correct reading excludes any other and exhausts the possibilities of meaning; the inclusive acknowledges that a given text may be capable of many meanings, including that discerned by the exhaustive school, but remaining open to meanings not yet discerned. The exhaustive view asserts clarity, often assumes perspecuity, and a univocal certainty. The inclusive accepts a degree of ambiguity, recognizes that texts convey meaning, that the meanings can be manifold, and the readings provisional.

The inclusive manner of reading is that of the rabbinic and the Patristic eras, of the Catholic tradition and (ironically) also of liberal protestantism; the exhaustive is represented in several strands of protestant conservatism. The inclusive manner allows the church to hold a number of interpretations, and part with those that science or reason eventually show to be untenable. The exhaustive, in the long run, often finds itself unable to navigate the waters of reality, having run aground, not on the text, but on the inflexibility and failure of their own interpretations to offer a credible word to a skeptical world.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 05.26.11

There is a huge difference between a hermeneutic of suspicion and a veil of suspicion. The former brings clarity, the latter confusion. The former exposes a hidden reality, the latter cloaks it further. One seeks honestly better to understand, perhaps to exculpate, the latter further to project, and further implicate.

This marks, in part, the difference between investigative and yellow journalism.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

No New Revelation

When addressing controverted subjects, we are called to look back on the Scriptural text for guidance in dealing with things about which those texts are themselves silent. The issue is not, "What would they have said?" on a topic about which they did not speak; but rather, "What do we say based on what those texts say about other things, using natural reason and knowledge gained since their writing to interpret old texts for new principles."

This is not about any new revelation. As one important story from rabbinic history shows: Revelation is now closed, but interpretation is open -- even a voice from heaven, even from God, cannot contravene the findings of the living interpretative community because, "It [i.e., the Law] is not in heaven" -- that is, God has given the Scripture to the people of God and it is up to us to wrestle with it.

People may well disagree about the outcomes of the wrestling match. And the question, "What Would Jesus Do?" is not entirely out of place, but has to be asked by positing Jesus not of his time, but as he is with us in our time -- as I believe he is, in his church, through his Spirit, which is now engaged in addressing challenges he did not address in those earlier days. There is no new revelation, but there is always new understanding.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Unrecognized Love

Jonathan loved David. That's what the Bible says. They were soul-mates. The Bible does not call them "friends." It cannot be explicitly determined from the text that their love had — or didn't have — an erotic expression. The Hebrew has been heavily redacted, and the Greek and Latin amended by the excision and addition of suggestive or obfuscatory text. So while there is no explicit evidence of erotic fire there are clear signs of concerted efforts to clear the room of smoke.

All of this is irrefutable and objectivity true. Still, one of the more tiresome responses from the reasserter wing, in response to a statement such as that above, is that it somehow represents an eroticized Western culture's failing to understand the nature of friendship.* On the contrary, it is this unfounded assertion that represents a heterosexist or (at worst) homophobic culture's inability to recognize loving and devoted same-sex relationships, understanding them only in objective and erotic terms.

Even in frankly eroticized and libertine "gay cultures" gay men know the difference between their friends and lovers. Many gay men have deep, devoted, lasting friendships with other men in whom they have no erotic interest whatsoever. It is the heterosexist culture that doesn't want to ask and certainly doesn't want to be told about lifelong, monogamous, same-sex couples, — and so tries to conceal or erase or trivialize them by calling them "just good friends," or "roommates," or "war buddies who are sharing an apartment," or "bachelor girls" doing the same for purely monetary reasons. The "love that dare not speak its name" is bound and gagged by a culture that doesn't know love because it refuses to see it, and is afraid to acknowledge it.

This has been going on for over three thousand years, and it is about time to stop.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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*An example, from the recent "traditionalist" paper written for the House of Bishops (page 11 in the draft version), in reference to any suggestion of a same-sex relationship between David and Jonathan.:

Here there is the obvious difficulty of arguing from an agenda rather than from explicit textual support. But it also exposes the weakness of modern western culture in not being able to foster or even understand deeply committed same-sex friendships that do not involve physical sexual expression.

Of course, this is precisely not a matter of an "agenda" (other than the heterosexist agenda to maximize Scriptural negativity towards same-sex relationships while minimizing anything positive); and the nature of the relationship as based on "love" rather than "friendship" is explicit in the text. If one were to change the names and recast the story with a man and woman, no one would argue it was about "very good friends." In fact, one need not engage in such speculation, since the same Hebrew verb for "love" of David is used in the same chapter (1 Samuel 18) in reference both to Saul's son Jonathan and his daughter Michal. David would later make it clear that the former was a more wonderful and greater love, in a text bowdlerized in the Vulgate.

Update 6/2/10: The thinking continues in part 2.

Another (Re)View...

...of Reasonable and Holy

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Anglican Christianity has long had a tradition of scholarly parsons. At the head of this line stands Hooker, of course, and it is Hooker who presides over Reasonable and Holy, the learned work of another learned parish priest. It is one thing to quote Hooker’s words, as Tobias Haller frequently does, and something more difficult, more admirable, and more worthwhile to emulate his approach and his temperament. Haller does that too.

Hooker’s was in the first instance controversial theology, aimed at answering and controverting a stated position, strongly held, on matters of practical import for the church as a whole. Likewise, Haller seeks to meet opponents on their own ground, assessing their arguments carefully and refuting them courteously, rather than simply dismissing them and insisting on his own alternative. The ground, in this case, is primarily biblical. However important the natural-law tradition has been or may still be in addressing the questions at issue, that is not where Anglicans who disapprove of same-sexual relations commonly take their stand. Accordingly, neither does Haller. On the one hand, he does not take the standard line of appealing to the moral virtue of justice, which would be a form of natural-law argument; on the other, he need not and does not deal with consequentialist arguments to the effect that any change in longstanding prohibitions with regard to same-sexuality will have evil effects. The arguments that are relevant here are arguments from authority, and the relevant authority is that of canonical texts.

Nevertheless, for Haller as for Hooker, it remains that not even scriptural texts are self-interpreting. They have to be understood, and understanding them calls for rationality. The relevant passages—all the usual ones—need to be examined reasonably, which is quite a different thing from submitting them to a priori judgment. In other words, there is exegetical homework to be done. It is true that Haller does not dive into the maelstrom of “higher,” historical-critical interpretation. He takes the Bible, deliberately, as it stands, and takes it as holy Scripture, in the way that the church has taken it and that Paul and Jesus took it. In that regard, as in others, Reasonable and Holy is quite a conservative book. Yet by no means does it follow that scholarly investigation is superfluous. Quite the contrary. Haller does not parade his erudition; he does exercise it. Where the nuances of Greek and Hebrew are relevant, he refers to them. He also brings into the conversation a good deal of rabbinic exegesis, with which his own has perhaps a certain affinity.

There are no sweeping judgments here. To use his own phrase, Haller does not offer a Grand Unified Theory of Sexuality, in which everything the Bible has to say finds a clear-cut, logical place. In fact much of his book is aimed, explicitly or otherwise, at those who have put forward such artificial, totalizing schemes as the answer to current disputes. That is not what he means by being reasonable. He means—to judge by what he does—drawing careful distinctions, gauging the merits of possibly relevant interpretations, and mounting a case that depends on the cumulative weight of all its components. “Judicious” might be the right word.

That being so, even if it were possible to summarize the argument, a summary would be out of place. The value of Reasonable and Holy lies not in its conclusions alone but chiefly in the way Haller reaches them. What should, however, be emphasized is the user-friendliness of his book, its learnedness notwithstanding. The sidebars and callouts will help readers keep their place. Headings are memorably phrased, and just occasionally over the top (“Don’t be so shellfish”). There are no footnotes and, more seriously, there is no index—not, that is, in the book itself. But an index of names and another of textual references can be consulted online. Now that the General Convention of the Episcopal Church has committed itself to “an open process for the consideration of theological and liturgical resources for the blessing of same gender relationships,” whoever is charged with compiling those resources will want to add this book to the list.

CHARLES HEFLING
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

From The Anglican Theological Review Winter 2010, Volume 92 Number 1, 225-226.

Faithful Readings

I would like to conclude my response to Ephraim Radner’s review of Reasonable and Holy with a few comments on his views of my biblical hermeneutic. Perhaps the strangest thing in this strange review is that Radner appears not to recognize what I am doing as entirely within the range of the classical Biblical interpretation. I suspect his assumption must be something like, “If your result disagrees with the doctrinal tradition, then your technique or method must diverge from the exegetical tradition.” I may be putting words into his mouth, but this is the only premise that can make sense of his further comments. Taken on its own, as a premise, it is clearly false, as many people using identical exegetical methods, at various stages in the history of engagement with Scripture, have come to very different conclusions as to its meaning and application.

However, the least accurate characterization Radner makes of my biblical approach is to call it “Liberal Protestantism.” Liberal, perhaps, but only in the sense that Richard Hooker was liberal in comparison with Walter Travers. Protestant, but only in the sense of the classical Anglicanism of the Elizabethan Settlement, or the Evangelicalism of Luther, and certainly not in the mid-19th to mid-20th century meaning of the word. If seeking a cohesive message from Scripture — such as my own that its sufficient purpose is salvation through grace by faith in Christ (an aim Radner seems to find less than fruitful, as he puts save in scare-quotes!) — then he is equally guilty of such an appeal, when he criticizes me for not developing a “larger scriptural vision” along the lines of John Paul II. If anything, Radner’s approach, and what he appears to be asking me to do, is more along the lines of the liberal protestant academy of the late 19th century.

To take one example, which I referred to in the earlier post: Radner accuses me (I think) of misrepresenting Rob Gagnon on the question of Jesus’ use of porneiai. Here is Radner:

...On the issue of whether Jesus actually says anything about homosexuality, [Haller] attacks Gagnon on his reading of porneiai in Mark 7:21ff. as possibly implying homosexual practice.

Haller provides some straightforward initial questions, ones that are worth noting, and then pursues his general theme of same-sex references in the Bible as being primarily aimed at cultic prostitution. One might think that Gagnon is a rather silly man on this basis. But the reader is never told that Gagnon himself doesn’t put much weight on the very argument Haller attacks (half a paragraph, on a verse he questions as “authentically” Jesus’ in any case), while Haller, on the other hand, deals with the question at length (four pages).

First of all, to the accuracy of Radner’s characterization of Gagnon. From his reference to my book, one would think this was Gagnon’s only statement on what Jesus thought about homosexuality. In fact, it is the only text Gagnon can attempt to twist so as to put an actual condemnation of homosexuality (in his mind) into Jesus’ mouth. Gagnon, after all, is capable of such astounding statements as, “Jesus, both in what he says, and what he fails to say, remains squarely on the side of those who reject homosexual practice.” (B&HP, 228, emphasis mine) So much for actual fidelity to the text! However, I was addressing Gagnon’s earlier statement:

...No first-century Jew could have spoken of porneiai (plural) without having in mind the list of forbidden sexual offenses in Leviticus 18 and 20 (incest, adultery, same-sex intercourse, bestiality). The statement underscores that sexual behavior does matter. If Jesus made this remark, he undoubtedly would have understood homosexual behavior to be included among the list of offenses. (ibid. 191-2)

Contrary to Radner’s assertion, Gagnon expresses no doubt whatsoever that porneiai “undoubtedly” includes “homosexual behavior.” In addition, Gagnon holds very lightly indeed any doubt he may have that this verse is an actual statement by Jesus (“If Jesus made this remark...”) — for Gagnon, Jesus damns if he does say it, and damns if he doesn’t. This is a bizarre combination of Jesus Seminar color-coding and pure eisegesis — hardly what I would call sound scholarship. And yet this passage from Gagnon is quoted widely as a definitive summary of Jesus’ position on the subject, including in the Church of England’s House of Bishops’ position paper, Some Issues in Human Sexuality. Do I think Gagnon a “rather silly man.” No, but perhaps a dangerous one, whose agenda is at all costs to spin either what the Scripture says or what it doesn’t into an overarching message of disapprobation.

+ + +

I, too, of course, do have a “larger Scriptural vision,” though it may be that Radner cannot grasp it because he doesn’t share it. He dismisses my hermeneutic based on the “Summary of the Law” as if it were not in fact “a consistent moral ‘principle’ (discerned somehow as divine)” by which we are to understand the Scripture. I think that is exactly what it is, and from the mouth of Jesus himself.

This view is not some modern concoction out of Liberal Protestantism, as Radner thinks, nor is it a means simply to dispose of difficult passages, but the means to place them in their proper perspective in the over-all plan of salvation. This principle of biblical interpretation is the basis of Jesus’ and Paul’s own engagement with Scripture — and it is the font that waters the best reflections of the early church. As Saint Augustine put it,

Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up the twofold love of God and neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. If, on the other hand, a man draws a meaning from them that may be used for the building up of love, even though he does not happen upon the precise meaning which the author whom he reads intended to express in that place, his error is not pernicious, and he is wholly clear from the charge of deception. (On Christian Doctrine 1.36[40])

As Augustine later says, it is better to be accurate than not, and error should be corrected. But let the correction itself by clear and sound and specific — and not like the dense circularity of Gagnon, or the flippant dismissal of Radner.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Understanding God

SJF • Last Epiphany 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.+

Paul the Apostle, in that beautiful passage we heard today, acknowledges the incompleteness of our knowledge about God. “We know only in part,” he assures us, and even what we do know is like a reflection in a dusty mirror, a dim vision of the heart of reality that is too much for our eyes to take in.

The simple fact is that, as the old hymn said, the full truth of God’s love — for God is Love — “is broader than the measure of man’s mind” — beyond our full comprehension.

Have you ever tried to get a good look at the Empire State Building from 34th street? Well, if you have, you know you can’t see much. Standing at its base, you are too close to take it in — it is so overwhelming. Even from across the street you are still too close, and if you get further away other buildings will obstruct your view. The only place really to get an idea of how tall the Empire State Building is is to go blocks and blocks away, or even to Brooklyn or New Jersey — where you can then see it rising far above all of its neighbors.

Well, if this is true of a human construction, how much more of the creator of the world and all that is in it? We know from our reading of Scripture that Moses talked with God face to face — though even then we also know that God must have toned down his glory so that Moses would be able to converse with him. The one time Moses asked to see God in all his glory, just prior to the passage from Exodus that we read this morning, God told Moses he could not bear it and live, and so God made Moses stand in a cleft of the rock, with God’s own hand upon him until the fullness of God’s glory passed by, and only then did God take his hand away and let Moses see God’s back — the back of God’s glory — and that was enough to cause Moses’ face to shine with the reflection of that divine light. And ever after Moses had to wear a veil over his face, so that even this reflection of the back of God’s glory would not be too much for the people to bear.

And in our Gospel today, three of the apostles witness the revelation of God’s glory manifest in Jesus on the mountain-top; but even then the cloud of God’s presence mutes and filters and overshadows the dazzling scene — so that they might not be struck dead at the sight of God’s full glory revealed.

+ + +

So how can we come to any understanding of God? Well, first of all, as the doctor said, “Take two tablets and call me in the morning!” Moses comes down from his meeting with God, his face glowing from the encounter, but also bearing those two tablets of the covenant in his hand, God’s word, written by God’s own hand, ready to be delivered to the people. In this we may understand all of Scripture to be meant — all of the Word of God delivered to us in the Law and Prophets and Writings, in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and their letters, and the visions old and new.

And yet, just as the people couldn’t bear to look at Moses’ face, so too people then as now find even the second-hand glory of God’s Word in Scripture hard to understand — it will come as no news to you that there are as many different interpretations of Scripture as there are believers. There is an old Jewish saying that if you don’t like how your rabbi interprets the Scripture, you can always find another rabbi; and that in a room with five rabbis you’ll find at least six different interpretations. The same is surely true of Christians as well.

In fact, Christians can’t even on the whole agree on what the Bible is, let alone what it means, as Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, and Protestants disagree about which books of the Old Testament are to be included in the Bible — books accepted by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox as a part of their Bible are considered Apocrypha (suitable for reading but not for doctrine) by Anglicans and Lutherans, and not even included at all by Protestants. That’s why you’ll find different editions of the Bible with different books in different places, and sometimes going by different names.

Beyond these differences in the content of Scripture, in what the Bible is, we come to the various interpretations of Scripture. And here too, there is wide difference of opinion both between churches and within them. Every church will have a different understanding, or many different understandings, different shades of interpretation.

+ + +

So, how do we know which we should follow? Ultimately that question is rhetorical, as surely people will follow the interpretation that makes sense to them, that seems to speak to them, or else, as in the saying I quoted before, they’ll go off to find another rabbi — or priest or minister or church.

But I think there is some guidance to be found in what Saint Paul says in that passage from First Corinthians, about the need for love as the standard by which we judge whether our understanding and interpretation is in accord with God’s will. For as Paul says, even if he could speak as eloquently as an angel, or in miraculous tongues, or with powerful prophecy, or with an understanding of all mysteries and all knowledge — if his understanding and speaking and teaching were not based on love, it would all be for nothing. If his teaching or preaching or his prophecy did not ring the note of love, it would be like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And what kind of teaching would that be?

+ + +

Saint Augustine of Hippo was one of the early great expounders of Scripture. He had been a young man-about-town, living the high life, but he experienced a conversion and became a Christian towards the end of the fourth century. (He credited his conversion to the prayers of his mother, Saint Monica, and you can see them conversing in our stained-glass window in the corner.)

Augustine had a fundamental rule when it came to interpreting Scripture, and it was based on Saint Paul’s advice, under the governance of the love commanded by God — the love of God and neighbor. Augustine wrote: “If it seems to you that you have understood the Scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by this understanding you do not build up the twin love of God and neighbor, then you have not understood them... If on the other hand you have made judgments about [Scripture] that are helpful for building up this love, but for all that have not said what the author you have been reading actually meant ..., then your mistake is not serious, and you certainly cannot be accused of lying.” (On Christian Doctrine 1.36.40.)

This was Augustine’s standard, and it was wisdom then as now. Does how you read the Scripture, understand the Scripture, and teach the Scripture build up — or to use the old word, does it edify? Is your understanding set upon the firm foundation of the love of God and neighbor? That is a sound foundation, and Augustine makes clear that even if your interpretation of the Scripture might depart from what Moses or Isaiah or Saint Paul himself may originally have intended, you will not go far wrong if that interpretation leads to a greater love of God and neighbor. Love is the key that unlocks the Scripture, and that is true all the time, not just on Valentine’s Day!

For ultimately, love is God’s message, what God has been trying to get across to us from the very beginning — from the very first time God wrote with God’s own hand anything down to instruct the people, on those two tablets of stone, which I hope you will notice in the first tablet, the first four commandments how we are to love God (honoring God alone, not having idols, respecting God’s name, and keeping the Sabbath) and in the final six telling us how we are to love our neighbors (by honoring our parents, not killing, cheating, stealing, lying, or coveting).

And if we needed any further instruction, after all of that, Jesus himself provides us with a summary of the law of the two tablets as the very instruction that Augustine would later take as his key to interpreting the Scripture: to love God with your whole self, and to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two, as he said, hang all the law and the prophets — that is, all the rest of Scripture.

As another old hymn puts it, “What more can he say than to you he hath said?” Do you want to understand the Scripture? Do you? Let me repeat to you what God himself says in today’s Gospel in reference to Jesus, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”+

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What's Up with Scripture?

It is not that progressives such as I are teaching contrary to Scripture, but that we are interpreting Scripture contrary to a traditional teaching.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
more on this later

Peter Feeds His Sheep

Bishop Peter Selby has presented a superb reality check — bracing as a brisk Beaufort five — in response to the Archbishop of Canterbury's post-General Convention reflection. (I have to admit that the publication of such essays as Selby’s delay my own response, as I find words and ideas preempted and stated better than I could hope.)

In any case, it seems to me that Bishop Peter expertly demythologizes three of the primary myths of the Rowanian Mythos (the Rowanogion?):

• that merely deploring homophobia functions as a talisman or prophylactic against performing homophobia
• that mutual recognition and consensus lie at the heart of communion, as opposed to communion being the safe context in which disagreement can exist because of mutual love and respect, and as a consequence of this supposedly necessary consensus
  
• that it is necessary for the Anglican Communion to be able to speak with a single voice in its relations with other traditions, churches, and communions

Bishop Peter ably deconstructs these highly questionable propositions, and gently (in that British self-effacing way) reveals them for the half-truths they are. I will only at this point add to the undermining of the third by noting that The Episcopal Church has been quite capable of undertaking significant ecumenical dialogues apart from any supposed universal Anglican Teaching — with the Lutherans and the Moravians. (And does Rowan really believe that dialogue with Rome is anything other than what it has always been — and that whether Anglicans speak with one voice or not is immaterial, as the rock against which all such ventures run aground is the heir of that other Peter? Any or all Anglicans makes no difference, if they cannot submit to Petrine doctrinal and ecclesiastical supremacy. That is a defining teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, and she is not about to bend on such a fundamental doctrine crucial to her identity. The current incumbent of Peter's Chair has been very clear that doctrinal uniformity is central to the Roman notion of what it means to be a church. Anglicans adopting the same principle — contrary to our history and ecclesiology — will be of no avail to-Rome-wards if the doctrines themselves differ in detail.)

Meanwhile, some, perhaps correctly, see Bishop Peter's comments as aimed at the proposed Anglican Covenant. I see them more as addressing concern over "the Covenant via Rowan" — that is, not the Covenant as a text delivered as it were de novo but rather one that has emerged from a process so full of spin and intention, in particular from some of the authors of the earlier drafts, that it will never be free of spin and second guessing, under hermeneutics of deeply suspicious pedigree. However much persons such as I might want to see the Covenant as a way to hang together, and work through our differences, this may not be possible. The "our" is in my mind the set of those who can tolerate differences of opinion and continue to work together. Others (such as the ACI+Wright) want the consensus first, so that only those who already agree about everything important will be in this new and peaceable communion. This is where Selby's concerns about "two tracks" come in: for if consensus is to be the Shibboleth for admission to the Covenanted Communion, what really is the point? Likemindedness, mutual recognition, uniformity, univocality -- these are all very nice things, but as Iris Murdoch reminded us, there is a huge gap between the Nice and the Good.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Biblical Wedding Cake Ornaments

Suitable for use as a bookmark in any Bible.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 05.30.09

One of the most graceful and grace-filled things about a close examination of and intimate relationship with the Scripture is that we can find implicit ways better to understand some of its explicit language. If this were not so, the Scripture would long ago have been dead to us; while, on the contrary, the Spirit continues to guide and instruct the people of God, to better, and more charitable ways of life.

— Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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

Mything Persons (2)

It is no accident that the mid-to-late 19th century catch-up with the Enlightenment on the part of the mainstream protestants (higher criticism, etc.) coincided with the rise in popular interest in the Gothick and Magick. Nor is it unfair to observe that the flourishing of Bultmann's agenda of demythologizing, and the "death of God" coincided with the sudden appearance of flying saucers. Such is our hunger for the Transcendent Other that we will give into consuming that which is not wholesome if we lack what is. The hubris of claiming to understand the incomprehensible, to whittle the divine down to solely human dimension (neglecting that all-important Other nature in the person of Jesus, who is not just us-writ-large but God-made-present), the quest for the merely historical instead of the sacred story -- these were among the greatest missteps in the church's earthly pilgrimage. We buried our treasure in a field.

—Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

How they got here

I see from a news report that the Anglican Communion Network (h/t Thinking Anglicans) is prepared to pass a sputtering torch to the new, emerging “Anglican” “Province” in North America. (I may run out of scare quotes before this is all over.) The Network confesses that it has failed in its purpose to recall the Episcopal Church to its standards of orthodoxy, and even goes so far as to suggest that this purpose is beyond achievement. Thus the torch they are passing to ACNA is not only sputtering but extinguished.

This reminder of the Network’s failed purpose helps to bring into focus one of the major problems with the present mess into which the Anglican Communion has descended. Though I acknowledge the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada played their part in providing grist for a particular mill, still, the decision to drive that mill at a pace which has caused the whole mechanism to fall apart seems to lie with the Network and its allies — and their almost complete misunderstanding of what they had been advised to do or not to do by Archbishop Rowan Williams.

At this point they already said that Rowan Williams counts for little — he has not backed them up in what they have wanted to do. But it is worse than that. It may be that he did not understand them, but surely they did not understand him, nor did they follow through on doing what he asked them to do. I have not been alone in noting the nuanced and sometimes impenetrable language Rowan Williams uses, but the more I listen to him and the more carefully I listen the more consistent and thoughtful he appears to be. Perhaps, like Mark Twain, we are all learning that while our father in God seemed, in our youth, to be incredibly dense, we have discovered that the older we grew the wiser he has become.

The main thing people misunderstand about Rowan Williams — on both sides of the aisle — is that he is resolutely committed to working things out through the existing mechanisms of the organization. He is what some might call an institutionalist. Hence his initial displeasure with the Episcopal Church — holding as he does to the notion that Lambeth 1.10 represents the mind of the Communion, even if his own opinions tend another way (and I think they still do, by the way, contrary to what I think are other misreadings of some of his statements — but this just goes to show the depth of his commitment to proper process.) We might note as well his continued pressing for some kind of covenant, some rules in a book instead of facts on the ground. Everything Rowan Williams says has to be understood with this hermeneutical key: people should follow the rules. Perhaps he is a Benedictine at heart?

It is by failing to grasp this fundamental Rowanite principle that the Global South and its North American supporters/ambassadors have come to their present situation, on the verge of walking apart from the Canterbury-centered Anglican Communion.

This has been going on for a long time. When Bishop Duncan and his friends approached the Archbishop with the proposal to form a ‘network of confessing parishes and dioceses,’ the archbishop gave the nod. What, after all, is wrong with that? Anglicans have been forming networks or parties from the very beginning — in England the great mission societies emerged through that very process, as evangelicals and high church Anglo-Catholics worked within their own circles to build up the church in the way they thought it ought to be built.

But almost from the very beginning, the Network functioned, not as an underground body continuing to work within the structures of the larger church, out of step with which it felt itself to be — which is, after all the model for a confessing church in the manner of Bonhoeffer. No, the Network came to see itself not even as leaven in the loaf, but more like the dedicated portion of the challah loaf, though in this case a portion which would come to replace the rest of the body since it could not transform it. The rhetoric of “two churches” instead of a movement within one church began very early on in this particular turn of the Episcopal carousel.

And so it continued. In spite of Archbishop Rowan’s repeated declarations of the “un-helpfulness” of such things as AMiA and CANA, and his refusal to recognize as Anglican bishops those who staff these adventures and incursions; in spite of his explicit comments about those who chose to absent themselves from Lambeth, and his references to the language of “walking apart” from the Windsor Report — in spite of all this, the “Anglican Church in North America” still seems to hold out that sputtering hope that they will become the official Anglican presence in North America.

They shall become something; what they will become is too soon to tell. But I surmise that they will not, like the Episcopal Church, be a member of the Anglican Communion, a fellowship of autonomous churches in communion with the See of Canterbury.

Tobias Haller BSG