Good Earth

Joachim and Anna are remembered as the Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I've chosen to portray them in this image as a rather earthy Jewish peasant couple, married, so the legend goes, for decades before being blessed with issue. I can only guess that the household in which Mary grew to marriageable age herself must have been a happy one, full of joy and love. Things like this run in the family, and what a family it is! Remember, we are adopted into it; so let joy abound!

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

People, Places, and Things

Looking at the big picture of Creation, and hearing how it groans in expectation...

A sermon for Proper 11a 2014 • St James Fordham • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place — and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

After my mother passed away, my youngest sister took up the task of trying to make some orderly sense out of the boxes of loose photographs that my mother had accumulated over the years. Not only were there a number of photos from her own mother and grandmother, but of those taken in my generation — and I was the oldest of six, so there were a lot of photos. There were literally hundreds of them, and it was a challenge to sort through them.

One response to organize such pictures is to divide them up into three familiar categories, at least to begin to get a handle on the task: to sort them into three piles of pictures: people, places, and things. For some pictures, the sorting is easy: the baby pictures, the school pictures, the graduation pictures, first communion, confirmation — those all go into the “people” pile; while the views of the Grand Canyon or the Belvedere Fountain in Central Park go into the “places” category; and the photos that my dad took of his model airplanes are clearly to be numbered among the “things.”

But what do you do with the picture of Mom and Dad standing in front of the Washington Monument? Is that a “people” picture or a “place” picture — or even a “thing” picture if you have a collection of pictures of monuments? How do you categorize something that seems to fit in many different categories?

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This morning’s Scripture readings face us with just such a challenge. At first glance, as with some pictures, it seems to be easy: the reading from Genesis is clearly about Jacob’s experience at the place, about Jacob’s experience of the place that he would come to call Bethel. The reading from Romans is clearly about people, in particular about us as we become children of God. Finally, the reading from Matthew is about the weeds and the wheat and the harvest — all of them things.

But when we look bit closer the categories are not quite as clear as they appear at first. The reading from Genesis is about a place — a place in which Jacob begins by making a pillow out of a stone, lying down to sleep and to dream. Clearly this is no ordinary place, and Jacob recognizes it as the gateway to the house of God — which is what Bethel means in Hebrew.

But in addition to it being about that holy place — there are those things: the stone, to oil, the ladder, the gate; and the people (or perhaps I had better say the personalities) of Jacob, the angels, and the God of Abraham and Isaac — now to become the God of Jacob as well, as he makes with him a covenant of adoption and promises to be with him to keep him wherever he goes. Whatever place he goes to, God will personally be with him.

Which brings us to the second reading, which is clearly about people, and how we are adopted, through the Spirit of God as children of God, as the Spirit leads us to cry out, “Abba! Father!” Yet no sooner does Paul describe the personal aspect of adoption, than he turns around and applies it to a thing — the thingiest thing there is, the whole creation, the very embodiment of thingdom! For what is more a creature than creation? And Paul is bold enough to claim that redemption is not just for people, but for that whole creation; that somehow in God’s good time and place, “the whole creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God!” This is one of the Scriptures I point to whenever people ask me if I believe whether our pets, our animal companions, will share with us in the resurrection. I am also comforted and encouraged by the words of the Psalms. For they not only call upon all things that have breath to praise the Lord — and believe me, if you have a pet cat or dog, you know they have breath! — but also for the trees to clap their hands and even for the hills and mountains to leap for joy. This brings us back to Saint Paul is saying — “the whole creation” must mean “the whole creation” — that is, there is nothing outside God’s grace and redemption, for God hates nothing — no thing — that God has made.

Finally, in that reading from Matthew, we appear to be dealing with just such things — the seed, the weeds, the wheat, the harvest — but then Jesus offers an explanation of this parable to the disciples and he immediately brings in places — all places, for the field is the world. He then he tells of those people: the Son of Man and the children of the kingdom and the children of the evil one, and the enemy, and the very angels themselves, the same ones whom Jacob saw ascending and descending upon that ladder.

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So what are we to make of this? What categories can we use? Perhaps the key after all lies in that lesson from Romans. Perhaps what God is trying to tell us this morning is that the categories we create to divide up the world aren’t quite so clear as we think them to be — that we and the angels, and the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, and the seed of the fields, and the trees of the forest, and the forest itself, and the hills and the valleys and the mountains — indeed that the whole of creation is groaning in the pains of childbirth until now.

Instead of an assortment of little pictures, there’s just one big picture: a view such as perhaps the first man who walked on the moon had, forty-five years ago today, looking back and seeing that the world was not split up into many different things, but is one beautiful thing, hanging there in the sky. The whole creation is awaiting the redemption that is not just our destiny but the destiny of all that God has made.

Perhaps God is saying to us that we are all in this together — that although human beings do hold a special place in God’s creation, as people who are more than mere things, yet we still share the role of creatures, with all of God’s creation. I mentioned pets, our animal companions, but there are others: we usually treat our pets fairly well, but there are others we don’t so well. It does not take a great stretch of imagination to look into the eyes of a captive orangutan, whose young have been stripped from her, sent off to a zoo somewhere — confined now to a cage in a forest in which she once ranged freely, but has now been torn down, burned down so they could plant a plantation for the production of palm kernel oil — it doesn’t take much to look into the depth of those sad, sad eyes of the captive orangutan and ask, What have we done to our fellow creatures? It does not take much of a great stretch of experience — although it seems to be a stretch too far for some — to see the collapsing ice sheets of Antarctica, the disappearing glaciers of northern Europe and Canada and the Alps, the polar bears vainly trying to swim because there is no more ice left for them to climb upon — it is no great stretch to see our profound impact on creation — and, oh, how it groans! It does not take a great stretch of imagination to look at the raging wildfires of the American West, or the smog in China so thick you can cut it with a knife, and not ask yourself, “What have we done?”

Perhaps God is trying to tell us in these powerful lessons — lessons written not only in the pages of Scripture but in the black and white of the world itself — that we do not live in heaven — we are still sleeping here on earth on our stony pillows and our dreams of ladders. And it is time to wake up, and out of our stony griefs to raise up Bethel. To take our part in making this world what God means it to be: God’s world, in which we dwell as guests. Too long have we thought that this world was just a place we could despoil and neglect, because we were headed for a better one up that ladder into the world to come. What does Saint Paul say? The creation has been waiting, waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God? And when we are revealed, what are we revealed to be? Will we be seen as those who did not care, who despoiled and neglected God’s creation; or worse: will some of us be seen as enemies of God’s creation who spread bad seed upon God’s field, so that it brought forth weeds instead of wheat? Is it not written, as you have sown, so shall you reap?

My brothers and sisters, these are sobering questions for us today, far more important than the mere categories of people, places, and things. It is the whole creation — the big picture — of which we form a part, and which we change — for better or for worse — by our actions. We are not called to divide things up, but to pull them together: not to divide, but to unite. God intended humanity to care for creation — pulling it all together. Let us, my friends, be responsible stewards of that which has been committed to our care — and for which — one day — we will be called to render an account.+

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The Long View

William White had the good fortune to live a long and active life (1748-1836). This took him through the early years of the Episcopal Church, in which he was a major participant as layman, priest and bishop. While not the first American bishop (Seabury holds that title) he was soon in the mix. Since it takes three bishops to consecrate a bishop, no sooner had Samuel Seabury returned from Scotland than the young American church put forward William White of Philadelphia and Samuel Provoost of New York, who were consecrated as our second and third bishops.

White was a devout pastor, founding several charitable and educational institutions to help the poor, the deaf, and a ministry devoted to helping prostitutes rebuild their lives. White also served as the Episcopal Church’s first Presiding Bishop. His Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church (his 1836 second edition is available free on-line in ebook format) provide a fascinating glimpse into the formative years of the church, from his unique perspective.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
This was one of my first efforts at a "quick icon" in wash on paper

The Circle of Our Embrace

If you ask someone to define a circle, you will likely get several different definitions, depending on their mathematical sophistication; but if they are good definitions they will be accurate. Some may be procedural: a circle is the shape traced by a compass moving through 360 degrees. Others may be Euclidean: a circle is the set of all points in a plane equidistant from a single point. Note that these “definitions” can also accurately be called “descriptions.” They both limit what a circle is and how a circle is formed. The question, “But why is a circle defined or described in this way?” — were it to arise — would very likely be met with a blank stare; though a wise philosopher might simply respond that this is a convention useful in geometry and mathematics, and of course there are an infinite number of circles that can be drawn around any given point, and this gives us a tool to name them and work with them.

Would that the marriage debate were so simple. There are some for whom it is that simple, in their own minds. Marriage is “defined” — for example — as “the lifelong union of one man and one woman,” and any example that doesn’t meet the definition falls outside the term. Some such definitions are also fairly called “descriptions” but nonetheless draw the line at some things being within the category while others are not.

Leaving aside the reality that a strict application of that definition fails to address whether a marriage that ends in divorce was ever a marriage, or still is, the more serious problem arises when people ask the question about marriage that I hazard no one would ask about circles: “Why is marriage limited in this way.”

When faced with this question, some will resort to a merely definitional and tautological approach that boils down to, “Because that’s what marriage is.” This is unassailable, but also not a real answer to the question, as it begs it.

Other answers will commonly include an appeal to the fact that only men and women can procreate. Of course, the problem with that answer is evident: people can procreate without marriage and marry without procreation — so clearly the ability or the lack thereof cannot be essential. The creation of such notions as virtual or potential procreativity seem even further removed — and beside the point as even those who definitely can procreate might not marry or procreate; and this particular dodge is ultimately a subterfuge to preserve the “man and woman” requirement in their essential, rather than procedural, reality — which the more astute among you will recognize as another form of begging the question.

Among other appeals will be the well-worn fallacies of appeal to authority, tradition, or numbers — forces to which one may choose to bend but which are not in themselves proof of the rightness of the premise.

Ultimately, the question with which we have to deal is much more serious, and much more complex, than simple definition or description. It concerns the lives and loves of countless human beings, seeking to order their lives under a discipline that allows those lives and loves to flourish and grow. It is not easy to stretch definitions when they are deeply entrenched in a culture, but it is incumbent upon us to recall that marriage is a cultural convention, and an infinite number of circles that can be inscribed round any given point.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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The Failure of Mission

There has been a new development in the case of Canon Jeremy Pemberton, a Church of England priest and chaplain who had the temerity to marry his beloved of many years, Laurence Cunnington. Jeremy works as a chaplain for the National Health Service (NHS), and was up for a promotion; but because the promotion requires a license (or licence, as the English spell it) and the bishop has denied the license, his promotion is on hold. Laurence has written an eloquent summary of the situation.

This is a sad example of what happens when a church loses sight of its primary ministry and mission, and allows secondary (or tertiary or even more remote "concerns") to deflect the implementation of ministry.

For there are few ministerial offices with the weight of dominical force; but among them is the commandment to minister to the sick. There is no dominical command either to marry or to refrain from marriage, though Jesus clearly held that there are requirements placed on those who do marry.

So in this case, the Church of England is not only confecting a discipline, but perverting the course of ministry by applying it.

I offer my prayers for both Jeremy and Laurence, and more particularly for that benighted institution the Church of England, of which I rejoice in not being a member, else my own ministry would be offered up on the altar of a false gospel.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

Youthful witness

Bernard Mizeki was a refugee from slavery who came to South Africa in the mid-19th century, and found more than a refuge — he found the faith. He became a missionary and catechist in Mashonaland, and suffered death at the hands of those opposed to the incursions of Europeans and Africans who supported the importation of a foreign religion. His body was never found, but a memorial was raised close to where he is said to have died as a martyr to the faith, and one who would not abandon those who had joined him in it. That memorial stands in testimony to this young man's willingness to testify.

The Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, who kindled the flame of your love in the heart of your holy martyr Bernard Mizeki: Grant to us, your humble servants, a like faith and power of love, that we who rejoice in his triumph may profit by his example; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

ikon by 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

Thought for 05.29.14

Two enemies there are of doing work;
the one says, “It’s not my job,”
the other, “If I don’t do it, no one will.”

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Marriage as Eschatological Sign

Ephesians 5:29-32 says that marriage is a sign for the relationship of Christ and the Church. Yet Jesus affirms (in Luke 20:35 || Matthew 22:30) that marriage is a thing of this world, and that the children of the resurrection do not marry; that is, that marriage does not endure into the life of the world to come.

Taken together these passages can be understood as indicating the role of marriage as an eschatological sign — a sign of the end and of eternity, in which the redeemed are united in one body (the Body of Christ) just as spouses are united in one flesh. Once that eternal union in the Body of Christ is realized, there is no longer need for the temporal union of marriage. In this sense, marriage is like a sign on a door that truthfully indicates what it declares, but whose function is fulfilled once one has gone through the door into the reality to which the sign pointed. Once the fullness to which the sign pointed is achieved, there is no need for the sign. As Jesus observed in a similar context, reflecting on how the things of this world ("eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage... buying and selling, planting and building" Luke 17:27,28) will pass away when the Son of Man is revealed, "Remember Lot's wife." (Luke 17:32).

For centuries it was part of the tradition to see celibacy rather than marriage as the superior earthly sign for the world to come, in which "they do not marry"; but by applying the imagery from Ephesians, marriage is also a sign for another aspect of that world: the union of the redeemed with each other and with the Lord.

So marriage and its opposite (celibacy = non-marriage) both can serve as eschatological signs; one by anticipating (analogically or metaphorically) in this world a state only fully realized in the next, the other by foregoing here a reality whose fulfillment is deferred to the next, but which in its practice anticipates another analogical aspect of that eschatological reality. In the life of the world to come all are celibate (not-married) yet united as One in Christ as he and the Father are One.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A Monk Worth His Metal

Dunstan of Canterbury is one of those tough-minded monastics who, while maintaining a foot in the world of contemplation, also managed to get his hands dirty not only with the stuff of the metal shop but of politics. Like it or not, is to the reforms that he and his colleagues initiated that we owe much of the concept of Established Church, with King and Archbishop working hand in hand. This is perhaps best exemplified in the creation of a full-fledged coronation liturgy.

The irony is that inbuilt tensions in this royal/monastic alliance ultimately contributed to its own eventual downfall in the days of Henry VIII. Perhaps a case of metal fatigue?

The Collect (from Lesser Feasts and Fasts)
O God of truth and beauty, you richly endowed your bishop Dunstan with skill in music and the working of metals, and with gifts of administration and reforming zeal: Teach us, we pray, to see in you the source of all our talents, and move us to offer them for the adornment of worship and the advancement of true religion; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The icon is part of my "real people" series.

Getting Real

The leadership in the Church of England is in the difficult position of wanting to oppose homophobia while retaining a doctrine that gives homophobia its underpinning. They ran into a similar bind when, in an effort to scuttle last year’s changes in civil marriage, they tried to pretend (contrary to the facts) that they had been supporters of the alternative of civil partnerships. Until the church can free itself both from mendacity and illusion, it will make little progress.

The real problem, of course, is that few in the church are willing to admit that “traditional” marriage does not qualify as one of those things that meets the test of Vincent’s canon (“always believed, everywhere, by all”). Yet it acts is if that were the case, talking about a biblical “definition” where one in fact finds myriad “descriptions” and a long and controverted history of reflection as to what constitutes marriage, and a longer series of equally contesting regulations concerning who can marry whom.

Had they approached the latest proposal (adopted by the state) as simply one more variation in an ongoing symphony, perfectly at harmony with much of the foregoing (though clearly dissonant with much of it as well) there might have been some productive dialogue and thoughtful engagement. But the pretense of a monolithic and unchanging “institution” from the time of creation even to this day is risible to anyone familiar with the Bible or the human history which that Bible in part records, to say nothing of the pilgrimage of the institution of marriage under the church’s care.

Marriage is not a proper subject of dogmatic theology, but at most of moral or pastoral theology. There is no core doctrine concerning marriage, and it is doubtful that the subject warrants a doctrine at all, and at least some of the efforts to construct a theological defense of marriage do more harm to theology than help to marriage. The church did very well without much doctrinal reflection on marriage for centuries. The creeds and classical Anglican catechisms are silent on it. The Articles of Religion refer to it as an estate allowed, and available to clergy as they see fit. There is no settled doctrine of marriage, only changing rules, laws, rites and ceremonies — all of these, as the Articles also remind us, subject to amendment by the church.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Show and Tell

Dame Julian of Norwich (1342–c 1417) is among my favorite saints, one whose writings have nourished my spirituality and my theology. She was an English anchoress, dedicated to prayer and contemplation, and in later life a source of wisdom and spiritual direction to other pilgrims.

She was led to this unusual manner of life due to a mystical experience. About the age of thirty she fell ill and was not expected to survive. During this illness she experienced the “shewings” or revelations of divine love, during which Christ in his Passion offered her glimpses and hints of that which is beyond comprehension, but which brought her deep comfort.

Scholars have debated the dates of composition of the short and long texts in which Julian recorded and reflected upon her mystical experience over considerable time. Whenever composed, they are full of a depth of wisdom and clarity of thought. I commend them to reading and study and further reflection, particularly in the nimble and able translation from the Middle English by Fr. John-Julian OJN, who includes both the short and the long versions.

The drawing above is part of my “real-life icons” series, inviting us to see Julian as she may have appeared late in life, when she offered spiritual counsel to another pilgrim, Margery Kempe. I hope I have captured a regard which says, in Julian’s famous words, that “all manner of thing shall be well...”

The Collect
Lord God, in your compassion you granted to the Lady Julian many revelations of your nurturing and sustaining love: Move our hearts, like hers, to seek you above all things, for in giving us yourself you give us all; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Creature Discomfort

Athanasius appears not to have been a cheerful chap. He had a good deal about which to be grumpy, including most importantly the threat that Arianism posed to the Christian faith. In his youth Athanasius attended the Council of Nicea, and he became and remained a powerful opponent of the teaching of Arius that rendered the Son of God a creature. To do this Athanasius had to step beyond the lexicon of Scripture to introduce the word homoousios  to describe the ontological unity of the Father and the Son, being "of one substance," and incidentally meaning just about the exact opposite of what we mean when we say that two things are "substantially the same." (This also demonstrates the principle that the truths of the faith cannot always be completely explained in the language of the Scripture.)

I'm continuing my venture of using living models for some of the early saints for whom no true likeness exists. Athanasius is usually portrayed as a sage elder, but I wanted to picture him more as the stern young man with penetrating gaze and the air of conviction he must have had in Nicea. So I asked my brother in Christ Joseph Basil if he was willing to model, and he agreed. I asked him to give me the hairy eyeball of a stern but concerned RN, and he obliged. So Athanasius is portrayed as one eager to bring the healing that adherence to a strict regimen and protocol provides. (Basil was one of Athanasius' biggest fans, by the way; he called him the "God-given physician of the church's wounds" — so a registered nurse is not too far off!)

Here is the collect for Athanasius:

Uphold your Church, O God of truth, as you upheld your servant Athanasius, to maintain and proclaim boldly the catholic faith against all opposition, trusting solely in the grace of your eternal Word, who took upon himself our humanity that we might share his divinity; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Pound Sterling

Only having heard select portions of Donald Sterling's private conversations, I would suggest he deserves the opprobrium one usually attaches to those who make insulting remarks about others behind their backs.

But I am troubled by the extent of the reaction to what amounts to personal views, however reprehensible or repugnant, expressed in private to an intimate. I am not only troubled as a firm believer in freedom of thought and speech, but also as one who believes in a right to privacy. In this case, it seems to me that even had Sterling's words been made in public they would be classified as bigotry, but hardly "hate speech." With all of the concern about the NSA, internet privacy, and so on, it seems counter to the trend towards recognition of freedom of thought and private expression to react so very harshly.

More troubling to me than that is the thought that this response itself represents a kind of quasi-Girardian scapegoating; as if the wrath poured out on Sterling somehow shows just how righteous and unbiased the judges are. Society can feel itself cleansed by its righteous ire at the miscreant, as if that feeling somehow rendered the society itself innocent.

Because it isn't. Racism still runs deep in our society, however much we like to pretend it is a thing of the past. The simultaneous dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and the construction of mechanisms of voter suppression is just a case in point.

So the Sterlings of this world do us all a service, reminding us just how closely beneath the mask the old hatreds fester. I have no interest in making windows into people's souls -- the mobile phone apps will do that for us; and when they do, I think the proper response is not a fine and an exile, but the cold shoulder reserved for nasty people, followed by forgiveness and help to reform, together with the recognition that if all private thoughts were shouted from the rooftop few of us if any would be able to face each other in the street.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A different slope

Last week I was drawn into a Facebook conversation with an English Evangelical. As always, I found it helpful and informative, not the least for confirming my sense that the general trend of my thinking is in the right direction.

The conversation arose in response to a recently publicized instance of polyamory — a trio of women whom the press said had “married.” This led to some “I told you so” fulfillment of the slippery slope: the promise that permission for same-sex marriage would open the floodgates to all sorts of other sexual variations. I’ve addressed this argument, and the logical fallacy of which it is an instance, elsewhere, and won’t repeat my comments here beyond the simple evidence that polyamory made its first appearance in the seventh generation from Adam, so blaming the gays seems an effort to close a barn door opened by someone else.

However, this was not the thesis that engendered the discussion. It was the more nuanced suggestion, “The arguments used in support of same-sex marriage can also be used to support polyamory.” This is a slope of a different slip, a logical fallacy so far as concerns addressing the validity of the arguments in question. That does not mean the phenomenon does not happen — a logical fallacy may still describe a true situation; but it remains a fallacy because it does not address the underlying argument.

As I noted on Facebook,

The thesis takes the form: Argument X in favor of Y is wrong because it can also be used in favor of Z. In the present instance, the claim is that arguments advanced in favor of same-sex marriage fail because those same arguments can be used to support, in this case, polygamy.
There are a number of problems with this thesis. Most importantly, it does not in fact disprove the validity of Argument X, but merely observes that the same argument may be employed in another case. Mere antipathy to that other case (which may reflect antipathy towards the first case) is in itself irrelevant. In reality, arguments that support things one holds to be good can also be used to support conclusions one feels are bad.

Let me raise a case where I think the thesis is true, even if fallacious. The libertarian argument in favor of same-sex marriage (or anything else, as it is less an argument than an ideology) takes the form, “People should be allowed to marry if they love each other and are doing no harm to others.” The same argument can be applied to polygamy, and very likely has been. But even though that is the case, it doesn’t actually prove the argument to be wrong, in either case. A whole separate debate on the virtues of libertarianism would need to be entered; and I think most people are neither fierce absolute libertarians nor equivalently doctrinaire authoritarians. In practical terms most people would, I think, given the popularity of another ideology, utilitarianism, home in on whatever alleged “harm to others” might result from any given action. (And however popular and common, a debate on the virtues of utilitarianism would also need take place!) So I concur that a libertarian argument may in fact have wider application than intended — but it may still apply in relation to the action and the harm that are the real subject of debate. If one wishes to debate the principle of liberty or utility themselves, that will have to be a separate discussion.

Getting back to arguments that I have actually encountered in the same-sex marriage debate, one of the principle arguments against it revolves around procreation. Again, I’ve dealt with the merits of that argument elsewhere at considerable length and won’t repeat it here except to note that the overlap between procreation and marriage is incomplete, on both sides.

But the proffered example of procreation can serve as a case in point in the larger question of arguments in favor of things one likes being used to support things one does not. For while procreation is cited as one of the “causes” for marriage, it can also be used as an argument in favor of polygamy.

This is not an abstract thought experiment, but a reality. Jewish law holds the command to “be fruitful and multiply” as binding on all men and women. This leads directly to polygamy in the case where a man’s wife cannot conceive (or has not conceived); Scripture provides case studies as with Elkanah, Peninnah and Hannah, and also that of Abraham (although Hagar remains a concubine rather than a formal wife). The necessity to procreate also leads to the Levirate law in which a childless widow is to be impregnated by her brother-in-law. This law figures in salvation history in the person of Ruth and Boaz; and when the question of the Levirate law is raised to Jesus by the Sadducees, he does not speak against it, in principle, though he does aver that marriage is a thing of this world. Closer to the Anglican homestead, observe the extent to which Henry Rex’s concern for the succession led him to employ, and then reject, the Levirate law; and even briefly, so it is said, to contemplate plural marriage — precisely what the pope accused him of undertaking when he married “Anne of a thousand days.”

On the other side, a negative argument involving procreation is often advanced against same-sex marriage, as a kind of Kantian categorical imperative: that if everyone practiced it the human race would cease to exist. However, the same argument can be advanced against celibacy. Again, this is not merely theoretical, but (in keeping with the understanding of the "first commandment" to multiplication of the human species) forms part of the groundwork for the opprobrium attached to celibacy in mainstream rabbinic Judaism.

Ultimately we owe to the scholastic church the fine argument that the command to procreation is addressed to the species as a whole, not to all individual members of it. This let the celibates off the hook, but the application to family planning has run aground on the shoals of natural law — another example of the fact that arguments can be applied to different concerns with very different results.

In summary, then, it would appear that arguments ought to be weighed on their own merits, not on ancillary or subsidiary possible circumstances. Those represent slopes down which it is not at all necessary to slip.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Adam Found the Tree of Life

For many years I searched to find this place. The way
was watched by angels armed with swords;
and yet in seeking it I felt the Lord’s
love guiding me. With hope and fear, by grace
I made my way — I’m sure it was God’s will.
It was the Tree of Knowledge God forbade.
Its bitter fruit our innocence unmade;
had we kept faith we’d be in Eden still.
But this, the Tree of Life, was only lost
because we fell. In Paradise once more,
I looked upon the Tree, and what it bore.
The Tree had brought forth fruit, but at what cost!
I saw a wonder hanging from that Tree;
a man was nailed to it; he looked like me.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
1988

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Familiar Values

One of the welcome side-effects of the increasing acceptance of marriage equality is an increasing likelihood that people will become familiar with people who are gay or lesbian. There is a synergy at work here, and the effect is undeniable. There was a time when the accepted image of gay men was licentious, surreptitious and promiscuous; and that of lesbians pointless and tragic on one hand, or brutal and cruel on the other — and on both sides pathological. Beginning with the removal of legal restrictions and psychiatric categories, people began to see that these old stereotypes were just that: no more expressive of the family members and friends they had finally come to know than were minstrel coon caricatures actually reflective of real African Americans.

This growing familiarity has robbed the homophobic of the effectiveness of some of their favorite tropes. This has not stopped the continued trumpeting of these pet libels, though the mistaken trumpet is not rousing many in its call to arms. The recent Position Statement from the self-styled Anglican Mainstream is a case in point. Even though the discussion has moved on to marriage equality, the bigots (in the strict sense of those who seem unable to change in spite of evidence) continue to hammer away on gays and lesbians as licentious hedonists, disturbed and troubled souls stricken with a pathology from which they can be delivered if only they seek the right aid, but otherwise doomed to lives that will be short, nasty and brutish. They marshal discredited or misrepresented studies in support of claims that most people now know to be utterly irrelevant to their own experience of the gay and lesbian people they know and love.

There is a double effect here: the more extreme and irrelevant (and false) the claims of the homophobe, the stronger the reaction against it. The “moveable middle” instinctively moves away from what they perceive more and more actually to be nasty, mean, and wrong. And as they do so, friends and family who have kept their identity closeted begin to feel more comfortable opening the doors.

As the Gospel has it, the truth will make you free. Lies and fear will bind you. It is easy to see what one should choose.

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

The Foundations of Violence

Further thoughts on the Archbishop's Interview...

The reason anyone would attack anyone else over homosexuality is homophobia. So the answer to lessening violence lies in disabling its foundations: to combat homophobia. This means homophobia even in its genteel forms, which give aid and support to its more violent forms.

For instance, the notion that homosexuality is contagious — giving rise to fears that it will spread and infect heterosexuals and make them do things they do not want to do —stems from the notion that it is a disease to be cured, a pathology to be repaired. The homophobic basis of "reparative therapy" is not an innocent bystander, nor is the refuge, "But it is in Scripture" sufficient to warrant a claim of innocence. In case no one noticed, racism is in Scripture, deeply so, and it remains in place, systematized and supported even by the church, in spite of the Gospel and the Apostolic urgings against it, even to this day. It is in within living memory that the Dutch Reformed Church apologized for apartheid.

But back to homophobia: The idea that "if everyone were homosexual it would be the end of humanity" is indeed a frightening thought, so frightening I wonder why otherwise calm folks will make such an observation. They too should be reminded that the same is true of celibacy. Yet "moderates" will still make this or related observations about homosexuality and its alleged threat to society (often in the milder form of parroting the unproven thesis that it is best for a child to be raised by a mixed-sex couple). This is nothing more than a perverse application of a Kantian categorical imperative, and even if true would really say nothing than that it is an ideal that is often unrealized.

Moral: African violence against homosexual persons is empowered and encouraged even by those for whom the violence it engenders is repugnant.

I rather think, QED.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG