It’s a bit of a mishmash in terms of sequence, but the arguments themselves are clear enough (if sometimes over-intricate on linguistic matters). They are not particularly novel to those familiar with the debate: Haller points out inconsistencies of practice in the tradition, fastens on the logical conundra over the use of categories like “nature,” limits the meaning of biblical texts to realities that purportedly have nothing to do with modern homosexual partnerships and understandings (e.g. to cultic prostitution and idolatry), points out how Christian understandings and practice with respect to the law have changed in various ways (eating blood, slavery, etc.), and argues for a central gospel message that should control all Christian scriptural interpretation (the Golden Rule).
The book is a disappointment, however, on the level of a studied consideration of the topic in terms of Scripture and tradition. There are a number of reasons for this, some simply related to the genre of blogging from which these essays derive, others related to the form of argument Haller uses, and others related to the presuppositions applied to the arguments themselves….
Most readers who are not specialists will skim these long passages, perhaps assuming that the arguments must make sense because they are detailed and intricate. But they are not actually responsible arguments on these terms.
Interesting comments about the effect of blogging. One wonders if Haller would have produced a better book had he not had such experience. Based on a fairly extensive review of the relevant literature in preparation for the recent Mere Anglicanism conference, I’m not so sure. Since Gagnon produced his blockbuster in 2001, pro-gay literature produced within Church circles has tended to be fairly insular, generally avoiding careful and irenic scholarship. That is usually left to secular scholars with less of an axe to grind (see Nissinen and Brooten, for example). Haller’s book sounds like more of the same. Unless you’ve decided ahead of time to support the Homosexual Cause, you just don’t get to where these people are if you are doing any careful biblical work.
Sophistical is the word that comes to mind when thinking about Haller’s work. Thank-you, Ephraim Radner, for taking the time to so thoroughly respond to the “arguments.”
It’s interesting to read Mark Harris’s send up of Radner’s review — it amounts to an [i]ad hominen[/i] argument against Radner charging him with making an [i]ad hominem[/i] argument! I read Radner’s review earlier — it’s anything but an attack on Haller. If Haller’s blogging is the basis for the book, then anyone who has ever read a word that Thomas Aquinas wrote will recognize that he utterly fails to engage the natural law tradition.
Yes, I noted Tobias Haller seems to think that tradition and revision face the same burden of proof but the whole point of speaking of tradition is that it is, in some sense, authoritative. Of course that doesn’t mean tradition may not be “developed” in accordance with its inner logic – but that, the burden of proof lies with the one who wants to suggest such “growth”.
It’s a disappointing review. He asserts that Haller’s arguments have been refuted, but then doesn’t do so himself.
Then he complains that Haller doesn’t offer a comprehensive vision about marriage. Was that the intention of the book? It only makes sense if the primary aspect of the reasserting view of marriage has to do with how people have sex. However, if marriage is about “better to marry than burn” or mutual joy or encouragement, fidelity and goodness, then perhaps there’s not that much of a shift in the tradition.
Haller dispenses, using reason and scripture, the idea that complementarity is essential to Christian faith in the light of the resurrection; he disposes of Gagnon’s insistence that Paul must have known of same-sex lifelong partnerships. He also raises some interesting challenges (for example, if two heterosexuals can get married, why not three?) that don’t always appear to reasserters.
At least it was a well-written review. Mine was a bit more favorable.
1. To be fair he refers to Gagnon’s book and, I take it, implicitly to his own commentary on Leviticus. He’s also right IMO to note that Haller’s book seems not primarily intended to persuade those who hold to he church’s traditional teaching. (For a case that genuinely seems interested in speaking to catholic minded traditionalists, Stephen Fowl’s work is much more sympathetic).
2. More significantly he raises the question of whether the historical critical method is capable of responding, in itself, to what Scripture is in the life of the church.
3. If one is to argue for a development in the understanding of the providential purpose of human sexuality then a theology of marriage (and celibacy) is IMO pretty significant.
4. I obviously disagree about how persuasive Haller’s case is but it was very largely eirenically and thoughtfully made which is a plus in the midst of the deluge of mud slinging that often characterizes such discussion.
5. Thus, I can only regret the personalizing of the debate that one sees at Mark Harris’ site.
Personalizing is THE argument because it diverts from logic, data, and thought to the mush of feelings and emotions. It is the oldest play in the book for same-sex stuff.
Yes, sadly – the arguments, of course, stand or fall on their merits – diverting attention to folks allegedly impure motives is precisely to avoid engaging in “listening” to what they are actually saying.
#9 I should add even if Haller’s anti-complementarity argument works (and I don’t think it does, but that’s another discussion) – namely that the resurrection, in some sense, relativizes the theological significance of embodied difference – the typical conclusion of such a claim in christian history has been radically ascetic. That is, if one can begin to live like an angel now (to use Jesus own language) – then marriage as a whole is relativized. Thus even if Haller’s argument works it supports not gay marriage but “aneglic” celibacy. One would be, of course, obedient both to Jesus’ own example and to Jesus’ teaching in Mark 12.25 (and parallels):
I don’t really want to get into this, and will do so only to this extent, in an effort to calm the waters (I hear that Tobias is upset with the review and is working hard in various places to defend himself — no need). I mean Tobias no harm. He has written an interesting book. But we are really working in alternative universes here: on the one hand, from his perspective, one in which there is a truth that floats behind the Bible to which the latter’s parts are variously congruent or not (hence Paul — and much of the Old Testament — goes out the window in any intrinsically authoritative way); and on the other, from mine, one in which the Scripture as whole and in all its parts is “God’s word written” (as the the Articles state), all of it spoken by the Christ, and all of it therefore necessarily congruent in its parts one with another (“non-repugnant”, again as the Articles state). The last perspective, of course, still leaves open room for debate about particular matters of interpretation, but only so long as comprehensive, authoritative divine coherence and non-repugnance hold. And under no circumstances can the former perspective be viewed as consistent with the Christian tradition of the larger Church.
RE: “But we are really working in alternative universes here . . . ”
Boy — that’s the truth!
My favorite part of the review was not the specifics of it, but the three paragraphs that covered — yet again — from a global holistic way how the two camps [alternate universes] view Holy Scripture.
I’m saving these three paragraphs to quote for future comments:
[blockquote]Even though the purpose of Haller’s volume, then, is limited, it nonetheless makes use of more fundamental theological presuppositions that are worth noting. Most centrally is his understanding of Scripture. By and large, and despite the scattered nature of his treatments on the nature of scriptural interpretation throughout the book, Haller’s approach is squarely in line with the paradigm of liberal Protestantism: the Bible records the historically evolving interplay of God and human response, and this record has authority for the present only to the degree that a consistent moral “principle†(discerned somehow as divine) can be extracted from it.
For Haller, this principle is Jesus’ Summary of the Law, which subsists as authoritative through varying cultural changes embodied in the scriptural text. Thus, in his penultimate chapter, he explicitly argues that Paul’s words in the New Testament do not have the same authority as Jesus’, and indeed, have no authority unless shown to be “congruent†with explicit words of Jesus (p. 125), interpreted according to the Golden Rule (p. 138; c. p. 94). And given the ideal Gospel of love that transcends the historical contingencies of the biblical record, Haller can therefore approach that record selectively according to the kinds of historicist arguments he marshals in his apologetic handbook: this and that text is “really†about cult prostitution and idolatry, not homosexual sex; this or that text is “really†about male-female anal intercourse, not lesbianism; this or that text is “really†about the primitive biological views of an ignorant ancient society, not about a divinely wrought anthropology.
Although he claims that he wants to take the text “as the Church has received it,†he does not mean this in terms of the coherent meaning and authority of the text; only that he is not interested in “source†criticism. Haller is sensitive to “contradictions†in the Scripture and uses this fact as a fundamental justification for seeking a central interpretive cue that can relativize texts according to its application, through the analytical use of “reason†that can thereby cull and trim, determine cultural “desuetude,†judge relevance to the moment and need. The Laws of Scripture are useful insofar as they “saveâ€; once they cease saving, according to some cultural calculus reason performs, they lose their usefulness, and have only a historical value.[/blockquote]
And it’s interesting, Dr. Radner, that Tobias thinks the former approach is “patristic,” whereas the latter, the view of Scripture as an integrated whole that all speaks of Christ is not. We’re through the looking glass, to be sure.
It’s also strange that Tobias leans so much on Jewish interpretive tradition – whether correctly or not, I can’t say – to advance his case. How far are we supposed to take that line of argument? The same tradition is quite careful to explain why Jesus can’t be the Christ, but only a fraud. If he wants, I can refer him to a book, a third longer than his, that will spell it out for him. But then, as with the veneer of Christianity, I suspect the Talmud is useful to him only so long as it serves his own ends.
Thanks for the review, Dr. Radner, and for your comment #10. You’ve very concisely summed up the problem. We are dealing with what Princeton law professor Robert George (a committed Catholic) has aptly called [b]The Clash of Orthodoxies.[/b] The two rival worldviews or orthodoxies (in the general sense) are mutually exclusive, i.e., Liberalism, as an ism or ideology, is implacably hostile to genuine, biblical, historic Christianity, and vice versa.
As someone who hopes to start my own website (including my own blog) in the coming months, I especially appreciate your cautionary remarks about the limitations of the blogging medium. I mostly plan to post longer essays that can supply the kind of documentation, responsible arguments (as opposed to mere assertions), and larger interpretive context that Haller so conspicuously fails to provide.
Alas, if this is the best that “temperate and thoughtful apologists” for “progressive” views within TEC can come up with, or that the Church Publishing Company can find to make the pro-gay case, then progressive side stands self-condemned.
But we already knew that, didn’t we?
David Handy+
It made me recall Alastdair MacIntyre’s work in and after “Whose Justice? Which Rationality?”. He has a great recent essay on how we might proceed in the face of intractable disputes arising from different traditions of “rationality”. It’s in [url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/026802300X/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0268022992&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=02ZHMVKARREPHFZQDN9E]Intractable Disputes about the Natural Law[/url] (edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham).
The problem is that we are all, in some ways, informed by liberalism or have benefited by liberalism’s victories. It may be true that the bible is anti-liberal in a fashion. It believes in a collective good, it doesn’t see individuals as merely individuals but as members of a community (Israel), thinks of property as God’s and not as someone’s personal wealth, demands individuals submit themselves to the collective, and has an altogether different framework than the kind of capitalist system we find ourselves in.
We live in a system where desire is completely unfettered; to suggest restraining it is deeply anti-market and anti-American. Some prefer pot, jazz, their Volvos and don’t care about gay sex. Others drive their SUVs, eat at McDonalds, and buy guns. But we all like our own choices, and may hate the choices of others.
But certainly, nobody likes being told what to do.
Although I do agree that some of the challenges to liberalism have merit (a previous commentator mentioned Macintyre, and I’m fond of Wendell Berry and Christopher Lasch myself), there are some places in the world that are clearly anti-liberal, like Iran, Saudi Arabia and North Korea. I wouldn’t want to live in any of those places, although that might be my elitism speaking.
#17 — Years ago I heard exactly that argument made with great force in response to a long professorial address romanticizing Hooker’s world view. Yes, we have all benefited by liberalism’s victories. The problem is using liberalism as an umbrella category — in order for the argument to work it has to include, say, Hooker, Hobbes, Locke, the Enlightenment, and the Founders; Lincoln, Wilson, and both Roosevelts; all lumped together with our current cultural anarchy. The reality is more nuanced — particularly the notion that the liberal tradition can be reduced to individualism without remainder; and that individualism, in turn, can be reduced to the “experiential-expressive” utilitarian variety on display today. It seems to me the liberal tradition has much deeper resources than that.