Luke Timothy Johnson is one of the great, great living New Testament scholars and in most respects a very orthodox Roman Catholic. His piece articulates what so many of us feel in our bones but don’t have the skill (or time) properly to articulate.
Thank you, Kendall, for posting this. Although I have not always thought so, you play a very clean game.
I strongly recommend reading the following paper:
Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Bodyâ€
Implications for understanding same-sex attraction and same-sex acts
JPI 840 Theology of the Body
For Dr. Mary Shivanandan Fall 2003 by James G. Knapp, S.J.
December 8, 2003 http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/mshivana/popejohnpaulII.htm
Here are some excerpts
“…Original Unity of Man and Woman: A Communion of Persons
This dual-union of the spouses is an icon—an image and reflection—of the interior life of the Blessed Trinity. The dual-union of the man and the woman is open to fruitfulness, and can result in “a third†through the mystery and gift of procreation.
… Responding to this mystery the pope teaches that man is in “the image of God†not so much in solitude, as in communion. The communio personarum of the man and woman is an incarnate reflection of the disinterested self-giving in the Triune God who created them. The unity that exists in their difference is much deeper than the “complementarity†of two individuals who find each other compatible. …
…The conjugal act, as expressive of the communion of persons, is to be found in the unity of man and woman. Freely chosen, freely and mutual self-donating, and open to the generation of children, the conjugal act is the normative expression of the one-flesh union. It is the “normative†understanding for the act because it expresses the interior meaning and ontological reality of the act itself.”
I believe that until a clear theology of the body grounded in Scripture, Tradition and Christian anthropology is developed. Debates on homosexual behavior will continue in the Anglican Communion and other Protestant churches. This is because there first must be a clear understanding of conjugal love. This is important because even within heterosexual marriage conjugal love can be and is violated.
I believe that homosexual unions can never be three things which are essential to Christian marriage. These three things are
Christian marriage is Trinitarian. Christian marriage is a mystery reflecting Christ and His Church. Christian marriage does not offend natural law.
The issue should not be viewed soley as heterosexual behavior vs homosexual behavior. But as what does the Church mean by marriage? How is conjugal love different from other love? And how can we offer love and support to those who may never be able to experience conjugal love? For we must never forget these questions involve real persons. Who are being asked to take up a hard cross. Too often we mock them on their way instead of helping them shoulder that cross. We can disagree but we must remember to be charitable for Christ’s sake.
Like JS (#1) above, I have huge respect for LTJ. We’ll always owe him so much for his expose of the Jesus Seminar for exactly what it is in his THE REAL JESUS. (The book is actually so much more than that. And his LIVING JESUS is a great blessing too.)
LTJ’s piece above is good, as far as it goes. The central problem with it, from the point of view of a Reformation Christian, is the high view he has (owing to his Roman Catholic tradition) of human capacity and the human will. He writes:
“By so doing, we [reappraisers of church teaching on this issue] explicitly reject as well the premises of the scriptural statements condemning homosexuality-namely, that it is a vice freely chosen, a symptom of human corruption, and disobedience to God’s created order.”
The key phrase here is A VICE FREELY CHOSEN. For LTJ, as for most Roman Catholics following Trent and the later suppression of the Jansenists, sin (or rather sins) are necessarily acts of man’s free will. If you aren’t FREELY CHOOSING to be a certain way, then that way can’t be a sin. Thus the RC emphasis on sins (plural) — acts — that could be individually repented of and chosen not to be commited again — along with other kinds of willed actions done to make the sinner worthy of forgiveness (acts of contrition or penance).
Luther and many of the other great later Reformers (Cranmer, Hooker, etc.) held a different view, one centered in texts like Romans 7 and the Antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount: which is that the problem was not with what we do (sins) but who we are (sin); not with apparently willed behaviors which (if only we got enough coaching) we could stop doing, but with the singular internal state from which they spring.
So, to return to the specific question that LTJ addresses, namely homosexuality: Reformation Christians have no problem accepting the testimony of gay people that they aren’t freely choosing this. We have no problem with it because our understanding of sin is that it includes all kinds of uncontrollable and even unconscious states (again see the Antitheses and Paul’s own self-diagnosis, given as a regenerate Christian, as a man profoundly bound in sin). We do NOT read Scripture (as Erasmus and many others have done) as defining sin to be acts of some supposedly free will — rather we see the general arc of Scripture as testifying in the opposite direction.
Of course, it could be true that homosexuality is not in itself sin. I am very willing to listen to the case for that — including the stories of people’s lives. But by simply pointing out that you don’t believe it is a freely chosen state, you haven’t advanced one inch in establishing that.
PS. This is not a minor academic point, relevant only to LTJ’s piece. It is a crucial error repeated over and over in the polemic of the gay movement inside the Church: that because we were born this way, it must be good. (Or equivalently, because I am not choosing this, it can’t be bad.) It came up again in Bill Moyer’s recent interview with KJS. Traditionalists hurt their own case by arguing about this, since (a) the gay people are probably right in most instances and (b) it implies agreement with them on a very high view of human nature which is (at least from a Reformation and 39 Articles point of view) unbiblical. Much better is to respond by dealing with the much deeper theological issue of the bound will and our consequent need for a Jesus who came for sinners and NOT the righteous. The bad news is that all of us gay or straight are saddled with sin we cannot control or freely will away (“Who will deliver me from this body of death?”) — and the Good News is that we have a Compassionate Christ, a Friend of Sinners, who’s blood can cover us completely.
John Stamper,
You fail to distinguish between venial and mortal sin in Catholic teaching.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines a mortal sin as follows:
“Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him.” (C.C.C. # 1855)
“Mortal sin, by attacking the vital principle within us – that is, charity – necessitates a new initiative of God’s mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the Sacrament of Confession.” (C.C.C. # 1856)
“Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the private of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance of God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion to make choices for ever, with no turning back. However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God.” (C.C.C. # 1861)
“To choose deliberately – that is, both knowing it and willing it – something gravely contrary to the divine law and to the ultimate end of man is to commit a mortal sin. This destroys in us the charity without which eternal beatitude is impossible. Unrepented, it brings eternal death.” (C.C.C. # 1874)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines a venial sin as follows:
“Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it.” (To “subsist” means to “exist.”) (C.C.C. # 1855)
“Venial sin constitutes a moral disorder that is reparable by charity, which it allows to subsist in us.” (C.C.C. # 1875)
“One commits venial sin when, in a less serious matter, he does not observe the standard prescribed by the moral law,or when he disobeys the moral law in a grave matter, but without full knowledge or without complete consent.” (C.C.C. #. 1862)
“Venial sin weakens charity; it manifests a disordered affection for created goods; it impedes the soul’s progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good; it merits temporal punishment. Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin. However venial sin does not set us in direct opposition to the will and friendship of God; it does not break the covenant with God. With God’s grace it is humanly reparable. ‘Venial sin does not deprive the sinner of sanctifying grace, friendship with God, charity, and consequently eternal happiness.'” (C.C.C. # 1863)
“Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s laws. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.” (C.C.C. # 1859)
“When the will sets itself upon something that is of its nature incompatible with the charity that orients man toward his ultimate end, then the sin is mortal by its very object… whether it contradicts the love of God, such as blasphemy or perjury, or the love of neighbour, such as homicide or adultery… But when the sinner’s will is set upon something that of its nature involves a disorder, but is not opposed to the love of God and neighbour, such as thoughtless chatter or immoderate laughter and the like, such sins are venial.” (C.C.C. # 1856)
So a Catholic can indeed sin without freely choosing to do so.
It is also important to state that the Church does not teach that someone can freely will away sin. It is only through the Grace of God in Jesus Christ that sins are forgiven. Those who commit venial sin do not have to confess to the priest and receive absolution. But they still must confess their sin to God and repent. It is grace that gives us the means by which to resist sin and to unite our will with that of God’s. No one dares be bold enough to say I can stop sinning without your grace. That is blasphemy.
Just read the Luke Timothy Johnson. Yes, we need to listen to personal experience. But it is a fallacy to assume that reasserters have no personal experience with same sex attracted people. For example, it is my observation that some grandparents are held hostage in that they cannot interact with their grandchildren unless they promote the goals of the same sex couple.
Just read the Eve Tushnet. I take away her advice: Do not set homosexuality apart as a specially stigmatized and identity-shaping category.
This is hard when the contemporary debate is about full inclusion of same sex active people who define themselves in this way. I think most reasserters are not claiming that same sex activity is the one specially bad sin.
But how do we have public discourse on the one topic without seeming to have singled out the one topic under debate?
And how do we avoid defining people by their same sex attraction when that is how they choose to define themselves?
Living a Christian life means:
• A life of submission to God and to His standards
• Crucifying the flesh instead of indulging it
• Choosing sexual purity over sexual immorality
• Actively pursuing holiness instead of unrighteousness.
• Seeking true intimacy with Jesus Christ instead of the false intimacy of same-sex relationships
In addition to the standard Bible verses against homosexuality, consider these:
Amos 3:3 Can two walk together, except they be agreed? (How can a Christian walk with God when their directions and values and mindset are diametrically opposed?)
Rom. 7:12-13 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. (The gay lifestyle is about presenting the members of one’s body as instruments of unrighteousness, but faithful Christian living is about presenting the members of one’s body as instruments of righteousness.)
Yes, I also want to state that these standards are no different for heterosexual persons, whether mental (lusting) or physical. One cannot be a straight porn indulger or a luster and be a faithful Christian, either.
Living a homosexual life means:
• Sexual sin (sex outside marriage and contrary to God’s creative intent)
• Unbridled hedonism
• Undisciplined soul: lack of self-restraint against indulging the flesh
• Living a life oriented toward doing what feels good, and surrounding one’s self with people who support that hedonistic lifestyle
The gay lifestyle is all about doing what I want, with whom I want, when I want, how I want, and nobody has the right to tell me differently.
This is in absolute opposition to being a “faithful Christian,†which means:
RevOrganist (#7), I liked very much your summary of the Christian life and I think you’re right. You said, “Seeking true intimacy with Jesus Christ instead of…” I have come to realize, and I think any real Christ-follower comes to realize that that intimacy is better than anything the world has to offer including intimate relationships with other humans. I think this is a point where there is a real lack of faith – maybe intimacy with Christ really isn’t worth dying to self, crucifying the flesh and self-sacrificial living. Of course some revisionists will claim to be intimate with Christ and I’ll just say that they are deluded.
Yes, the world would have us believe that it was created FOR us…. that we are to indulge ourselves rather than deny ourselves. There is a sense of entitlement that wants to believe it’s all about us, when in fact, it is all about God.
John Stamper; so well stated and so seldom heard. Sadly, a minority position within a minority position. I agree that your point is not a minor technicality, but crucial to the Gospel itself. The reformed view of sin and justification could be the vehicle for the two sides to find common ground, but it is pretty much invisible in the slugfest that passes for discussion between the two sides.
Living a homosexual life means:
• Sexual sin (sex outside marriage and contrary to God’s creative intent)
• Unbridled hedonism
• Undisciplined soul: lack of self-restraint against indulging the flesh
• Living a life oriented toward doing what feels good, and surrounding one’s self with people who support that hedonistic lifestyle
The gay lifestyle is all about doing what I want, with whom I want, when I want, how I want, and nobody has the right to tell me differently.
But my brother and his partner exhibit none of these traits whatsoever. Nor do any of the other same-sex couples I have known. On what research did you base your list?
#11 ember
You are saying that the same-sex couples you know are not having “sex outside marriage and contrary to God’s creative intent”.
However, if these are not celibate couples, then they are having “sex outside marriage and contrary to God’s creative intent”.
And if you are claiming they are not and publicly proclaiming such, then it would appear that they have chosen to “surround themselves with people who support that hedonistic lifestyle.”
#11
I base it on 30+ years living the gay lifestyle, and on the clear teachings of Holy Scripture.
Are saying your brother and his partner are not having sex? (As in the Archbishop of Canterbury said his clergy could register as couples as long as they were celibate?) I don’t believe it.
God created humans male and female for each other. THAT was His creative intent. All you have to do is look at our atanomy to see that.
RevOrganist
I praise God that He called you into true freedom found in Jesus Christ. That His love for you overpowered the sinful desires of your heart. That the mercy and forgiveness of Christ enriched your life and gave you hope. I pray that with His grace you continue to be a witness for His glory. That you continue to live the Gospel in your daily life offered in love and service to God the father almighty.
#10… Thanks Jimmy D! As two guys who’s spiritual lives were both so changed by Paul Zahl, you and I might want to talk some more sometime. (I bet you can feel the PZ in my post…. LOL.) My direct email is jstamperATL@aol.com. Feel free to give me a shout sometime if you want.
PS. TOTALLY agree with you about the idea that, if ever there could be a place where the two wildly polarized sides could meet, it would be in the Simul Iustus understanding of broken but redeemed sinners. I also loved the phrase “a minority position within a minority position.”
17. john scholasticus wrote:
The notion that God created male and female is no longer tenable in the light of evolution.
Now that’s interesting. Do you believe that humanity came into being by accident? Or do you believe that randomness and intentionality are not antithetical?
Regarding Luke Timothy Johnson’s perspective, I encounter this notion repeatedly among my “progressive” friends; but at its core, it seems more Existentialist than Christian. It strikes me as ultimately incoherent, not least for avoiding the admonition to “test everything,” but also in its conflation of impulse and action, at the nexus of which is human moral agency. If all we need to do is to rationalize our notion of “lived experience” with a completely abstracted notion of love, it seems we could consrue anything “natural” as good. But if we pay attention to what Scripture tells us about what God desires and about our true natures, this line of reasoning makes no sense.
The notion that God created male and female is no longer tenable in the light of evolution.
Aaargh! “If there’s a scientific explanation, God didn’t do it.” For someone who styles himself “John Scholasticus,” you haven’t spent much time with Western thought, have you?
Dunno about your circles, but in the theological and scientific circles I run in we don’t see Creation and evolution as a dichotomy.
Credentialism alert: I managed to Pile it High and Deep enough, too.
#19
I’m not a member of TEC.
Others: you can talk about evolution or you can say God used evolution. The second is my position. It doesn’t allow you to say God created male and female. That’s axiomatic.
john scholasticus, saying that God used evolution implies that you wouldn’t believe in purely random mutation. Your assertion in #17 makes sense only if you believe that humanity is an accident, otherwise, there’s no reason to reject male and female as the intentional consequences of God’s use of evolution. It should be self-evident, of course, that if God created life through evolution, it is specifically not evolution according to the materialist definition, i.e., random and purposeless.
… [The contention that] God used evolution … doesn’t allow you to say God created male and female. That’s axiomatic.
Why? This makes no sense to me at all. If God is sovereign in Providence, and God uses evolution, why can’t he have created male and female through the evolutionary process? It’s no different than saying he created you and me. That it’s a “random” process is no argument; you and I are just as “random” and “undesigned” as the very real differences between male and female.
Or, to use “outmoded” categories of thought, God is not the efficient cause of sex differences but is the final cause.
#23
Thanks for your response. Evolution is a very, very powerful explanatory tool and it’s all too easy for would-be sophisticated Christians to say: of course, I believe in evolution and of course it doesn’t conflict with Christianity. I agree with that, but subject to very rigorous qualification. Within evolution ‘purely random mutations’ certainly occur, but the ones that work win out (generally speaking: one has to allow for random things like comets hitting the earth). Is mankind an ‘accident’? Yes – and no. It still remains true and axiomatic that you can’t say: ‘God created male and female’. I have no objection to that being said in church – it is part of our tradition, it is true in a sort of long-range sense – but what you can’t do with it is derive from it allegedly irreversible condemnation of homosexuality (which also of course occurs everwhere in the natural world).
#24,26
‘God is not the efficient cause of sex differences but is the final cause.’
I have no objection to such a formulation, but it has to be interpreted as meaning that God started the whole process off (via the Big Bang), not that he intervened within the evolutionary process. That ‘not’ is absolutely crucial.
#25, 27 js, I suspect we could spend a long time discussing the nature of randomness, but to my point: your claim back in #17 can make sense only if you believe that God did not intend to make humanity. Non-intervention in ostensibly pure randomness is only “absolutely critical” for the preservation of the philosophy behind contemporary materialist accounts of evolution. How would you reconcile the notion of a random and purposeless process with the notion of an intentionally creating God? In an earlier post, you said you are not a member of TEC. Do you consider yourself a deist?
it has to be interpreted as meaning that God started the whole process off (via the Big Bang), not that he intervened within the evolutionary process. That ‘not’ is absolutely crucial.
IOW, deism is the only intellectually respectable form of belief? Do you unbend enough to allow God the cheerleading role given to him in panentheism?
What counts as “intervention”? And why is it so crucial that God doesn’t intervene? Is it theodicy (again)? Or the scandal of particularity?
Have you read Michael Ruse’s analysis, Can a Darwinian be a Christian? Ruse (not any sort of Christian, by the way) argues that the form of Christian belief most compatible with evolution is a rather Calvinist, conservative Protestantism. It’s another take.
#29
I have read Ruse.
Evolution doesn’t allow God to intervene in the normal course of events. As Christians we make exceptions in the cases of the Incarnation and Resurrection. It’s hopeless to hypothesise that God ‘created male and female’ in some sense outside the evolutionary process. If one does hypothesise this, one isn’t understanding or properly factoring in evolution.
Re #32, john scholasticus, it still leaves the question: How can you reconcile the notion of a random and purposeless process with the notion of an intentionally creating God? Simply importing a materialist account of evolution into Christianity cannot work. One or the other has to give, and it’s not a question of religion vs science or faith vs reason. It’s a question of which philosophical basis you choose to subscribe to. Whichever you choose, it has a significant effect on how you understand and answer subsequent questions.
PS: I hope I didn’t offend you asking whether you consider yourself a deist. I take your answer implicitly from, “As Christians we,” above.
PPS: Of course, our whole discussion of evolution is tangential to any question of moral agency, whether it exists and how we understand it if it does.
Hello John Sc! Don R is making a good point, which I hope you’ll think about and respond to. If I understand him right, he is saying that there is a difference between the fact of evolution (i.e. life on earth has developed over hundreds of millions of years from very simple forms to the current complex diversity we see today) from theories, some with metaphysical presuppositions, that seek to explain that fact. That’s why he distinguishes between “evolution” and a “materialist account OF evolution” — two things it appears to us that you are conflating.
#34 and indeed others.
I think evolution is enormously destabilising of orthodox Christian (or any religious) thinking. The question is: what can you hold on to? I – even I – want to hold on to some things. What I think you can’t hold on to is any notion that God after the initial Creation intervenes in any ‘strong’ way in the physical processes, which are of course very messy, except in the Incarnation and Resurrection. If you do think he does intervene in a ‘strong’ physical way, you get into insuperable difficulties, not only because you are ‘rewriting’ evolution in a way that doesn’t make sense but also because you then have to explain why God doesn’t intervene in horrible things, such as the Holocaust or the Tsunami. It’s silly to claim instance “x” as a ‘miracle’, when there are innumerable instances on the other side when no miracles occur. But to say that God does not intervene in any ‘strong’ way in the physical processes, is not to say that He isn’t still present in some strong participatory sense. (So my position is not deist.) On the other hand, I would not want to say that God ‘intended’ the arrival of human beings, because (on my understanding of evolution) it wasn’t inevitable that human beings should arrive and it is a virtual certainty that human beings will not always remain top dogs. Sure, in evolution there can be a progression from simple to complex, but equally it is demonstrable that there can be a regression from complex to simple (if, for example, as most evolutionists believe, small birds – even chickens – descend from dinosaurs). The most that God could infer is that there was a chance that someday some creature would evolve with which (whom) He could communicate.
How these comments devolved into a debate on evolution escapes me. To deny God’s continued presence in our daily life…that He continues to create and sustain life and all that entails…is a basic denial of who God is. According to Martin Luther, “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my limbs, my reason, and all my senses, AND STILL PRESERVES THEM; in addition thereto, ….. all my goods; that He provides me richly and daily with all that I need to support this body and life, protects me from all danger, and guards me and preserves me from all evil; and all this out of pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me; for all which I owe it to Him to thank, praise, serve, and obey Him. This is most certainly true.”
#36. Your comments deny the “Soverignty of God”… to choose when and where He will act, They also deny God’s creative intent…as Holy Scriptures decribes the creation of man, “Let us make man in our image.” You seem to limit your god to someone or something you can comprehend. My God is much bigger than that.
Holy Scriputres is God’s Word:
“For prophecy did not come in times of old by the will of man: but holy men spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. …” 2 Peter 1:21.
I challenge and deny those things which are contrary to what God has spoken through His Son and His Word.
“What I think you can’t hold on to is any notion that God after the initial Creation intervenes in any ‘strong’ way in the physical processes, which are of course very messy, except in the Incarnation and Resurrection.”
It’s a pleasure to know that you believe in an Incarnation and a Resurrection that involve real direct supernatural intervention in the physical world by a transcendent God — by which of course you are standing in agreement with virtually all Christians of the last 1900 years. Great! I am always delighted to find areas of agreement in discussions. But I am puzzled by what seems then a very arbitrary exclusion by you of the miraculous in all other areas. I have an atheist friend who believes on principle that miracles do not occur — and of course Deists like Voltaire and such also believed this — and I can understand them therefore having a purely materialist view of evolution and corresponding notions of purpose and intent in human history and the history of the physical world in general. But I am sure that they’d be just as surprised as I to discover someone who believes a dead man could rise from the Tomb, due to the supernatural act of a transcendent God, but who then is a priori convinced that no other miracles could ever happen. In a court of law, if you have established that a certain person exists, and he has intervened in a situation in the past by ways A and B, then you’ll have a hard time convincing the jury that of course it is impossible he could have ever intervened in ways C or D or E.
(2) You then say:
“If you do think he does intervene in a ‘strong’ physical way, you get into insuperable difficulties, not only because you are ‘rewriting’ evolution in a way that doesn’t make sense but also because you then have to explain why God doesn’t intervene in horrible things, such as the Holocaust or the Tsunami. It’s silly to claim instance “x†as a ‘miracle’, when there are innumerable instances on the other side when no miracles occur.”
But don’t you see that this objection really has nothing to do pro or con with evolution, but is simply a restatement of the problem theodicy wrestles with? (“Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” or “Why is there evil in the world (not caused by direct human agency)?”) Do you not see that this is a question that any theist could ask — and many agonizingly have — over the last 3000 years? There’s a book in the Old Testament called Job for example that deals with that. Your posts posit some kind of world in which these “insuperable difficulties” (e.g. the problem of theodicy) didn’t exist for anyone (e.g. post #38, in which you name Luther, the authors of the Old and New Testament, Jesus, etc.) because they had the misfortune of living before the publication of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
This is a problem that any Jew or Christian for the last 3000 years has had to deal with who’s lost their mother or son in some horribly cruel and unfair twist of fate. Nobody had to wait for Darwin to come along before it was an issue.
(3) You mention above that a belief that God could have intervened in ANY way in the unfolding process of Earth’s natural history involves “rewriting evolution in a way that doesn’t make any sense.” Can you explain why? I think if you try to explain clearly why you feel that way, you’ll discover that you are using “evolution” to mean “a completely materialist theory of the fact of evolution based on a priori metaphysical assumptions.” Otherwise as far as I can see there is no reason to exclude God’s agency as impossible.
Again, please take a look at what some of us have suggested already on this thread about the idea of distinguishing evolution as a statement of fact (“life on earth has developed over hundreds of millions of years from very simple forms to the current complex diversity we see today”) vs. theories to explain that fact (one of which would be a rigid materialism which has a METAPHYSICAL and therefore nonscientific assumption that is absolutely impossible for supernatural events to ever have occured in the development of life on earth). It’s OK if you belive this theory (although again I am puzzled because you also believe in the Resurrection) but regardless I think it is critical to distinguish facts from theories or systems intended to explain the facts.
#40
Hi, JS.
Thanks for yours. I don’t really think you come to grips with evolution in all its horrible plausibility. Evolution isn’t just the statement of fact that you make: it makes claims – seemingly correct claims – about the mechanisms whereby physical organisms develop (and note that they don’t always develop from simple to complex: it can go the other way). These mechanisms seem to be: (a) random mutation; (b) survival of the fittest (from random mutations); (c) chance events which reshuffle the cards (meteors, etc.). God isn’t operative in any of this (though He is in the initial Big Bang or whatever). Then come your questions:
(1) Since you are not a crude or abusive person, I freely admit that I have enormous difficulties in believing Christian (or any) religious claims. But I try, and I have devoted quite a large part of my life to trying. To the extent, then, that I uphold the Incarnation and Resurrection, I want to regard these not as God suspending the usual rules of the world (those rules being (a) the laws of physics; (b) evolution), but as God’s world ‘breaking in’ on our world. There are actually lots of Christian theologians (some of them Anglicans) who argue in this way. Beyond that, the more you import the ‘miraculous’ into the world, the worse you make the problem of evil, because you make God capricious and disproportionate. This notion of ‘breaking in’ is important on another level. If one believes in God, one has to be committed to the notion that God is spirit (difficult as that notion is – it is actually very difficult). One has then to believe to some extent in a form of reality which is different from our physical reality and to which to some extent we will eventually be assimilated. I get annoyed by those who (apparently) insist on a 100% physical resurrection, because such a resurrection would condemn Jesus and us to the material system we are now in (one that necessarily entails, eating, drinking, excretion, killing other living things, living and dying).
(2) I agree that the problem of theodicy has been acute for thousands of years. But it’s made more acute by evolution, because evolution makes death and suffering absolutely inevitable and intrinsic to the creation. I’m afraid I think it’s quite useless to argue that there was an original paradise state, and then humans ‘fell’. Post Big Bang, creation through death and destruction is built in.
(3) Really the same points. But to reiterate: evolution has enormous explanatory power. It does not plausibly (or morally) leave God ‘space’ in which to intervene much (if at all) on the physical plane.
I do actually believe (to the extent that I believe!) that the notion of ‘the suffering God’ is the way to allow God active (or passive!) participation in the world. God suffers in the Tsunami, God was present in the Holocaust (as the Rabbis said: the question was not, where was God? but, where was man?). God suffers on the Cross (the paradigm of all suffering).
Worse is to come. For me, the ‘point’ of the crucifixion is not so much to save human beings from ‘sin’ (highly prejudicial term, which glosses over the fact that bad things are intrinsic to the creation) as to show that God is with us, that out of all this mess (which is intrinsic), there is something better.
I’m very ‘liberal’, as you may now gather. But I am sure you can see that against such a perspective the question of what gay men or women get up to isn’t very important.
Exchanges like this one are amazing to me, for the charity and candor that can prevail despite the contentious topic. John Stamper, thank you for thoughtful questions, and john scholasticus, thank you for the honest and direct answers.
john scholasticus, unless I misunderstand you, you would agree with Paul in Romans 8:20-22, but would disagree with him about what God does or even has the ability to do.
You seem to have a clear sense of the brokenness of creation, including the brokenness of humanity. I find myself wondering whether that, coupled with your desire and efforts to believe and understand, might be true evidence that God does indeed intervene, however inscrutably, even in our very lives.
Even if you can’t believe that, doesn’t it make sense that a God who cares enough about humanity to suffer with us, might also care not only how we treat each other, but how we live our own lives?
I would suggest “Miracles” by CS Lewis
and “Resurrection” by Hank Hanegraaff.
Perhaps these thoughtful authors can help you.
Also here’s a site that might answer the “evil” question for you.
Sorry folks to have to say this………but I worship and an omnipotent GOD. He can choose to create any way He wants. I personally believe that it takes more faith accept the “theory” of evolution than “creation”.
Luke Timothy Johnson is one of the great, great living New Testament scholars and in most respects a very orthodox Roman Catholic. His piece articulates what so many of us feel in our bones but don’t have the skill (or time) properly to articulate.
Thank you, Kendall, for posting this. Although I have not always thought so, you play a very clean game.
I strongly recommend reading the following paper:
Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Bodyâ€
Implications for understanding same-sex attraction and same-sex acts
JPI 840 Theology of the Body
For Dr. Mary Shivanandan Fall 2003 by James G. Knapp, S.J.
December 8, 2003
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/mshivana/popejohnpaulII.htm
Here are some excerpts
“…Original Unity of Man and Woman: A Communion of Persons
This dual-union of the spouses is an icon—an image and reflection—of the interior life of the Blessed Trinity. The dual-union of the man and the woman is open to fruitfulness, and can result in “a third†through the mystery and gift of procreation.
… Responding to this mystery the pope teaches that man is in “the image of God†not so much in solitude, as in communion. The communio personarum of the man and woman is an incarnate reflection of the disinterested self-giving in the Triune God who created them. The unity that exists in their difference is much deeper than the “complementarity†of two individuals who find each other compatible. …
…The conjugal act, as expressive of the communion of persons, is to be found in the unity of man and woman. Freely chosen, freely and mutual self-donating, and open to the generation of children, the conjugal act is the normative expression of the one-flesh union. It is the “normative†understanding for the act because it expresses the interior meaning and ontological reality of the act itself.”
I believe that until a clear theology of the body grounded in Scripture, Tradition and Christian anthropology is developed. Debates on homosexual behavior will continue in the Anglican Communion and other Protestant churches. This is because there first must be a clear understanding of conjugal love. This is important because even within heterosexual marriage conjugal love can be and is violated.
I believe that homosexual unions can never be three things which are essential to Christian marriage. These three things are
Christian marriage is Trinitarian. Christian marriage is a mystery reflecting Christ and His Church. Christian marriage does not offend natural law.
The issue should not be viewed soley as heterosexual behavior vs homosexual behavior. But as what does the Church mean by marriage? How is conjugal love different from other love? And how can we offer love and support to those who may never be able to experience conjugal love? For we must never forget these questions involve real persons. Who are being asked to take up a hard cross. Too often we mock them on their way instead of helping them shoulder that cross. We can disagree but we must remember to be charitable for Christ’s sake.
Like JS (#1) above, I have huge respect for LTJ. We’ll always owe him so much for his expose of the Jesus Seminar for exactly what it is in his THE REAL JESUS. (The book is actually so much more than that. And his LIVING JESUS is a great blessing too.)
LTJ’s piece above is good, as far as it goes. The central problem with it, from the point of view of a Reformation Christian, is the high view he has (owing to his Roman Catholic tradition) of human capacity and the human will. He writes:
“By so doing, we [reappraisers of church teaching on this issue] explicitly reject as well the premises of the scriptural statements condemning homosexuality-namely, that it is a vice freely chosen, a symptom of human corruption, and disobedience to God’s created order.”
The key phrase here is A VICE FREELY CHOSEN. For LTJ, as for most Roman Catholics following Trent and the later suppression of the Jansenists, sin (or rather sins) are necessarily acts of man’s free will. If you aren’t FREELY CHOOSING to be a certain way, then that way can’t be a sin. Thus the RC emphasis on sins (plural) — acts — that could be individually repented of and chosen not to be commited again — along with other kinds of willed actions done to make the sinner worthy of forgiveness (acts of contrition or penance).
Luther and many of the other great later Reformers (Cranmer, Hooker, etc.) held a different view, one centered in texts like Romans 7 and the Antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount: which is that the problem was not with what we do (sins) but who we are (sin); not with apparently willed behaviors which (if only we got enough coaching) we could stop doing, but with the singular internal state from which they spring.
So, to return to the specific question that LTJ addresses, namely homosexuality: Reformation Christians have no problem accepting the testimony of gay people that they aren’t freely choosing this. We have no problem with it because our understanding of sin is that it includes all kinds of uncontrollable and even unconscious states (again see the Antitheses and Paul’s own self-diagnosis, given as a regenerate Christian, as a man profoundly bound in sin). We do NOT read Scripture (as Erasmus and many others have done) as defining sin to be acts of some supposedly free will — rather we see the general arc of Scripture as testifying in the opposite direction.
Of course, it could be true that homosexuality is not in itself sin. I am very willing to listen to the case for that — including the stories of people’s lives. But by simply pointing out that you don’t believe it is a freely chosen state, you haven’t advanced one inch in establishing that.
PS. This is not a minor academic point, relevant only to LTJ’s piece. It is a crucial error repeated over and over in the polemic of the gay movement inside the Church: that because we were born this way, it must be good. (Or equivalently, because I am not choosing this, it can’t be bad.) It came up again in Bill Moyer’s recent interview with KJS. Traditionalists hurt their own case by arguing about this, since (a) the gay people are probably right in most instances and (b) it implies agreement with them on a very high view of human nature which is (at least from a Reformation and 39 Articles point of view) unbiblical. Much better is to respond by dealing with the much deeper theological issue of the bound will and our consequent need for a Jesus who came for sinners and NOT the righteous. The bad news is that all of us gay or straight are saddled with sin we cannot control or freely will away (“Who will deliver me from this body of death?”) — and the Good News is that we have a Compassionate Christ, a Friend of Sinners, who’s blood can cover us completely.
John Stamper,
You fail to distinguish between venial and mortal sin in Catholic teaching.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines a mortal sin as follows:
“Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him.” (C.C.C. # 1855)
“Mortal sin, by attacking the vital principle within us – that is, charity – necessitates a new initiative of God’s mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the Sacrament of Confession.” (C.C.C. # 1856)
“Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the private of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance of God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion to make choices for ever, with no turning back. However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God.” (C.C.C. # 1861)
“To choose deliberately – that is, both knowing it and willing it – something gravely contrary to the divine law and to the ultimate end of man is to commit a mortal sin. This destroys in us the charity without which eternal beatitude is impossible. Unrepented, it brings eternal death.” (C.C.C. # 1874)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines a venial sin as follows:
“Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it.” (To “subsist” means to “exist.”) (C.C.C. # 1855)
“Venial sin constitutes a moral disorder that is reparable by charity, which it allows to subsist in us.” (C.C.C. # 1875)
“One commits venial sin when, in a less serious matter, he does not observe the standard prescribed by the moral law,or when he disobeys the moral law in a grave matter, but without full knowledge or without complete consent.” (C.C.C. #. 1862)
“Venial sin weakens charity; it manifests a disordered affection for created goods; it impedes the soul’s progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good; it merits temporal punishment. Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin. However venial sin does not set us in direct opposition to the will and friendship of God; it does not break the covenant with God. With God’s grace it is humanly reparable. ‘Venial sin does not deprive the sinner of sanctifying grace, friendship with God, charity, and consequently eternal happiness.'” (C.C.C. # 1863)
“Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s laws. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.” (C.C.C. # 1859)
“When the will sets itself upon something that is of its nature incompatible with the charity that orients man toward his ultimate end, then the sin is mortal by its very object… whether it contradicts the love of God, such as blasphemy or perjury, or the love of neighbour, such as homicide or adultery… But when the sinner’s will is set upon something that of its nature involves a disorder, but is not opposed to the love of God and neighbour, such as thoughtless chatter or immoderate laughter and the like, such sins are venial.” (C.C.C. # 1856)
So a Catholic can indeed sin without freely choosing to do so.
It is also important to state that the Church does not teach that someone can freely will away sin. It is only through the Grace of God in Jesus Christ that sins are forgiven. Those who commit venial sin do not have to confess to the priest and receive absolution. But they still must confess their sin to God and repent. It is grace that gives us the means by which to resist sin and to unite our will with that of God’s. No one dares be bold enough to say I can stop sinning without your grace. That is blasphemy.
Just read the Luke Timothy Johnson. Yes, we need to listen to personal experience. But it is a fallacy to assume that reasserters have no personal experience with same sex attracted people. For example, it is my observation that some grandparents are held hostage in that they cannot interact with their grandchildren unless they promote the goals of the same sex couple.
Just read the Eve Tushnet. I take away her advice: Do not set homosexuality apart as a specially stigmatized and identity-shaping category.
This is hard when the contemporary debate is about full inclusion of same sex active people who define themselves in this way. I think most reasserters are not claiming that same sex activity is the one specially bad sin.
But how do we have public discourse on the one topic without seeming to have singled out the one topic under debate?
And how do we avoid defining people by their same sex attraction when that is how they choose to define themselves?
Living a Christian life means:
• A life of submission to God and to His standards
• Crucifying the flesh instead of indulging it
• Choosing sexual purity over sexual immorality
• Actively pursuing holiness instead of unrighteousness.
• Seeking true intimacy with Jesus Christ instead of the false intimacy of same-sex relationships
In addition to the standard Bible verses against homosexuality, consider these:
Amos 3:3 Can two walk together, except they be agreed? (How can a Christian walk with God when their directions and values and mindset are diametrically opposed?)
Rom. 7:12-13 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. (The gay lifestyle is about presenting the members of one’s body as instruments of unrighteousness, but faithful Christian living is about presenting the members of one’s body as instruments of righteousness.)
Yes, I also want to state that these standards are no different for heterosexual persons, whether mental (lusting) or physical. One cannot be a straight porn indulger or a luster and be a faithful Christian, either.
Living a homosexual life means:
• Sexual sin (sex outside marriage and contrary to God’s creative intent)
• Unbridled hedonism
• Undisciplined soul: lack of self-restraint against indulging the flesh
• Living a life oriented toward doing what feels good, and surrounding one’s self with people who support that hedonistic lifestyle
The gay lifestyle is all about doing what I want, with whom I want, when I want, how I want, and nobody has the right to tell me differently.
This is in absolute opposition to being a “faithful Christian,†which means:
RevOrganist (#7), I liked very much your summary of the Christian life and I think you’re right. You said, “Seeking true intimacy with Jesus Christ instead of…” I have come to realize, and I think any real Christ-follower comes to realize that that intimacy is better than anything the world has to offer including intimate relationships with other humans. I think this is a point where there is a real lack of faith – maybe intimacy with Christ really isn’t worth dying to self, crucifying the flesh and self-sacrificial living. Of course some revisionists will claim to be intimate with Christ and I’ll just say that they are deluded.
Yes, the world would have us believe that it was created FOR us…. that we are to indulge ourselves rather than deny ourselves. There is a sense of entitlement that wants to believe it’s all about us, when in fact, it is all about God.
John Stamper; so well stated and so seldom heard. Sadly, a minority position within a minority position. I agree that your point is not a minor technicality, but crucial to the Gospel itself. The reformed view of sin and justification could be the vehicle for the two sides to find common ground, but it is pretty much invisible in the slugfest that passes for discussion between the two sides.
RevOrganist said:
Living a homosexual life means:
• Sexual sin (sex outside marriage and contrary to God’s creative intent)
• Unbridled hedonism
• Undisciplined soul: lack of self-restraint against indulging the flesh
• Living a life oriented toward doing what feels good, and surrounding one’s self with people who support that hedonistic lifestyle
The gay lifestyle is all about doing what I want, with whom I want, when I want, how I want, and nobody has the right to tell me differently.
But my brother and his partner exhibit none of these traits whatsoever. Nor do any of the other same-sex couples I have known. On what research did you base your list?
#11 ember
You are saying that the same-sex couples you know are not having “sex outside marriage and contrary to God’s creative intent”.
However, if these are not celibate couples, then they are having “sex outside marriage and contrary to God’s creative intent”.
And if you are claiming they are not and publicly proclaiming such, then it would appear that they have chosen to “surround themselves with people who support that hedonistic lifestyle.”
#11
I base it on 30+ years living the gay lifestyle, and on the clear teachings of Holy Scripture.
Are saying your brother and his partner are not having sex? (As in the Archbishop of Canterbury said his clergy could register as couples as long as they were celibate?) I don’t believe it.
God created humans male and female for each other. THAT was His creative intent. All you have to do is look at our atanomy to see that.
RevOrganist
I praise God that He called you into true freedom found in Jesus Christ. That His love for you overpowered the sinful desires of your heart. That the mercy and forgiveness of Christ enriched your life and gave you hope. I pray that with His grace you continue to be a witness for His glory. That you continue to live the Gospel in your daily life offered in love and service to God the father almighty.
#10… Thanks Jimmy D! As two guys who’s spiritual lives were both so changed by Paul Zahl, you and I might want to talk some more sometime. (I bet you can feel the PZ in my post…. LOL.) My direct email is jstamperATL@aol.com. Feel free to give me a shout sometime if you want.
PS. TOTALLY agree with you about the idea that, if ever there could be a place where the two wildly polarized sides could meet, it would be in the Simul Iustus understanding of broken but redeemed sinners. I also loved the phrase “a minority position within a minority position.”
RevOrganist:
You answered Ember saying:
Ember? No reply?
#16
I’ll reply for Ember. The notion that God created male and female is no longer tenable in the light of evolution.
Now that’s interesting. Do you believe that humanity came into being by accident? Or do you believe that randomness and intentionality are not antithetical?
Regarding Luke Timothy Johnson’s perspective, I encounter this notion repeatedly among my “progressive” friends; but at its core, it seems more Existentialist than Christian. It strikes me as ultimately incoherent, not least for avoiding the admonition to “test everything,” but also in its conflation of impulse and action, at the nexus of which is human moral agency. If all we need to do is to rationalize our notion of “lived experience” with a completely abstracted notion of love, it seems we could consrue anything “natural” as good. But if we pay attention to what Scripture tells us about what God desires and about our true natures, this line of reasoning makes no sense.
#17’s reply is just another example of the apostasy in TEC and reason to get out.
all we have to do is look at the heavens to see that the sun orbits the earth — for science to say otherwise is apostasy
Aaargh! “If there’s a scientific explanation, God didn’t do it.” For someone who styles himself “John Scholasticus,” you haven’t spent much time with Western thought, have you?
Dunno about your circles, but in the theological and scientific circles I run in we don’t see Creation and evolution as a dichotomy.
Credentialism alert: I managed to Pile it High and Deep enough, too.
#19
I’m not a member of TEC.
Others: you can talk about evolution or you can say God used evolution. The second is my position. It doesn’t allow you to say God created male and female. That’s axiomatic.
john scholasticus, saying that God used evolution implies that you wouldn’t believe in purely random mutation. Your assertion in #17 makes sense only if you believe that humanity is an accident, otherwise, there’s no reason to reject male and female as the intentional consequences of God’s use of evolution. It should be self-evident, of course, that if God created life through evolution, it is specifically not evolution according to the materialist definition, i.e., random and purposeless.
Why? This makes no sense to me at all. If God is sovereign in Providence, and God uses evolution, why can’t he have created male and female through the evolutionary process? It’s no different than saying he created you and me. That it’s a “random” process is no argument; you and I are just as “random” and “undesigned” as the very real differences between male and female.
Or, to use “outmoded” categories of thought, God is not the efficient cause of sex differences but is the final cause.
“The lot is cast into the lap, but the result is the Lord’s.” “Random” may be just another way of saying “I don’t understand how God decided to do that.”
#23
Thanks for your response. Evolution is a very, very powerful explanatory tool and it’s all too easy for would-be sophisticated Christians to say: of course, I believe in evolution and of course it doesn’t conflict with Christianity. I agree with that, but subject to very rigorous qualification. Within evolution ‘purely random mutations’ certainly occur, but the ones that work win out (generally speaking: one has to allow for random things like comets hitting the earth). Is mankind an ‘accident’? Yes – and no. It still remains true and axiomatic that you can’t say: ‘God created male and female’. I have no objection to that being said in church – it is part of our tradition, it is true in a sort of long-range sense – but what you can’t do with it is derive from it allegedly irreversible condemnation of homosexuality (which also of course occurs everwhere in the natural world).
Let’s try that last paragraph again. %-P
The lot is cast into the lap, but the result is the Lord’s. “Random†may be just another way of saying “I don’t understand how God decided to do that.â€
#24,26
‘God is not the efficient cause of sex differences but is the final cause.’
I have no objection to such a formulation, but it has to be interpreted as meaning that God started the whole process off (via the Big Bang), not that he intervened within the evolutionary process. That ‘not’ is absolutely crucial.
#25, 27 js, I suspect we could spend a long time discussing the nature of randomness, but to my point: your claim back in #17 can make sense only if you believe that God did not intend to make humanity. Non-intervention in ostensibly pure randomness is only “absolutely critical” for the preservation of the philosophy behind contemporary materialist accounts of evolution. How would you reconcile the notion of a random and purposeless process with the notion of an intentionally creating God? In an earlier post, you said you are not a member of TEC. Do you consider yourself a deist?
IOW, deism is the only intellectually respectable form of belief? Do you unbend enough to allow God the cheerleading role given to him in panentheism?
What counts as “intervention”? And why is it so crucial that God doesn’t intervene? Is it theodicy (again)? Or the scandal of particularity?
Have you read Michael Ruse’s analysis, Can a Darwinian be a Christian? Ruse (not any sort of Christian, by the way) argues that the form of Christian belief most compatible with evolution is a rather Calvinist, conservative Protestantism. It’s another take.
It’s interesting that Don and I made essentially the same points. Ever seen both of us in the same room at the same time? 🙄
NWOhio Anglican, I’ve never seen you in any room I’ve been in! 😉
#29
I have read Ruse.
Evolution doesn’t allow God to intervene in the normal course of events. As Christians we make exceptions in the cases of the Incarnation and Resurrection. It’s hopeless to hypothesise that God ‘created male and female’ in some sense outside the evolutionary process. If one does hypothesise this, one isn’t understanding or properly factoring in evolution.
Re #32, john scholasticus, it still leaves the question: How can you reconcile the notion of a random and purposeless process with the notion of an intentionally creating God? Simply importing a materialist account of evolution into Christianity cannot work. One or the other has to give, and it’s not a question of religion vs science or faith vs reason. It’s a question of which philosophical basis you choose to subscribe to. Whichever you choose, it has a significant effect on how you understand and answer subsequent questions.
PS: I hope I didn’t offend you asking whether you consider yourself a deist. I take your answer implicitly from, “As Christians we,” above.
PPS: Of course, our whole discussion of evolution is tangential to any question of moral agency, whether it exists and how we understand it if it does.
Hello John Sc! Don R is making a good point, which I hope you’ll think about and respond to. If I understand him right, he is saying that there is a difference between the fact of evolution (i.e. life on earth has developed over hundreds of millions of years from very simple forms to the current complex diversity we see today) from theories, some with metaphysical presuppositions, that seek to explain that fact. That’s why he distinguishes between “evolution” and a “materialist account OF evolution” — two things it appears to us that you are conflating.
What Don and John said. JS, you still haven’t addressed the implications of Proverbs 16:33 for your view of evolution.
#34 and indeed others.
I think evolution is enormously destabilising of orthodox Christian (or any religious) thinking. The question is: what can you hold on to? I – even I – want to hold on to some things. What I think you can’t hold on to is any notion that God after the initial Creation intervenes in any ‘strong’ way in the physical processes, which are of course very messy, except in the Incarnation and Resurrection. If you do think he does intervene in a ‘strong’ physical way, you get into insuperable difficulties, not only because you are ‘rewriting’ evolution in a way that doesn’t make sense but also because you then have to explain why God doesn’t intervene in horrible things, such as the Holocaust or the Tsunami. It’s silly to claim instance “x” as a ‘miracle’, when there are innumerable instances on the other side when no miracles occur. But to say that God does not intervene in any ‘strong’ way in the physical processes, is not to say that He isn’t still present in some strong participatory sense. (So my position is not deist.) On the other hand, I would not want to say that God ‘intended’ the arrival of human beings, because (on my understanding of evolution) it wasn’t inevitable that human beings should arrive and it is a virtual certainty that human beings will not always remain top dogs. Sure, in evolution there can be a progression from simple to complex, but equally it is demonstrable that there can be a regression from complex to simple (if, for example, as most evolutionists believe, small birds – even chickens – descend from dinosaurs). The most that God could infer is that there was a chance that someday some creature would evolve with which (whom) He could communicate.
How these comments devolved into a debate on evolution escapes me. To deny God’s continued presence in our daily life…that He continues to create and sustain life and all that entails…is a basic denial of who God is. According to Martin Luther, “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my limbs, my reason, and all my senses, AND STILL PRESERVES THEM; in addition thereto, ….. all my goods; that He provides me richly and daily with all that I need to support this body and life, protects me from all danger, and guards me and preserves me from all evil; and all this out of pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me; for all which I owe it to Him to thank, praise, serve, and obey Him. This is most certainly true.”
#36. Your comments deny the “Soverignty of God”… to choose when and where He will act, They also deny God’s creative intent…as Holy Scriptures decribes the creation of man, “Let us make man in our image.” You seem to limit your god to someone or something you can comprehend. My God is much bigger than that.
#37
Luther didn’t know about evolution.
Nor did the Holy Scriptures.
Nor actually did Jesus.
All these are challenges. You don’t meet them by denying they exist.
Jesus Christ is God and all-knowing.
Holy Scriputres is God’s Word:
“For prophecy did not come in times of old by the will of man: but holy men spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. …” 2 Peter 1:21.
I challenge and deny those things which are contrary to what God has spoken through His Son and His Word.
Hi John Sch. Some thoughts on your post #36:
(1) You write:
“What I think you can’t hold on to is any notion that God after the initial Creation intervenes in any ‘strong’ way in the physical processes, which are of course very messy, except in the Incarnation and Resurrection.”
It’s a pleasure to know that you believe in an Incarnation and a Resurrection that involve real direct supernatural intervention in the physical world by a transcendent God — by which of course you are standing in agreement with virtually all Christians of the last 1900 years. Great! I am always delighted to find areas of agreement in discussions. But I am puzzled by what seems then a very arbitrary exclusion by you of the miraculous in all other areas. I have an atheist friend who believes on principle that miracles do not occur — and of course Deists like Voltaire and such also believed this — and I can understand them therefore having a purely materialist view of evolution and corresponding notions of purpose and intent in human history and the history of the physical world in general. But I am sure that they’d be just as surprised as I to discover someone who believes a dead man could rise from the Tomb, due to the supernatural act of a transcendent God, but who then is a priori convinced that no other miracles could ever happen. In a court of law, if you have established that a certain person exists, and he has intervened in a situation in the past by ways A and B, then you’ll have a hard time convincing the jury that of course it is impossible he could have ever intervened in ways C or D or E.
(2) You then say:
“If you do think he does intervene in a ‘strong’ physical way, you get into insuperable difficulties, not only because you are ‘rewriting’ evolution in a way that doesn’t make sense but also because you then have to explain why God doesn’t intervene in horrible things, such as the Holocaust or the Tsunami. It’s silly to claim instance “x†as a ‘miracle’, when there are innumerable instances on the other side when no miracles occur.”
But don’t you see that this objection really has nothing to do pro or con with evolution, but is simply a restatement of the problem theodicy wrestles with? (“Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” or “Why is there evil in the world (not caused by direct human agency)?”) Do you not see that this is a question that any theist could ask — and many agonizingly have — over the last 3000 years? There’s a book in the Old Testament called Job for example that deals with that. Your posts posit some kind of world in which these “insuperable difficulties” (e.g. the problem of theodicy) didn’t exist for anyone (e.g. post #38, in which you name Luther, the authors of the Old and New Testament, Jesus, etc.) because they had the misfortune of living before the publication of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
This is a problem that any Jew or Christian for the last 3000 years has had to deal with who’s lost their mother or son in some horribly cruel and unfair twist of fate. Nobody had to wait for Darwin to come along before it was an issue.
(3) You mention above that a belief that God could have intervened in ANY way in the unfolding process of Earth’s natural history involves “rewriting evolution in a way that doesn’t make any sense.” Can you explain why? I think if you try to explain clearly why you feel that way, you’ll discover that you are using “evolution” to mean “a completely materialist theory of the fact of evolution based on a priori metaphysical assumptions.” Otherwise as far as I can see there is no reason to exclude God’s agency as impossible.
Again, please take a look at what some of us have suggested already on this thread about the idea of distinguishing evolution as a statement of fact (“life on earth has developed over hundreds of millions of years from very simple forms to the current complex diversity we see today”) vs. theories to explain that fact (one of which would be a rigid materialism which has a METAPHYSICAL and therefore nonscientific assumption that is absolutely impossible for supernatural events to ever have occured in the development of life on earth). It’s OK if you belive this theory (although again I am puzzled because you also believe in the Resurrection) but regardless I think it is critical to distinguish facts from theories or systems intended to explain the facts.
#40
Hi, JS.
Thanks for yours. I don’t really think you come to grips with evolution in all its horrible plausibility. Evolution isn’t just the statement of fact that you make: it makes claims – seemingly correct claims – about the mechanisms whereby physical organisms develop (and note that they don’t always develop from simple to complex: it can go the other way). These mechanisms seem to be: (a) random mutation; (b) survival of the fittest (from random mutations); (c) chance events which reshuffle the cards (meteors, etc.). God isn’t operative in any of this (though He is in the initial Big Bang or whatever). Then come your questions:
(1) Since you are not a crude or abusive person, I freely admit that I have enormous difficulties in believing Christian (or any) religious claims. But I try, and I have devoted quite a large part of my life to trying. To the extent, then, that I uphold the Incarnation and Resurrection, I want to regard these not as God suspending the usual rules of the world (those rules being (a) the laws of physics; (b) evolution), but as God’s world ‘breaking in’ on our world. There are actually lots of Christian theologians (some of them Anglicans) who argue in this way. Beyond that, the more you import the ‘miraculous’ into the world, the worse you make the problem of evil, because you make God capricious and disproportionate. This notion of ‘breaking in’ is important on another level. If one believes in God, one has to be committed to the notion that God is spirit (difficult as that notion is – it is actually very difficult). One has then to believe to some extent in a form of reality which is different from our physical reality and to which to some extent we will eventually be assimilated. I get annoyed by those who (apparently) insist on a 100% physical resurrection, because such a resurrection would condemn Jesus and us to the material system we are now in (one that necessarily entails, eating, drinking, excretion, killing other living things, living and dying).
(2) I agree that the problem of theodicy has been acute for thousands of years. But it’s made more acute by evolution, because evolution makes death and suffering absolutely inevitable and intrinsic to the creation. I’m afraid I think it’s quite useless to argue that there was an original paradise state, and then humans ‘fell’. Post Big Bang, creation through death and destruction is built in.
(3) Really the same points. But to reiterate: evolution has enormous explanatory power. It does not plausibly (or morally) leave God ‘space’ in which to intervene much (if at all) on the physical plane.
I do actually believe (to the extent that I believe!) that the notion of ‘the suffering God’ is the way to allow God active (or passive!) participation in the world. God suffers in the Tsunami, God was present in the Holocaust (as the Rabbis said: the question was not, where was God? but, where was man?). God suffers on the Cross (the paradigm of all suffering).
Worse is to come. For me, the ‘point’ of the crucifixion is not so much to save human beings from ‘sin’ (highly prejudicial term, which glosses over the fact that bad things are intrinsic to the creation) as to show that God is with us, that out of all this mess (which is intrinsic), there is something better.
I’m very ‘liberal’, as you may now gather. But I am sure you can see that against such a perspective the question of what gay men or women get up to isn’t very important.
Best.
Exchanges like this one are amazing to me, for the charity and candor that can prevail despite the contentious topic. John Stamper, thank you for thoughtful questions, and john scholasticus, thank you for the honest and direct answers.
john scholasticus, unless I misunderstand you, you would agree with Paul in Romans 8:20-22, but would disagree with him about what God does or even has the ability to do.
You seem to have a clear sense of the brokenness of creation, including the brokenness of humanity. I find myself wondering whether that, coupled with your desire and efforts to believe and understand, might be true evidence that God does indeed intervene, however inscrutably, even in our very lives.
Even if you can’t believe that, doesn’t it make sense that a God who cares enough about humanity to suffer with us, might also care not only how we treat each other, but how we live our own lives?
john scholasticus,
I would suggest “Miracles” by CS Lewis
and “Resurrection” by Hank Hanegraaff.
Perhaps these thoughtful authors can help you.
Also here’s a site that might answer the “evil” question for you.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/professor.html
Sorry folks to have to say this………but I worship and an omnipotent GOD. He can choose to create any way He wants. I personally believe that it takes more faith accept the “theory” of evolution than “creation”.