[As this series continues, I want to remind readers that what follows is a continuation of an essay I drafted in 2003 in protest of the imminent confirmation of then-candidate for Episcopal bishop V. Gene Robinson. This series begins at this link; it addresses homosexuality in the context of the Episcopal Church's theology. This series is not about homosexuality in general, or its place in society at large. And I would add that any major changes or additions to the original essay will appear between [].
Also, please recall that in Part I it was reported that, in response to comments I made to now Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson, Mr. Robinson replied "I don't know anybody who is arguing that way." Well, "that way" is pretty much what is printed below. Peace. BG]
What's Left of the Trimuvirate? (cont.)
III. Call it the "fallacy of ignoring tradition"
Moving now to the next major fallacy, let us put it forward rather plainly: Tradition has adapted with the times throughout the history of the Church. Once it was traditional for parishioners to own slaves. At one time it was tradition that kept women from the priesthood. But, thank God, tradition has changed. And there is no tradition in the Church worth keeping that would prevent homosexuals from marrying, or being elected as Bishop.
The fallacy here, really, is not that tradition hasn't changed. It has. The fallacy is that there has been a tradition in the Church that precludes homosexuality from ever being accepted, and yet that tradition is dismissed without so much as an argument. It is patently ignored. What is that tradition? It is the tradition of the Sacrament of Marriage, rooted in Judaism, sacramentalized by Jesus the Christ, and honored by the Church throughout the ages. And it is a sacrament that cannot be changed.
Here is the general metaphysics of the sacrament of marriage, hastily outlined, but nonetheless foundational to the tradition of which I am speaking: the Church is Christ's Bride, and He is the wondrous Bridegroom. But men and women, by their very natures (there is no room to expand on this here), perceive Christ differently. The Mary Magdelene character in Jesus Christ Superstar struggles with her affections for a man who does not exploit her: “I don't know how to love Him.” Her confusion is understandable: she's a woman, Jesus is a man. I have heard women speak of Jesus during Bible study groups in ways that border on the romantic. For men––at least straight men––this type of affection is crazily unfamiliar. No man I know would want Jesus to come and 'do spoons' with him in the deep of night. In contrast, I once heard nearly a dozen women "ooh" and "ahh" over one woman's testimony that she feels Jesus come to her on nights when her husband has withdrawn from her. Men and women even perceive Jesus differently because women, theoretically, could be impregnated by the Incarnate God of the Universe. But, and here is the rub, men are called to be Christ's Bride. How do men, who represent something very different in Christian theology, become brides at the Great Wedding?
The Church has said that men gain a better understanding of their futures with Christ by participating in the Sacrament of Marriage. For in that sacrament, a man and woman, representing Jesus Christ and the Church respectively, come to understand something profound about Jesus' love for the Church, and the Church's due response to that love. A man chasing his wife around the house, eager to express his love and eager for her love, is the symbol of Christ's zealous love for His Church. The way a wife responds to the 'husbanding' of her husband is the perfect paradigm of how one responds to Christ's love! And by watching how her husband pursues her, a woman better understands the strength of Christ's love, which is a burning passion any loving husband feels within himself every day. But how does a man respond to that burning love when it is directed at him by Jesus? He responds by imitating how his wife responds to his overtures, his passion, his zeal. And this is a beautiful, ancient, and deeply metaphysical thing!
Furthermore, in honor, celebration and adulation of the joys of their life together, including pure sexual bliss, any loving husband and wife, attempting to incarnate their love; attempting to bring permanance to their union; and attempting to pass on to others the very pleasures in which they indulge, procreate children. Each of us (it is easy to forget) is the product of sexual orgasm. No doubt, sexual beings know how quickly sexual pleasures pass. But there is no doubt either that through procreation, the momentary flashes of pleasure in procreative sex acts reverberate through a couple's progeny every breathing moment. Procreation brings permanance to the sex act! Moreover, procreation shares the joys of love, sex and life with others! [Think of it this way: if sex is so great, would you not want to pass that greatness on to others? I mean, if we brag about the best restaurants with friends, surely we'd want others––our children!!––to know the pleasures of love, commitment, sex.]
All this, of course, emulates Christ's own intercourse with His Bride. For Christ speaks to His Church, He sows His Word in Her eager, loving womb, and new life is created, the life which is His children. Christ and His Church do not indulge in such pleasurable intercourse solely for selfish reasons, but to empower others [converts/children] so they too may know such pleasure. Hence, homosexuality fails to meet this incredible sacrament's power. For a man having sex with a man, no matter how “loving”, does not help anyone learn anything about God. It is, after all, a horrible symbol of Christ having sex with Christ. It is completely self-enjoying. Similarly, sex between two women is the Church having sex with itself. Both types of homosexual images are distortions of the holy union between Christ and His Church. As such, neither image can ever be sacramental: for they symbolize nothing remotely Christian. And if they can never be sacramental, what can they be, but desacramental?
Of course, premarital sex, adultery, divorce, birth control, and abortion are also distortions of this Holy Sacrament; each symbolizes something dreadful. Premarital intercourse is the equivalent of Christ sleeping with several Churches, or the Church rolling in the hay with several Gods, before finding the “Right One.” Adultery is Christ running off with other Brides, the Church running off with other Christs. Divorce is the dissolution of Christ and His Church due to irreconciliable differences (or a myriad of other reasons). Birth control symbolizes Jesus and the Church intercoursing with each other self-indulgently, the Church enjoying the presence of God's Word without having to be burdened (yet) with new members, new converts, new children. And abortion is merely the Church saying to Christ that She is not ready to bring forward the child––the new convert––He has conceived in Her womb.
Please, I am not saying that there are not exigent reasons for any one of these desecrations of the marriage sacrament. Christianity has never said that the earth is perfect, or that it will be perfect. But it has also maintained the tradition that marriage, as a Sacrament, is a standard for a whole host of reasons; and that merely because there are aberrations or difficulties in life it does not follow that one abandons or redesigns the standard. Extremes occur; even Jesus sadly recognized that.
Here, then, ends our description of the fallacy of ignoring tradition. The Church, rooted in Judaism, has held that marriage between a man and woman is a symbol, a sacramental fact, of God and creation, Christ and Church. There is no reformation to take place here. There is nothing to deconstruct. The Sacrament of Marriage is a basal point of Christian theology; foundational, universal, eternal. It is a tradition not only worth keeping, it is a tradition that is rooted in absolute truth, and hence can never be forsaken without great peril.
[It is important to insert here something about Creation. If I do not, someone might assert that I am essentially suggesting that Jesus is indeed a homosexual if He is indeed the Bridegroom of Christian men.
In a hasty sketch, let me simply state that since the earliest times of ancient Israel's history, Israel battled idolatry. Often the idols and false gods it battled were feminine. The reason for this was rooted in the religious starting point of primitive peoples: they started with the earth, the fertile, fecund earth, teeming with life. The earth reminded them of a mother, and it was all they knew. But the problem with that starting point is that divinity then begins to look feminine; it begins to look earthly and earth-bound. Thus the very things of the earth begin to be worshiped and idolized. And not just things hewn from rock or carved in wood. Sex and fertility and wine are idolized, the very glories of the orgiastic goddess which is Mother Earth. Even temple prostitutes draw men and women closer to the goddess. After all, if the Goddess is creation, if She is the earth and the cosmos, then everything in it is her body; is of her substance. That we still think in similar terms today is evident in abortion discussions, primarily when those who speak in favor of abortion claim that a child is not just its mother's, it is its mother's very body. The distinction between Goddess Earth and the things of the earth is not made. The failure to make that distinction is wherein idolatry is born.
In contrast, the Jewish revelation that God is male begins not with the immanence of earth, but with the transcendence of the Creator: He is outside space and time––and earth and wood and stone––the way a human father is outside reproduction: a father ejaculates his word into the womb of his bride and yet he remains -- himself -- transcendent of the creation that follows. God, too, ejaculated His Word into the abyss, and that Word brought forth light and life. But unlike the womb and the Mother Earth, God is outside; He is beyond the sex act like each of our fathers was outside our mothers: the father enters but for a moment, and he remains forever outside. Thus, the concept of a Transcendent God, the transcendent father, shatters the tendency to idolize any earthly THING, for God transcends the earth, the cosmos, the stuff of matter and mother (I believe matter, material and mother all share the same Latin root and do so because the ancients conflated the two ideas). No wonder abortion discussions do not revolve around whether a fetus is actually the father's body: we all assume that fatherhood and transcendence are synonymous. This revelation that God is male compared to creation gave not only Israel the proper foothold for climbing out of the idolatrous womb, it gave us all that opportunity: there are no idols if True Divinity is outside everything that is made.
Hence, not only is the Sacrament of Marriage a sacrament that illuminates Christ's relationship to the Church, it is a sacrament that illuminates the Father's relationship to all of Creation. Through such we learn that, by comparison, all of us, men and women alike, are feminine in comparison to the Transcendent God. Hence, even men––even truly manly men like me!––are feminine in comparison to God. Thus, transformed by Christ's ministry and the Holy Spirit, and informed by the Sacrament of Marriage, I, as a man, learn to become a Bride of Christ. This is not then a Male God marrying a male follower in the fullness of time: it is a simple man submitting to the sobering fact that he is not God. It is a simple man accepting his limitation: Jesus is the Man, and I, as man, must decrease: I am but a type who is female in comparison to God. There is no gender confusion here: this is just the dance between the transcendent and the immanent, the creator and the created, the independent and the contingent. Masculine and feminine remain in perfect harmony and balance.]
Peace.
(Tomorrow: the fallacy of the new love)
Part VI of this series begins here.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Episcopal Church, Anglican Communion, ECUSA, Gay Rights, Homosexuality, Identity Politics, sacraments, sacramentalism, marriage, consecration, Gene Robinson, Gay Bishop,
tradition, idolatry, goddess, mother earth
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