Category: Rants

Yet another nitpicky and wandering post on Evangelical ethics… This one attempting to jostle some preconceptions around and look at things from a different perspective. Hopefully to some purpose.

I have always found the Evangelical tendency to over-spiritualize marriage & family slightly bemusing (see my previous post). The tendency is not limited to these areas. The problem is related, I think, to taking ethical statements in the Bible, as prescriptive, deriving from some supra-human state of being, rather than as descriptive; that is, they are not so much pre-existing spiritual constructions imposed upon an unwilling humanity as conclusions derived from an understanding of the basic makeup (and even variable culture!) of human beings.

Thus things like the Ten Commandments are not immutable constraints that apply to every order of existence, but arise from the makeup of human society and personality. The proof of this statement is simple: we neither observe nor believe that animals are subject to them, let alone other orders of creation we know not of.

This will probably seem like a tautology to Christian readers: human ethics derive from human behavior because humans are a divine design. Granted, but I think it’s still valuable to look at some of these areas from the inside-out perspective, as it were. I think it’s dangerous especially in Biblical exegesis to proceed from the perspective that ethical and moral statements in the Bible arise from divine fiat without reference to human reality on the ground. If it were a universal divine principle that males should uncover and females cover their heads to pray (a straightforward prescription in the New Testament), for example, the vast majority of us would be in big trouble.

All that said, let us return to marriage and family. From what I perceive of Evangelical thought on these matters, it seems that marriage and sexual fidelity are regarded as direct reflections in the imago dei of the relationship of the Godhead, and humanity’s participation in the Godhead in the eschaton.

It strikes me that the “direction” of the metaphor in this idea is exactly backwards. First of all, if human marriage were a direct reflection of the Godhead, then there would be three partners. (I’m surprised this point isn’t brought up more often by opponents of “Biblical” ideas of marriage :-) Second, the idea that sexual fidelity is an aspect of the imago dei strikes me as slightly ludicrous. Sex is not present in the communion of the Godhead, or else those first-century Corinthians had something going for them.

In my small study of metaphor (OK, maybe a master’s thesis), I explored the idea that the “direction” of our metaphors about God is from our limited human existence to God’s infinitely higher existence. We express ideas about the divine in terms of what we know, and this is how divine revelation is presented, otherwise we would have no hope of understanding it. So it is not quite accurate to say that marriage is a shadow or reflection of the Godhead. It is more accurate to say that we conceptualize the intensity of the communion of the Godhead (and humanity’s participation in the Godhead in the eschaton) in terms of marriage, because marriage is the highest, noblest and most intense form of communion we know.

I actually find the Catholic position on marriage much more logical than the Evangelical. Marriage and sex in humans are intended for the propagation of the species — a species whose members just happen to posess the imago dei and require extensive socialization to reach adulthood. Stable trusting couples are necessary to fully equip their offspring with their heritage. (This does not mean that childless marriages are not valid — one-legged people are not less than human despite that humans are “intended” to walk on two legs.) The idea of celibacy before marriage and fidelity within it derive directly from the principle of caring for one’s offspring.

The beauty, power and sanctity of marriage arise from that admixture of physical and spiritual which is the defining characteristic of humankind. The necessary stable partnership — necessary because it arises from the makeup or design of human society — is sustained by sex, which is the most intense form of physical communion and inseperable from our physical being, and that intellectual and spiritual communion that is made possible by the imago dei.

Thus marriage is at first the highest expression of philia, the love that governs all human relationships, and then combines eros and agape into something that is the highest expression of what it means to be human — the physical and spiritual melded into something far greater than the sum of the parts.

So in the end my conclusions don’t differ much from those of people like Rob Bell, but I like to think my way of thinking about things is more helpful than theirs. I think it’s more likely to make sense — and be just as valid — to people to talk about things like marriage and sexual fidelity in terms of caring for children than as some divine principle deriving from systematic theology.

P.S. To those who wonder when the lovely Andrea and I will practice what I’m preaching, I’ll only say that we are working to develop our economic and physical circumstances to the point where we will be more fully able to set about instantiating our offspring in their full potentiality :-)

Just FYI, this post is mostly hair-splitting in an area of specifically Evangelical ethics, so those uninterested in such things may forego their usual rapt attention to every word on this blog!

Ben Whitherington reviews Rob Bell’s latest book, an explication of Evangelical sexual ethics. The reason I emphasize the Evangelical part is that although the conclusions of Bell’s book aren’t substantially different from those of other branches of Christianity, the arguments may differ wildly. But that’s beside the point.

I really have nothing much to say about the majority of the review; I haven’t read the book, but from Witherington’s description it doesn’t seem to say anything original, just repeats the over-protesting and overly-spiritualized arguments with which Evangelicals responded to the sexual revolution. I far prefer John C. Wright’s argument from the simple ethics of caring for one’s offspring. But that is also mostly beside the point.

My point is really a nitpick, but one that does have some importance for I’m guessing almost 50% of the population. Witherington says:

[Bell] makes the strong point of how our culture encourages us to objectify women, treating sexual persons as sex objects. Of course this sort of reductionism would never happen if fallen males did not lust after women’s body parts. It has gotten so bad that you can even see it in how men look at women. They tend to look at their breasts first, and then their faces, thinking of what they want, before thinking of who they want.

My objection to this is that it fails to make the distinction between the biological wiring of males and their related socialization. It seems to be a generally received idea (one that I can verify is true in at least one case!) that men are generally wired to respond sexually to visual stimuli to a higher degree than women (that is not to say that a man can’t be sexually stimulated by a woman’s brain, nor that a woman can’t be stimulated by a man’s appearance; we’re talking in terms of general trends and basic impulses).

What women simply aren’t equipped to understand is that in a man’s sensory field, women basically come pre-installed with flashing strobe lights at breast, hip and leg. It takes a considerable act of concentration to look at a woman’s face first. I would argue that this internal wiring should not, in the Christian view, be classed as an aspect of the fallenness of the world. Both men and women are wired to crave food when hungry, but civilized women and men are socialized against gluttony or theft as a response.

Therefore, what Bell or Whitherington should condemn is the cultural attitude that encourages inappropriately dwelling and acting on the impulse, rather than the impulse itself. This is a subtle point, but an important one, I think. Civilized men are socialized to at least be discreet about the impulse, and to take the time and effort to appreciate women for all their qualities. However, in moments of inattention or lowered concentration men will inevitably find their attention on women’s salient parts if they are in the vicinity. It is unfair to men to condemn them for an automatic reflex, without taking into account the level of their socialization in response to it. This sentences honourable men to a lifetime of guilt and anxiety, without affecting dishonourable men.

I was fortunate to have been brought up on the principle that it is not the impulses of the flesh that are automatically wrong, but that it is how one responds to them that matters.

More evidence, not that any was needed, that Young-Earth Creationists are a bunch of liars.

A Young-Earth Creationist obtained a Ph.D. in geosciences from Rhode Island University. His research topic was a group of animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. His dissertation never once mentioned the inconvenient fact that he disbelieved its own assumptions.

It’s not so much on behalf of the university and scientific community that he deceived that I’m upset. It’s on the behalf of his poor students. He’s now teaching that current biology and geology are wrong, and using his Ph.D. to enhance his authority for those statements. But his Ph.D. was granted on the basis of of the very things he teaches are wrong, so then his Ph.D. must be wrong, and of no value in teaching!

This is bearing witness of the falsest kind.

And cowardice. He refuses to defend his beliefs in the open, preferring to skulk in the shadows and indoctrinate innocent souls with his soul-destroying doctrine of evil. Better that a millstone were slung around his neck and he be thrown into the sea.