The fourth and final “step” in Hays’ interpretive process for ethics is “living the text.”

“In the midst of a culture that worships self-gratification, and in a church that often preaches a false Jesus who panders to our desires, those who seeks the narrow way of obedience have a powerful word to speak.” (403)

Hays charts some initial trajectories for this “narrow way” by asking and answering seven questions:

1. Should the church support civil rights for homosexuals? Yes. “… Christians should not single out homosexual persons for malicious discriminatory treatment: insofar as we have done so in the past we must repent and instead seek to live out the gospel of reconciliation.” (400)

2. Can homosexual persons be members of the Christian church? This, Hays insists, is rather like asking if envious persons can be members of the church. Not only “can they be” (and hence they should be admitted), but they already are. Hays writes, “If they are not welcome, I will have to walk out the door along with them, leaving in the sanctuary only those entitled to cast the first stone.”

This means that we in the covenant community must “find ways to live to live within the church in a situation of serious moral disagreement while still respecting one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.” Further, Hays insists, there are much more important issues for the church to start drawing lines in the dirt over including violence and materialism (about which the Bible has much more to say than this issue, as we have seen).

At the same time however, the church must challenge all her members to repent and be conformed not to the world but to Christ. For the person of homosexual orientation this includes the call to resist the temptation to form personal identity over sex alone or even primarily.

Hays also points out that persons who uphold the traditional position have an obligation to continue to hold everyone to the same standard of sexual morality: chastity within heterosexual marriage, or celibacy.

3. Is it Christianly appropriate for Christians who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation to continue to participate in same-sex erotic activity? No, especially in light of the fact that “the only person who was entitled to cast the first stone said, ‘Go and sin no more.’ It is no more appropriate for homosexual Christians to persist in homosexual activity than for heterosexual Christians to persist in fornication or adultery…. Despite the smooth illusions perpetuated by mass culture in the United States, sexual gratification is not a sacred right, and celibacy is not a fate worse than death.” (401)

4. Should the church sanction and bless homosexual unions? No.

5. Does this mean that persons of homosexual orientation are subject to a blanket imposition of celibacy in a way qualitatively different from persons of heterosexual orientation? This is a penetrating and difficult question to which Hays shows great sensitivity. Homosexuals are left “in precisely the same situation as the heterosexual who would like to marry but cannot find an appropriate partner (and there are many such): summoned to a difficult, costly obedience, while “groaning” for the “redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:32). Anyone who does not recognize this as a description of authentic Christian existence has never struggled seriously with the imperatives of the gospel, which challenge and frustrate our ‘natural’ impulses in countless ways.” Our hope, Hays goes on to show, is in the glorious future of the new heavens and new earth, and our resurrection bodies within them. Thus our hope is decidedly eschatological. (402)

I would add that, here again, the example of Gary is important.

6. Should homosexual Christians expect to change their orientation? In the new heavens and new earth, Hays suggests, “yes,” but not necessarily before then. And yet, Gary was granted a new sense of “not considering [himself] a homosexual” (his words, quoted by Hays on 403), and so we can hope and pray. But, to be sure, the ‘not yet’ of the gospel does indeed loom large, as it does with all our sins and weaknesses.

7. Should persons of homosexual orientation be ordained? In its (rather high-profile) discussion of this question, the church, sadly in Hays’ opinion, has suggested a double-standard for clergy and laity; “it would be far better to articulate a single set of moral norms which apply to all of Jesus’ followers.” And far from imposing a special requirement in this area (after all, are there such special requirements in other areas?), “such matters are left to the discernment of the bodies charged with examining candidates for ordination; these bodies must determine wither the individual candidate has the gifts and graces requisite for ministry. In any event, a person of homosexual orientation seeking to live a life of disciplined abstinence would clearly be an appropriate candidate for ordination.” (403)

Turning to a consideration of (various things he associates with) reason, Hays discusses three areas: arguments of nature (genetic predisposition) versus nurture or culture, argumentation from statistics, and argument from experience.

He points out that, even if conclusive, undisputed evidence were to emerge that there is a genetic predisposition to homosexual orientation, this would have few implications for Christian ethics. In fact, he argues, “we need not take sides in the debates of nature versus culture” since, as Hays points out earlier in his material, “actions do not necessarily have to be “voluntary” to be sinful before God” (though I would insist, along with the counselors from the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, associated with Westminster Theological Seminary, that human brokenness which stems from sources other than “free volitional decision” such as physiological addiction, clinically diagnosable impairments such as Alzheimer’s and A.D.D., and indeed genetic predisposition, while not legitimizing behavior with the Bible describes as sin, do in fact call for a different, more compassionate and patient approach to counseling).

I would also add that a robust theological anthropology which acknowledges that sin and brokenness have wreaked havoc not just on our souls but also on our bodies might actually predict or expect sins to be deeply tied to bodily impairment. As the doctrine of total depravity teaches, there is no part, aspect, or dimension of the human person which is not marred and twisted by the fall.

Turning to statistical data, Hays is correct summarily to dismiss any argument which would seek to legitimate homosexual activity on the basis of statistics: “If Paul were shown the poll results, he would reply sadly, ‘Indeed, the power of sin is rampant in the world.’”

Hays rightly sees advocates of homosexuality in the church have by far their most formidable case “when the appeal to the authority of experience.” “There are individuals who live in stable, loving homosexual relationships and claim to experience grace – rather than the wrath – of God.” Then Hays asks several pointed questions:

How are such claims to be assessed? Was Paul wrong? Or are such experiential claims simply another manifestation of the self-deception he describes? Or, besides these irreconcilable alternatives, should we entertain the possible emergence of new realities which Paul could not have anticipated? Does the practice that Paul condemns correspond exactly to the experience of homosexual relations that exists in the present time?” (398)

I must say that I find Hays’ point here especially compelling in light of Paul’s teaching in I Cor 13 where he enjoins a new law of love on the community and instructs us to “hope all things, truust all things, believe all things.” As my wife and I have discussed countless times over the years, this “covenantal epistemology” teaches us to resist the temptation to be suspicious of (the) other(s), and instead to listen and to trust and to believe and to hope. This is true (as any couple who has been through good marriage counseling will tell you) for the covenant community of marriage, and it is true for the covenant community of the church (ie, the Eucharistic community). If there are brothers and sisters within the church who bear witness to healthy experiences of homosexual behavior, we must listen to them in a 1 Corinthians-kind-of-way.

And yet, there is much more to be said than just this, and Hays says it.

For one thing, we should allow gay experience to critique gay experience. In other words, the voices of those like Gary, “who struggle with homosexual desires and find them a hindrance to living lives committed to the service of God” (399) must be fully appreciated.

Further, Hays takes the “covenantal epistemology” of discerning what is good and true though the voices of the community seriously enough to admit that, if one day a strong consensus in the (global?) church should emerge that homosexuality is possible to practice faithfully in the covenant community, then that consensus would become normative.

(This is hugely important in my mind, and this kind of reasoning highlights the importance of the church as prerequisite for truth, 1 Tim 3:15. Sadly I find that many evangelical – and even Reformed – American Christians are lost on this point.)

Has the church ever so dramatically reversed her position on such an issue (especially one as pressing as this)? Indeed she has, and Scripture records it. And, significantly enough, it was experience which provoked the church, in grappling over the inclusion of Gentiles (qua Gentiles) in the covenant community, essentially to say, “We now see that we had previously overlooked something in the Scriptures.” Not only is this deep grappling on the part of the apostolic church recorded in Paul’s dense argumentation in texts such as Romans and Galatians, but “we see the rudiments of such a reflective process in Acts 10:34-35, where Peter begins his speech to Cornelius by alluding to Deuteronomy 10:17-18 and Psalm 15:1-2 in order to confess that ‘God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’”

As can readily be seen, huge differences exist between the reversal of the apostolic church and the reversal which proponents of homosexual acceptance are proposing. And yet, we must admit, the experience of believers should prompt a deeper investigation into Scripture. When this occurred in the apostolic church, manifold textual indications were discerned which did in fact reveal that, now, at that present time, God was in fact doing something new, and new light was truly breaking onto the covenant community.

Especially in light of the scant and univocal Biblical material regarding homosexuality, Hays is right to argue that, until such an unlikely phenomenon occurs again in the (global) church, “we must affirm that … marriage between man and woman is the normative form for human sexual fulfillment, and homosexuality is one among many tragic signs that we are a broken people, alienated from God’s loving purpose.” (400)

Hays in this section emphasizes the lack of rules prohibiting homosexuality in the NT. Instead what we have is principles, and these principles are not enough to ground an ethics in and by themselves, and therefore they require a deeper hermeneutic rigor.

For example, from Rom 1 we can infer the principle that humans should “acknowledge and honor God as creator.” But apart from a certain (moral) “order of creation” which specifies that, say, male-plus-female sexual relations are normative, this principle is not enough to prohibit homosexual activity for members of the Christian community.

Therefore, reasons Hays, we should look for neither rules nor principles in the NT to inform our ethics. Rather, we should appreciate and (assuming that the Bible is normative for the Christian life) submit to its symbolic construal of the world. In this symbolic world which Paul and others construe in the NT, homosexuality symbolizes man’s rebellion and ignorance which have resulted from Adam’s idolatry. “If we accept the authority of the NT, we will be taught to perceive homosexuality accordingly.” (396)

When we turn to tradition (which we should do in this hermeneutical quest, Hays apparently thinks), we find this perspective confirmed. If anything tradition probably has a more hardened disapproval for homosexuality than Scripture, since Scripture would lead us to view this vice as no worse than many others which are listed alongside it (1 Cor 6; 1 Tim 1).

After commenting on tradition, Hays turns to “reason,” which I will review in a subsequent post.

Hays now applies his device of “community, cross, new creation” to this issue.

1. As for community, Hays does a masterful job of showing how Paul’s pastoral theology to the Corinthian church is an amplification of what we see in the holiness code of Lev 18, where we read in vv24-26,

Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, for by all these practices the nations I am casting out have defiled themselves. Thus the land has become defiled; and I punished it for its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you shall keep my statutes and my ordinances and commit none of these abominations, either the citizen or the alien who resides among you.

Like Leviticus (one might say, “like Moses”), Paul’s concern in his letters to the Corinthian church is primarily one for the community. The following paragraph of Hays’ is so good I must quote it in full:

… Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians to ‘glorify God in your body’ (1 Cor 6:20) grows out of his passionate concern, expressed repeatedly in 1 Corinthians, for the unity and sanctification of the community as a whole. Fornication with a prostitute is wrong, among other reasons, because ‘your bodies are members of Christ’ (6:15). Thus, to engage in sexual immorality defiles the body of Christ. Through baptism, Christians have entered a corporate whole whose health is at stake in the conduct of all its members. Sin is like an infection in the body; thus, moral action is not merely a matter of individual freedom and preference. ‘If one member suffers, all suffer’ (1 Cor 12:26) This line of argument is not applied specifically to every offense in the vice list, but it does not require a great leap of imagination to see that for Paul the church is analogous (though not identical) to Israel as portrayed in the holiness code [of Lev 18, emphasis mine]. That is the logic behind the demand that the Corinthian church expel the man engaged in a sexual relationship with his stepmother (5:1-13). A similar logic would certainly apply, within Paul’s frame of reference, to the malakoi and arsenoikotai of 1 Cor 6:9. The community of those who have been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ ought to have put such behaviors behind it. The NT never considers sexual conduct purely a matter of private concern between consenting adults. According to Paul, everything that we do as Christians, including our sexual practices, affects the whole body of Christ.”

Hays then rightly points out that this canonical discipline does not apply to the wider society, for which “the right to privacy may well be a useful principle for a secular political order.”

2. As for cross, there is an implicit and crucial connection between homosexuality and the cross in Romans. The human unrighteousness in Rom 1 is the condition that makes the cross (ie, the death of Christ) necessary (Rom 5:8). In addition, “[t]he human unrighteousness detailed in Rom 1 is answered by the righteousness of God, who puts forward Jesus to die for unrighteousness (Rom 3:23-25), enabling [us] to walk in newness of life.” (392)

Therefore, writes Hays, we can see the following two implications: first, “the wrath of God — manifested in God’s “giving up” of rebellious humanity to follow their own devices and desires — is not the last word.” The cross shows us that God loves us even while we are in rebellion “and the sacrificial death of his son is the depth of that love.” This is the logic of Paul’s “sting” operation in Rom 2:1ff, thinks Hays, that no one is sanctioned to condemn others for anything. “This has profound implications for how the Christian community ought to respond to persons of homosexual orientation. Even if some of their actions are contrary to God’s design, the cross models the way in which the community of faith ought to respond to them: not in condemnation, but in sacrificial service.” (393)

This is brilliant on Hays’ part, I must say. We are not to emulate the creator God in his wrathful condemnation, theologizes St. Paul, but rather, as ministers of reconciliation, we are to emulate the merciful love and welcoming invitation of Jesus, the saving, redeeming Lord.

Secondly, because the cross “marks the end of the old life under the power of sin (Rom 6:1-4) … no one is locked into the past or into a psychological or biological determinism.” Only “in light of this transforming power” the Gary’s of the world (let alone the Matt Boulter’s of the world) enter into the hope and change offered in the Christian life.

3. New Creation. The eschatological framework of Romans and the entire NT implies that Christians will still struggle with sin, struggle “to live faithfully in the present time…. Those who demand fulfillment now, as though it were a right or guarantee, are living in a state of adolescent illusion.” (393)

And then Hays makes a striking statement: “Consequently, in this time between the times, some may find disciplined abstinence the only viable alternative to disordered sexuality.”  (393) And then, “the art of eschatological moral discernment lies in working out how to live lives free from bondage to sin without presuming to be translated prematurely into a condition that is free from ‘the sufferings of the present time’ (Rom 8:18).”

“How is human sexuality portrayed in the canon as a whole, and how are the few explicit texts treating homosexuality to be read in relation to this larger canonical framework?”

Hays notes that unlike the the matter of “the subordination of women, concerning which the Bible contains internal tensions and counterposed witnesses, [t]he biblical witness against homosexual practices is univocal.” (389)

Hays then lists three major, overarching canonical considerations to keep in mind as “we place the prohibition of homosexuality in a canonical context:”

• “God’s [Creational] Intention for Human Sexuality.” “From Genesis 1 onward, Scripture affirms repeatedly that God has made man and woman for one another and that our sexual desires rightly find fulfillment within heterosexual marriage.” (390)

• The Fallen Human Condition. “The Bible’s sober anthropology rejects the apparently commonplace assumption [on the part of us who are "great-grandchildren of the Enlightenment"] that only freely chosen acts are morally culpable.” Hays sketches how, as a result of Adam’s / humanity’s fall, human beings are in a state of self-deception (he quotes Jer 17:9) and bondage (”We are ’slaves of sin’” Hays writes, referencing Rom 6:17) . “Redemption (a word that means ‘being emancipated from slavery’) is God’s act of liberation, setting us free from the power of sin and placing us within the sphere of God’s transforming power for righteousness (Rom 6:20-22; 8:1-11; cf 12:1-2).”

• The Demythologizing of Sex. Contrary to the assumptions of today’s (western) culture, the Bible undermines our obsession with sexual fulfillment. It bears witness, in fact, that we can be totally fulfilled and joyful without sexual relations. “Sex,” unlike food or drink, one would suppose, “is a matter of secondary importance…. Never within the canonical perspective does sexuality become the basis for defining a person’s identity or for finding meaning and fulfillment in life.” (At this point I must admit that it seems to me that Hays overlooks the Song of Solomon as well as the old covenant’s emphasis on childbirth, which is surely fulfilled in Christ but still somehow relevant for life in the new covenant and is probably somehow related to 1 Tim 2:15: “[a woman] will be saved through childbearing.” Given these, it does seem to me that “sexual fulfilment” might be more important than Hays allows, albeit in a way radically different from the assumptions of our culture.)

In his exposition of Rom 1:18-32, Hays notes that this is the only place in the NT (I would add “and in the whole Bible”) where homosexuality is not just mentioned or prohibited, but explicitly theologized about. (383) There is, in a sense, a “theology of homosexuality” here in Paul’s thought, and this is especially true in light of the fact that, as Hays points, out, “this is the only passage in the whole Bible that refers to lesbian sexual relations.” (384)

Situating Paul’s teaching on this particular issue within the larger context of the letter, Hays rightly stresses that Paul’s initial main point in chapter one is that “the Gospel” is God’s demonstration of righteousness, that is, his demonstration of eschatological power (it is “the instrument through which God is working out his purpose in the world … reaching out graciously to deliver humanity from bondage to sin and death”), and thus it serves in Paul’s argument as the vindication of God.

“Having sounded this keynote,” Paul not only adopts a contrasting key by contrasting God’s righteousness to humanity’s unrighteousness, but he also actually grounds God’s righteousness in his response to humanity’s unrighteousness. When it comes to man’s sin (which, note carefully, is not here any individual or specific sin including anything having to do with homosexuality, but rather the more primal sin of replacing God and the worship due him with creation and idolatry), God does something about it.

And what does he do? He “gives humanity over” to themselves and their own devices. He gives them over to the dark futility of ignorance (1:21; cf 2 Thes 2:10b – 12). He gives them over to a debased mind. And, more to the point for our purposes, he gives them over “in the lusts of their hearts to impurity” (v24), to the “dishonorable passions” which result in erotic homosexual behavior. (vv26-27)

Hays thinks that Paul’s rhetoric about homosexuality serves to make two points (I list these in reverse order): evidence and consequence. First, given the centrality (at least in Pual’s and his hearers’ minds) of the sexual difference of the creation narratives of Adam and Eve, homosexual activity in particular would have been regarded as a “particularly vivid” illustration of how God has poured out his wrath against primal human idolatry. Second, this particular sin, along with the others mentioned in the next paragraph of chapter one (slander, haughtiness, disobedience, etc.) are not the cause of God’s wrath, but, rather (much like the plagues upon Egypt) the result of it.

(Note: Hays’ point, for which he enlists John Calvin, that Paul’s audience would have unequivocally shared in his assumption that homosexual acts are “obviously” depraved raises a question in my mind. It is, perhaps, a question about Paul’s intended audience. I can totally see how a Jewish audience would share in this assumption, of course, but would a Greek / Roman audience? It don’t think so. This is particularly interesting / troubling in light of the fact that many commentators, including NT Wright, think that Romans was intended for a primarily Gentile audience.)

Hays shows how the connection between homosexuality in particular on the one hand and (the) creation (narratives) on the other runs especially deep. He points out that when Paul writes that people “exchanged natural relations for those contrary to nature” (v26) this is in fact Paul’s third use of “exchange” (and its cognates) in this context. First Paul states that rebellious humans have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” of created things (v23), then that “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie (v25).” Writes Hays: “The deliberate repetition of [this verb] forges a powerful rhetorical link between the rebellion against God and the ‘shameless deeds’ (v27) that are themselves both evidence and consequence of that rebellion.

Hays summarizes Paul’s teaching in this chapter by stressing that “the aim of Romans 1 is not to teach a code of sexual ethics, nor is it a warning of God’s judgment against those who are guilty of particular sins. Rather, Paul is offering a diagnosis of the disordered human condition. He adduces the fact of widespread homosexual behavior as evidence that humans are indeed in rebellion against their creator…. Homosexual activity provokes the wrath of God…. The unrighteous behavior cataloged in Romans 1:26-31 is a list of symptoms: the underlying sickness of humanity as a whole, Jews and Gentiles alike, is that they have turned away from God and fallen under the pattern of sin (cf Rom 3:9)…. Homosexual activity will not incur God’s punishment; it is its own punishment, an “antireward.” (387 – 88)

Finally, Hays points out that, since this particular sin (here as everywhere else it is mentioned in the NT) is cataloged alongside other sins, it is not an “especially reprehensible” sin. It is in principle “no worse than covetousness or gossip or disrespect for parents (338). “Consequently, for Paul, self-righteous judgment of homosexuality is just as sinful as the homosexual behavior itself” (389).

Peter Toon, in Who Runs the Church? 4 Views on Church Government, goes on to outline and describe the three views held within the Anglican family on the relationship of the historic episcopate to the whole church: the esse, the bene esse, and the plena esse.

First, the view that the historic episcopate of the of very esse (or essence) of the church. On this view “the episcopate guarantees the church. Thus the church derives all her authority from the Lord Jesus Christ through the divinely ordained means of the historic episcopate. Only bishops, who are in the apostolic succession of persons and doctrine, and the priests whom they ordain, have authority and grace to celebrate the Eucharist as an effectual sacrament of grace.” (37)

Second, the view, held mainly by “evangelical churchmen and liberal churchmen,” that the historic episcopate is of the bene esse (“well-being”) of the church. This view sees the episcopate as utilitarian: it is “the best as well as the most natural method of church government, for it brings the greatest good to the church of God in terms of value and usefulness.” (37)

Third, and this is the view Toon himself takes, there is the idea that the historic episcopate is of the plene esse (“fullness of being”) of the church. The historic episcopate embodies the gospel in church order (question: do Presbyterians think in this way? Would we say that our form of church government “embodies the gospel in church order?” Some would, no doubt – especially three office Presbyterians, but some, like Thomas Witherow, simply claim that it is the most biblical form of church polity), according to Toon, and this in two ways.

First, “it provides the effectual sign” of the church’s catholicity / unity, which I suppose stems from the historical fact that the universal church – for many centuries, as least – practiced this form of government. (Keep in mind that catholicity refers to unity not just in space – geographically – but also in time.)

Second, “it includes the principle of apostolicity. The episcopally ordained ministry is sent to represent Christ to his church and is representative of his church. It provides the guardianship of the Word and sacraments, of faith, and of the flock of Christ. The historic episcopate is thus the effectual sign of the relation of Christ to his church, for it shows forth his authority within his church.” (37-38)

For many years now I have struggled to understand how Anglicans perceive their form of the episcopacy. In Who Runs the Church? 4 Views on Church Government evangelical Anglican Peter Toon makes several helpful points which I had not seen quite so clearly before:

1. The ancient church of the first few centuries which universally developed the historic, diocesan episcopacy is the same church which decided the content of the NT canon; which established the first day of the week as the festival of the resurrection on the Lord’s Day; which created major feasts / festivals such as Easter and Pentecost; which set forth the dogmas of the “blessed, holy, and undivided trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost and of the one person of Jesus Christ, made known in two natures, divine and human. (This is in contrast, BTW, to the later doctrinal developments specific to the Roman and Eastern traditions, which took much more time to develop.) (24) Do we really want to accept its verdict on these things, but reject the way it developed the historic episcopate?

2. The development of the diocese and its sole bishop came about as follows: “as city churches (with their one bishop and several presbyters) established missions in nearby towns, presbyters went to the smaller churches to serve as pastors, and so it was that bishops came to have multiple churches in their care and presbyters came to be pastors of individual churches.” (25)

3. Comparing and contrasting what Ignatius and Irenaeus say about bishops is instructive for seeing how the office developed early on. Ignatius of Antioch (circa 105) establishes the monepiscopacy, consistent with three office Presbyterianism. But for “Irenaeus of Lyons (died c. 200), some six or seven decades later, the primary emphasis was upon the bishop as holder of an apostolic see and thus the sign of continuity in apostolic faith and teaching.” 25

Question: how was the purity of this apostolic teaching established or demonstrated? It could not have been merely from (what we mean by) Scripture, since the canon had not yet been finalized! Rather, it was from lists of Episcopal successions, the earliest of which we have is late 2nd century. (29) So this is not simply an argument from tradition as opposed to scripture. There was no “scripture,” just as there was no “scripture” in Paul’s time. → This is where those suggestions that the apostles taught things that are not explicitly recorded in our Bibles (Thes; I Cor 11:23ff) comes in. The situation in the first 3 centuries is analogous to that. In the absence of the Bible, what is authoritative? Apostolicity / apostolic teaching.

4. The monoepiscopacy, it must be admitted, was at least allowed by the HS. 26

5. When we look to the NT we see that “the visiting apostle or evangelist or representative of the apostle had an authority in certain matters “above” that of the local presbyters / bishops and the local congregation of Christ’s flock. So we see here a kind of two-teared authority which is consistent with the two-teared authority between bishops and presbyters. (27-28)

6. It is possible that James was “a monarchical bishop in Jerusalem.” (Acts 21:18) (27)

7. The Anglican church maintained its Episcopal orders unimpaired: “We do not arrogate to ourselves either a new church, or a new religion or new Holy Orders…. Our religion is the same as it was, our church is the same as it was, our Holy Orders are the same as they were, in substance; differing only from what they were formerly, as a garden weeded from a garden unweeded.” – Archbishop John Bramhall in 1654. (32)

After making these and many other points, Toon has a good discussion of three views on how essential bishops are to the church: the esse view, the bene esse view, and the plene esse view, which I will blog on in an upcoming post.

The most fully developed thought on homosexuality the entire Christian Bible is is Romans 1:18-32. Before dealing with that passage, however, Hays first looks at two other NT texts which definitely comment on homosexuality (I Cor 6:9-11; I Tim 1:10 ), and one which possibly comments on it (Acts 15:28-29).

In two NT passages, I Cor 6:9-11 and I Tim 1:10, Paul (note however that Hays and many other NT scholars see the pastoral epistles of I Tim, II Tim, and Titus as pseudonymous) uses a word which is not extant in any source prior to I Cor: the word arsenokoitai. Hays demonstrates how this term, almost certainly coined by the apostle Paul, “is a translation of the Hebrew mishkav zakur (‘lying with a male’), derived directly from Lev 18:22 and 20:13.” (See above for discussion of these OT texts.) In both texts this term appears in a list of “unrighteous deeds.”

Hays continues, speaking of the I Corinthian passage: “Thus, Paul’s use of the term presupposes and reaffirms the holiness code’s [in Leviticus] condemnation of homosexual acts. This is not a controversial point in Paul’s argument; the letter gives no evidence that anyone at Corinth was arguing for the acceptance of same-sex erotic activity.” Paul simply assumes that his readers will agree that arsenokoitai are “workers of unrighteousness” just like the other offenders named in the list (idolaters, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, robbers, etc.).

Here as elsewhere, Paul’s goes on to argue that in the lives of the Corinthians a new reality has come about, and that they no longer belong to themselves, but to God. This is the basis upon which Paul argues that they ought to “glorify God in their bodies.” (I Cor 6:20)

The first Timothy passage is quite similar to this one in that it, too, presupposes that the audience will agree that homosexual activity is rightly categorized as one sin among others including “murderers, slave traders, liars.”

The only other passage in the NT – besides Rom 1 – is Acts 15:28-29, which uses the word pornea (“sexual immorality”). Hays thinks it likely that “these stipulations” are based largely on the purity regulations of Lev 17:1 – 18:30, and therefore “probably include … homosexual intercourse.”

Next up: Hays on what Paul teaches about homosexuality in Rom 1:18-32.

Hays’ ethical project in his The Moral Vision of the NT contains four steps: Reading the Texts, Synthesis (in canonical context), Hermeneutics, and Living the Text.

1. Hays points out the paucity of texts which in any way address this matter. While I do think that there is a sense in which every page of the Bible teaches us about sexuality (for example, every time it teaches us about worship, or about the divine community which we now call “the Trinity,” etc.), nevertheless this is an important point. Hays rightly stresses that the Bible (including the NT) has much, much more to say about economic justice and possessions than it does about (homo)sexuality.

In fact, however, as Hays hints at in this section and elsewhere, for Paul sexuality and possession(s) are theologically weaved together. Twice in I Corinthians (I Cor 6:12-20 in the context of sexual immorality, and in I Cor 7:3-4, in the context of gender in the church), Paul argues from what one might call “Gospel dispossession” to a revised understanding of sexual morality. In other words, Christians (now realize that we) no longer “own” our bodies as a possession, but rather (that) God owns them (I Cor 6:19-20) and thus, for married people, our spouses have the right to control them (I Cor 7:4). So it’s not simply that the Bible talks about money and possessions more than it does about (homo)sexuality, but rather that the Bible discusses (homo)sexuality in the context of its theology of possession(s). In a sense Paul’s theology of sex is rooted in this theology of ownership.

2. Hays rightly points out, as have countless other biblical interpreters, that the story of Sodom & Gomorrah in Gen 19 has little or nothing to do with this issue. The sins of Sodom & Gomorrah are of a completely different kind. Related to the above point about money and possessions, the sins in question here are injustice and greedy selfishness (Ezek 16:49). It seems clear to me therefore, that we should either abolish the word “sodomy” from our vocabulary, or begin to define it as oppression against the poor. (I suppose that the latter scenario would make many conservative evangelicals “sodomites.”)

3. Hays rightly points out that in Lev 18:22 and 20:13 homosexual intercourse between two men is flatly and simply prohibited and condemned (though the text is silent on woman / woman relations). Thus, if we were members of the covenant community to which this law was originally addressed, there would be no need for sophisticated hermeneutics here. Directly, plainly, and simply, this activity was forbidden for these people.

As Hays points out, however, things are not so simple for Christians living in the first century and beyond, given the eschatological character of biblical theology and ethics over the span of redemptive history and indeed up to the eschaton.

Thus Christians like Hays who see the Bible as authoritatively normative for the covenant community have more work to do. The starting point for that work is to attend to how the NT applies these “old covenant” laws. This is precisely what Hays proceeds to do.

In seminary (Westminster) I had the extremely helpful opportunity to do an independent study with Larry Sibley, researching the issue of “gender in the church.” The aim of the study in particular was to clarify what Scripture teaches about the role of women in the church and also the issue of homosexuality. And even though I did finally confirm my basic stance that women are not allowed to be ordained to the office of presbytery within the Presbyterian form of church government, nevertheless,

- I did discover that the NT, and Paul in particular, endorses all kinds of serious ministry opportunities for women to engage in (including the office of deacon);
- I saw a difference between the way this issue should be played out between Presbyterianism on the one hand and Episcopal forms of government on the other;
- I have continued, over the last seven years, to struggle with this issue, sensing it to be so difficult and such a source of consternation that firm settledness is simply not possible. (This, not least, because of countless conversations with people outside the church who have differing perspectives on this issue.)

In the spirit of the third point above, I have continued to study the issue over the last seven or so years in pastoral ministry. In particular I have found the works of Richard Hays quite helpful. (His Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul is one of the most paradigm-shifting books I have ever read.) Hays, like NT Wright, is in favor of the ordination of women to the presbyterate, but (again like NT Wright, and, as we will see in a later post) opposes the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals and sees chastity within marriage as the biblical norm for human sexuality. (More on Hays’ thinking on homosexuality forthcoming in an upcoming post.)

I want, here on my blog, to summarize Hays on gender in the church according to St. Paul. The relevant material can be found in his The Moral Vision of the New Testament, pages 46 – 56.

1. Hays argues that Paul, especially in I Corinthians, is at pains to oppose the false and pagan form of asceticism that was rapant in his culture as well as in the Corinthian church. Hays takes I Cor 7:1a (“It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”) as a quotation lifted from the Corinthian community / correspondence which he then seeks to counter or qualify. Paul doggedly affirms that husbands and wives are obligated to gratify one another sexually in the marriage bed, with rate and specific exceptions that he spells out later in the chapter.

Hays’ point here is that Paul here as elsewhere (Gal 3:28) shows himself to be a radically “egalitarian” thinker with respect to gender, given the patriarchal assumptions which were dominant in his day. For, as St. Paul says in the same paragraph (7:4) “the husband does not have authority over his body, but the wife does.”

2. In I Cor 11: 3-16 Paul demonstrates that “he expects women to pray and prophesy in the community’s worship.” (52) And even though in this passage Paul is making some pretty “conservative” assumptions about women covering their heads and thus visibly displaying their submission to men, he nevertheless once again breaks radically with the dominant assumptions of his day with respect to women’s roles not just in the wider culture, but also within the Jewish synagogue.

3. When we come to I Cor 14:34-35 (“Let the women keep silent in the churches….”), we are thus confronted with a problem, something that is hard to see as anything other than a contradiction. Hays ultimately opts for seeing this latter passage as a post-Pauline interpolation (an option which, I agree, does seem quite plausible), but he also notes that another possible way of reconciling the two emphases, which, at the very least, are in tension with each other, is to hold that in I Cor 11 Paul is referring to unmarried women (including widows), whereas in I Cor 14 he specifically has married women in view. (Remember that in Greek the word for “woman” and the word for “wife” are one and the same: gune.)

4. Still, a tension exists within Paul’s thought, and we need to try to reconcile it. But we also need, to test or confirm the working hypothesis of Paul’s “pro-egalitarian” posture which follows from (or perhaps presupposes) Hays’ assertion of post-Pauline interpolation. How best to do this? Hays rightly says that we should look at the actual way in which women were viewed and treated in the actual Pauline Christian communities. Four examples are prominent:

a. Phoebe (Rom 16:1) who is called a deacon, and whom Paul expects to be honored with great authority, since he commands the Roman Christians to do “whatever she requires of you.” Significantly, Paul also refers to Phoebe as a prostasis, a word which probably describes one who “leads or presides over a group.”
b. Prisca and Aquila, a wife and husband team. Paul writes that “all the Gentile churches give thanks for their ministry” and he never elevates the husband over the wife; she is a full participant in ministry. (Rom 16:3-4; cf Acts 18:18-28)
c. Junia, describes as “prominent among the apostles” (16:7) along with several other women in Acts 16 who are described as “workers in the Lord.”
d. Eudia and Synteche whom Paul says “stuggled beside me in the work of the Gospel.” (Phil 4:2-3).

Hays concludes by suggesting that Paul is pretty clearly in favor of women having no restrictions in the life of the covenant community. Other canonical voices, however (including the post-Pauline voices of Ephesians and the pastoral epistles, especially I Timothy), must be taken into account before a final view can be settled upon.

Next up: Richard Hays on what the Bible teaches about homosexuality.

It was about ten years ago that my friend Rob Kirby introduced me to this wonderful, ancient poem. I had forgotten about it until a few days ago when I ran across it again in Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization. St. Brigid, probably consecrated a bishop “by accident” (according to various sources, including Cogitosus), lived in Ireland during the 5th & 6th centuries. (Cahill, 172-179) Cheers!

I should like a great lake of the finest ale
For the King of kings.
I should like a table of the choicest food
For the family of heaven.
Let the ale be made from the fruits of faith,
And the food be forgiving love.

I should welcome the poor to my feast,
For they are God’s children.
I should welcome the sick to my feast,
For they are God’s joy.
Let the poor sit with Jesus at the highest place,
And the sick dance with the angels.

God bless the poor,
God bless the sick,
And bless our human race.
God bless our food,
God bless our drink,
All homes, O God, embrace.

I should have posted this a long time ago. I mentioned it to a friend / fellow Starbucks partner a while back, and I decided today to print it out and give it to her. “Sincere Meditations,” a chapter in Anne Lamott’s Plan B:

Sometimes, if you are lucky and brave, you can watch someone who’s met with serious illness or loss do the kind of restoration that I suspect we are here on earth to do. If you’ve ever seen David Roche, the monologist and pastor of the Church of 80% Sincerity, you may have already witnessed this process.

David and I met years ago through a friend we had in common. The first time we spoke was on the phone, and we talked about God for half an hour. He mentioned that he had some facial deformity, and I thought, Well, whatever, and we talked some more. Then he came to my church, and it turned out he had one of the most severe facial deformities I’ve ever seen.

He was born with a huge benign tumor on the bottom left side of his face; surgeons had tried to remove it when he was very young. In the process, they removed his lower lip, and then gave him such extensive radiation that the lower part of his face stopped growing, and he was covered with plum-colored burns.

He is fifty-five now, with silvery hair and bright blue eyes.

I first saw him perform at a local community center, at a benefit for refugees in Kosovo. He was wearing a plum-purple dress shirt, which exemplifies the tender and jaunty bravery I have come to associate with him. He stepped out onstage before a hundred grown-ups and a dozen children, and stood smiling while people got a good look. Then he suggested we ask him, in a conversational toe and in unison, “David, what happened to your face?” When we did, he explained about the tumor, the surgery, and all those radiation burns.

He told of wanting to form a gang of the coolest disfigured people in the world, like the Phantom of the Opera, the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, Freddie Krueger, and Michael Jackson. They’d go places as a group-bowling, or to a makeover counter at Macy’s.

“People assume I had an awful childhood,” he continued. “But I didn’t. I was loved and esteemed by my parents. My face may be unique, but my experiences aren’t. I believe they are universal.”

Wouldn’t you think that having a face like his totally messed with his adolescent sex life? Of course it did, he said. And he was stocky, too, a chubby little disfigured guy. But these things were not nearly as detrimental as having been raised Catholic, having been, as he put it, an incense survivor.

As he told his stories through a crazy mouth, a jumble of teeth, only one lip and a too-large tongue, David’s voice did not sound garbled but strangely like a burr, that of a Scottish person who just had a shot of novocaine.

“We with facial deformities are children of the dark,” he said. “Our shadow is on the outside. And we can see in the dark: we can see you, we see you turn away, but one day we finally understand that you turn away not from our faces but from your own fears. From those things inside you that you think mark you as someone unlovable to your family, and society and even to God.

“All those years, I kept my bad stories in the dark, but not anymore. Now I am stepping out into the light. And this face has turned out to be an elaborately disguised gift from God.” David spoke of the hidden scary scarred parts inside us all, the soul disfigurement, the fear deep within us that we’re unacceptable; and while he spoke, his hands moved fluidly in expressions that his face can’t make. His hands are beautiful, fair, light as air, light as a ballet dancer’s.

He described his first game of spin-the-bottle, when the girl who was chosen to kiss him recoiled in horror, and he said to her, debonairly, “You know you want me.” Then he admitted sheepishly that he didn’t actually say that for twenty years, but that in soul time, it’s never too late. He told of loving a teenage girl named Carol, of how it took months to ask her out, and then when he did, she accepted. They went to the movies and then afterward sat on his front porch; he kept trying to put his arm around her but couldn’t quite do it, so they talked and talked and talked. He wanted to kiss her but was too shy to ask; he was afraid it was like asking her to kiss a monster. Finally she said, “I need to go home now,” and he said, “Carol, I want to kiss you,” and she said, “David, I thought you’d never ask.”

That was a moment of true grace, and from this experience, he built a church inside of himself. There is no physical church, but his own life: both his performances and his work teaching people to tell their stories, their marvelous, screwed-up and often hilarious resurrection stories. Voilà: a church.

“We in the Church of Eighty Percent Sincerity do not believe in miracles,” he said. “But we do believe that you have to stay alert, because good things happen. When God opens the door, you’ve got to put your foot in.

“Eighty percent sincerity is about as good as it’s going to get. So is eighty percent compassion. Eighty percent celibacy. So twenty percent of the time, you just get to be yourself.”

It’s such subversive material, so contrary to everything society leads us to believe-that if you look good, you’ll be happy, and have it all together, and you’ll be successful and nothing will go wrong and you won’t have to die, and the rot won’t get in.

In the Church of 80% Sincerity, you definitely don’t have to look good, but you are supposed to meditate. According to David’s instructions, you sit quietly with your eyes closed and you follow your breath in and out of your body, gently watching your mind. Your mantra should go like this: “Why am I doing this? This is such a waste! I have so much to do! My butt itches…” And if you stick to it, he promised, from time to time calmness and peace of mind will intrude. After some practice with this basic mediation, you will be able to graduate to panic meditations, and then sex fantasy meditations. And meditations on what to do when you win the lotto.

When David insists you are fine exactly the way you are, you find yourself almost believing him. When he talks about unconditional love, he gives you a new lease on life, because the way he explains it, you may, for the first time, believe that even you could taste of this. As he explains it, in the Church of 80% Sincerity, everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but with a shelf life of about eight to ten seconds. Instead of beating yourself up because you feel it only fleetingly, you should savor those moments when it appears. As David puts it, “We might say to our beloved, ‘Honey, I’ve been having these feelings of unconditional love for you for the last eight to ten seconds.’ Or, ‘Darling, I’ll love you till the very end of dinner.’”

David has been married to a beautiful woman named Marlena for the last few years. After listening to his lovely words, his magic, this doesn’t seem at all strange. There he is, standing in front of a crowd, and everyone can see that just about the worse thing that could happen to a person physically has happened to him. Yet he’s enjoying himself immensely, talking about the ten seconds of grace he felt here, the ten seconds he felt there, how those moments filled him and how he makes them last a little longer. Everyone watching gets happy because he’s secretly giving instruction on how this could happen for them, too, this militant self-acceptance. He lost the great big outward thing, the good-looking package, and the real parts endured. They shine through like crazy, the brilliant mind and humor, the depth of generosity, the intense blue eyes, those beautiful hands.

The children, sitting in the front rows, get him right away. Maybe they don’t have so many other overlays yet, of armor and prejudice so Spirit can reach out and grab them faster. Maybe it’s partly that they’re sitting so close, but whatever the reason, they gaze up at him as if he were a rock star. “I look different to you now, right?” he asked the kids that first time I saw him, when he was almost finished, and they nodded, especially the teenagers. To be in adolescence is, for most of us, to be facially deformed. David makes you want to help him build a fort under the table with blankets, because it looks like such fun when he does it. He builds the fort, and then lets you lift the blankets and peek in, at him and at you. You laugh with recognition, with relief that your baggage and flaws are not vile, unmentionable. It’s like soul aerobics.

“I’ve been forced to find my inner beauty,” he said in closing. “Doing that gave me a deep faith in myself. Eighty percent of the time. And that faith has been a window, so I can see the beauty in you, too. The light in your eyes. Your warmth. So thank you.” There was thunderous applause, and he bowed shyly, ducking his head and then looking up, beaming at us all. He holds his palms up as if about to give a benediction. His hands caught the light like those of the youngest child there.”

In his subsection on the sacraments, “Communion with the Mystical Body” (Catholicism 93 – 101), de Lubac explains the historical understanding of the “threefold manner of the body of Christ:”

When, with St. Augustine, [our ancient forbears] heard Christ say to them: “I am your food, but instead of my being changed into you, it is you who shall be transformed into me,” they unhesitatingly understood that by their reception of the Eucharist they would be incorporated the more in the Church. They could see a profound identity between the mysteries of the “real presence” and of the “mystical body.” And this identity was taken for granted in all their – frequently lively – discussions on the question of the corpus triforme or the triplex modus corporis Christi.”

The three forms of the body of Christ, as de Lubac describes them, are:

• the soma typicon (coined by Origen, the “typical” body, ie, the individual body of the man Jesus),
• the corpus mysticum (the mystical body, which, as William Cavanaugh in Torture and Eucharist and others elsewhere point out, and which de Lubac confirms, originally referred to the eucharistic body, ie, the communion bread, but then was later exalted to refer to the corpus Christi quod est Ecclesia, the body of Christ which is the church),
• the corpus verum (the true body, which originally referred to the body of Christ which is the church, but then was demoted to refer to the communion bread).

It is no secret that Radical Orthodoxy, in concert with many other intellectual historians (including Pope Benedict), sees a radical intellectual, cultural, and spiritual shift taking place in the thirteenth century with emergence of the thought of Duns Scotus.

In her book After Writing, Catherine Pickstock attempts to trace some of the ways in which this shift led to pervasive decline in the economic and political realms. Her overarching theme is that there came a shift from the bonds of kinship – displayed, for example, in the high middle ages’ approach to godparenthood and marriage – to the bonds of contract. This older web of kinship, Pickstock wants to demonstrate, is loosely bound to a sacramentality which “[structures] all forms of social interaction.” (152)

In the economic realm, lay fraternities and craft guilds provided the bonds of kinship and linked economic practice to liturgical practice. The bonds of friendship – beyond just the norm, for example, that disputes be settled through internal arbitration, to the more important informal exchange of gifts in the sense of caritas – were never formalized into contract, but rather embodied in social expectations and ritualized practices.

With the decline of the fraternities (a bi-product of the Scotist revolution), however, two pernicious developments ensue: the notion of charity is depersonalized into an abstract notion of philanthropy, which, like modern “charitable giving,” does nothing to bind giver and receiver, and, as social networks of lay fraternities and guilds decline, power shifts to a class of newly aggrandized priests / ministers. (Pickstock shows how, as usual, late medieval Catholicism and the emerging Protestant societies are mere variations on the same pernicious theme.)

If it is true, as I have summarized de Lubac’s argument in my last post on his book Catholicism, that the beatific vision will be enjoyed only by the community as a whole, then this has implications for Christ himself, who, after all, is a member of this community. (He is the head of the body, and the chief cornerstone of the temple of living stones, and our elder brother.) This is de Lubac’s point in this section.

Writes Origen (de Lubac’s primary theological mentor), commenting on Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones:

When shall come the resurrection of the real, whole body of Christ, then the members of Christ shall be knitted together, joint to joint, each one in its place, and the multitude of members will form at last, completely and in one full reality, one single body.”

Until that time, argues de Lubac, there is a certain sense in which Christ remains imcomplete. De Lubac quotes from a 1934 article in Revue Nouvelle theologique:

Christ, the Word Incarnate, was not our Redeemer by a sort of accident; it was his sole office, it governed everything else. Can it be allowed that the Redeemer’s hope is fully satisfied, independently of the outcome of his work? Has the hope of the Shepherd nothing to do with the fate of his flock? Is it enough for him to have kept clear of the wolf’s jaws that he may peacefully contemplate his sheep from afar, watching over them merely with pity as if they were not his own? As long as God’s work is not complete, as long as there are petitions of the Pater unfulfilled, can it be admitted that hope has not room in heaven, that its object is found wanting? The happiness of the individual is not substitute for that of the community. The same steadfast longing, the same desire, the same rhythm of life run through both the church militant and the church triumphant until that day when Christ shall be complete, that is, until he shall come again in glory.”

We may, writes de Lubac, conclude with Bossuet: “Jesus Christ will not be whole until the number of saints in complete. Our gaze must ever be fixed on the consummation of God’s work.” (133)

Berry, Wendell. Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community

Cavanaugh, William. Torture and Eucharist

Cavanaugh, William. Theopolitcal Imagination

Gornik, Mark. To Live in Peace

Jordan, James. Sociology of the Church

Leithart, Peter. Against Christianity

Liethart, Peter. The Kingdom and the Power

MacIntyre, Alistair. After Virtue

Milbank, John. Theology and Social Theory

O’Donnovan, Oliver. The Desire of the Nations

Pickstock, Catherine. After Writing

Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace

Wright, N.T. Bringing the Church to the World

Ward, Graham. Cities of God

William, Rowan. On Christian Theology

In this section de Lubac rehearses yet another exhibit in his argument for the Christian faith as primarily social. Here again he argues from patristic history combined with Scripture (and the Fathers’ reading of it).

In the first several decades of the Church it was easy for Christians to conclude, on the basis of such passages as Mt 25, 2 Tim 4:8, and Heb 11:39-40, that final consummation of Christian joy and reward would take place only at the time of judgment at the end of the world. After all, the Faith was new enough that it was easy for them to recall every Christian generation which had passed before them.

What is interesting, however, is that, even when many generations had passed and the Church finally became aware that perhaps the return of Christ was not quite so imminent as it had previously seemed, Christians – more or less universally – still clung to the idea that all would experience final joy, or the beatific vision, together, as one community.

So much so that in the fourteenth century Benedict XII had to censor the view that departed saints had to wait until the final resurrection to enjoy the beatific vision. Now, the point here is not that Benedict XII was wrong to censure this view: he was in fact right to do so, correctly condemning this “transposition into the order of time a genuine causal dependence.” (123)

The point is this: why did the Church so doggedly insist that the beatific vision will be enjoyed by the community as a whole? The answer is that she understood deep in her bones the social nature of the Church and her salvation.

To this end de Lubac quotes St. Thomas:

The end of a reasonable creature is to attain to beatitude, and that can consist only in the Kingdom of God, which in turn is nothing other than the well-ordered society of those who enjoy the vision of God.” (Contra Gentes lib. 4, c. 50, quoted on 130)

The story of the development of the Christian doctrine of God, beginning with the doctrinal disputes of the fourth century, is long and complex. Certain key themes, however, emerge again and again: ousia, hypostasis, energeia among the most important. In this book Orthodox philosopher David Bradshaw lucidly and compellingly deals with all of them, focusing particularly, however, on the ancient concept of energeia (i.e., the “energies” of God), genealogically tracing its evolution from Aristotle through the Medieval Greek speaking theologian Gregory Palamas.

Readers will find the book immensely relevant to such discussions as the relationship between faith and reason (which, according to Bradshaw, has been rent in the West but held intact in Eastern Christianity); the pervasive influence of ancient Greek thought upon Christian theology; the origins of modern, western nihilism; and the nature of the theological issues dividing Eastern and Western branches of the Christian church.

The primary thesis of the book, attempting to indict central streams of Western Christianity in one grand sweep, is that the West, beginning with Augustine, has failed to assimilate the Greek understanding of God’s energeia, a failure due in part to the exigencies of language (none of the major Latin renderings of this term – operatio, actus, and actualitas – fully capture its semantic nuances), in part to historical accident (e.g., Augustine had access only to certain “Neo-Platonist” philosophers), in part due to more pernicious reasons such as Augustine’s absolutization of Plato’s version of divine simplicity unique to his middle dialogues.

Of particular interest is the way in which Greek and Latin theology received the classical heritage. It is perhaps tempting for many to assume that the Greek speaking East is somehow more saturated with Greek thought, but this is not the case: “It is only by seeing both the eastern and western traditions as developments out of a shared heritage in classical metaphysics that they can be properly understood.” (xii)

The book is divided into five parts: the development of energeia from Aristotle through Plotinus (chs. 1- 4; note that this includes Paul’s letters, in which ten occurrences of the term are treated in the book); preliminary developments in the West (ch. 5); preliminary developments in the East (ch. 6); the growth of the Eastern tradition (chs. 7 – 8); and a systematic comparison of Augustine, Aquinas, and Palamas (ch. 9).

Beyond the general point that Christian notions of teleology have their roots in Aristotle, Bradshaw’s articulation of Aristotle’s doctrine of God (i.e., the Prime Mover) already foreshadows how the West has (allegedly) impaired the right use of ancient thought. For Bradshaw shows us how Aristotle’s theos is not simply transcendent (as he is usually viewed in the West) but also radically immanent in his relation to the world (the first heavens, for example, being moved as objects of the Prime Mover’s love). Bradshaw rehearses various other modes of participation between the creation and the divine (with energeia acting as a connecting thread) in the thought of the Hellenistic schools, Philo of Alexandria, and especially Plotinus, whose theory of two acts proved to be formative for subsequent thought. Of particular note here is the development of the concept of theurgy beginning with Porphyry but truly coming into its own in the philosophic outlook of his disciple Iamblichus, those thought – significantly – remained virtually unknown in the West.

Moving to a treatment of these ideas in a specifically Christian context, the influence of energeia is exerted most fully in the Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century. Among the most important examples is the Neo-Platonist logic behind Athanasius’ theological critique of Egyptian bishop Serapion’s denial of the deity of the Holy Spirit. Well known is Athanasius’ affirmation that “the external works of the Trinity are undivided” (in Latin, Opera ad extra trinitatis indivisa sunt.). Less appreciated is that this doctrine relies on a philosophical presupposition of Neo-Platonism: that energeia is revelatory of essence implying in this case that if we know that the three persons of the Trinity perform their works (Greek energeiai) in unison, then we know (or so Neo-Platonist thinking would hold) that their ousia must be unitary as well. In this way Serapion’s theology is demonstrated to fall short of Scriptural implications.

Here lies the primary benefit of this book. Modern western Christians of an orthodox persuasion readily accept Athanasius’ conclusions here (and elsewhere), but ought we to embrace the Greek presuppositions upon which these conclusions depend? For these presuppositions, Bradshaw shows, lead to some rather far reaching consequences, most of which center on the ancient understanding of methexis or participation (at this point the book traffics in the domain of the theological development known as Radical Orthodoxy, with its insistence on the centrality of participation in the Christian life). God mysteriously interacts with his creation in ways that shed new light on such things as the body’s role in prayer (just as the energies mitigate against a God / world dualism, so also do they mitigate against a mind / body, or even a soul / body dualism), the nature of the sacraments (the main connection here being that of theurgy), and the meaning of sanctification (hence the Orthodox understanding of theosis).

Critical reaction to this book centers on three basic points:

First, Bradshaw’s (indeed that of the mainstream Orthodox tradition) reading of Neo-Platonist teaching in the writings of St. Paul needs justification. To load, for example, Paul’s use of energeia in Ephesians 1:19 with classical philosophical meaning seems a bit suspect. What might be the Hebraic background of this idea? Even if such a query lies outside the scope of Bradshaw’s book, this is a question that must asked when grappling with these issues. (To say this is not to totalize authorial intent at the expense of other interpretive postures: such ecclesial and corporate “reader response” may well be legitimate, especially given the dual authorship of Scripture, but such a move ought at least to be explicitly articulated and examined.)

Second, Bradshaw’s genealogy of western nihilism as stemming from Augustine is tenuous (although shared with other compelling Orthodox theologians such as Christos Yannaras). It is true that Western theology and practice is more centralized, monarchical, and centered on the impersonal ousia of God (seen in the papal tendencies of Rome) than the Eastern commitment to the equal ultimacy of the tri-personhood of God. And yet, one must strain to trace modern nihilism in the west all the way back to a supposed Augustinian source. More plausible, it seems to me, is the genealogy of nihilism put forth by Radical Orthodoxy, beginning as it does with Duns Scotus and late medieval nominalism.

Third, the same objections to this account of the divine energies tend to crop up over and over again throughout the history of the church: that this view of God’s energeia reifies what are properly merely logical distinctions, that it compromises the simplicity of God, and that it comes dangerously close to pantheism. To his credit Bradshaw does not avoid these criticism, engaging as he does in a lengthy response to one of the more recent critiques of this Neo-Platonist heritage, that of Rowan Williams. And despite the fact that Williams has modified his views on this particular issue, Bradshaw does overcome several real objections.

However, Bradshaw does not sufficiently bring out the fact that, in all likelihood, important figures usually associated with Eastern Orthodoxy would likely have objections to this view, wanting to protect the simplicity of God. In particular, to say that God decides something other than what he is does not seem to be consistent with the Cappadocian Fathers or Maximus. This, of course, does not mean that it is not true, but nevertheless full context here would be helpful.

This book is the product of a lucid mind and a faithful imagination engaged with his tradition and is worthy of deep respect.

The key word in this section is the word “analogy.” I once heard RC Sproul say that “theology is the making of distinctions.” As important as distinctions are, however, I would argue, and de Lubac and others would agree, that to think theologically is to think analogically. The analogies which help us understand what the church is proliferate:

First, the church is like the human body. That is to say, the church is decidedly eschatological in its nature. Just as the human body which I now am will one day be transformed into a more glorious resurrection body (analogous, by the way, to the body of the man Jesus Christ) so also the visible, embodied church of today will one day be transformed and transfigured into something far more glorious, in full consummation with Jesus Christ. In this connection, de Lubac stresses that the church is not merely a vestibule of the Heavenly city / church, any more than the tabernacle was a mere vestibule of the temple of the old covenant of Israel. Augustine: “The church of today is the kingdom of Christ and the heavenly kingdom.” (Is this, perhaps, included in what BB Warfield rejected when he described Calvinism as “the triumph of Augustine’s soteriology over his ecclesiology?” I suspect that it is.)

Second, the church is like Christ. In Christology we reject, on the one hand, the monophysite tendency to merge or to confuse the two natures of Christ that form the duality of his person, and on the other hand the Nestorian tendency to separate those two natures thereby destroying the unity of the person of Christ. In precisely the same way, in ecclesiology we reject the tendency, on one hand, to separate the visible, embodied church from its eschatological fulfillment as well as its mystical divinity (not to mention its eschatological fulfillment, present in an “already / not-yet” way), and on the other hand to simply identify the visible, embodied church with its mystical divinity. There is some kind of hypostatic union going on here just as in the person of Christ. De Lubac suggests that these two reductionistic tendencies, being the two halves of a false dichotomy, include one another, and that Protestant theology / ecclesiology is guilty of both of them.

Finally, the church is (like) a sacrament. Christ is the sacrament of God, and the church is the sacrament of Christ, making him fully present in the world. “She not only carries on his work, but is his very continuation, in a sense far more real than in which it can be said that any human institution is its founder’s continuation.” (p 76)

A couple of excerpts serve to summarize this portion of chapter 2, “The Church:”

Thus, just as the Jews put all their trust for so long not in an individual reward beyond the grave but in their common destiny as a race and in the glory of their earthly Jerusalem, so for the Christian all his hope must be bent on the coming of the Kingdom and the glory of the one Jerusalem; and as Yahweh bestowed adoption on no individual as such, but only insofar as he bestowed universal adoption on the people of the Jews, so the Christian obtains adoption only in proportion as he is a member of that social structure brought to life by the Spirit of Christ.”

Where Christ is, and there alone, can be found the true Israel, and it is only through incorporation in Christ that participation in the blessings of Abraham may be obtained.” (This is a quotation from Irenaeus, Against Heresies.)

For those of you who have read William Cavanaugh on the rise of the modern nation state, this will sound familiar.

In addition, this comports quite nicely with John Zizioulas’ theology of person (prosopon / hypostasis) in Being and Communion, where he teaches that there is really no such thing as a solitary individual, but only persons, who are always already in relationship with others, imaging the triune life of God.

According to de Lubac, if Adam / the human race was created as an integral whole (thus reflecting the unity of God), as the last post argues, then the fall must mean a shattering of that unity.

Thus, de Lubac shows (pp 33ff) how, according to the Fathers, Adam’s sin is about the break up of the human race as much as anything else.

In discussing the fall of man, de Lubac offers the following quotations:

“Where there is sin, there is multiplicity.” – Origen

“And now, we rend each other like wild beasts.” – Maximus

“Satan has broken us up.” – Cyril of Alexandria

“Adam himself is therefore now spread out over the whole face of the earth. Originally one, he has fallen, and, breaking up as it were, he has filled the whole earth with pieces.” – Augustine

For the next few weeks I plan to blog about Henri de Lubac’s _Catholicism_, this text being so important for a proper understanding of the corporate / social / political character of salvation and the church. As we will see, de Lubac’s command of theologians who have gone before him is masterful, and the majority of the ink he spills in his books is either paraphrasing them or directly quoting from them, especially from the church fathers.

John Milbank describes this work, a “foundational” text for the ressourcement theology of the first half of the 20th century, as stressing “the social character of the church as the true universal community in embryo, rather than as a mere external machinery for the saving of individual souls.” (John Milbank, The Suspended Middle 2)

From pp. 30-32 of Catholicism:

“So when the pagan philosophers jeered at what they considered the extravagant claim put forward by Christians, those latest barbarians, of uniting all men in the same faith [as did Celsus, in Origen, Contra Celsum … or Porphyry, Ad Marsellam. It must be added that Origen himself sees very well the obstacles to such unity, to the point of conceding that it can never be fully achieved in this world. Yet he knows that there is complicity between the deepest nature of man and the law of the Logos, which is none other than the religion of Christ.], it was easy for the Fathers to answer them that this claim was not, after all, so extravagant, since all men were made in the one image of the one God…. In the language of the first centuries Adam was not generally called the “father of the human race;” he was only the “first made,” “the first begotten by God,” as is recalled by the final sentences, so solemnly in their simplicity, of the genealogy of Jesus according to Luke: “who was of Henos, who was of Seth, who was of Adam, who was of God.” To believe in this one God was, therefore, to believe at the same time in a common Father of all: unus Deus et Pater omnium [here de Lubac footnotes, among other sources, Acts 17:26-28].

Again and again Irenaeus dwells on this dual correspondence:

“There is but one God the Father, and one Logos the Son, and one Spirit, and one salvation only for all who believe in him…. There is but one salvation as there is but one God…. There is one only Son who fulfills the will of the Father, and one human race in which the mysteries of God are fulfilled.” [from Adv. Heareses]

Clement of Alexandria, in pages brimming over with poetry, after exposing the baseness of the pagan mystery cults, extols the mysteries of the Logos and displays the “divine Choregus” calling all men to him:

“Be instructed in these mysteries and you shall dance with the choir of angels before the uncreated God, whilst the Logos will sing the sacred hymns with us. This eternal Jesus, the one high priest, intercedes for men and calls on them: “Hearken,” he cries, “all you peoples, or rather all you who are endowed with reason, barbarians or Greeks! I summon the whole human race, I who am its author by the will of the Father! Come unto me and gather together as one well-ordered unity under the one God, and under the one Logos of God.” [from Protreptic]“

Today I picked up a copy of, and started reading, Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change.

First impression: I can’t help noticing a familiar vibe, reminiscent of John Shelby Spong’s Why Christianity Must Change or Die, which I read several years ago in college.

McLaren (typical of other “emergent” authors such as Donald Miller) offers a passionate call for believers to reject “mainstream” patterns of Christianity. In particular “emergent” authors have done a great job of conceiving of and articulating the meaning of the Bible in narratival ways.

However, as best I can tell, there is minimal ecclesiology (including as pertains to the sacraments and liturgy) in McLaren’s approach.

The radical act that Christians are called up on to perform is to believe more “wildly,” rejecting the “framing narratives” that dominate our culture.

A superior alternative to the program of the Emergent Church leaders is that of Radical Orthodoxy, with its emphasis on liturgy, participation, and the genealogy of nihilism. Drawing on the deep pre-modern roots of the faith, RO is able to offer a critique of postmodern secularity which “emergent” theology cannot.

For an excellent introduction to Radical Orthodoxy, listen to this.

Anne Lamott has a new book out which I have not yet read.

I love, though, this paragraph from her Plan B:

You’ve got to love this in a God — consistently assembling the motleyest people to bring, into the lonely and freightening world, a commitment to caring and community. It’s a centuries-long reality show — Moses the stutterer, Rahab the hooker, David the adulterer, Mary the homeless teenager. Not to mention all the mealy-mouthed disciples. Not to mention a raging insecure narcissist like me.”