Appreciations
[2]
A list of the normative theological themes occurring in the opening
parts of the draft might read as follows: affirmation of the law of
God "which protects us and society from harm" (#60); "God's
incarnation in the very midst of human life and… our
justification for the sake of Christ, our Savior" (#95); the
goodness of material creation and the body (#122) and yet "the
brokenness of our relationships to God and to each other" (#127),
manifest in egocentric "self-gratification and self-promotion"
(#131); thus the simul iustus et peccator of the Christian life,
rejecting "the notion that we can perfect either ourselves or
society" (#157) in favor of living by faith "within the difficult,
complex, and ambiguous realities in this world." The new life in
Christ is understood as vocation (#171); here the point of ethics
is concrete love of neighbor (#5-11). Holding all this together,
the draft lifts up as a meta-principle God's "mercy and compassion"
(#209ff). Divine compassion is said to shape Lutheran sexual ethics
in this distinctive "pattern:" Grace transforms and renews, neither
by evading the law nor yet again by restoring the law as an
abstract basis for ethical conformity, but by the new vocation of
neighbor-love in changing times. This vocation includes the domain
of human sexuality; the concrete task of love is discerned in the
deliberations of Christian community (# 252-316), such as the draft
itself seeks to model.
[3]
An omission occurs in this otherwise worthy distillation of
principles for theological ethics: the divine command laid upon the
human couple made in the image of God according to Genesis 1:26-28,
which provides the ethical content of the law. This is the classic
text, the sedes doctrinae (seat of the doctrine of humanity). The
substance of the divine command to the primal man and woman is
"dominion-sharing love," as the late William Lazareth put it.[1]
Drawing on Luther, Lazareth wrote, "the Law before sin is one
thing, the law after sin is something else (alia lex)." The notion
of creative divine command stands "in ethically responsible
opposition to all simplistic forms of antinomianism[;] it was God's
intention that this command should provide man with an opportunity
for obedience and outward worship… a sign by which man would
give evidence that he was obeying God."[2] "Before their fall into
original sin (Genesis 1-2), Adam and Eve were governed by God's
gracious command of holy love. In the absence of any sin, strictly
speaking, God's eschatological will as command was explicitly
expressed neither as law (to condemn sin) nor as gospel (to conquer
sin). At most, the law and the gospel were latently united in
command and grace as the governing will of God for righteous human
beings." Lazareth cited Luther's own words: "For Adam this Word was
Gospel and Law; it was his worship; it was his service and the
obedience he could offer God in this state of innocence."[3] [4]
Any such reflection is absent in the draft. Even though the draft
wants to affirm relationality as essential to humanity, one fears
that acknowledgment of the authority of the Genesis text is avoided
because it indicates that creation in the divine image consists in
the partnership of man and woman, that is, not in each as isolated
individual, but precisely together, as partnered. What is notable
in the draft, however, is not only the absence of the creative
divine command to the first human couple. What we find in its place
is a polemical accent against "abstract ideals" (#206),
against the mere "application of static principles, even biblical
ones, to varying situations," supposedly applied merely for the
sake of "containing the ambiguous power of sex" (#311-13). This
polemic is, as we shall see, hardly justified by the otherwise
important insight that the on-going work of divine creation is
"constructive social, political, and community practices that will
build trustworthy relations" (# 314-5; and all of Part IV). The
idea would rather be that some structures are divinely authorized
just because they consist in the constructive practices which build
trust (e.g., man and woman together conceiving, bearing, and
raising children) while others (e.g., man abandoning, woman
aborting, either abusing children) are for the same reason
precluded. I will return to this matter. In
any case, at this juncture in the draft comes a statement that some
have found perplexing. The statement in question reads: "A Lutheran
sexual ethic looks to the death and resurrection of Christ as the
source of the values that guide it" (# 315-6). This statement is
admittedly ambiguous in speaking of the source of values this way.
The ambiguity is connected with the omission of the creative divine
command to the human image of God and the polemic instead, even
against "biblical principles," referenced above.
[5]
Yet for many reasons, the draft Social Statement could represent
considerable progress in theological ethics by employing in place
of a static dualism of spheres the dynamic, eschatological
distinction between two kinds of power: the temporal power of
reward and punishment ("law") and the eternal power of "mercy and
compassion" ("promise"). I read the draft this latter way: the
cross and resurrection of Christ teach us to value sinners in spite
of sinfulness, to hope for mercy beyond all that we could merit by
our own accomplishments. This costly valuing of divine compassion
is, so to say, theological trump. It plays in ethics as the
last, winning card in controversy.
[6]
This dynamic interpretation of the distinction at the heart of
Lutheran theology issues in the important section which follows:
"Living as People of Hope." A critical move is undertaken here:
"the fullness of our creation in the divine image is not a
reclaiming of the past. Rather, it is our destiny" (#344). This
eschatological orientation means that all forms of "social
structure," including "marriage and family, civil authority, and
employment" are "temporary and anticipatory until God's promised
future arrives" (#372-3). What might appear as "formlessness" is
rather (charitably interpreted on the draft's own terms) the
important theological insight that "the form of this world is
passing away," i.e., that creation is God's work under way in the
further Trinitarian acts of redemption and fulfillment. This
excludes looking back to some golden past to be restored. It
requires us instead to look forward in revising and devising new
and better forms for temporal love by anticipation of God's promise
of the eternal wedding feast of Christ and the church. So
this hardly means that anything goes. The section on authoritative
Scripture immediately follows (#389ff). This contains the decisive
hermeneutical affirmation: Christians "cannot discover God's
intention for Christian morality simply by observing nature or the
world. Scripture teaches that God's will for humankind and creation
can be comprehended only through the foolishness of the cross and
resurrection of Jesus Christ" (#405-07). On the other hand,
authoritative Scripture, the draft rightly goes on to teach, is not
any old proof text selectively deployed, but Scripture rightly
interpreted in the light of the gospel of "the incarnation of
Christ and the justification of the sinner" (#433).
[7]
If that is so, there is but one real question: does the draft
succeed in rightly interpreting Scripture as just laid out to frame
our contemporary questions about the ethical forms of sexual love?
It cannot do this if it just omits from consideration weighty texts
like Genesis 1:26-28 and Mark 10: 5-9 that have hitherto informed
the teaching not only of Lutheranism but of all the ecumenical
tradition on sex, marriage and the family. The job of drafting a
Social Statement, let us acknowledge, is a thankless one, not least
of all because the end result is an inevitable compromise among
heterogeneous voices enlisted to serve on a committee, each
representing constituencies with interests and passions. One cannot
fairly criticize such a draft as if it were the internally coherent
deliberation of a single author. The draft represents the best a
committee can come to under such impossible circumstances. We
should rather wonder about this way of doing business.
[8]
As evidenced in the foregoing, what I appreciate about the draft is
the responsible attempt by competent theologians in Parts I-II to
frame the deliberations on sexuality normatively. I think that if
the ELCA avoids further fragmentation on the issue that divides it
(as the draft admits in defeat: "this church does not have
consensus regarding loving and committed same-gender relations"
#1117-8), or even manages to stop the slow, steady bleed on account
of wider issues of eroding theological integrity, let alone if the
ELCA manages still "to accompany one another in study, prayer,
discernment and pastoral care," (#1118-9), it will because of the
first steps taken in this draft towards restoring a normatively
Lutheran theological framework for moral deliberation. That remains
a big "if," however, not least because of the many theological
tensions evident within the draft statement itself, especially in
Parts III-VI.
[9]
Let me be clear about where I am coming from in the criticisms
which follow. As one who supports a generous orthodoxy, I have
publicly argued for a pastoral accommodation on same-sex unions
(see "Recognition, Not Blessing"
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (on line)
August 2005 Volume 5, Issue 8). The Lutheran
theological reasoning for this is lucid and compelling: if indeed
we think that marriage is to be theologically commended (#1005-6)
as the divine command of life-long union of a man and a woman for
temporal purposes of loving union, repopulating the earth and
symbolizing the eternal marriage of Christ and the church, why not
recognize something analogous to this among sisters or brothers in
Christ who find themselves in an incorrigibly homosexual condition?
Christian freedom allows it. That would be the Luther-like
thing to say about this possibility for living by faith 'within the
difficult, complex, and ambiguous realities in this world.' We are
free to acknowledge this reality so long as we are truthful about
what we are doing. On
the other hand, recognizing such "life-long," "binding," "publicly
accountable" relationships as the place for "sexual intimacy"
(#1104-07) is arguably something prophetic within Gay and Lesbian
communities today, for the same reason it is among 'liberated'
heterosexuals: "this church does not support non-monogamous,
promiscuous, and transient sexual relationships or causal sexual
encounters" (#977-8). Be it noted that the draft fails to provide
any deep theological reasoning for this critically important
judgment. It surely derives, as does the image of God teaching in
Genesis 1:26-28, from Israel's experience of the
covenant-faithfulness of the Lord, and the church's experience of
Christ as Bridegroom. The gospel extends into temporal forms
in just this way, lifting up the 'one-flesh' union of temporal
marriage as its own sign among all other possible sexual relations
in the world, as Eph. 5 teaches. [10]
In this light, we have truthfully to say that same-sex union is not
marriage, yet it is like marriage. It approximates marriage. In
terms of the gospel, it is better than the false gospel of
polyamorous sexual sampling which has ruined so many contemporary
lives (not to mention ministries and congregations). The church's
recognition of same-sex unions along such gospel lines executes a
critique on what Luther frankly named 'whoring,' not only of the
Girls Gone Wild crowd, but also of homosexual subcultures. In a
world in which perfection must be awaited as God's final work of
new creation, the call to discipleship by sexually exclusive
relationships represents humanly meaningful progress.
Criticisms
[11]
But the document comes nowhere near this when it seeks to address
concrete matters in controversy. Instead its deliberations in Parts
III-VI are too often exercises in inconsequence. For example: the
Trinity is rightly affirmed as deep ground of the affirmation of
human relationality (#438-443), but the document cannot bring
itself to confess articulately the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit, let alone to employ the Three of the gospel narrative
actually to parse the abstract notion of relationality. This
parallels the incoherence of affirming authoritative Scripture, but
generally avoiding its gendered language (with the exception, thank
God, of # 441-43). The Incarnation is similarly affirmed as the
theological basis of the affirmation of the body, yet the bodily
fact of biological heterosexuality is gingerly side-stepped for the
most part in favor of the abstraction, "sexuality." For heaven's
sake, gays and lesbians are also male or female, sons and
daughters, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts --respectively,
if that's unclear to the drafters! The deneutering of language in
this document is dehumanizing, a sanitized discourse expressing
alienation from the very concrete bodies we actually are and have
as male and female. Such language treats abstractions as if they
were real. It is every bit as suspect of gnosticism as any 'static'
reification of a historically contingent forms of gender is suspect
of patriarchy.
[12]
More sensitively, the profounder notion of sin as egocentric
captivity is rightly affirmed and insightfully used to expose the
greed of sexual exploitation, yet the implication of this move for
the interpretation of homosexuality as deviance is ignored.
Pedophilia is passionately denounced; it is of course true that
pedophilia is perpetrated by adult heterosexuals as much as by
homosexuals. But no question is raised about pedophilia's role in
forming same-sex attraction in confused adolescents or vulnerable
children. The sleazy phenomenon of recruitment is not even on the
radar screen. Painful and awkward as these questions are, they
cannot honestly be evaded - not in a church where parents can and
ought to vote with their feet to protect their children and where
ample clerical and lay sexual misconduct has given them reason to
walk first and ask questions later.
[13]
It may be that there are a variety of homosexualities. But if
continuing dialogue is at all to be possible about the true sources
of our dissensions, theological proponents of homosexuality have to
grasp and grant this point of opponents: the theological reason one
refuses to endorse homosexuality as God's creation and indeed
regards this revisionist proposal as church-dividing has not to do
with the personal sin of any individual, let alone with some
Neanderthal biblicism. If a Christian finds herself bearing the
cross of homosexual desire, she dare not be told that God created
her this way when it was Uncle Rapist who in fact scarred her
sexual psyche for life. Opposition to blessing homosexuality has
thus to do with the very kinds of social-structural deformities
-"social sin" (#569)-to which the draft rightly calls attention. It
is a disputable question how much of the psychogenesis of
homosexuality is due to seductive mothers or abusive fathers
(themselves acting out on defenseless children the exploitation
they experience on the job or in their marriages), but it surely
cannot go unmentioned. It is the elephant in the room. It is
cowardly to dodge this awful question in a draft which otherwise
rightly lifts up the protection of children (#728ff).
[14]
This leads back to the fundamental omission of the Divine Command
of Genesis 1:26-28 mentioned above, which is the source of the
tensions, not to say incoherencies of Parts III-VI: even though
antinomianism is rejected in principle, and the Genesis text is
mentioned in passing, the concrete and universal command of God to
marry as given in Scripture's account of creation (taken up by
Luther in his biblical rejection of monastic vows of celibacy as
self-chosen works that do not please God) is nowhere put to work as
the very content of the divine mandate of creation. The "law" never
appears as anything Scripture actually authoritatively commands, as
in Gen. 1:26-28 or demands, as in the Sixth Commandment. It does
not appear then constructively, as the creative command of God for
the dominion-sharing partnership in love of male and female,
forming temporal anticipations of the eschatological fulfillment;
nor does it appear prophetically, as the accusing demand of God
that we become the partnered creatures He intends us to be. Instead
the law appears as certain abstract functions: political curb of
exploitative behavior, spiritual accusation of exploitative sexual
desire. That is also why we get no prophetic critique of the
secular, contractual understanding of marriage in late capitalist
society, though the social perspective the document urges fairly
demands just such analysis and critique. Instead the
scandalous acceptance of casual divorce in the American church goes
without notice in favor of uncritical appropriation of this
society's contractual language and mentality (e.g., #1044-1052).
[15]
There would be, by the way, nothing static or casuistic about such
use of the actual law we find in the Bible. That would simply be an
iteration of what law is: instruction on the good life, as we see
in Luther's exposition of the Decalogue in the Catechisms. For
biblical Christians, the instruction in question is that of the
Author of life. That is why its content is authoritative.
That is also why for those whose membership in this
denomination is contingent upon its fidelity to canon, creed and
confession as the norms by which we discern fidelity to the Triune
God who has been faithful to us all in Jesus Christ, the
revisionist proposal is and must be church-dividing.
Conclusion
[16]
"We come as we are" (#1410) - surely this right. But if we come
into God's transforming mercy by the cross and resurrection of
Christ, as this draft at its best commends, we do not remain as we
were. Marriage is the universal vocation because it is
eschatologically oriented. We understand better today that Genesis
1 was written in the light of salvation history and that, thanks to
certain feminist critiques, Christian teaching on marriage is
certainly not to be understood as the patriarchal institution
represented by the curses on sin articulated in Genesis 3. Yet
neither is marriage in Christian teaching the mere life-style
option among others in the smorgasbord of late capitalist decadence
(#1061-1065!) that it can appear to be in this draft. Christian
teaching on marriage rather lifts up and restores the authorized
temporal form (Gen. 1) which anticipates the eternal feast of
Christ and His bride, the Church (Eph. 5:32) and as such, by the
express word of our Lord, it is the very object of God's redeeming
and fulfilling love (Mark 10:5-9). The dominical command, "What God
has joined together, let none separate," applies to theological
ethics as well.
[17]
The draft is misleading, then, when it states that "the critical
issue with respect to the family is not whether it has a
conventional form" (#684); for Christians marriage is undertaken in
restoration of the Creator's original intention by the redemption
which is in Christ Jesus. This project is anything but
"conventional." Rightly understood, it is counter-cultural in the
sense of Romans 12: 2. At its best, this draft gropes towards
that understanding (#1005-7). We should appreciate that. Because of
all the incoherencies, however, what will come in re-drafting is
anyone's guess. While conversation, accommodation, and reform are
important, the foregoing criticisms indicate what needs clearly to
be said: heterosexual monogamy remains normative in Christian
theological ethics. Pastoral and evangelical adaptations of the
ecumenical tradition's teaching on sex, marriage and the family
have identifiable limits.
[1]
William H. Lazareth, Christians in Society: Luther, the Bible,
and Social Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) 224.