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Guest forum: Better or Worse?
by David Curry
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Dr. Gary Thorne's recent response to Bishop Ingham's call for “a better theology of sex” prompted a lively rejoinder from Canadian Anglican theologian David Curry
Dr. Gary Thorne appears to have provided a timely and important riposte to Bishop Ingham's call for a better theology of sex. However, his article assumes the same basic point, namely that “adult homo-eroticism … is a valuable piece of modern empirical and social scientific interpretation in light of which the Christian Church should without doubt re-think its Biblical interpretation, historical doctrinal statements, and traditional Christian theological understandings”. In other words, the Church should develop an adequate theological justification for this “modern ... interpretation”; in short, “a better theology of sex.”
But is it the case that we have discovered “a valuable piece of modern empirical and social scientific interpretation” of sexuality in the affirmation of homo-eroticism? And can the ancients, such as Plato in The Symposium really be called in as witnesses to our contemporary desire to affirm our affections and predilections whatever they may be? Later in the same dialogue, Aristophanes' speech is criticized precisely because it is about self-fulfillment, a kind of self love, rather than the yearning for what is transcendent, for what embraces the genuine love of others in the political and moral community of souls.
As to the “modern empirical and the social scientific”, it is difficult to know what Dr. Thorne means. If the homo-erotic, considered in its sexual context rather than as an aspect of the soul's yearning for the beautiful (and the true and the good), is taken to be something empirical, that is to say, something that is a biological given, then it no longer belongs to the vagaries and whimsies of mere social constructs, whether they be ancient or modern. Then the demand must be to accommodate 'this new wisdom' to the doctrine of creation and to the forms of sanctified life in the Church such as marriage. It means that we have got the categories of creation all wrong. For two thousand years the Church has 'messed up'. Bad Church!
But isn't this really all assertion - the assertion of the day? There simply is no scientific basis for presupposing that homosexuality is a biological category, let alone a biblical category, that belongs to the essential understanding of our humanity.
What, then, are the arguments for homosexuality? They are the arguments belonging to the variety and forms of human social interaction, to the realm of social constructs, to the endorsements of current cultural proclivities, not all of which are consistent with Christian doctrine, not all of which require liturgical expression and blessings, and some of which are simply incompatible with the moral and spiritual teaching of the Church. At issue theologically is not only the doctrine of Creation but the doctrine of the Fall.
Perhaps the clearest argument comes from Alan Bray's book “Homosexuality in Renaissance England.” As with his book “The Friend”, his argument is far from endorsing same-sex relations as equivalent to marriage. Quite the opposite. While he explores and examines some of the touching evidence for compassionate friendship, he points out some of the shifts in social understanding that belong to a more modern world. He ends with the disturbing story of a man caught having sex with another man and whose defence was the rather modern sounding claim that “I think there is no crime in making what use I please of my own body.” Exactly the mantra of the world around us.
But how to reconcile that with the clear and foundational Christian teaching that we are not our own, our bodies included? It remains very difficult to see what positive good can objectively be said to belong, empirically and/or scientifically, to anal intercourse and to see how there can be a theology of sex which blesses sodomy, all of our sinfulnesses notwithstanding. As Bray shows in “The Friend”, there is always “an ethical uncertainty” about the sexual dimension that clouds our friendships, however touching and sincere they may be.
At issue really is whether one can say unequivocally that “homosexuality is a basic and natural orientation experienced by some members of the human community.” If one can, then the Church has been both deceiver and deceived and the moral and spiritual tradition of holy friendship as distinct from marriage is all a misguided illusion.
What this means for friendship in marriage, too, is much in doubt, if we are to be defined by our inclinations, our drives and our desires, our “orientations” whatever they may be. It is hard to see in such a view how marriage can be anything more than a social arrangement either for the procreation of children or for the satisfaction of sexual needs, now regarded as paramount.
Of course, for the North American Anglican Churches, there is the further problem of refusing the theological direction and guidance of the Anglican Communion which, at the very least, has recognized the need to think theologically about human relationships. Bishop Ingham's better theology is no theology, as Dr. Thorne points out, but unfortunately his argument is at the expense of the ground upon which theology, too, must stand, namely, the ground of natural reason.
Fr. David Curry
More responses:
Guest forum: J. I. Packer's Response to the St. Michael Report
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