Episcopal Church and the Gay Debate
Monday, August 30, 2004
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:11:40 -0400
To: bishopsdeputies@hobd.org
From: Tobias S Haller BSG
Subject: Re: [HoB/D] Normative
Message-ID: <412C9E1C.5070004@earthlink.net>
Patristic theologians regarded the creation of humanity in two sexes not
as a symbol of God's nature, but as a temporary expedient to populate
the world. They base this on God's first commandment to the new humanity
in Genesis 1, and God's "discovering" it as rather an afterthought in
Genesis 2 (because after Adam is unsatisfied with the animals God has
made from the same thing Adam was made from, and Adam isn't satisfied,
God then makes a companion out of Adam's own substance). The idea that
the "male and female" *together* somehow represent God is certainly not
Paul's reading of the text: see 1 Cor. 11.7. Further, Paul elaborates in
Galatians that this earthly distinction of male and female ceases to
exist "in Christ." Certainly it would be odd of God to wipe away
something intended as distinctively revelatory of the divine nature
precisely in its most perfect exponent. Similarly, though not so
explicitly, Christ himself assures us that there is no marriage in the
ressurection life (Mat 22:30, Mar 12:25, Luk 20:35).
What Saint Paul _does_ use marriage for is as a symbol of the
relationship between God and the Church, just as the prophets had used
it as a symbol of the relationship between God and Israel. Note,
however, that these were not always happy marriages: often the analogy
is based not on a life of happy union, but on the adulterous harlotry of
Israel's unfaithfulness and (in some cases) God's infinite patience and
forgiveness. However, I don't think we would want to model marriage
today on the symbolic marriages envisioned in Ezekiel and Hosea!
My special thanks to Sarah Dylan Breuer for teasing out the Operating
System analogy. I think this is a window (no pun intended) into a better
way of understanding the profoundly incarnational import of what we are
talking about. There is more to this "living with the hand we've been
dealt" -- that "hand" is not simply something invconvenient to be worked
around. On the contrary, it is the gift of God, if accepted with thanks
and sanctified -- and that goes for all the imperfect marriages we
bless: as *all* of them are imperfect, so too they are all we've got.
I earnestly believe that faithful gay and lesbian couples teach the
church a great deal about what it means to be blessed, not as a result
of having conformed to some purported ideal (to which no one can truly
conform anyway), but for the reality of the love and charity they
actually display and participate in; for the signs of God's presence are
love, patience, forbearing, peace, and so on -- not the anger, dismay,
division and strife that have been so common of late. We are not only
called to bear each one of us our own burdens (Gal 6:5), but to bear
each others' burdens as well (6:2). The purpose of dealing hands, after
all, is so that we can all play together.
