Hearing the “Homosexual” Voice

If you grew up anywhere near the Evangelical church, you’ve probably heard the Christian cliché, “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” It may surprise you, but these words aren’t found anywhere in Scripture. They certainly never fell from Jesus’ mouth. Nevertheless, this concept has found pride of place in many of the on-the-ground ethics of good Christian people.

Now, while I think that the impetus behind this idea is an admirable one, I don’t believe this bumper-sticker theology actually delivers on what it promises.

In fact, it seems to me that this idea can easily stand as a roadblock to a genuine posture of love towards another human being because it reinforces the unhealthy human tendency to separate and divide. Upon meeting another person, it immediately encourages us to analyze them and discover what is “worthy” in them and should be celebrated and, conversely, what is “unworthy” and should be “hated.”

This seems odd to me.

Furthermore, this critical posture of analysis hardly engenders authentic life collaboration between two people as friends. If my worst parts are despised by a friend, then I’m in critical danger of feeling deep loneliness and separation in our relationship. This is true even if it’s not my friend’s intention to hurt me. Even if they have the purest of hearts and truly will my good, I will inevitably feel unknown in those areas of my heart.

Being unknown is being unloved.

This discussion adopts a peculiar poignancy when applied to the homosexual dialogue. Desperate to stay faithful to the teaching of Scripture[1], many Evangelicals strive to live by the hate the sin, love the sinner principle in this arena, but with devastating consequences.

More often than not, their actions result in the homosexual community feeling more and more misunderstood and more and more unknown. This climaxes in the greatest irony of all: by attempting to “love” homosexuals, many Evangelicals actually foster experiences of hate towards them![2]

I think a lot of this would change if we could begin to open our hearts (and doors) more to the voice of the homosexual community. I’ve been exploring this idea myself for the past year and it has been transformative.

You see, when the abstract homosexual becomes a concrete Homo sapiens things begin to look a little bit different. You’re no longer dealing with cold ideologies or impersonal logic. You’re face to face with a real human being. A true Thou to your I.

Coming face to face with another human being immediately confronts you with the narrative of their life – their personal history. Entangled in that history (as in your own history) are the complex movements of love, fear, joy, disappointment, achievement, etc. all oscillating together to form the person you have before you. This complexity transcends the elementary distinction between sin and sinner.

Beyond the rhetoric (of both sides) stands a person. A person dearly loved and cherished by God. A person desperately wanting acceptance and appreciation. A person yearning for a place. It is to our deep shame as Evangelicals that we’ve trampled this honest human craving on so many occasions and preferred to perpetuate unloving actions.

In the past, I’ve suggested that as followers of Christ, we are to be an “open people that willingly incorporates others into our lives and gives them…a place” (Here: www.spaceforthedivine.blogspot.com/2013/07/trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman-and.html).

For the homosexual community, this starts by giving ear to their voice.

As Fr. James Martin has said, “for the church to love gays and lesbians more deeply,” it would begin by “listening to their experiences – all their experiences, what their lives are like as a whole.”

Maybe, just maybe, as we give ear to their voice, they will start giving ear to ours.

If you don’t have any practice giving ear to the homosexual voice, try starting by watching this video. As best as you can, look for the deep longing in each of these gentlemen’s hearts. Identify with their desire for intimacy. Instead of looking for something to condemn, look for something admirable; perhaps even something you might hope for in your relationships.

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[1] I do recognize that there are extant pro-homosexual interpretations of Scripture – especially regarding the “classic” passages that deal with homosexuality (i.e. Leviticus 18; 20; Romans 1; 1 Cor. 6). However, I remain unconvinced that any of these pro-homosexual interpretations of Scripture are exegetically robust. Nevertheless, I remain open to any honest discussion of the matter.

[2] In another blog, I hope to explore the nature of sexual identity and how that factors in here. Suffice it to say, the distinction between the “sin” of homosexuality and the homosexual person is not as clean cut as some might think. Sexuality has an overwhelming capacity for defining our identity. So much so that condemning homosexuality feels (to the homosexual) like a condemnation of their personhood.

The Gospel is not (just) Justification by Faith

Many Evangelical theologians will tell you that the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone was a (if not THE) hallmark theological victory of the 16^th century Protestant Reformation. Reformulation of this doctrine effectively retrieved salvific power and authority from the grip of the Roman See and released it back into the benevolent winds of the Holy Spirit to fall wherever and whenever He saw fit.

This is all well and good and we should be grateful for the recovery of what I take to be a central soteriological claim (i.e. that people are saved by grace through faith alone and not [merely] through association with the visible, organized church).

However, I think there is a disturbing myopia that can arise from an accidental overemphasis of this facet of the gospel.

Surely this is the mechanism of the gospel – the instrumentality by which the gospel is applied to broken human beings – but I think by itself it fails to capture the totality of the gospel. In other words, to reduce the gospel message down to justification by grace through faith alone fails to account for relevant revelation data that suggests a broader understanding of the gospel message.

When we come to Scripture, we find something much bigger afoot. As I’ve explored before (Here: Why do you read the Bible?) I think it’s telling that God has given us something of an on-going narrative in Scripture. Instead of just providing us with a nice and tidy list of Do’s and Dont’s, the record of God’s revelation comes to us in an unfolding story. It’s the dicey tale of God’s interaction with and establishment of the people of Israel. It’s the compelling presentation of a nascent Church’s developing in the crucible of a hostile mother religion. It’s the representation of God in real life; the real life of people – just like you and me.

Sure there’s plenty of scholarly debate about how every piece of the story fits together (or even if there is one overarching story – thanks Collin Cornell for mentioning this in a previous comment), but side-stepping that discussion for a moment I think it stands that (according to the Scriptures) God is up to something big – the plot line of his novel is complex and cosmically sized. It starts with creation and ends with creation.

But did you catch that? Cosmically sized.

If we read the story carefully, we find that our justification by faith in Christ is but a piece of all that God is up to. A large piece, yes; but only a piece nonetheless.

When we back out from the particulars of human salvation, we can see that God is working out redemption for all created things. The writer of Revelation reminds us that (in the final scene of this act) God, the Lord, the Alpha and Omega will make “all things new” (Rev. 21:5). Last time I checked, all things meant ALL things.

We see echoes of this when Paul writes that “…the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the Creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19-20).  

This present truth kind of makes St. Francis look a little less crazy for preaching the gospel to the wildlife he happened upon. Right? Perhaps St. Francis actually had a more healthy understanding of God’s cosmic plans for redemption. I’m not suggesting we all go out and evangelize the Alaskan brown bears or the Floridian crocodile. But I am suggesting that it would do our souls well to remember the grandiose plan of God for his Creation. This is the God for whom saving Israel was “too light a thing” (Is. 49:6), so he declared his intentions to offer salvation to all the nations. This is the God for whom simple preservation of the old isn’t enough, behold, he will make all things new (Rev. 21:5).

With this understanding of the gospel, we can see that the gospel is not (just) justification by faith. The gospel is a seed-promise of cosmic restoration – not merely of humanity, but of all things Creator God has made.

Analytic Philosophy: A "Progressive" Methodological Proposal for Evangelicals

Preoccupation with methodology seems to be simultaneously the best and worst reality of contemporary theology. At its best, discourse on methodology attempts to justify a robust, theological perspective on the world to a “culture whose attention is fixed in another direction.”[1] It’s relatively self-evident that most of Western culture doesn’t think twice (if even once!) about the world theologically. Fixation on scientific explanation has transformed the lens through which the average individual experiences and interprets the world. So, readdressing the relevance and poignancy of a theological perspective through methodological justification seems (to me) to be a worthy task.

Unfortunately, at its worst, methodological consideration devolves into meaningless spinning-of-the-intellectual-wheels.  As Jeffrey Stout famously stated, “Preoccupation with method is like clearing your throat; it can go on for only so long before you lose your audience.”[2] Indeed, as Grenz and Franke point out, it seems that many mainline theologians have fallen into the mire of “simply reflecting on method” without thoroughly putting their methodology to work.[3] Perhaps this is an alternative (more compelling?) account for why many mainline denominations are declining? (See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-b-bradshaw/mainline-churches-past-pr_b_4087407.html)

Conversely, many Evangelical theologians have fallen prey to the opposite theological temptation. They proliferate dogmatic texts concerned with “the content and exposition of theology”, but fail to give adequate attention to “methodological concerns.”[4] This often results in the classic appeal to authority. How do you know what you believe is true? Well, Micheal Horton, Wayne Grudem, L.S. Chafer, or Charles Ryrie told me so, of course! Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think appeal to authority is epistemically dubious in all situations. Truly, I tend to trust the doctor’s analysis of my illness without overwhelming evidence. However, it seems to me that many lay-Evangelicals (even many seminary trained Evangelicals!) defer to authority much too quickly and, unfortunately, many dogmatic textbooks do little to counteract this proclivity – further perpetuating a distasteful form of fideism.

So, what do we do? On the one hand we have mainline theologians who have (perhaps) lost relevancy to culture by too much attention given to methodology. On the other hand we have Evangelical theologians who have (perhaps) lost relevancy to culture by too little attention given to methodology.

Currently, I don’t believe I’m in a justified position to offer suggestions to the mainline denominations regarding their plight. In short, I would suggest that they explore the manner in which their methodology produces constructive theological proposals that have some level of pragmatic clout. For now, I’ll leave room for that proposal to be explored in another blog post.

Regarding Evangelicalism, I propose that theologians begin to take seriously proper justification for their theological conclusions. Perhaps Evangelical theologians can start by asking and answering simple questions such as: how did I arrive at this conclusion? What are the philosophical/hermeneutical presuppositions latent in my method? Why do I consider some text or theory as more regulative than another? How can I make my implicit framework more explicit in my writing or teaching?

In an attempt to aid in this process, I would like to further suggest and commend the resources of analytic philosophy to the Evangelical theological methodology. Certainly, I am by no means the first to recommend this integration of disciplines. Kevin Vanhoozer already exemplifies this integrative sensitivity as he capitalizes on the deliverances of Speech-Act Theory (see: The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Doctrine [Westminster John Knox Press, 2005]) and the same can be seen (albeit in the opposite direction: from philosophy to theology) in the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff (see: Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks [Cambridge University Press, 1995]). Furthermore, I think some of the most profound application of analytic philosophy to the Evangelical theology can be seen in the work of Oliver Crisp (see: Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered [Cambridge University Press, 2007]).

Conceptually, it seems to me that analytic philosophy should be understood as a handmaiden to theology. Following in the footsteps of St. Anselm we cry, “Fides quaerens intellectum” (faith seeking understanding). Christianity’s mantra has never been, “Just believe, just believe!” Christians throughout the centuries have attempted to push their understanding of truth to the furthest extent possible. They’ve sought to unpack the content of their faith in a comprehensible way.  They deferred to “mystery” only as an absolutely last resort – not a first choice! So many evangelicals that I’ve met (especially in seminary) prefer to punt to God’s mystery without two seconds thought about how their infantile method might actually be to blame. This is a great tragedy.

So, how do I think analytic philosophy can benefit Evangelical theology? There are at least two proposals that I would suggest to Evangelical theologians:

1) Analytic philosophy (as a set of tools) can serve Evangelical theology by making explicit the implicit features of essential Christian doctrines. Because contemporary analytic philosophy is concerned with breaking things down to their constituent parts and then reassembling them in an understandable fashion, I think it is primed to be put into service for parsing out difficult doctrines such as the Trinity or Christ’s incarnation.

2) Analytic philosophy (as a set of intellectual virtues) can serve Evangelical theology by developing a preference in the theologian for “clarity, parsimony of expression, and argumentative rigour.”[5] Beyond confusion of categories on essential doctrines, many theologians fail to even communicate clearly and concisely on elementary matters. I am convinced that the careful appropriation of analytic philosophical methods (especially in theological training) will serve to develop relevant intellectual virtues in the theologian herself/himself; virtues which are indispensable to public discourse – and which seem to be absent in many Evangelical circles.

It has been said that “…there is an eternal Consanguinity between all Verity: and nothing is true in Divinity, which is false in Philosophy, or on the contrary…”[6] If this is true (which I suspect it is), then Evangelical theologians should follow in the footsteps of Vanhoozer, Wolterstorff, and Crisp. They should seek to rigorously understand the essentials of the Christian faith with the tools of analytic philosophy and, thereby, offer their students and readers compelling reasons to believe.

May God show us all mercy as we humbly seek to understand His self-revelation.

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[1] Grenz, Stanley J. and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Westminster John Knox Press), p. 11.

[2] Stout, Jeffrey, Ethics After Babel: The Language of Morals and Their Discontents (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988), p. 163.

[3] Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, p. 13.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Crisp, Oliver, “On Analytic Theology” in Analytic Theology, eds. Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea (Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 37-38.

[6] Quinn, Arthur, The Confidence of British Philosophers: An Essay in Historical Narrative (Brill Archive, 1977), p. 9.