In the New York Sunday Times Magazine this past Sunday (July 19, 2009) there was an article by the famous (or, infamous) ethicist, Peter Singer. Singer is a professor at Princeton University and is well known for his stand on "animal rights". Dr. Singer has stated on numerous occasions that there are times when an animal's rights outweigh those of human beings--for instance in a fire it might be more ethical to save the life of a well trained seeing eye dog and leave a new born infant, retarded adult, or Alzheimer's patient in the inferno to die. The dog, in this case, would have greater "utility" to society than any of the aforementioned human beings.
In his article this past Sunday Singer actually comes off sounding considerably less controversial--at first glance. He does not vent against human "speciesism" and does not mention animals at all. His whole point is to advocate for the rationing of health care (the article is titled, "Why We Must Ration Healthcare". Before I go on to explain why I believe that Singer's rationale is an example of the diabolical nature of utilitarian ethics, I will let him speak for himself. The following quote is taken from the article:
“As a first take, we might say that the good achieved by health care is the number of lives saved. But that is too crude. The death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities. We can accommodate that difference by calculating the number of life-years saved, rather than simply the number of lives saved. If a teenager can be expected to live another 70 years, saving her life counts as a gain of 70 life-years, whereas if a person of 85 can be expected to live another 5 years, then saving the 85-year-old will count as a gain of only 5 life-years. That suggests that saving one teenager is equivalent to saving 14 85-year-olds.”
Thus, the value of a human life can be calculated quite precisely in terms of "the value of life years saved". The math makes sense and many people would (are) tempted to accept it as a reasonable basis for making medical decisions.
But, wait, the mathematical value of a human life is not just measured in the number of years lived, it has a quality value, too--which can also be quantitatively measured:
“Health care does more than save lives: it also reduces pain and suffering. How can we compare saving a person’s life with, say, making it possible for someone who was confined to bed to return to an active life? We can elicit people’s values on that too. One common method is to describe medical conditions to people — let’s say being a quadriplegic — and tell them that they can choose between 10 years in that condition or some smaller number of years without it. If most would prefer, say, 10 years as a quadriplegic to 4 years of nondisabled life, but would choose 6 years of nondisabled life over 10 with quadriplegia, but have difficulty deciding between 5 years of nondisabled life or 10 years with quadriplegia, then they are, in effect, assessing life with quadriplegia as half as good as nondisabled life. (These are hypothetical figures, chosen to keep the math simple, and not based on any actual surveys.) If that judgment represents a rough average across the population, we might conclude that restoring to nondisabled life two people who would otherwise be quadriplegics is equivalent in value to saving the life of one person, provided the life expectancies of all involved are similar” (emphasis mine)
Once again, the math makes sense and a lot of people will--perhaps with some discomfort--accept it as a reasonable demonstration of rational rationing of health care. In a few sentences, it seems, Dr. Singer has dismissed two millennia of Christian ethics. He writes off the "infinite value of each human life" as being mere "feel good" rhetoric that has, at best, symbolic value and, at worst, can be "deeply unethical".
To be fair, Singer would be one of the first to admit that the core value of utilitarian ethics--the greatest good for the greatest number with the least amount of suffering--might still cause immense suffering for the few (how ever they are defined). He does not attempt to hide the full impact of his belief system from anyone--himself included. And President Obama, when he suggested that it might be better for an 85 year old in need of surgery to be given pain-killers, seems to have been taking a very similar stand. Of course, we can be sure that such extreme honesty will be tempered in the future with all sorts of qualifications--mostly to pacify the sort of politician who needs to affirm his or her personal value for all human beings while affirming that for budgetary purposes lines have to be drawn to save the tax payer's money. (They are the same politicians who oppose abortion personally, but will vote for appropriations to pay for abortions because they respect a woman's "right" to choose.)
It goes without saying that utilitarian ethics are a great evil from an Orthodox Christian perspective. Our Lord Jesus Christ clearly stated that we will be judged according to how we treat "the least of our brothers and sisters"--not as a class of people, but as unique human persons. On the Day of Judgment we will not be asked questions about "life years" and "quality years"--we will simply be asked how we treated Martha, Kwasi, Timothy, and Maria; in others words, how we treated unique human beings with names and faces.
For Christians, ethics is never about numbers but about people. Human beings can never be reduced to classes and quantities--one would have thought that the monstrous regimes of the twentieth century would have taught us that much. Yes, each and every person is of infinite value which is why every system that attempts to quantify the value of anyone according to his or her age, condition, social status, intelligence, or "utility" (not to mention, race, gender, religion, 'orientation', or anything else) is ultimately profoundly evil.
The sad thing is that this world view is rapidly being eroded even among those who say that they are believers. Decades of indoctrination in the public and private schools of this country, the two faced deceitfulness of our political leaders, and the paradoxical destruction of the value of the person even as we uphold the "rights" of the "individual" has left most Americans very poorly equipped to argue against the rationalizations of men like Peter Singer. And, perhaps the bottom line is few of us really want to when we look at the cost--the price of resistance. For most of us it really is about the money--even if we are too squeamish to say so. That's why Singer's theories will probably win the day and well will continue on our (not so long) march to charnel house.
But...what if we were to just say No? This might all be turned around if one of the biggest voices in our society was to speak up loudly and clearly...and really, just say "NO!"
Stay tuned.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Utilitarian Road to Hell, or, Auschwitz with a Happy Face: Introduction
This is the first in what will be a series of meditations from a theological, polemical (defense of the faith against hostile opponents), and political perspective on the proposed new National Health Care system and its philosophical roots in a system of ethics called "utilitarianism".
An 18th century philosopher named Jeremy Benthen stated, “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.” Others have him stating, "the greatest good to the greatest number with the least amount of suffering". This worldview has essentially become the dominant world view in the United States and Western Europe since the end of World War II (at the latest). And it is a world view that is leading us quickly down the road to a living hell for millions of people (who do not have the good fortune of being in the majority). Why is this? Stay tuned and you'll find out!
An 18th century philosopher named Jeremy Benthen stated, “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.” Others have him stating, "the greatest good to the greatest number with the least amount of suffering". This worldview has essentially become the dominant world view in the United States and Western Europe since the end of World War II (at the latest). And it is a world view that is leading us quickly down the road to a living hell for millions of people (who do not have the good fortune of being in the majority). Why is this? Stay tuned and you'll find out!
Saturday, June 13, 2009
The Communion of Saints
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)
An acquaintance of mine, a Protestant woman, who was well disposed towards Orthodoxy once told me that she had no problem at all with Orthodox theology except in two areas--the veneration of the saints and the kissing of icons. She said that no matter how hard she tried to understand it, it still looked idolatrous to her.
I responded by asking her what she felt when she looked at a picture of her (long deceased) parents.
She asked me, in turn, whether I had misunderstood what she had said. I said, "No, I heard you just fine, but in order to really answer your question I need to know what you feel when you look at a picture of your parents--or for that matter your grandchildren."
"Well, love, I suppose--but what has that got to do with saints and icons?"
"When you look at those pictures do you find yourself thinking about the paper and ink?"
"No, of course not! But what are you trying to say?"
"When you look at those pictures and feel such strong emotions toward the people represented in them it isn't because they are printed on Kodak paper or were taken with a digital camera or whatever. The medium that was used to print them is the last thing in your mind. It is what they re-present that matters. It is the reality behind them that draws your attention and inspires those feelings of love. Well.... that is exactly what icons do for us Orthodox. They remind us of people we love, members of our family who have gone before us but who are still very much with here with us."
"I never thought about it like that before.... That's quite interesting. But still, you pray to those people in your icons!"
"No. We ask them to pray for us. There is a big difference between praying to someone and asking their prayers. We Orthodox pray to God alone, but we freely ask for the prayers of the Mother of God and all the other saints."
"That's not scriptural. You can't expect the dead to hear you....why it's almost pagan!"
"I think Jesus put an end to that when he spoke of in St. Mark's Gospel where He said that God is the God of the living, not the dead."
"But wasn't He speaking of the Resurrection?"
"Yes, but He was also speaking of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--who had not yet risen from the dead. The point is that the dead are alive in the Lord. And I think that it is safe to say that the veil between this world and the next is much thinner than we sometimes think. At any rate, our relationship with the saints and our kissing of their images in icons is a family relationship--a communion between those of us here on earth and those who have gone ahead of us. The saints we venerate are great examples of Christian virtue and faith, but they were--and are--human just like us. We ask for their prayers in the same way that we ask for prayers from one another in this world and we love them in the same way that we love one another here. It is all very real to us. Those icons are not idols--they represent real people--and the God who became a human being for our salvation."
"Well, I'm not convinced...but it certainly puts things in a different light to think of it that way."
"That great cloud of witnesses that St. Paul writes about in his letter to the Hebrews really are all around us--those are the very words of scripture. So, when we paint them on the walls of our churches and put them on our iconostases and put them up in our homes--all we are doing is confirming what the scripture itself teaches."
"Maybe I'm half convinced--but its hard to forget a lifetime of being taught that icons and statues are idolatrous."
"Just look at those pictures of your parents and grandkids when you get home....you'll understand."
An acquaintance of mine, a Protestant woman, who was well disposed towards Orthodoxy once told me that she had no problem at all with Orthodox theology except in two areas--the veneration of the saints and the kissing of icons. She said that no matter how hard she tried to understand it, it still looked idolatrous to her.
I responded by asking her what she felt when she looked at a picture of her (long deceased) parents.
She asked me, in turn, whether I had misunderstood what she had said. I said, "No, I heard you just fine, but in order to really answer your question I need to know what you feel when you look at a picture of your parents--or for that matter your grandchildren."
"Well, love, I suppose--but what has that got to do with saints and icons?"
"When you look at those pictures do you find yourself thinking about the paper and ink?"
"No, of course not! But what are you trying to say?"
"When you look at those pictures and feel such strong emotions toward the people represented in them it isn't because they are printed on Kodak paper or were taken with a digital camera or whatever. The medium that was used to print them is the last thing in your mind. It is what they re-present that matters. It is the reality behind them that draws your attention and inspires those feelings of love. Well.... that is exactly what icons do for us Orthodox. They remind us of people we love, members of our family who have gone before us but who are still very much with here with us."
"I never thought about it like that before.... That's quite interesting. But still, you pray to those people in your icons!"
"No. We ask them to pray for us. There is a big difference between praying to someone and asking their prayers. We Orthodox pray to God alone, but we freely ask for the prayers of the Mother of God and all the other saints."
"That's not scriptural. You can't expect the dead to hear you....why it's almost pagan!"
"I think Jesus put an end to that when he spoke of in St. Mark's Gospel where He said that God is the God of the living, not the dead."
"But wasn't He speaking of the Resurrection?"
"Yes, but He was also speaking of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--who had not yet risen from the dead. The point is that the dead are alive in the Lord. And I think that it is safe to say that the veil between this world and the next is much thinner than we sometimes think. At any rate, our relationship with the saints and our kissing of their images in icons is a family relationship--a communion between those of us here on earth and those who have gone ahead of us. The saints we venerate are great examples of Christian virtue and faith, but they were--and are--human just like us. We ask for their prayers in the same way that we ask for prayers from one another in this world and we love them in the same way that we love one another here. It is all very real to us. Those icons are not idols--they represent real people--and the God who became a human being for our salvation."
"Well, I'm not convinced...but it certainly puts things in a different light to think of it that way."
"That great cloud of witnesses that St. Paul writes about in his letter to the Hebrews really are all around us--those are the very words of scripture. So, when we paint them on the walls of our churches and put them on our iconostases and put them up in our homes--all we are doing is confirming what the scripture itself teaches."
"Maybe I'm half convinced--but its hard to forget a lifetime of being taught that icons and statues are idolatrous."
"Just look at those pictures of your parents and grandkids when you get home....you'll understand."
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Seeing but not perceiving, hearing but not understanding
"Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn that I should heal them" (John 12:40)
We just finished studying chapters 40-57 of the prophet Isaiah--by far the most quoted prophet in the New Testament. I have also just finished reading the prophet Ezekiel in my own course of readings and what has struck me in both these prophets is their use of blindness and deafness as a willful spiritual quality of human beings when they are confronted with God's truth. It doesn't matter whether we are speaking of the ancient Israelites, or the Pharisees of Jesus' day or the purportedly Christian leaders of our society today--when confronted with an inconvenient truth that goes against the prevailing cultural prejudices they choose blindness. It isn't that they can't see--they choose not to see.
For instance, our self avowedly Christian president chooses to ignore the massive preponderance of pro-life teaching in both the Old and New Testaments in order to support a woman's right to "choose" to destroy her child before it is born. All the prophets cite one of the most heinous crimes of Israel before it was finally punished with exile into Babylon was the killing of innocent children. Why were these murders committed in Israel? In order to assure the well being of a household, a community, a harvest--in other words for the same reason the murders are being committed today (a woman's future, education, vocation, emotional health, earning power, independence--and also for a man's freedom from responsibility, independence, earning power, and so on). The justification for the immolation of infants in ancient Palestine was psychologically and spiritually exactly the same as it is for the immolation of infants today. But our "Christian" leaders choose to blind themselves to the facts and to deceive themselves into pretending not to understand.
But, like the guilty child slayers of Israel, they cannot really get away with it. They must either admit in the end that they support one of the most unspeakable crimes of all--the wanton destruction of innocent children, or they must altogether abandon the pretence of being Christians. The good news, if one can call it that, is that it is becoming less and less important to pretend to be a Christian in this society and I suspect that politicians will soon feel free to abandon such pretences altogether. So we wont have Presidents and members of Congress who fell obliged to tell us they are Christians while defending the most horrifying of all the crimes an adult can commit. It will be safe to just come right out and say that they understand very well what they are doing and can see very well where it is leading and they don't care one way or another about what Christianity and the Scriptures have to say about it. They will then have attained the refreshing honesty of the communists and national socialists of the last century who were willing to say they were hard hearted s.o.b's and be proud of it.
It is better for the Church to have to contend with sworn enemies than to have to endure the wolves in sheep's clothing who have been tearing apart Christ's flock for the past two generations.
Oh, yes, but when they finally go down--as they most assuredly will--you can bet they will say with all the good national socialists, "we didn't know what was happening....we were deceived...we didn't understand where it would lead...."
In the end, God is a respecter of freedom of choice....all choice....and He will permit the wicked to go to the uttermost extreme of their wickedness in order to manifest His righteousness, mercy, and truth. But no one can say--or at least no free adult in this country can ever say, "we didn't know....we didn't see....we didn't understand what was happening around us."
I would rather that the wicked would repent and be saved and that our civilization would turn itself away from the path we are taking. But if we will not repent then I pray that our leaders will stop pretending. One of the gifts of the current regime is that that day is fast approaching. The convenient mask of Christianity is fast being dropped in the face of a revolutionary attempt to co opt what little remains of an overtly Christian culture. The voices of the false prophets of atheism, abortion, euthanasia, and every perversion will finally attain their place as not only acceptable but true. And no one will have to be ashamed to be blind anymore--until the whirlwind comes.
We just finished studying chapters 40-57 of the prophet Isaiah--by far the most quoted prophet in the New Testament. I have also just finished reading the prophet Ezekiel in my own course of readings and what has struck me in both these prophets is their use of blindness and deafness as a willful spiritual quality of human beings when they are confronted with God's truth. It doesn't matter whether we are speaking of the ancient Israelites, or the Pharisees of Jesus' day or the purportedly Christian leaders of our society today--when confronted with an inconvenient truth that goes against the prevailing cultural prejudices they choose blindness. It isn't that they can't see--they choose not to see.
For instance, our self avowedly Christian president chooses to ignore the massive preponderance of pro-life teaching in both the Old and New Testaments in order to support a woman's right to "choose" to destroy her child before it is born. All the prophets cite one of the most heinous crimes of Israel before it was finally punished with exile into Babylon was the killing of innocent children. Why were these murders committed in Israel? In order to assure the well being of a household, a community, a harvest--in other words for the same reason the murders are being committed today (a woman's future, education, vocation, emotional health, earning power, independence--and also for a man's freedom from responsibility, independence, earning power, and so on). The justification for the immolation of infants in ancient Palestine was psychologically and spiritually exactly the same as it is for the immolation of infants today. But our "Christian" leaders choose to blind themselves to the facts and to deceive themselves into pretending not to understand.
But, like the guilty child slayers of Israel, they cannot really get away with it. They must either admit in the end that they support one of the most unspeakable crimes of all--the wanton destruction of innocent children, or they must altogether abandon the pretence of being Christians. The good news, if one can call it that, is that it is becoming less and less important to pretend to be a Christian in this society and I suspect that politicians will soon feel free to abandon such pretences altogether. So we wont have Presidents and members of Congress who fell obliged to tell us they are Christians while defending the most horrifying of all the crimes an adult can commit. It will be safe to just come right out and say that they understand very well what they are doing and can see very well where it is leading and they don't care one way or another about what Christianity and the Scriptures have to say about it. They will then have attained the refreshing honesty of the communists and national socialists of the last century who were willing to say they were hard hearted s.o.b's and be proud of it.
It is better for the Church to have to contend with sworn enemies than to have to endure the wolves in sheep's clothing who have been tearing apart Christ's flock for the past two generations.
Oh, yes, but when they finally go down--as they most assuredly will--you can bet they will say with all the good national socialists, "we didn't know what was happening....we were deceived...we didn't understand where it would lead...."
In the end, God is a respecter of freedom of choice....all choice....and He will permit the wicked to go to the uttermost extreme of their wickedness in order to manifest His righteousness, mercy, and truth. But no one can say--or at least no free adult in this country can ever say, "we didn't know....we didn't see....we didn't understand what was happening around us."
I would rather that the wicked would repent and be saved and that our civilization would turn itself away from the path we are taking. But if we will not repent then I pray that our leaders will stop pretending. One of the gifts of the current regime is that that day is fast approaching. The convenient mask of Christianity is fast being dropped in the face of a revolutionary attempt to co opt what little remains of an overtly Christian culture. The voices of the false prophets of atheism, abortion, euthanasia, and every perversion will finally attain their place as not only acceptable but true. And no one will have to be ashamed to be blind anymore--until the whirlwind comes.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Sacramental Marriage, Civil Marriage & "Family Values"
Marriage and family values. They used to be positive and uncontroversial terms. No longer.
The first thing we need to do is establish that what the Church means by marriage is very different from what the state means when it uses that term. Likewise, we need to make it very clear that "family values" is not a euphemism for "anti-gay".
A great deal of the problem we face in the debates of the decades long "cultural war" that has raged in this country is the twisting of words and terms into euphemisms for things that are very different from what they appear to describe. "Pro-choice" has come to mean "Pro-abortion", "liberal/progressive" has come to mean intolerant and anti-traditional, "adult" can often mean pornographic, and "enhanced interrogation" means torture.
Likewise the matter of "marriage"--a term that has been reduced to mean a sexual relationship in which the partners have legal claims to one another's property and persons--inheritance, medical decisions (under certain circumstances), etc. Now, on one level, this is what marriage has always meant--to the State. But it is most definitely NOT what it means to the Church. The problem is that when believers and secularists get into arguments over the issue, they are talking past one another.
For the state, since ancient times, the venerable institution of marriage existed to establish clear lines of inheritance and authority within a family unit. And for centuries this understanding worked relatively well for Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians whose understanding of marriage was quite different than the State's. The State's limited and concrete concerns and the Church's supernatural and mystical concerns were able to coexist harmoniously within the context of a single term.
The truth is that this coexistence ended a long time ago--long before the advent of "gay marriage".
Since the nineteen sixties, with greatly eased divorce laws in most Western countries, it has become increasingly common for individuals to marry and divorce--sometimes multiple times, or, simply to live in a sexual relationship without even the pretence of "legality". We are speaking about heterosexual relationships here. In many cases the children of two or three (or even more) marriages/relationships might live in the same household with an ever changing kaleidoscope of "mothers" and "fathers". Serial monogamous relationships, with or without legal blessing, have become 'normal' in most American communities--even in purportedly religious parts of the country like the "Bible Belt" of the deep south.
Any complementarity between the State's idea of marriage and the Church's has long since eroded away. The debate over "gay marriage" and the soon to come debate over "plural marriage" (don't believe me--just wait!) is merely the natural result of a deeper crisis that extends back at least a half century.
The best thing the Church could do at this point is to separate itself entirely from the State when it comes to discussing the various forms of civil unions that the states recognize and concentrate on coming up with a clearer explanation of sacramental marriage, which will at the same time clarify our position on the meaning of gender and family structures. To state that we have our work cut out for us is to put it mildly!
The first thing we need to do is to literally divorce ourselves from the State! By this I mean that Orthodox clergy ought to petition their bishops to be advocate a complete separation of the sacramental/mystical marriage that is performed in the Church from the civil union that is performed by the State. Our clergy should not operated as agents of the state! As is common in Europe, let those who wish to "marry" according to the state's notion of the term do so at a local courthouse or town hall. If they wish to enjoy the blessing of the Church, then let them make arrangements with their priests to have a sacramental union. If we were to do this we would move in the right direction of letting the public know that what we mean by marriage and what the State means by marriage are not one and the same. But, if most people continue to get married in Churches by pastors who are also acting as State agents by signing marriage certificates and attesting that State regulations have been lawfully applied, how can we blame anyone for being confused about the difference between the two fundamentally different (an now even opposed) understandings of what is happening? Of course, some religious denominations are in full sync with the State and will be happy to continue to act as its agents. They are not Orthodox.
The next thing we need to do is to educate our own people on the "mystery" of marriage--which is described as an image of the relationship between God and the Church in both the Old and the New Testaments. The "husband" image of the God of Israel in the Old Testament to His (often unfaithful) wife is made even more explicit in the New Testament where the enfleshed God in Christ is seen as the Bridegroom of the Church (Ephesians 5). Understand that human marriage and human sexuality are images of a deeper divine mystery. One of the great crises of our times for the Church is to explain that gender has MEANING and that this meaning is rooted in Divine self revelation. Part of the problem is that the Church has never had to clearly explicate this understanding because it was not under attack. Now it is and, as we had to deal with issues of the divine/human natures in Christ and the Threefold Oneness of God in the past, so now we will have to more clearly explain the mystery of gender today.
Fundamentally, the mystery of marriage in Orthodox Christianity is rooted in the mystery of a paradox--that of otherness and sameness in union. Clearly men and women are equally human (the same), but they are also mysteriously "other". This is not only an obviously physical fact, but a spiritual fact. We are "psycho-somatic" beings--we partake of both matter and spirit--on every level. The current age's attempt to reduce everything to material determinism in one direction and individual choice in the other, aside from being insane, has obscured the mystery of unity and differentiation between creation and the uncreated (God) and among creatures--particularly among human beings. St. Paul speaks of the union of a man and a woman in marriage as a "great mystery" (or, a "great sacrament").
Likewise, the order (taxis) of "headship" in a family--husband/wife; father/mother/children is rooted in the order of the Trinity, where the Father is "first" and "source" while being equal to the Son and the Holy Spirit. This, too, is a "great mystery/sacrament" which is virtually unacknowledged and untaught by most Orthodox pastors when they prepare men and women for marriage. Why? Perhaps because we don't understand it ourselves because we have absorbed the pseudo-scientific theories we were indoctrinated with in the schools and because, like everyone else, we are creatures of the times. The seminaries in this country certainly haven't been up to the task of confronting this issue--perhaps the fundamental pastoral issue of the age.
So, what about "gay marriage", the politics of "gender identity", and "family values"?
Well, the first is simply non-existent within the mystical framework of Christian marriage (like polygamy and other "choices"). We need to stop fighting about it and get out of the business of being State agents. If the State wants to recognize multifold forms of what it calls marriage then we might bemoan the fact that it causes some confusion to untrained ears and get on with the business of distinguishing between Orthodox Christian marriage and state sanctioned civil unions (homosexual, heterosexual, and multiple).
The second (gender identity) is a subject worth and Ecumenical Council! But we need to start challenging the prevailing "science" with some real theology here. Writers like Father Thomas Hopko, former dean of St. Vladimir's seminary have begun to tackle this issue and we can expect more to arise as time goes on.
The third (family values) is intimately tied in with the first two, but the ultimate model for any and all relationships among human beings is that of the Holy Trinity. In no place is this more true than in marriage and the family.
So, in the end, we need to reformulate the debate within the context of our own community of believers and accept the fact that the non-believing (or barely believing) world outside the Church has an entirely different agenda. If we debate the issues on the terms of those outside the community we will always come out looking like fools.
Does this mean that we are to drop out of the public debate? Absolutely not. We simply need to reframe it and be explicit about what we are doing. At this point we are talking about mission and conversion--which is to say, doing the business of the Church. Again, it is a matter of taking charge of the debate using our own terms and norms and conveying this to our own people and to the world at large.
The first thing we need to do is establish that what the Church means by marriage is very different from what the state means when it uses that term. Likewise, we need to make it very clear that "family values" is not a euphemism for "anti-gay".
A great deal of the problem we face in the debates of the decades long "cultural war" that has raged in this country is the twisting of words and terms into euphemisms for things that are very different from what they appear to describe. "Pro-choice" has come to mean "Pro-abortion", "liberal/progressive" has come to mean intolerant and anti-traditional, "adult" can often mean pornographic, and "enhanced interrogation" means torture.
Likewise the matter of "marriage"--a term that has been reduced to mean a sexual relationship in which the partners have legal claims to one another's property and persons--inheritance, medical decisions (under certain circumstances), etc. Now, on one level, this is what marriage has always meant--to the State. But it is most definitely NOT what it means to the Church. The problem is that when believers and secularists get into arguments over the issue, they are talking past one another.
For the state, since ancient times, the venerable institution of marriage existed to establish clear lines of inheritance and authority within a family unit. And for centuries this understanding worked relatively well for Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians whose understanding of marriage was quite different than the State's. The State's limited and concrete concerns and the Church's supernatural and mystical concerns were able to coexist harmoniously within the context of a single term.
The truth is that this coexistence ended a long time ago--long before the advent of "gay marriage".
Since the nineteen sixties, with greatly eased divorce laws in most Western countries, it has become increasingly common for individuals to marry and divorce--sometimes multiple times, or, simply to live in a sexual relationship without even the pretence of "legality". We are speaking about heterosexual relationships here. In many cases the children of two or three (or even more) marriages/relationships might live in the same household with an ever changing kaleidoscope of "mothers" and "fathers". Serial monogamous relationships, with or without legal blessing, have become 'normal' in most American communities--even in purportedly religious parts of the country like the "Bible Belt" of the deep south.
Any complementarity between the State's idea of marriage and the Church's has long since eroded away. The debate over "gay marriage" and the soon to come debate over "plural marriage" (don't believe me--just wait!) is merely the natural result of a deeper crisis that extends back at least a half century.
The best thing the Church could do at this point is to separate itself entirely from the State when it comes to discussing the various forms of civil unions that the states recognize and concentrate on coming up with a clearer explanation of sacramental marriage, which will at the same time clarify our position on the meaning of gender and family structures. To state that we have our work cut out for us is to put it mildly!
The first thing we need to do is to literally divorce ourselves from the State! By this I mean that Orthodox clergy ought to petition their bishops to be advocate a complete separation of the sacramental/mystical marriage that is performed in the Church from the civil union that is performed by the State. Our clergy should not operated as agents of the state! As is common in Europe, let those who wish to "marry" according to the state's notion of the term do so at a local courthouse or town hall. If they wish to enjoy the blessing of the Church, then let them make arrangements with their priests to have a sacramental union. If we were to do this we would move in the right direction of letting the public know that what we mean by marriage and what the State means by marriage are not one and the same. But, if most people continue to get married in Churches by pastors who are also acting as State agents by signing marriage certificates and attesting that State regulations have been lawfully applied, how can we blame anyone for being confused about the difference between the two fundamentally different (an now even opposed) understandings of what is happening? Of course, some religious denominations are in full sync with the State and will be happy to continue to act as its agents. They are not Orthodox.
The next thing we need to do is to educate our own people on the "mystery" of marriage--which is described as an image of the relationship between God and the Church in both the Old and the New Testaments. The "husband" image of the God of Israel in the Old Testament to His (often unfaithful) wife is made even more explicit in the New Testament where the enfleshed God in Christ is seen as the Bridegroom of the Church (Ephesians 5). Understand that human marriage and human sexuality are images of a deeper divine mystery. One of the great crises of our times for the Church is to explain that gender has MEANING and that this meaning is rooted in Divine self revelation. Part of the problem is that the Church has never had to clearly explicate this understanding because it was not under attack. Now it is and, as we had to deal with issues of the divine/human natures in Christ and the Threefold Oneness of God in the past, so now we will have to more clearly explain the mystery of gender today.
Fundamentally, the mystery of marriage in Orthodox Christianity is rooted in the mystery of a paradox--that of otherness and sameness in union. Clearly men and women are equally human (the same), but they are also mysteriously "other". This is not only an obviously physical fact, but a spiritual fact. We are "psycho-somatic" beings--we partake of both matter and spirit--on every level. The current age's attempt to reduce everything to material determinism in one direction and individual choice in the other, aside from being insane, has obscured the mystery of unity and differentiation between creation and the uncreated (God) and among creatures--particularly among human beings. St. Paul speaks of the union of a man and a woman in marriage as a "great mystery" (or, a "great sacrament").
Likewise, the order (taxis) of "headship" in a family--husband/wife; father/mother/children is rooted in the order of the Trinity, where the Father is "first" and "source" while being equal to the Son and the Holy Spirit. This, too, is a "great mystery/sacrament" which is virtually unacknowledged and untaught by most Orthodox pastors when they prepare men and women for marriage. Why? Perhaps because we don't understand it ourselves because we have absorbed the pseudo-scientific theories we were indoctrinated with in the schools and because, like everyone else, we are creatures of the times. The seminaries in this country certainly haven't been up to the task of confronting this issue--perhaps the fundamental pastoral issue of the age.
So, what about "gay marriage", the politics of "gender identity", and "family values"?
Well, the first is simply non-existent within the mystical framework of Christian marriage (like polygamy and other "choices"). We need to stop fighting about it and get out of the business of being State agents. If the State wants to recognize multifold forms of what it calls marriage then we might bemoan the fact that it causes some confusion to untrained ears and get on with the business of distinguishing between Orthodox Christian marriage and state sanctioned civil unions (homosexual, heterosexual, and multiple).
The second (gender identity) is a subject worth and Ecumenical Council! But we need to start challenging the prevailing "science" with some real theology here. Writers like Father Thomas Hopko, former dean of St. Vladimir's seminary have begun to tackle this issue and we can expect more to arise as time goes on.
The third (family values) is intimately tied in with the first two, but the ultimate model for any and all relationships among human beings is that of the Holy Trinity. In no place is this more true than in marriage and the family.
So, in the end, we need to reformulate the debate within the context of our own community of believers and accept the fact that the non-believing (or barely believing) world outside the Church has an entirely different agenda. If we debate the issues on the terms of those outside the community we will always come out looking like fools.
Does this mean that we are to drop out of the public debate? Absolutely not. We simply need to reframe it and be explicit about what we are doing. At this point we are talking about mission and conversion--which is to say, doing the business of the Church. Again, it is a matter of taking charge of the debate using our own terms and norms and conveying this to our own people and to the world at large.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Church & State
The Orthodox Church has a very long history of engaging the state. In the Byzantine period there was a symphony between the secular power and the Church. In fact, there was no such thing as the "secular" as we understand it today--the entire society was "religious"--but there was a definite balance between the political power of the state and the spiritual power of the Church. This symphony continued into the Russian imperial period until the Church was forcibly submitted to secular power under Peter I ("the Great"). After this the spiritual power of the Church was increasingly marginalized. The situation became infinitely worse after the Communist Revolution.
Now, no one in the 21st century United States would ever imagine a "symphony" between the secular political power and the Orthodox Church. We are virtually invisible to the government (and, unfortunately to the majority of the citizenry). Yet, we have the unique freedom to address the state in open and uncensored criticism. In a real sense, it is our duty to do so.
Does this mean that we are always a voice in opposition? No, not always. But I submit that most of the time we will be. And this is the way it should be. Even in the so called "Golden Age" of the Orthodox polity--in Byzantium and Pre-Petrine Russia--the Church was most often a voice "calling in the wilderness". What was it calling the state/society to do? To repent, of course!
The Church always has a political message--but it is not one "of this world". The Kingdom we proclaim is the Kingdom of God, not of any human being or any political party, per se.
That being said, given the position taken by various political parties and leaders, it can be fairly admitted that some parties and leaders are more closely aligned with Orthodox values (family, sanctity of life, etc.) than others. But NO political party or leader represents the Church in its entirety.
In this country, in recent decades, the Republican Party has stood for moral values that are more closely aligned with the Church's values in the areas of sanctity of life and family. That could change in a moment, so it could never be said that the Republican Party is the Church's party. On the other hand, the Democrat Party could one day return its roots as the supporter of the weak and upholder of the common people (weak as in infants and pre-born babies, common people as in the family men and women who make up the back bone of any healthy society). One never knows.
In the meantime, the last thing we can afford to do is to retreat into a "safe" corner and refrain from political engagement. Whenever the Church has become disengaged from politics, either due to laziness or by force, the result has been disaster both for society and for believers.
Now, no one in the 21st century United States would ever imagine a "symphony" between the secular political power and the Orthodox Church. We are virtually invisible to the government (and, unfortunately to the majority of the citizenry). Yet, we have the unique freedom to address the state in open and uncensored criticism. In a real sense, it is our duty to do so.
Does this mean that we are always a voice in opposition? No, not always. But I submit that most of the time we will be. And this is the way it should be. Even in the so called "Golden Age" of the Orthodox polity--in Byzantium and Pre-Petrine Russia--the Church was most often a voice "calling in the wilderness". What was it calling the state/society to do? To repent, of course!
The Church always has a political message--but it is not one "of this world". The Kingdom we proclaim is the Kingdom of God, not of any human being or any political party, per se.
That being said, given the position taken by various political parties and leaders, it can be fairly admitted that some parties and leaders are more closely aligned with Orthodox values (family, sanctity of life, etc.) than others. But NO political party or leader represents the Church in its entirety.
In this country, in recent decades, the Republican Party has stood for moral values that are more closely aligned with the Church's values in the areas of sanctity of life and family. That could change in a moment, so it could never be said that the Republican Party is the Church's party. On the other hand, the Democrat Party could one day return its roots as the supporter of the weak and upholder of the common people (weak as in infants and pre-born babies, common people as in the family men and women who make up the back bone of any healthy society). One never knows.
In the meantime, the last thing we can afford to do is to retreat into a "safe" corner and refrain from political engagement. Whenever the Church has become disengaged from politics, either due to laziness or by force, the result has been disaster both for society and for believers.
A Disengaged Church?
Sensible Joe has published a response to my latest political 'rant'. While his lesson on state versus federal constitutional law is correct, it misses the point. We are facing a sudden tidal wave of state and federal legislation and juridical decisions that are very much in sync with the new regime.
Can President Obama be personally blamed? Of course not! No matter how ubiquitous his presence and opinions he can't be blamed or praised for everything that happens. But he, like George Bush before him, is both a symbol and symptom of the times.
As for withdrawing into the "acceptable" Church corner of social welfare, I think not! The Church is called to be present in both the social and political spheres. After all, Jesus was.
Thanks for writing, Joe. I've been away from the blog for awhile and neglected to publish your response.
Dissenting opinions are always welcome!
Can President Obama be personally blamed? Of course not! No matter how ubiquitous his presence and opinions he can't be blamed or praised for everything that happens. But he, like George Bush before him, is both a symbol and symptom of the times.
As for withdrawing into the "acceptable" Church corner of social welfare, I think not! The Church is called to be present in both the social and political spheres. After all, Jesus was.
Thanks for writing, Joe. I've been away from the blog for awhile and neglected to publish your response.
Dissenting opinions are always welcome!
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