Fr Andrew Harmon
You may ask, why the criticism of the GOA? Mainly because it’s the GOA which is driving the Episcopal Assembly. In the meantime, all is not lost. Some priests in the hinterlands are fighting the good fight. Please take the time to read this editorial by Fr Andrew Harmon. I’m especially gratified that Fr Andrew understands that the nature of marriage is not sacramental but ontological, that is it’s rooted in nature itself.
Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer | The Rev. Andrew Harmon
Over the last few years I have been asked many times about same-sex marriage. Especially in the last few months, as this issue has become so big, the question repeatedly comes: “What does the Eastern Orthodox Church say about this matter?”
Some denominations will now perform such ceremonies. Within some denominations, some pastors will and some won’t. The Orthodox Church is the second largest Christian body in the world and usually considered the most traditional. Will the Orthodox Church do same-sex marriages?
No, we won’t.
Let me explain why. Marriage has always been between males and females. That is the very meaning of the word. Some cultures in history, most famously ancient Greece, were — shall we say — rather easygoing about homosexuality. But even they never accepted same-sex marriage as an open and legal institution.
If this huge change now takes place, as it seems it might, it will be a first in the history of the human race. Marriage is one of the holy sacraments of the church. And it has always been between a woman and a man. To change this would be to change the very nature of the sacrament and that we cannot do.
The sacrament of Christian marriage reflects the loving union between Jesus Christ and his church. This is clear in the epistle lesson written by the Holy Apostle Paul, Ephesians 5:21-33, which is read at every Orthodox wedding. In this epistle reading, St. Paul clearly teaches that the marital union reflects the union between Christ, the bridegroom, and his spouse the church, the bride.
A human bride and groom hopefully have a similarly loving relationship and union as do Christ and his church. But the marriage between Christ and the church can’t work if there are two Christs and no church, or two churches and no Christ! And, similarly, the human marital reflection of the union between Christ and the church won’t work if there are two human brides and no groom, or two grooms and no bride.
To have such a “marriage” would make nonsense of everything Paul says and that fact shows that such a “marriage” really isn’t marriage, no matter what terminology we humans wish to use. Ultimately, real marriage is what God says real marriage is, not what we say it is. Through the inspiration of Scripture by the Holy Spirit, God has spoken through the writings of St. Paul.
Both the Bible and the tradition of the church teach that same-sex sexual activity is sinful. It’s not an unforgivable sin or the worst sin, but it is a sin. Therefore, the church asks those who are tempted to such sin to refrain from it and be chaste. In a similar way the church asks those with no same-sex struggles to refrain from heterosexual sexual activity outside of marriage. Chastity is asked from both and it is believed that God can help a person remain chaste.
So in closing, the Orthodox Church is happy to minister to those struggling with homosexuality. Such ministering goes on pretty much everywhere and in most parishes —our people have the same struggles as everyone else does. We certainly have no hatred against people with this struggle and no interest in “gay bashing.”
We will not turn someone away because of a particular sin they struggle with. They are sinners like the rest of us who need God’s forgiveness and help.
But performing or approving of same-sex marriages? No, we can’t do that. That would be saying that what is a sin isn’t a sin. That would be a lie, so we can’t participate or approve.
May God have mercy on all of us sinners and bring us to repent of our sins and bring us all into his heavenly kingdom.
The Rev. Andrew Harmon is pastor of St. Matthew Orthodox Church in North Royalton.
It’s good to see that Fr. Harmon avoids the Dunn Error where Orthodox writer David Dunn posits that because the Church views marriage as a sacramental reality, natural marriage is a matter of moral indifference to Orthodox Christians.
The sacramental dimension never negates the natural. For example, bread and wine become the Body and Blood of wine without losing their created nature as bread and wine. Nature is elevated and completed, not negated. This means the natural forms have intrinsic value in and of themselves.
Natural marriage is quite properly a matter of deep moral concern to Orthodox Christians as Fr. Harmon makes clear.
The sacramental actually makes the natural more real and more morally significant. To believe otherwise is a form of Gnosticism. Fr Harmon is not a Gnostic.
Absolutely. The sacramental reveals that we should approach the natural with great moral sobriety and deliberation.
That’s what the early Christians understood when they rescued abandoned infants. They knew that all human life has intrinsic value. The diminished moral understanding of the dominant culture of their time had no bearing on the value of the children that they rescued.
If we were to expand the Dunn Error and apply it to other areas of life, we would be forced to conclude that the early Christians had it wrong. Intrinsic value existed only for baptized infants while the value of the discarded babies was a matter of moral indifference.
Actually, he’s arguing only discussing ‘sacramental marriage’ here, he’s only talking about Christian marriage, marriage in the Church. He notes, in passing, that there has never been such a thing as ‘gay marriage’ in history, but he makes no arguments about what you call ‘natural marriage’. Outside of religion, there’s really no need to hold only to those things that have gone before. Modernity has promoted quite the opposite for some time. Fr. Andrew isn’t talking about society or the state and their view of marriage, he is talking about marriage according to what the Church teaches about marriage. He may hold views about what the state or society should do concerning ‘gay marriage’, but he doesn’t talk about them in this piece.
123, correct, Fr. Harmon makes no direct argument about natural marriage. Instead he assumes it. There is no artificial bifurcation between natural and sacramental marriage which is why Fr. Harmon avoids the Dunn Error.
One clarification: the distinction you draw between the “society or the state” view of marriage and Church marriage is certainly one held by the dominant culture but it is incorrect.
Natural marriage exists in nature and precedes the rise of the nation-state. It takes one male and one female to create a child and thus constitute a family. This relationship exists as a biological realty. We call it natural law. The correct distinction then is between “society and state” and nature or natural law.
The shift in thinking that marriage is a creation of the State is dangerous (I outlined the reasons why in an essay I wrote: Homosexual Marriage at the Dusk of Liberty). This shift is one reason why I believe that homosexual rights will create the legal ground for the persecution of Christians should persecution come to pass. Terry Mattingly has made a similar point on these pages when he reminds us that the legal redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couplings is ultimately a religious freedom issue.
So yes, Fr. Harmon is “. . .talking about marriage according to what the Church teaches about marriage.” But the teaching implicitly affirms natural law, that is, natural marriage is within the order of creation and ordained by God. Fr. Harmon does not suggest that natural marriage is a matter of moral indifference (the Dunn Error) and thus remains within the teaching of the Orthodox moral tradition whereas David Dunn does not.
I did not limit myself to discussing the state’s view of marriage, i also mentioned society’s, which is much more changeable.
There is no rational/legal necessity outside of religion to limit family to the man/woman/child scenario you provided; mere historical precedent isn’t an argument for/against anything in a multicultural, non-confessional state – it doesn’t even work with most people in society who don’t already agree with you.
I’m not arguing with your view insofar as we are both Orthodox Christians, I’m arguing with your religiously based understanding of natural law as a basis for law in a secular, multi-religious (and a-religious) state and society. The appeal to “we all used to agree on this” has no real pull, except with the choir, so to speak. Arguing this political/legal point simply undercuts a religious leader’s argument and authority, at least in a secular/religiously neutral state like the US. It’s arguing from different assumptions without seemingly noticing. (In countries that accept the authority of a religion within the context of their state this would be different, e.g., Sharia in traditionally Muslim countries, Roman Catholicism in Italy, Lutheranism in Scandinavia, Orthodoxy in Greece, etc.)
There’s a real sense to all these culture war arguments that the “conservatives” are not, in fact, trying to convince anyone to change their minds. It seems the goal is simply to proclaim (loudly) what is Right and then demand it be bowed down to because it is Right. This gives the impression that the purpose of speaking (loudly) is something other than what is stated (or perhaps even consciously intended).
123, the “rational/legal” always draws from a moral/religious ground. It simply cannot be any other way. When religion/morality is denied or, as in our time, when a pseudo religion supplants real religion, culture dies.
So when you assert that. . .
. . .I ask myself what are the presuppositions informing this assertion? Why does 123 believe that there is such a strict bifurcation between the rationale (reason) and legal and religion/morality? And, since I know some history, I remember that this view, while certainly dominant in the larger culture, is also relatively new and has its own intellectual pedigree.
Then I step back even more and remind myself that truth has nothing to do with the majority. A word spoken in truth has a power all its own, or as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “One word of truth shall outweigh the world.”
Then I speak the truth the best I understand it. If no one listens, well, then no one listens.
I don’t make up truth. Instead, I look to the reservoir of truth — a tradition — established by men much better than myself. GK Chesterton explained it well:
So, in that spirit, let me offer two essays that deal with religion and culture that will hopefully show you the necessary relationship between the two, and begin to deflate the common prejudice that religion is merely a subjective enterprise.
Russell Kirk: Civilization Without Religion
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Templeton Address – Men Have Forgotten God
Father Harmon’s comments reflect the clear thinking I have generlly felt to be normal among my Antiochian brethren.
Anyway, I think all of us agree with him.
http://palamas.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/To_Faithful_re_marriage.pdf
Clarity and strength. That was the hope of the OCA.
123, correct, Fr. Harmon makes no direct argument about natural marriage. Instead he assumes it. There is no artificial bifurcation between natural and sacramental marriage which is why I say it avoids the Dunn Error.
One clarification: the distinction you draw between the “society or the state” view of marriage and Church marriage is certainly one held by the dominant culture but that too is incorrect.
Natural marriage exists in nature. One male and one female are need to create new life and thus constitute a family. This relationship exists as a biological realty. We call it natural law. The real distinction then is between “society and state” and nature or natural law.
This shift in thinking that marriage is a creation of the State is dangerous (I outlined the reasons why in an essay I wrote: Homosexual Marriage at the Dusk of Liberty. This shift is one reason why I believe that homosexual rights will create the legal ground for the persecution of Christians should persecution come to pass. Terry Mattingly has made a similar point on these pages when he reminds us that same-sex marriage is ultimately a religious freedom issue.
So yes, Fr. Harmon is “. . .talking about marriage according to what the Church teaches about marriage.” But the teaching affirms natural law, that is, natural marriage is within the order of creation and ordained by God. He does not argue that natural marriage is a matter of moral indifference (the Dunn Error).
We have been given a testament to Christian life and marriage in the newly reposed handmaiden of God, Ksenia Pokrovsky. It is not a loud public statement coming from an Assembly of Bishops, but a quiet Christian witness to living a faithful married life that has born much fruit. For those of you not familiar with her work, you may read about this spiritual child of Fr. Alexander Men at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksenia_Pokrovsky.
Some of you may recall that she wrote the icon of the Synaxis of the Saints of North America, an impressive icon that bears witness to the Orthodox Faith in the New World. The icon was commissioned in 1994 by Metropolitan Theodosius and now belongs to the OCA.
It is quite remarkable, that Ksenia reposed on the Second Sunday of Pentecost, July 7, 2013, the Synaxis of the Saints of North America.
From the Lord I Call verses at Vespers:
Come, let us praise the Saints of North America,
Holy hierarchs, venerable monastics and glorious martyrs,
pious men, women and children, both known and unknown.
Through their words and deeds in various walks of life,
by the grace of the Spirit they achieved true holiness.
As they now stand in the presence of Christ who glorified them,
they pray for us who celebrate their memory in love.
MEMORY ETERNAL!
Memory Eternal. Truly a light in my life . . .
” I’m especially gratified that Fr Andrew understands that the nature of marriage is not sacramental but ontological, that is it’s rooted in nature itself.”: except that is not what he is saying at all. He is speaking of the Orthodox Christian teaching which is decidedly sacramental/iconic. He is also spot on.
Just venturing an opinion here, but it seems to me that “in the beginning” the ontological was also sacramental, which was only later desacralized by the Fall. Marriage was thus never merely “natural” but is instead the very first mysterion — how two can become one.
How nicely put, Deacon Patrick!
“in the beginning” the ontological was also sacramental, which was only later desacralized by the Fall. Marriage was thus never merely “natural” but is instead the very first mysterion — how two can become one.
Well done. I have always thought this was Jesus’ view of the matter.
Let me offer a corollary. I’ve seen some significant miracles in my life the most recent being the (continuing) recovery of a young man in my parish involved in a very serious car accident. The miracle is occurring through the intercessions of Elder Paisios. I will have more to say when I write the report for his glorification.
The point: Miraculous healing does not happen outside of nature. Rather, the healing is somehow “sped-up” — nature possesses an energy that may have been native to it closer to Eden or will be closer to the Kingdom of God (take your pick, both are the same). If we had the technology to measure all the physical processes during the miracle I think it would reveal that the processes work in ways similar to ‘regular’ healing only with much more intensity.
Miracles then, are not “super-natural” in the sense that they do not belong to nature. Rather, miracles may actually be evidence of what nature once was and what it may well be again.
I’m not sure if anyone has ever written about these things but those are my musings about what I am witnessing.
“(how they were ever able to override the Venerable Archpriests who run the show is astounding in and of itself).”
Maybe they were able to do this so-called “overriding” because your idea that there are some Venerable Archpriests running the show is misconceived and wrong.
or, let’s indulge your ideas for a moment……maybe their ability to override the Venerable Archpriests is testament to the leadership skill and ability’s of His Beatitude and to the standing of the entire Synod on the issues of morality and true humanness.
But George, could you dare admit such? Well, most likely not since you would then have to disavow every “lavender mafia” post or comment you have ever written. For if the Holy Synod can now come out with a statement on the Sanctity of Marriage, maybe, just maybe Metropolitan Jonah wasn’t “run-out” because of hiss stance on morality. Just maybe?
Interesting. Where to begin? OK, how about here:
1. Perhaps “Lavender Mafia” presupposes to much. Would “gay activists” suit you better? We know that there are archpriests in the OCA who are gay activists in that they choose to reimagine all sorts of sexual relationships. This does not mean that they are themselves homosexual just that like Dick Cheney, they believe in “marriage equality.”
2. Jonah wasn’t “run out because of his stance on morality”? Given that his “unilateral” signing of The Manhattan Declaration preceded the conspiracy against him, I’d have to say that a very good case could be made that the gay activists/liberals/ecumenists who pretty much run the show in Syosset were mighty perturbed by his actions.
3. At his cathedral in DC, the gay activists there (some of whom actually were in same-sex relationships) worked overtime to undermine his authority there. It got to the point where he had to issue two directives –one to clergy, the other to laity–stating what the Christian moral tradition says about approaching the Chalice unrepentantly.
4. Your fourth paragraph gives me hope. Perhaps the Synod is actually in the process of taking over the reigns of the Church. We’ll know when the OCA decamps from the NCC (which 98.5% of the people in the OCA have wanted for, oh, I dunno, twenty years now?), when Fr Lefty kishkovsky’s –ahem–retirement is made to stick, when The Chancellor is made to repudiate the entire concept of “sexual minorities,” and when actual bishops are elected for the vacant dioceses.
Regardless, their statement against the Supreme Court overturning DOMA was a step in the right direction. If only the GOA had this much fortitude.
Ad Vandyjk, if only that were true. Where I think you and George are both wrong is that I don’t think there has been any overriding of the archpriests who really run the OCA.
No, I think those archpriests were much in approval of the little statement that the OCA finally coughed up. That statement, along with Tikhon sidelining the lavender priests at St Nicholas Cathedral, are simple ploys to try to make it look as though the OCA supports Orthodox teaching on sexuality. “See? We are even ahead of the Assembly of Bishops.”
The truth is that, given the number of clergy and faithful who absolutely don’t support Orthodox teaching, and the thoroughly-closeted bishops who protect them, the OCA is in serious trouble.
Let me state it bluntly: there was absolutely nothing brave about the OCA bishops’ statement. Nearly all of it was backwash from the 21-year-old statement. They didn’t even bother mentioning that homosexual behavior is itself sinful.
I will offer the OCA Synod five points for giving the statement at all. But they get minus one for making it a week late (despite months of notice), minus one for recycling their own words, minus one for failing to mention that sodomy is sinful, minus one for failing to acknowledge the progressive assault on Christian sexual ethics, and minus one for failing to correct those within the Church who want the Church to regard homosexual behavior as anything other than sinful.
Perhaps, Fr. Hans, you could do here what you could not do on your own site, and that is provide some authority for the concept of “natural marriage” as “within the order of creation and ordained by God.” Certainly there must be Holy Scripture and an abundance of Patristic Fathers to delineate and expand on this essential theological concept. I personally must admit my limitations here as I am stuck, as it were, at what must undoubtedly be the Church’s oversimplification of the matter by stating, “He, Who by His presence at the marriage feast at Cana in Galilee declared marriage to be honourable, Christ our true God…”; providing a Gospel reading that, while occurring at a wedding feast, really is about the first miracle of Jesus; and an epistle reading that makes the polite – let alone the politically correct – cringe at its second line, “Wives, submit yourselves…” My thought: not much authority for “natural marriage” in the liturgical material, which is not encouraging.
Perhaps this is yet another pointless, time-wasting exercise from the Christian Right playbook of denouncing the “ontology” of homosexuality, the “sterility of the gay marital relationship,” the “myth of orientation” and the “identification by sexuality,” and now the added jingoism of the Dunn Error? We were shown to the world as the hapless, toothless, bumbling, leaderless Orthodox Church with less of an opinion than the heterodox in matters that will shape the moral attitude of our country, and you suggest – with a straight face – that we address this issue with “natural marriage” and the “Dunn Error?” Seriously?
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
The apparent discomfort of the Chancellor’s friend with Orthodox notions of natural law (referenced in St. John Chrysostom’s writings on marriage, as he will find in Fr. Josiah Trenham’s book) perhaps is reflected also in the silence of the Chancellor’s Diary, along with the apparent discomfort of some American Orthodox leaders on this issue of marriage, in contradiction to the recent re-affirmation of the Orthodox position by the OCA Holy Synod among others.
Certainly the voice of the mother church of the OCA, the Russian Synod, is also clear on the issue of natural law, having commented on these issues under the category of bioethics (not “social constructions”) in its Jubilee Statement on society and the Church.
The Apostle Paul referred to the gentiles as being a “law unto themselves” in following a natural sense of law, and our Lord referred to marriage as being between a man and a woman, based on Genesis (likewise a good source :-)) and the law given to Moses.
In the secular realm in America, even the Declaration of Independence refers to “nature’s laws and nature’s God,” which presumably originally was understood mainly in Judaeo-Christian terms, and in the defining of which today Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Churches in America still have a voice.
But from an Orthodox standpoint, Dr. Herman Engelhardt, in his book The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, writes:
From an Orthodox standpoint, to deny this sense of the natural to our non-Orthodox neighbors is in effect to exclude them from God’s creation and love, and from salvation, and not to fulfill the command to preach the Gospel. It is like the Pharisee passing along the other side of the road as our neighbor lies there. It is contrary to a Christian sense of social justice. It denies the transformative potential and power of grace and of Christ. As the Blessed Martyr Pavel Florensky put it, secular rationalism would assume that one’s identity is fixed and objectified, A=A, and that in secular terms would mean a choice of fixed identity on today’s menu of heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, etc. But as Fr. Florensky wrote in his book The Pillar and the Ground, identity is formed in relationship, A=Not-A, and that relationship importantly is symbolized in living and transformative iconography as marriage, both between a man and a woman and in the deepest and highest reality between Christ and His Church.
Current secular thinking on sexual identity and re-defining marriage is based on an objectified sense of self and of others. It is a kind of neo-colonialist appropriation of traditional marriage by our secular global consumer culture, which ultimately will remove any kind of rationale for marriage as between only two people, or even involving particular ages of consent. It seeks to erase from the view of our larger society the iconography of marriage in the natural sense that scriptures and the church fathers and Dr. Engelhardt describe, and also then undoubtedly to reach within the Church to do so, as public “education” and laws against “discrimination” will.
While the “gates of hell” cannot prevail against Christ’s Church, we have the duty as Orthodox Christians in the Church to stand to prevent the suffering of a generation or more, for whom what C.S. Lewis called the secular “technocracy” would set up all manner of obstacles of deception in opposition to natural law. If we stand up in prayer and words for the kidnapped bishops in Syria, as we should and do, then how much also should we stand up for the children of generations to come whom Jesus called upon us to love? It is, again, a matter of social justice for us as Christians, social justice also being a concept that relies upon a sense of natural law.
The Chancellor’s friend (if I understand him correctly, and please forgive me if not) to date unfortunately has seemed to advance a kind of Catholic or fundamentalist sense of Original Sin with regard to identity and relationship. This seems to encourage a reactionary disregard for Orthodox commitment to social justice, following a conservative Protestant or Anabaptist model of individualistic separatism, to discourage Orthodox Christian involvement in crucial social issues, even when based in our duty to prayerfully preach the gospel and love our neighbor in witness for our faith, and in keeping visible to our neighbors the iconography of our Liturgy.
I may well be mistaken in my reading of his comments, and I hope that I am. I genuinely hope that the Chancellor’s friend will join many of us next year at the March for Marriage, and persuade all his “We are their Legacy” friends to march, too, and join with the All American Council in supporting establishment of Sanctity of Marriage Sunday in the OCA. Let examples and strong compassionate articulations of what is natural and right be honed and expressed by all of us here and elsewhere in the Orthodox blogosphere, and most of all in real life, showing forth what we believe in as the natural transformative potential of human beings in an Orthodox sense, across jurisdictions in growing unity, and without regard to past divisions and arguments among us as brothers and sisters in Christ.
Please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
Prof. Siewers,
Since I am unable to constructively dialog in the third-person or maintain my sense of dignity posing with the smiley-face emoji of a nine-year-old Japanese girl, I won’t. Bon chance.
Why would you assume that the scriptures and the holy fathers would address something that has never really needed to be addressed until this current time? Things that are obvious are not usually discussed.
By the way, your second paragraph is straight from the play book of the left. Don’t actually address arguments, just pretend they are stupid or racist or something. I taught my students about logical fallacies. This is a form of ad hominem and should be treated as such, not just with an explanation but if with disdain, as if the person using it couldn’t really be that stupid, everytime it is used.
Is this a serious question?
Let’s start at the beginning. God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. If God created Adam and Steve, where would Cain and Able come from?
That’s biblical literalism! — will be the retort. You know, another “time wasting exercise from the Christian playbook denouncing the ‘ontology’ of homosexuality…” and other unseemly affairs. (Homosexuality has an “ontology”? Really? Should bestiality have an ontology too then?)
Is it literalism? Not really. Narrative is the only way that the uncreated and created can be expressed in literary form, and in this case the placement happens to be the beginning (the Genesis) of the Christian texts. This ought to be crystal clear to the Orthodox Christian.
Have you read the Orthodox wedding service?
Does the affirmation of natural marriage really need to be explained?
Moving on. . .
The Dunn Error is the artificial bifurcation of the natural and sacramental to assert that the moral status of homosexual couplings is a matter of moral indifference to Orthodox Christianity. David Dunn bills himself as an Orthodox theologian in some widely read venues. We need to be clear that what he says is accurate. Here Dunn is wrong, thus the Dunn Error. (You can read it for yourself.)
Given your criticism however, do you believe Dunn is correct? Do you hold to the Dunn Error?
Homosexual couplings are naturally sterile. Adam and Steve can’t make a Cain or Abel. If the biblical reference offends you then look at nature: the child of a homosexual couple always requires the participant of a parent (an egg or sperm donor) outside of the immediate relationship. Here the text and nature are complementary; both reveal the same truth.
As for the tiresome pejoratives: right wing, jingoism, and so forth — those are meant to close discussion, not advance it.
My point, as you are well aware, Abouna, is that you have chosen to reduce “the great mystery of Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:32) to the capacity for biological reproduction. Then why read this epistle? Read T.S. Eliot: “Birth, copulation, and death. That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks.”
Unfortunately lost to time is a little pamphlet written by Prof. SS Verhovskoy – the kind you would find among information stands for visitors in Orthodox parishes – about marriage. All I recall was a very profound description of how no matter how despicable a relationship between a man and a woman, how sinful, how corrupt, how fallen a relationship had become, still that relationship bore the possibility for sanctification by repentance and Christian marriage. Imagine! Somehow, in the great mystery of Christ and the Church, it was possible, and it had nothing to do with procreative capacity.
I agree that this capacity was established “in the beginning,” and I believe Met. Anthony (Bloom) best described it in a lecture on Genesis:
This is what eternally distinguishes Christian marriage: sanctification and transcendence. All the love in the world will never transform a same-sex relationship into a Christian marriage. Never. We do not deny the inherent love in same-sex relationships, but we deny their capacity for sanctification. To focus on the lack of “reproductive capacity” as a “slam dunk,” irrefutable criterion pursuant to “natural law” is a waste of time and does not address the issue of homosexuality nor married couples who cannot conceive.
I appreciate Stankovich’s citation from Anthony Bloom.
It suggests the source of his confusion. Anthony Bloom did not understand these things.
Thank you for putting this out Fr. To my mind, even a great bishop like Bloom could get something wrong every now and then. Sometimes people pick things up from the ambient surroundings. The unconcern with the redefinition of marriage as well as the easy acceptance of homosexuality, is one such thing. The coasts of the US as well as the upper reaches of the British aristocracy have long been averse to traditional morality. It’s not that hard to see how an otherwise brilliant theologian like Bloom (and Kallistos Ware) could envision such things as the female priesthood for example.
I think I’ll pick Metr. Anthony Bloom over Fr. Patrick any day.
I don’t view it as “either/or.” Unless Metropolitan Bloom preached or taught heresy, I rather think that any differences between him and Fr Patrick are inconsequential.
I am puzzled; why would you question the Orthodox opposition to same-sex marriage? There is not one iota of support for same sex marriage in our Holy Tradition and there are plenty of support for marriage as being the union of a man and a woman. Father Andrew, brother Kentigern and Father Hans have laid out the case against same-sex marriage convincingly. I simply do not understand your rejection of their arguments.
Mr. Kraeff,
Quite to the contrary, I find the Church’s position on Christian Marriage as expressed in the Scripture, the Patristic Fathers, the Canonical Fathers, and our Holy Tradition quite compelling, and in fact, sufficient as intended. It is this prideful, insatiable need to shamelessly self-aggrandize and interject platitude – somehow imagining the Holy Tradition is not quite sufficient enough – that I find disturbing. We have already appeared as opinionless and insignificant in the light of the recent SCOTUS decisions, must we also appear inept and foolish as well?
Thanks for clearing this up. I must have read your post in haste. In Christ, Kyrill
For someone who pretends to know so much about Fr. Alexander Schmemann and his views, M. Stankovich unnatural, unscriptural, and unorthodox opinions on marriage directly contradict what Fr. Alexander wrote regarding the natural and sacramental dimensions of marriage.
M. Stankovich is shamelessly promoting a militant and misguided “progressive desacramentalization” of marriage that Fr. Alexander warned against. Talk about bearing false witness!
This is what Fr. Alexander Schmemann actually said about natural and sacramental marriage (emphasis mine):
Fr. Alexander continues:
Percentage of humans conceived through homosexual intercourse: 0%
Percentage of humans conceived through heterosexual intercourse: 100%
What more needs to be said about natural marriage?
Stankovich writes:
Perhaps, Fr. Hans, you could do here what you could not do on your own site, and that is provide some authority for the concept of “natural marriage” as “within the order of creation and ordained by God.” Certainly there must be Holy Scripture and an abundance of Patristic Fathers to delineate and expand on this essential theological concept.
Study “an abundance of Patristic Fathers” (as distinct, I suppose, from some other sort of Fathers?) in order to grasp “this essential theological concept”?
No, you start with the fixed biology of the thing. If you are looking to “provide some authority,” let me suggest you begin with some extremely tangible facts. (If you need help with this, I can get more specific.)
The first book of divine Revelation is the Created Order. Divine Revelation’s second book is the Bible. (This theme of Revelation’s “two books” is the teaching of the Holy Fathers.)
The fundamental theology of human sexuality is written in our bodies before it is written in the Bible. Indeed, it is written in the Bible because it is written in our bodies. The theology of marriage is written in our bodies before it is written in the Service Book.
Consequently, the State can no more alter the structure of marriage than it can decree rainfall on Wednesdays.
That is what needs to be said by the Church. Everything else is obfuscation.
Fr. Patrick,
When you reduce Christian Marriage to the criterion of biological reproduction, I would presume then that when you and your wife made a decision to have no more children, you likewise made a decision to end your sexual relationship and live in a celibate state? What purpose would sexuality serve in “natural marriage” once the “task” of procreation has been completed?
Likewise, I am presuming that you are counseling couples in your spiritual care to live in a celibate state upon medical confirmation that they are incapable of conceiving and bearing children? What purpose would be served in “natural marriage” for a sexual relationship that will never result in procreation?
When you reduce Christian Marriage to the criterion of biological reproduction, . . .
Can you, for one minute, exert some small effort not to be such a consummate jerk?
Are there to be no occasions when you make some faint attempt to understand what other people are saying?
I never mentioned “biological reproduction.” Much less did I “reduce Christian Marriage” to that criterion.
Indeed, I didn’t directly refer to “Christian Marriage” at all.
As for your insufferable “I would presume,” let me declare that virtually everything you say is presumptuous.
I had better stop; i want to receive Holy Communion next Sunday.
M. Stankovich how in the world did you come up with this outrageous conclusion regarding what Fr. Patrick said: “when you reduce Christian Marriage to the criterion of biological reproduction“? His post did no such thing!
Does the plain meaning of the English language no longer apply to your thinking process? From all reasonable, sane, and logical perspectives what Fr. Patrick actually posted did not “reduce Christian Marriage to the criterion of biological reproduction.”
Chris,
Stankovich has to reduce the ontological differences between male and female to biological particularity alone in order to posit homo-genital activity as part of human ontology — which is to say as part of God’s design for the human race.
In plain English:
Stankovich cannot accept natural law. To do so would require him to consider the differences between male and female as more than biology. We see this in his response to Fr. Reardon.
Stankovich wants to replace the term “natural marriage” with “Christian marriage.” The term works if by it we mean sacramentalized marriage, that is, natural marriage brought within the Church and thus becoming a means of salvation. But he doesn’t mean this. He wants to use it sociologically, that is, as a social grouping alongside other groupings.
There really is no such thing as “Christian marriage.” There is only natural marriage (blessed and ordained by God as the scriptures, our liturgical tradition, and most important natural law make clear), and sacramental marriage. Sacramental marriage elevates and completes the natural, it does not negate it.
But if the male and female differ only in their created biology, and if this difference is only expressed in the sexual act, then who is to say that homosexual couplings are not a natural marriage either? And why shouldn’t the Church accept persons in homosexual unions as long as the unions are never sacramentalized?
This is what Stankovich is shooting for. He and his “We are the Legacy” crowd want to invite persons in homosexual unions into the Church as full communicants without ever blessing their unions — which they perceive as a “natural” marriage. In other words, if the difference between “natural” and “Christian” marriage is sociological, then a homosexual union and Christian marriage differ only in name. As long as the priest doesn’t bless the union, Orthodox discipline is preserved.
Stankovich contends that he stands in the tradition of the early SVS theologians. Maybe he does but for reasons different than he perceives. The early theologians are largely silent about natural law. Stankovich (and presumably the rest of the Legacy crowd) rationalizes within that silence. He does not seem to understand how natural law functions or that there is more to Orthodox theology than what he learned in four years at seminary.
Fr. Hans,
If I understood your arguments up to this point correctly, then would it be safe for me to say that if a couple is sterile because of a medical condition that it doesn’t impact the sacramentality of the relationship? Likewise for a couple past the years of child bearing age?
So while one result of marriage is offspring, it is not THE PURPOSE.
So why do we go on and on about procreation as the end all be all of Christian marriage? It seems as though we create an illogical argument, especially since the scripture doesn’t support it. It is an argument which is used often by individuals to justify homosexuality and it’s important to understand that marriage was established by God from the beginning, apparently for companionship and help. This help takes the form in someone that completes what is lacking in the other person. Eve was not made from entirely new material, but made from a piece of Adam, so that he was aware that there was a piece of himself missing when he awoke and was in the person standing opposite him and looking at him. “Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.”
Here’s the difference, oooh! A couple that cannot conceive because of a medical condition still model the natural and sacramental reality, ie: one male and one female are needed to create a child and thus constitute a family.
This stands in contrast to the same-sex model which is sterile by design, ie: a male to male or female to female coupling is biologically closed to the creation of new life even if the individual partners have no medical issues that would prevent them from conceiving a child.
Fr. Hans,
Thank you for taking the time to clear that up. It was something that was on my mind and has come up often in conversation with friends who are Orthodox and heterodox.
Another question:
So it is safe to say that human procreation is not a result of the fall but was God’s intention for humans as well? In other words, He didn’t intend it to be just Adam and Eve and stop, but Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and ………In other words, procreation (for the purpose of producing offspring and forming a family, as you mention) is “natural” to the human existence?
Oooh!!, two things I like to avoid: 1) speculations about God’s intentions; and 2) speculations about the mind of God.
So I can’t really answer that question without speculating, and speculation means that I really don’t know the answer. However, since you asked me, I speculate yes.
I can say for certain however that after the Fall, scripture is clear: be fruitful and multiply.
And, yes, procreation is natural — and not only for humans but all living things.
Father Hans,
Also procreation was in place before the fall. “Be fruitful and multiply” was the blessing God gave first to the animal kingdom, and then reiterated to mankind as his viceroy in the days of creation. Also the plants multiplied in seed “according to their kind.”
So the means of seed and multiplication was imprinted by God on all creation before the fall.
Also, the boundaries of each creature was confined “to their kind,” so there is no “evolving” of one creature to become another, as we still see today.
Fr. Hans and Trudge at SmartVote,
Thank you both for clearing up these questions for me.
There is one crucial point about marriage that goes beyond procreation (although related to it) and mere companionship and the aspect of completion. The word I use is synergy. As marriage is the icon of the Church so the male-female inter-relationship in marriage is an icon of the divine/human synergy necessary for our salvation. The male-female synergy is creative even if there are no children in the marriage and for it to function at its highest level the man and woman have to become one flesh in marriage, a oneness that leads, in Christ, to an even greater oneness and an even greater creativity. The distinction between male and female in no way diminishes the full human equality of both, we have one savior. He clearly articulated (radically) the fundamental equality before God that men and women share while at the same time the Biblical accounts show the functional differences.
Such synergistic creativity is impossible between two people of the same sex. Although simplistic the analogy of magnetic poles is somewhat apt. We are ontologically male-female. It is not a continuum of ‘gender’. The nature of sex is part of the mystery of creation. The continuum fallacy leads us into the worship of the created thing, more than the Creator problem St. Paul outlines in Romans.
The energies of God move in a special manner in marriage that is simply not available in any other pairing. Those energies (grace) empower all of humanity to fulfill the two fundamental commandments in Genesis: dress and keep the earth; be fruitful and multiply (two commandments that are inter-linked). It would take some time and study but IMO a clear case could be made changing the understanding of marriage is environmentally destructive. Homosexual ‘marriage’ is not green.
throughout my Christian life as I have pondered, prayed, listened, studied and experienced the reality described in Genesis , the scope of the creativity (fruitful-multiply) has come to mean far more than the central act of begetting and raising children. Although the “olive shoots” are of great importance for continuing the human race, the equally important act of passing on the tradition in communion and evangelizing has become a crucial aspect.
At my niece’s wedding a few years ago there was a visible change in her during the service. She began the service as a beautiful young girl and by the end of the service, she was a beautiful woman obviously empowered by an authority she did not have before. I have no doubt that a similar change can occur for the male as well.
There is also the fact that the sacramental marriage in the Church is not simply about the two human parties to the marriage, the man and woman as husband and wife are taking a new and different place in the community and the community is accepting them, much as we do our priests,
In is criminally insufficient for anyone in the Church with any teaching authority to say that ‘every body knows what we believe” that is a lie. The understanding of the sacerdotal reality of marriage has been, is being, attacked by the secular, nihilistic culture in which we live. It must be strongly affirmed and aggressively taught just to stay even. It is a central part of the revelation of God’s incarnation and salvation which we have been given to safeguard and propagate. (The parable of the talents comes to mind here).
IMO, we are, in part, reaping the fruits of our previous inaction.
This need not be and should not be ideologically, partisan politics. It is far removed from that level of human function and will. Unfortunately, it has become that because of the stupidity and vapidity of the Protestant culture in the country AND the desire of the opposition to force it into the political mold. Thus almost any statement that is made to articulate the truth is viewed as ‘political’ and attacked as such (as some commentators here have shown).
While there are certainly areas of importance where marriage and political culture intersect, they are not identical.
AXIOS Michael Bauman!
Well said, indeed, Mr. Bauman. But as to the “stupidity and vapidity of the Protestant culture”, you’re getting my Scots/Anglo blood up.
I’ll wait, I think, until I’m official. Then, I may become an English irredentist to balance the Greek and Russian ones.
This “culture” in this country, of course, doesn’t even know the Orthodox exist, much less what they believe. But I don’t put that on its stupidity, not at all.
Tim, its a long story but it is not particularly difficult to see the seed of secularism in the iconoclasm and denial of sacrament in the Protestantism that was dominant in the formation of our culture.
The lack of awareness is some what excusable but on a deep level it reveals the relentless presentism of so many modern Protestants.
Ah, but where were, and are, the Orthodox? It is fine to criticize the Protestants, but then, they arose from an intolerable situation in the Church of the West.
The Orthodox were essentially unknown to the West for century upon century. There are many good reasons for this. But they are still unknown to most of the West, and there aren’t as many good reasons for that. On balance, they have not used their freedom in this country well.
I have “fellow-travelled” with Orthodoxy for 35 years, in innumerable ways. This is no credit at all to me. I deliberately decided about 30 years ago not to convert, though I continued over the years to maintain a “peripheral association”. I have at last come to realize that this was a great mistake.
But nobody can ever know the sadness of the situation better than those of us who now have no choice but to leave those churches of Christ in which our mothers and fathers, and grandmothers and grandfathers, went to their eternal rest, where we first confessed Christ, where our children were baptized and married, where we were surrounded by our own clouds of witnesses, together with all those of Christ’s church. I greatly tire of the anti-Protestant polemics often found here, although I generally except you, whose posts I have found quite valuable.
Anyway, enough of that. My great joy is that my youngest son, a great family man, is following this course with me, and, indeed, pulling me along. Not the least thing is that he has been “acquainted” with Orthodoxy since childhood, because of my peculiar semi-involvement, as have all my other children, believers all, who are watching with interest!
Michael, yes, but. . .
Some Protestants recognize the error. Here’s an article by Mark Tooley (a friend to the Orthodox, BTW) that addresses it: Christian Cosmology and Unpopular Truth.
Tim, the Orthodox have not done the job of evangelizing the culture. No doubt. We’ve been out of sight, mostly for good reasons actually.
The U.S. culture founded on Protestant deism has descended into vapidity, but it was not always such, it used to be aggressively stupid. The U.S. sponsored missionaries in Alaska (mostly Baptist and Presbyterians) sent there under President Grant to “convert the heathen Indians (already Orthodox) did their best to destroy the Orthodox culture and faith. They did not quite succeed, but they came close. The consequences of their destructive efforts can still be seen today in the native population of Alaska.
It was the strong Protestant culture of my home town, Wichita, KS which was once nick-named “Church City USA” which ostracized the founders of my home parish and St. Mary parish on the “bad” west side of town with the Catholics (the blacks were already incarcerated in the northeast quadrant) spat on them in the streets and called them racial epithets. They wanted to “fit in” so a camouflage was adopted. For some it became more than camouflage.
Even the Catholics in this country have largely succumbed to fit in. My late wife growing up in Lincoln, NE as a Methodist was told not to have anything to do with those Catholics ’cause they just weren’t Christian.
Protestantism is founded on heresy. Calvinism, for instance, was officially declared heretical by the Church in 1638. Some good things have come out of it for particular people at particular times because Jesus finds a way to get through, but the cultural version in the US has exerted relentless pressure to dumb down, privatize (relativize) yet mass produce and emotionalize faith while presenting a picture of God so vile that no thinking person would want Him. Thus creating a fertile soil for atheism and the secular nihilism we now have, but opening a space for the truth at the same time. As Fr. Hans notes, many Protestants are beginning to recognize the problem and that is a good thing. However, it is not Protestants or even Protestantism per se that is the problem, it is the culture it formed.
I find it difficult to imagine a less hospitable place for the Orthodox Church to be planted and grow strong than the United States, even with a well organized and focused missionary effort. We didn’t have that, we had simple lay immigrants who’ve largely hidden in ethnic ghettos for years, out of sight and yet continuing to practice the faith of their fathers preserving the pearl of great price in a hostile land and here you are, here I am.
I was led to the Church, not evangelized. I am not alone in that experience, but I was raised outside the predominant culture by parents gifted with a unique experience and vision that (unbeknownst to them) was fundamentally Orthodox in many ways. They created a hunger for God in my brother (now a priest) and me that could only be satisfied in the Orthodox Church (also quite a surprise to them).
Despite our deficiencies the Church is stronger now that it has ever been. We have the truth, the life and the antidote for modernity, therefore we will suffer attacks, defections and disruptions of all kinds. Nevertheless God will prevail.
Glory to Him.
Michael, I have a sunnier view, which I am confident does not arise from stupidity. On the other hand, I can’t rule out the possibility that vapidity may account for it!
Some of your criticisms of Protestantism and the “culture” are so wide of the mark as to carry little sting; others are closer.
In my own case, every experience I have personally had of the Christian religion, in what is getting to be a long life, has been a positive one. This includes not only the Protestants and the Orthodox, but of course to an equal degree the Catholics, too.
I, of course don’t live in Witchita, Kansas, either, but rather, Tacoma, Wash. I have considerable doubt that the Orthodox here had similar experiences to what you describe. My wife and I were married at 19 in the Catholic church; both of our families were well content with that. I never heard an anti-protestant word from her family (or the countless Catholics I know), nor did I ever hear my parents or grandparents– ever– express anti-Catholic views. The only “anti-Catholic” views I heard growing up were of the most benign sort, delivered in a joking manner about fish on Friday and such.
Same with the Jews. I didn’t even realize until 6th or 7th grade that Jews were something different than a subset of the Presbys and the Methodists.
So I have no bitterness or ill-feelings about any of the Churches and sects. Our experiences are very different. And I’ve met some great men and women in these churches that were anything but stupid and vapid, culturally or otherwise.
And believe me, I’m no Dr. Pangloss!
I’ve been further pondering the idea of the “stupidity” of Grant’s Alaska policies. I wonder, if the shoe had been on the other foot, and the original missionaries there Protestant, what would have been the Russian policy had they taken over later, rather than the other way ’round as actually happened? I think we know what the answer would probably be.
Anyhow, if Grant’s Alaska policies were stupid, William Seward’s assuredly were not!
Michael, I echo Fr. Hans’ AXIOS to you for an eloquent summary of the mysteriological / biological truth, beauty, and virtue of Holy Matrimony!
Thank you Father. It is comforting and humbling to have what I believe to be affirmed as true. I give thanks to a good God for any truth I speak.
The following reflection is a response to Fr. Hans’s July 10, 10:13 a.m. post to this thread. I would be interested in responses both from him and from M. Stankovich
Stankovich has to reduce the ontological differences between male and female to biological particularity alone in order to posit homo-genital activity as part of human ontology — which is to say as part of God’s design for the human race.
[Mr. Stankovich and others] want to invite persons in homosexual unions into the Church as full communicants without ever blessing their unions — which they perceive as a “natural” marriage. In other words, if the difference between “natural” and “Christian” marriage is sociological, then a homosexual union and Christian marriage differ only in name.
I have to confess my head is spinning with all the sword-crossing between Fr. Hans and Michael Stankovich over natural law, ontology, and whether sexual differentiation only matters in a “sacramental” vs. nonsacramental marriage.
Can’t we bypass all this terminology by going directly to the Lord’s teaching in Matt 19:4-5: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female and said ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and he shall be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh’”? Here Christ clearly states that from the beginning the universal purpose of marriage for all humankind (not some specific sociological subset) is to unite male and female into one flesh. We can call this “ontological” if we like twenty-dollar words, but the naked clarity of the Lord’s statement means the Church can’t tell same-sex couples that they’re married in any sense of the word, except perhaps by legal fictions of the modern pagan state.
Having said that, I wonder if Mr. Stankovich’s view really is as Fr. Hans states in the second of the two quotes above? It’s my impression from reading a number of his posts and some essays on the “We are their legacy” site (which I can’t check since it’s no longer up) that his views on same sex attraction, gay marriage, and the Church might be more complex (and sometimes contradictory) than that.
Mr. Stankovich, is your position on same-sex couples in the Church in fact what Fr. Hans says it is?
I’d be happy as a clam if it were as easy as that.
The question that needs be asked is: Mr. Stankovich, do you believe that same-sex desire is part of human ontology?
Brian, I know you complained that “ontology” is a twenty dollar word, but here it makes all the difference in the world. If same-sex desire is indeed a part of human ontology (ontology, not experience), then blessing same-sex unions and everything that goes with it is a short step away.
Brian, good luck getting a straight answer. It would be nice to get one. IMO, he is quite contradictory sometimes aggressively so.
Mr. McDonald,
Holy Cow! I’ll try and answer here amidst a preemptive strike! First, how can I not appreciate the directness of your question! You are always refreshing, Mr. McDonald. The answer to your question is no. Period.
[Before continuing, I always forget to ask if you saw my response to your mention of the monastery near the Vatra? I believe I was the only one. It brought back some wonderful memories and motivated me to purchase some articles from the nuns, at your recommendation, which were handmade and were well-received gifts! Again, thank you.]
I would note that both responders to your explicit question to me have referred to me in terms of heresy. My thought is that both banter this terminology about with, literally, no concept of the audacity of such an accusation in the context of our Tradition. The Church has historically reserved such determinations for those so vile as to “divide the garment of the Lord,” and arrogantly refuse the healing offers of brotherly correction; for their salvation and the integrity of the Church as the “spotless Bride,” they are anathematized. Now, obviously, it is the record of the Councils and the Fathers that the accused be heard; be confronted with their own words. So, if what Fr. Hans says is, in fact, true, that I “want to invite persons in homosexual unions into the Church as full communicants without ever blessing their unions — which I perceive as a “natural” marriage,” that “the Church accept persons in homosexual unions as long as the unions are never sacramentalized,” and that I would wish to to use marriage “sociologically, that is, as a social grouping alongside other groupings,” let him use my words to condemn me. Otherwise, he needs to retract these accusations of vile heresy and apologize. I suspect his pride will prevent him from doing anything.
You answered Brian’s question, not mine. So let’s settle it.
Answer this question:
Do you believe same-sex desire is part of human ontology?
If yes, then everything I said is true (same-sex couplings will be de-facto blessed).
If no, I’ll retract what I said.
Fr. Jacobse, I’m confused about what exactly you intend to denote by terms such as “ontology” and “human ontology,” in the context of a blog discussion of same-sex attraction and activity. This word is about as abstract as words get. It may even exceed in abstractness and wooliness its very close relative “Being.”
Charitably consider deploying smaller words and more concrete language, please, for the sake of your less intellectually and spiritually gifted readers, like myself. And while you consider how you might revise your contentions into a more broadly accessible mode — one that even I might comprehend — consider a few biological facts in the meantime. Same-sex sexual behavior is utterly rampant in nature and commonly observed in all primate species studied (where monogamy or exclusive pair-bonding is more or less unknown). As a matter of fact, in a species whose genome is the most closely related to ours, the bonobo, it is more commonly observed than heterosexual behavior, according to some studies. Believe it or not. It is found in most species of mammals studied, as well as in many birds (where something close to same-sex monogamy of a sort is surprisingly frequent, e.g., in swans, mallards and penguins). It is seen in gut worms and various insects, too. It’s been observed in one form or other in well over 1,000 species closely studied. Interesting fact: Approximately 8% of male sheep show zero interest in ewes and pair-bond only with other rams, often for long periods of time. These relationships include “homosexual” genital behavior of various kinds, too, incidentally. It certainly looks an awful lot like an “orientation” in these guys. Would you care to deny that their same-sex “desire,” behavior and long-term bonding are part of ovine “ontology?” If you would, I wonder on what grounds, exactly. And as to these sundry miscreants and their naughtiness — creatures who clearly illustrate a no doubt deplorable but nevertheless widespread biological exuberance in the wild kingdom — would they be analogs of the human (or subhuman?) sodomites, in your view? Is this evidence of their sinfulness, or somehow an analogy — or consequence — of ours? Aristotle seems to have known very little about any of this, and St. Thomas Aquinas was relatively innocent of it, too. We however now know vastly more about biology and zoology — and anthropology — than they did, and the data throw rather a lot of wrenches into the works of scholastic, “natural law”-based moral reasoning. However prestigious a buzzword it may be, and however flattering its reflected shimmerings upon those who piously invoke it.
Read in context and seen in the round, Paul’s words with respect to the male-female “synergy,” as Mr. Baumann puts it, are ambivalent, to put it mildly. Even the words of Our Lord are far from univocal about the absolute (though not relative, admittedly) value of marriage for the spiritual life. I don’t really have a strong desire to cite all the (many, many) places in the Holy Scriptures that would confute the laughably blinkered and simple-minded rhetoric one encounters here. I could, however.
Having said this, I too quixotically oppose the frivolous redefinition of marriage, and I’m at least as convinced as anyone that the health of this institution is a sine qua non of human well being and spiritual development in charity. But, far more pithy and to the point, in a refreshing if not particularly characteristic fit of honesty, here’s how George put the case recently,
Word, dat.
Trying to clear up the confusion. . .
I’m not clear here if you asking what the term means, or why it is important in the discussion of same-sex marriage I am having with Stankovich.
You can look up the definition easy enough. Regarding my conversation with Stankovich, if same-sex attraction is grounded in human ontology, then there is no theological reason to withhold any blessing of same-sex couplings. This should be easy to understand. Just follow the reasoning of the Episcopalians.
Stankovich’s reasoning leads me to conclude that he believes same-sex desire is grounded in human ontology, which is why I asked him the direct question.
As for “heterosexuals mocking marriage,” that falls into the trap of defining people first as heterosexual vs. homosexual as if these categories represent immutable characteristics of human personhood. They don’t. Sociology is not ontology.
It is true that marriage and family are in huge trouble these days, and that collapse no doubt contributes to the confusion that same-sex couplings can be viewed as a morally licit marriage.
Mike Myers,
Let’s take the penguins. Despite the hoopla and propaganda spread a few years ago, it turns out the penguins are not “gay” but LONELY! They don’t engage in same-sex acts, but they “flirt” (practice rituals) and engage in mating displays. This is completely different from the kind of sexual behaviors that go on in the human population.
A 2010 study by the Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, France discovered that the penguins are only pairing up with other males because they are “lonely”. There are not enough females in the colony and the males have high levels of testosterone, which drives them to engage in mating displays – even if it is with other males.”
There is no comparison with regards to the sexual act, the birds are only displaying (play acting) the behavior. “During the mating season king penguins “flirt” with potential partners by closing their eyes, stretching their heads skyward and moving them in a half-circle to “take peeks” at one another.
The male pairs engaged in the displays for short periods of time but did not bond in the same way as a heterosexual pair would, by learning each other’s calls or caring for eggs. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8076771/Penguins-are-not-gay-they-are-just-lonely.html
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2012/11/15/controversial-toronto-zoo-penguins-not-gay-after-all/
Mr. Myers, your fundamental confusion, IMO, comes from looking at things from the bottom up rather than the top down. From the beginning, it was not so. God gave us dominion over the earth. As such as St. Paul points out, when we fell, all of creation fell and groans and suffers because of it. That is not hyperbole.
It is incorrect to form conclusions about human being and behavior from what is seen in the rest of visible creation (a bottom up approach). That is the fundamental flaw in philosophical naturalism and antithetical to the Christian revelation.
There is also a clear distinction between human beings and animals. We are created in the image and likeness of God, they are not. We have a living soul, they do not. I frankly don’t care if every sexual encounter in ‘nature’ was so-called homosexual (which even in the cases you observe it is not and really bears no relation to human behavior). Human beings are called to a much higher standard, i.e. to be divinized so that the rest of creation can be sanctified. The existence in the visible, non-human parts of creation of behavior that is clearly wrong for we humans is an indication that we have yet to do our job as commanded by God: dress and keep the earth.
We cannot fulfill that commandment without recognizing the male-female as God intended it to be and submitting to His love for us rather than our own perverse desires.
I’ve never found St. Paul ambivalent so I’m at a loss to follow what you intend to convey by that statement. He deals on several levels, but again, I suspect your confusion comes from looking at things from the bottom up. Remember, “All good things come down from above…”
Father Jacobse:
I agree with your previous interlocutor in saying these are terms ( ontology, human ontology) that are abstract to the general reader and really do require a serious amount of explanation in order for one to grasp how valid is your argument. I am not challenging your argument here, rather your use of the term human ontology.
I too have academically studied in the fields of philosophy of science and sociology of knowledge, albeit many years ago now. I have not studied theology, however. Having said that, I am lacking in knowledge of what is human ontology and cannot understand it as you are using the term so far. All knowledge is human or understood by humans, even that, which, is revealed from the above and beyond.
20th Century scholars (in Philosophy and Sociology) referred to a sequence of terms — unreflective ontology, epistemology, and reflective ontology as the process in which knowledge is evolved and acquired — and to achieve a deeper meaning to what one understands in ones life on this earth.
Primitive societies primarily understood observed phenomenon through unreflective ontology. They had a straight comprehension of God(s), nature, and the universe As socities advanced, methods, techniques, and science, emerged to establish ways to better understand what and how phenomenon on this earth (i.e. epistemology) functions. Methods evolved to understand events in the physical, chemical, biological and social/human behavior areas. But with the evolution of method, knowledge is now being filtered.
To those who continue to inquire and question, science and its methods do not satisfactorily answer all questions. This is where one must return to ontology to grapple with unanswered questions, as a result of analysis and method. Now comes reflective ontology. To explain how reflective ontology functions would take much more explanation than I can achieve here. Partly because words cannot fully explain, hence some part of the knowledge is tacit. Truly, poetry and theology have a place in this realm.
Nonetheless ontology is a term hard to grasp by use of simple rhetoric. I do not know where the human ontology comes from. Maybe it is a new emerging field/subfield in philosophy, sociology or psychology. Maybe theology too — perhaps it is better known here. If it is an area of knowledge, it is likely controversial and still emerging.
You are free to use what words you want. But I like the previous writer stay confused.
Yes, Mike, we should all take our cues for behavioral normalcy from the animal kingdom.
So what are all these food banks for, when starving families can just cull the weaker offspring for food?
Ontology refers to the immutable characteristics or categories that are intrinsic to being. For example, to say that a human being is either male or female is an ontological truth. There is no other possibility. Granted, some people get confused, transgenderism and so forth, but even here the only two possible poles are male or female.
In terms of our discussion here, if same-sex desire has an ontological grounding, that is, if same-sex desire is immutable and intrinsic to our being, then the moral prohibitions against same-sex behavior are not in accord with a person’s created nature and should be modified.
In ecclesiastical circles, once the reasoning takes hold it is only a matter of time before homosexual expression is celebrated. The Episcopalians teach us that.
Again, what does “grounded in human ontology”mean? What does “human ontology”mean?
You wrote, “. . . Stankovich’s reasoning leads me to conclude that he believes same-sex desire is grounded in human ontology.” OK, then shouldn’t you honestly comply with his perfectly reasonable request that you produce the offending text that led you to this conclusion? And surely you could elaborate on just what you mean by your own paraphrase of his claims, so as to make your own meaning less abstract, clearer and more comprehensible. Then we might judge for ourselves the merits of your harsh critique, comparing the text he actually wrote to your reading of and opinion about what he wrote and assessing how warranted is your opinion about his reasoning. But first we’d need to know 1) what he wrote, and 2) just what you mean with respect to what he wrote. You’re the one making serious charges against him. Back them up, please. If you can, without more obfuscation and pettifoggery.
And I think it’s most reasonable and easiest to begin by defining your novel terminology. Tell us more about what you mean by “human ontology,” please, in this context. It’s really vague and wooly. Then, if you can, post his text.
It’s a challenge to navigate amidst so many shoals and eddies and shallows of solecism red herrings straw men utterly inadequate paraphrases undefined terms and so forth. While it is true enough that George can be quite heedless and imprecise in his use of words (among other abuses), he’s hardly alone here in that. But I imagine most of us got the gist of this pithy quip, which was that married men and women (aka, heterosexuals, pace hairsplitters, transparent point evaders, and fish mongers [viz., red herring]) have long made a mockery of marriage. Adultery, divorce, child neglect, abandonment, abuse and worse, committed by married men and women, are the principal reasons for the present condition of marriage.
This begins to clear up the first question. The one remaining is the quality of your reading of what M. Stankovich wrote and the merit of your very serious charges against him. Please cite his text, and then explain why you interpret him in such a way as to warrant your accusation. I myself often cannot really understand M. Stankovich — sometimes I have next to no clue what he’s saying — but I don’t recall ever reading anything that could substantiate your charge.
Myers wrote:
Jacobse responds:
Here’s the definition I gave in the post directly above yours:
Myers wrote:
Jacobse responds:
There is no single offending text. That’s why I wrote “Stankovich’s reasoning leads me to conclude…” He could clear it up by answering my question. If I am wrong I will be glad to retract my conclusion. I’ve already made that clear.
Myers wrote:
Jacobse responds:
As for being unwilling to characterize people as homosexual or heterosexual, I am very serious about that and practice it in my own life. I don’t like the term “gay.” I reject implicit cultural maxims like the object of one’s sexual desire defines human personhood and self-identity. They don’t. They function as filters and erode the possibility of real communion with people. Of course if the person I am talking to demands that they do, no real communion is possible.
I also don’t believe that people have “made a mockery of marriage” except those who deliberately set out to do so of course. Many people I meet are dealing with a boatload of brokenness and are overwhelmed and confused, and some (a lot actually) respond to authentic compassion and common sense.
Fr. Hans has puffed out his chest, and in his arrogance has hastily ascribed to me beliefs & opinions that constitute heresy. I have called upon him several times now to demonstrate that his assertions are true, or retract them and apologize to me. Instead, he wishes to “bargain” with me, using a form of logic with which I am unaccustomed: you demonstrate that my false accusations are not false. Really? I honestly used to revel in these “posturings” – the single-sentence dismissal, the first, in fact, was an epic “Your attempt to discredit [the writer] fails.” Translation: “Sit your dumb ass down!” And I defended the notion of the raucous give-and-take of the “public square.” Disagreement is one thing, but the accusation of heresy for Orthodox Christians is quite another matter altogether.
Over a year ago, when this ridiculous issue of “ontology” and “homosexuality” arose – which has no other purpose to serve but as a metaphor for the dissatisfaction of the sufficiency of the Holy Tradition of the Church regarding homosexuality and same-sex marriage – I wrote an essay that begins here (scroll to bottom to begin – sorry!) and address the “conflict.” I would point out the importance of the phrase, “the reality of our fallen and broken humanity” because it is the crux of the issue. While Fr. Hans is shaking bushes, I am stating:
This is not an observation of our humanity “as it was in the beginning,” but a reflection of “the reality of our fallen and broken humanity”as we experience it in this broken world. It is only in this sandbox of semantic games – now we have arrived at “human ontology” for heaven’s sake – can we deny homosexuality does not “exist.”
I hold no opinion, no belief, and no teaching that is in contradiction to the Holy Scripture, to the Patristic Fathers, to the Canonical Fathers, and to the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church. I have insisted this to be the case from my first post on this site and the AOI site, and I have never deviated nor varied my opinion, my belief, or teaching once. Fr. Hans, you need to retract your accusation and apologize to me.
“Yes, Mike, we should all take our cues for behavioral normalcy from the animal kingdom.”
Helga, I note the numerically represented reception for this silly and baseless cheap shot. It speaks volumes about the level of discourse that’s approved and at home here.
Not remotely in the vicinity of my point, but I think you knew that. Because I was largely clueless re: the precise meaning of Fr. Jacobse’s formula, “human ontology,” with respect to same-sex desire and attraction, I wanted to hear his opinions about “bovine ontology,” too, if he had any. So first I pointed out some evidently empirical facts about related behavior in the wild kingdom. I thought a sort of thought experiment using an analogy, one starring a species often used as a metaphor for Christians, might be helpful to understand better where he’s coming from.
Given all the horrors of inhumaneness and cruelty that humans not afflicted with this particular cross are guilty of, I find it strange that y’all are so obsessed by this one aspect of the human condition. To meet you halfway, this particular developmental disability, let’s call it — which it seems to me is the very worst way one ought to fairly view it, in most cases (given what we know these days.) The prevailing attitude reflected in the climate of discourse here is very suspect to me. Much of it reeks of the grossest hypocrisy. It’s weird how few of you appear able to see this.
Stankovich wrote:
Well, there we have it. Thanks for clearing that up. Now, my next point. . .
No one denies that homosexuality exists just as no one denies that, say, bestiality or drug use exists. But would we say that the desire towards animals is grounded in human ontology? How about the desire for drugs?
Or are you just expressing a category confusion between human experience and human ontology?
In these statements, you have accused me of vile heresy. You need to set aside your shameful pride and need to appear to “win” an argument and address them:
1) Stankovich has to reduce the ontological differences between male and female to biological particularity alone in order to posit homo-genital activity as part of human ontology — which is to say as part of God’s design for the human race.
As I have demonstrated, this “ontological” reality is not attributable to God, but a consequence of our fallen nature – symptomatic of of our rebellion – and our broken world: “it is, not according to creation nor our “nature,” but it is what we have become.” I have specifically cited the authority of Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom).
2) Stankovich wants to replace the term “natural marriage” with “Christian marriage.” The term works if by it we mean sacramentalized marriage, that is, natural marriage brought within the Church and thus becoming a means of salvation. But he doesn’t mean this. He wants to use it sociologically, that is, as a social grouping alongside other groupings.
I have asked you on numerous occasions for some authority as to the term “natural marriage,” a contrivance of a dichotomy you claim is pursuant to the “natural law” that is somehow “elevated & completed” in the sacramental rite of the Church. First, I have pointed out to you that my use of the term “Christian Marriage” is hardly my creation, and I offered the example of the classic work of Fr, John Meyendorff, Marriage: an Orthodox Perspective which includes a definition of “Christian Marriage,” yet never mentions “natural marriage” once. Further, Fr. John is very clear that marriage was and is always sacramental because it is eschatological by nature, always realized in the Kingdom.
3) He and his “We are the Legacy” crowd want to invite persons in homosexual unions into the Church as full communicants without ever blessing their unions — which they perceive as a “natural” marriage. In other words, if the difference between “natural” and “Christian” marriage is sociological, then a homosexual union and Christian marriage differ only in name. As long as the priest doesn’t bless the union, Orthodox discipline is preserved.
4) If the male and female differ only in their created biology, and if this difference is only expressed in the sexual act, then who is to say that homosexual couplings are not a natural marriage either? And why shouldn’t the Church accept persons in homosexual unions as long as the unions are never sacramentalized?
In effect, you accuse me of promoting same-sex marriage as “equal” to the Sacrament of the Church as long as – I don’t know what – one maintains a devious “detachment” from the rite which would “elevate” and complete the “natural marriage” process. Not only is this ludicrous in its pretension – if I reject the entire foolishness of the “dichotomy” of “natural marriage” v “sacramental marriage” to begin with, what would be the point of believing the remainder? And in the First case, you are silly enough to cast a “broad net” for people whose opinion you could not possibly know. What a dumb idea! This one even raised my eyebrows.
If you somehow imagine you will distract me with alternate issues and endless series of further “questions and clarifications,” you are mistaken. You are an Orthodox priest and you have accused me of heresy before everyone who reads this forum. I say again: I hold no opinions, beliefs, or teachings that are contrary to the Holy Scripture, the Patristic Fathers, Canonical Fathers. or Holy Tradition. You have championed that words have power, and you have openly challenged my integrity. Either demonstrate my heresy or retract your accusations and apologize to me.
Stankovich writes:
You are confusing categories. If same-sex attraction is a consequence of our fallen nature, then it cannot be part of ontology. Sexual desire is grounded in ontology; the disordered expressions of that desire are not.
Further, if same sex attraction has an ontological grounding. you would have to make the same claim for all sexual passions. Why, for example, wouldn’t bestiality be considered in the same way?
See Chris Banescu’s comment quoting Fr. Alexander Schmemann.
I have NO intention of dialog with you. You have accused me of heresy. You are an Orthodox priest who lacks the fundamental humility and courage to admit you hastily & rashly made false statements as to my beliefs, opinions, and teachings. I have lost my respect for you, I am embarrassed for you, and you should be ashamed of yourself before anyone who has followed this discussion.
Well, then I will answer it for you.
A marriage not ‘sacramentalized’ (yes, it’s a clumsy word) in the Church would be called a natural marriage.
Fr. Schmemann also called it a natural marriage. In fact, nothing I said about natural marriage contradicts what Fr. Schmemann taught according to the quotes Chris Banescu provided.
Let me resign this pitiful discussion by saying this: What is a “natural marriage?”
You said: “Fr. Schmemann also called it a natural marriage. In fact, nothing I said about natural marriage contradicts what Fr. Schmemann taught according to the quotes Chris Banescu provided.” Not exactly. You actually said:
You are the Karl Rove of the Orthodox Right who will say just about anything to “win” as you perceive it. Bon chance. I stand by my integrity.
Stankovich, the point is not that there are differences between natural marriage and sacramental marriage — clearly there are. Rather, the point is that natural marriage exists within the order of creation. I don’t see any denial of that in the Fr. Meyendorff quote you offered.
Here is the context of the words you quoted by me: The State does not have the authority to change the definition of marriage because marriage exists within the order of creation. The State’s attempt to define same-sex couplings as morally licit marriage is an arrogation of authority that the State does not rightfully possess. That’s not a political statement. It’s a statement of natural law — the moral ordering of creation discerned by how creation is made.
That natural marriage exists and has moral value is clear in Fr. Schmemann’s writing below (emphasis mine):
Note the Fr. Schmemann argued that natural marriage is given a new meaning, not a new reality. The sacramental forms do not negate the natural forms. Rather the sacramental elevates the natural. God is existentially present in the marriage so that the work of redemption (sanctifying creation) can be accomplished.
Creation, then, is affirmed, not denied; natural and sacramental marriage are complementary. Moreover, the fact that natural marriage can be ‘sacramentalized’ at all helps us see the full meaning and authority of natural marriage that is first revealed within creation and affirmed by Holy Scripture.
You can see here how radical the Dunn Error really is. By divorcing the natural and sacramental, Dunn effectively denies that natural marriage has any meaning or authority, and that the blessing conferred in Genesis rises no higher than fable. This contributes to the “progressive ‘desacramentalization'” of creation that Fr. Schmemann strongly deplored.
I have always thought anathemas a bad approach, that have yielded unfortunate results in the past. Of course, it’s hard to get past “vile”.
I notice that all of the churches, including the Orthodox, have been somewhat sparing of anathemas for quite awhile now.
Of course, it’s one thing when Councils hurl anathemas; quite another when ordinary bloggers do….
M. Stankovich wrote,
I always forget to ask if you saw my response to your mention of the monastery near the Vatra?
No, I’m afraid I missed that. (I’m kind of in and out on this blog). Thanks for letting me know that you did that or I’d have missed it. I’m so glad that your experience there was a good one! I always feel more human after a few days there. When I leave I think, “This is what human beings are supposed to be. I hope I never forget it.” And of course I do. (Sigh)
Your note gives me an opportunity to put in another plug for the Monastery of the Dormition, Rives Junction, Michigan (OCA, Romanian Episcopate). If you want to see Orthodox life at its very best, a few days visit to this peaceful and beautiful place, with nuns and clergy that are genuine, transparent, unselfconscious lovers of God, who worship in a way that makes God seem fully present and real (and have some good practical life advice to give) will be a real restorative.
As you can imagine, I have some thoughts (too wordy I’m afraid!) on some of your posts and Fr. Hans that I’ll be putting up soon
Fr. Hans and Mr. Stankovich:
The following is my own summary of what I think each of you is saying on the issue of same sex attraction, and he Church, etc. I’m only attempting to gain full clarity on this debate since you’re raising issues that are incredibly vital though perhaps lost amidst the tumult and shouting. Wherever I’ve got you wrong, please jump in and correct me (as though there’s any doubt you will!).
A couple of days ago I suggested it might be useful to bypass philosophical abstractions like “natural law” and “ontology” and appeal directly to the Lord’s concrete words about man, woman, and marriage. My hope was that this might differentiate substantial disagreements from essentially verbal disputes. If it turned out that we were all agreed his clear and concrete teaching was definitive and without appeal or qualification, what actually was there to dispute about?
Well it appears there’s plenty; however for all the hard and heated words between you, it does appear you’re agreed on a stupendously important matter: that the Lord’s words describe the true nature of humanity as created “from the beginning.” The humanity God originally bestowed upon us did not include homosexual attraction (or any other of the passions that suffocate our true humanity). You both seem fully agreed on this “ontological” fact.
It’s at this point the word “ontology” comes to bedevil matters. (And let me switch to 3rd person here.) Father Hans wants to reserve the adjective “ontological” for the actual nature of things as given by God, their true end and purpose. Mr. Stankovich wants in addition to apply it to the realities of fallen man and the resultant human existence consequent upon the fall. Now if we’re being philosophically and theologically precise, Fr. Hans would seem to have the upper hand. The Church fathers, East and West, Gregory of Nyssa as much as Augustine would surely not acknowledge that “immutable characteristics or categories that are intrinsic to being” could be properly applied to those passions that reign in fallen humans For the fathers, being is good; evil is defined as the absence and negation of being. Evil isn’t in the same way the Good is. It can’t add something to being, only subtract from it. It is a parasite upon being, having no capacity for independent existence. Evil—like Tolkien’s ringwraiths—is both powerful yet insubstantial.
Thus I just don’t see that the Tradition can allow us to apply the word “ontological” to any distorted passions that currently afflict fallen humans, including the sexual. On the other hand, there are indications (correct me if I’m wrong) that Mr. Stankovich is using the term in a purely practical, down-to-earth sense as when we say something “is what is.” As he writes: “sexual orientation is ontological, as a simple entity, as a simple affirmation of truth: homosexuality ‘is.'” If this practical and “existential” meaning is all that’s intended how could one deny it? Passions are so often written into our being by genetics and environment and seem all but definitive. (I’m assuming btw, that you’re not saying that sexual differentiation, which is “from the beginning” is a result of the fall. If so, I’ve completely missed your point.)
To appreciate this point, perhaps it would be useful to switch from the hot-button topic of sexuality to something more “neutral.” My grandfather, my mother, and I (all of whom share similar looks and personality traits), are chronically anxious people. Our successes and accomplishments never did anything but aggravate those anxieties. We all developed strategies to cope (including occasional bouts of medication), but none of us ever found a cure. It seemed to be in us in somewhat the same sense as St. Paul says, “I see another law in my members. . . .”
So some (not all) of our passions seem to be written into us by genetic and environment factors. To return to same sex attraction, what are the implications of this fact? What is the pastoral and theologically responsible approach the Church should take with those who are unlikely to overcome this passion this side of the Kingdom of Heaven? What should we be doing in this era to approach the whole range of sexual dysfunctions that seem so rampant among us from heterosexual to homosexual? I would like to know what “speaking the truth in love” means to each of you—if you wouldn’t mind sharing your thoughts on this. I think this is where the real and substantial differences on this issue may be made clear. It sure would be good to get them fully and honestly out in the open.
Brian, you hit the nail on the head with one qualification: although you are right about evil, some readers could interpret that section to mean that same-sex attraction is evil. It’s not of course and I know you don’t mean to say that it is but I wanted to make that clear.
To boil it down in the debate between myself and Stankovich: Stankovich uses the term “ontological” where he should be using the term “anthropological,” ie: same-sex attraction is part of human experience. It still seems to me that Stankovich is searching for an ontological grounding for same-sex attraction but I could be mistaken. He simply may not understand the theological vocabulary and categories that well.
The problem he runs into by claiming same-sex attraction is ontological — intrinsic to being — is that it elevates a passion as an immutable characteristic of human personhood. If he indeed is seeking to establish same-sex desire as an ontological characteristic, why limit the discussion only to same-sex desire? Why wouldn’t the desire leading to, say, bestiality be considered in the same way?
As my priest reminded us this morning, Christianity is not just concerned with saying no to sin, not even mostly. We should be intent on achieving virtues that counter sin (our own and our others).
So if the real sin in same sex attraction is actual fornication, then the virtue is chastity and service to others I would think. There are other factors I am sure but focusing our attention on the remedy might be beneficial.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
One problem with an ontological definition of homosexuality, in my view, is that it draws on a dated cultural context of identity politics, whose underpinnings have become more and more frayed intellectually, even as they now seem to triumph politically, while at odds wiht the Church.
Viewing homosexuality as an objectified category of identity helps shape a growing spectrum of de-facto essentialist views of expanding sexual identities, including heterosexuality.
Yet an ontological sense of homosexuality also runs counter today to anti-essentialist views of sexual identity in queer theory. The latter emerged in part from earlier work by Foucault, who noted that modern categories of sexual identities did not exist in pre-modern cultures, but emerged in the modern West. (That view also runs contrary, btw, to essentialist views of homosexuality advanced by the historian John Boswell, whose inaccurate claims about supposed early Orthodox “same-sex” rites have been thoroughly refuted.)
Some LGBT activists themselves reject the notion of a fixed deterministic sexual identity, which they feel would take away their agency. Epigenetics and developments in secular evolutionary biology also raise questions about assumptions behind fixed essentialist or “ontological” notions of sexuality.
But what is the best approach to “speaking the truth in love?” A crucial question.
Others can provide better answers, I’m sure.
I’d just suggest that such an approach needs to include articulating how Orthodoxy theology and anthropology reject objectification of any person’s sexual identity, and instead focus on the incarnate, transfigurational potential of everyone’s identity in Christ—whether they may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, etc.
In this, the embodied biological sense of the sexes serves, beyond any social constructions, as living iconography for the marriage of Christ and His Church, at once prototypical, incarnationally transfigurative, and eschatological. St. Nikolai Velimirovich symbolically described this in his “Prayers by the Lake” as the coming together of the masculine heavens and the feminine earth–expressing an Orthodox sense of nature sparkling with the uncreated energies, to borrow a phrase from Stanilouae.
Others have put all this better here, and more accurately, I’m sure. I would agree, however, for the little my 2 cents are worth, with Fr. Hans’ assessment that an ontological sense of homosexuality is not Orthodox. It points in the direction of what some express as a hoped-for “new Orthodox anthropology,” which tragically would tend away from the guidance of our living tradition in Christ.
Please forgive and correct any errors here.
And please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
Prof. Siewers,
Having read your “two-cents,” I have no disagreement with anything you’ve written. Nothing. We are in complete agreement. Having said that, I am also going to presume, since no one else has even spoken to this matter but me, that you have wasted my time in crafting this “two-cents” with me in mind. This provokes in me a potent ambivalence: on the one hand, I respect you as an academic, and would presume it natural for you to inspect my actual writings – to offer me the benefit of the doubt as to whether I had addressed any of your concerns – and this is terribly disappointing. On the other hand, you bumble on here, supporting Fr. Han’s position, blah, blah, blah when he has shamelessly and wrongfully accused me of vile heresy:
Am I to presume, Prof. Siewers, that even in the interest of fairness you have no comment? Do you plan to simply carry on here, calling into question every position and every dynamic of the “Chancellor’s friend,” but nothing as to whether he believes and teaches vile heresy and promotes, in the words of the Fathers, “a tear in the seamless garment of the Master?” Is it possible, Prof. Siewers, that suddenly, you have actually run out of words for the “Chancellors Friend?” Ah! Now I know the meaning of quietude, and its judicious application.
Mr. McDonald,
Everything that was contained on my previous site, with the one exception of a critique by Fr. Arida of Fr. Schmemann’s Problems of Orthodoxy in America can be found here. The original five essays have been restored unedited and exactly as published on the old site. In addition, there is a sixth essay, and a specific series regarding sexual orientation begining here (as I have noted, it begins at the the bottom of the page and scrolls up upward – all apologies). This introduction includes the statement:
My use of the term “ontological” is exactly as you have described, in the classic categorization: “affirmation of simple truth.”
A bit less than half of my work is research in behavioural genetics, nearly exclusively in the area of mental illness. The genetic and epigenetic information I have presented, particulary on the AOI, is very specific and speaks to a sub-group of homosexuals – predominantly men – who demonstrate strong familial, physical characteristics, and gender distinctions that seem to suggest that they are under very significant genetic risk for same-sex attraction. It is unclear what other epigenetic might influence this situation. Nevertheless, they seem to identify their orientation at a young age; their orientation is not “fluid,” fluctuating, or phasic (i.e. the research indicates that 95% of adolescents who “struggle” with identifying their sexual orientation will resolve as heterosexual), and it will remain consistent through their life-cycle. I emphasize: this is not true of all persons who identify themselves as homosexual and it is more true of men than women.
Secondly, there is very limited research as to the efficacy of legitimate treatment for someone who voluntarily wishes to “change” themselves. The gay community has lobbied hard and successfully against any such effort, to the point where any legitimate research even among voluntary patients is deemed “unethical” and clinicians theoretically could loose their licensing and universities funding. However, in consideration of the research available prior to this ban, this particular group responded very poorly to “reorientation” efforts. What is my point? The only pastoral point I may offer is that, for this specific group, it strikes me as a needlessly wasted effort to promote “changing” orientation, rather than the spiritual warfare of the “podvig.”
As to the matter of “speaking the truth in love,” if you were to examine the history of my presenting the issues of homosexuality, genetics, and human medicine, beginning on AOI and migrating here, it has been an arduous two years. I am precise, measured, and careful. I have invited correction on substance because it more important that the information is correct, not that I am correct. Likewise, I am familiar with the rigorous environment of academic researchers who will not suffer the unqualified, the ignorant, or the unprepared. I would not speak to that what I am neither qualified to speak, nor would I speak unless I was reasonably confident I am correct. All of that being said, welcome to the internet. (Suffice it to say that some so confident on the internet should genuinely fear meeting me in a live debate. You will beg for Google.) My point, Mr. McDonald, is that the only reason I can maintain, that I can insist that nothing I believe or teach is contrary to the Holy Scripture, the Patristic Fathers, the Canonical Fathers, and Holy Tradition, and that I can “speak the truth in love” is because I have nothing to win, nothing to gain. Maybe no one will recall that abrasive, arrogant jackass, but they will make a clear distinction between same-sex attraction, wherein one can live ones life in chastity, obedience, singlemindedness (sophrosyne/tselomudrye), and purity to which we are all called, and sex-gender sexual activity which is forbidden. That is sufficient. If I have not answered your question(s), tell me.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Dear M. Stankovich,
As in many online discussions generally across cyberspace, one reaches a point of saying “what’s the point”? If you and I are in complete agreement on substantive points, and I am likewise in complete agreement with Fr. Hans, then what was the basis of any disagreement to begin with between you and Fr. Hans, about which much virtual ink has been spilled by you yourself? There would seem then to have been none, thankfully.
However, now you are discussing how you feel you are owed an apology by Fr. Hans, who said you were offering a view opposed to Orthodox Tradition, against whom you in turn have hurled personal insults.
Much of this thread as I recall started from your persistent challenge that there was no warrant in the fathers for the idea of “natural marriage,” and calling for citation. That was supplied, but you seem to have offered a particular definition of natural as distinct from sacramental (or the supernatural?) in your emphasis.
Meanwhile Fr. Hans was arguing that you were advancing an ontological view of homosexuality. That seems to have been verified in your own words, although you are offering a particular definition of ontology in a “practical” dimension to clarify your point.
So there are differences it would seem, still.
You cited Fr. Arida somewhere here recently. If I remember right, his words emphasizing the need for a reformed pastoral approach to homosexuality (rather than an emphasis in moral dogmatic theology) appeared on OCANews along with a piece by Fr. Vinogradov during the height of the OCA’s online controversy. Fr. Vinogradov has in the past cited a need for a “new Orthodox anthropology.” Likewise his clerical associate Fr. Michael Plekon has expressed the hope for new revelations of the Holy Spirit on love in the Church. Your arguments seem to fit within a Venn diagram of the context of their emphases. Those emphases often seem carried online with the marker of accompanying disparagement of Metropolitan Jonah and “konvertsy” for being moralistic in their approach, in a general grumpiness identified here often with Syosset, where works your friend the Chancellor and his prominently featured online Diary (which still has made no mention of the marriage issue).
However, such explicit or implicit criticism of konvertsy doesn’t address cosmological and social justice arguments for the Church’s Tradition, not to mention the realm of moral dogmatic theology beyond the moralistic. These stand in opposition to trending emphases mentioned above in parts of American Orthodoxy, which appear to channel an American Zeitgeist that, unlike Native Alaskan traditions mentioned elsewhere here, is not a traditional culture but one based ultimately in secular consumer capitalism. Perhaps some Americans who have experienced its social and mental gulags are more attuned to the seriousness of the situation than some who take pride in their cradle Orthodoxy?
One only has to compare the writings and words of those mentioned above to the Russian Church’s Jubilee Statement on Orthodox bioethics of marriage and sex to see the difference between an Americanized approach and global Orthodox Tradition.
So while I appreciate your effort to be a peacemaker, and your efforts to point out our agreements, I think it’s unfair to elide differences and then decry Fr. Hans for strongly defending his position. You have done the same in condemning “natural marriage” as being outside the Tradition, where you would place Fr. Hans’ views. I unworthily think you’re wrong in that and Fr. Hans (with others) is correct. I say that with respect for your writing and experience, and realization of my own great limitations and greater sins. I ask your forgiveness if I am misrepresenting your views and for correction if so.
Please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
Kentigern,
While this frequently comes at the hand of Mr. McDonald – and perhaps he laid the groundwork – it now dawns on me that the only point to be drawn is your question “What’s the point?” You have said it famously. I know I am correct and that I learned from the mouths of fathers of our generation, who learned from theirs. And for that I make no apology. But in my own shameful pride, in my own need to convince with the Truth that convinces on its own, and to imagine I was defending that which needs no defense, I review my post after post of extraneous, repetitious arguing that nauseates me. I made my point, it was complete and sufficient, and I should have left it at that. My sincere apology to anyone whom I offended.
Responding to Fr. Hans’s post of 7/14/2013, 7:30 p.m.
Brian, you hit the nail on the head with one qualification: although you are right about evil, some readers could interpret that section to mean that same-sex attraction is evil.
Oh, Gosh, I needed to be more careful there! You are correct that I certainly did not mean to imply that same sex attraction per se was evil. Rather that nothing that diminishes or distorts God’s original intent in the creation could be given positive ontological status as an intrinsic definition of human being. We are not defined by passions, but rather occupied by them because [and here I’ll use the word in the sense I wanted it taken in my post] “the whole world [in its current fallen state] lies in the power of the evil one” (1 Jn. 5:19).
I’m reminded a section in Chesterton’s Orthodoxy in which he says that the doctrine of original, or ancestral, sin was good news. Why? Precisely because the doctrine meant that the passions and violence that divide us from God and from each other were not original, any more than the icons damaged and defaced by the iconoclasts were the real icons.
Responding to M. Stankovich’s post of 7/15/2013, 7:22 p.m.
The prior posts didn’t have “Reply” buttons on them, so as with my previous post, I’ll have to use another option that makes it appear I’m in another thread.
I find the above post from the date above, an incredibly useful summary of your views on genetics, epigenetics, their role in same sex attraction, the current political difficulties of further research, etc.– and how these may inform the discussion so that it may proceed on the basis of knowledge and understanding rather than anger and fear. (And from my prior reading of your materials it also seems to me to show that your views really aren’t self-contradictory as has been often claimed by respondents.) For those who don’t have the time or inclination to read those, this will serve as a good digest of your understanding and could be referred to as a kind of rough interpretive key to “where you’re coming from” in other posts. For me, it will serve as a roadmap as I do a more thorough read of your oeuvre as contained in your current web site.
Responding to M. Stankovich’s post of 7/15/2013 at 1:39 p.m. (A reply to Kentigern Siewers)
it now dawns on me that the only point to be drawn is your question “What’s the point?” You have said it famously
Is it too naive to think that the clash of the titans going on in this thread has hidden what is a substantial agreement? Is it possible that like the Homoousians and the Homoiousians of the 4th century the battle has been mostly (though by no means wholly) over terminology and not substance? Is it possible that we really do share the same faith if not the same politics? Unless I’m missing something, I think we really do.
I know that real issues remain, but I have to say I’ve really appreciated the direction the posts on this subject have taken. It now seems to me everyone’s trying a bit harder to clarify views and understand the other person’s rather than just duking it out. In the process I find that I’m clarifying my own understanding and learning something on a crucial contemporary issue that involves the Church’s teaching and its approach to human life, well being and flourishing.
It’s been my hope and intuition that Orthodoxy, with its famous balance, has resources for coming to grips with this issue that are missing or less influential in the more legalistically-minded traditions of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Those posting here are really positioned to give clarity to those of us who long to cut through a lot of confusion. I hope we continue to find more light and less heat.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Dear Brian,
I am a bit puzzled by your comment, which sounds at first glance more Edward Gibbonish than Orthodox, that the battle between “Homoousians and the Homoiousians” of the 4th century was more over terminology than substance. (Of course literally it did involve substance, essence, person, etc. :)). I can understand why a secular historian would say that, and indeed Gibbon did in effect, and that was one of his reasons for being so unfairly dismissive of Eastern Christian culture given his Western Enlightenment prejudices.
I may well be missing something in what was meant as a more shorthand kind of comment. But the problem seems a relevant parallel to your main point, in what I still see as eliding differences between Fr. Hans and M. Stankovich that they both recognize and feel strongly about (and judging by “likes’ and “dislikes” cumulatively throughout the thread, that others do as well).
The 4th-century issue you cite was a key basis for the Ecumenical Council that we just celebrated in Orthodox churches on Sunday. And, as it stands, your citing of that particular dispute makes me less likely to accept that the differences under discussion here are unimportant, whereas you seem to want to lead us in the other direction.
You mention that Orthodoxy has resources to help go beyond legalistic views. But aren’t those resources closely related to the dogmatic theology articulated by our seven ecumenical councils, not to mention many other fathers for whom the issue you mention was real? Wouldn’t we give up the authenticity of a living tradition in not recognizing our intergenerational connection to them? I’m wondering if you’re thinking of looking for a kind of synthesis that is more intellectual and reflective of assumed expertise of our moment, and thus more a traditionalism, rather than a living tradition that includes that 4th-century legacy among others. I realize that I may be unfair in that, though, and please forgive and correct me if so.
As someone who pokes around frequently in the Late Antique and early medieval eras, I’m somewhat aware of the historical nuances of the 4th-century debates. But I’m referencing more their dogmatic significance. Some Orthodox scholars argue that Western legalism emerged indeed from more of a theological emphasis on analogia than energeia, and that could indeed be seen as related to shallower understanding of the distinction between the two terms you seem implicitly to elide. Maybe again I read you wrongly, though, as this would lead away from your point.
Meanwhile, as I read your recent comments on the debate between Fr. Hans and M. Stankovich, I think that your rhetorical role as honest broker in this situation seems to overlap with a commitment to one side of a discussion that you prolong. Perhaps it would be helpful at this point for you to share more directly and in detail your own views on the topic of same-sex marriage and sex in Orthodoxy, apart from what I’m seeing (maybe wrongly) as again eliding difference that is significance among theirs?
Please forgive me again if I am misconstruing your remarks, and please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
Prof. Siewers,
Mr . McDonald put his question directly and specifically to me. In both cases, His combined responses are addressed to my responses. When you had the opportunity to dialog frankly and directly, as both an educated party and an Orthodox Christian, you thought it wiser to address me in the third-person as the “Chancellor’s friend” and tickle me with emoji. When I addressed your specific “concern” – your repeated reference to St. Chrysostom’s reference to “natural law” in his Commentary on Romans’ you completely ignored me. You took the opportunity to offer your full “critique” of this “debate,” a critque unrequested and for which you are not vaguely qualified to offer. You are, in fact, “poking around” in areas where you lack the qualification and standing to insert yourself. I will state emphatically, with no pride or hubris, this is the last argument in which anyone like you or Fr. Hans will insult me with terms of “a few years of American seminary,” or “reminiscing over old times,” or “blowing smoke and bluster.” I am more than qualified to challenge you and Fr. Hans for the simple reason that I “join with the Fathers before me”; I was taught by the fathers of our generation, who in turn had gratitude for the fathers who taught them, and in turn… ” I certainly do not need Fr. Hans & Chris Banescu to interpret pages 88-89 of For the Life of the World for me, or tell me what Fr. John Meyendorff “meant” in Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective. I learned it from them directly. And that is the entire difference. I asked for authority and Fr. Hans has none. I am not in the class of Alexander Schmemann or John Meyendorff, but I am certainly and considerably more studied in the Patristic Fathers, the Canonical Fathers, and the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church than you or Fr. Hans. And more importantly: I know not to speak to what I am unqualified to speak! You are prolonging this foolishness, not Mr. McDonald. Your “questions” are rightfully directed to me, and I will not answer. There is nothing more to be said and certainly not from you. This thread should die.
Mr. Stankovich, this whole business might have gone a little easier if you were in the habit of stating your point clearly. You have gotten into the habit of writing in asinine riddles, then castigating anyone who fails to decrypt your meaning the way you wish.
Response to Kentigern Siewers July 16, 10:29 p.m. post to this topic. ( Again, I can’t find the Reply button that would land me in the right place.) This is the first of what will probably be two posts since there are two issues to clear up.)
Prof. Siewers wrote: I am a bit puzzled by your comment, which sounds at first glance more Edward Gibbonish than Orthodox, that the battle between “Homoousians and the Homoiousians” of the 4th century was more over terminology than substance.
I made the inexcusable error of making an analogy without providing the historical context necessary to make clear the point of the analogy. Now that the horse has bolted let me do things backwards and provide that essential context.
As you know, the creed promulgated by the Nicene Fathers in 325 was not immediately accepted by the all parties in the Church and was a matter of controversy for nearly 60 years before finally being settled (and augmented) by the Council of Constantinople in 381. The Arians, rejected out of hand a creed that made the Son full partaker of divinity with the Father (when their own adroit political maneuvering made it safe to do so); but the majority of the truly Orthodox bishops also were also unhappy with it. Why? Because for many of them, the formula that declared the Son to be homoousias, (of one “substance” or “essence” with the Father) smacked of Modalism, a heresy in which the names “Father,” “Son” and “Spirit” refer to different roles of God and not different persons.
This large party in the Church despised the Arian “demotion” of the Son, but were equally fearful that the Nicene formula submerged the three Divine persons into undifferentiated Godhead. Under the leadership of men such as St. Basil of Ancyra, they settled upon the unhappy term “homoiousias”(“of like substance”) to characterize the son’s relation to the Father. This term was codified in a synod in Ancyra in 358.
It was at this point that the great Athanasius realized—well before Edward Gibbon’s famous sneer—that the battle between his homoousians and the majority “homoiousian” party really was over a diphthong! He led the way to reconciliation with a Synod at Alexandria in 362 that recognized that each group was using the different terminologies to get at the same meaning. With the resulting unity of the Orthodox parties, Arianism was guaranteed a defeat, and over the next twenty years, the Cappodchian fathers’ helped hammer out terminology to provide a common language to express everyone’s common meaning.
Obviously, if it takes this long to explain the analogy, it wasn’t a good analogy! However, my point remains. On the particular issue that’s been exercising this forum, I’m hoping for clarity on what differences are purely verbal and which are really substantial.
By the way, to anyone viewing this post, if you’re looking for a good readable discussion of this and other theological controversies in the first centuries of the Church, I highly recommend Justo Gonzalez’s History of Christian Thought, volume 1. It was a seminary text that—inadvertently considering its author was Presbyterian—contributed to my eventual conversion to Orthodoxy.
2nd response to Kentigern Siewers July 16, 10:29 p.m. post to this topic. ( Again, I can’t find the Reply button that would land me in the right place.) This is the first of what will probably be two posts since there are two issues to clear up.)
Meanwhile, as I read your recent comments on the debate between Fr. Hans and M. Stankovich, I think that your rhetorical role as honest broker in this situation seems to overlap with a commitment to one side of a discussion that you prolong.
I’ve tried to avoid the appearance of being an “honest broker” since I’m uncomfortably aware that as a (usually) infrequent poster to this forum, I don’t have the standing that would permit me to assume this self-appointed role. I’m ready to abandon my pretentious attempt to be what my mother used to refer to as a “goat-between” and recognize that my honest, if officious, hope for locating common ground amidst the flying of the rhetorical shrapnel is probably misguided. I think some common ground really does exist, My posts have tried to explain where I think it lies. But it appears that few are seriously looking for it. I would agree with your implication that inserting myself into this hotbed has served only to “prolong” discussion–and contention
When I say common ground, btw, I don’t mean phony compromise. Rather, I think that all fights, especially among Christians, should start only after an earnest attempt to discover whether there really are grounds for a fight–and if so, exactly where they lie. If it should turn out those professing the same faith, really are not agreed on what that faith declares, then let them fire away with both barrels. Even then the guns should be firing at viewpoints and not at human beings. I continue not to understand the need, often on the part of intelligent, accomplished and educated individuals, to get personal, either by outright insult or more subtle forms of attack–and what appears to be a persistent refusal to think through what the other guy may be trying to say.
Yet a 3rd (and final) response to Kentigern Siewers July 16, 10:29 p.m. post to this topic. ( Again, I can’t find the Reply button that would land me in the right place.)
Perhaps it would be helpful at this point for you to share more directly and in detail your own views on the topic of same-sex marriage and sex in Orthodoxy.
I think my several references to what “was from the beginning” have made my general views clear. Since you ask for particulars: Same sex marriage is an oxymoron, a manipulation of language worthy of Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty, who claimed a right to make words mean anything he wanted. Its adoption by our larger culture is a potential catastrophe, not the least because it opens the door for state persecution of Christians for proclaiming what they are bound to proclaim if they stay true to the gospel as preserved in the Tradition. I also believe with many others in this forum, that there are rational grounds for opposing marital redefinition that don’t depend upon allegiance to a particular religious faith—though as C. S. Lewis says and as current events are proving, without the assistance of religion, reason has as much chance as a snowball in a blast furnace (“The Language of Religion”).
On the other hand, it seems to me that Mr. Stankovich has provided evidence from many studies that same sex attraction (which he has consistently differentiated from practice of same) seems to be, at least in the male homosexual population to be “wired into” a person in our tragically fallen world. He chooses the unfortunate word “ontological” to describe this condition, but nevertheless as a practical statement of “what is,” it seems to me he’s likely getting at a hard and painful truth: the fallen condition of the world causes us to be “occupied” by different passions, the greater number of which are not of our own choosing. (That fact, of course doesn’t dispense us from using our free will to seek out God’s grace in coping with them.) We should approach them as St. Paul does his with own particular “thorn in the flesh”— as weaknesses that will allow God’s strength to be perfected in us. And one of the ways that happens is using our own temptations and addictions as a means of making us more understanding of those of others.)
Finally, the hand wringing over the change in marital definition should have started long before we got to a place that’s really the end result of a much larger and longer process. Over the years, Christians themselves have consciously or unconsciously exchanged the biblical and Orthodox view of marriage as covenant before God for that of romantic companionship—and gone on to separate that from the bearing of children. While most married couples have children, many don’t see the intention to do so as inherent element in the definition of marriage (despite what our service books proclaim). I’m not saying that the same sex marriage is an inevitable next step for this devolution, but because of the foregoing, it’s a lot shorter step. If our bishops and priests in this age of confusion were willing to make a point of teaching the whole meaning of marriage, our stance on same sex unions would make a lot more sense and (perhaps) seem a lot less harsh.
One more thought and I’m done. It isn’t difficult to find Orthodox thinkers who act almost as though the command to “be fruitful and multiply” is somehow in opposition to the glad reality that in marriage we can say to each other “flesh of my flesh” and enjoy the meeting of heart and body, whether or not conception results. But why separate what God has joined together? As my priest once told me, the love of two can lead to an exclusivism, but when a third in the form of a child or children enters the picture, the love is directed outward and “circulates” among the family. (Perhaps this is one of Blessed Augustine’s “Trinitarian traces,” a reflection of the exchanges of love by which the Trinitarian persons “indwell” each other) Of course this refers to the intention not the capacity for married life to be open to children, it doesn’t makean infertile marriage less a marriage for God knows what’s in the heart and there are other ways to open up our love to include others.
Another too long post, but hopefully it has supplied the required detail.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Dear Brian,
Thanks for your thoughtful replies and the spirit in which you offer them. Certainly the phronema of the Church involves experientially a right spirit on this topic in which all faithful Christians have an interest. My own work focuses on Christian views of nature and the natural, including marriage, with also a background in having covered policy issues as a journalist, hence my interest in this topic. But no academic or professional background qualifies one to offer any kind of definitive Orthodox view, of course. And this is especially true in my case with my sins and foolishness!
Still, there is a difference I think that we all recognize here between compassionate recognition of a “thorn in the flesh,” which in various forms we all experience as fallen humans (and how we understand such a state in Orthodoxy, with our faith’s experience of uncreated grace, versus a Catholic or Protestant view of Original Sin), and social constructions of sexual identities through mores and education and law– whether those identities be heterosexual, homosexual, transgender, etc. Generally I think that’s an area of agreement here.
The social changes well underway toward dismantling marriage involve an attempt by the state (enmeshed with a global consumer ethos, in what C.S. Lewis called “technocracy” in “That Hideous Strength”) to reify its own secular version of such identities, as in effect the only version. This offers arguably the major challenge facing the Church in America in our time, in its proclaiming the truth and hope of its transfigurative message about identity-offering compassion and salvation in a living tradition taking into account the interest of a multitude of generations, a kind of “seventh generation” sense of social justice to use the Iroquois phrase.
In thinking about the realm of the natural here, perhaps we can try to imagine as 21st-century American Orthodox how urgently we might respond to the current situation if we found it a direct threat to our own immediate families (as much so as, say, serious domestic discord, emotional or physical hurt, or dire economic, social, environmental, or spiritual threat to those loved ones in our household), rather than tending to see these issues as more distant because they seem to involve “only” civic institutions at the moment. We would respond with urgency to such threats to our own households, not emphasizing grades of distinction between the naturalness of a family as a “little church” versus liturgical life in the parish; we wouldn’t abandon the former as natural and not sacramental. Yet we all have in different ways a tendency in our culture to “cocoon” in our own household, even with impending threats of social martyrdom (and more) to our spiritual and home families from this issue, as a stumbling block to salvation for many in the communities in which we live.
To prepare for such martyrdom, it seems to me an urgent need to develop clearer contemporary apologetic witness about marriage (given also its importance to basic iconography and “real symbolic” teaching of the Church on theosis), starting with our own prayers and ascesis, and extending into cultural media and scholarly realms. In this we have the fathers and our liturgical and ascetic tradition on which to rely, with God’s grace.
I must ask forgiveness for my own foolishness and sin in these discussions, while also hoping and praying for wisdom to better articulate and exemplify these issues from our living tradition to young people in my charge, in groups I advise, and in family networks of both home and Church.
Please pray for me in this, the sinner,
Kentigern
Dear Kentigern:
You write, In thinking about the realm of the natural here, perhaps we can try to imagine as 21st-century American Orthodox how urgently we might respond to the current situation if we found it a direct threat to our own immediate families. . . rather than tending to see these issues as more distant because they seem to involve “only” civic institutions at the moment.
I am entirely in agreement about the real nature of this threat. This was why I singled out one inevitable result of the state legitimization of same sex marriage: state harassment or persecution of Christians. It is inevitable that public schools and universities will be required to teach the goodness of same sex practices and same sex marriage as part the “diversity” curriculum. Elevating homosexuality from a practice (and thus debatable) to an identity (which is immune from criticism), has demoted defenders of traditional marriage to bigots rather supporters of a legitimate moral position. Once gay marriage becomes established as the law of the land, just how long will the state tolerate the teaching of “bigotry” in our churches and in our families? And just how long will most Church families– generally ignorant of their faith and taking most of their cues from the culture–put up with priests and bishops who stay faithful to the Tradition? A young man I’m close to has just graduated from seminary and will at some point be ordained a priest. I wonder what the future will hold for him as he tries to teach the truth to his congregation and his children?
If we want to get a present glimpse as to what that future will look just Google a bit of information on the fate of those in prominent positions who’ve had the courage to state their convictions on marriage. No matter how charitable and thoughtful their wording, news reports almost invariably frame them as “anti-gay” comments. In the world of the future, it’s likely that if your kid states a “pro-marriage” view point, the school counselor will meet with you to discuss his “anti-gay” slurs.
BTW, in trying to look at present trends to see the future, I single out those in prominent positions because any one who wants to can easily find their stories. Many lesser known people have discovered to their cost that gay marriage is no longer a matter over which rational people are allowed to disagree. The purely “civil” endorsement of such marriages cannot help but lead to drastically uncivil consequences for our churches and families.
Mr. Banescu,
I came up with this “outrageous conclusion” as defined by Fr. Hans:
“Brass tacks,” no? Fr. Patrick writes:
Although he did not mention “Christian” marriage.
This much I know, Mr. Banescu: Fr. Alexander Schmemann – as best as I can pretend to know – in his heart believed that the only way the Orthodox will survive in America is to renew the church at the parish level. And this is dependent upon the priest, and he must be Orthodox:
Fr. George Washburn has posted a comment this morning that is brilliant in its simplicity: the Church has always had one teaching about marriage between one man and one woman, and it has been sufficient for centuries, and it will be sufficient for centuries to come. “This is the Faith of the Fathers, this is the Orthodox Faith.” We do not need Solzhenitsyn or affiliates of the Christian Right and the heterodox to school us on how to vote or how to avoid the “Dunn Error.” We need and we deserve priest who are Orthodox.
Stankovich, my point is that the family is the primary social unit within creation as established by God and this involves only one man and one woman. This is affirmed in scripture, tradition and natural law. Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, make Cain and Abel.
Your conclusion then, that this is a statement of biological complementarity alone is reductionistic. Rather, the biological distinctions are evidence of a larger order and design; a pattern of how the world was created and in its own way reveals the intention, will, purpose and creativity of God. This is what is meant by natural law.
This should be obvious with even a cursory reading of Genesis:1-2 where the natural is elevated — that which is known in nature is contextualized within the narrative of God — to give the male to female relationship its proper moral framework and where the meaning, purpose and destiny of the human person (male and female) can be more deeply understood.
And yes, the health of a parish does indeed depend on the character of the priest. But let’s hope the priest does not believe that same-sex unions are in any way a morally licit marriage. Let’s hope too that he does not believe that same-sex desire is part of human ontology (experience certainly, but not ontology) as you have claimed elsewhere.
Moreover, we most certainly do need Solzhenitsyn and other great moral thinkers to help us navigate the shoals of the moral collapse of Christendom that we are presently experiencing. He helps us define it much like Dostoevsky did in his day.
And we certainly have to recognize faulty logic like the Dunn Error lest we make the same mistake the Episcopalians made and end up where they are. You do agree that Dunn’s bifurcation between the natural and sacramental is a serious theological error, correct?
As for the Christian Right, I already mentioned this upstream. These hackneyed pejoratives are meant to close discussion, not advance it.
Then, if you would, explain to me what in the natural law is “elevated” and completed in the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick? How about the Eucharist? Where in the natural law do you find the basis for the sacred priesthood and how is it fulfilled in the Sacramental expression of the Church? Or perhaps is this ridiculous contrivance only related to “natural marriage” because you need it? You are a poseur with no authority and no foundation in the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church. You are the Karl Rove of the “Orthodox Right,” believing you can distract by fabricating and falsifying my position on natural law, same-sex marriage, biology, and homosexuality. I ask you to cite authority in our Orthodox Tradition for your position that the Sacrament of Marriage in the Orthodox Church is merely “elevation” of “natural marriage,” and you are continuously attempting to overwhelm me with “radio chatter.” Answer the question. If this is the moral tradition of the Church, as you say, you must.
You, an Orthodox priest, whom St. Chrysostom notes, “For it has not been said to them, “Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.” (Mat. 18:18) They who rule on earth have indeed authority to bind, but only the body: whereas this binding lays hold of the soul and penetrates the heavens; and what priests do here below God ratifies above, and the Master confirms the sentence of his servants,” have literally accused me of heresy in promoting same-sex marriage as “equal” to the Sacrament of Marriage, and inviting these individuals to the Eucharist in their “sanctioned” state of marriage. You should be ashamed of yourself. You need to retract these fabrications and answer the question.
It’s impossible to argue with delusion. As seen from this exchange, when the plain meaning of the English language and basic reasoning are jettisoned, to be replaced by hysterics and subjective opinions, the rational flock must shake the dust of our sandals and move on.
I am posting again not for Stankovich’s sake, (he cannot be reasoned in his current state), but for the sake of any other readers who are interested in the truth and can rely on logic and reason to discern meaning and seek knowledge and understanding.
Regarding the challenge presented to Fr. Hans: “I ask you to cite authority in our Orthodox Tradition for your position that the Sacrament of Marriage in the Orthodox Church is merely “elevation” of “natural marriage,” and you are continuously attempting to overwhelm me with ‘radio chatter,’” I offer below the right teaching and public witness of multiple Orthodox Christian clergy and bishops that support the same perspectives.
Both Fr. Hans and Fr. Patrick stand firmly in the center of the Moral and Orthodox Tradition of the Church and proclaim the correct teaching and theology of the Orthodox Christian Church regarding marriage. (I’ve already posted the specific writings of Fr. Alexander that are virtually identical to the view expressed by Fr. Hans and Fr. Patrick; see above. )
Fr. Alexander Schmemann – Natural and Sacramental Marriage, An Orthodox Christian Perspective
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2013/07/natural-and-sacramental-marriage-an-orthodox-christian-perspective/
Fr. John Meyendorff – The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony
http://www.holy-trinity.org/morality/meyendorff-marriage.html
Encyclical Letter of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America on Marriage
http://oca.org/holy-synod/encyclicals/on-marriage
ALL of them proclaim the same teaching, same theology, and same views on marriage!
Mr. Banescu,
I don’t know where you studied theology – apparently the Google School – but I would have offered these citations to support my position, for heave’s sake. What are you thinking? First, had you looked, the 2nd citation is by Fr John Meyendorff, not Paul (who is professor of Liturgical Theology at SVS) and is taken from his classic book, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective, published by SVS Press, which you also apparently missed. Continuing, these three citations speak to what I consider to be the Church’s traditional position in regard to marriage, particularly the Letter from the Synod of Bishops:
You are absolutely correct that “ALL of them proclaim the same teaching, same theology, and same views on marriage!” NONE of them speak to the claims of Fr. Hans. That would be NONE of them. If you claim he, indeed, “stands firmly in the center of the Moral and Orthodox Tradition of the Church and proclaims the correct teaching and theology of the Orthodox Christian Church regarding marriage,” you best return to Google.
I have a question, Mr. Stankovich, as one who has never yet been in any controversial exchange with you that I remember, and as one who often finds valuable points in your posts– what are the purposes and reasons for the negative personal tone, to the point of real distastefulness, that so often accompanies what you write?
It’s a serious question, but perhaps a futile one, I suppose.
Mr. Mortiss,
Let me, with the greatest confidence possible, make you a promise. Many follow a path to the Orthodox Church, imagining it is the culmination of a journey – which it most certainly may be – but for those whose “souls are consumed with longing” (cf Ps. 119(118):20), who are zealous, are passionate “from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matt. 11:12), they see the journey transformed into a beginning. And what they hear in the “small voice” likened to Elijah (1 Kg. 19:12) is the message of the Lord to Nathaniel: “You shall see greater things than this.” (Jn.1:50) Imagine! Many had presumed a certain “maturity” of faith that would culminate in the Orthodox Faith, only to find “the peace of God, which passes all understanding,” (Phil. 4:7), moving, in the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa, “from glory to glory.” Always pray – and I will pray for you – that you always maintain the passion that brought you here!
In a round-about way, I hope that answers your question.
Mr. Stankovich, thanks, and may your prayers be efficacious!
When the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, the bread and wine don’t change their created natures. When the oil is blessed to be an agent of healing along with prayer, it doesn’t stop being oil.
As the body and blood of Christ, the bread and wine are more than nourishment for the body, but even in their sacramental dimension they still retain the capacity to nourish the body. As an agent of healing, the oil still retains its natural cleansing and antiseptic properties.
Marriage, outside of a sacramental dimension, is not a non-marriage. It is a natural marriage. How do we know this? Because natural marriage is written into the fabric, the structure, of creation. And marriage, because it involves human beings has a profoundly moral dimension — one fixed in nature (natural law) and the other by divine commandment (Holy Scripture) and both come from God.
Natural law is reflected within the structure of the creation. Marriage, for example, is designed for one male and one female. How do we know this? One male and one female have the biological complementarity necessary for the creation of a child and the constitution of family. This is affirmed in Genesis:1-2 where it is decreed that God designed it such. (Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve and all that.)
Natural marriage then, because it is created by God, is blessed. That blessing is not removed once the death and resurrection of Christ enabled mankind to partake of marriage as sacrament.
Be careful not to make the Dunn Error here. The sacramental never negates the natural. It elevates it.
Natural marriage (one male, one female) is good. Sacramental marriage is better. A marriage beginning in the Church as sacrament starts out best.
Need a citation? How about the wedding service (which, if you look closely, is drawn from Genesis):
Clearly marriage, even in its non-sacramental form, is blessed. How else to explain the blessings of God on marriages before sacramental marriage was even a possibility?
Question for you. You have said elsewhere that same-sex desire is grounded in human ontology (ontology, not experience). On what do you base this conclusion?
Careful here. If same-sex desire is indeed grounded in human ontology, you will end up affirming same-sex unions as morally licit marriages down the road.
Fr. Hans Jacobse says (July 10, 2013 at 6:46 pm):
‘When the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, the bread and wine don’t change their created natures.’
And then some other things.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s VERY IMPORTANT for us to understand that the physical elements of the christian Mysteries remain truly what they always were at the same time as they — by the action of God’s Holy Spirit — MEAN something much different, much more important, much more transformed and transformative.
Bless, Father!
Fr. Hans, I’ve been following the comments here on this topic with great interest, and am blessed to read the dialogue that is occurring. It’s so important for these discussions to take place.
My question relates to your statement:
“Natural law is reflected within the structure of the creation. Marriage, for example, is designed for one male and one female. How do we know this? One male and one female have the biological complementarity necessary for the creation of a child and the constitution of family.”
Someone commented on this site recently that the primary reason that people experiencing same-sex attraction shouldn’t be allowed to marry is because 100% of children are conceived by heterosexual intercourse, and 0% of children are conceived by homosexual intercourse. I believe that in our day, that is not an accurate statement. The ethical and spiritual questions related to fertility are actually quite complex and go far beyond what I am hearing you refer to as “natural law” or “natural marriage”.
On the one hand, I understand what you are saying in terms of the biological functions of man and woman, and of course agree with you. But when you begin comparing that to what actually exists in reality in our world, there are so many variations of human experience. (I’m thinking specifically of infertile married couples; couples who choose ivf; couples who hire a surrogate to bear their child; couples who pay an egg/ovum donor or sperm donor and have embryos created outside their bodies then implanted into the female’s womb; couples who have children and then divorce and then remarry and then have more children; couples who choose sterility rather than pass on biological traits of disease and affliction; etc.)
For us to denounce same-sex attraction as violating “natural law” or “natural marriage”… well, shouldn’t we also be equally vocal in denouncing divorce? Polygamy? Sperm donation? Egg donation?
I caught that too and decided not to comment at the the time. There really is no such thing as “homosexual intercourse.” By the term I presume the writer really means sodomy, but sodomy is a sin and it makes no difference whether it is man to woman or man to man. If the writer meant there is no real equivalence between heterosexual intercourse and sodomy, then I would agree.
Questions of fertility don’t come into play here because — to put it bluntly — the rectum is not a sexual organ.
No one has suggested a relationship between same-sex attraction and natural law. Did you mean to write same-sex coupling?
But yes, I agree that polygamy, polyamory, or any other ‘marriage’ relationship that people concoct violates the principle that marriage is between one man and one woman. This is why I argue that the SCOTUS ruling (or any legislation sanctioning homosexual coupling as a legal marriage) is in fact the destruction of the traditional definition. Polygamy and other arrangements are right around the corner and will too be fought on the basis of civil rights (marriage equality for polygamists and so forth).
Questions about egg and sperm donation are valid and tie into the value the society places on traditional marriage. Since the culture at large is abandoning the principle of one man and one woman, we should expect that human eggs, sperm, and so forth will become increasingly commoditized.
Our sister Christine asks: “For us to denounce same-sex attraction as violating “natural law” or “natural marriage”… well, shouldn’t we also be equally vocal in denouncing divorce? Polygamy? Sperm donation? Egg donation?”
Indeed, shouldn’t we now? Cela s’impose.
lxc
Christine inquires, “shouldn’t we also be equally vocal in denouncing divorce? Polygamy? Sperm donation? Egg donation?”
Yes
“How else to explain the blessings of God on marriages before sacramental marriage was even a possibility?” Because Christian marriage has always and will eternally be sacramental because it is eschatological by nature!
I say again that this is precisely why the epistle reading for the Orthodox Service of Marriage speaks to the “great mystery of Christ and the Church” (Eph. 5:32). You present this dichotomy of “natural marriage” v “Christian marriage” as if to say when the Church finally got around to sanctifying a “rite,” then we had a sacrament to “elevate” natural marriage. But Fr. Meyendorff asks, “If marriage was conceived by the Early Church as a sacrament, anticipating the joy of the Kingdom of God, how can we explain the fact that this Church did not use any particular ceremony, or rite, to sanction marriage? Instead, it recognized as normal a marriage concluded according to the laws of secular society,” and “Until the ninth century the Church did not know any rite of marriage separate from the eucharistic Liturgy. Normally, after entering a civil marriage, the Christian couple partook of the Eucharist, and this communion was — according to Tertullian — the seal of marriage, implying all the Christian responsibilities.” And I use the term “Christian marriage” as Fr. John taught it: in the “great mystery of Christ and the Church” (Eph. 5:32),
I would emphasize to you, to Fr. Patrick, and to Mr. Banescu that what you read here is rich in Fr. John’s meticulous authority of the Holy Scripture, the Patristic Fathers St. Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, Nicholas Cabisilas, Photius, and Blessed Augustine; the Canonical Fathers Nicephorus the Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras, and Theodore Studite; and the Holy Tradition of the Church. Sadly, Fr. Patrick has projected his own lack of understanding of the words of Blessed Methodius of Olympus onto Met. Anthony (Bloom), words that took my breath away. My thought: race to the Fathers and the Holy Tradition. Everything you need is there. The Church does not need your contrivance.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
“My thought: race to the Fathers and the Holy Tradition. Everything you need is there. The Church does not need your contrivance.”
Exactly.
And this is why we don’t need use of selected statements from one’s former seminary instructor (after a few years at American seminary) to shape a misimpression of an American “school” of marriage versus world Orthodoxy.
This is what the Chancellor’s friend seems to do (hopefully unintentionally) in his apparently quietistic disregard for an Orthodox sense of social justice. On the latter, see the Russian Synod’s jubilee statement on society, in which the section on bioethics deals with marriage as a social issue.
Again, not to do a patristic study for him, but here is one example from St. John Chrysostom: “the law of nature ordered one man to associate with one woman throughout…” (see citation elsewhere on this thread). That’s one example. He can look up the rest, if sincere in his statement and not merely being provocative.
The historical development of marriage in the Church includes the living iconographic fulfillment of marriage, as St. John’s words indicate. Dr. Engelhardt’s book Foundations of Christian Bioethics, already cited on this thread, provides a valuable overview of an Orthodox sense of natural law on issues of marriage and sex.
There are differences between the Orthodox and Catholic sense of natural indeed. But to try selectively to eject any Orthodox sense of the natural from marriage in society ironically brings us to a more Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant sense of identity and grace, based in the Western sense of Original Sin.
As an Orthodox sense of natural law also provides a basis for an Orthodox sense of social justice, such a move also would result in Orthodox churches withdrawing from engaging pressing social issues, as an expression of preaching the gospel and helping our neighbors.
Please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
Prof. Siewers,
I encourage you start your own blog dedicated to me, and stop taking up space here with this third-person silliness. Call it, “Let’s Take Him Down a Notch,” or “This Arrogant Bastard Rubs Me the Wrong Way,” or anything to that effect, but at least be honest in your intention. If my grasp of Orthodox theology is as blatantly shallow, as transparently superficial a gaggle of “reminiscence” of the good ol’ days of a few years at an “American seminary” as you accuse, you may rightfully add “vanquisher of the proud” to your Linkedin accomplishments. Oorah.
On the other hand, you might stop and consider that in my “few years at an American seminary” – which, in fact constituted twenty years of my life – I sat at the feet of the fathers of our generation like… FORREST GUMP! People you can only now read about, I and my classmates had the God-provided opportunity to listen to as they preached, as they lectured, as they served the divine services, as they counseled in confession, and as they invited us into their homes and shared their personal lives. Imagine. And when we’re gone, Prof. Siewers, all you’ll have left is you and the four books you’ve read, because your ego needs determined you had nothing to learn from me.
Prof. Siewers, I leave you with this: I am your Gunnery Sgt. Hartman. You will not like me. But the more you do not like me, the more you will learn. Paris Island, the OCA. Yeah, buddy.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Every Gunnery Sgt. Hartmann must have his Beetle Bailey, I guess, and I’m suited to a cartoon role. But the One-so-eager-to-be-addressed-directly forgets that he can’t be a sergeant in an army in which he is not a member. He should feel free to join the Army, and then those of us actually in the OCA will be happy to use the first, second, or third person in welcoming him and showing him around. 🙂
As for bragging continually of sitting twenty years at the feet of the holy and the great, it doesn’t do much good if one wasn’t paying attention, as the bragging itself suggests, along with lobbing personal insults at priests and disrespecting hierarchs publicly, while supposedly pursuing serious Christian theological discussion online.
And still the unanswered question, if this is indeed a deep attempt at dialogue: Why does he disown natural law in marriage when it is taught by the fathers?
The citation was sought, and given. The answer substantively has been silence, but without quietude. And so his apparent effort to define an American-libertarian school of Orthodox marriage seems to continue.
Please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
Prof. Siewers,
Somehow you are under the mistaken impression that I “disown natural law in marriage.” Au contraire. Fr. Josiah – whom I respect – is not the first person to read Patrologia Graeca, and I am aware of the citation – which in case anyone missed it – you have now provided serially. Clearly what is related to us in Scripture and delineated by the Fathers regarding “as it was in the beginning” is the natural law and the dogmatic teaching of the Church. If you see “natural law” as the issue, you have missed my point entirely. My objection is to this contrivance of a dichotomy of “natural marriage” and “sacramental marriage” and the bs “Dunn Error,” neo-Aquinian mental gymnastics that must constantly evolve even as we speak, when – God bless my champion, Fr. George Washburn – the Church has held one position for centuries, and will hold the same position for centuries to come: marriage is between one man and one woman, by natural law. It is sacramental. It will always be sacramental. This is sufficient. This will always be sufficient. What more is necessary, Prof. Siewers? Every priest at every wedding could easily explain this “mystery of Christ and the Church” (Eph. 5:32) and convey the sanctity of the Church’s Tradition. “This is the faith of the Fathers. This is the Orthodox Faith.” I have not been silent. You’ve not been listening.
So what happens to the clear teaching of Fr. Alexander Schmemann who wrote regarding matrimony: “We can now understand that its true meaning is not that it merely gives a religious “sanction” to marriage and family life, reinforces with supernatural grace the natural family virtues. Its meaning is that by taking the “natural” marriage into “the great mystery of Christ and the Church,” the sacrament of matrimony gives marriage a new meaning; it transforms, in fact, not only marriage as such but all human love.”
You are rejecting Fr. Alexander’s preaching then? It’s a rhetorical question mind you, as I expressed earlier I can’t argue with delusion. I’m here simply to remind the readers of the importance of staying grounded in reality and pointing out the great confusion and glaring contradictions.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann on Natural Marriage and how Sacramental Matrimony Transforms Marriages and ALL Human Love:
Fr. Alexander on Natural Marriage Being Given it True Perspective in Christ and the Church:
Mr. Banescu,
Read my post directly above yours. And enough of your personal insults and your obviously misguided “mission” to personalize this. The only “great confusion and glaring contradictions” are in your head. You are out of your league and cannot grasp the concepts. Do you seriously imagine I have never read For the Life of the World?
You seem to think because Fr. Alexander is using the words “natural marriage” he is likewise creating the dichotomy contrived by Fr. Hans. He is not. Do you not hear the the identical phraseology of Fr. Meyendorff’s “Christian Marriage” here? You should and you would had you taken the time to read it! Of course “like the whole “natural” life of man, marriage had to be taken into the Church,” and how do you read this as contradictory to Fr. John’s statement above: “it is a Mystery of the Kingdom of God introducing man into eternal joy and eternal love.?” Fr. Schmemann’s discussion of the distinction of the Service of Betrothal and the Marriage is identical to that of Fr. John. Why? “This is the Faith of the Fathers. This is the Orthodox Faith.”
For the life of me. Mr. Banescu, I cannot imagine your reasoning for establishing what seems to be a competition, and a poor one at that: “A man in his error digs a hole and shovels it out, and falls into it himself.” (Ps. 7:15) It has never been my intention to be rude, but to join with the Fathers before us is no small matter and no small calling. Heed the words of Fr. George: the Church has held a teaching for centuries and it has been sufficient, and will sufficient for centuries to come.
Stankovich,
What would you call a non-saramentalized marriage?
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
I think the Chancellor’s friend is mistaken in his protopresbyterianocracy that we need only priests. Of course we do, and we need them to be speaking out in homilies on marriage and by example in the civic realm, as have Fr. Andrew and other reverend fathers so well, here online, and in real life.
But we also need more, in ways that are demanding of ourselves in all the orders of the Church. We need God’s grace and the synergy of ascetic and liturgical work with that grace. We need not to be passive-reactionary Protestant and quietist separatists, in the model that he seems to borrow from certain fundamentalist and Anabaptist groups, in a strange amalgam of a reactionary opposition to social justice. We need bishops who will stand for the truth, such as Archbishop Iakovos of blessed memory marching with the civil rights movement, to stand up for social justice from an Orthodox perspective. Following the logic of the Chancellor’s friend’s apparent opposition to an Orthodox sense of social justice, Archbishop Iakovos should never have participated in that effort, but should have relied on parish priests performing the Liturgy only (not to discount the infinite virtue of that, but should he also have left civil rights struggles alone in abandoning that commitment for the life of the world in praxis?).
And we need laity and monastics as an order of the Church also to stand up under the leadership of the Church fathers, to not abandon our neighbors and generations unborn, as we do in supporting pro-life measures ranging from opposing abortion to supporting efforts addressing poverty such as FOCUS North America.
To hide our heads in the sand on marriage and family in our world, as if we were Amish without their agrarian community commitments, is not Orthodox in our global commitments to being Christian in the world at large. Yet that is the kind of quietist approach that he seems to advocate, a kind of secularized American variation on libertarianism, without expression of Christian commitment to community, both in the Church and in the order of Creation, in the natural world and the ecumene at large.
Please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
words words words
I looked up matrimony and learned that the root is matrem from Latin meaning mother. So I guess it means something like the making of a mother.
I also looked up marriage and the root of that is marital meaning husband from the Latin maritus.
These are from the Oxford Universal Dictionary 1955.
If you go to dictionaries on line all have been changed to add in same sex marriage.
The Apostles and Fathers would not have been so dilatory in acting forcefully and in unison with other jurisdictions, including Roman Catholic, in such a crisis concerning marriage and the will of God for mankind.
Posting a statement on an obscure website has no effect. To the general public and even the OCA members, Oca.org is an obscure site. In the same way, the Manhattan Declaration in the end is merely a Neville Chamberlain “piece of paper.”
What if the Apostle Paul had written his letters but hadn’t sent them, nor provided instructions for their circulation and enforcement? Putting a statement on a website and leaving it at that is not much more than not having published it at all.
What a forceful Orthodox/Catholic response would look like:
The objection is raised, “Nobody cares what we have to say anyway, we are so few.” Did the Roman Empire care what the Apostles and the 100 had to say after Pentecost? Those who a short time later were brought before city officials in other lands because they were turning the world “upside down?”
Now we have millions in this country who are Orthodox or Roman Catholic and millions more who name the name of Christ. It is to our shame that we do not have even a few who have the knowledge, spiritual power, wile and courage of the Church Fathers and the Saints, and to our shame, because of our spiritual poverty, that non-Christians do not care what we have to say. Indeed, one of the Apostle Paul’s qualifications for a bishop is that he is held in respect by those outside of the Church – that is, people care about what he has to say. This was the case in Antioch in the time of Chrysostom, that the public officials in a city where paganism was thriving received the counsel of the ascetics living in their mountain cells in times of crisis because they found value in their counsel time and time again.
Thanks for posting this, George, along with the OCA’s statement. At first I was disheartened by the lack of response to something so monumental as the overturning of DOMA, but then I recalled that the OCA’s Synod of Bishops is functioning without several bishops in place due to vacancies. I know it’s a tangent from this topic, but how are things going in the Diocese of the South with regards to the bishopric position?
I wish I knew. My feeling is that as in the other vacant dioceses, Our Betters in Syosset are going to do whatever it takes to delay the election of bishops. The drying up of monies to Syosset has forced them into a box: real bishops of real dioceses have real authority over whatever monies are remitted to the
Apostolic PalaceSyosset.What is “natural marriage” as used by all the with it folks here? Is it a Protestant thing we’re importing into Orthodoxy these days? Is it something in the neocon playbook and lexicon?
I admit to being ignorant on this topic
I admit to being ignorant on this topic
I doubt this. You’re as familiar as the rest of us with the first two chapters of Genesis.
To speak of “natural marriage” simply means that marriage pertains to the Order of Creation. Its “nature” and structure are indelible by God’s creating act. It cannot be altered by any human decree or determination.
Every other meaning of marriage—including the mystical/sacramental—is rooted in that divine creating act.
I suspect that the recent confusion on this point—among Orthodox Christians—has to do with a failure to grasp what Paul means by the “analogy of faith.”
I will not pursue this point here; it would distract from the very important comments made on this site by Fr. Hans Jacobse, Chris Banescu, Kentigern Siewers, and others.
So, in effect, it is a pure contrivance that reflects, as Fr. Florovsky notes, “the loss of the Patristic & Scriptural mind” and a dissatisfaction and self-aggrandizing based in ignorance of Holy Tradition. I asked Fr. Hans for simple authority: “joining with the Fathers before us…” as is the traditional formula and custom since Chalcedon. Rather he offers me what he believes defines his contrivance, “natural marriage,” in a haughty voice that suggests I am a fool for not knowing this already, when I know it is a contrivance. Mr. Banescu accuses “shamelessly promoting a militant and misguided ‘progressive desacramentalization’” citing Fr. Schmemann, carefully pulling out every reference to “natural” and “marriage,” though Fr. Alexander never speaks of “natural marriage!” Just a dollar short… And in the bottom of the 9th, Fr. Patrcick strikes out Met. Anthony with a low-and-inside called third-strike (Umpire Michalopulos was blind), and forced the aptly named “Natural Marriage” to pop-up with the “it’s an analogy of faith” screwball to a right-hander to end the game. Holy Cow!
This is evidence par excellence of why Georges Florovsky and John Meyendorff dedicated themselves to bringing us back to the Church of the Fathers. To stopping our dependence on the conclusions and the movements of heterodox. To force us to utilize our own weapons and our own strenghts:
That we cannot rely on the strength of Scripture, the pillar of the Holy Fathers, and utilize the weapons of our Holy Tradition without contriving “natural marriage” and manufacturing judas-goats of “Dunn Errors” is shameful and shocking. Better then that we gather once a year to march in commemoration of our helplessness and loss than continue to expose ourselves as fools, or allow anyone to imagine contrivances are the “best of Orthodox thought.”
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Can we take up a collection to send the Chancellor’s friend a copy of Fr. Josiah Trenham’s new book on St. John Chrysostom on Marriage and Virginity, so that he may read before he posts again?
He will benefit in his studies by reading texts there by a church father, St. John, one of the Three Hierarchs in fact, and one among many church fathers who have written on this.
It sounds as if our correspondent’s reading these days has been restricted to his own blog, while he reminisces about his Seminary studies years ago in seeking to instruct the reverend fathers here on theology.
Perhaps he then can share his copy of the book with the Chancellor, who in turn can help spread the word about the church fathers’ views on marriage and natural law on the Chancellor’s Diary to a larger audience. We can all use some more reading in the fathers!
Please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
Why are you taking potshots at Fr. Jillions? Let’s keep on topic please.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
I’m afraid, Kyrill, that you seem to me like the policeman stopping someone for not making a full stop at a stop sign, while a mugging is being committed nearby in full view, given your concern here.
But I’ll assume you’re sincere and will respond in kind.
The Chancellor’s friend and chief public defender here repeatedly has taken American Orthodox Christians to task for not providing leadership on the marriage issue.
Meanwhile the Chancellor himself has not addressed the issue at all in his near-daily Chancellor’s Diary.
That’s a fair field for criticism, don’t you think? Observing that the Chancellor’s Diary in its regular public commentary has not addressed the marriage issue is not a personal insult.
If I remember, you and others publicly have gone after a hierarch, without him present in the conversation, while engaged in argument with what you have termed his friends here, haven’t you? And didn’t that involve your own public diagnose of alleged psychological problems of that hierarch?
But if you’re sincere, as I hope, what do you say to that well-known theologian, the Chancellor’s friend, about his insults directed toward Fr. Hans on this same thread, while supposedly sharing theological insights?
The Chancellor’s friend as a lay theologian demands of Fr. Hans as a priest: Answer the question!
I won’t do that to you, Kyrill.
Living in glass houses, we should probably all not throw stones, dear brother in Christ.
Please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
What you call “analogy of faith” is the Protestant playbook for what we antique Orthodox used to call “Holy Tradition” . But, analogy does bear closer relationship to ἀναλογίαν, however, we consider the Greek phrase ἀναλογίαν τῆς πίστεως has a proportional dimension for the term (to use a Protestant tool, cf http://biblesuite.com/greek/356.htm )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_Faith
See last paragraph of the definitions section
This “natural marriage” thing, ;likewise is from the Protestant nomenklatura and maybe from the Roman Catholic one as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_marriage
Try looking up either term in the Orthodox Wiki, btw.
As Father Alexander suggested in his article, in which he put quotation marks around the term “natural”, marriage for Orthodox is not merely sanctified, but the sacrament of matrimony gives marriage a new meaning; it transforms, in fact, not only marriage as such but all human love
So, we get back to the old fashioned way of stating things, that marriage is a sacrament and a mystery in which two become one flesh which has the potential of creating life through the martyrdom of one to the other who become the same flesh who journey through marriage in the Church. The hymnography supports the procreative life affirming aspect of marriage
http://www.orthodoxtwopartmusic.org/files/NWED-rejoiceoisaiah.pdf
http://www.orthodoxtwopartmusic.org/files/OPA-ps127-new.pdf
The two becoming one flesh is well expressed in this article by Father Gleb Kaleda :
http://www.stjohndc.org/Russian/homilies/HomiliesE/e_0109a.htm
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
To find the mind of the Church, look to Orthodox wiki? Maybe not.
Here, for example, is St. John Chrysostom: “the law of nature ordered one man to associate with one woman throughout…” Homilies on Roman 13, PG 60.512, NPNF 1.11 p. 431. This is quoted in fuller context in Fr. Josiah’s book Marriage and Virginity According to St. John Chrysostom (2013), p. 122.
Perhaps we can start a joint Monomakhos-We Are Their Legacy reading group on Fr. Josiah’s book on Google Hangout?
Meanwhile one arguably follows the secular American playbook to look for answers on Orthodox Wiki rather than actually in the fathers–unless one takes the apophatic approach of what may not be on Orthodox Wiki (or Wikipedia) may be true as well :-). (And that’s not to diss Orthodox Wiki, which I appreciate a lot, and on which I have written and edited a few articles, but just to note that it’s not a substitute for deeper study.)
Please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
I was not establishing the Wikipedia nor the Orthodox version of the same as an Orthodox source, much less a patristic one . I was utilizing them to investigate the neocon nomenklatura aspects of terminology used here.
What you call “analogy of faith” is the Protestant playbook for what we antique Orthodox used to call “Holy Tradition” .
Well, no, it’s not.
When Paul wants to say paradosis, he says paradosis. In the text to which alluded, he said analogia pisteos. Clearly it is something distinct from the paradosis..
Your jarring reference to “the Protestant playbook,” however, does not encourage me to pursue the matter.
kata tes analogian tes pisteos according to the measurement / proportion of the faith is precisely measuring the amount something corresponds to the Faith / Holy Tradition.
referencing Romans 12:3 for the concept of the term as measurement as opposed to analogy
What I said, I believe, is that some Orthodox Christians fail to understand what Paul meant by the analogia pisteos.
The response above pretty much proves my point.
This is not a matter of simple translation. Indeed, I completely accept the translations “measurement” and “proportion.”
Anyway, these disappointing responses discourage me from saying more about it on this venue.
If anyone is interested in pursuing the matter with me privately, I am easily reached.
I will be glad to share with inquirers my lecture on this subject at Princeton, this past February, at the Orthodox Patristics Conference.
Please provide the link to this talk so that this February talk at Princeton, or the paper upon which it is based, might be read by those interested. Or, do you have a website with this content?
Please provide the link to this talk so that this February talk at Princeton, or the paper upon which it is based, might be read by those interested. Or, do you have a website with this content?
Since Princeton owns the copyright to this lecture, I cannot put it on a website.
I will be glad to make a copy available to you, however, if you contact me at: phrii@touchstonemag.com
Everyone, I read above were at one accord. quite refreshing, while it is still a spiritual no-brainer. I like right thinking.
To date, no one has posted a spiritual definition of the Abomination of Desolation, that could be a correction, or better than the one I posted. I like right thinking.
George and Trudge bemoan the fact that the Assembly of Bishops has not responded within two weeks of the Supreme Court decision with a united, public statement reiterating Orthodoxy’s position on the matter. This is a very American, and in my opinion more Protestant than Orthodox, reaction.
There is something very human, very American, very Protestant in, well, protesting against our leaders …or even more than protesting. And also in demanding loud and immediate public braying on the topic of the day.
Someone ignorant of Orthodoxy reading the bemoaners’ writings might be pardoned for supposing that this Church had no position in the matter. The opposite is true: Orthodoxy has always required candidates for marriage to be male and female, and has never taught or declared otherwise.
We should not be surprised or critical that the OCA hierarchy has acted more swiftly than the AOB on this issue. The whole AOB structure is nascent, after all, and to date has little or nothing to do with how Orthodoxy in this country actually operates. How many different jurisdictions are members and would have to be consulted over a public pronouncement? And is there even a department or committee of public statements set up and running to take the lead in such an effort, let alone with authority to step forward unilaterally? I doubt it.
Kudos to those like the OCA synod or Fr. Andrew who speak clearly, gracefully and promptly. Criticizing the AOB for not doing so reminds me of a section in Eric Berne’s book Games People Play in which he describes the game “Ain’t it Awful,” the gist of which is getting one’s kicks from discovering (or imagining) the failings of others and then confabulating about them.
love,
Fr. Geroge
Not at all Fr. No “Protestant spirit” here as far as my criticisms. And I seriously doubt that the overturning of Christian tradition is “the braying order of the day.” Any more than I think the crushing of babies’ skulls is a regrettable unpleasantness. I just don’t understand why the GOA-led ACOB is as dilatory as the OCA synod. To say that they are unenthusiastic about this issue is putting it mildly.
Thought experiment: let us say that the Senate passed a resolution affirming the right of the Turkish sector of Cyprus to be recognized as an independent nation. How long do you think it would take 79th Street to come screeching out of the gates condemning the Senate? I’d say about 5.6 nanoseconds.
Father George,
What I am hoping to do in contributing to Monomakhos is to recall to our minds the words and deeds of the Apostles and Church Fathers as the standards of the Christian faith, who were not American nor Protestant, and not modernist nor evolutionary theologians.
Please see the Synodal letter from St. Ambrose and other hierarchs encouraging Pope Siricius, 389 AD
From this statement, following Christ’s teaching, it is clear the primary duty of a bishop is to defend his flock from heretics, that is, those within Christianity who seek to distort the faith. St. Ambrose himself initially fled in fear from this duty, when he was acclaimed bishop by the people, in fear knowing the severe judgment of the Lord if he failed in exercising his protective oversight.
It is also clear from this statement that only bishops and priests who are worthy should be heard and followed. The statement also declares that wolves and wolvish doctrines should be confronted, for even when the Church has always done something according to the Gospel in the past, when a particular doctrine of the Church and of the will of God is threatened, those Christians living in the present need to be reminded anew of the seriousness of keeping the standard of the Christian faith and need to be energized for keeping it into the future.
As many here who have had some contact with the disaster that has befallen the Episcopalians and other Protestant denominations, keeping tradition, which was expressed by its enemies as “We have always taught or done it so in the past” was ridiculed as bad reasoning, and the enemies characterized the past and tradition as bigoted prejudice. And this is the argument that is leading Christian and non-Christian alike into absurdities, even to the abandonment of the male-female principle of life. And there are priests and bishops in Orthodoxy who hold this view of evolutionary theology, a theology of the “future.” This should in no way be tolerated – a little leaven leavens the whole batch.
Dear Father George-I sometimes think that it must be difficult for the Albanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Serbian, Antiochian, Greek, Romanian and Russian bishops to say anything in public about American affairs if they feel that (a) they are part of the diaspora and thus have dual allegiances, and (b) they will be thought as rude guests.
Thanks for excusing Orthodox Christian mediocrity Father! Speaking out for issues and against evil is not something that is “American” or “Protestant” …….its called evangelism.
Honestly, Father it is flat out stupid for you and others to repeat the line “We do no need to speak out because the Church has always belived that”
People need to understand the faith and our leaders need to teach it.
George, as usual I think you are too quickly inclined to give yourself a clean bill of health when the question is whether or not your brand of Orthodox engagement with cultural issues is authentically Orthodox…or a unique brand particular to our day and age and the energized sector of commentators active here who have come to their Orthodoxy after decades of steeping in an evangelical, or other socially-conservative, American marinade.
Americans love taking a crack at their authority figures, and you guys who have so much background exposure to the liberal v. conservative debates in the political arena take cues you are not even conscious of when ginning up another episode of your “Ain’t It Awful” serial. A kerfluffle must be had if the troops are to be kept energized and the “opponents” kept on the defensive – two central hallmarks of the socio-political dramas whose cues you take. So you take out your favorite, us v. them-punching bags, the episcopacy, and take a couple of free swings at them for not suiting the very American agenda of instantaneous sound bites for the media circus.
Our bishops, unlike the Al Sharptons of the right, left or whatever, have other jobs, and many priorities bigger than making public statements about issues where Orthodox teaching is completely clear already. Room for improvement on their part. Absolutely, but you really need to consider the possibility that your broadsides have a tendency to produce effects opposite to what you claim to want.
love,
Fr. George
Father George writes:
Yes Father George, like Metropolitan Savas who has put thousands of hours playing on facebook instead of working with the Church and Society Committee…….
The majority of Orthodox Bishops live comfortable six figure suburban lifestyles at the expense of their flocks. If you do do not see this you are blind and more importantly numb to the Gospel.
I, for one, have for decades steeped in a “mainline”, social-“progressive” American marinade! Not that it ever soaked in much…..
That’s one of the troubles for the Church in America, though, Fr. George– there are so darn many Americans around! Whatever is to be done with them all?
Father George declares, “There is something very human, very American, very Protestant in, well, protesting against our leaders …”
Nathan? Elijah? Huldah? John the Baptist?
The time for lamenting America’s descent is long past. We should investigate instead remedies that are available through the Constitution.
1. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has been legislating from the bench and the latest outrage against our civilization is part of a trend that stems primarily from the election of presidents and Congress members who nominate and confirm activist judges. No matter how we approach this problem, the place to start is to vote for politicians who are unlikely to vote with the national or liberal Democrats. We have to make up our minds if issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage are more important than economic or foreign policy issues. I remember from Civics classes that Congress has the authority to determine the number of justices and to restrict appellate jurisdiction of SCOTUS. Of course, the President’s authority to nominate and the power of the Senate to advise and consent are also important. In any case, if we do not vote the Republicans in large numbers, we cannot change the composition of the SCOTUS.
2. The second remedy would be a peaceful secession. To be sure this is a radical step but it should not be taboo. There are arguments for such made by some of the Founding Fathers (Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris) and even Northern abolitionists, among others. I think that a reasonable scenario could be several states passing such a request and submitting it to the US Congress in accordance with Texas v. White: “There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.” Perhaps Article IV, Section 3 may apply as an approach. I am not a Constitutional scholar but I think this possibility should be on the table. If Slovakia and the Bohemia split peacefully, surely we should be able to at least consider a reasonable parting of ways between the red and blue counties/states.
Not wishing to get off-topic,Mr.Kraeff,but it was the CZECH REPUBLIC which split with Slovakia.I have no doubt you know this,but the Czech Republic consists of 2 regions;the Czech region(Bohemia) in the west,and Moravia in the east.
Thank you Father Andrei; I had a senior moment and am very happy to be corrected.
Check out this article by Father Paul Meyendorff on marriage:
http://www.holy-trinity.org/morality/meyendorff-marriage.html
Let me reply to the unknown Andrew and my respected colleague Fr. Patrick, in the same message.
But first let’s be clear what we are really talking about. George’s intro to this thread consisted of several interwoven and well-worn, if not threadbare, themes:
– if the leadership of the AOB were any good they’d be out front in public with a statement reaffirming the historic position of the Orthodox Church in the face of the Supreme Court ruling on the DOMA
-the lack of such an AOB statement reflects badly on the Greek hierarchs who are the most powerful in the AOB, but very myopic and self-referenced
-the OCA hierarchy asserted itself promptly and correctly, but George can’t let himself give them credit it for it for the moment without a backhanded slap at them as weaklings who are normally told what to do by their staff
– Fr. Harmon did well to publish his piece in the Plain Dealer.
Of these four messages I took issue with the first three, but especially # 1 which arises from the assumption that the AOB’s job is to quickly engage in Al Sharpton- like jousting tournaments in the media, and that they are to be automatically faulted for having been slower to act or having seen the Orthodox episcopal job-description as involving other duties than becoming media controversialists and sound bite slingers on the talk shows. The minute anyone enters the lists in that way he becomes a target of convenience for simplistic lance thrusts by the Knights of Political Correctness. This in turn places them in the position of entering into a duel of sound bites – a kind of fight Orthodoxy is not really set up to win (or place or show) or to be seen as cowards for withdrawing in silence in the face of the gibes of their opponents. Kudos to Fr. Andrew, by the way, for his effective public statement.
To me the unspoken assumption in George’s broadside is very problematic: that it is the job of Orthodox bishops and institutions to issue quick, public statements that draw them into the middle of media-driven donnybrooks. Those exchanges take a certain kind of person and set of talents that I do not often see in our archpastors, and that is by no means essential to the role of bishop. Sure we honor hierarchs (and prophets and saints) of the past who stood up to tyrants at crucial times and at severe cost, but it is simplistic in the extreme in my opinion to imply that such engagement is the public duty of our official institutions.
Engagement with the world, the flesh, and the devil is part of the Church’s duty. I personally approved of the Orthodox bishops who signed Manhattan, for example. I also approve of bishops who recognize this need, but do not see themselves as having the gifts to personally do so or the time to take away from overseeing their dioceses.
I disapprove of taking simplistic, gratuitous cuts at the institutions and bishops who do not rush immediately into the lists, however. What their motives are for so acting, or refraining to act, I am unwilling to speculate here.
But I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. George, by contrast, and in complete harmony with the thumbs-uppers here, is firmly committed to do the opposite and withhold any such benefit of the doubt, or when forced to give credit to do it so sparingly and grudgingly, as he did to the OCA bishops who spoke out, as to turn the ostensible credit-giving into a gibe. And it is this utter and automatic refusal to give any benefit of doubt that I find so American and Protest-ant in George, et. al.
Fr. Patrick and Andrew clearly believe that George is speaking as a prophet in chiding all bishops, or at least the Greek ones, for the failure he assumes was theirs. To my recollection, however, those heroes eschewed pseudonymous generalizations about all kings and authorities, and went straight in over the horns, face to face and in person, with particular kings and queens over specific issues and failings. You will have to pardon me for hearing less of Elijah or Nathan in what George wrote above, and more of Limbaugh, O’Reilly or Maher.
sincerely,
Fr. George
I am attempting in the observations I have posted to point out the lack of spiritual power among modern Orthodox, among laymen and in church office, when according to Orthodoxy this power should be present in spades.
Yet no one seems to want to take up this essential matter.
We seem to have returned to the identical situation when Christ preached the Gospel. The Pharisees were concerned about their position, about pomp, being shown the proper respect due their titles, yet they stood in the way of the common people in attaining spiritual freedom. In their eyes they were beyond criticism, especially from people they saw as beneath them and not as well “educated” as them. They saw themselves as spiritual, yet when the author of true spirituality appeared before them they lashed out and claimed that he had a demon, in the end crucifying him.
In teaching the Gospel, the Son of Man had compassion on the common people because they were leaderless, like sheep without shepherds, and so were confused and scattered, like we see today, every man for himself.
These are among the spiritual truths that are not heard in modern sermons that are the core of the Gospel, especially the principle of hypocrisy, playing a part in an act.
Christ warned the apostles, beware the leaven of hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Why leaven? Because it grows and spreads and is hidden from view, most of all to those whom it infects. Conformity to a group and its self-protective instincts is a powerful force. When pseudo-spirituality spreads in a group it becomes like a mental illness and is indeed demonic.
Many of the core elements of the Gospel and its spiritual principles are obscured for the modern Christian because Christ is no longer portrayed as he is and was in the Scriptures in the time of his appearance: the muscularity and contentiousness of the Son of Man, his zeal for the proper representation of God by the religious leaders and for Truth, the nature of his conflict with the Pharisees, and the spiritual principles that come out of this conflict, the complete knowledge of the Son of Man and his use of both the spiritual principles of the Scriptures and of the natural phenomenon that correspond to the spiritual principles in teaching the Gospel.
Another core element of the Gospel that has been lost to us is asceticism. The Temptation of Christ was an ascetic experience, where the temptations of the body were mastered and of the mind. In the 40 days of temptation Christ matches wits with the fallen Satan over the proper interpretation of the Scriptures, in what God has commanded of man. The Son of Man succeeds where Adam failed.
The tragedy of modern Orthodoxy, is that there is no engine of asceticism preparing Christian leaders for office, deacon, priest or bishop. Instead it is the same academic model of the Protestants – the modern university system.
How many of our deacons, priests and bishops have spent significant time or regularly visit a monastery, or live as an anchorite, or go on pilgrimage?
Instead, it is too often like the Cops episode where a drug dealer proclaims that he is a Church-goer and wants to swear on the Bible found in his car that the drugs are not his. The police notice that the Bible is marked with a card from a stripper club. They recognize that the stripper card invalidates his claims of being a spiritual person, yet the dealer is unashamed and goes on protesting his innocence and spirituality.
Our situation brings to mind the Apostle Paul’s warning to bishop Timothy (and to us):
Ontology refers to the immutable characteristics or categories that are intrinsic to being. For example, to say that a human being is either male or female is an ontological truth. There is no other possibility. Granted, some people get confused, transgenderism and so forth, but even here the only two possible poles are male or female.
In terms of our discussion here, if same-sex attraction has an ontological grounding, that is, if same-sex desire is immutable and intrinsic to our being, then the moral prohibitions against same-sex behavior are not in accord with a person’s created nature and should be modified.
In ecclesiastical circles, once the reasoning takes hold it is only a matter of time before homosexual expression is celebrated. The Episcopalians teach us that.
This is a really fascinating conversation, but I admit, way over my head intellectually.
I have a favor to ask, assuming that one or more of the correspondents on this forum are willing to undertake it for the “philosophically impaired” like myself so that we can better comprehend the conversation and at least follow along if not participate.
Let’s pretend that you are trying to explain this issue to your 5-year-old grand child in terms that they can comprehend. How would you define terms like “ontological truth” to your 5 yo grand daughter?
I sort of understand what you write above, but not fully. I can’t quite internalize and express it in a way that makes it easy for others to comprehend. I need that type of help to spread the message. Thanks in advance to all.
Oooh!!, I’m not sure you can define the term to your 5 year old granddaughter, but she probably already understands it in her own way.
For example, what if your five year old came home after being read, say, “Heather Has Two Mommies” in school. She asks, “How can Heather have two mommies, Grandpa? People can have only one mommy, right?”
You would have to answer, “Right Sweetheart. Heather can only have one mommy.”
Your answer deals with ontology — the immutable and unchangeable structure of reality. Every person alive emerges from one mother, not two.
Now here is where it gets a bit tricky (your granddaughter won’t understand this but you will):
People will respond with, “But what about someone else who loves Heather just like her own mother would?”
The answer to that is sure, it happens all the time. We see it with adoptive mothers, extended family members, and so forth. Young Heather can experience maternal love from women other than her biological mother. Still, the reality is that Heather has only one biological mother.
I chose the “Heather Has Two Mommies” example because we know that the book was written to to soften the moral prohibitions against lesbian relationships. It does so by positing experience against ontology.
The story teaches your granddaughter that the distinction between male and female is superfluous. In other words, if you would have answered, “No Sweetheart, people can have two mommies just like some people have a mommy and a daddy,” you would have taught her that ontology doesn’t matter.
Ontology is immutable but it is not always destiny For example, say young Heather was born to a drug addicted or abusive mother. In that case the authentic maternal love of another woman is definitely better for Heather than staying with her biological mother. No one would argue with that.
It is not true however that because Heather’s experience was bad that reality is whatever we say it is. Heather still has only one mother. Experience does not trump ontology.
It is a reasoning that also leads to a female “priesthood”. It is the lack of proper ontology that connects the two.
It is a reasoning that also leads to a female “priesthood”. It is the lack of proper ontology that connects the two
Something Anthony Bloom never grasped.
You meant to say Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh, of blessed memory, the former Exarch of All-Europe of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was both confessor & mentor to Blessed Bishop Basil (Rodzianko), a saint of the Church, and their friends included Blessed John Maximovitch of San Francisco, Justin Popovich, and Nikolai of Zica. Metropolitan Anthony was a brave man, and having taken his doctorate in medicine from the University of Paris, was a combat surgeon with the French army during the Second World War. And after having been secretly tonsured a monk, was given the discipline of remaining as a combat surgeon until the end of the war. He was a teacher of and mentor to both Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff. He was a true monastic and teacher of monastics, a gifted writer whose instructional books on the art of prayer are Orthodox classics, reprinted and translated into numerous languages. No one has questioned the Orthodoxy of Met. Anthony, and if you have a legitimate point to make, I suggests you do so. But you will not because you do not. “The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance!” (Ps. 111:6) Shame on you for your lack of respect.
So?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that Metropolitan Anthony Bloom was a theologian and hierarch of the first magnitude. That doesn’t mean that he was 100% right about everything. We don’t have episcopal inflallibility. That’s also why we pray in the Litanies: “for our bishop, [name] that he rightly divide the word of truth.” Why pray for our bishops if they can do no wrong?
Fr. Bless,
I’m loathe to quibble with you, because I think I stand essentially on the same side of this question as you do, but You speak of mankind existing only as either male or female as a foundational point of human ontology and that no other gender possibilities exist (if I understand you correctly).
What about those whose sexual genetics are basically frapped, be they hermaphroditic or have some double Xs attached to their Ys or vise versa, or some other biologically rooted condition that effects the establishment, expression, of their gender, or orientation with respect to gender. For these people their biological gender, let alone how that works out day to day in their lives is not normative, but it is rooted in their specific biological being. Their maleness or femaleness is confused or obscured by a broken biology, not psychological confusion. Granted, there are those who are essentially just confused as a point of psychological identification, but I’m not talking about them.
My point…I think arguments rooted in ontology need some Orthodox anthropological caveats to deal with the anomalies that arise from our fallen condition. The way humans should be, and the way they are is not always the same.
Seraphim98, these are good points. Thank you.
I have only one quibble and that deals with the devolution of language and only tangentially touches your point. We should restore the word “sex” to denote biological differentiation and use “gender” to describe the particular constructs that a culture employs to express the masculine or feminine sex.
I had to buy a plane ticket today and the form asked for my “gender.” What it really wanted to know was my sex (male or female). By collapsing sex into gender and then banishing the word, the larger society tends to think that biological sexual differentiation is a social construct too.
Having said that, yes, broken biology can confuse sexuality but, as you indicated, this is anthropological caveat.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought. It’s evidently OK for you to play fast and loose self-righteously with others’ words and reputations. You do this regularly. You suspect “Stankovich’s reasoning” — but on what basis? Presumably one divined from his text. What else? But, when challenged to document your charges, it turns out, rather conveniently, that “there’s no single offending text.” You make very serious charges that you then cannot defend with rational argument or relevant citations. Pure clericalism to imagine that you shouldn’t have to account to anyone for that. Who made you Grand Inquisitor?
He has answered the question before, repeatedly. You’re simply harrasing him. Your accusations are unfounded and entirely out of line. I don’t claim to know your motives but I will say they are highly suspect to me.
We could even agree about this, in the abstract, although I think many of you culture warriors overstate the issue, as if many aside from your adversaries on the other side think like this. But in the concrete, when dealing pastorally with most people where they are — and with their emotional, love lives, rather than their sex lives — rhetoric like yours wouldn’t work too well often. And I wonder how attentive you are to all the other, far more common, manifestations of human concupiscence, covetousness — and malice. Not so much, relative to this one, I’m guessing. Judging from what you weigh in on here, anyway, and what you appear to bury in silence.
Ambivalent with respect to your contentions. Maybe contradictory would have been clearer, if somewhat less irenic on my part. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7 hardly paint a very high “matrimoniology,” if I could be forgiven for coining a clumsy neologism. Read the chapter yourself if you want to discuss this seriously, and then get back to me. Paul said it’s good for a man not to touch a woman. He frankly wishes everyone was like he himself was: a celibate, unmarried. I don’t know how you’d square this with your contentions about the male-female synergy thingy, which, while obviously real enough and meaningful in the context of the biological, fleshly, created aspects of human existence in this age, appear contradicted by St. Paul with respect to advancement in the spiritual life, in synergy with the Uncreated, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, in the New Age to come, the one breaking into time and space with His Incarnation. Your high-flown and lofty language seems to imply that marriage is some kind of pre-requisite for the highest spiritual attainment. Paul flatly contradicts that, suggesting quite the opposite. Or so it seems to me. If that’s what you meant.
**In Ephesians 5, Paul wrote
This is an icon of the relationship between Christ and the Church, not “of the Church” alone.
Mr. Myers. We are talking about marriage, not the call to celibacy and monasticism. But even monasticism has elements of marriage. There is a reason Athos is dedicated to Mary and no other woman may be on the island. That tradition is under attack too.
Union with Christ in a celibate state is one thing; union with Christ in a conjugal state is another. They do not contradict each other. The monastics root us in the kingdom while the marrieds fulfill an earthly role equally important. They feed each other. Does the fact that St. Paul is passionate about his calling surprise you? It doesn’t me. Given his commitment to celibacy, he does a remarkable job describing marriage. A blessing of the Holy Spirit.
What surprises me is your seeming bitterness that I am passionate about mine and what comes across to me as a cynical apathy about marriage in general.
My marriage in the Church is an integral part of the salvation of myself and my family. It is miraculous and beautiful. It deserves a description that at least hints at the beauty of God’s grace. I’m sorry that makes you grumpy. That is not my fault.
Michael, I’m not bitter about your lofty flights of rhetoric, or your imaginary theological musings. I simply pointed out the obvious fact that 1 Corinthians 7 just isn’t a soaring paean to marriage in this age. Paul said it’s better than burning. Even so, I know it’s one of the institutions that holds a society together, arguably the key to that. That’s obvious to me, too, just as Paul’s realism about it is. I think I have a balanced take on these things. And I’m against redefining marriage, as I noted. How many times have you been married, incidentally?
Matthew 19
When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
I didn’t say that union with Christ in the celibate and conjugal states “contradict each another.” I said that it seems to me Paul’s words contradict some of your own musings. That’s not the same thing. I mean, to point out a potential problem in the content of your own flights of rhetoric is not necessarily the same thing as to contradict Orthodox theology, right? I hope you know that what you may regard as your own personal theologoumena may in fact be logismoi. But then it seems that you are a theologian. So correct me if I’m wrong.
Paul taught that one of these sinless states was better than the other. His words are perfectly clear:
1 Corinthians 7 (NKJV)
Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me:
It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. 3 Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 But I say this as a concession, not as a commandment. 7 For I wish that all men were even as I myself. But each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that.
8 But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they remain even as I am; 9 but if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
Keep Your Marriage Vows
10 Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: A wife is not to depart from her husband. 11 But even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And a husband is not to divorce his wife.
12 But to the rest I, not the Lord, say: If any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her. 13 And a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. 15 But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. But God has called us to peace. 16 For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?
Live as You Are Called
17 But as God has distributed to each one, as the Lord has called each one, so let him walk. And so I ordain in all the churches. 18 Was anyone called while circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised. 19 Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters. 20 Let each one remain in the same calling in which he was called. 21 Were you called while a slave? Do not be concerned about it; but if you can be made free, rather use it. 22 For he who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise he who is called while free is Christ’s slave. 23 You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. 24 Brethren, let each one remain with God in that state in which he was called.
To the Unmarried and Widows
25 Now concerning virgins: I have no commandment from the Lord; yet I give judgment as one whom the Lord in His mercy has made trustworthy. 26 I suppose therefore that this is good because of the present distress—that it is good for a man to remain as he is: 27 Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife. 28 But even if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. Nevertheless such will have trouble in the flesh, but I would spare you.
29 But this I say, brethren, the time is short, so that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none, 30 those who weep as though they did not weep, those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, those who buy as though they did not possess, 31 and those who use this world as not misusing it. For the form of this world is passing away.
32 But I want you to be without care. He who is unmarried cares for the things of the Lord—how he may please the Lord. 33 But he who is married cares about the things of the world—how he may please his wife. 34 There is[a] a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. But she who is married cares about the things of the world—how she may please her husband. 35 And this I say for your own profit, not that I may put a leash on you, but for what is proper, and that you may serve the Lord without distraction.
36 But if any man thinks he is behaving improperly toward his virgin, if she is past the flower of youth, and thus it must be, let him do what he wishes. He does not sin; let them marry. 37 Nevertheless he who stands steadfast in his heart, having no necessity, but has power over his own will, and has so determined in his heart that he will keep his virgin,[b] does well. 38 So then he who gives her[c] in marriage does well, but he who does not give her in marriage does better.
39 A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. 40 But she is happier if she remains as she is, according to my judgment—and I think I also have the Spirit of God.
Another point, Michael. When Paul writes in Galatians,
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
it seems that he may be undermining the sort of sex phyletism implicit in your “male-female synergy” thingy. It just sounds kinda heathen to me, and not very Christian. In this chapter, Paul was warning against “Judaizing” the Gospel — the notion some of the Galatians had allowed false teachers to seduce them into: that they could be perfected in spiritual development only by submission to all of the Jewish law, rather than by a more and more profound faith in and obedience to the Gospel of Christ crucified and raised from the dead. It sound like you are trying to “biologize” the Gospel, reductively, with pseudo-mystical speculations like those in your post above. It seems backward-looking to me. The kainos zoe in Christ is not the same as the bios in this age, although for us the bios is obviously the foundation for the zoe. Or that’s how i understand it anyway.
kaine zoe
Mr Myers since your question regarding the number of times I have been married strikes me as a poison pill question similar to asking when I stopped beating my wife, your answer is John 21:22
As to the rest, while I am full of logosmoi I feel confident in my observations because they have been confirmed by priests from 3 different jurisdictions that have very different perspectives on things.
The joy I am trying to share is not theoretical and comes from a marriage blessed by God and hard won by His Grace despite my many sins.
It is not the whole truth but I see no fundamental contradiction with what St. Paul. Because in the larger scheme he is correct. The life dedicated to God and our fellows is in a celibate state is a higher calling as the priesthood is higher than thelay life. All three are sacraments however.
Michael, I hope I’d be the last person on Earth to minimize the joy that comes from generously loving another human being, in genuine humility and self-emptying service. Or the joy that priests and monks receive from loving many, many people, or at least trying hard to do it. If you’ve received this gift in your marriage then that’s a real blessing. I was mostly trying to say that that kind of love can be found elsewhere, too, and also that eros is something very different from agape. I think there are many kinds of good creativity and good synergy that aren’t powered by male-female eroticism. Uncreated energies of God can and do work in and through the created energies, of course. But your words seem to wish to confine God’s creative and healing power to the limits of your own understanding and experience. God’s love that purifies our hearts and illuminates our minds is greater than we can imagine.
I’m not sure what you were trying to say with your allusion to John 21:22. Maybe you could elaborate.
Oh and the proper word is inter-relationship which pretty well describes the entire life of the Church in all of its multifaceted glory.
Mike,
I’ll let Fr Hans defend himself on the specific charges. I do however take umbrage with your broadside against “culture warriors” and how we’re the ones driving this debate. Far from it. I’d say that 99% of us struggle with our own passions (alcohol, porn, adultery, gluttony, same-sex attraction, envy, you name it) and about 90% of us are far more merciful about others whose sins we don’t share. It’s just that the homosexual jihadists have worked overtime to destroy the family, sexual identity, etc. and tried to deform Christianity to their desires.
One thing I’ve learned from my Lutheran, ECUSA and other mainstream Protestant friends is that those who preach “tolerance” and “inclusiveness” the loudest are nothing but brownshirts. Said friends have been “included” and “tolerated” out of their denominations going on 2 decades now.
George, I’ll decline to bite, aside from noting that it’s pretty obvious you still need those remedial reading classes I’ve advised you to look into. And investigate the meaning of “eisegesis,” too. You have a notable problem with that. Roger and out.
Well, I’ll bite. I’m just a simple guy, what you see is what you get. I especially like Orwell’s dicta that you shouldn’t use six words when one can do and try not to be unnecessarily polysyllabic. What I can’t figure out is why intellectuals such as yourself perform the mental gymnastics that you all do in order to get the Church to change its teachings.
Other than that, you’re more than welcome to continue reading, writing, and commenting on this blog.
What teaching do you think I want the Church to change?
If I had to guess, I’d say the Church’s understanding of sodomy. For purposes of eventual sanctification by marital rites. If I’m wrong, I apologize.
What teaching do you think I want to change?
“. . . οὔτε κλέπται οὔτε πλεονέκται, οὐ μέθυσοι, οὐ λοίδοροι, οὐχ ἅρπαγες βασιλείαν θεοῦ κληρονομήσουσιν.”
That’s one it looks like you want to change, George. Leading by example?
What teaching do you think I want to change?
“. . . οὔτε κλέπται οὔτε πλεονέκται, οὐ μέθυσοι, οὐ λοίδοροι, οὐχ ἅρπαγες βασιλείαν θεοῦ κληρονομήσουσιν.”
That’s one it looks like you’re trying to change. Leading by example?
As far as Grant’s stupidity being replicated if Alaska had happened the other way ’round: the history of Orthodox evangelism reveals a respect for the peoples and culture of those being evangelized. That is why the native Alaskans are Orthodox to this day. The Orthodox monks stood up for them against the Russian fur company and found ways for the faith to be taken into the life they were already living and thereby enhancing it. St. Innocent created alphabets for two separate and unrelated native languages and translated basic service books for them.
Is there an example you know where Protestant missionaries during that time did the same?
Do you know of any example of Imperial Russia doing anything similar as the US did?
I don’t.
Suggestions that I was somehow claiming that the sexual disorderliness observed in the wild kingdom is prescriptive or normative (or even exculpatory) for us humans are beneath comment. Maybe you don’t mean to suggest that but Helga certainly did.
I share your belief that part of the human vocation is benevolent stewardship of Creation, which now unfortunately includes repairing the horrific damage we do. And we’re failing miserably.
Theosis is a beautiful idea, and I hope it’s the truth, too. I say hope because I see less evidence of it in Orthodox Christians than I’d wish for.
Tell you what, you work on your theosis and I’ll work on mine. In the meantime, I’ll continue to try to uphold Christian tradition as my ancestors, guided by Church Fathers, to the best of my abilities. For those who want to normalize homosexual relations within our Church, I ask them to consider some mainline Protestant denomination. ECUSA should be just the right fit. Plus, they’ve got more and better real estate and a greater percentage of them belong to country clubs. What could go wrong?
Why is it incorrect? Isn’t that what Darwinism teaches? Collet’s point is to the point. Let me add some other observations from the animal world:
1. male dolphins gang-rape single females,
2. bonobo chimps fondle each other when meeting,
3. dogs sniff their hindquarters when doing so,
4. male ruminants fight to near-death for breeding rights,
5. rogue lions kill the cubs of a rival and then force the mothers to copulate with them.
6. most males of most mammalian species are polygamous (the wolf ironically being a curious exception)
7. bees and soldier ants force others into slavery
8. chimpanzees cannibalize rivals from a separate troop,
9. humpback whales engage in group sex (a female will buttress the receptive female so that enough friction is generated for the male to copulate with her).
Don’t try any of these at home.
All of these behaviors confer some evolutionary advantage, otherwise they wouldn’t take place. What makes us think that humans –who are primates after all according to materialist evolution–should behave any differently?
All appeals to sentiment and morality are specious and beside the point.
Just another fact that the genomes of humans and bonobos/chimps are evidently ~96% identical (homologous DNA sequence). The other primates are also very closely related to us in this way, if less so. A lot more closely anyway than other extant species we know about. These facts have strong implications about distant ancestry, regardless of whether you or I may like it, or not. And whatever you may feel or imagine about the model of “materialist evolution” in your head, I take it you don’t deny the legitimacy of basic taxonomy and its terms? So what’s with the gratuitous ignoramus innuendo above?
I’m not competent to defend or critique the vast domain of modern integrated biology. I know you aren’t either. But I suspect that even you must be aware that many schools of thought compete to answer the questions raised by the incontrovertible facts supporting the reality of natural selection, in the big picture sense. Little idea or interest in what’s in your head under the label of “Darwinism.” I’ve found that in general it’s a treacherous venture to embark on an inquiry into the gory details of the rationale behind your various views on things. Whenever I’ve tried, it’s not long before I discovered myself trackless in the woods of your cognitive dissonance and other issues. We all suffer from at least a little bit of this stuff but you’re strangely exhibitionistic and out there. The vanity pundit schtick can be interesting, and occasionally even revelatory with respect to how certain subsets among “conservatives” and “traditionalists” “think,” but overall your act makes efforts at rational discourse frustrating and fruitless.
You seem more at home in the internet genre of rather wacko and ill-informed monologuery/demagoguery, under the guise of the “essay” form — “fighting alone,” as you put it. I’d prefer to leave you to that until you learn to read and listen better and more thoughtfully, and rant less ridiculously.
Nothing incontrovertible about natural selection at all when it comes to speciation, even in the limited area of adaptation it is not the only mechanism. You follow the usual illogical ploy of conflating the two using the stronger case to “prove” the weaker.
There are many questions that linear progressive evolution on a chassis of philosophical naturalism fails to answer or answers incorrectly.
As always the meaning of facts is dependent on the matrix of assumptions that selects the facts, prioritizes them and interprets them. Philosophical naturalism and the truth revealed to the Church are incompatible when it come to questions of the nature of humanity which, since the Incarnation are also Christological questions.
About those it is best to tread carefully. DNA has no bearing on being.
It could easily be that a particular DNA sequence is the most efficient for life in our environmentbut even that is speculative.
I accept and I believe the teaching of the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church about sexual intercourse of any kind whatever, outside of marriage. I don’t want that to change substantively and I’ve never said or implied otherwise. I would like to see less brutal stupidity and hypocrisy about it, though. Crude verbal thugs like you are a case in point of what I’d like to see fewer of, and hear less from. Fat chance of that though. Nauseating as the prospect is.
I think sex is grossly overrated. I think that to limit or define your own or anyone else’s personhood by any contingent carnal desire or passion, of any type, is dehumanizing and contrary to the Gospel. I’m opposed to the redefinition of marriage for many reasons. I’m for domestic partnerships and civil unions, although I don’t think the Church should be required by law to bless or even recognize them. I think that would be blatantly unconstitutional.
So yeah, you’re wrong.
Since I said absolutely nothing about the causes of speciation as such, I couldn’t have followed any “ploy of conflating” them or it with natural selection. So no ploy gotcha there, sorry — illogical or otherwise. You’re reading into what I wrote things I didn’t say. That is to tread on George and Hans’s turf — division of labor in obfuscation and Pecksniffery. Don’t think you could compete with those two in this dark art.
For all I know, the various primates today could be “degenerate” descendants of earlier hominids, although I doubt it. I wouldn’t care to speculate on this very silly blog about the mechanisms underlying speciation in natural history. I don’t know enough, and I seriously doubt you or anyone else here does, either.
But I would like to say that it’s always amusing how shirty some get when reminded of who our closest relatives in the animal kingdom are. Still, like it or not DNA is what it is. As to “being,” it interests me how in vogue it seems here to strike poses while all decked out in misused terminology from tired old neo-Platonism and German idealism. Check out Vladimir Lossky. Maybe he could update your terminology.
And try to avoid blasphemy in the gnostic mode. God used DNA to create our bodies, and in Jesus DNA has been conjoined with the Godhead. So let’s hear no more pseudo-intellectual static about DNA having “no bearing on ‘being.'” It does now.
These comments provoke a little more inquiry. I take it that “About those” refers to “questions of the nature of humanity.” A thorough understanding of the “nature of humanity” surely involves obtaining a solid scientific grasp on facts about our genealogy, and our ancestors’ “nature” is obviously relevant to ours — again, in the scientific sense.
You write that “DNA has no bearing on ‘being.'” But isn’t that an eerily gnostic kind of assertion? No bearing on whose ‘being?’ On human being? That would be flatly false. On the Incarnate Christ’s nature? Also flatly false. He was raised from the dead in the flesh, and according to the teaching of the Church He “ascended” in some sense in the flesh.
It almost sounds as though you’re suggesting a novel sort of Docetism, this time around, strangely enough, applied to our human nature rather than to Christ. Our physical, biological nature is hardly some sort of Platonic apparition, and our DNA, and that of our ancestors to a lesser extent, certainly does have “bearing on our ‘being’.”
I DO NOT think, however, that our nature is only genetically determined, in the strong thesis sense, or that “environment” is the only other factor, either. I believe God’s Uncreated Energies are ever at work in creation. But at this stage of human knowledge, I think it should be frankly admitted that this is a belief and not science as that’s conventionally understood. And that’s OK with me. It’s completely counter-productive, and, I think, arrogant to pretend otherwise. This just turns educated and informed people off immediately. Assuming that indulging resentments isn’t the point, anyway, it’s counter-productive.
The teachings of Christ aren’t falsified by molecular biology. I agree 100% with what I think you may mean behind the vagueness, though: our true nature, our telos, has been revealed in Jesus Christ. That’s the truth.
The sense of your second sentence completely eludes me. Please elaborate.
Sorry Mike, but you’re out of your depth here (and making some unwarranted observations). You will note that I said “Darwinism,” not “evolution” or even “speciation.” Darwinism was a decent hypothesis in the 19th century while it lasted but molecular biologists know way more about cellular mechanism than Darwin could’ve ever dreamed. And anyway, I have no problem with evolution per se but the Neo-Darwinists will not allow us (believers) entry into their hallowed halls, except maybe as useful idiots.
I know about the overwhelming congruence between chimpanzees and man. Whether I “like it” or not is immaterial –science is science. It’s not based on wishes, consensus or who cuts a more dashing figure.
You’d be surprised how much I know about “vast domain of modern integrated biology.” I’ve been working on a manuscript for almost 20 years now, poring over every hypothesis and critique thereof known to man. I’ve taken a hiatus the past three years because of this blog (which has been enjoyable) but I’ll give you a thumbnail: modern abiogenetic thought is far from coherent and the structural deficits of many of its premises make the differences within Christianity seem miniscule.
As for my “cognitive dissonance,” may I ask for some specific examples. Just because I’m a Conservative, a Traditionalist, and very much in the Right-wing, may offend you and that’s OK, but I really want something substantive by way of critique, not invective or aspersions.
You have the floor.
I also know that chimps have 24 pairs of chromosomes while humans have only 23. Something happened.
From 11 months ago:
Caughtcha red-handed, George:
“Sorry Mike, but you’re out of your depth here (and making some unwarranted observations). You will note that I said “Darwinism,” not “evolution” or even “speciation.” Darwinism was a decent hypothesis in the 19th century while it lasted but molecular biologists know way more about cellular mechanism than Darwin could’ve ever dreamed.”
Yeah, tell me about it. Oh wait … told you myself, last year. You’re too funny.
From 11 months ago:
Today:
“Sorry Mike, but you’re out of your depth here (and making some unwarranted observations). You will note that I said “Darwinism,” not “evolution” or even “speciation.” Darwinism was a decent hypothesis in the 19th century while it lasted but molecular biologists know way more about cellular mechanism than Darwin could’ve ever dreamed.”
You don’t say, George? Your instruction sounds very familiar, for some reason.
You’re a funny guy.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
George, btw, you’re probably aware of this book, but it’s an interesting sidelight to your good discussion: “Mind and Cosmos: While the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False,” by Thomas Nagel, an atheist philosopher at New York University (regarded at least before controversy over this new book as one of America’s best secular philosophers if not the best).
He argues for intelligent design in this book (although from his atheist standpoint, he also has some nice things to say about intelligent-design advocates who are Christian, which is anathema in the secular world). Here’s a recent summary of the controversy for those unfamiliar: http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Thomas-Nagel-Went-Wrong/139129/
Please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
Kentigern, have you seen this?
The Fallacy of Human Freedom
I am still digesting it so no endorsement or criticism implied. What I find compelling so far (and which I hold as true) is the thesis (sometimes implicit) that a large part of the ‘culture war’ is due to the collapse of faith in progress which is really the collapse of faith in philosophical materialism/naturalism. The ‘culture war’ in other words is really a battle of competing narratives in a sense.
Another key idea (and one I hold as true):
Technically this is not accurate. The notion of progress exists in Genesis, although it would not be fully comprehended and unleashed apart from the Gospel. Only Genesis (the monotheistic narrative) makes progress possible because it posits that time is created; time has a beginning and end. Linear time makes the idea of progress a conceptual possibility.
Interesting too is that when you look at the Darwinian creation story (the materialist narrative — philosophical materialism/naturalism), time is elevated as a metaphysical absolute. Creation has a start in time (the “Big Bang” — a concept that the Darwinian story borrows from Genesis). Yet time itself extends longer and longer into infinity as increasing scientific knowledge reveals that the complexity of natural processes would have taken millions more years to develop than originally thought if randomness (no ordering principle) indeed preexisted the beginning of all things.
In any case, it’s a very compelling article and the paragraph quoted above is essentially correct.
Also, another interesting article on Nagel:
The Heretic: Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him?. (The Weekly Standard publishes some worthy articles on occasion despite it’s liberal/neocon foreign policy biases.)
Father, your blessing!
I hadn’t seen this and will be interested in reading it more carefully. I’ve been interested in the different senses of time and non-time found in the fathers, namely human time (distilled in modern cell-phone time), the natural time of seasons and stars and non-human beings on earth, the created eternity of angels and demons, and the uncreated everlasting of non-time or beyond-time, if I’m recalling them rightly. A basis for the idea of progress in Christianity interweaves them all more deeply of course than any linear Enlightenment sense of progress, and I’d guess probably even more complexly among the Greek fathers than in Blessed Augustine’s writings. There is both a prototypical sense of man’s place in Paradise before the Fall, and a humbling regression afterword, amid the working out of salvation in history, culminating in the Incarnation, and in soteriological and eschatological transfiguration. I’m reminded of Erazim Kohák’s description of personhood as the intersection of time and eternity, redeemed (I would add) by the uncreated everlasting symbolized for him in the natural world as a larger context-beyond-self. This is in his book “The Embers and the Stars,” which is a little ark of Christian Czech phenomenological reflection. It’s intriguing to think about “culture wars” in America as a crisis in our secular civilization’s ever-more dessicated sense of temporality today, if I’m following this link right in a quick reading.
Please pray for me a sinner,
Kentigern
Father Hans,
An anti-evolutionary view of the dog below.
But first I greatly enjoyed the article on Nagel and the uproar he has caused as a philosopher “heretic” exposing the weaknesses of naturalism as a complete explanation of how the world we see came to exist.
The dog helps us here. In terms of arguments against the naturalistic/evolutionary/modern science doctrine of creation out of mechanistic randomness and its doctrine of the illusion of free will, I think the dog is man’s best argument against it.
Despite millenia and millions of human genetic interventions in the dog magnitudes beyond randomness, it is still a dog, with doggish ways which it holds on to doggedly. Despite all this the dog does not talk, even with the great advantage a talking dog would have for humans and dogs and all the human talk dogs have heard over the years. And cats could have gotten in on the act too!
And with all of the advantages our human brains and hands have given us, why are we the only animal with this adaptation? Throughout nature you see shared adaptations of the common forms: wings, claws, fur, but no brain and means of complex communication like humans.
It sounds like Nagel exposes the silliness of the naturalism evolutionary position and so there is much gnashing of teeth over him, like another now non-person in the academic world, the former arch-athiest Anthony Flew, who came to the same conclusion in his last years.
I got a lot out of Dembski’s Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing.
Well said, Trudge.
I look at evolution/materialism in the framework of cultural history. Of the three great materialists, Freud and Marx have already fallen. Darwin is next. It’s inevitable. Philosophical materialism/naturalism can’t bear the weight of man’s need to understand himself and the larger world.
If you liked the Nagel article you might also like this:
George Gilder: Evolution and Me
Excerpt:
One question I like to ask dogmatic Darwinists: If a randomness preexisted the emergence of matter, then where do the laws that govern the processes of matter come from? The only possible answer is from the matter that they govern. That makes no sense. (Theistic evolution is a non-starter; it denies the universe is random.)
This materialist superstition seeps into human anthropology as well. Marx believed ideas arise from brain matter and thus have no independent existence. How can there be intelligence in the universe if the universe started out as a formless void? That’s what happens when you borrow the teleology of Genesis but extract God from it.
These superstitions can’t stand and men like Nagel know it.
Fr. Hans, the three great materialists you mention: Freud, Marx and Darwin it is important to note that they appeared to de-enlighten the world with a common message of, not just materialism, but with the express purpose of replacing the Christian paradigm: they attacked the political/economic(Marx), emotional/psychological(Freud), and physical/social/scientific (Darwin, et.al).
I have always been surprised that you have not included Nietzsche. His work completed the attack by attempting to reach for the very soul of man to rip it away from God and to remove the Incarnation and our creaturehood from our understanding.
None of them could have done it alone, but the nihilism of Nietzsche (although he was always somewhat ambivalent about it), was the glue that holds them altogether and provided them with the energy and cohesion necessary to achieve their stunningly success, in the short term, at creating a miasmic world that has largely driven Christ out of the common mind and heart.
Of course, they could not have done it without the helpful groundwork laid for them by the Christian establishment in the west. We, also, tend to agree far to readily with many of the fundamentals of the attack if not all of the specifics. Particularly here in the U.S.
If the OCA is to actually fulfill the vision of her human founders, she must do a lot of work to actively critique these four pillars of un-faith and the weakness of the Christian witness that allowed them to flower. The same goes for the rest of us, but the other jurisdictions are more grounded in a pre-modern experience that connects us to Apostolic times and teaching in a way the OCA is not.
Michael, yes, but…
Marx, Freud, Darwin were the chief apostles of the myth of progress. They really believed they were unlocking the secrets of the universe (so did their disciples).
Nietzsche wasn’t. He just laid bare what Christendom would become if Christ was rejected.
Nietzsche was in many ways the glue that bound these false prophets but he was far more far-sighted than them. He realized the enormity of the evil that would be unleashed because of the “death of God.” Darwin did to an extent as well, excusing and even accepting the inevitability of genocide. Marx and Freud there were completely delusional in their optimism.
Father, I see your point concerning the myth of progress but what you say is part of Nietzsche, it was not all by any means. Two other aspects that empowered the destruction of the 20th century: Nietzsche preached that, absent God, destruction wrought through the “superman” was needed and required for the elevation of the elite amongst the humans.
The old must not only pass away, it must aggressively be removed before the new can be embraced. Creation as destruction was his theme (although he rejected the idea of a linear progress, adopting the older notion of a cyclical ‘eternal return’. )
Although there were others who proceeded Nietzsche with similar lines of thought, notably Emerson, Nietzsche was unique, I think, with his emphasis on destruction and subjugation.
These ideas are certainly in the work of the other three, but Nietzsche gave those ideas a certain visceral personal quality and life the others did not while at the same time gave the ideas an attractive, if specious, grounding in the past.
The period between 1848 and 1917 was one of immense change in all areas of life and thought. If there is a comprehensive treatment of the period out there, I haven’t seen it but I’d like to.
Michael, maybe instead of ignoring Nietzsche altogether since he is in a class by himself, I should include him with an explanation that he differs not in his materialist assumptions but that he was no believer in the Myth of Progress. I can say this: No dreams of a temporal New Jerusalem for Friedrich!
This discussion reminded me of Robert Hughes’ fine series “The Shock of the New” that chronicles how these ideas filtered into the larger culture.
Take a look at the interview below with Marcel Duchamp discussing his painting “Nude Descending a Staircase” (painting here and background here).
Duchamp painted “Nude Descending a Staircase” in 1912 — two years before the onset of WWI. The killing fields of WWI also killed faith in the Myth of Progress. We see that with the rise of Existentialism that followed. But you can already see the erosion of meaning in the creative class long before it. Listen closely to Duchamp. Note the depesonalization of the the human form; its reduction to mechanical being.
Then listen closely as he describes his “The Large Glass” later on in the interview (painting here and background here). Note how he describes sexuality as erotic mechanics and the insatiability of human passion. Note Duchamp’s dependence on Freud. It’s raw but it is where culture is today.
My point is that the deconstruction of human personhood that floods popular culture today has a discoverable pedigree. The ideas informing “Bride and Bachelor” for example are the same that inform our pornographic culture today especially the loneliness and estrangement when there is no possibility of divine love.
This is the world into which we must bring the Gospel.
Father Hans,
I think you have accurately characterized materialism as, ironically (to their surprise), a superstition, a neo-pagan view of reality.
Another thought experiment I like to ask, if you landed on another planet and were making your way on its surface and came across the heads of Mt. Rushmore, would you think that it had evolved that way through natural weathering processes or assume that an intelligent being had made it? So if it seems absurd to think of random processes assembling matter to look like Mt. Rushmore, why would you assume that random natural processes constructed life as we see it, which even at the cellular level is much more complex than the design features of Mt. Rushmore?
As I understand it, your question to the “dogmatic” (heh heh) Darwinists on the laws of nature – they know that there are complex laws that we humans struggle to discover that govern matter, but since there is no place in matter where the laws live, the laws must exist in a realm outside of matter, which the Darwinists deny by their dogma.
So your question exposes that materialists have to believe that somehow dumb matter has made for itself laws that govern it (the software), an unseeable orchestra of “the music of the spheres” as Einstein termed it calling the shots about how the universe operates.
It is interesting that, unlike other legitimate branches of scientific theory, there are no “laws” of evolution.
Tragically, most Christian adults including Orthodox haven’t worked out the problems with evolutionary theory, therefore they have a Christian faith, if it has not been destroyed, is compartmentalized and weak. An Orthodox mother a few years ago asked me to help her son who had rejected Christianity because of “evolution,” which flummoxed her. In all his years in an Orthodox parish with a devout mother he had received no teaching to parry this assault on his faith. Of course he had to keep coming dutifully to Divine Liturgy like the other teenagers, but the priest and the parish as a whole did not want to work out a way to address this crisis of faith facing our youth.
The hierarchical observation by George Gilder to me points out another fundamental principle that argues against evolution, entropy, “things fall apart,” the natural downward direction of energy states unless there is an external maintaining force.
Entropy also applies to the life of the Church and of the individual, unless Christianity is energetically reiterated and renewed in each generation it declines.
Are there prominent Orthodox biologists and geneticists? What are their views?
From 11 months ago:
Yesterday:
“. . .Sorry Mike, but you’re out of your depth here (and making some unwarranted observations). You will note that I said “Darwinism,” not “evolution” or even “speciation.” Darwinism was a decent hypothesis in the 19th century while it lasted but molecular biologists know way more about cellular mechanism than Darwin could’ve ever dreamed. And anyway, I have no problem with evolution per se . . .”
Well, George, tell me about it. Oh, wait . . . I told you. About a year ago. You’re pretty funny.
How come I can’t reply to your question, George? Every time I try, nothing happens. You said I had the floor. Changed your mind? Pecksniffery and dark arts struck a nerve, did it?
The DNA comprising human chromosome 2 evidently has a vestigial centromere in addition to the main one and vestigial telomere sequences (not at the ends), too. What do you think happened? They fused at some point in natural history. No mystery here.
Be very careful about throwing the word “vestigial” around when talking about the physical universe. The appendix has proven to be a component of the lymphatic system. The Second Law of Thermodynamics does not lead to order or increasing levels of complexity.
The two remnants of telomere sequences in the middle of human chromosome 2 are vestigial, as is the remnant of a centromere, and according to the scientific consensus now this is most likely due to a fusion, occurring in a common ancestor, more than a million years ago.
Vestigial doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means. It’s a reasonably neutral term. Vestigial structures can be put to uses other than those for which they originally evolved (or were created through evolution).
I don’t get the point of your name dropping of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics here.
That’s a classic “bait-and-switch” employed by the Church of Darwinism. When they get called out for using the word vestigial in the way that they actually mean it (i.e. unnecessary, inert holdover from the distant evolutionary past) they then start backtracking, saying things like “we mean ‘x’ not ‘y’.)
You say you “have no problem with evolution per se,” but you appear to want to mock the idea of a “distant evolutionary past.” Do you think the Earth is 6000 years old? Did Adam and Eve share the Garden of Eden with tame & cuddly Tyrannosaurus rexes and cultured velociraptors who sang them lovely songs?
All mammals either still have a tail or are at varying stages of gradually losing or transforming into some other structure the one their ancestors had at some point in “the distant evolutionary past.” You no doubt still have a coccyx: it’s a vestigial tail bone. It’s not accurate to say it’s inert and unnecessary because it still forms part of the base structure of your spine. You might call it something of a holdover, however. Sometimes, in its wisdom, God’s nature gradually finds new uses for ancient but eventually superfluous structures. Some of these structures are molecular in scale, such as the remnants of the centromere and the telomeres in human chromosome 2. It’s possible they’ve developed or could develop new functionality over time. But there is very, very strong molecular evidence for a fusion of two chromosomes millions of years ago in a common ancestor. Similar fusions still occur today.
You obviously fail to grasp the full and proper meaning of the terms vestige and vestigial. I meant ‘x’: what the words mean to those who use it knowing what they’re talking about, because they comprehend the underlying science. I didn’t mean ‘y’, some distortion dug up from your private lexicon and used in a lame stab at articulating some typically ludicrous fallacy. The only one who ought to be backtracking is you, but you seem to lack the elementary honesty and integrity required.
The level of intellectual conscience and basic intellectual integrity on this blog is often abysmal and embarrassing. There’s such a thing as intellectual morality too, you know.
Mr. Myers:
That is exactly the problem. You actually seem to believe that.
onobo chimps fondle each other when meeting,
3. dogs sniff their hindquarters when doing so,
4. male ruminants fight to near-death for breeding rights,
5. rogue lions kill the cubs of a rival and then force the mothers to copulate with them.
6. most males of most mammalian species are polygamous (the wolf ironically being a curious exception)
7. bees and soldier ants force others into slavery
8. chimpanzees cannibalize rivals from a separate troop,
9. humpback whales engage in group sex (a female will buttress the receptive female so that enough friction is generated for the male to copulate with her).
Don’t try any of these at home.
All of these behaviors confer some evolutionary advantage, otherwise they wouldn’t take place. What makes us think that humans –who are primates after all according to materialist evolution–should behave any differently?
All appeals to sentiment and morality are specious and beside the point.
Rating: +3 (from 3 votes)
George this makes me think of a passage out of the book of Job about why a certain female animal leaves her young. God asking the question to Job.
Well, if we all lived in the 10th century we certainly would not be arguing over the subject since Medieval Catholics and Orthodox definitely didn’t agree with gay marriage unless you are the gay historian Boswell.
From 11 months ago:
Yesterday:
“. . .Sorry Mike, but you’re out of your depth here (and making some unwarranted observations). You will note that I said “Darwinism,” not “evolution” or even “speciation.” Darwinism was a decent hypothesis in the 19th century while it lasted but molecular biologists know way more about cellular mechanism than Darwin could’ve ever dreamed. And anyway, I have no problem with evolution per se . . .”
Well, George, tell me about it. Oh, wait . . . I told you. About a year ago. You’re pretty funny.
From 11 months ago:
Yesterday:
“. . .Sorry Mike, but you’re out of your depth here (and making some unwarranted observations). You will note that I said “Darwinism,” not “evolution” or even “speciation.” Darwinism was a decent hypothesis in the 19th century while it lasted but molecular biologists know way more about cellular mechanism than Darwin could’ve ever dreamed. And anyway, I have no problem with evolution per se . . .”
Well, George, tell me about it. Oh, wait . . . I was the guy who told you. About a year ago. You’re pretty funny.
I’ll make it easy for you: Darwinism means evolution occuring by random, completely materialistic processes. There is no God in Darwinism because the Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis has tried to demonstrate arbitrary processes. Hence God is a free-rider, therefore unnecessary. No true Darwinist believes in God. Those that do are privately derided as deluded by the hard-core. Their idiocy is useful in that it can be used as a camoflouge against the broader theistic society.
Make what easy? Now what do you want from me? I went well beyond the second mile in answering your naive and poorly framed question. I’m about to roger and out again.
I made the definition of Darwinism easy in order for your to answer it. I’ll make it easier by putting my cards on the table. I don’t believe in Darwinism because it presupposes the increase in complexity and order by purely random, materialistic means.
I’ve answered your question thoroughly and completely. I won’t repeat myself besides recapping that I’m not a monist materialist. I believe in the Uncreated Energies of God. I have a lot of confidence in the findings of molecular biology and molecular genetics, some in evolutionary biology and modern integrative biology. I know very little, and unlike some of you, I know it. “Darwinism” is a straw man.
The big picture hasn’t been assembled yet as far as I know. I do definitely think that atheistic dogmatism encages many evolutionary and molecular biologists and occludes their potential vision of larger and more magnificent possibilities. But for a while yet, probably, that vision may have to remain outside the domain of science. No doubt in my mind this is temporary, however.
Y’all and those like you sure as hell ain’t helping to break down the strongholds of this occlusion. You are partly responsible for it. Know-nothingism is unattractive. Unreflective, un-self-aware know-littleism can be worse.
The critique of the fundamentals of evolution is not new. St. Athanasius in the first chapter of “On the Incarnation” in the opening paragraphs speaks out against the idiocy of the self-organization of matter and of the higher coming out of the lower.
True evolutionists, whether they call themselves Darwinian or not, are utterly opposed to Christianity and any faith in God.
It’s inappropriate to slander matter and its talents in this way. God built into it many types of evidently intrinsic capabilities for self-organization. A non-scientist such as St. Athanasius could be excused for not knowing this. Some obvious, common examples, relatively easy-to-grasp, of higher order of complexity arising from lower are crystals, liquid crystals, polymers of various kinds, lipid bilayers of the kind that surround cells, the related micelles and many kinds of self-assembled monolayers. What is chemistry? In part, it’s the science explaining how atoms become molecules, and how molecules become macromolecules. Would you care to dispute the “ontology” of any of these instances of the self-organization of matter into higher orders of complexity from lower orders?
What’s a “true evolutionist?” Do you think the Earth is 6000 years old?
Actually Mike there is no such thing as “self-organizing” matter, GOD continually supports, sustains, and animates ALL matter, life, and energy, even at the sub-atomic level. Without HIM there is nothing!
As a matter of fact, modern science has shown that what makes physical matter “real,” what gives almost ALL of the mass of an atom is actually 99% CONTROLLED energy. In other words, what we call “matter” and “physical reality” is controlled energy at the sub-atomic level that transforms energy to make it become real.
Science confirms that the mass of atoms which makes matter appear real and visible is really 99% highly-controlled and super-organized energy. Energy and LOGOS form the basis of EVERYTHING. And we should not be surprised by this! St. John says so clearly: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:1-4).
The assertion that: “God built into it many types of evidently intrinsic capabilities for self-organization. A non-scientist such as St. Athanasius could be excused for not knowing this,” is not accurate. From what I’ve read many Orthodox saints and other theologians across the centuries believed that GOD constantly sustains the Universe and His energy is what makes life possible. While He exists eternally outside His creation, His power and uncreated energy are what make reality possible and matter “real.” God’s energy and power continually animate and support all life. Were GOD to withdraw HIS power and energy the entire visible Universe would cease to exist.
As C.S. Lewis so powerfully and eloquently expressed:
FYI, I believe this also explains part of the great mystery of how inanimate and non-sentient matter is able to follow laws!
OK, then matter organizes. Matter at simple levels of order can organize into more complex levels of order, and those can then organize into greater complexity. Excluding the “self-” qualifier from this process of organization doesn’t change the facts about what occurs, whatever or whoever the agent is. Matter appears to have been designed to have many such intrinsic capabilities. Phospholipid molecules placed in water spontaneously organize into a bilayer two molecules thick, in a process driven by the interaction of their intrinsic chemical and physical properties with those of water molecules. The direct agent involved here is these properties themselves in interaction. Think of them as designed by God and having his blessing to do this, quite on their own. Such bilayers form the membranes around your cells and also around internal cellular structures.
As I’ve said, I believe the Uncreated Energies of God are constantly at work. You can think of this organizing of matter into higher complexity as God actively forming every crystal and every lipid bilayer if you like, and doing so in all the other ways matter organizes into higher orders of complexity. But He uses properties inherent in the matter to do it. Created energies are clearly at work, too. The distinction between them matters.
I don’t have the Greek text of what St. Athanasius wrote in front of me, so I can’t see it in context or judge for myself how accurately Baumann represented its sense or its relevance. I was replying to his anachronism in applying words written over 16 centuries ago to bolster his personal prejudice against the high-resolution data science has obtained from research in molecular biology. I assume you’re aware that St. Athansius was probably not thoroughly acquainted with the details of physics, chemistry and molecular biology. They’re works in progress, continually being revised to accommodate new knowledge and improvements in theory. We know more of the details than he or the other fathers did. And a major paradigm shift in the scientific method could happen.
Mike, you presume way too much regarding what I may or may not believe about evolution. Personally, the best evidence (so far) shows that the earth is probably 6 billion years old. I’ve answered your question, you still haven’t answered mine. Do I detect a little skittishness?
I also detect mighty efforts on your part to show how increasing order and complexity has arisen, what with phospholipids and polymerases and such. I have no essential quarrel with you in this regard. The question that you seem unable (or unwilling) to answer is how did increasing complexity arise, especially given the fact that the physical universe tends to entropy –i.e. growing disorder instead of order?
As for the ridicule you have heaped upon young earth creationists and their belief in a literal Adam and Eve cavorting in the Garden of Eden with baby T Rexes, I would caution a little humility. Please go to the Book of Job, the 38th chapter, verse 4 (I believe) and tell me what type of creature is being discussed there. As for the fundamentalists, I’ll grant you that they weren’t at the Garden but neither again were you. The story of biogenesis has been rewritten constantly since the time of St Darwin.
Roger that. So you’re not a young earther. It was a Socratic question; I didn’t think you were.
The current consensus on the age of the earth is around 4.5 billion. What evidence would you cite for an age of 6B? Those 10 little diamonds found in Zaire, around 1988? I’ll frankly tell you that the more interesting issue to me is not so much that you think the earth is 1.5 billions years older than most competent researchers do. It’s your grounds for the judgment: “best evidence,” and what that may reveal about your model of science and how it works.
Let’s ascend the scale of complexity from geological to biological evolution. You’ve revealed decades of labor on a manuscript, wherein you review the history of evolutionary thought. So perhaps you have some educated opinions on the following questions, too.
How old is life on this old earth, in your view? Which comes closest to your personal estimate: 6000 years? A million or so? 3 or 4 billion?
How long do you think primates and hominids have been around? Long enough to change in form as a result of natural selection and perhaps other causes?
Even so, isn’t time subjective in many ways? Open to interpretation, like so many other things . . .
~~~
No mighty efforts required. (And no mention of polymerases.) Merely cited a few simple examples of natural phenomena to refute M. Baumann’s erroneous, blanket assertion about the alleged “idiocy of the self-organization of matter and of the higher coming out of the lower.” He further asserted that St. Athansius agreed with his view on this “idiocy.”
I was instinctively quite skeptical that Mr. Baumann had fairly represented St. Athansius’ view, as I hinted in my reply. I sensed an anachronism, too. So I looked into this.
My instinct proves to have been sound. The father wrote of some who denied that “any Mind was behind the universe at all.” Now, M. Baumann appears to suspect that all evolutionists deny it, too. Or, maybe that only “true evolutionists” do. He being the judge and arbiter of their truthiness or lack thereof, perhaps.
Here’s an English translation of the theophoric father’s words:
Maybe I have a much higher opinion about matter and its intrinsic talents than some of you. Maybe I know a little more about it, which may be why I see the mind of God in its quite amazing properties. In my view of things, to say that matter is competent to “self-organize” is not a denial of God’s power and wisdom, at all. Just the opposite. God’s blessings extend down to the games dust plays, too. It depends entirely on personal optics — and on the degree of illumination by which one sees. This can be blinding, at first. But you get used to it.
George, you seem to have more faith in your own private take on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics than may be warranted. Let me restate it for you:
“Energy spontaneously disperses from being localized to becoming spread out if it is not hindered from doing so.”
Think about that, with respect to finite, created energy. Then think about it with respect to the Divine, Infinite, Uncreated Energies. And if you dare, ask yourself who’s hindering those. A question we should all ask ourselves, constantly. While meditating on the Jesus Prayer, say.
Stories in science are rewritten all the time. It’s the nature of that game. And who knows, maybe we’re on the verge of a major shift of paradigm in the game.
Mike, these are eloquent words and I have no essential quarrel with them. However, that is that like you (I presume), I am a theist. I very much see the complexity of the world. I also have a scientific, Newtonian/Baconian/Pascalian explanation for it. That God is the author and sustainer of the cosmos. That’s why I keep on asking you to explain the ordered complexity that is apparent using the vehicle of random, materialistic processes. The Inner Party that upholds Neo-Darwinism cannot, and will not brook any opposition.
Don’t believe me? Next time you hear of a symposium on evolution held under the auspices of a major university, and featuring luminaries such as Eugenie Scott, Richard Dawkins, Richard Lewontin, Danniel Dennet, etc., please make every effort to attend. If allowed, stand up and read the fine, Palamite words that you have written above, and you will be verbally lynched or laughed at. What you describe is “the divine foot in the door” that exercises the arch-materialists so very much. You will find out quickly enough that Darwinism as upheld by the academic, scientific, and global elite, cannot brook such heresy.
And then come to talk to me.
George, science by definition can work only with observations of natural phenomena that can be sensed and quantified mathematically, and scientists then theorize on their basis. Immense progress in understanding nature has been the result. The scientific method doesn’t accommodate sensing or quantifying God’s energies; this can only be intuited, at least right now, not measured. Now we may agree that that is a flaw inherent in the epistemology and philosophy of science and its method, and that it has a tendency to lead the secularist Zeitgeist toward a more and more dominant scientism and the potential for a new, terrible ideological tyranny — and I’m deeply concerned about that tendency and think there’s very solid evidence it’s growing and consolidating — it’s just a fact that researchers and scholars have made tremendous progress in accumulating a certain sort of knowledge (“that increasing mass of drivel” as Kierkegaard memorably put it, somewhat unjustly, I think, although he judged its value relative to the knowledge of God). To some, like hard-core materialists, who are not disposed to view things through the eyes of faith and do not or maybe simply cannot peer behind appearances, this accumulation is the highest vocation of the human future. Certainly this was what Nietzsche thought, and he was as hard-core as it gets.
I can’t imagine why you continue to ask me “to explain the ordered complexity that is apparent using the vehicle of random, materialistic processes.” What’s up with this broken record of yours? And you’re being ridiculously presumptuous again: I’m probably far more aware than you of the atheist dogmatism in many scientists and academics since I’ve lived and worked among them for most of my adult life. More than a few are really militant and passionate about this. But at least some of the blame for that was laid by Paul in Romans 2:23-24. For the law, think the Royal Law.
I can’t vouch for the quality of this translation of the theophoric father’s prayer. Still these words may serve as a good preface to this discussion:
tapeinophrosyne
I don’t want what I meant to say in this thread to be misunderstood because of my sloppy and impure language. To remedy that, forgive me for a little long-windedness in what follows. I’m trying to be accurate.
It’s important to distinguish between natural processes that can be observed and studied — to a limited and imperfect extent — “scientifically,” and pseudo-theories and even satanic, anti-Christian ideologies that the darkened psyche can invent by misusing and misappropriating the limited, imperfect knowledge derived from these observations and their “data.” Such pseudo-theories and ideologies and vile interpretations have grown and developed over the centuries, like evil flowers out of poisoned soil: that soil is human phantasies, delusory imaginings and other kinds of psychic corruption and covetousness that since the Fall have a tendency to grow over a wandering nous like a moldy veil. This veil can harden into an iron wall, obstructing the Light. Allowing us to be misled, ever deeper into idolatry. Similarly, the higher orders of created energies, such as the psychophysical energies of human nature can, when divorced from orthosynergy with the Uncreated Energies of the Triune God, be in danger of driving processes of devolution.
In the final analysis, however, all of this corruption is the consequence of impurity in the heart (kardia), the spiritual center of our being. But when the eye of the soul (psyche), which is the illumined mind (nous), returns, descending into a heart purified by the Holy Spirit — into a heart that dwells in Christ, and, in Christ, in the Father — this is healing. Then we see clearly, and then we can heal. Like the bankrupt but repentant prodigal son who returned to his father, the soul’s eye, the nous, now cleansed through repentance, metanoia, can return to a clean heart. Then we’re on the road to health and wholeness and not far at all from the Kingdom of God. From Orthros.
It’s important to prioritize, to put things in the right (orthos) order: What the world needs now is gnosis of and communion with God. This is the Tree of Life, whose fruit is agape, the highest and divine form of Love, חסד ( chesed). A genuine, true, integrative science* (gnosis) of the true nature of created things will follow. Modern scientific man is laboring mightily to put the cart of knowledge before the horse of Love, to use a homely metaphor. An ineffective methodology. And an old story.
It’s ineffective, because the horse should be pulling the load on the road to the Telos, not cruelly forced to push it forward with his nose, all while being beaten. Another thing that would help is less chaff and more wheat, together with the water, oil and wine, in the cart.
A few humble suggestions to some of y’all and your readers.
~~~
*Science (n.)
c.1300, “knowledge (of something) acquired by study,” also “a particular branch of knowledge,” from Old French science, from Latin scientia “knowledge,” from sciens (genitive scientis), present participle of scire “to know,” probably originally “to separate one thing from another, to distinguish,” related to scindere “to cut, divide,” from Proto-Indo-European root *skei– (cf. Greek skhizein “to split, rend, cleave,” Gothic skaidan, Old English sceadan “to divide, separate;”.
“Science, since people must do it, is a socially embedded activity. It progresses by hunch, vision, and intuition. Much of its change through time does not record a closer approach to absolute truth, but the alteration of cultural contexts that influence it so strongly. Facts are not pure and unsullied bits of information; culture also influences what we see and how we see it. Theories, moreover, are not inexorable inductions from facts. The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts; the source of imagination is also strongly cultural.” [Stephen Jay Gould, introduction to “The Mismeasure of Man,” 1981]
The distinction is commonly understood as between theoretical truth (Greek episteme) and methods for effecting practical results (tekhne), but science sometimes is used for practical applications and art for applications of skill. Main modern (restricted) sense of “body of regular or methodical observations or propositions … concerning any subject or speculation” is attested from 1725; in 17c.-18c. this concept commonly was called philosophy. To blind (someone) with science “confuse by the use of big words or complex explanations” is attested from 1937, originally noted as a phrase from Australia and New Zealand.
I can’t imagine why it should be necessary to spell this out again, explicitly, considering what I’ve already written, however — I DO NOT think, believe, reason or intuit that “random, purely ‘materialistic’ processes” or “abiogenic” mechanisms alone explain or account for the genealogy of the “tree of life,” in the scientific sense of the term. I think that’s an ideological — not genuinely scientific — position. The “random,” “abiogenic” qualifiers are particularly suspect to me. And I think that such positions demonstrate an underlying naivete and pseudo-dogmatism that’s at least as objectionable and without merit as the most abjectly subrational, anti-intellectual, literal-minded fundamentalist naivete is. These two”schools of ‘thought'” deserve each other.
Mike, isn’t it ironic that you and I (and Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Georges Cuvier, Karl von Linnaeus, Louis Pasteur, Lord Kelvin, et al) could readily see the Hand of God working in the cosmos but it’s supposedly “unscientific” to mention the elephant in the room according to the keepers of the Darwinist legacy?
If I may venture a comment on this statement…
Young earth/Old earth concepts simply have no meaning to which we can relate according to the Genesis account – even if, and perhaps most especially if, we take the account as historical in some way (which I personally do).
It must be understood that time, as we know it, is ‘relative’ in the sense that it is perceived and measured by the relative movements of objects in space. The Genesis story tells us that the earth was created 3 “days” (whatever that may mean) before the sun which was created on the fourth day. One wonders, then, how “time” can be measured in years – or even days – prior to their being a sun around which the earth orbits to measure a year.
Respectfully, science can tell us nothing about creation with respect to time. Neither the young earth ‘Scientific Creationists’ nor the Evolutionists (deistic or otherwise) can be reconciled with Scripture or the Tradition. Whatever is being described for us in the Genesis account is a cosmos that is not subject to nature as we know it. It is far more akin to the cosmos for which Christians hope, one that is according to nature as God created it while also above the limits of nature.
The earth is unimaginably old, as anyone who goes up into the mountains or down into canyons easily sees. The evidence is there for any ordinary person. The rocks show that life has been around for hundreds of millions of years; the earth is far older and the universe far older yet; over 14 billion years.
I don’t believe that God created the world 14+ billion years ago, because “ago” has no meaning to Him who created time itself, along with matter/energy, at least three spatial dimensions, and much more. God can do what he wants, on any scale he wishes to be part of that creation.
To me the unfathomable ancientness of the world is obvious. It’s also interesting, but the place of these facts in the Plan are unknowable to us. What concerns us is, as always, how are we to live and how are we to be saved? The Son came down from heaven for us men and for our salvation. This is what is central. Theories about geology, biology, astronomy, physics and the rest are of importance, but nothing remotely as important as that.
These other things do, however, declare the glory of God, in a creation even more glorious than our forbears imagined.
A very important distinction lost in this discussion of particle physics is the widely agreed upon decision to give up upon describing the inner nature of any of these particles. Modern quantum theories are in essence a set of equations which accurately (for the most part) predict what the measuring tools we have report during experiments. It’s a lot like watching race cars zooming around and predicting what happens in the crash without offering any theory as to what the cars are made of, why that is, or much of anything to do with why they go. That they go, which way, statistically they will be seen to go, and how fast, yes. Bits that have certain characteristics ‘are seen’ to stick or repel other bits. We have an equation for that. Why that happens? Errr…
You don’t even need to get heavy deep and real into particle physics to see this sort of ‘agreed upon hand waving’ going on. Look at any radio or tv tower. Why does shoving power up and down the metal tower really fast cause electrons to leave perfectly good metal antennas and set off into the non conducting air? (or even less conducting space…) Read up on it and you’ll see completely wonderful equations that explains that it happens, how much juice you need to shove up the antenna to get the loudness you want at distance X from the antenna… but… what makes electrons moving at less than the speed of light up and down a metal antenna create something that moves at the speed of light called a radio station moving away from it? Well, we have these equations you see, and they’re correct…. as far as they go….. all about what. Nothing but the purest hand waving about ‘why’ those equations are as we see, nothing about the ‘inner life’ as it were of any of it.
So we have this set of mathematical equations that do a statistically good job of predicting the things for which the equations have variables that equipment we have can measure reports. Why any of it does that? Guesswork only. Are there things important things going on that we aren’t measuring or don’t know that we should be trying to measure? Probably.
Remember, for all the acclaim the theories rightly get for predicting what happens to eeensy teensy things, none of them explain gravitation. (They explain how hard you have to push to get it to move at the desired speed… but why the apple falls from the tree? The variables and equations we have just don’t go there for the eeensy teensy bits).
Through the years many were convinced of the correctness of their comprehensive understanding of nature. Today we look upon them almost the same way those alive 200 years ago looked upon stone knives and bear skins. Let’s keep the humility lesson alive, we will be looked upon by the unhumble prigs of the future as equivalently barbarian.
Even the hardest core scientist accepts upon not less than you’d-have-to-kill-them-and-they-won’t-admit-it-yet can’t-deny-it faith that the ‘laws’ of the near future ‘must be’ as the recent past.
Mr. Banescu,
This individual proved your point above in a very interesting and poignant way:
Chris, even inanimate (to us) and non-sentient matter is full of energy. The totally God made stuff has the most, the truly man-made crafted things somewhat less and machine made, computer made stuff, even less.
There is the old Chinese proverb about the apprentice and the jade master:
Thank you for expressing what I was attempt to get across more understandably.
John 6:53 comes to mind.
Turns out that St. Athanasius agrees with the same views expressed above. Providentially he referenced the same Scriptures from St. John. We are surrounded by a great could of witnesses indeed!
St. Athanasius: The Divine Word Holds the Universe Together
Fr. Jacobse, do you mean to say that the “natural marriage” that “exists within the order of creation” by “natural law” is decreed by God as between only one man and only one woman? And do you mean that this moral order is discerned by the illuminated nous from “how creation is made,” and from the Holy Scriptures?
Mike, click “View all comments” at the top right of this box and read through my comments again. That should clear up your confusion.
And do you mean that this moral order is discerned by the illuminated nous from “how creation is made,” and from the Holy Scriptures?
Bingo! Only the illuminated nous, the mind of Christ, properly (orthos) discerns the structure of the Created Order. Bare reason cannot do it.
Mike, click “View all comments” at the top right of this box and read through my comments again. That should clear up the confusion.
Father, I’m confused about how your conception of natural law would proscribe polygamy and prescribe monogamy. This confusion is not only not cleared up by your comments, which I have read, it’s exacerbated, alas. Maybe I’ve missed something.
You wrote:
“It’s a statement of natural law — the moral ordering of creation discerned by how creation is made.”
The antecedent statement represented by “it’s” in the citation above is this one:
Now, I appreciate that you are invoking natural law to support the proscription of same-sex “marriage.” Such a proscription is readily discerned, reasoning from incontrovertible biological facts. Unfortunately, I don’t see how your conception as expressed would be relevant to utilizing natural law to proscribe polygamy, or to counsel the state to do so. IOW, why does your axiom that “natural marriage exists within the order of creation” support exclusive monogamy but not polygamy?
The words of Christ clearly and unambiguously prescribe monogamy, but I fail to see how it can be coherently maintained that natural law as such could. On what rational basis could you say that polygamous marriage does not exist within the moral order of creation? If you would, I mean.
Mike Myers asks, “why does your axiom that ‘natural marriage exists within the order of creation’ support exclusive monogamy but not polygamy?”
Let me explain, if I may.
We Christians do not look at “natural law” as “natural men.” We look at natural law from the perspective of the Gospel. This process pertains to what St. Paul calls the analogia pisteos, which means “measuring things by means of the faith.”
That is to say, we look at the Created Order through the eyes of Jesus. (Indeed, theology does not even begin until we look at things through the eyes of Jesus.)
Our guide in the theological inspection of the Created Order is Jesus, the nous tou Christou, the sensus Christi.
Now, with respect to marriage in the Created Order, does Jesus give us any idea how he looks at the subject of polygamy?
I believe so: “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.”
The life-long union of one man and one woman seems grammatically inferred in Jesus’ theological assessment of the Created Order. It is Jesus who instructs us on the proper view of the Created Order. Otherwise, we are just metaphysicians.)
(What I have written here is a fairly simple exercise in what St. Paul calls “analogy [or measure] of the faith.” Once again I refer you to my lecture at Princeton this past February. I will be glad to send it to you.)
My confusion was “Socratic,” Fr. Reardon. As I think you probably knew.* Thank you for a lucid and perfectly coherent answer to the question raised by Fr. Jacobse’s language.
*Note that I did give him this helpful hint about the serious weakness in his exposition of “natural law” and its boundaries, in the hope that he’d correct it himself:
“Fr. Jacobse, do you mean to say that the “natural marriage” that “exists within the order of creation” by “natural law” is decreed by God as between only one man and only one woman? And do you mean that this moral order is discerned by the illuminated nous from “how creation is made,” and from the Holy Scriptures?”
Thus the emphasized and. The apparent emphasis in his remarks on an appeal to “natural” reason in this context, without constant reference to Christ’s words (revelation), seems fallacious. I’ll look to see if he even mentioned Christ’s words once.
Fr. Reardon expanded on the point I already made here (and elsewhere):
Different context, same principle.
Fr. Pat, is your lecture online?
Fr. Patrick, I deleted this posted question, but there it is anyway. I’ve deleted a couple of other things but they got posted as well. I saw your email address upthread with your note that Princeton has the copyright. Thank you.
I emailed Fr. Patrick to acquire the paper as he suggested, but nothing so far. Looking forward to reading the paper if I ever get it.
Meanwhile, found an interesting blog posting by a St. Vladimir’s seminarian on monogamy that I thought folks might find interesting.
http://kevinbasil.com/2011/05/13/the-monagamous-front/
Kevin Fritts, btw, composes church music. I heard his newly composed Theotokion at the OCA parish ministries conference final liturgy celebration. It was a lovely composition indeed.
Thank you, Fr. Patrick, for driving home the importance of the mind of Christ and the witness of the Holy Spirit in discerning what is called the “natural law” or divine order in nature. The last two issues of First Things include an extensive discussion of natural law theory, but as our own David Bentley Hart points out in the back of the last one, it’s futile without a reference to Christ, for it is He Who shows us Who God is and Who we human beings are–or at least are called to be.
I happened to be reading–for the first time–the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Prof. Hart’s comments made certain sections of it discussing the “natural law” clearer than before. The terminology makes one think this “law” is derived from a purely materialistic observation and anlysis of nature. As Prof. Hart point out this will never be sufficient and it would seem that even the RCC acknowledges this–even if many scholars fail to do so.
Here are the relevant passages for any who are interested (with some empahsis added or comments inserted in brackets or italics by me). If this it not helpful, please forgive.
lxc
1954 Man participates in the wisdom and goodness of the Creator [God the Holy Trinity] . . . with a view to the true and the good. The natural law expresses the original moral sense which enables man to discern by reason the good and the evil, the truth and the lie [but this reason is only right insofar as it participates in and is conformed to the mind of Christ]:
The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin. . . But this command of human reason would not have the force of law if it were not the voice and interpreter of a higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be submitted. [So, the “reason” spoken of here is the mind of Christ and the voice of the Holy Spirit witnessing to his heart.]
1955 . . . The natural law states the first and essential precepts which govern the moral life [and lead to human happiness and joy—i.e. Beatitude]. It hinges upon the desire for God and submission to Him, Who is the source and judge of all that is good, . . . This law is called “natural,” not in reference to the nature of irrational beings, but because reason which decrees it properly belongs to human nature [as made in the Image of God and called to His likeness]:
Where then are these rules written, if not in the book of that Light we call the Truth?
In it is written every just law;
from it the law passes into the heart of the man who does justice, . . .[placing] its imprint on it, like a seal on a ring that passes onto wax, without leaving the ring.
The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God;
through it we know what we must do and what we must avoid [in order to obtain true happiness and joy/Beatitude].
God has given this light or law at the creation.
1956 The natural law, present in the heart of each man and established by reason, is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all men. It expresses the dignity of the person and determines the basis for his fundamental rights and duties:
For there is a true law: right reason. [i.e. reason conformed to the mind of Christ]
It is in conformity with [pre-lapsarian] nature, is diffused among all men, and is immutable and eternal; . . . .
To replace it with a contrary law is a sacrilege; . . . no one can abrogate it entirely.
1958 The natural law is immutable and permanent throughout the variations of history; . . . Even when it is rejected in its very principles, it cannot be destroyed or removed from the heart of man. It always rises again in the life of individuals and societies:
1960 The precepts of natural law are not perceived by everyone clearly and immediately. In the present [post-lapsarian] situation sinful man needs grace and revelation so moral and religious truths may be known “by everyone with facility, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error.” The natural law provides revealed law and grace with a foundation prepared by God and in accordance with the work of the Spirit.