On Marriage and Christ

If you've escaped the recent controversy surrounding The Gospel Coalition and their publishing of an article on sex as an icon of the gospel, well done.  This post is a very limited response to a part of that controversy, but should make sense even if you didn't follow it at all.  The point I want to respond to is the claim by a number of people that the problem with the article was that it over-extended a metaphor.  That is to say, it is true that Scripture draws a metaphorical connection between marital union and the spiritual union of Christ and his people, but by reflecting explicitly sexual language the article had stretched that metaphor beyond its biblical usage, and thus invalidated it.

My response here is simple: I do not think the Bible presents marriage as a metaphor for the gospel.  As I understand it - and I confess freely that I am no literary theorist - metaphor is a way of relating two things or concepts which have no (or at least no necessary) real (that is, ontological or conceptual) connection; it is allusive, linking two things which are not directly linked in order to shed light on one or the other.  Metaphor is limited in what it implies, and is essentially linguistic.  It does not imply or establish any real or ongoing link between the two items.  Rather, it uses language to appropriate one thing or concept as a means of 'opening up' another.

My contention, then, is that this is not the sort of link Scripture envisages between human marriage and the gospel.  In Ephesians 5, the apostle Paul is not casting around looking for a great illustration of the gospel and arriving at marital love.  Nor is he looking about for some justification for the institution of marriage and chancing upon the gospel - that direction of thought would be impossible for him.  Look at the way he uses the quotation from Genesis.  His argument depends on there being a real link between human marriage and the relationship between Christ and his church.  It depends, in fact, on finding the primary application of the "one flesh" saying from Genesis in the gospel, with the obvious historical sense of the saying in its Genesis context becoming a secondary application.  This makes sense in a world where primary ontology is about God and his actions, and creation represents a kind of secondary ontology, a derived, contingent being which is dependent on the Lord God for both existence and meaning.  This latter is crucial.

The question, then, is this: is created reality inherently ordered towards the gospel?

There is another way of approaching this which asks a question which is similar, but in the end totally different: does created reality have inherent meaning and structure?  If we're asking this question, we're in the territory of natural law, and perhaps in territory which envisages a natural end to human life and created existence apart from the gospel.  I don't want to go into this territory.  I don't think it's a good place to be.  I am proceeding on the assumption that the heart of created reality is the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the underlying reason of human existence and indeed the whole created order is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What is at stake here?

On the one hand, the grounding of Christian ethics is at stake.  I mean this is in a very particular way.  The essential ground of Christian ethics is the command of God.  As believers we ought to wholeheartedly commit ourselves to being impaled on one horn of the Euthyphro dilemma - the morally good is determined by the will of God, and God himself is bound by no external standard of goodness.  In that sense, when we are asked about sexual ethics and why we hold particular positions we can simply respond 'God says so', and point to the relevant commands in Scripture.  But the doctrine of creation means that we can say something more about the particular way in which Christian ethics is grounded.  The divine commands do not hang in the air, because the God who commands is also the God who structures reality.  What he commands is morally good because he determines moral goodness, but we can also say that this goodness reflects the structure of created reality - or more accurately, perhaps, that it is reflected in the structure of created reality.  Once we pull in the doctrine of redemption - that the God who commands and creates is also the God who save - we can argue that the divine command is reflected in creation which is itself oriented toward the gospel.  The gospel, then, reveals the significance of created reality, and thus of the divine commands.  Far from being arbitrary rules, they reflect both creation and redemption, because God is one and his goal and purpose is one.

Grounding Christian ethics in this way binds it together with the gospel, in a way which seems to me central to New Testament thinking.  The Christian sexual ethic is good news because it signifies The Good News.  We joyfully submit to this ethic and call others to do so because the end goal of created reality is the marriage supper of the Lamb.

On the other hand, our ability to think and speak about the Christian life in a way which reflects the full richness of Scripture is at stake.  When Scripture tells us that the 'one flesh' relationship of husband and wife is oriented towards the relationship between Christ and the church, that opens up the reading of - for example - the Song of Songs as a beautiful representation of spiritual communion with Christ.  The question 'is this about marriage or is it about Christ' is, in the end, a non-question if human marriage is itself always related to Christ and his gospel.  We can read the Song in a perfectly natural way as a collection of beautiful human love songs, and indeed as a celebration of erotic love, and therefore as having reference to the relationship between Christ and his people.  And in fact we can see this latter as in a sense primary for a canonical reading of the book.

Simone Weil points out that real things exist in three dimensions, and can therefore be viewed from different perspectives.  If there is a real, ontological link between human marriage and the gospel, then it becomes legitimate to look from different perspectives at both.  I think the Song legitimates us in seeing the sexual as one such perspective.  The 'one flesh' union of marriage is enacted in sexual intercourse; the spiritual union of Christ and the church also has moments of 'enacted' reality, most notably perhaps in the sacraments.  I don't intend to particularly develop this here, but just to note that the real link between marriage and the gospel enables and perhaps even mandates this sort of reflection, whereas a metaphorical link would shut this down.

One warning: we must always continue resolutely to say No! to natural theology.  (Should we so desire, we can say it in German).  That means that revelation, the Word of God, Christ as witnessed by the Scriptures, remains in control.  I take it this was one of the key complaints against the TGC article: that the direction of thought which is so obvious in Paul - from the gospel to marriage first, and only subsequently and indirectly from marriage to the gospel - was in danger of being reversed.  Revelation interprets created reality, not vice versa.  Wherever spiritual reflection on marriage and sex approaches this line - and it must in a sense approach it - we need to be on our guard that the line is not crossed.  If it is appropriate to describe marriage as an icon of the gospel - and I think it is - we need to be careful that we are looking 'along' the icon to the reality and not stopping short at the content of the image, or worse projecting aspects of the image into our thinking about the reality in an uncontrolled way.

Another warning: we know marriage and sexuality only in a fallen mode.  There is a sense in which everything we experience of it is tainted.  This introduces a sad requirement for theology: just at the point at which we would like to speak rapturously of Christ and his love for his people, we must stress very carefully the limitations of our thoughts.  We know it is easy for people to abuse the Scriptures - to take, say, the teaching in Ephesians 5 and twist it to abusive ends.  How much more so our secondary spiritual reflections on marriage and sexuality!  In one sense this is just the movement of all theology: we draw analogies, show that Christ is like something in our experience, but then immediately have to qualify it, because he is also unlike anything in our fallen world.  This is also true of the icon of marriage.

All of which is to say, these are dangerous waters - but beautiful to sail if navigated carefully!  What a wonderful bridegroom is our Lord Jesus.  What grace it is that he should welcome us, sanctify us, call us his bride.  What a high privilege it is to enjoy spiritual communion with him.  (And husbands should love their wives).

Material, not just formal, unity

These are bewildering times for Christians seeking to live faithfully to Christ, under his authority.  I think they are times which require us to rethink our approach to a number of things, not least how we understand Christian unity.

The approach to Christian unity which has characterised evangelicalism rests, I think, particularly on a formal principle: the authority of Scripture.  We can unite with people who share our commitment to the authority of Holy Scripture.  There is a lot of sense in this.  Whilst we can have a conversation with all sorts of people, there is no likelihood of agreement where there is no common commitment to a way of knowing.  Disagreements between people who are equally committed to Scripture at least have some hope of resolution, and an agreed way (in principle) of reaching that resolution: we read and study and debate Scripture together.  Take away that formal agreement - either by taking away the commitment to Scripture, or by adding to it another authority - and material agreement becomes much more difficult, perhaps even impossible.  At the very least, we are having a different sort of conversation if we're talking to someone who isn't happy to follow us into the Bible for answers, and who isn't pre-committed to accepting and submitting to those answers if they're satisfied that they really are biblical.

And so the authority of Scripture is a sensible rallying point.  But it has never been the case that commitment to this formal principle alone is sufficient for Christian unity.  There have always been heretics who claim to hold to biblical authority, and even make an impressive show of deference to the Bible.  Leaving actual heresy aside, even amongst mutually acknowledged Christians there are limits to how much practical unity we can have purely on this formal basis.  And so we qualify our basis for unity: we have unity with those who take Scripture as their authority (the formal principle) within certain bounds (and here we are introducing material beliefs).  Normally for evangelicals that means there is a minimalist statement of faith which we look to as a standard; and so long as people subscribe our minimum standard,  and remain committed to the formal principle, we allow latitude on a whole bunch of issues.

And here's where it gets tricky.  Our minimum standards don't tend to address the hot-button issues of the day, like racism or human sexuality.  The latter in particular is becoming a significant dividing line amongst professing Christians, and it isn't addressed in our evangelical standards.  So what do we do?  Typically we fall back here on the formal principle: you have to believe what the Bible says about sexuality.  We turn it from a material issue (about theological anthropology, say) into a formal issue (about the authority of the Bible).  But this raises two issues.  Firstly, what do we do when people on the other side of the debate claim to be submitting to the authority of Scripture?  We can debate them, in that case, on biblical grounds, and hope to persuade them of our reading of Scripture, but in the meantime is this an 'agree to disagree' situation?  I don't see how it can be.  Second, if this is in fact a fracture point, do we understand why it is so significant?  Why must we divide over this disagreement about the interpretation of Scripture, but not over so many other things which we have (for the sake of unity) designated 'secondary issues', outside the scope of our doctrinal statements?

Here is a difficult thing: we don't want to divide over issues like baptism (who, when, how), or church government, or our understanding of eschatology, but we will divide over sexuality.  Doesn't it sound like we're just cherry picking issues?  Might it not seem as if this is driven basically by homophobia rather than doctrine?  Why, after all, pick this issue as the line?  It will not do to claim that sexual ethics is more important or central - more important than baptism, "which now saves you"?  (Elevating anthropology and ethics above the church and soteriology is not a great way to go, I think).  I am also not convinced it will do to claim that Scripture speaks more clearly on this issue - I think it is also perfectly clear on baptism!

It seems to me that the way forward is a renewed confessionalism, which will show that our formal principle is not merely formal, but carries material content.  That is to say, we need to be able to show that Christian doctrine does not proceed in two stages - first sorting out the source of doctrine in Scripture and then moving on to what the Bible actually says.  Rather, we need to show that our commitment to Scripture and its authority is part of a whole view of God's being and activity; that it already carries with it material content; that the nature of Scripture and its place within the dispensation of grace entails a particular way of reading.  We need a thicker, more substantial doctrine of Scripture, along with a broader confession of Christian truth that goes beyond the bare minimum.  Nobody wants to build higher fences unnecessarily, but I'm not sure we have any other option if we want to maintain Christian orthodoxy in our churches.

Ethics, obedience, fellowship

Bonhoeffer (again) argues that Christian ethics is unique because it refuses to ask the two ethical questions - how can I be a good person? and what is a good action? - because it is already confronted by a greater question: will you hear and obey God?

I think that's helpful in churches riddled with ethical confusion.  Look, the key thing here isn't to go away and have a commission and a process to try to work out what is good.  Will you listen to God and do what he says?

It's also helpful in cutting through some of the fudge.  This is just ethics, say some.  It's a peripheral and complicated issue.  Nobody should be made to feel unwelcome in church just because of an ethical disagreement.  Why can't we all just coexist?  Well, okay Mr Fudge, I see where you're coming from.  The big 'ethical issues' we're wrestling with - around gender and sexuality, for example - are indeed 'peripheral', and have a degree of complexity about them.  I get it.  But what if we try again with the only relevant question for Christian ethics put front and centre: this is just obedience to God.  Obeying God is a peripheral matter, and it's complicated.  Nobody should be made to feel unwelcome in God's church just because they persistently and deliberately disobey God!  Yeah, doesn't sound so good now, does it?

Leaving aside the fact that the apostle is perfectly clear that we should indeed break fellowship with people over 'ethical' issues, and that he brings this into the closest possible connection with the eucharistic celebration of the gospel, just understanding what the ethical question is ought to help us with working through the implications of the answer.

Undivided

I have just finished reading Undivided by Vicky Beeching, her memoir of struggling with the tension between her evangelical faith and her secret attraction to women, and finally her coming out as a lesbian and the ruptures it caused between her and the church tradition she loves.  It is a powerful book, and a book that will be widely read.  It deserves to be widely read, perhaps especially by conservative evangelicals.  It ought to ring alarm bells for us on so many levels.  This is not really a review so much as a series of thoughts and reflections, relatively unprocessed (I have literally just put the book down, having read it in a few hours - it's a page-turner).  My thoughts roughly group themselves under three headings: how should we read this book?  what do we need to change as a result of reading it?  what is the implicit theology at work within this book (and therefore presumably within Vicky Beeching's life)?  Then I just have a concluding reflection.

Firstly, how to engage with this book?  I've read reviews suggesting that it is a mistake to treat it as a polemic or apologetic, a mistake to expect theology, because this is a memoir, a personal reflection.  This is, I humbly submit, to completely misunderstand this cultural moment.  Everything is now autobiography: philosophy, politics, theology.  Everything is personal.  The way in which polemic, apologetic, and yes, even theology, are now conducted with most success is precisely through the medium of self-reflection and self-presentation.  Vicky Beeching has written a powerful apologetic for a revisionist position on Christian sexual ethics.  And there is a theology contained and taught therein.  The problem is, we're not yet used to engaging critically with this sort of writing: we've been educated to think that somebody's experience is not open to debate.  Of course there is some truth in that: if this is the way it seemed to you, then this is the way it seemed to you, and I have no right or reason to question that.  But it is easy to smuggle in the assumption that if this is the way it seemed then this is the way it was.  In that way, a memoir gets behind our defences and makes us agree without ever having to argue.  So, engage critically.  And yet...  It is still a memoir.  This is a real person's life, and empathy is called for.  Critical thought, compassionate heart.  Engage both to the maximum setting.

Second, what does the church need to learn from this memoir?  Oh, so many things.  There are parts of this book that grieve me deeply.  The subculture of shame which Glynn Harrison talks about in his excellent book A Better Story is evident throughout: the church culture in which Vicky Beeching grew up was apparently one in which sex was shameful, and homosexual feelings were particularly shameful.  (See chapter 29 especially for the appalling ways in which this affects people of all sexual orientations, and page 13 for a desperately sad recollection of Beeching's own first sense of shame).  If only the gospel has been applied at this point!  If only it had been possible to be open about what was going on, without the sense of shame!  But that clearly wasn't possible.  Would it be better today, in our churches - in my church?

The book also presents a church culture in which asking hard questions was discouraged.  One of the most telling passages in the book for me came early on, when Beeching describes her childhood struggle with various stories from the Old Testament.  It seems like this was the beginning of a period of repressing the tough questions, and therefore of maintaining a distorted picture of God (because how can you not have a distorted picture of God if you repress aspects of himself which he has revealed?).  Churches need to get much better at seeing doubts and questions, not as threats to faith, but as opportunities to deepen faith through tough engagement with God's word.

There is so much other stuff.  Dealing with hypocrisy - openly and clearly - and applying discipline (56 - there is a lot to be disturbed about in Beeching's description of her time at Wycliffe Hall).  Not relying on big conferences and events, but rather on the regular ministry of word and sacrament (see chapter 5).  Getting rid of a bad theology of easy change.  Thinking carefully about mental health issues (163).  Banishing a triumphalist theology.  All of this and more.  I would like every church leader to read this book and think about our weaknesses as they are exposed in this memoir.  We can and must do better.

Third, what about that implicit theology and apologetic?  Well, this is a conversion story.  It turns on a  reading of Acts 10: Peter is taught that God has called Gentiles clean, and this is then applied to gay people. (See pages 168-172).  That doesn't work as a reading or application of the story, to be honest.  The Lord is not berating Peter for being a religious bigot who needs to liberalise here; he is announcing to Peter a new stage in salvation history.  But that doesn't matter, because Beeching felt God himself make the application to her (171).  "God had spoken" (172).  This sort of subjectivism is not uncommon, of course, in evangelical circles - maybe I should have included it as one of the things the church needs to learn to lose.  For Beeching, this is the scales-falling-from-eyes moment; from here on, she is an undivided person.

So what is the theology here?  I've already noted the way in which Beeching struggled as a child with passages in the OT that showed God's judgement (15-17).  It seems more accurate to say she didn't struggle with them: "My simple childhood faith was rooted in God's love and kindness, so I tried to focus on the stories that emphasized those qualities." (17)  Fair enough, you might think, for a child, but when this reminiscence is picked up later, after the coming out story, it's clear that they never have been processed (see page 224 - note that the sort of vitriol Beeching recounts here is indefensible in terms of the passages of Scripture cited).  The practical theology operative here involved denying aspects of the biblical witness to God in order to remake him in more amenable image.  A God totally without wrath - certainly not the God of the Bible.

Along with this, the assumption that what God really wants for us is that we should just be ourselves.  That we are all accepted just the way we are.  I suppose that follows.

A lot of the theological approach involves downplaying the idea of doctrine or of the faith as a deposit of revelation to be received.  Kallistos Ware appears as a catalyst to Beeching's developing feeling that the life of faith is not about knowing, but about pressing further into mystery (96).  This sort of mysticism allows for a sense that we're all on a journey, and that greater knowledge of God lies in the future, not in any past revelation.

That is significant for the apologetic, which has three main prongs.  The first is that the church has historically supported ethically bad things, and has only been dragged out of its moral morass by a few principled crusaders. (This is, I think, the thrust of chapters 9 through 11).  Beeching presents this as a pattern: the church always wrong, with the exception of a few progressives.  It is, of course, the standard story of liberal society (based on and derived from the liberal Christianity of the 19th century).  It won't stand up to historical scrutiny, but it doesn't need to: just the impression that those who remain orthodox on sexuality are on the wrong side of history is enough.

The second prong is to make people aware that there are scholars who read the Bible differently.  I've written about this (in a slightly sarcastic tone...) before.  If it can be shown that someone somewhere, ideally an 'expert', holds a different interpretation, that is enough to throw off the shackles of orthodoxy (see, for example, 86-7).  It is worth noting again that one need not actually decide that the alternative interpretation is the most natural one; that it exists is enough.  In the memoir, it is striking that it is not finally reading liberal approaches to the Bible's teaching on sexuality that brings the breakthrough, but a highly subjective sense of God speaking through Acts 10 whilst sitting in the Brompton Oratory.  The different interpretations just serve to prise one's fingers slightly from orthodoxy.

The third prong is the apologetic of harm.  So much of the book is devoted to showing that the church's teaching on sexuality harms people.  This is powerful, because doing no harm is basically the only value left in our society.  If something makes people unhappy, causes them hurt - then it is morally bad.  I'd want to say three things to that: firstly, that it isn't true - there are other values which also have to be considered; second, that the church clearly has harmed people (not least Vicky Beeching), and we need to both grieve for that and seek to be better; and third. that I do not believe it is orthodox teaching on sexuality which has done the harm but certain caricatures of it coupled to a shame culture.

This has become very long, so briefly a concluding thought.  The saddest thing for me throughout this memoir is that I'm not convinced Vicky Beeching has ever really understood, or at least appropriated, God's grace.  She characterises herself as a perfectionist, desperately aware of her flaws (50), and gives the impression that she's always felt anxious about letting people, and God, down.  She admits having an obsessive need to be theologically right about everything (94).  When she finally sat down in the Brompton Oratory and felt God change her perspective through her reading of Acts 10, "It was hard... to accept a new perspective.  I was offended at the idea of losing the badge of righteousness I had earned by holding to traditional Christian views."  (171)

The impression here is of someone sadly trapped in legalism.  And with that in mind, I can't read this as a story of liberation.  How I would have loved it to have been the story of how that need to establish one's own righteousness was vanquished through the acceptance of God's righteousness freely bestowed!  But there isn't that: just the realisation that she's been righteous all along, because righteousness means self-acceptance.  Maybe I'm wrong.  But that's how it reads to me.

Look, you should read it.  It's important.  I think the conclusions to which Vicky Beeching has been driven are incorrect.  I think there are better ways of reading the Bible, and better ways for all of us to face up to our sexuality in the light of the gospel.  But here is the challenge of a revisionist reading wearing a real human face, the face of someone you instinctively want to like.  Read it, because other people will.  Read it, because painful as it is, it will do you good to think and pray this stuff through properly.

Division, faith, ethics

One of the more unfortunate responses to the Nashville Statement (of which, to be clear, I am not a fan, despite being broadly in agreement with its ethical positions) is to complain that this statement is divisive.  You can find the complaint here, for example, on a blog which I have on other ocassions found useful and encouraging.  It's unfortunate because of two things: firstly, it complains that the statement does exactly what it aims to do; and secondly, it implicitly claims that division is always bad.  The second claim is obviously the important one, and it doesn't work.  The NT is full of commands to divide from people - off the top of my head, one might consider 1 Corinthians 5, or 2 Thessalonians 3:6.  These two references are particularly pertinent, as they don't command division from people who take erroneous doctrinal stances, but from people who persist in ethically forbidden behaviour.

That helps with countering a particular form of the 'division is bad' argument, which makes it an issue of whether we believe in justification by faith.  In the same post I linked earlier, you will find essentially this argument: if you divide from anyone over anything other than faith in Christ, you are saying that justification requires faith in Christ and this other thing, in this case a particular take on sexual ethics.  And therefore you are denying the heart of the gospel.

It's worth picking over the logic.  The idea is that if I divide from someone else who professes faith in Christ, then I am claiming that this person is not a Christian, and therefore I am saying, or at least implying, that I think they're not justified.  Therefore I am making justification depend on faith in Christ and right doctrine or behaviour, and this will not do.

Let me counter some of that.  Firstly, it is worth noting that the NT is clear that certain kinds of behaviour rule out inheriting the Kingdom of God, regardless of the faith you profess - see Galatians 5:19-21 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.  Without getting into the detail of how that works, it seems clear that if your understanding of justification sola fide makes these verses untenable, your understanding is wrong.  Secondly, division from another person who professes faith in Christ ought not to be understood as a final judgement on them as to their justification - by what power or right could we possible pass such a judgement?  It is more like a warning shot.  It says 'friend, we consider your doctrine or behaviour to be such that we cannot regard you as a true Christian; and therefore we call you to consider whether you are in the right with God, and to repent'.  That is a severe thing to say, but it could be a mercy if it brings repentance!

Thirdly, in the final analysis, this is just a rehash of the Counter-Reformation calumnies against justification by faith alone, but given a perversely positive spin.  The Counter-Ref claimed that Protestants taught that so long as you believed in Jesus you could behave as you liked - there was no motive for ethical living, because your faith would guarantee you salvation regardless of what you did.  Of course, the Roman apologists of this era were appalled at such a suggestion.  Now, though, it is expressed as if this were a positive thing: we can all just disagree about sexual ethics, because it doesn't really matter what you do, so long as you believe in Christ!  But this is a desperate caricature of the beautiful doctrine of justification by faith alone.  If you think that justification by faith alone means 'trust in Christ and it doesn't matter how you live', then you have missed the point.  The person who is justified by faith in Christ is given a heart to obey Christ.  The person who does not obey Christ does not love Christ, does not trust Christ.  This is all in the New Testament, front and centre.  You can deny the gospel by your behaviour, as well as by your doctrine.

I hope the Nashville Statement disappears soon.  I don't think it's fit for purpose.  It lacks theological rigour and gospel tone.  But there is a serious need for division in the church.  If we take the NT warnings about ethics and the Kingdom seriously - read again some of the verses I've linked above! - the least loving thing we can do is to try to fudge the issue.  Eternal life is at stake. We must be clear.

Prolegomena to any future statements

It may have escaped your attention that a group of evangelical Christians has published a statement on the subject of sexual ethics.  Now, a number of the signatories are people I deeply respect, and the actual ethical positions taken are ones with which I am in broad (but not total) agreement.  So I'm not knocking the statement, per se.  But here's how I wish it had started, and how I wish any future statements on ethical issues from evangelical Christians might begin.  And if it sounds a bit antiquated, a bit theological, not directly relevant to the ethical questions asked: well, so much the better.  I've just written the intro and the first article.

Preamble

That the Church in the West is faced with a particular crisis today is undeniable.  The outer nature of this crisis is the unique result of the Church's ongoing encounter with post-Christian society, with the inevitable shattering of the consensus worldview and ethics of Christendom.  It is essential that the Church pay attention to the unique features of this situation, for she is called to speak a word in season, to address men and women as they are and where they are.  The Church can hardly take too seriously the unique situation in which she finds herself.

However, the inner nature of the crisis is the one pressing question which is put to the Church in every age, not by the surrounding world, but by the Church's Lord.  This is the question of whether she will hear, believe, and obey the Word of God.  That there are particular pressures today inclining her to be deaf to this Word; that there are unique circumstances today making it difficult for her to seriously believe what she hears; that the path of obedience is today strewn with obstacles which she has not previously faced - all these things are undeniably true, but must not be allowed to conceal the most important question.  Will the Church today hear, believe, and obey the Word of God?

Article 1

We believe that the Church of Jesus Christ lives by faith in the Word of God, which Word is Jesus Christ himself as he is held out to us in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

a.  We believe that the Word of God in Holy Scripture calls us to confident faith in the accomplished work of God in Jesus Christ.  We tremble before the revelation of God's holy love at the cross of Christ, love which embraces all of sinful humanity and yet purges from sin.  We rejoice in the promise of eternal life given to us in the empty tomb of Jesus Christ, receiving this promise by faith as our only hope in life and death.  We gladly receive by faith the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, daring to call on the holy God as our Father because of the completed work of his only-begotten Son.

b.  We believe that the Word of God in Holy Scripture calls us to faithful obedience to the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ, who rules by his word and Spirit.  We acknowledge that the love of God in Christ does not leave us unchanged, but calls us into the perfect freedom of his service.  We acknowledge Holy Scripture as the sceptre of Christ the King, by which he commands his people and orders his Church.  We prayerfully depend on the presence of the Holy Spirit of Christ in the Church and in the hearts of his people, looking to him to give the will and power to follow where Christ our Lord leads.

c.  We confess with sorrow that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, have not lived by faith in the Word of God, but have sought to establish our own righteousness.  We confess with sorrow that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, have not obeyed the commands of Christ.  We confess with sorrow that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, have failed to present the promise of eternal life to the world.  We confess with sorrow that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, have failed to show the goodness of Christ in his commandments.  For all our wilful failings and accidental sins, we pray: Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.

d.  We deny that the Church of Christ can live otherwise than by the Word of God.  We deny that the Church of Christ must heed other voices than the voice of Christ as it is heard in Holy Scripture.  We deny that the Church of Christ must change its faith or its obedience in response to any other voice, whether from within or without.  We deny that the Church of Christ must recognise changes in wider culture as the voice of her Lord.  We deny that the Church of Christ can separate faith in the promise of the Word from faithful obedience to the command of the Word.  We deny that the lamentable failings of the Church invalidate the message of the Lord,who is merciful beyond our ability to comprehend.

e.  We call all those who put their faith in Christ to join with us in seeking his will, by prayerful attention and holy submission to Holy Scripture.  We ask the watching world to believe that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, must believe and act in obedience to our Lord.  We pledge ourselves to reform our faith, our teaching, our community life, and our actions in conformity with the Word of God as we hear it in Holy Scripture, and we ask anyone who sees error in our life or faith to bring witness against us from Holy Scripture.

Why argue about sex?

This is a post for people who don't understand why Christians are always arguing about sexuality.  To be honest, we're not always arguing about it - I devote a fairly small amount of my time to arguing in general, only a small chunk of that to arguing with other Christians, and a relatively ickle proportion of that arguing about sexuality - but it does get reported a lot, and not just in the fake news.  I want to explain to people who don't know Christianity from the inside why it is that we Christians are having an argument over something that most people think is a matter entirely for individual consciences, where it isn't so blindingly obvious that anyone ought to see it.  I'm not going to particularly argue for a position.  This is just an introduction to why we feel the need to take up a position in the first place.  It may be patronising, in which case my apologies.  It's just some stuff that to me seems to get missed in the translation of inter-Christian arguments into the secular press.

So here goes.

First thing to note is that Christians believe that everything has meaning.  This is based on the notion that ultimate reality is personal (God), and that every part of contingent reality (i.e. everything else) stands in some sort of relationship to that ultimate reality, and that relationship defines what this particular part of contingent reality is all about.  This is very different from a view of reality as ultimately meaningless.  Meaningless is what everything ultimately is if, at bottom, there is no personality.  There are two ways of thinking about an ultimately meaningless reality - the optimistic way and the pessimistic way.  If you take the optimistic route, you will think that the ultimately meaningless reality is like a blank canvas, onto which we can project whatever meanings we like; we are meaning makers.  If you go down the pessimistic road, well, meaningless is meaningless.  Perhaps the best we can do is live with some sort of authenticity, but even that is, at the end of the day, without meaning.  We are lost, accidentally endowed with a desire for meaning and incapable of genuinely finding or making anyway.

If everything is ultimately meaningless, whether you are optimistic or pessimistic about our ability to make some sort of meaning within that, it is obviously a waste of time to argue about what things mean.  Either it's like arguing about which flavour of ice cream is best - it's clearly a personal choice - or it's like arguing about whether cheese is snurg - it's total nonsense.  But if reality is at bottom personal, and if contingent reality therefore has meaning, it may be possible to find meaning in each part of contingent reality - by which I don't mean some variation on the optimistic view above, where I project meaning into something, but something more like digging for gold: there might actually be meaning in there, and I might find it.  And in that case we can have a genuine conversation about what it is that we've found: we could argue about what something means, and it wouldn't be obviously nonsense.

Second thing is that Christians believe in revelation.  In the Christian context, that means one particular thing (and lots of other things which depend in one way or another on that one thing).  It means that we believe that the ultimate reality - the personality at the bottom of it all, by relationship to whom the meaning of everything else is defined - this ultimate reality has appeared within contingent reality.  This has a pretty substantial effect on the quest for meaning.  If it's true that the meaning of contingent reality comes from its relationship to ultimate reality - well, that might mean that everything has meaning, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that we could discover what that meaning was.  In fact, it seems unlikely that we would discover it.  The sort of ultimate reality we're talking about it transcendent, which is to say that although it undergirds all of contingent reality, it does not appear in the way that contingent reality does.  If you catalogued everything in the universe, ultimate reality wouldn't appear in the catalogue, because it is what stands behind and beneath everything else.

But the claim is that ultimate reality has appeared in the midst of contingent reality, and in fact has appeared as contingent reality in some sense.  Of course, what Christians are referring to is the incarnation, the idea that the God who stands behind everything became a human being - became the Jewish carpenter and itinerant preacher Jesus of Nazareth - and lived and died in our world, in our history, at a point on a normal map that I could point to right now.  If that is true - and that of course is a huge if  - then the story of Jesus of Nazareth is the centre point around which everything else revolves.  If everything in contingent reality derives its meaning from its relationship to ultimate reality, and if ultimate reality is revealed in the life story of Jesus of Nazareth, then the meaning of everything in contingent reality can be seen in its relation to this life story.  That is a great big claim, but for the Christian it means that the question of what everything means is not a vague philosophical one, but a concrete and yet very personal question about what this particular chunk of contingent reality has to do with Jesus.  That is something about which we could argue, you see, because there is an answer, and the answer is not in principle hidden away.

Thirdly and finally, what does this have to do with sexuality?  Well, in the general sense, obviously human sexuality is an aspect of contingent reality, and so we can ask what it means, and we can try to work out the connection between it and the life of Jesus, just as we can for every single 'thing' in the universe.  But there is something more specific than that.  We've already said that the Christian thinks that reality is ultimately personal, and indeed relational.  That makes human beings uniquely important - apart from angels and demons (which are a complex part of the Christian view of the world) we are as far as we know the only contingent personalities in existence.  And it makes the relational aspect of human beings particularly significant.  We could view the fact that ultimate reality became human in Jesus as the confirmation of this particular importance and significance.  But sexuality lies very near to the heart of who we are as relational persons.  Which should lead us to expect that when we are talking about sexuality, we are talking about something that is absolutely charged with meaning.

That is what we are arguing about, and that is why the arguments are heated.  For Christians, sexuality has meaning, and its meaning stands in close relation to ultimate meaning.  The Bible - which for Christians is the first and authoritative record of God's communication to the world, and therefore the means of his communication to the world in the present - suggests that human marriage, particularly in its sexual component, is a picture of the ultimate story of reality; the story of God's coming into the world in Jesus to unite humanity to himself in loving relationship.  So the nature of our understanding of sexuality is closely related to our understanding of God.  There is meaning, really important meaning, in there.  So we discuss it.

There's rather more to say than that, and of course I take a definite view of where the discussions (or perhaps better, arguments) ought to end up.  But I hope that helps to explain why we're having the discussion in the first place.

After the Shared Conversations

It may not have escaped your notice that the Church of England has been holding what it has called Shared Conversations about human sexuality, and particularly same-sex marriage, over the last couple of years.  Of course, it may have escaped your notice, and that's fine too.  The report of the bishops commissioned to close the process has now been published, and it essentially represents two things: a maintenance of the doctrinal status quo, alongside an attempt to create a more open and welcoming atmosphere for people who identify as gay or lesbian.

Commendable goals, in my view.

And yet I have a big problem with this report, and it goes beyond the immediate issue and to the heart (I think) of Anglican polity.  There is a lot of talk in the report about disagreeing well, and about seeking to maintain unity, and it all sounds jolly noble (and no doubt actually is noble, at least in intention).  But there is not a lot of 'thus says the Lord'.  And that really matters.  Because if we cannot preface what we have to say on this issue - and so many others - with a Dominus dixit, do we have any right to call people to listen?  In short, what authority do the bishops of the Church of England, or indeed anybody else, have to regulate people's sexual conduct?

For as long as the impression given is simply that it's best for the unity of the church if we don't accept gay marriage, or that there just isn't the appetite for change at the moment, or any number of more or less sincere and more or less pertinent and powerful reasons to maintain the status quo, Christians in favour of gay marriage will be appalled, because it is appalling to lay burdens and laws that come so close to the heart of people's own existence and identity for any of those reasons.  It is only if we can say with authority that this is God's law - flowing from his gospel - that we can make any such pronouncement.  Because it's only the law that comes from the gospel that brings freedom.

So, anyway, I guess I'm not an Anglican.  But we probably all knew that already.

Adultery

Tim preached us an excellent and powerful sermon from Proverbs 5 this past Sunday at Cowley Church Community.  Applying the chapter broadly, he addressed the 'pornification' of contemporary culture - something which I see the BBC is just waking up to.  It's important stuff, and it's important that we face up to it as churches and families.

This morning I started work on Proverbs 6, and of course that chapter too ends in a discussion of the dangers of adultery.  And it's there again in chapter 7.  Why this heavy emphasis?

I think the answer has something to do with the way wisdom is presented in Proverbs, and something to do with the whole Bible story.  In terms of the portrayal of wisdom in Proverbs, the fact that she is personified in chapter 8 giving a directly contrary appeal to the loose woman of chapter 7 is indicative.  The adulteress represents folly, the life lived without wisdom and without reference to the God of wisdom.  But why?  Well, wisdom is often represented in the early chapters of Proverbs as faithfulness to the received teaching.  I give you good teaching, says the father - don't forsake it!  Don't forget it!  Wisdom is being faithful to the wise teaching handed down, and not flirting with new ideas.  (This is not reactionary; it is about the father handing down the covenant testimonies of God, not just the received wisdom of the ages).  Adultery is the sexual counterpart of folly, forsaking what is good and what is yours for something else that is both forbidden and harmful.

And in the big story of the Bible, isn't that what's always going on?  Adam is unfaithful to God; humanity forgets God; Israel deserts God.  Adultery, adultery, adultery.  Hence the appeal of the apostle Paul - I betrothed you to Christ, to be spotless for him!  Don't desert him!

In a culture where adultery, and sexual immorality more widely, are rampant, we need to realise that behind the scenes this is not because of sexual liberation of any kind.  It is because we have betrayed our God, and been unfaithful to him.  Unfaithfulness breeds unfaithfulness.

Liberalism is about disagreeing

Poor old Tim Farron.  A couple of days into his new job, and already he is under attack for holding orthodox Christian beliefs.  Specifically, he is accused of holding illiberal views on homosexuality, something which is deemed ironic for a leader of the Liberal Democrats.

But this is what liberalism is all about.  Tim Farron has his Christian faith, and appears in general to accept the ethical conclusions that flow from that.  It is fair enough to ask whether you want someone with those convictions representing you, but before anyone leaps to conclusions it is worth asking 'what does Tim Farron do next?'  Does he try to legislate his convictions?  Does he advocate that anyone who disagrees with him should be pilloried and driven from public life?

No, he doesn't.  Because he is a liberal, and liberalism is about what happens when you disagree.  It is about working out what the common good looks like when we don't have a common worldview.  As such, it seems to me that it will be an increasingly important part of our political landscape going forward.  And Tim Farron, as someone who holds a minority worldview, could be well placed to revive liberalism's fortunes after the crash at the end of the coalition.

As an aside, I think personally this is very difficult.  I flinch when I read Farron quoted as saying 'this is my private faith' - really?  It is your private faith that Jesus is Lord of all the universe and all people in it?  But then, I don't know how exactly I would tackle this.  I'd like to see the interface between Christianity and liberalism worked through a bit more, but then that was hardly likely in the Guardian...

Those who are accusing Tim Farron of illiberalism should show where in his behaviour he has been illiberal; instead they have simply decided that anyone who doesn't agree with the majority opinion on sexuality or faith is inherently anti-liberal.  So there's the real irony: there is nothing more illiberal than insisting that a particular set of views, particularly minority views, is beyond the pale in public life, and yet this is being done in the name of liberalism.

Aiding and Abetting

Today I've been thinking about the Homoiousians.  I imagine you think about them from time to time as well, but just in case they've not been at the forefront of your mind recently, let me remind you who they were.  The Homoiousians were the moderate party in the fourth century debates about the person of Christ.  They positioned themselves between the Homoousians on the one hand (note the lack of 'i' - homo rather than homoi) and the Arians on the other.  To boil it right down, whilst the Homoousians said that God the Son was of one being with the Father, and the Arians said that God the Son was unlike the Father, the Homoiousians said that the Son was similar to or like the Father in his essence and attributes.

As we all know (right?), the Homoousians ultimately won the day; the Gospel story required the relationship between Father and Son which they championed.  Arianism has been denounced as heresy by all branches of the Christian church.

But my thinking today has not really about the Trinitarian and Christological controversies of yesteryear.  Rather I've been thinking about the role played by the 'moderates', the Homoiousians, in all this debate.  They were a varied bunch.  Some were very slippery characters; they had Arian sympathies, but lacked the courage of their convictions.  Others were simply concerned for the unity of the church; they wanted to try to acommodate the views of as many as possible (whilst ruling out the extremes of Arianism).  Others just felt that it wasn't as important as everyone was making out; they just wanted to preach the gospel without getting mixed up in this abstract argument.

History has not judged their efforts kindly, nor should it.  Whatever the motives, good or bad, the attempt to moderate and compromise and hold people together led to the Homoiousians advocating, or at least tolerating, heretical doctrine.  They did not, in the final analysis, speak the truth about God.  Had they been allowed to triumph, the Gospel would have disappeared.  In the end, whatever they hoped to achieve, they were in fact aiding and abetting the enemy.

I've been thinking about Homoiousians as I reflect on the role some people I respect very much are playing in the big debates in the church today - especially around gender and sexuality.  I worry that in trying to be gentle, kind, moderate...  they're running the danger of being on the wrong side.  When it comes down to it, on this and all issues, we have to listen and speak.  If God said nothing on the subject, we'd jolly well better shut up.  But if he spoke, we'd better hear what he says and articulate it clearly.  No messing around.  No fudging, no hedging, no softening the edges.  Rather, gentleness with clarity.

Ethics

I'm currently reading and loving Bonhoeffer's Ethics  Some obvious references to National Socialism aside, it seems to me that it could have been written in the 21st century.  Certainly, I keep coming across passages that strike me as astonishingly relevant.

One of the things I am loving about Bonhoeffer's approach is that he refuses to moralise about the world without bringing the church into the closest solidarity with the world.  It is not an ethics that points to the flaws that stand outside the people of God; at least, not without recognising that the church bears responsibility for those very flaws.  Hence there is a long passage of confession of sin, from the church's perspective.  The paragraph on sexual ethics particularly struck me:

"The church confesses that it has not found any guiding or helpful word to say in the midst of the dissolution of all order in the relationships of the sexes to each other.  It has found no strong or authentic message to set against the disdain for chastity and the proclamation of sexual licentiousness.  Beyond the occasional expression of moral indignation it has had nothing to say.  The church has become guilty, therefore, of the loss of purity and wholesomeness among youth,  It has not known how to proclaim strongly that our bodies are members of the body of Christ."

Tell me that couldn't have been written yesterday.  How have we still not found any guiding or helpful word - any strong or authentic message - to speak into the mess that is 21st century sexual ethics (or lack thereof) in the West?  What are we to do about it?

One thing we must not do (or perhaps, one thing that we must stop doing) is become fanatics,

"Fanatics believe that they can face the power of evil with the purity of their will and their principles.  But the essence of fanaticism is that it loses sight of the whole evil, and like a bull that charges the red cape instead of the man holding it, fanatics finally tire and suffer defeat" (my emphasis).

Every time we chase down the particular red cape issues of sexual ethics - most recently, for example, gay marriage - we risk missing the whole evil: we miss noticing that our culture stands estranged from God and fallen away from Christ.  Nothing, to my mind, captures the efforts of evangelical Christians to engage with ethical issues in wider society quite so well as the image of the bull charging here and there, always targeting the cape and never the man who stands behind it.  Always hitting the issues, and never The Issue.

It seems to me that the road to real ethical engagement with society is a road that must begin with our own confession of guilt, and not only ours but that of our society - because their guilt belongs to us as those who did not speak a strong message, the message of Christ.  This is a burden, but not an unbearable one, because guilt confessed is judged and borne away in Christ - and in Christ there is new life to be had and shared and proclaimed.

Marriage, etc.

Those who move in Christian circles can hardly fail to have become aware of the Coalition for Marriage, a pressure group seeking to prevent the government from giving legal sanction to homosexual marriages.  I imagine even if you don't move in such circles, you will have heard rumblings in the media.  I have to say, I find the Coalition off-putting.  It is partly the slightly shrill tone with which they pronounce their warnings, and partly it is the sorts of arguments they use - the argument from tradition, the slippery slope argument (and I quote: "If marriage is redefined once, what is to stop it being redefined to allow polygamy?"), and the 'rest of us' argument ("Same sex couples may choose to have a civil partnership but no-one has the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us").  These are not good arguments.  But the whole thing has got me thinking more about what I think.

Firstly, I don't think government or anyone else can define or re-define marriage.  Human sexuality is not something which is given to us to define.  It takes its definition from creation, and ultimately from the gospel.  I do not uphold 'traditional' sexuality or morality, or 'traditional' definitions of marriage, but I will hold to gospel definitions.  The Biblical witness makes it plain that marriage derives its existence and its meaning from the union of Christ with his Church; moreover, it is clear to me, on the basis of this witness that only lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage devoted to Christ's service or celibacy devoted to Christ's service adequately point to this spiritual union of Christ and Church - the former as a picture of what the union is like, the latter as a symbol of the over-riding importance of the union.  That is where my definition of marriage comes from.

Secondly, because this definition is rooted in the gospel, I do not and cannot expect people who do not believe the gospel to accept it.  I don't think it is wise for Christians to fall back on arguments from sociology or tradition in order to support their view of marriage, which if it is of value at all is derived not from tradition or sociology but from Christ.  That will make it harder for us to make the public case, but then I wonder whether that is my job as a disciple.  Is there any way to make the case for marriage other than preaching the gospel of Christ?

Thirdly, I find myself looking to draw a line between issues where I can believe a thing to be wrong, but not want to legislate, and issues where I think we must campaign for legislation.  For example, I think it is desperately wrong, hugely damaging, and ultimately leading to hellfire to blaspheme.  I do not think, however, that anyone should legislate against blasphemy (and such antiquated laws as remain should be repealed).  On the other hand, abortion - I think we should do everything possible to make this illegal in almost all situations.  The difference is that if I campaign for legislation against blasphemy, I am really only campaigning for my right to live in unoffended, unchallenged comfort; whereas if I campaign against abortion, I am campaigning for the right of another human being to live.  Where does the marriage campaign fall?  Do I think the government's plan are ill-advised, ungodly, and ultimately a reflection of sin rampant in our society? Sure I do.  But is it the sort of thing that we ought to be campaigning against, or the sort of thing that should prompt us to preach Christ and his grace, and to pray much more?  I think I incline toward the latter, although the issue is certainly complex.

Fourthly, I think we Christians need to be ready to suffer on this front, and we need to be ready to do it well.  The race analogy keeps cropping up - saying that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry is like saying that black people shouldn't be allowed to ride in the front of the bus.  As a Christian, I can't accept the analogy; Biblical anthropology stands against it.  But I can understand where it comes from, and it has a certain rational (and a great emotional) force.  We will be hated for what we say, or at least what we say will be hated.  How we react will matter.  Here is a question: what rights of gay people and couples could we stick up for?  How could we try to bless people whose lifestyles and choices we reject?

Fifthly, we are equipped with three ultimate weapons which will make a difference in this situation, and they are all prayers: agnus dei, kyrie eleison, and maranatha!

Who are you?

If you start your investigation of human nature with Jesus - if Christology is at the centre of your anthropology - the possibility is raised that you do not know yourself.  You may have to be told who you are.  It may be that none of us knows inherently, or is able to deduce from our own behaviour or that of others, what it means to be human.  That raises all kinds of issues.

One issue that has been floating around recently, mainly because of the case of Mr and Mrs Johns, is the attitude of Christians to homosexuality.  Now, up front, I want to acknowledge that this is a hugely complex and, for many, painful issue.  I also want to acknowledge that Christians don't all agree on this topic.  But I have to say that as I read Scripture, and as I try to think theologically about what the gospel implies for humanity, I arrive at the conclusion that an active homosexual lifestyle is not compatible with the Christian message.  I don't want to overplay that, and I also don't want to make out that this is a big part of my belief - it is not.  (In fact, although from the news you would get the impression that evangelical Christians basically talk about this all the time, and also that they are raging homophobes, my experience has been that the topic comes up rarely, and when it does is tackled with pastoral sensitivity.  I know that hasn't been everyone's experience.)  Still, however peripheral this belief is - however much I may consider it to be basically an implication of an implication of the gospel, something which stands at considerable remove from the heart of the faith - nevertheless I am obliged to hold it.

And here's the point.  This position comes in for criticism so often in the news, and raises such outrage amongst our contemporaries, because it challenges our notion of what it means to be human.  Christians are saying something which is, despite all my disclaimers above, huge in what it means for human nature.  Everybody knows that Christians want to tell people how humanity ought to be - it is part of the Christian message to say that we are not what we should be, and that we must be changed.  This is, naturally, offensive to people.  But I think we are actually saying something more offensive than that - we are saying that you are not who you think you are.  Imagine if a Christian said this: 'if this lifestyle is incompatible with the gospel, it is not human'.  Offensive!  But that is implicitly what we are saying.

Of course, we are saying it to everyone, not just those who practice a certain lifestyle, and not just those outside the church.  Still, sexuality is a point at which it is particularly painful, because it is so close to the heart of an individual's identity.  The Christian message threatens to take their identity away, by telling them they are not really who they think they are at all.  What insecurity this threatens!  And what offence!

The flip-side is that if the gospel is true, then I am told who I really am, and can relax.  I have no need to forge my own identity, assert my own individuality, or even wrestle with my own inner contradictions to quite the same extent.  Who I am is decided elsewhere, and I am in a sense graciously given to myself to enjoy.