Homosexuality and Catholicity, Part 1: Unity and Purity

After the presentation of the nine (or eight) theses given in the previous post, I received an email from one of the participants, which voiced concern about sacrificing righteousness for the sake of unity. This gave me the opportunity to clarify my thoughts in a lengthy response, which I shall post here in two segments. Here's the first, much longer section:

First of all, then, I think you are mischaracterizing my position when you speak of it as a willingness to sacrifice righteousness for the sake of unity. In fact, I think it is deeply problematic to articulate the problem in these terms. I do not think we should set up two poles, righteousness and unity, and play them off against each other in a kind of zero-sum game. Properly understood, neither is possible without the other. Our unity in Christ through one table, one Spirit, one baptism, is the only possible basis for righteousness--a house divided against itself cannot stand. Only as we are nourished by the common life of the body of Christ are we enabled to pursue righteousness and purity, to grow up into maturity, into the fullness of Christ. A purity of individuals or sects that holds aloof from the common table of the Body is no true purity. Likewise, unity that is not founded upon Christ’s gift of justification and sanctification to his people, which does not unite us in a common commitment to and pursuit of holiness, is not Christian unity; at best it is cooperation and compromise, which, while occasionally valuable in their proper place, cannot be the foundation of the Christian Church.

But of course, things are more complicated than this, because both unity and purity exist in the tension of the already/not yet. We certainly know this to be the case with purity. We have all been washed, we have all been sanctified, the whole Church bears Christ’s name and is robed in His righteousness. And yet, we wear the robe badly, and our own soiled garments underneath often peek through, so we must constantly strive to cleanse ourselves and one another. As we seek to grow in purity, however, we must remember that what counts above all is the commitment to strive; we are all riddled with sin in our various ways, and so the presence of actual sin in our midst, while it must never go unconfronted, is an inevitable feature of our pilgrimage. Likewise, we are not called upon to create unity--we already are one in Christ--all who have been baptized in his name, who listen to his word and eat around His table. Unity is a starting point, not a destination. And yet, of course, we cannot rest secure in this; just as we are simul justus et peccator, we are simul unus et divisus. We must patiently strive to overcome these divisions in love, and sometimes, when they are severe enough, they may be beyond our ability to overcome, but never God’s. When our efforts fail, we await God’s action to restore the alienated party to oneness of mind or else, perhaps to cut it off and kill it for the life of the body. But we must remember that this latter, fearful act of judgment is ultimately God’s, not ours; even when excommunication is pronounced, it is not so much a putting of someone outside the fellowship of the body, as a recognition that they have already put themselves outside and must therefore be called to repentance.

Probably you agree with all this, but my point is simply to say that I do not want us to act as if we find ourselves standing on some neutral ground and weighing before us two alternatives--righteousness and unity. Rather, we find ourselves already in unity, and called to maintain it and pursue it, while also growing in righteousness, a task that requires naming and rebuking the sins in our midst--something that is part of the task of unity, rather than opposed to it. Ephesians 4 and 5 seem to me to be a wonderful statement of this simultaneous reality of and call toward unity and purity in the Church. Paul demands both, and the key for achieving this is love (4:2, 16).

-------
So my concern is to discern what forms this pursuit of righteousness takes within a body that is inescapably unified.

Before going on, I should flesh out what seems to me an implication of us being “inescapably unified”:
“If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (1 Cor. 12:26)
That is to say, at one level, we do not have a choice as to whether to be “contaminated” by a particular sin in the Body--we already are. If certain branches of the Church are practicing or condoning serious sin, then the whole Church suffers, and the whole Church, in a sense, bears responsibility. This notion of corporate responsibility is clear in the Bible, as in your example of Israel in the wilderness, where the whole is often held responsible for the sins of the many. We can learn from the example of great Old Testament leaders like Nehemiah and Daniel, who both pray to God confessing the sins of Israel--sins which are not theirs (see Neh. 1, Dan. 9). They recognized that the whole people of God bore responsibility for the sins of the people, even those who had not personally taken part. So, I think it is first of all important that conservative Christians acknowledge our “participation” in the sins of more liberal churches, a participation that exists whether or not we remain in outward fellowship with them. This is of course not to say that “Oh, we’re all tainted already, we might as well sin boldly now.” Obviously, we can always fall more deeply into sin, and a concern to avoid being led astray may require an attenuated fellowship with serious sinners; but we should be under no illusions that we can purify ourselves of all stain by picking and choosing our brothers in Christ.

Mere fellowship with a sinner, then, does not constitute sin. Dishonest fellowship--fellowship which tries to ignore sin--does constitute sin. If I believe a fellow Christian is in serious sin, then I must (prudently, patiently, and charitably, to be sure, but firmly) let him know that I think so, but then I can, and indeed must, continue to fellowship with him as long as he is willing to let me. If he is hardened in his sin and wants nothing of my advice, our communion will likely be severed, despite my continuing attempts to reach out to him. But if he is willing to listen to me, even though he may disagree and is convinced that his actions are defensible, then I should remain in fellowship with him, and indeed, attempt to discern whether I cannot learn something from him, while still maintaining an uncompromising opposition to what I see to be sinful.

With the current chaos about homosexuality in the Church, I certainly do not want to call on Christians to put their hands over their mouths, look the other way, and pretend like nothing is wrong. That would be sacrificing righteousness for the sake of unity. By all means, we must maintain a faithful and fearless witness to the truth (though, I would add, whenever possible we must do this in charity and patience, with particular concern for the well-intentioned weaker brother, rather than unnecessarily alienating and dividing by fire-and-brimstone rhetoric). But this action, this standing up for righteousness, is not an action against unity, but is rather a call to unity in Christ in the midst of a house divided. Why then should this stand be an act of division? “Divisions will come, but woe to the one through whom they come,” as O’Donovan says. If an individual, or a church, or even a denomination, makes a stand for righteousness, then, no matter how charitably they do it, divisions will come. But let the unrighteous be the ones who break fellowship, not the righteous. Why not say, “This is Christ’s Church, and we are worshipping Christ, so by golly, we’re not going anywhere unless you throw us out!” This, it seems to me, is the general pattern of how the faithful in Israel resisted the widespread unfaithfulness of the people of God in the Old Covenant, and in the New Covenant, we are summoned to even greater charity, patience, and faith that God will defend his Church.

Now, though I feel strongly about this, perhaps there are cases where a separation is necessary. But is homosexuality really that point? I do not want to minimize the sin, but certainly, there are worse ones--blasphemy and idolatrous worship being near the top of the list.

When talking about the practice and condoning of homosexuality, it seems to me that we have to be careful about discerning two different phenomena. One is the product of a deep-seated rejection of the Bible’s authority and rebellion against God, which may manifest itself in a high-handed contempt for God’s word or else in a hypocrisy hidden underneath a veneer of piety and faith. This kind of sin is utterly destructive, and must be resisted fiercely (though still with the aim of bringing the erring brother or leader to repentance). This, I take it, is the sort of sin that Paul warns against in 2 Tim. 3 and Ephesians 5 (Titus 3, the other passage you cited, seems to be a warning not so much against the impure, as the divisive, and so would support my concerns more than yours, though, as I have been arguing, the two cannot be separated). If a Church leader has a person like this in his flock, he must discipline him; if a leader himself is like this, the leaders to whom he is accountable have the responsibility to remove him. If proper disciplinary action is not being taken, then fellow-believers may need to shun the sinner, even while still holding the promise of fellowship if repentance occurs.

Then there is the Christian who practices or condones homosexuality while genuinely desiring to serve God and build up the Church. These exist--I have met them. And it should be no surprise to us that they exist, because within our own circles, there are well-intentioned Christian leaders with huge moral blind spots (e.g., I would suggest about war and greed--more on that below). Now, with folks like this, more patience is necessary--a willingness to work toward common understanding while refusing to compromise on allegiance to Christ and His Word. If this “well-intentioned” sinner is a fellow layman, then patient instruction, dialogue, and occasionally rebuke is in order. If he is a church leader, then for one’s own sake or one’s family’s, it may be prudent to find a different church home, but the leader and his congregation should not be shunned. If you are a leader, in the position to discipline a layman or clergyman sinning in this way, then formal disciplinary action may prove necessary, but should not be your first resort. If we cannot learn to distinguish this latter kind of sinner from the former, and to address him in patience and love, with a willingness to learn and repent of our own errors, then we are not being “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Ep. 4:3)

------
It occurred to me after reading your email that perhaps there is a problem with our readiness to invoke Paul’s exhortations to shunning and excommunication in the current context. There’s two reasons. First of all, my main concern has not been to say, “How should church leaders address the sins, homosexual or otherwise, of those under their authority?” Obviously they should address them, by instructing, rebuking, and if necessary, formal discipline. This is what I would call the vertical dimension. My main concern has been to address the horizontal, and perhaps what we might call the “reverse-vertical” dimensions--that is to say, how does the believer who is not in authority over an erring brother (or the church which is not in authority over an erring sister-church) engage him (horizontal dimension), and how does he engage an erring leader (reverse-vertical dimension)? So, of course the Bishop of Edinburgh ought to do his job and refuse to ordain the homosexual curate; but, given that he didn’t do his job, what’s my job? Do I take it upon myself to “un-ordain” him? Do I still accept that he is a leader in the Church? If not, do I still accept that he is a brother in the Church? How should other churches treat him, and treat the Bishop who ordained him? How should other denominations? These are the questions that are vexing me. This is not a matter of tolerating unrighteousness for the sake of unity, but simply a matter of discerning the appropriate and lawful means to resist unrighteousness. I can strongly believe that a thief should be imprisoned, but that does not mean that I have the right to seize him, convict him, and lock him up in my basement for ten years.

Now, I do not deny that there is a time and a place for “horizontal” or “reverse-vertical” judgment, in which a believer or a congregation must withdraw the right hand of fellowship from those in gross sin, but even in such cases, should we not act with great fear and trembling, and praying that such a break of fellowship may be a very temporary meausure?

Second, however, it seems that even for those leaders responsible to exercise discipline, like Rowan Williams in the Anglican Communion, Paul’s exhortations cannot always be carried over so easily in our setting. For leaders of small house-churches, or even men like Titus or Timothy, who seem to have been responsible for overseeing quite a few churches, discipline is a personal, relational, face-to-face action. Practiced this way, excommunication can be quite effective. However, to lop off a whole branch of the Church, containing thousands of churches and millions of members, both faithful and unfaithful (the sort of action many conservatives are clamoring for today), does not work the same way. Obviously, the sheep must be cared for and protected from wolves, but turning the whole flock loose is not the way to do it. Honestly, I’m not quite sure what exactly is the way to do it, but clearly, it is complicated, and requires great discernment and patience. For this reason, I want us to be less hasty to condemn leaders who are struggling to address the problem.

Eight Theses on Homosexuality and Catholicity

Travelling, groomsmaning, catching up with folks in Moscow, etc., have all gotten in the way of blogging in the past week. But lots of great ideas have still been flying around, especially about (what else?) homosexuality and catholicity. (I'm beginning to feel like that's all I talk about...yikes!) A friend of mine arranged a kind of reunion of old friends to chat theology, and I proposed this question for discussion: How are we to reconcile the demand for catholicity, church unity, patience amist disagreement with the widespread practice and condonement of homosexuality in the Church today? To prompt discussion, I submitted nine theses (of which one proved to be redundant, and so is omitted here):

1. Homosexual activity is a serious sin.
2. Homosexual sensibility and desire is not in itself sinful, though it is disordered.
3. Homosexual activity, like most other sins, can be practiced in well-intentioned ignorance.
4. Homosexuality can be wrongly, but well-intentionedly defended by Christians.
5. We do not contract the “infection” of a homosexual’s sin by fellowshipping with that person, or with an individual or a church who supports them.
6. We do not contract the “infection” of a homosexual’s sin by worshipping at a church supporting them, or even at which they are ministering.
7. The proper way to address homosexuality in the church is patient but firm church discipline, which may require excommunication of those practicing it or, possibly, those condoning it.
8. If the authorized leadership does not practice the discipline that they are obliged to practice, other believers do not receive the right to take disciplinary action into their own hands and unilaterally secede/declare other churches to be non-churches. They are required to rebuke in love, and pray and work for unity of mind and, if necessary, God’s judgment.

The discussion that ensued was excellent and edifying, and most present seemed willing to go most of the way in agreeing with these points. I did, however, receive an email afterward from one participant, registering some strong objections. I will probably post parts of my response to that email over the next couple days.

Wielding a Serrated Edge with Care

Lately, I have found myself thinking a lot more about what Christian charity in debate should look like, and in particular, my encounter with O'Donovan's book on the gay issue has sharpened these thoughts a bit.
For the past few years, I’ve become less and less comfortable with the whole “Serrated Edge” approach to debate-—the idea that we should imitate the Biblical prophets in mocking and railing against those believers who are hypocrites, or are undermining the faith, whomever they may be. Aside from the question of whether or not that style of prophetic condemnations could in principle be normative for the ordinary believer, there is a clear practical objection to our imitating them. We don’t know who’s a hypocrite, and who’s undermining the faith. We may think we have a pretty good idea; in some cases, we may be almost dead certain, but we will always have to face the fact of our limited knowledge and understanding, the fact that it may in fact be ourselves who are the hypocrites. The Biblical prophets (and Jesus, and the Apostles) spoke as specially called emissaries of God, and so could denounce God’s enemies with some confidence and precision. We cannot, and so we’d be much wiser to hold our fire.

I’ve also come to see the dangerous threads of the American hatred of authority in the “Serrated Edge” approach. If you think that anyone can act just like Jesus or Jeremiah, then any old believer or self-ordained minister can take it upon himself to denounce and mock the bishops and God-ordained leaders of the Church, whenever he thinks they’re wrong. Now, there can be Pharisees and Caiphases who need to be called to account, but something seems wrong with this anti-hierarchical free-for-all that the “Serrated Edge” approach advocates.

Anyway, all that to say that I’ve been doing some reflecting on what Christian charity really means for us, particularly in light of my reflections on the gay controversy (see my serial reviews of O’Donovan on this) and I wanted to throw three observations out there.

1) Hearing out the other side
First, being charitable means being willing to respect, listen to, and (in some cases) even submit to others even on the points with which you disagree with them. Now, this really should be quite obvious; after all, how is it any virtue to respect and listen to others on the points with which you already agree with them? That’s really almost just a form of patting yourself on the back--“Ah, he says the same thing I think--good for him...I like this guy.” But I know people--pastors and teachers--who think that doing this makes them charitable. “Oh yes, I try to be charitable and balanced. I don’t just chuck everything that guy says in the rubbish bin--only the stuff he says that is wrong. But he says other stuff that is right, with which I fully agree, and I’m perfectly willing to give him credit for that.”
Now, admittedly, to say this is actually a big step forward for many in the Reformed tradition, for whom it is customary to chuck everything someone says in the bin if you disagree with them on anything of importance. But I should hope we can go further than this in cultivating the virtue of charity.

Charity means saying, “Ooh, I like what this guy is saying here...but I’m really not happy with where he goes in chapters four and five. However, even there, I have to give him credit for his careful, Biblical argumentation, and for his earnestness, and I really need to read back through those chapters carefully to see if maybe I have something I need to learn.” Charity means saying, “I’m pretty sure this is wrong, but I need to keep listening to see if it’s really me who’s wrong.” For many evangelicals and Reformed folk, saying this, in many contexts, sounds like compromise, sounds like being willing to get wobbly about the gospel. It can be, for sure, but it doesn’t have to be. (O’Donovan has a fabulous quote on this, that I’ll be sharing shortly in my review of Church in Crisis.)

2) Keeping in mind the original audience
Second, charity means being willing to read someone else within their own context, in light of their own audience, rather than insisting that they address you and your concerns directly. Again, this should be fairly obvious, and is hardly a matter of distinctively Christian charity--it’s just common sense. But it doesn’t seem all that common. Too often, we judge Christians writing in other backgrounds by the standards we would apply to someone writing with a background identical to ours. We have to be willing to ask, “What audience is this author trying to address? What problems and concerns does that particular audience have? Given those particular problems and concerns, how might this author want to address them? What would the arguments in this book mean or convey to someone in that audience?” Only after we have asked these questions thoroughly can we begin the difficult process of translation—“what form would this message take if addressed to me? How does it apply? Do we agree fundamentally despite the necessary differences of approach?”

Very often, Christians seem unable or unwilling to go to the work of this kind of translation, with the result that Bible-thumpers here in the US lambast British evangelicals for “giving up the gospel” or “abandoning Scripture,” even when those same British evangelicals are known to their own audiences as stalwart defenders of the gospel and the authority of Scripture. And I don’t just mean, “Well, everyone’s so liberal over here, that you have to understand that what looks liberal to Americans looks conservative to Brits.” It’s not that simple. It’s a matter of differences in culture, history, church organization, priorities within the faith, etc. I’m getting very tired of American evangelical leaders who know nothing about the history or culture of the Church of England, about its polity, about its struggles and triumphs, proceeding to mock any Church of England leader who isn’t willing to say exactly the same thing about homosexuality as they would say, at the same time and in the same way as they would say it. There might be legitimate complaints, but it is hard to find them amidst the endless heap of absurd ones that keep getting chucked across the pond.

3) Owning other branches of the Church
Finally, I’ve realized something crucially important about catholicity and church unity: we already are all one body--it’s not up to us to decide whether and how much we will be. That is to say, we can’t decide whether we want to be connected to or associated with Christians who are doing all kinds of wacky stuff and are cooking up heretical ideas and are ordaining homosexuals—inasmuch as we are all belong to the Church of Christ, all share in one baptism, we already are connected to and associated with each other. So our job is not to decide who we’re connected to in Christ, but how to respond and relate to those to whom we are already connected to.
At times it seems as if we operate with something of an Old Covenant purity mentality, constantly fearing contamination. Evangelicals seem to think that their purity may be contaminated if they come too close to Christians who are involved in various errors. Do we dare attend a Roman Catholic worship service, or will we be contaminated by idolatry? Do we dare attend a liberal worship service, or will we be contaminated by their unbelief? Do we dare attend a service led by a woman? Or by a homosexual?! I know many who would do the Protestant equivalent of crossing themselves at the very suggestion. Why is this?

Why is it that whenever a denomination takes some dangerous new step toward apostasy, all the surrounding denominations (and many of the constituent churches) trip over one another trying to distance themselves? I noticed that when the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted in favor of homosexuality this summer, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod put out a statement saying (roughly), “Please don’t get confused—we have nothing to do with them. We’ve always said they were bad.” Somehow I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind when he prayed “that they may all be one, as we are one.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying there aren’t very important practical questions to be addressed here, and that there is not an important place for church discipline to declare when Christians have cut themselves off from Christ, and an important place for believers to acknowledge and respond to that reality. However, in Protestantism’s current condition of denominational mayhem and lack of real authority, there is no clear-cut way of making such judgments. Indeed, what does it mean to say that such-and-such denomination by their action so-and-so has made themselves to no longer be a Christian church, and we don’t need to treat any of them as such anymore? We make those kinds of pronouncements all the time, and I don’t really see how we are in a position to. Until God acts decisively in judgment upon his unfaithful children, and they are utterly scattered and destroyed, we must remember that they are still his children, of whom He has “kept seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal” and we must relate to them as such. And this means owning them, rather than denying them. I would like to have seen the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod say, “Yes, our Christian brothers have said this. We value them and pray for them as Christian brothers, but we believe they are in serious error here. We repent for this error on their behalf, and hope that they will repent also.”
In other words, we are not pure Christians trying to avoid being contaminated by apostates. We are already contaminated by our own sins and theirs—because we are all part of the Body of Christ, we too must own responsibility for their errors, and repent as well. If ordaining women is a sin for the Church, I share the guilt by virtue of being a member of the Church, not by attending a service led by a woman.

Again, we may still need to make practical judgments about how to relate to and associate with errant Christians, but it must be always from this starting point—we do not get to choose whether or not we will be connected with them, because we already are, like it or not.