Force Becomes Structure: David Bentley Hart on the Cause of Controversy

July 14, 2010

More pressing matters have delayed me from saying more about the controversy conference, but I do want to return to it and say a bit about some of the other lectures while the memory is still fresh.  The afternoon of the first day of the conference was graced by the presence (via videoconference) of David Bentley Hart and Robert Jenson, both titans of the American theological landscape and both known as well for their colorful personalities, which came through even from 5,000 miles away.  

Hart’s lecture was entitled a “Penitential Approach to Controversy,” though that was not really its main focus.  The penitence referred to was his own, coming to us as he did with a  legendary reputation for bombastic theological rhetoric.  We can, he said, invoke the prophets as a model for dramatic controversial pronouncements, but we must acknowledge that most of us are not called to be prophets in this way, and that went for him as well.

Hart proposed in his lecture to offer us not so much an argument as an intuition of why it is that ferocious controversy has been such a perennial feature of the Christian Church’s life, despite the New Testament’s clear calls for peace and unity.  His suggestion was provocative and intriguing, disturbingly similar to liberal reconstructions of the early Church of the von Harnack variety, and yet refusing to grant their apostate conclusions.  

There is a deep tension at the heart of the Christian faith, he suggested, between its apocalyptic other-worldiness and its need to become assimilated to history, to life in this world.  Dogma and cult were the means by which the Church had to tame, as it were, the apocalyptic inbreaking of the Gospel and make it suitable for millenia of waiting for the consummation.  Christianity entered history not as a set of doctrines, but as an apocalypse; it constituted an overturning of history and nature as we know them, or as we think we know them.  There could be no simple return to the sacred as formerly understood, and there didn’t have to be, because history was coming to an end.  Christianity thus accords ill with any purely cultic rationality. 

It would take some time, and some adjustment of expectations, for so singular an interruption of the eschatological into the temporal to be recuperated into a stable institution of words and practices.  Christianity had to become historical again, cultural again, cultic again.  Christianity was forced to take on the morphology of the religions which it had replaced, without compromising its content.  What began as force had to become structure--the event had to crystallize. 

Now thus far, this has a great deal of similarity to certain liberal narratives, but Hart does not take all this to mean that the assimilation to history was wrong, or something that we need to undo.  It is necessary and valuable--dogma and cult and all the rest.  Nonetheless, there is a tragic element to this accomodation between apocalypse and cult.  The apocalyptic force of the Christian revelation, its newness and power, its difference from all that came before, is too volatile to permanently and comfortably sit at ease within its own institutional boundaries.  It is for this reason, suggests Hart, that Christianity has proved so uniquely fissile, and creative even of a militant atheism and nihilism.  There is an ungovernable destructive energy at the heart of Christianity that is always at tension with its constructive impulses. 

Dogma, therefore, the Christian event’s assumption of a fixed, historical, and institutional form, although it can be the poetic discovery of language for speaking about God, is also in some sense the language of disenchantment.  It wants to recuperate the force of a cosmic disruption in the form of institutional formulae.  This is not something to be lamented--we must accept the workings of providence.  But dogma always has some quality of disappointment about it.  We speak in these formal terms because we have not yet seen with our eyes and felt with our hands.  And with this disappointment comes an impulse to anger.

It is this anger, this spiritual discontentment, and not merely the mixing of the Church with politics, that explains part of the violence of the controversy witnessed in the early Church.  Theological hatred, Hart suggested, may be at some level a reflex of fear, fear that the Gospel, exposed to the corrosion of ordinary time, may be reduced only into history.  

Another phenomenon might also be going on: there is something in the pursuit of theology that is a constant frustration of human pride, and thus calls forth ever more assertive expressions of human pride.  We are thwarted by the surfeit of truth over the limits of human language.  But even more importantly, all our attempts to speak about God are overwhelmed by God’s speaking of Himself in time.  It challenges and cancels our customary attempts at meaning, and destroys the human ambition to ascend unaided to the summits of truth.  Theology thus carries with it a certain measure of resentment, a resentment toward grace.  

It is from this resentment, our unspoken recognition of our inability to gain a true grasp of that of which we speak, that leads to the anger that bursts forth so intemperately in the midst of theological controversy.  Controversy must therefore always be carried on in penitence, penitence for our resentment against God.

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I have nothing to add to this fascinating and powerful thesis, except the objection that was voiced by several in the Q&A afterward--namely, that Hart’s thesis is perhaps better seen as a paradigm for understanding what is always true about the Christian revelation, than as a historical explanation of how the Church evolved.  Indeed, that is more how I have presented it here.  But, although he was counseling no return to primitivism, he did seem to claim that the Church was in the beginning characterized by this apocalyptic otherworldiness, in constant expectation of the end of the world, and then only after a century or so realized that it had to settle down and develop doctrine.  This obscures the fact that controversy over doctrine and the institutional shape of the Church is present already in the New Testament itself.  Nonetheless, with this caveat, I find that Hart’s intuition seems to ring true, and promises to perhaps shed a lot of light on the theological experience.

"Theology and the Peace of the Church"

July 8, 2010

John Webster kicked off the proceedings at the Controversy Conference with his lecture “Theology and the Peace of the Church,” and as one might’ve expected from a man like Webster, it was profound, sophisticated, systematic, and rooted thoroughly in the doctrine of God.  I might add that it was rooted in a thoroughly metaphysical doctrine of God, though I do not mean that pejoratively (a caveat one has to make in this anti-metaphysical age).  His argument was essentially methodological, and sought to make two main points. 

First, attempts to discuss the issue of controversy and conflict in the Church generally move immediately to the ethical, the imperative, without first establishing the theological, the indicative.  Exhortations to overcome conflict thus degenerate into empty moralizing.  Instead of this, we must, like St. Paul, first establish who God is and what He has done, and then we can construct ethical imperatives to act in accord with what is already the case by virtue of God’s character.  

Second, this theological account which we must first provide is one in which peace is ontologically prior to violence, where being is good and evil is a privation of being, not a counter-being, in other words, the venerable Augustinian account of evil, enriched by his discussion of peace from City of God 19.  Anything else ends in Manichaeanism, in which conflict is just as basic to the world as peace, intrinsic to the Church’s life and inescapable.

Webster began by contesting the common claim, mentioned in the introductory post about this conference, that it is through conflict that truth comes to light, that conflict makes clear what would else have remained obscure.  We may think this is so, he said, but this is an illusion that comes from the dramatic oversimplification of the options that conflict engenders.  In the midst of conflict, we artificially draw black-and-white distinctions that, while they appear to facilitate a triumph of rationality, are actually its downfall.  We have two basic options, according to Webster: either we can see conflict as the natural condition of reason, or else it is an aberration from God who is the principle of order and peace.  We must see it as the latter, because peace is ontologically prior to violence, and is indeed the guarantee of the possibility of reason.  “An account of peaceful conduct,” he said, “rests upon a dogmatic account of the peace that God is and bestows.” 

 

God is both the principle and the pattern of creaturely peace, but the former, said Webster, is generally ignored in favor of the latter.  In other words, we exhort ourselves to be ethically conformed to the pattern of God’s peacefulness, without first meditating on how God provides the source and foundation for peaceable being.  To do this requires that we reflect on who God is in himself.  But of course we run into an immediate problem--we cannot know God as he is in himself.  We must, said Webster, let this inhibition stand, but nonetheless recognize that God summons us into his inner presence by his outward activities.

 

In his account of the immanent Trinity, Webster’s hidden interlocutors were surely modern “dynamic trinitarians” (to coin a phrase, if it isn’t already one) like Moltmann and Jenson.  The works of the Trinity, he said, are fully harmonious; there is no disorder, disruption, or contradiction in God’s making of the world, and thus not also in the inner life of God.  At this point I found myself torn; on the one hand, of course--how could it be otherwise--God is perfect peace and harmony.  On the other hand, I have learned too much at the feet of “dynamic trinitarians,” people who emphasized the ways in which the Godhead is also the archetype of diversity and creative tension, to be wholly satisfied.  No disorder in God’s making of the world, sure; but could we say there was tension?  And likewise in the inner life of God.

 

But let us let these objections rest for a moment, and follow Webster’s account out into the world of created being.  Here he founded his case firmly on the Augustinian premise: Peace is intrinsic to creaturely being.  Chaos is not a mode of being, but a declension from being.  Conflict is devoid of ontological weight, because created nature is peaceful.  Because of this, peace is first a property in the order of being, and only secondly a precept in the order of obligation--this is his recurring point about the indicative preceding the imperative.  

 

In the New Testament narrative, peace is integral to grace;  it is the chief product of Christ’s work of reconciliation.  Peace is not first announced as a precept for the Church, but as a condition of the Church.  The Church exists in peace as a function of the reconciliation of peace accomplished by Christ on the cross.  This statement seems to locate the true being of the Church behind the visible church, and this will be troubling to many.  The church that matters, many will object, is the actual visible church, and this is not peaceful; it is torn by conflict; we must seek to address this conflict, rather than offering ourselves false comfort that the Church really does exist in peace.  An understandable objection, said Webster, but one that falls into the error of making practical ecclesiology the first theological science.

 

The summary precept of peacemaking, he said, is “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts”--and this is not directed toward making peace real, but toward making peace visible.  We must insist upon this, that our task is simply to make visible a peace which already defines the Church’s being, instead of manufacturing a peace where one does not yet exist; otherwise, our task is hopeless from the start.  To be sure, conflict remains a present ecclesial reality, but what kind of reality?  We must not assume, said Webster, that we can straightforwardly interpret the reality.  We must read it in light of the illumination of the gospel of peace, by which we can see conflict for what it is: sin against peace.  We must remember that vice is always contra naturam; it is not an ugly mode of being, but as a contrary to the mode of being.  Conflict must not be described in a Manichaean way, as an eternal parallel to peace. 

 

This all sounds great, but what does it really mean in practical terms?  Does the rubber here ever meet the road?  I was skeptical at this point in the lecture, but Webster went on to draw some very fruitful applications.  

 

First, we must deploy intelligence to penetrate through the phenomenon of conflict to the peaceful nature underlying.  That is to say, we must remember that, despite our conflict in the Church, we share a unity in Christ, and because of that, there is much else that we share.  We must seek to discover this source of peace and unity that underlies our disagreements, and recognizing our conflict as a temporary aberration, seek to uncover its cause and dispel it.

 

Second, we must not attribute to conflict an irreducibility that it does not possess.  If we get too worked up about conflict, then we attribute to a being that it lacks.  If evil is non-being, then ultimately it is nothing to fear.  If conflict is but a temporary aberration, then we can rest in confidence that it will be dispelled by faithful waiting upon Christ.  We must see conflict for what it is, which is to say, as Webster put it with surprising eloquence, “The afterlife of what the gospel has already excluded, the lingering shadow that the rising sun has yet to chase away.”  Therefore, in a sense, we do not need to make an assault upon conflict, but rather to reassure ourselves in confidence that no such assault is required.  

 

None of this means that we are to blithely and complacently dismiss the fact of conflict, the fact that we may need to enter controversy at times to defend the peaceable kingdom, but it dramatically changes our attitude to it.   

 

It means that we can lay down these three basic precepts for conflict and controversy:

1. It must be a work of charity, for the Church and our neighbors.
2. It must be exercised in common pursuit of divine truth.
3. It must arise from and attend toward peace.

 

In order to approach controversy in this way, what kind of person does the theologian need to be? Webster asked.

Theological science requires grace-character.  It requires tranquillity of mind, lack of ambition, competitiveness, and vain curiosity.  

At this point, Webster paused to reflect on zeal--is zeal a virtue or a vice?  How may zeal promote the peace of God in the Church?  Zeal is a righteous form of anger, but an unstable one.  What is the distinction between righteous and unrighteous anger?  Corrupt anger corrodes both rational and common life; it reduces controversy to a hopelessly conflictual affair, and destroys the clear vision of intelligence.  Righteous anger is cooler and more objective.  It follows a judgment of reason.  It is a public passion for Gospel truth.   Anger through zeal does not destroy the operation of reason, but nevertheless it may impair its performance; therefore, zeal must be moderated by our recognition of the ontological priority of peace.

 

What should the conduct of theological controversy be?  The Church does not dispute according to the fashion of the world.  Four rules for edifying controversy can be laid down: 

First, it must display and magnify the truth of the Gospel, whose author is peace.  Controversy will only serve peace in the Church if it has an external orientation, toward an object outside of the disputing parties.  It must not become reduced to a simple party strife. 

Second, theological controversy must not allow divergence of opinion to become divergence of will.  Concord in the Church is a union of will, not of opinion.  We must recognize that those who differ from us in opinion often share the same will toward the same good.  There are of course, cases in which this is not the case, where we do not share a common object of love; but when this is the case, these are disputes not in the Church, but about the Church, and here we must await the converting work of the Spirit. 

Third, it must recognize the catholicity of the truth, a truth that exceeds any representation that we may make.  This object of love over which we contend is one too profound for us to rightly grasp.  We cannot ever “end our dealings with it.”

Fourth, it must be undertaken in tranquil confidence that the Spirit will illuminate the Church.  We often let ourselves fall into a barren naturalism, in which appeals to Scripture founder on irreconcilable exegetical conflict.  We lose faith that there is an efficacy in the Word, a Word that will make itself clear to us, and will resolve this conflict.  We may be confident that exegesis, rightly pursued, will, by Christ’s aid, lead us to peace and resolution.

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All that by way of exposition.  Now some evaluation is in order.  First, some words of ringing endorsement:

Although I might’ve wanted to put it in somewhat different, more Christocentric terms--Christ has conquered, he has brought us peace and guaranteed us peace--I thought his insistence on the priority of peace over conflict, the essential impotence of conflict, was fantastic.  Too easily we get depressed over the conflicts all around us in the Church, or mired down in the midst of them, and forget that they are ultimately frivolous and insubstantial, Christ will preserve his Church, the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it, and any divisions that appear to loom large for us now will ultimately be reconciled in perfect harmony.  Or else some of us get so intoxicated with the fumes of conflict that we come to imagine it as a positive good, as a joy to be indulged, rather than an aberration to be deplored.  Certainly Webster provides us a wholesome corrective here.  Conflict must never become an end in itself, but must be oriented toward peace, and that a just peace, not the peace of the merciless victor who has silenced all opposition.  Nor is conflict inevitable or irresolvable--patient waiting upon Christ will reveal a resolution.

 

In particular, I liked Webster’s final point about the efficacy of the Word.  Too true it is that, for all our passionate insistence on the authority of Scripture, we treat it as a dead letter.  One side alleges texts that prove their point, and the other side insists upon other texts, or demands a better exegesis of the opponent’s texts.  Both seem trapped by certain hermeneutical assumptions, and conclude that it is hopeless; the text remains silent about its interpretation, and so the quarrel will never be adjudicated.  But in Scripture we do not have a dead letter to reckon with, but a living Word, a Word continually made efficacious by the Spirit who breathes it and the Son about whom it speaks.  This Word will reveal itself to those who wait patiently upon it in faith.  The perspicacity of Scripture is not immediate, perhaps, but it is in the end real.  

 

But then there are some objections to raise, or rather, not objections, merely questions.

First, on a minor note, although I liked his point about recognizing that there can be concord--unity of will--amidst diversity of opinion, so long as we share the same object of love, this leaves a large part of our question unsolved.  After all, at some vague level, we share a “common object of love” with anyone who seeks truth, or wants to serve some kind of God.  If the presence or absence of a common object of love determines whether we have a dispute within the Church or a dispute about the Church, as Webster so meaningfully put it, then how do we define this common object of love?  I talked to him about the problem afterward, and he recognized that this object “had to have some shape to it”--a creed, for instance.  But then, how do we know that we are merely united in will and that we are not confessing the same words with very different concepts or intentions?  The problem is not so easily resolved.  This is not a fault with Webster’s presentation, merely a call for further elaboration.  

 

But there is a much more significant objection, one that I knew Leithart was going to raise, so I asked it for him and beat him to it: while it may be true that God is peace, and that Christ’s redemptive work is a work of peace, how do we maintain this while simultaneously doing justice to the fact that this is not exactly how Scripture often speaks.  The Old Testament is full of war, and Yahweh is described as a warrior; even in the New Testament, Christ says that he comes not to bring peace, but a sword, and Revelation pictures him as a conquering warrior destroying his foes.  Or, to put this problem as Webster preferred to put it--how do we reconcile the immanent reality of peace with the economy that is dominated by drama and conflict?  Leithart pursued the same point further with Webster after the formal Q&A session, and the three of us discussed it on the way over to lunch.  In some ways, this is merely a methodological question, but it seems to make a lot of difference to our paradigm.  After all, if conflict is integral to the economy of redemption, then perhaps we should embrace it with more gusto than Webster would seem to advocate, perhaps seeking peace with the serpent, as Adam did in Genesis 3 (Leithart’s example) is a failure, and seeking conflict is a truer imitation of the divine character.  

Webster acknowledged that it was a thorny problem, and did not want to minimize the fact that, whatever may be the case on the immanent plane, on the level of the economy, peace is only reached through a great deal of “drama and conflict.”  However, he wanted to insist that the crucial point is that peace is the starting point, and peace the endpoint, and conflict is an aberration, it is not eternal, it is not integral.  It all comes down, he said, to whether you accept a privative account of evil, or not.  On a phenomenal level, such an account is deeply unsatisfactory, because it seems to deny the reality of the evil we encounter, but ultimately, he didn’t see how you could do without it; otherwise you end in Manichaeanism.  And he didn’t want to risk going there.  

 

I am quite sympathetic to this outlook, and it does seem that you have to maintain a privative account of evil, but it also seems to me that you have to be careful about not letting that affirmation loom too large in your theology, or else you end up minimizing large sections of Scripture.  I suggested that perhaps this was just one of those many paradoxes that we have to live with in theology, affirming both seemingly opposing truths--God is peace, God is a warrior--without ever satisfactorily synthesizing them.  I think both Webster and Leithart were, at some level, satisfied with this way of putting it

 

Yet, a real difference of theological method persists.  For Webster, we must begin with the immanent and let that condition our interpretation of the economic; we must begin with an account of who God is in Godself, and then use this as an interpretive grid for making sense of what Scripture says that God does.  A cynic would say that this means we begin with philosophy and let this set the parameters of Scripture.  Webster stated his determination to avoid that error, but nevertheless insisted on what he called “a very dangerous, but a very important principle”: the proportions of dogmatics do not have to match the proportions of the economy.  Scripture may tell us very very little about who God is in Godself, but dogmatics needs to talk about it quite a great deal.  As he charmingly put it: “Your conclusion will in the end be that of Job--‘God is great, and we know him not.’  But you still have to spend a few hundred pages saying ‘God is great, and we know him not.’”  Ultimately, I wouldn’t want to deny any of that, and I don’t think Leithart would either.  But Leithart, I know, would be a lot more comfortable starting from the economy, learning that Yahweh is a warrior, that we are called to imitate him in that, and only then seeking to establish the senses in which God is peace, and we are to imitate him in that (of course, it is also possible that one could take Leithart’s method of starting with the economy, but still argue that in the economy, God reveals himself as peace much more than he does as warrior).  

 

In any case, some of the crucial lessons of Webster’s lecture would remain--conflict is not the starting point or the endpoint, peace is.  Conflict is not therefore irresolvable, it is not to be sought for its own sake, and it must only be engaged in with patient faith that God is a God of reconciliation.  

Church and Controversy Quick-Takes

July 5, 2010

(This post is not about VanDrunen--can you believe it?)

I just returned from an immensely fruitful weekend in Aberdeen, attending the conference “Theology, the Church, and Controversy,” hosted by the wonderfully hospitable Francesca Murphy and featuring such luminaries in theology and ethics as John Webster, Robert Jenson, David Bentley Hart, Brian Brock, and the inimitable Peter Leithart.  The conference featured an excellent lineup of papers exploring how the Church ought to engage in controversy from historical, ethical, and theological angles, and a fantastic roundtable discussion at the end that wrestled its way through the question of how we ought to engage the homosexuality controversy today.  (Not to mention, of course, the “Church Controversy Charades” that featured such once-in-a-lifetime experiences as watching John Webster attempt to visually act out the heresy of universalism, or Peter Leithart reenacting the castration of Abelard.)

A recurrent question that seemed to go back and forth during the conference in an irresolvable tug-of-war was: is controversy a blessing for the Church or an aberration that should be avoided wherever possible?  

A couple months ago this question was highlighted by Davey Henreckson at Theopolitical a couple months back, who pointed to an article in Christianity Today comparing an N.T. Wright conference in Wheaton with a simultaneous neo-Reformed conference at Louisville.  For the neo-Reformed, 

“protecting disputed doctrines against heresy is where good theology is born. Clear thinking comes from friction and protestation, from Hegelian dialectics (R.C. Sproul spoke on this), but not from compromise. The Patristic Fathers got it right whenever they were ironing out disputed doctrines and fighting against heresy, said Ligon Duncan in his talk. But on matters that were not disputed, he said, their thought sometimes got muddled up.”  

This is a common sort of claim to make, especially in Reformed circles.  Controversy is necessary to bring truth to light; without it, we would grow dull and lose our grip on the Gospel.  Fighting, then, is a necessary and desirable part of the life of the Church, suggesting that, if we ever find ourselves without fights, we should perhaps stir some up to get ourselves back in shape.  

Although no one at the Aberdeen conference put things quite that combatively, there were certainly a few talks that sought to emphasize a bit more the positive side of theological controversy.  Robert Jenson, for instance, argued that “provocations” are an important part of the Church’s life, and although some of these will be wholly destructive, and some would have been destructive but for God overruling and bringing good out of evil, some are clearly constructive, despite painful side-effects, such as when some Christians began preaching against segregation in the 1960s.  Peter Leithart, too, despite being the gentle irenist that we all know and love, sounded a rather combative note in his defence of Athanasius, so much so that he was quickly type-cast by some who did not know him as the stereotypical pugnacious Presbyterian.  

Brian Brock, on the other hand, taking as his subjects Stanley Hauerwas and the French philosopher Michel Serres, argued that Hauerwas’s combative, intentionally provocative style stood at odds with his pacifistic convictions, and that Serres’s pursuit of peaceful discourse was a more consistent pacifism.  This was not to say that there was no legitimate place for Hauerwasian provocations, but it must be a very subordinate place.  The most powerful account of the negative role of controversy was given in a brilliant and sophisticated paper by John Webster, “Theology and the Peace of the Church,” which came first, and set the tone for much of the rest of the conference, culminating in a fascinating exchange between Leithart and Webster at the roundtable discussion at the end of the conference over the doctrine of God and theological method.

Intriguingly, the flamboyant and combative David Bentley Hart sounded, if anything, a more Websterian note, appearing before us as a public penitent for his own propensity to violent rhetorical outbursts against error.  (Needless to say, I hope that he does not overcome this vice too quickly, as it makes for jolly entertaining reading!)  

That’s just a little taste for now; I hope over the next few days to be posting reflections from each of these talks and a couple others, with particular attention to Webster and the discussions he engendered.

Master-builders of Utopia

March 1, 2010

While doing some political theology research, I came across this fantastic passage in Heinrich Bullinger's Sermonum Decades on church unity, vigorously endorsing the principle extra ecclesiam nulla salus.  We might well debate whether or not Bullinger and his colleagues's Protestant principles and the actions they took in the Reformation can be strictly reconciled with this viewpoint, but it is certainly worth appreciating that they still had this viewpoint, and set it forth in terms that roundly condemn their modern Protestant (and particularly Reformed) descendants: 

“The unity and united society of this church of God is so great, that out of her fellowship is there no people found acceptable unto God, any true salvation or safety, any light or truth; for without the pale of God’s church are no wholesome pastures found, all are infected with poison.  No religion pleaseth God out of the church of God.  If of old any man had sacrificed to God himself without the tabernacle or temple, in the high places, he was accounted to have sacrificed to devils, and esteemed to have shed innocent blood.  Rightly therefore the blessed martyr and bishop of Carthage, Cyprian, hath left in writing: ‘Whosoever separated from the church is joined to an adulterous church, the same man is separated from the promises of the church: neither pertaineth he to Christ’s merits, which hath left the church of Christ.  He is a stranger, he is unclean, he is an enemy.  He cannot now have God his father, who hath not the church his mother.  If he might scape that was out of the ark of Noah, he may also escape that is abroad out of the church.  He must needs be a most wicked man, whoseover he be, that leaveth his own country and the fellowship of very good men, and falleth away to the enemies....Wherefore I cannot marvel enough at the corrupt and schismatical manners of certain men, who separate themselves for every light cause from the most wholesome and pleasant company or society of the church.  For you shall find in these days captious and fantastical men not a few, which of many years have had fellowship with no church, nor as yet have fellowship with any; for in every man that is they find some kind of fault, in themselves only they find nothing worthy reprehension.  Therefore they conceive with themselves a wonderful fashion of the church, which except they see somewhere established after that fashion which they themselves have devised, they contend (with shame enough) that there is as yet no true church of Christ in the world.  They are worthy surely to be master-builders in Utopia...where they might set up a building fit for themselves.”

Homosexuality and Catholicity, Part 2: Evangelical Hypocrisy

Whoops...I never posted the second half.

Finally, let me explain part of why I am so concerned about the typical evangelical response to this issue (though this criticism is not aimed at you).
You alluded to 2 Timothy 3, from which I shall now quote,
“For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.” You quoted some commentator who glossed “avoid such people” as “have no fellowship with them, depart from their communion, withdraw from them, and come out from among them: this passage sufficiently justifies the reformed churches in their separation from the church of Rome.” If this is so, then surely we are of all men most to be pitied! For who is not a lover of self, or a lover of money? Who is not proud, or ungrateful? Who does not love pleasure rather than God? Obviously, we cannot avoid every sinner, so presumably this applies to those who obstinately cling to their sin and spurn calls to repentance. What we see with homosexuality is a serious ethical confusion--an acceptance of activities which, though our culture tolerates them, are clearly immoral. But is homosexuality the only phenomenon where we see this in the church today? No, and abortion is not the only other one. At least since World War II, a great number of conservative Christians have embraced the world’s approach to war, an unrestricted, utilitarian, “you gotta do what you gotta do” approach. Christians have even endorsed nuclear weapons, carpet bombing, and more. If this isn’t a great ethical confusion, what is? Conservative Christians have also happily endorsed economic practices and uses of money that earlier generations would have considered terrible examples of greed, luxury, and exploitation. American Christianity is rife with this kind of mammonolatry, as Doug Jones has pointed out over the past couple years; and indeed, as he has also pointed out, economic sins are more harshly condemned in Scripture than are sexual sins (e.g., notice that the chief criticism of Sodom in the Bible--Ezek. 16:48-50--is not for her sodomy, but for luxury and neglect of the poor).
If we are going to take a hard line on homosexuality--refuse to associate with them, excommunicate them, call down judgment upon them--what are we going to say about these ethical confusions of ours? “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” (Mt. 7:2) If we’re really serious about righteousness in the Church, we need to be just as hard on our own sins as others, and that means that we need to be careful about using serious sin as a reason to divide a church, because there’s enough serious sin around to keep the Church dividing until judgment day.
Conservative Christians rarely seem to notice that after Paul’s harsh condemnation of homosexuality and idolatry in Romans 1, he turns to us and says, “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who do such things. Do you suppose, O man--you who judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself--that you will escape the judgment of God?” (2:1-4)
Yikes. Clearly Paul does not mean that the Jews he is addressing practiced exactly the same sorts of things, but theat they were guilty of sins just as serious. Are we evangelicals guilty of sins as serious as confusion about homosexuality? Maybe, maybe not. After seeing American conservative Christianity through the eyes that our brothers in Britain can see us, I really do wonder whether we’re not worse sometimes. And yet conservative condemnation of homosexuality and abortion has given us a convenient way to hide our guilt. We focus so obsessively on the sins of liberal Christianity, filling ourselves to the gills with righteous indignation, that we manage to avoid ever turning the sword of the Word on ourselves, to divide our own flesh and spirit, discerning the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. Until we can learn to be just as honest about the seriousness of our failures to understand and apply Jesus’s standard of godliness as we are about those of brothers in more liberal churches, we had better tone down the rhetoric of judgment and division, of shunning and schism, lest God judge us with the measure by which we judge, and come and strike the land with a curse. Here is the beginning of my post.