29
March

Opposing Gay Marriage Doesn’t Make One a Bigot

Supreme Court Hears Arguments On California's Prop 8 And Defense Of Marriage Act

Everyone opposing this position is not a bigot.

[NB: Awhile back I wrote an article about how I believe that all Christians can come out in support of legalizing gay marriage[1] (click here if you would like to read it). The position is simple: God, not the government, defines marriage. Thus, fights about the definition of marriage should take place in Christ’s Church. Regardless of what it is called, the government institution of marriage is something different.[2] This is my position, so today I am writing on behalf of those who vote against me.]

I am going to make a simple argument in the midst of what I find to be some quite thoughtless name-calling (explicit and implicit) against the backdrop of the current Supreme Court hearing: Many Christians who oppose gay marriage are not bigots.

This misrepresentation has been caused by our culture’s contemporary view of truth as it relates to religion. Our culture, for the most part, only allows for religious people to have values. This is difficult, because a religion such as Christianity claims not values, but truth that exists outside of the individual agent.[3] God communicated some of this truth that exists, to which humans can either bend their own will or ignore. But from the Christian position, one cannot simply call truth a value and relativize it.[4] From this position, the questions of the homosexual act of sex and the genders of those who marry were decided from eternity. They did not choose their position. It was chosen for them.

Continue reading »

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3
August

Are We Victims or Criminals?

Who better exemplifies our human condition – Mother Theresa or Jerry Sandusky?

There are two continuous narratives lying beneath our contemporary public discourse that are often held apart from each other. The first is an assumption that most of us are fellow victims of forces outside of us. This narrative is exemplified by the proliferation of ‘addict’ labels that are used to explain behaviors that are frowned upon within our culture. For example, when news broke in 2006 that Charles Barkley had lost $10 million gambling, I was infuriated by what I saw his lack of responsibility – such a large amount of money could have been used to help countless numbers of those in need here in the U.S. and internationally. However, when he revealed that he was a gambling addict, my anger subsided – Barkley was no longer a careless fool. He had become a victim. I have problems that cause me to act in ways that I am ashamed of as well. I can relate to this. We victims are bound together by a special kinship that the wounded share.

The second narrative is opposed to the idea that we are victims. It holds that there is an evil within humanity that requires control. This narrative is probably best exemplified by the existence of governments. Although we disagree in the U.S. about the level of limitation that the government should impose, the majority of Americans (except the disciples of Ayn Rand) seem to agree that some level of limitation needs to be in place to limit the greed, racism, and violence of humans from impeding upon the freedoms of others. In the first narrative we are all potential victims. In the second narrative we are all potential perpetrators. Continue reading »

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31
July

How Conservative Christians Can Support Legalizing Gay Marriage

One aspect that is often overlooked in the current political imbroglio over legalizing gay marriage is that there is a difference between the legal institution of marriage and the Christian institution of marriage. One is a social construct, the other is a divine mystery.

I think that it is important for theologically conservative Christians to remember this distinction for two reasons. First, as a divine mystery, nothing can ‘threaten’ the divine institution of marriage. There is no need to defend something that has been handed to us from God. No need for anxiety. The institution that God has created will continue long after America ceases to exist as a nation. Legal definitions have no bearing on divine institutions (permit me a small extension of this point: those who believe that they are defending Christian marriage by fighting about the legal definition of marriage are actually ascribing too much power to the State). Second, since legal marriage is a social construct, it is proper for it to represent the society. The United States is not a Christian nation (that concept itself has significant problems, but that is for a different post). As such, it is proper in a democracy for legal definitions to reflect the culture. Again, this holds no threat whatsoever to the Christian institution of marriage.

So how does this distinction lead to support for legalizing gay marriage by theologically conservative Christians? Simple. If the issue is no longer defending the institution of Christian marriage, then different ethical questions come to the forefront – particularly the question of justice. Is it just for two men or two women who have chosen to live together in a committed relationship to be denied the legal rights that come along with marriage in our society (e.g. property inheritance rights and the ability to share health insurance coverage)? I believe that the answer to this is, clearly, no.

In this way, a conservative Christian can vote for legalizing gay marriage. At the same time, he/she is not required to affirm that gay marriage is part of the divine institution of marriage. That is, again, a completely separate issue.

 

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18
July

A Simple Argument Against the Death Penalty

One issue on which I have changed my stance over the past decade is my view of the death penalty. Growing up in fundamentalism I was taught that capital punishment is biblical. Appeals to verses such as Gen. 6:9 were often made – “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made” (NIV).

I think that this claim is incorrect and does not take into account the totality of Scripture. However I do not want to add to the overabundance of arguments on the web concerning the divine will on capital punishment. Rather, I would like to offer this simple argument that has brought me to oppose the death penalty:

  1. It is wrong to kill an innocent man or woman. 
  2. Finite humans can never achieve perfect knowledge. 
  3. Without perfect knowledge, we will, without doubt, incorrectly apply the death penalty. 
  4. Thus, to avoid murdering innocent people, the death penalty should also be avoided.
The second point is really the key – finite humans can never achieve perfect knowledge. If perfect knowledge was achievable, then I think that the question of the morality of using the death penalty would become relevant. Until then, I think that it is a greater good for us to avoid it since our application of it will necessarily lead to the death of innocent people.

I welcome your thoughts.

25 comments

17
July

Engaging Hobbes: Does Removing Theology from Political Dialogue Also Remove Violence?

Did Tiananmen Square Undermine
Thomas Hobbes’s Thesis?

One of Thomas Hobbes’ most significant claims in his work Leviathan is that the removal of theology from political philosophy would also remove, or at least severely minimize, violence in the world. I find this claim quite compelling, but am not sure that the past few centuries have affirmed Hobbes’s claim.

The evidence for the connection between theology in politics and violence are well established. To name but a few examples we can easily turn to the Crusades, the post-Reformation religious wars, the use of theology to support Adolf Hitler’s Germany, and the violence between Ireland and England that was so prevalent in the late twentieth century. (I have not included terrorist acts since they often do not represent the action of a state). There exists a plethora of examples where theology, regardless of its quality, has led to widespread violence on the part of a nation.

Yet, there is a significant counter-example that I believe must be considered – violent communist states. The history of violence by communist states is so prevalent that there is an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the subject. Of course, Wikipedia is not to be used as a foundation for an argument, but I think that it is significant that such a page exists. Continue reading »

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11
July

The Rise and Fall of Liberal Theology

NB: This is the fourth part in a short series that will be summarizing and, at times, interacting with Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (Vintage, 2007).[1]

Friedrich Schleiermacher
(1768-1834)

After exploring the shift in philosophy and theology brought by the thinking of Georg Hegel, Lilla moves on in his next chapter to explore the rise of liberal theology. As always, it is helpful to begin with definitions. A movement that began in the Protestant churches of the United States and Europe, Lilla characterizes the term liberal theology as having different connotations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During the former, a liberal theologian:

“…would have been someone critical of traditional orthodoxies and authoritarianism, a preacher of toleration among the Christian faiths, someone who welcomed the challenge of modern science as an opportunity to sift out the essential moral teaching of the gospel from the mythical and superstitious chaff obscuring it. Such a theologian would have deemphasized original sin and spoken of the grand possibilities of human self-improvement and the need to defend freedom of religious conscience, and of the benevolence of a caring God.” Continue reading »

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8
July

Georg Hegel: Reconciliation and the Validation of Bourgeois Society

NB: This is the third part in a short series that will be summarizing and, at times, interacting with Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (Vintage, 2007).[1]

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(1770-1831)

In the third episode that Lilla offers in his work, he turns to the changes that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel brought to Western conceptualizations of political philosophy and theology.

Hegel’s work comes after the reaction of Kant and Rousseau to Hobbes. As explored earlier, Hobbes brought the great separation of theology from political philosophy in part in order to help lower violence in post-Reformation Europe (to read the summary of the Hobbes episode click here). Following this, while accepting his anthropocentric view of religion, Rousseau and Kant both brought theology back into political discussion by arguing that God is necessary for morality to exist within society (for the summary of that episode click here). Lilla titles his next episode, focusing on Hegel, “The Bourgeois God.” Here is why…

One important aspect of Kant’s philosophy is that, throughout all of his works, he never allowed for ultimate reconciliation either within humans or between them. However, the generation that followed Kant, specifically in Germany, was not satisfied with such an existence. Having been touched by Romanticism, specifically Rousseau,

“[b]y and large these German figures accepted Kant’s new account of the limits of reason – and then proceeded, against Kant’s strictures, to seek a way ‘beyond reason’ through aesthetic experience, mystical insight, myth, or religious leaps of faith. Their aspiration was to make themselves and their world whole again, and to be fully reconciled with existence.”[2]

Hegel would emerge as one of the most influential of these voices through his work Phenomonology (1807). So, what changes did Hegel bring to the stream of intellectual history that preceded him? Continue reading »

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2
July

Rousseau, Kant, and the Ethical Necessity of God

NB: This is the second part in a short series that will be summarizing and, at times, interacting with Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (Vintage, 2007).[1]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778)

Following Lilla’s extensive discussion of the effect that Hobbes’s Leviathan had upon the West in his chapter entitled “The Great Separation,” he moves to the next episode in the development of political philosophy and theology – a chapter that he appropriately entitles “The Ethical God.”

Lilla’s main focus in this second episode is the thought of two figures – Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Both are important as they bridged the rift between theology and political philosophy that was struck by Hobbes. However, they each made unique contributions to this new path.

Rousseau’s contribution springs primarily from his educational treatise, Emile (1762). The book is presented as the story of the education of a young man, Emile. In it can be found his philosophical anthropology: natural man is both good and not religious. However, once introduced into society, man witnesses an amour propre (unhealthy pride) that arises from a weakness – the need to be well regarded by others. Rousseau saw this amour propre as the source of all of society’s corruptions, “the psychological force that breeds unnatural needs and desires, and then the destructive economic, political, and educational means to satisfy them.”[2] Although humans do not need God when they are alone, once they are introduced to a society, they have a great need for God because their weakness is exposed and they experience a lack of morality that they would not know if they had remained by themselves. Continue reading »

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2
July

Thomas Hobbes and The Great Separation of Political Theology and Political Philosophy

NB: As promised, this is the first part in a short series that will be summarizing and, at times, interacting with Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (Vintage, 2007).[1]

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

Lilla’s work is a walk through the history of political theology and philosophy in the West. It begins by exploring the centrality of political theology, especially Christian political theology, for approximately 1300 years following Christianity’s rise to political power during the reign of Constantine. Political theology, as defined by Lilla, is “discourse about political authority based on a revealed divine nexus.”[2] Lilla argues that, for the 1300 years following Constantine, political questions were approached by looking at the deity’s revelation at the divine nexus and interpreting that revelation in terms of political thought.

However, Thomas Hobbes’s work Leviathan (1651) changed everything. According to Lilla, Hobbes’s work brought on “The Great Separation” – his term describing the forced removal of political theology from political thought, as well as the title for his second chapter. Hobbes removed the divine nexus from conversation by claiming that humankind’s concept of God arises from people, particularly from their fear of a violent death.[3] Furthermore, he posited that both religious and political conflict arise from this same source within human nature. Therefore, in order to end the theological-political violence that Christian Europe had been so deeply involved in, especially after the Reformation, Hobbes offered a two-part plan to achieve peace.

Hobbes’s plan deeply reflects his philosophical anthropology – that religious and political violence both come from the fear within each human being. The first part of the plan is to restore peace by placing an absolute sovereign over a nation – an earthly God – whose subjects would fear him above all others. The second part of Hobbes’s plan was to reform philosophy and the sciences, particularly at the university level, leaving only the experimental natural sciences and Leviathan, which he saw as the first genuine work of political science, to remain.[4] Continue reading »

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1
July

Helpful Reading: Mark Lilla’s “The Stillborn God”

This past week I have been reading Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (Vintage, 2007). It is a fascinating summary of the historical developments of Western political theology and political philosophy, with special emphasis on post-Reformation philosophy and theology. The work was recommended to me by two excellent and well-published scholars, and, so far, I enthusiastically agree with their high view of the work.

Over the next few days I will be posting a few summaries of Lilla’s thoughts and interpretations to help me process them as well as help out anyone else who finds a summary of this stream of intellectual history to be helpful. Feel free to check back in as well as offer any of your own thoughts, if you have read the work.

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