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| Calvin |
One catalyst for this has been a marvelous article called Teaching Calvin in California, by
Berkeley history-of-religion scholar Jonathan Sheehan. Sheehan argues for the educational importance of engaging with
that dread text of the Reformation, Calvin’s Institutes, including the (then and now) outrage-inducing doctrine
of double predestination – that is, that both the saved and the damned are the
way they are because of God’s choice, that this choice is just and cannot be
disputed, and that both the salvation of the saved and the damnation of the
lost equally display God’s glory. “The
classroom erupts in protest”, writes Sheehan. “Calvin teaches us, Be careful
what you believe in. Investigate what your own views demand…” By their own engagement with “the
terribleness of Calvin’s challenge”, Sheehan’s students are already obtaining a
hands-on education – “participating in the intellectual revolutions of the
modern world.”
The point about double predestination is not that it is
illogical, or even that it is unscriptural; Calvin mounts a ruthless case,
starting from the locus classicus in
Romans 9-11. It’s not our minds that
revolt against the doctrine; it is our guts – that fine biblical word σπλαγχνα,
translated by King James’ men as “bowels and mercies” in Phil 2:1. To put the problem simply, we just can’t
swallow it. (Hence the wide variety of alternative theological proposals, upon
which rigorous-minded Calvinists look down.)
But I’ve also been thinking about Calvinism through watching
the travails of American evangelicals as they endeavor to show love and welcome
to LGBTQ people. Bear with me a moment
because I think there’s a connection here.
Wind the clock back fifty years. Christians are unified (more or less) on the purpose
of marriage: to quote the Book of Common
Prayer, “for the procreation of children…for a remedy against sin…for
mutual society, help and comfort.”
Marriage provides the stable context where children can be brought up; and
it channels sexual desire in a fruitful direction, specifically, into the
direction of deep, lifelong mutual covenant love, “both in prosperity and
adversity”, matching the Genesis admonition “It is not good for humans to be
alone”. And everyone ‘knows’ (remember,
we wound the clock back) that none of these purposes can apply to homosexual
unions: they have no place for children, they are promiscuous and volatile,
they provide no opportunity for lasting commitment. What’s more, we also ‘know’ that
homosexuality is a psychological disorder which can be fixed – true, the “ex-gay
ministries” like Exodus International are still in our future, but the idea
that the gay person can change by “making different choices” is already part of
the furniture. Work your mind back into
this fifty-years-ago perspective, and the whole complex of ideas around Obergefell vs. Hodges make no sense at
all.
But times have changed.
A majority of people personally know LGBT couples for whom “it is not
good to be alone”; couples who find deep fulfillment (“mutual society, help and
comfort”) in relationships which look just as much like long-term covenantal
unions as most heterosexual marriages. What is more, the idea that LGBT people can “make
different choices” to become straight has collapsed along with the whole ex-gay
movement. The only fallback position for
Evangelicals that seems consistent with the available evidence is to say that
an LGBT orientation, per se, cannot
usually change but is not a sin; but that (on the basis of the half-dozen “clobber
passages”) allowing that orientation to overflow into action is inevitably sinful. Thus, an LGBT
orientation should be interpreted as a call to celibacy; that is the new
evangelical orthodoxy, hauntingly expressed in the personal testimony of Wesley Hill (Washed and Waiting).
However, “It is not good for humans to be alone” still stands;
there is no clause in Genesis limiting this to the straight. As a result, Evangelicals are left with a
picture of a God who calls all humans into the gift of covenant relationship, but who arbitrarily decrees that seven percent or so of
them should have a sexual orientation which makes it impossible to legitimately fulfill the mutual desire which fuels such relationships for just about everybody else. Just as, in Calvin’s
world, the reprobate desire Heaven but can never attain it, so our LGBTQ
siblings are doomed to desire a fulfillment which is never to be within their
reach. We recognize, once again, the specter
of double predestination. And once
again, it is not logic or Scripture that cry out against it. It is the σπλαγχνα, the guts. The picture of
the world so presented is hard for the “bowels and mercies” to accept. (Hence, in my opinion, the way organizations like
Inter-Varsity are now resorting to naked authority to uphold their
preferred interpretation on this issue, when they have long agreed to
compromise on (say) the mode and timing of baptism, a matter that was once
regarded as of equally life-shattering importance.)
A friend wrote
recently on Facebook, “I know several people who in their guts [my emphasis] want to affirm LGBT relationships; they
simply don’t know what to do with [those half-dozen] Scripture passages.” Jonathan Sheehan would say, perhaps, that
these people are experiencing the power and danger of a good argument. Personally, I would think back to Jesus, “stirred
in his bowels” (a different Greek word, but the same idea) before the obscenity
of the tomb of Lazarus (John 11), and I would like to share one piece of
advice.
Go with your gut.
All books mentioned here may be obtained from your local independent bookseller or by mail from Hearts and Minds Books of Dallastown, PA. You don't need me to tell you about the mega-corporate alternative, but which one really builds community?
1 comment:
Go with your gut--this will be the slogan of the new exegesis! This fits perfectly with the story I turn to in evaluating this and other difficult transitions for the church: the matter of the acceptance of Gentiles without circumcision. The day was won not by appeal to scriptural precedent or the example of Christ--neither offered a shred of support--but by the leading of the Spirit. And, as Luke tells the story in Acts 10, this started with--wait for it--a vision in which Peter was told to eat something he didn't think he could swallow.
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