A Commentary on St. John Chrysostom's On the Priesthood (Part I)

Editor's Note: This piece is rather long, so I am going to introduce the less controversial piece today, given that *Christopher recently has written on some of the same subjects. The controversy will have to wait until I can do a good job on it.

I am spurred to this post by Father John Heidt, Canon Theologian of Fort Worth, who writes in a recent post,

"For whatever reason, a Christian man or woman who is unable, or does not feel called, to enter the married state as the bible and the church understand it, must attempt to develop an inward discipline of chastity which most heterosexual people never even consider, and do their best to withstand the external social pressure of conforming to the life style of the homosexual community. This is not an easy calling, but there is no substitute, and today, as in past ages, those who have responded faithfully to that call have often been the great heroes of the Faith. In their pilgrimage they need all the sympathy, encouragement and support that the church can muster, while reminding them that their particular troubles and temptations may differ in kind but not in power from the troubles and temptations of married men and women."

Among other things, Heidt says in this post that we should beware of the label "homosexual," since it was invented by the atheist Havelock Ellis. What I hate to have to tell the Reverend Father in God is homosexuality is prior to Havelock Ellis. And in some sense, Father Heidt does admit this by mentioning "the great heroes of the Faith." But was it is this simple? Did these heroes theologize their homosexuality as something that really doesn't exist? Did they theologize homosexuality as something Christ could take away or did they theologize it as something capable of sanctification as a primary characteristic of the individual nature? Did they theologize same-sex unitive relationships or did they regard such unions as impossibilities in the divine economy? We know what Heidt would answer. I remain quite unconvinced of his position. And I was less unconvinced before reading the ancient sources than afterwards.

*Christopher of Bending the Rule often refers to the family of his conjugal union as a "community of ascesis." In the sense I suspect he means it, he sees his family structure in terms of creatures training for the competition alluded to in 1 Corinthians 9 or obliquely in 1 Timothy 4. Thus, a community of ascesis is in constant training for the present struggle against the principalities and powers in hope for the amazing blessedness of the world to come. This is a common problematization of the monastics. Why are the monastics so popular among Christian gay couples? Why do I see so many icons of Benedict near rainbow flags? Why are relationships that seem the height of profligacy and indulgence in one view so strongly invested in the theology of self-denial for the sake of the "work of God." This is not a modern problem, I believe. I believe these elements are so strongly juxtaposed because monasticism was strongly influenced by a solution to very peculiar problems of the early Christian Era.

The First Problem: You are attracted to a person of the same sex in the 3rd century AD Roman world. You are an adult male citizen. Your beloved is an adult male citizen. In a world with supposedly more liberal sexual mores, your situation is impossible. At best, any relationship between you would be seen as immature, the kind of thing teenage boys would do. It would lower your status in the community. Moreover, it would complicate your property relations. Philosophically, such a relationship would be seen as poor discipline of the soul. At worst, your relationship could be considered a criminal offense.

The Second Problem: You are Christian. From what you read in the Scriptures, you cannot have sexual relations with your beloved without incurring divine sanction. Moreover, you are on the d.l., since in some dioceses, anyone with any homosexual experiences is regarded as incapable of redemption. Such persons are not permitted to be instructed in the Faith, let alone baptized. What are you to do? Surely, God has some good news for you.

To be honest, there seem to have been a variety of solutions to these problems. In some cases, gay men found liberty in solitary or communal living dedicated to prayer and works of mercy. And because being a straight man often wasn't easy in those times, such communities were mixed in sexual orientation. The idea of these communities was very simple. They were all "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven" who had given up everything to take up the cross and follow Jesus. The liberation of all of this was tremendous, because in the ideal world, there was no longer gay or straight living in Greco-Roman society with its worries about taxes, agricultural failure, commercial disaster, and the marriage market. The obligations of earthly citizenship could pass away. In this ideal case, persons were consecrated by their decision to abandon the world and by this consecration, they sought relationship with God and the entire created order. They sought the most final state of holy and eschatological being, in which God would be "all in all." In practice, the Institutes of Cassian suggest there were certain concessions to human nature. A couple of monks might share the same cell, if the abbot had determined their close living would further the work of the community. Were these particular same-sex relationships that actually had romantic dimensions? Probably. But there was no sex. Sex, of course, did not mesh with the theology. And it still doesn't. But I still claim that monasticism originates from a rejection of the heterosexual world for one not just "genderfucked" but completely rearranged. This is the power of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ!

We also can see cases in which particular same-sex romantic relationships became what I like to call "fratrimony." I think the martyrs Sergius and Bacchus came from or were exemplars to a rare community in which there really was a theology of same-sex marriage. And the theology was this: just as matrimony is a potential icon of the relationship between Christ and the Church, fratrimony is a potential icon of the relationship among the members of the Church and the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity. Thus, by natural relationships, the symmetry between koinonia and perichoresis that ultimately will be hyperthesis (by which I mean the transposition of the fullness of God for the fullness of the human being) can be displayed to the world entire. For indeed one of the ancient liturgies of fratrimony ends with this hymn of the priest, "By the union of love the apostles join in the praying to the Master of all; themselves committed to Christ, they extended their beautiful feet, announcing the good news of peace to everyone." When I read this I was amazed, for the Scriptures were opened to me, i.e. John 17.

However, fratimony had a strong pressure on it, the Greek emphasis on body/spirit duality and certain legal issues made it very difficult to theologize its sexual elements. Fratrimony, from the few sources that testify it, emphasized union according to the spirit rather than the flesh. This is a distinction one can make in a Johannine framework, because John could live with both monist and dualist understandings of human nature, but it is very hard to reconcile with the Old Testament. The body without the spirit is mere potential and vice versa . And indeed, the Old Testament lauds the potential of spirit, being "the breath of God" and views "bones" as the potential of the flesh.

But we need not worry. Heterosexual sex still was rather dubious in the Patristic books. It was allowed for sake of procreation. The Schoolmen were able to put it on better footing, until we have reached its ultimate theological celebration in American Protestantism. If it were up to me, I would adapt the formula of the Schoolmen and say, "faith, offspring, and sacrament" for matrimony and say, "faith, direction (cultivation?), and sacrament." In other words, I believe that homosexual unions possess as part of their charism not the fecundity of matrimony but the ability to look beyond the reproductive necessity to the fullness of the human person. In the ideal view, a homosexual union provides to the sensible world benefits in the form of a more objective economic and emotional safety net. They should be able to dedicate more of their time to cultivating the good and healing the harms. They have the ability to make more people their brothers and sisters than their immediate family. In the future of properly theologized relationships I see in the future, fratrimony and matrimony will be a spectrum not about sex per se but about how the couple gives of themselves to the world. The heterosexual couples will give their children to the world, both in terms of genetic potential and the habits they instill in them. Childless, homosexual couples, and celibates will give of themselves in other ways. What will matter is how the nature of God and the Christian community is published to the world by these relationships. By their fruits, we will know them.

[To be continued]