Ephraim Radner's Latest Screed

isn't half-bad and provides some insight into the mind of a deeply thoughtful reasserter. Both Richard Kew+ and Rev. Mr. Radner are concerned about the effects of technology (especially biomedical) on personhood itself. Note that Radner mentions the issue of in(e/i)quity, for instance. And frankly, such technology does raise the twin spectres of both idolatry and inequity.

I'm still working through my response to such concerns about the relation between sin, God, creation, and personhood. But I think it will turn on "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" in the context of Paul and the meat market of Corinth, in which concerns about avoiding all implication of participation in idolatry are subordinated to the good gifts of God being used in thanksgiving.

Radner, of course, also makes the mistake of looking at science as potentially non-irrelevant (I use the double negative intentionally). God reveals Himself in very Word and very works: a dualism united and mediated through Our Lord Jesus Christ. Science in this debates serves an aetiological purpose. It purports homosexuality as a phenomenon and supplies an explanation that must agree with but is not in itself divine law. Scripture, too, provides an aetiology for homosexual activity (and other potential abuses of human sexuality such as adultery, fornication and arsenokoitia with one's wife. And respecting the Apostle, I will admit that it is possible that homosexual activity (and the other potential abuses) in some contexts arises from idolatry (either of foreign gods or the self). But if the works of God do provide non-idolatrous examples of homosexuality (and science may be capable of such demonstration), the church is called to reflect seriously on her tradition and how it might be deepened by this knowledge.

As for Radner's comments on "ascetics," I only will say that the tradition only speaks of men becoming celibate. And it speaks of this as a gift of the Holy Spirit. I'm still not quite sure what the Lord meant. And the gifts of the Holy Spirit are free gifts of God. Paul, when speaking of marriage in light of the eschaton says that it is better to marry than to burn with desire. He does not say that Christians who want to marry must have had bad relationships with their parents. He does not recommend that the community problematize the married. In fact, the Apostle and the tradition since have been careful to promote and cherish the gift of the eunuch-making spirit while recognizing marriage as a state of greater worldly obligation and as a vocation not to be despised in oneself or in others.

Thus, the third worst aspect of reparative therapy (after the harm it does to oneself and one's relationships) is that it seems to be the seeking of grace with works. If I were called to be a perpetual celibate (and I still may be), it would be obligatory for me to cultivate that. No one should say to me, "Well, if we give you enough therapy and keep you away from monastic breviaries and all other parts of the celibate lifestyle and make you read the Song of Solomon long enough, you'll want to marry a woman." So it remains clear. I and the tradition generally still don't know what to make of the Lord and the eunuchs. But I'm sure they are important somehow.

Finally, I have one comment to make on the relativization of Scripture. America is a land of immigrants, but throughout most of our history we've done our best to either keep them out and exploit them. It is unclear to me whether the first is prohibited by the Scriptures, but the second is forbidden by the Law and the Prophets in no uncertain terms. Our ancestors were strangers in Egypt, who were brutally exploited for the needs of the Egyptian polity and economy. We often talk of the immigrant as someone who will do what no American will do. Think on the end of Genesis, in which Israel and his family are admitted to tend sheep in Goshen, because the Egyptians think such an activity is unclean. How far might we be now from chaingangs of undocumented Americans (11 million or so) building the highways of Texas? How far are we from being Pharaoh? We are not far indeed if we forget our past. We are not far if we are asked on television about religious objections to criminalizing aliens (as Congressman Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin was asked recently) and our formation as Episcopal Christians leads us to say, "Jesus never crossed any national borders."

There is a kind of Scriptural relativism associated with the idea of "pluriform truth" and there is a kind of Scriptural relativism associated with honoring the fears of the culture and the ideal of the maximization of profit. Radner, I suspect, has in mind the former. I am learning to be concerned by both, but it is the latter that truly frightens me.