The following is part of a correspondence with a friend of mine, who asked that I refer to him by his baptismal name: Basil. The question originally asked was, "How do we know that the rejection of same-sex relationships is Orthodox?" I hope to publish further portions of my responses in the next few weeks.
Dear Basil:
I apologize in advance for the length of this email. I also apologize for the time it has taken me to respond to your original email. I delayed for a couple of reasons. First and most obviously, the questions you asked are significant and deserved a measure of consideration before I could offer a suitable response. Second, I cannot escape the feeling that the standard responses to these questions, which we typically see in a wide variety of Orthodox apologetic literature—sermons, articles, podcasts, books, retreats, and even hierarchical epistles—are somehow threadbare and inadequate, if not for Orthodox insiders, then certainly for the people of our generation outside the Church to whom we are trying to give an answer for the hope that lies within us.
If our audience lay within the Church, or if this were another time in history, I might find a response easier. If you asked at that time, “How do we know that the rejection of same-sex relationships is Orthodox?” I might first appeal to custom and say that the Orthodox Church rejects same-sex relationships because it has always done so. This answer may well satisfy the insiders; in a more conservative time, it may also have satisfied non-Christians who valued conformity, duty and honour to a given cultural tradition. However, our contemporary society, particularly in the West but rapidly on a global level, no longer upholds such values. Perhaps we have witnessed too many historical instances in which cultural conformity, duty and honour have produced nothing but violence, death and destruction. Even as an Orthodox Christian, I see some of my fellow Orthodox devoting themselves to slavish obedience over practices and teachings that are trivial at best and destructive at worst. Even if I were to appeal to custom in answering your question, I might well be reminded of the words of St. Cyprian of Carthage, “Custom without truth is merely the antiquity of error.”
Perhaps I might appeal to Scripture and the teachings of the Fathers to bolster my argument from custom. I could point to the various verses that you mentioned in your first email, the strictures (supposedly against same-sex relationships) from the Old and New Testaments. I might dredge the sayings and writings of the Fathers for quotes that supported the ongoing practice of the Church. Again, if you were already convinced of the matter, no doubt this scriptural and patristic evidence would suffice. If you spent some time considering these texts, though, you might find yourself increasingly troubled. In your first email, you correctly pointed out the problems involved with using scriptural verses to legislate on our contemporary situation. Scriptural proof-texting, even at its most sophisticated, is not sufficiently compelling to a postmodern generation that tends to be suspicious of any attempt to assign texts of any sort, let alone Scripture, with inherent objective authority. To put it simply, if I were to answer your question, “How do we know…?” by saying, “Because it is in the Book,” you might be convinced, but no one else would be...
Dear Basil:
I apologize in advance for the length of this email. I also apologize for the time it has taken me to respond to your original email. I delayed for a couple of reasons. First and most obviously, the questions you asked are significant and deserved a measure of consideration before I could offer a suitable response. Second, I cannot escape the feeling that the standard responses to these questions, which we typically see in a wide variety of Orthodox apologetic literature—sermons, articles, podcasts, books, retreats, and even hierarchical epistles—are somehow threadbare and inadequate, if not for Orthodox insiders, then certainly for the people of our generation outside the Church to whom we are trying to give an answer for the hope that lies within us.
If our audience lay within the Church, or if this were another time in history, I might find a response easier. If you asked at that time, “How do we know that the rejection of same-sex relationships is Orthodox?” I might first appeal to custom and say that the Orthodox Church rejects same-sex relationships because it has always done so. This answer may well satisfy the insiders; in a more conservative time, it may also have satisfied non-Christians who valued conformity, duty and honour to a given cultural tradition. However, our contemporary society, particularly in the West but rapidly on a global level, no longer upholds such values. Perhaps we have witnessed too many historical instances in which cultural conformity, duty and honour have produced nothing but violence, death and destruction. Even as an Orthodox Christian, I see some of my fellow Orthodox devoting themselves to slavish obedience over practices and teachings that are trivial at best and destructive at worst. Even if I were to appeal to custom in answering your question, I might well be reminded of the words of St. Cyprian of Carthage, “Custom without truth is merely the antiquity of error.”
Perhaps I might appeal to Scripture and the teachings of the Fathers to bolster my argument from custom. I could point to the various verses that you mentioned in your first email, the strictures (supposedly against same-sex relationships) from the Old and New Testaments. I might dredge the sayings and writings of the Fathers for quotes that supported the ongoing practice of the Church. Again, if you were already convinced of the matter, no doubt this scriptural and patristic evidence would suffice. If you spent some time considering these texts, though, you might find yourself increasingly troubled. In your first email, you correctly pointed out the problems involved with using scriptural verses to legislate on our contemporary situation. Scriptural proof-texting, even at its most sophisticated, is not sufficiently compelling to a postmodern generation that tends to be suspicious of any attempt to assign texts of any sort, let alone Scripture, with inherent objective authority. To put it simply, if I were to answer your question, “How do we know…?” by saying, “Because it is in the Book,” you might be convinced, but no one else would be...
Complete post here.
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