Covenant and Calling

Robert Song

Description

No other issue in recent times has proved as potentially divisive for the churches as that of same-sex relationships. At the same time as many countries have been moving towards legal recognition of civil partnerships or same-sex marriage, Christian responses have tended towards either finding alliances with proponents of conservative social mores, or providing what amounts to theological endorsement of secular liberal values.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 24 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334051909
• Langue: English

Extrait

Covenant and Calling
Towards a Theology of Same-Sex Relationships
Robert Song
© Robert Song 2014
Published in 2014 by SCM Press
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978 0 334 05188 6
Typeset by Manila Typesetting
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon
In memory of
Michael Vasey
(1946–98)
‘Jerusalem the Golden’
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
1   The Beginning and End of Marriage
2   Covenant Partnership
3   Sexual Differentiation, Sex and Procreation
4   Reading the Bible
5   Same-Sex Marriage?
6   Conclusion
Further Reading
Index of Bible References
Index of Names and Subjects
Acknowledgements
My first debt of gratitude is to Joe Pilling, who chaired the Church of England House of Bishops Working Group on Human Sexuality, and whose kind invitation to me to join the working group as an adviser provided the context in which the thoughts in this book germinated. The group’s discussions were intense and demanding, but also very rewarding, and I am thankful to him, and to all those in the group for their warmth and collegiality: Jonathan Baker, Malcolm Brown, Martin Davie, Jessica Martin, Michael Perham, Keith Sinclair, John Stroyan, and Rachel Treweek; as well as those around the country who openly and generously shared their experience with us.
The ideas in this book were aired at seminars given in Durham and Aberdeen, and I am grateful to those who participated in them, as well as to the following for the kind of insights that arise only in conversation: David Atkinson, Stephen Barton, Vicky Beeching, Dorothee Bertschmann, Nigel Biggar, Brian Brock, Joe Cassidy, Conor Cunningham, Andrew Goddard, Gerard Loughlin, Margaret Masson, Mike Mawson, John Milbank, Walter Moberly, Oliver O’Donovan, Anna Poulson, Gene Rogers, Helen Savage, Peter Selby, Maeve Sherlock, Harry Smart, Iona Song, Stuart Weeks, and Philip Wheatley. As ever, conversation implies not agreement, but a willingness to engage.
I am particularly grateful to John Barclay, who encouraged me to turn my early thoughts into a book, and to him and several others who very kindly read through and commented on a draft of the text: Stephen Barton, Nicolas Baumgartner, Robert MacSwain, Margaret Masson, Maeve Sherlock and Catherine Wilcox.
Two friends deserve special mention: Mark Hearne, whose chance comment over a quarter of a century ago opened a door that has never closed; and Michael Vasey, who was by turns brilliant and exasperating, and who taught me much of what I know about living with these questions. And to my wife Margaret, and children Iona and Jamie, for all their love and care, as ever, and in particular for their tolerance and patience beyond anything I could have reasonably asked, even as I rushed to finish a book on a subject about which I once vowed I would never write.
Preface
This is not the first book on the subject of theology and sexual relationships, and short of an asteroid incinerating the biosphere or the Lord returning in a way more spectacular than Anglicans are used to expecting, it will not be the last. It is written at a time widely thought to be one of crisis for the churches, a time when they are persistently threatened by the prospect of schism over matters of sexuality, but when renewed efforts are also being made to defuse tensions by calling on participants on all sides to lay down arms and enter into talks.
My aim is to make a contribution to these conversations, not by providing a detached overview of the issues, but by seeking to explore what potential there might be for taking the discussion forward, in a way that is both fully responsive to the tradition of Christian teaching and liturgical practice, and yet willing to entertain the possibility that we still have more to learn. In particular, I want to ask not so much about sexuality as about the relationships within which sexuality is expressed. Historically the churches have recognized two vocations, marriage and celibacy. Marriage has been understood as the lifelong and exclusive commitment to one another of a man and a woman, the only appropriate context for sexual relationship. Celibacy – or at least sexual abstinence – has been regarded as the proper and only legitimate alternative. The question I want to investigate is whether these really represent the sole alternatives, or whether we could draw from within the terms of the tradition the lineaments of another, third vocation. Might it be possible to conceive of another kind of calling, one that arises out of the heart not only of Christian understandings of marriage and celibacy, but also of what these tell us about our created, bodily natures and our hope in Christ?
There has of course been no shortage of defences of same-sex relationships, appealing to models of lesbian or gay friendship, of quasi-marital same-sex union, or of equal marriage, from which there is a great deal to learn. But many of them convey a sense of not having really done full justice to the thick texture of Christian thinking about sexuality. This is not so much a matter of how they handle scriptural texts in the area – though that remains a standing question – as a failure to deal adequately with the fact that fundamental to Christian understandings of marriage throughout the centuries has been the assumption that it is a creation good, and consequently intrinsically open to procreation. The other goods and virtues of marriage, such as its commitments to faithfulness and permanence, are frequently assumed to be separable in principle from procreativity, but without a really compelling theological justification. The rich Christian narrative of creation and redemption, which I will argue might provide a fuller theological rationale and point the way to such a separation, never properly comes into view.
Interestingly, a parallel kind of failure to place ourselves within the Christian theological narrative can be discerned behind many more conservative accounts of marriage and sexuality. While they may claim, and not without cause, to be closer to the surface meaning of many pertinent biblical texts, and may also rightly sustain the sense of marriage as a created good, they frequently forget that according to the Christian narrative of the redemption of the world in Christ the Church has no ultimate stake in the propagation of the species or the indefinite continuation of society outside of Christ. The survival of the human species and the perpetuation of this world order are not independent goods to which Christians whose identity is rooted in the resurrection have to pay obeisance, but are themselves relativized by Christ, who alone is the substance of Christian hope. And this cannot but affect our understanding of sexuality.
In both cases the decisive failure is one of not recognizing the significance of the advent of Christ for sexuality. Sex bc is not the same as sex ad . Before Christ, marriage as a good of creation was inseparable from procreation; but after Christ, while marriage and procreation do not stop being goods, we are also directed to a future resurrection life in which marriage and procreation will be no more. The vocation of celibacy is the first sign of this resurrection life, witnessing as it does to a time when God will be known as the fulfilment of all our desires. The question is whether this ‘time between the times’ in which we live, between Christ’s resurrection and his return in glory, also admits of another calling. Is there space for another kind of vocational structure, a structure of relationship, which might also be an appropriate way of inhabiting this theological time between the times? Could such a relationship be sexually expressed? And what would sexuality signify in such circumstances?
In the chapters that follow, I will explore the arguments for such a third vocation, which I will call ‘covenant partnership’. The decisive feature that distinguishes this proposal from many other similar defences of same-sex partnerships is that it is rooted in the eschatological character of the time we indwell, that is, the time when in Christ the ultimate destiny of the creation has been revealed, but when it has yet to be fulfilled in our experience. A result of this, so I shall argue, is that covenant partnerships would in principle include not only same-sex relationships and relationships involving transsexuals or people with intersex conditions, but also opposite-sex relationships. One of the assumptions that tends to stand unquestioned is that the primary theological problem with same-sex sexual relationships is that they are same-sex. I argue by contrast that the fundamental division is not between heterosexual and homosexual relationships, but between procreative and non-procreative relationships. Covenant partnerships are different from the