When Marriage is No Longer Understood as a Moral Act

Is marriage a moral act?

Not all acts are moral acts.   I am using the term ‘moral act’ not in the sense that it is moral rather than immoral but in the sense that it is subject to moral definitions and is not simply amoral.  The distinction is between amoral acts and moral acts.  For acts to be moral acts, whether immoral or moral, we have in view moral actions, the moral character of the actors, and the moral consequences.  We develop an entire ethic as a society that embraces views on actions, character, and consequences and which expresses them in its laws.  When, however, we remove the notion of an act being a moral act and still try to develop a morality around character and consequences, the results are very, very disturbing.  This is the case with Western society’s experiment with making marriage a mere act—an amoral act—while still holding to ethics of character and consequences around the issue of marriage.

Before examining this point in regard to marriage, let us take another example.  Say that, instead of using the word ‘killing’, we substituted in every instance the word ‘murder.’  In that case, we would make every act of killing a moral act of murder.  Soldiers would not be heroes but criminals, and those who killed in battle would be subject to trial. Judges who tried to distinguish between killing in self-defense and in cold-blooded murder would be removed. 

Yet, we do not do this, and various societies in various ways have found making distinctions between acts and moral acts to be essential.  We distinguish killing an animal from killing a person.  We distinguish killing someone by accident or in self-defense from killing someone intentionally or in war.  We make such distinctions because we do not equate killing with murder in every case but seek to articulate what is required for killing someone to be considered a moral act, murder.

Or, imagine that things went the other way.  Imagine that society determined that no acts were moral acts.  When a society insists that a particular act is not a moral act but, nevertheless, retains a morality in regard to character and consequences, it develops a very disturbing morality.  In the case of murder, the redefinition that it is only an amoral act of killing might mean that discussion should focus on the character of the killer, such as his courage, or the consequences, such as that the person killed was an unwanted glutton during a famine.  As with a speeding ticket, which is a law about some act that is not in itself a moral act, a killer might be fined or even put in prison for disobeying the law, not for what he or she did to someone else.  A magistrate who claimed that some acts were moral acts might be dismissed from the bench.  He or she would be expected to apply the law as a rule book, not as a moral code and therefore without any moral considerations.

Society might invent new ways to describe certain killings so that no sense of morality is suggested.  Actually, we have done this in regard to killing with terms like ‘family planning,’ ‘termination of a pregnancy,’ ‘euthanasia,’ ‘mercy killing,’ etc.  In all but the last example, we avoid moral language—especially the heavily moral word ‘murder’.  Yet imagine if what we have all understood to be murder was no longer considered to be a moral act.  We might not simply be dismissive of people who commit ‘murder,’ we might even require certain people in society to perform certain kinds of killing.  We might, for example, require doctors to euthanize patients or perform abortions.  Of course, we no longer have to ‘imagine’ such a society.

To return to our original question, ‘Is marriage a moral act?,’ we should note, firstly, that all societies have understood marriage in moral terms even if some very odd views have been floated about marriage from time to time in various cultures and periods of time.  Marriage has, however, been framed by societies around a variety of moral questions, and sometimes these are quite standard even in vastly differing cultures.  The moral understanding of marriage is articulated in terms of character/s, actions, and consequences.

Who might marry?  Most societies have ruled out the marriage of siblings, or a parent and a child, or persons of the same sex, or a person already married.  Of course, there have been exceptions to such rules in some societies, such as the drive for same-sex ‘marriage’ in Western countries in very recent times.  Marriage is also described with regard to certain actions that are considered moral.  Societies have traditionally said that adultery is a criminal offense and immoral, although Western societies make this a matter of free choice (an ‘open marriage’) rather than part of the definition of marriage.  Most societies (except Western countries in very recent times) have considered pre-marital sex morally wrong and perhaps criminal.  Certainly, societies have considered rape to be immoral, even if some view it as far more serious than others.  Also, societies expect certain commitments other than sexual matters to apply to marriage: care for the spouse (‘till death us do part’) rather than abandonment, and love rather than abuse.  And, thirdly, societies have a variety of views and laws regarding the consequences of marriage and of not abiding by the commitments expected in marriage.  Traditionally, marriage meant society’s approval that this couple may live together and have sex.  Children were welcomed into this union, and a family was formed—and the parents and children were expected to relate to each other in certain ways (such as nurture or obedience).

Now, however, imagine not that we simply take different views on the morality of marriage but that we no longer consider marriage to be a moral act of moral characters with moral consequences at all.  ‘Marriage,’ whatever it might mean to someone, would be rather ill-defined and, in fact, a rather quaint artifact from earlier societies no longer relevant to the free actions of individuals or the controlling actions of society.  The raising of children would be disassociated from the concept of ‘family’ and all that that might entail.  Having children out of wedlock might become acceptable, or the state controlling the raising of children might replace the role of the parents.  Persons might form contracts or unions for whatever purposes—taxes? property rights? celebrations?—that could be annulled or reconstituted by magistrates.  Magistrates would be expected not to hold a moral view on ‘marriage’; they would rather be expected simply to apply the law as clerks of court as currently stated and practiced.  As a judge does not regard owning a car to be in itself a moral issue, even if it might be subject to laws, so, too, marriage might be considered merely from the standpoint of a contract and not an ethical act per se.

The progression from understanding marriage to be a moral act to it being a mere contract might go still further.  Having removed the moral definition of marriage, society might then develop a new morality around those who insist on treating the now amoral acts of its citizens as moral issues.  As in the example above of requiring persons in certain social roles to perform acts without interference by their consciences or moral convictions, so now persons associated with acts of marriage might be required to lay aside any moral convictions.  Moreover, if they do not, then society might consider their character, actions, and consequences to be immoral.  The morality of marriage, for instance, shifts from the discussion of marriage to one of how others engage in society with those who want to call their unions ‘marriage.’  The minister or magistrate who will not marry the couple because he or she has a moral view of marriage that will not allow it is now the subject of moral scrutiny, not the couple.  The fertility doctor who insists that his patient be married may lose his license.  The baker who refuses to bake a wedding cake to celebrate what he or she calls an ‘immoral ‘marriage’’ is now the immoral person in such a society.  The social worker or adoption agency or judge who considers it best for children to be raised in stable families headed by a father and mother who are married is now viewed as immoral (in this particular case, the judge has been removed).  By removing the description of marriage as a moral act, a new morality enters in that labels those with a moral view of marriage as ‘immoral’ and considers them subject to social stigmatization and legal penalties.

If, however, marriage is a moral act, then we must ask, ‘What is the basis for our morality?’  Modern and postmodern, Western society has been involved in a social experiment that prioritizes ‘freedom’ in particular in all moral matters.  This has led to a variety of moral conclusions—some good, some bad, in my view.  Yet, post-postmodern, Western society has progressed beyond deconstructing marriage as a moral act.  It has introduced the tribal idea that participation in society, not freedom to exercise one’s rights or conscience, is the locus of morality.  Freedom of speech is now curtailed in certain areas of society, and speech is regulated by rules about so-called ‘hate speech.’  Similarly, persons in certain social roles—bakers, magistrates, doctors, educators, etc.—are expected to support the new morality and, if they do not, they are the immoral agents who should be penalized and perhaps removed from society.

The consequences of removing a moral definition of marriage are only just being discovered in Western culture.  The implications are immense as society explores the implications for families, education, the workplace, counselling, medical practice, the legal system, etc.  What undergirds this experiment in the West is a strong, anti-naturalism perspective.  We have moved well beyond the scientific dominance of society in Modernity, let alone the religious traditions of most cultures and of Western culture before the Enlightenment era.  Notions of ‘created order’ and ‘nature’ are no longer a basis for morality.  Indeed, living against authority, including nature, might be considered a morally heroic act.  Thus, by linking sex to marriage, procreation and family have been replaced with amoral acts of sexual pleasure and impermanent unions and of romantic friendship.  Children are no longer the product of marriage but a possible adornment for an amoral union some choose to call ‘marriage.’  Those who do not applaud these acts but consider them immoral distortions of marriage are considered the immoral persons whose dangerous views and actions should be punished.

When Use of the Diagnosis 'Spiritual Abuse' Becomes a License for Bad Pastoral Care

The Evangelical Alliance in the United Kingdom has recommended against use of the term ‘spiritual abuse,’ a term that has been promoted by advocates of the ever-present issue of homosexuality.[1]  Clearly, there is an agenda on the part of those trying to silence orthodox Christianity: the intention is to turn historic Christian teaching on homosexuality into ‘spiritual abuse’ and then to silence, even criminalise, it.  The EA worries that the phrase ‘spiritual abuse’ is vague and incoherent.’

There is no question that anything (such as enshrining the phrase ‘spiritual abuse’) proposed by Jayne Ozanne will have an anti-orthodox and anti-Biblical agenda and should be seen for what it is.  She is one of the primary spokespersons for undermining orthodoxy in the Church of England in our day, a campaigner for the distortion of Christianity by encasing it in postmodern, Western culture, particularly on issues of sexuality and marriage.  The EA is right to challenge her and others trotting out their views behind a socially powerful, pseudo-psychological, and potentially litigious category.  ‘Spiritual abuse’ can be interpreted in various ways and even lead to criminalisation of religious practices.  Indeed, she calls for ‘professional organisations external to the religious institutions [to] call for better safeguarding measures against spiritual abuse.’[2]

Ozanne’s paper, however, is interesting in its description of various ecclesiastical bodies using the term ‘spiritual abuse.’  At issue is concern over the abuse of power by those with some sort of authority in a religious body.  That sounds fair enough, yet the poison is in the pudding.  What emerges is not only an anti-Christian agenda on sexual issues but also an opposition to ministry with children that entails things like deliverance ministry and encouragement to accept Christ.  There is also something so vague as ‘misuse of scripture or the pulpit to control behaviour.’  Certainly, these things can involve abuse by persons in power, yet there is no end to the abuse that some, armed with this vague language, could go to oppose historic Christianity.  Indeed, the Jesus of this group would not have challenged the disciples’ for their lack of faith when trying to cast the demon out of the boy (Matthew 17) but would charge them with spiritual abuse.  They would no doubt applaud the authorities of Philippi for hauling off Paul and Silas to jail after casting out a spirit from a slave girl (Acts 16).  As it turns out, spiritual abuse is what one wishes to make of it, and the EA is right to challenge the notion itself.

Yet, is there a Biblically defensible place for such a notion as ‘spiritual abuse,’ or is there a better language to get at some of what is of concern here?  As it turns out, Scripture does not support a notion of ‘spiritual abuse’ so much as what might be called ‘bad pastoral care.’  ‘Pastoral’ is a good term to use because the related language of ‘shepherd’ is found repeatedly in both Old and New Testaments.  It is a better term to use than ‘spiritual,’ which is far less specific.  The general term ‘bad’ in this alternative suggestion is useful as a way to capture the various adjectives and issues that Biblical texts identify.  It could be replaced with various words, as might be observed in the following, brief study of 'shepherds' caring for the 'flock'.

Jeremiah, for example, warns of prophets and diviners who deceive the people because God did not send them (Jeremiah 29).  God promises to judge the shepherds of the people who destroy and scatter the sheep (Jeremiah 23).[3]  ‘Both prophet and priest are ungodly; even in my house I have found their evil” (Jer. 23.11).  The sexual immorality (specifically, adultery) and evil of Jerusalem’s prophets are to God as the sinful people of Sodom and Gomorrah (Jer. 23.14).  Such passages are addressing ‘bad pastoral care.’  Jeremiah was falsely accused of misusing his authority as a prophet: ‘Then the priests and the prophets said to the officials and to all the people, "This man deserves the sentence of death, because he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your own ears’ (Jer. 26.11).  In Ozanne’s view, Jeremiah might well have been guilty of ‘spiritual abuse’ on the grounds that (1) he was a prophet with ‘spiritual authority’ and (2) he said things against others that were challenging rather than supportive.  The question, though, is whether God sent Jeremiah or the politically correct prophets. 

Such a study shows that ‘bad’ pastoral care will involve the idea of care of God’s people that departs from God’s ways.  One simply cannot get around the question of whether something is right or wrong and focus simply on relational or power dynamics.  Otherwise, the language of ‘spiritual abuse’ is easily susceptible to replacing God’s standards with alternative practices, as we see in Isaiah:

Isaiah 5:18-20 Ah, you who drag iniquity along with cords of falsehood, who drag sin along as with cart ropes….  ²⁰ Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

This rather well defines Ozanne and her fellow shepherds.  Their concept of ‘spiritual abuse’ is defined in large part by their understanding of what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and ‘abuse’ comes to mean what they do not like, not what God says is wrong.  They rightly point out that persons in pastoral roles can abuse their authority, but they wrongly understand what constitutes abuse on their own terms rather than on Scriptural terms.  They rightly capture the idea that abuse will involve the misuse of power.  But they miss the point that substituting their own ethics for what Scripture says is an example of that misuse of power.  They are, as Paul warned, those very ‘wolves’ rather than shepherds of the flock that ‘come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them’ (Acts 20.30).  They are the false teachers ‘who will secretly bring in destructive opinions’ (2 Peter 2.1), who, as Jude says, are intruders who ‘pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness’ (Jude 4), who are ‘scoffers, indulging their own ungodly lusts’ (v. 18).  Peter warns against the abuse of authority when he calls on the church elders to be shepherds who ‘tend the flock of God,’ who exercise oversight willingly, without desire for gain, and without abusing power but by using their own example to guide the flock (1 Peter 5.1-3).  This is a restrictive use of authority, but it also entails remembering that the sheep are God’s and that, therefore, the shepherd’s oversight is under God’s authority.  On Ozanne’s view, God’s authority would be spiritual abuse because it condemns homosexuality.

Ozanne rightly warns against such things as

·       Pressure to conform

·       Misuse of scripture or the pulpit to control behaviour

·       Requirement of obedience to the abuser

·       The suggestion that the abuser has a ‘divine’ position

·       Isolation from others, especially those external to the abusive context[4]

As it soon turns out, however, Ozanne’s interpretation of this involves opposing the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality and certain practices of charismatic groups.[5]  There is certainly room to criticise certain charismatic groups where they espouse unbiblical notions of faith and spiritual gifts (the Prosperity Gospel), and where their leaders practice abusive power relationships.  The problem, though, is that Ozanne’s attempt to deal with this is itself an exercise in power: to shut down groups she does not like rather than to argue from Scripture what is right or wrong.  She seems unaware of her own interest in gaining power over others rather than submitting to the authority of Scripture.  In part, she does this with a pseudo-therapeutic interpretation, such as when she denounces orthodox Christians maintaining a Biblical view of sexuality as creating three phases of spiritual abuse (silencing homosexuals, trying to heal them, and trying to convert or deliver them).  One can only assume that every Biblical prophet, John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Apostles would all fall to the same sword.  The only proper cure for ideology and the abuse of power, including Ozanne’s, is to submit to God’s Word.  Bad pastoral care, it turns out, is pastoral care that does not witness, oversee, and care for the flock according to the teaching of Scripture.

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[1] See the article by Harry Farley, ‘Evangelical Alliance rubbishes ‘spiritual abuse’ language: It could ‘criminalise’ conservative teaching on sexuality,’ Christian Today (5 February, 2018); online at https://www.christiantoday.com/article/evangelical.alliance.rubbishes.spiritual.abuse.language.it.could.criminalise.conservative.teaching.on.sexuality/125357.htm.  Accessed 5 February, 2018.

[2] Jayne Ozanne, ‘Spiritual Abuse: the Next Great Scandal for the Church,’ p. 9; online at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzMyH8nMD_OdNW5WUW4zTmVvQms/view.  Accessed 5 February, 2018.

[3] Zechariah uses the term ‘worthless shepherd’ deserts the flock, the people (Zech. 11).

[4] Ibid., p. 5.

[5] Ibid, pp. 5-8 especially.

The Seminary as an Academic Community

Introduction:

A seminary forms several, overlapping communities for the purpose of serving the Church.  These communities are: an educational community, a spiritual community, a ministerial community, an academic community, and an interpersonal community.  Such communities clearly overlap in several ways with the Church—and with churches—and this is a positive point and calls for various, ongoing discussions to foster the relationship.  Yet there are distinctions between what the Church and churches can offer and what a seminary, serving the Church, can offer.  Here, I intend to discuss the seminary as an academic community.

The Academic Community:

While a distinction between an educational community and an academic community is somewhat forced because the two overlap significantly, some distinctions are important to make.  An academic community may, for example, be research-oriented rather than educationally oriented.  There are times when an educational institution suffers because faculty are so research-oriented that they do not attend to the teaching and training of students.  On the other hand, an institution so focussed on the latter may lose its contribution to other publics—when there is too little of an interest in academics.  The issues here are wrongly phrased in terms of ‘practical’ versus ‘academic, ivory tower’ education.  Academics can be extremely practical, such as in medical research.  The same goes for Biblical, historical, ethical, theological, missional, and ministerial research.  Thus, the question is rather, ‘In what ways should a seminary function as an academic community?’  The answer given here is expressed specifically in terms of the Evangelical seminary as an academic institution.

Undertaking New Research

There are new things to discover in every field of study in the seminary, not just educating students in already existing material.  Contrary to a comment one often hears, there is actually a considerable amount of research to do in Biblical studies.  Also, if theology is understood to be more than a system of thought, then there is a considerable amount of work to be done as theology is explored historically and contextually.  The seminary should assist the wider Church to understand current issues and trends and its response to them, such as in collecting new demographic data and interpreting it for missions or in articulating the Church's response to culture (apologetics).  The seminary as an academic community should ask, ‘Where does new research need to be done?’

Engaging Other Publics

The seminary should not be a cocoon for its own constituents but should engage other publics.  Sometimes this means one Evangelical tradition engaging another Evangelical tradition, especially if the seminary itself represents only one Evangelical tradition.  The seminary also needs to engage other religions, and this calls for academic research.  Also, the seminary needs to engage academic, cultural, global, and non-Evangelical publics.  There is something to be gained in such engagements academically, as ‘iron sharpens iron’ (Prov. 27.17).  This engagement is also apologetic, since we are to be able to give an answer for our faith (1 Peter 3.15).  A problem arises when an ‘academic political correctness’ ethos sets in and the seminary no longer understands academic work as a clear articulation of orthodox faith (from ‘first principles’).  All too often, such an ethos entails a destructive self-criticism that adopts methods and presuppositions of opposing worldviews.

The Seminary’s Primary Constituency: the Church

The primary constituent of the seminary, however, is the Church.  Plato and Aristotle forever asked the question, ‘What is the end/goal of such and such a study?’—politics, ethics, rhetoric, etc.  The seminary’s academic interests have the primary end of serving the Church.  Learning Greek and Hebrew in order to exegete Biblical passages is an academic goal, but to do so in order to be able to translate the Scriptures into languages without Bibles, to be able to teach God’s Holy Word, to be able to preach in worship, to be able to answer questions about the faith, to be able to challenge bad practice or heresy—these are the sorts of goals that a seminary helps the Church meet when academic study has the Church’s mission and ministry as its primary end.  This does not dilute the academic purpose of the seminary; it rather locates and focusses it, and therefore helps academic study to perform its purposes well.  This is the virtue of academic study.

Intentional Research, Group Study, and Conferences

One of the problems a seminary often faces is that it takes no lead as an institution in intentional research.  Rather, academic research is left to the interests of individual faculty.  While individual research should be encouraged, the seminary should also offer direction as an institution to engage various publics.  That is, it should play a role beyond the academic interests of individual scholars and, as an academic community, make an academic contribution to the Church in the pressing issues that it is facing.  This can be done by holding conferences on particular topics that address real issues for the Church in Biblical studies, the Church’s faith and practice, and the Church’s mission and ministry.  Such conferences would call for cutting edge research on a given topic and then produce an edited book or articles for a journal that can, in turn, provide leading discussion for a wider public.

One example might be helpful.  The identity of ‘Evangelicalism’ is in something of a crisis.  This is largely because the definition is losing its historical rootedness and is being given various meanings in the present to serve political ends.  Evangelicalism as a movement can easily be manipulated or swayed in one direction or another without historical, theological, and Biblical definition, and only academics committed to engaging with the movement will be able to keep it on course.  An Evangelical seminary has a particular role in defining what Evangelicalism means, and this needs to be done through conferences and publications.

Academic Publications

While mentioned already, a particular point needs to be made about academic publications.  A seminary that intends to provide some direction and oversight academically needs to do more than encourage its individual faculty to publish.  It needs to do more than be sure that students are reading opposing viewpoints and are trained in academic methods.  It actually needs to take control of the publication industry itself.

There are several reasons for this.  Most importantly, publishing houses are, more than anything else, businesses interested in financial viability and success.  Professors will receive contracts for publishing if their books will sell.  Clearly, however, not all academic material sells well: it is far more lucrative to publish popular books of a less academic nature, books that will sell well because they are controversial, or books that are not so controversial that they might damage the reputation of the publishing house.  The bottom line is that a seminary has chosen its faculty and should support them in publishing, and it should do so without an eye toward financial concerns.  Thus, a seminary should have a ‘publishing arm’ for its undertakings beyond its role of educating students in classrooms (although published works will be used in classrooms).

This publishing commitment of a seminary can more easily be done in the present day, since cheaper options than printed publications are available.  E-books and an e-journal are now respectable and can be made available at far cheaper prices to a far wider public than print publications.  A seminary should feel obligated to produce helpful material without the concerns of a publishing house to make money or please certain publics other than the ones it is already serving.  Indeed, as a ministry of the Church, a seminary should be concerned to provide inexpensive publications at various academic levels that can be helpful for the global Church.  (Sadly, I know of one Christian college that requires students to purchase books that its teachers publish that are simply spirally bound, photocopied books--and charges over $100.  This practice needs to be called out as unethical.)  It should, therefore, not only publish its own faculty’s material but also make these available at minimal costs to people in the developing world.  An e-book sold on the seminary's virtual bookstore that is written by a faculty member could be sold at about $2.00 and the author could make the same money from the book that he or she would by publishing with a major publisher.  The seminary could offer a more academically reputable validation of the work than a major publishing house.

Academic Degrees

The seminary should also be concerned to provide academic degrees so that certain students may be formed in academic research for the Church.  A problem arises when academic research is considered as an end in itself as this research is then separated from the concerns of the Church.  A further problem arises when higher status is given to academic research that is independent from the Church.  This is a matter of setting up academic research in opposition to the Church, let alone a false, Modernist understanding of ‘objective’, scientific study.  We have lived long enough in a Postmodern critique of Modernity to know that the study of a tradition—research from first principles—is possible and even academically respectable.  Of course, as Christians, we reject certain assumptions of Postmodernity in favour of, as Alisdair MacIntyre calls it, ‘Tradition Enquiry.’[1]

If so, then a seminary ought to offer post-graduate degrees and do so with the full intent of providing a superior, academic education to students than what a university can give.  Universities have so framed academic study as independent reason that they have become oppositional to the Church.  More recently, they have become so beholden to set views and social outcomes that, especially in the humanities, their academic integrity is inferior to Christian tradition enquiry.  The seminary needs to offer masters and doctoral research degrees from within a faith perspective.  If it does not do so, it tacitly affirms a long-discredited view of academics (the separation of scientific research from faith), submits to more recent socially approved outcomes that undermine actual research, and relinquishes its mission.

Relationships with Other Institutions

Of course, not every theological institution will function as an academic community in this way.  There is a good place for other kinds of educational institutions in the Church, including Bible schools (which have, sadly, been declining in the West).  Since not every theological institution will function to the level suggested here for some theological seminaries, then one further suggestion in conclusion is that lower academic institutions should form relationships with other institutions that offer the academic activities discussed. 

A problem arises when a consortium of theological colleges is defined at the level of peer institutions: ones that have the same academic level of engagement and can offer cross-registration to its students or share the same accreditation.  Rather, it would be far better to arrange partnerships between lower level and higher level academic institutions so that they could work together.  If an academic seminary offering conferences, publishing, and educating students to the PhD level, e.g., were also in relationship with a lower level Bible college in the same country or abroad, the relationship would be a benefit in various ways to both institutions.  The academic institution too easily becomes self-focussed and wishes to establish itself in the halls of academia rather than be of service to the Church—this has happened repeatedly.  Academic institutions need to be connected to relevant ministries, from discipleship programmes in local churches to training ministers in poorer areas of the world to fulfilling the Church’s needs as it engages with its mission.  The lower level educational institutions, for their part, can then draw on resources that the more academic institution provides.  These resources now, thanks to advances in internet and computer technology, include lectures that can be delivered globally (such as by Digital Live) or made available in video (such as YouTube) format.  Such lectures could be used by missionaries and nationals as they relate them to the right academic level, translate them, and/or apply them in other contexts.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the seminary is, among other things, an academic community.  It needs to engage in certain activities beyond hiring academically qualified faculty in order to be an academic community.  It should engage various publics beyond just the students who are there for an education.  It should, for example, hold conferences, publish books, have a journal, make lectures available to other contexts, and offer academic degrees, including the PhD.  Alongside these academic activities, the seminary’s other concerns will hold it to the primary tasks of a seminary: the education and training of persons for ministry in the Church.  The seminary is not only an academic community; it is also a educational community, a spiritual community, a ministerial community, and an interpersonal community.  By remembering this, it’s role as an academic community will maintain the right focus for the Church.  The seminary exists to establish such communities, but it does so with the end or goal of serving the Church in its mission and ministries.  This includes the seminary as an academic institution.

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[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, IL: University of Notre Dame, 1990).  Cf. my Rival Versions of Theological Enquiry (orig. pub. International Baptist Theological Seminary, Prague: 2005; revised (1^st ch. only) in 2018 and available on the bookstore of my blog: www.bibleandmission.blogspot.com. 

The Anti-Naturalism of Western Culture

Western culture has increasingly followed an anti-natural trajectory.  If Modernity ruthlessly sought answers in science—or what it thought was ‘scientific’ (as in its imaginative constructions in the humanities)—an alternative anti-naturalism has come into ascendency in postmodern times.  This is not an ivory tower debate.  It plays out in children’s classrooms, adoption agencies, public policies, university campuses, denominations, views on immigration, hiring policies, and on and on the list goes.  The rejection of nature is the definitive characteristic of our age—despite all the contradictory worries about climate change and the environment.

The French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, argued for an authentic existence that did not fall entirely to the side of facticity or, alternatively, to the side of transcendence.  One should acknowledge the facts while not being bound by them (Being and Nothingness).  As an existentialist, his primary concern was to deny that we, as humans, have an ‘essence.’  Rather, we are thrown into existence and have to create our identity out of the choices and actions that we make.  Yet even Sartre believed that there were certain facts.

Perhaps the illogicality of his position has evolved existentialism into postmodernity.  If, indeed, existence precedes essence, then why should we acknowledge facts as though they are unchangeable?  Why should we not live in transcendence, in nothingness?  Admittedly, Sartre’s own examples of ‘being’ or facts were not in nature but in the realities of one’s existence: the waiter who does not accept that he is a waiter but imagines himself to be something else; the woman who denies that she is being touched; and so forth.   Remarkably, Sartre could not acknowledge the reality of evil; all that matters is that one chooses to act (and so create being), not what one chooses.

This denial of nature and the emphasis on personal choice stands as the antithesis of Stoic philosophy.  Stoicism rejected imaginary constructs and called on people to content themselves with who they were and what they were.  Are you a slave?  Then be a slave, and a good one at that.  They spoke of what was ‘natural’ and opposed those who lived ‘against nature’ (para physin) a phrase that was often used for homosexuals in antiquity because they lived against their biologically defined sex (so, e.g., Romans 1.26).  In the postmodern West in our day, the Stoics have been trounced.  Two hundred and fifty years of promoting ‘freedom’ as a cardinal virtue has finally come to define our worldview: we lean into nothingness and away from being.

This plays out in various ways in the halls of academia and in everyday life.  Already in the 19th century, David Friedrich Strauss could argue that myth was the true kernel of belief wrapped in discardable, historical garb—i.e., imagined, made-up history (The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, 1846).  Thus, according to Strauss, one should read the Gospels not for what they state about the historical Jesus but for what they claim for the Christ of faith.  In the same vein, the existentialist New Testament scholar in the following century, Rudolf Bultmann, insisted that history did not support theology.  One did not need to believe in the physical, historical resurrection of Jesus from the dead in order to preach a message about transcendent existence to a congregation.  On his view, Jesus’ resurrection was a faith claim apart from any reference to a physical resurrection.  In our day, it is a given that mainline denominational ministers will reject the claim that Jesus rose from the dead physically on the third day.  The elephant in the room for this constructed Christianity is the simple fact that the early Church was founded on the claim that Jesus had been raised physically from the dead: ‘And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain’ (1 Corinthians 15.14).

Our culture’s experiment with transcendence over facticity finds any number of peculiar denials.  The common language for this in postmodern thought is ‘deconstruction.’  If some reality has been constructed, it is arbitrary.  Its value is purely in terms of whether it is functional, not in, as the Stoics would have said, because we find contentment in living according to nature.  If existence is constructed, then it can also be deconstructed.  A good example might be the denial of borders and immigrants entering the country.  Borders are, after all, human lines in the sand, and people should not be categorized in terms of ‘immigrant’ or ‘citizen’ status, the argument goes.

The denial of reality is not always a question of nature.  It plays out in the refusal to have a serious conversation about Islam in the west.  Islamic terrorism is not simply terrorism by people who happen to be Muslims; there is such a thing as an Islam (there are varieties!) that, by definition, leads to terrorism—as any Islamic terrorist would agree (although the word would be jihad and it would be considered just and holy, not what we think of when we use the word ‘terrorism’).  It is a legitimate interpretation of Islam.  Western public discourse has, however, typically preferred to remain ignorant of the theological discussion in Islam and the teaching of parts of the Koran that advocate killing or subjugating non-Muslims.  What is the basis for this?  The answer, inevitably, is a culture that desires to discuss things in terms of what one wants to believe—a politically correct view of Islam—rather than to discuss the facts—what the Koran actually says and how it has actually been interpreted and lived by certain groups throughout many centuries.

The current interest in euthanasia, led by the Netherlands, offers an example of anti-naturalism.  Why should one, to use language introduced above, treat existence as a facticity, as a fact that defines a person?  Why should people not be able to choose to terminate their own existence?  Indeed, it would be the ultimate act of transcendency to deny the facticity of life.  Instead of addressing the facts of one’s life, such as a difficult illness, pain, or depression, why not resist all external definitiveness by choosing to act against the facts?  The most creative self-definition, on such a view, is the act that denies the fact of existence itself.

Not surprisingly, another of the much debated issues of recent decades fits this philosophical debate as well: abortion.  Different cultures have put forward different arguments to defend the morality of killing the unborn.  China has put forward a social argument: abortion as a way to control population growth for the supposed good of society.  Some have advocated abortion on eugenic grounds—killing those with Downs Syndrome or some terminal illness or defect, for example, or those wanting a boy and not a girl.  Yet the West’s fundamental argument in favour of abortion has been based on the ideology of freedom: women (not men or the unborn) should have the freedom to choose whether they want to bring a pregnancy to term or not.  On such an ethic, what makes abortion moral is the denial of the facts of what a foetus is—a growing human being—in favour of a value: freedom of choice.  This, too, is an example of the West’s anti-naturalism.

The denial of facticity even reached the halls of government this past year as people tried to deny that Donald Trump was actually president.  Others have tried to destroy his presidency by creating false ‘facts’.  Lying, denials, and fake news define much of Washington D.C., as well as other institutions of power in our culture, such as news agencies.  No wonder that young, university students oppose free speech, prefer safe spaces to reality, need trigger warnings to alert them that something uncomfortable might be in their assigned reading, and, in one way or another, can be helped to create their own bubble of reality.

Most destructively, biological sex and gender identity have been subjected to the philosophy of transcendency.  Ryan Anderson, author of When Harry Became Sally,[1] cites an example in the constructed reality of Dr. Deanna Adkins, director of the Duke Center for Child and Adolescent Gender Care.  She says [trigger warning!] that gender identity is the only medically supported determinant of sex…. It is counter to medical science to use chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics to override gender identity for purposes of classifying someone as male or female.

One of the recent attempts by transgender activists to define gender includes the categories of identity, expression, physical attraction, and emotional attraction (the Gender Unicorn)—not biology.[2]  Yet transgender activists cannot let go the idea of facticity.  Having rid themselves of biology as determinative, some, such as Adkins, nonetheless want to insist that gender is either innate or fixed at an early age.  (‘Insist’ appears to be the appropriate word: we live in a world that deconstructs nature and insists on the validity of its own construction of reality.)  Anderson asks, in response, if the proper dosage of medicine will be based on a person’s biological sex or on one’s gender identity—indeed.

Anderson further avers that transgender activists “promote a highly subjective and incoherent worldview.”  He accuses them of promoting their agenda without care for logical consistency and outlines their contradictions on several matters:

On the one hand, they claim that the real self is something other than the physical body, in a new form of Gnostic dualism, yet at the same time they embrace a materialist philosophy in which only the material world exists. They say that gender is purely a social construct, while asserting that a person can be “trapped” in the wrong gender. They say that there are no meaningful differences between man and woman, yet they rely on rigid sex stereotypes to argue that “gender identity” is real, while human embodiment is not. They claim that truth is whatever a person says it is, yet they believe there’s a real self to be discovered inside that person. They promote a radical expressive individualism in which people are free to do whatever they want and define the truth however they wish, yet they try ruthlessly to enforce acceptance of transgender ideology.[3]

The underlying, philosophical failure of these transgender activists is their concern to affirm the reality of a particular thing—transgenderism—and their postmodern belief that reality is constructed.  Incredulously, even biological sex is not arrant naturally but assigned, as the phrase, ‘assigned sex’ is now to be understood.  It is not, allegedly, assigned by God or nature but by a doctor or parents.  The logic of this position ought to press transgender advocates not to add ‘other’ to the binary ‘male’ and ‘female’ but to question whether there is any such thing as ‘male’ and ‘female’ aside from social constructs.  The category, ‘other,’ still has ‘male’ and ‘female’ as references.

In all this nonsense, the fundamental question keeps arising: ‘Can we say that there is anything ‘natural,’ or is everything simply a matter of perception, construction, and choice of identity?’  The Stoics simply called on people to be content with living according to nature; they did not have to try to explain to their culture, confused as it was, that there was such a thing as nature.  Their counterparts, the Cynics, took living according to nature to an extreme, casting off all authority and living anti-socially and naturally (in some cases, at least, nude, unwashed, and uncouth behaviour).  Even the Epicureans, who denied the existence or at least the relevance of, and therefore the authority of, the gods and believed in the mutability of reality (as periods in time offered different constructions of reality), acknowledged being part of a natural reality. 

Some, searching for some connection between today’s imaginations with ancient philosophy, have suggested Gnosticism.  Gnosticism was a second-century hodge-podge of various views, including some Christian language that consequently confused some of the churches.  It had more in common with certain eastern religious views.  At its heart was a conviction that the material world was a wrongful creation of a demigod, and that reality was really found in non-material spirituality.  The more fully explored version of this type of worldview will, however, be found in Hinduism.  What is different, however, is that any contemporary, Western versions of this type of anti-naturalism will not reject materialism.  Therein lies the logical contradiction that fills the daily news: the conviction that reality is constructed, not natural, and that this constructed reality is essential.

To all this, the Church rightly and necessarily affirms:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible (Nicene Creed).

We believe that God created the world, that the world is good, and that human sin is a rejection of God’s good creation and Law.  The good life is the life lived in conformity with God’s good creation.  Eve’s and Adam’s sin, definitive of all human sin against God, was their choice to construct their own existence, to deny the Law of God and act like God by determining good and evil for themselves.  Our culture’s version of this, anti-naturalism, is not too different.  As we say, ‘the apple has not fallen far from the tree.’

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[1] Ryan Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (Encounter Books, 2018).

[2] See the ‘Gender Unicorn’ graphic at www.transstudent.org/gender.

[3] Ryan T. Anderson, ‘The Philosophical Contradictions of the Transgender Worldview,’ Public Discourse (February 1, 2018); online at http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/02/20971/.  Accessed 2 February, 2018.