France's Un-Olympic Games

 

The Olympics celebrates the pinnacle of achievement for the human body.  We exult and are amazed by the speed, endurance, and strength that young people achieve through their natural capacities and strenuous training.  Anyone cheating through the use of drugs is disqualified.  At the Olympics, we only want to see those competing who are playing by the rules of nature.

The Olympics also celebrates the good will of humanity as athletes from different nations compete in friendly competition with one another.  The games can rise above the conflicts of nations.  Even athletes from aggressive nations can compete, though perhaps not as representatives of those nations.  By competing in the games, they rise above the behaviour of their national identities.

The French opening ceremony of the XXXIII Olympics in Paris managed to undermine both of these goals as drag queens parodied the Lord’s Supper, as depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's famous mural.  Instead of nature, they celebrated anti-nature.  Instead of good will, they mocked.  In the name of some distorted notion of freedom, they hailed the freedom to abuse their guests.  In the name of inclusion, they excluded.  The irony of France's position is illustrated in its celebrating men dressed as women while prohibiting Muslim women dressed as Muslims. Whose freedom and inclusion is it?[1]

Contrasting the natural pairing of males and females in the animal kingdom to human homosexuality, the Stoic speaker defending nature in Pseudo-Lucian says,

But you who are wrongly praised for wisdom, you beasts truly contemptible, you humans, by what strange infection have you been brought to lawlessness and incited to outrage each other? With what blind insensibility have you engulfed your souls that you have missed the mark in both directions, avoiding what you ought to pursue, and pursuing what you ought to avoid? If each and every man should choose to emulate such conduct, the human race will come to a complete end.[2]

This work was written by a non-Christian sometime in the 2^nd to the 4^th c. AD and represents a Graeco-Roman (not Judeo-Christian) debate about whether the love of women or of boys (pederasty) was preferable.  The speaker who wins the debate in this work is the one championing pederasty, not the one arguing for natural love between men and women.  The Christian era in Europe that began to take hold of the culture in the 4^th century rejected this, but it is now over.

The culture that has replaced Christianity is not a return to pagan Roman culture but a promotion of what was on the extreme edge of that culture and that Rome actually rejected.  Some commentators on the blasphemous mockery of the Eucharist by drag queens, including the director himself, have claimed that it was actually a presentation of a Bacchanalian feast, as though this makes things better. Bacchus, or Dionysus, was the god of wine, and a prostitution and sex cult was devoted to him. The Roman historian, Livy (59 BC – AD 17), describes it in his 'History of Rome' (bk. 39.8-15). Primarily a cult of women that excluded men in its bestial debauchery (cf. Euripides’ play, Bacchae), Livy says that the cult came to include men who resembled ‘women; actors and pathics [catamite, a male used in homosexual intercourse] in the vilest lewdness’ (39.15.9). While the Olympics celebrates the achievements of lives devoted to discipline and exercise, the Bacchic cult celebrates drunkenness, sexual indulgence, and gender dysphoria. The symbolism at the XXXIII Olympics in France is, nonetheless, well captures the rejection of Christ for such a god in contemporary Western society. The harmfulness of Bacchanalian devotion, including sexual slavery and the debauchery of youth, was such that the Romans outlawed the cult in Italy.

Indeed, the drag queens of Europe have the stage—at least until the Muslims take it not long hence.  Then we will move from mocking gender by men pretending to be women, to subjugating them.  The feminism that erased women’s uniqueness in the name of equality and that went on to allow men into women’s locker rooms and sports will have come full circle with the new religion that subjugates women.  Instead of drag, the veil.  Instead of freedom, submission.  Instead of homosexual marriage, forced marriages.  Yet Europe will need to wait a few decades for that development, though it can be found in sections of certain cities even now.

For those aware of the changing culture, the ceremony was a good depiction of how far removed Europe is from any Christian influence.  Nations observing this Olympics should realise that, whatever Europe is, it is not Christian.  What better than drag queens to represent the distortions of Western culture in its present, post-Christian age?  They are the epitome of the unnatural, even the anti-natural, and they are defined not in themselves but by what they mock, the woman and Christian faith.  Though dressed as women, they cannot bear children.  Yet they seek out children before whom to parade their sexual perversions.  (Indeed, a child was part of the mock feast of debauchery.) They are the grand deconstructors of European cultures that were built more or less on centuries of Christian teaching.  Knowing their enemy, they look for ways to mock Christians’ most holy institution, the Eucharist, while their allies burn a place of Christian worship in France every other week.  They celebrate their sin with a parody of our Lord's commemorative meal of His death for the forgiveness of sins.  Not only so, but bishops of once Christian Churches in Europe and America, now priests of post-Christian culture, offer blessings and even church weddings to homosexuals.  Perhaps the for the most part silence of bishops in churches like the Church of England is because they essentially approve of the progression from the Eucharist to Dionysian revelry.  They have already done so in promoting sexual debauchery in the Church.

And what better country in Europe to host this monstrous celebration?  France has been dismantling Christian faith since the days of its Revolution.  It is the secular state par excellence.  It has now enshrined in its Constitution the right to kill the unborn in the womb—another of the most anti-natural practices of a post-Christian people.  Having cleansed itself from Christian faith in the name of (a twisted notion of) freedom and inclusion, it is now host to another parody of the Christian religion, Islam.  Yet, as the ten percent of the population that is Muslim grows, France will discover (why is this so hard to see now?) that its distorted versions of freedom and inclusivity, not just its Christian past, are about to disappear.  For now, the Olympic drag show announces to the world that the West’s inhospitable inclusivity, its anti-natural freedom, and its mockery of Christianity are in control.  And how better to announce this than by mocking the Olympics, where natural capacities, the differences between men and women, and the awarding of merit are on display in every competition?

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[1] Cf. Nadine El-Bawab, 'Controversy surrounds French ban on hijab as 2024 Paris Olympics get underway,' ABC Eyewitness News (27 July, 2024); https://abc11.com/post/paris-olympics-2024-controversy-surrounds-french-ban-hijab/15104952/ (accessed 28 July, 2024).

[2] Pseudo-Lucian, Affairs of the Heart, trans. A. M. Harmon (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925).

How Aristotle’s 'Politics' May Help Us to Understand Paul and the Law

Introduction

At the academic level, scholars will be aware of numerous books and essays on Paul and the Law.  Many ministers and laity approach the question differently: ‘Is the Law still relevant for Christians?’  Much of this discussion focusses on exegesis of specific texts in Paul.  This brief essay takes a broader view in that it asks how Paul’s discussion of the Law might have fit into the discussion of politics in antiquity.  For this, I propose to use some distinctions from Aristotle’s Politics.  I also intend to keep the analysis brief as considerations easily become entangled in the plethora of literature on the subject and drown understanding in all the details.  The reader may ask whether this is simplistic and distorts the discussion of Paul and the Law.  My view is that this approach helps to provide a way into a complex subject that might be followed up with an engagement of all the discussion of Paul and the Law over the past decades.

Aristotle’s Discussion of Government in Politics

Aristotle follows others (like Plato) in speaking of six types of government that divide into three categories: rule of the one, rule of the few, and rule of the many.  Two possibilities are available in each of these, one good and one bad (Politics 4.1289a).  Thus, respectively, rule of the one may be by a monarch or a tyrant; rule of the few may be by an aristocracy or an oligarchy, and rule of the many may be by constitutional government or democracy.  (His negative view of democracy is that it is the kind of populism that flouts the constitution and laws of the land because the people vote for things that benefit themselves.)

Aristotle does not approach his subject by arguing that there is only one good form of government.  What is needed is virtuous and good leaders.  Nor does he take the view that government is stable as it changes.  As he discusses different types of government in different states, such as Athens and Sparta, he considers their strengths and weaknesses.  Within a state, good government might change for the worse and often does, and the failures of one form of government leads to change to another form of government, such as the excesses of democracy leading to tyranny.  Also helpful is Aristotle’s statement that different forms of government are suited to different sorts of people.  Thus, he sets out four questions for discussion of state constitutions (Politics 4.1288b):

What is the ideal constitution?

What form of constitution is best for a particular people (since the ideal is unattainable)?  How might this constitution be brought into existence and maintained?

What is the form of constitution shared by most states?

Various authors attest to a general view in antiquity that individuals set up a constitution with various laws for particular states, such as Solon’s law for Athenians.  Moreover, these human leaders functioned under the direction of various gods, such as Athena for the Athenians.  Significantly, different laws applied to different forms of constitution and different peoples.  Thus, we have the following sort of progression in the discussion of the politics of a particular people:

Their major god, their leader who established the constitution, the particular people, their constitution, and the laws appropriate for the constitution and the people. 

This view was held not only by the Greeks but also throughout the Ancient Near East.

This context is certainly applicable to a discussion of Judaism.  Of course, the Jews believed that there is only one God, and therefore they were unique among the peoples of the earth in that this God gave them the Law.  Moses was the lawgiver, Israel was God’s covenant people, they lived under a form of monarchy (a theocracy, however) and were given written laws.

Christians had the challenge of considering what to do with the Law of the Jews now that they included both Jews and Gentiles, and this leads us directly to the question of Paul, apostle to the Gentiles, and the Old Testament, Jewish Law.

Paul and the Law

These broad thoughts about government may help us in considering Paul’s view of the Law.  He has in view two different people: Jews and Christians (Jews and Gentiles).  They have the same God, but their constitutions are different.  The one constitution, that of Moses, functioned for a sinful people in covenant relationship with God.  The other constitution, that of Christ, functioned for a righteous people in covenant relationship with God.  They were not righteous through works of the Law but through the work of Jesus Christ.  Jesus was able to bring about the constitutional change because He fulfilled the righteous requirements of the Law, and now those ‘in Him’ were righteous by His righteousness.

The Christian constitution was not of the same sort as the Jewish constitution in regard to laws.  Laws were necessary because people were sinful.  We might say that, if a people obeyed the speed limit, they would not need speed signs.  In fact, we might compare the United Kingdom to the United States of America in this example.  In the UK, drivers are expected to know the speed limit on different sorts of roads.  Thus, they rarely need signs.  In the US, roads have speed signs everywhere.  On this example, the UK is comparable to a Christian constitution with respect to the law, and the USA is comparable to the Jewish constitution.  The example is further helpful in that both countries have speed limits, they just relate differently to them.  Christians do not oppose the laws of the Old Testament—so far as they relate to those who are not Jews.  The difference is that they do not need legal regulations because they are serving God in a different way by keeping in step with the Holy Spirit.

Some Jewish laws no longer apply to Christians, whether Jews or Christians.  The constitution has changed.  Sacrificial laws are no longer needed as Jesus was the sacrifice once for all for sins.  Laws regulating a Jewish state, including punishments for certain acts, are no longer applicable to a people that are not a state—the Church.  Some laws accommodated sin, as Jesus noted, such as permission for divorce.  The new constitution was for righteous people who understood marriage in terms of what God intended in creation.  Yet the question of the Law was not simply a matter of which laws still applied and which did not.  Instead, the constitution was changed by Jesus for a now righteous people serving according to the empowering Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

As stated above, Paul does not quite discuss the Law in the same way that Aristotle discusses government.  The comparisons offered here are for understanding certain categories in a discussion of constitutions and laws that provide a fresh way of trying to get to Paul’s basic argument.  Aristotle’s distinctions may help us understand Paul’s approach to the Law now that Christ Jesus had established a whole new people in Himself who are led by the Spirit.  Contrasting the two ‘constitutions’, Paul says,

For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. ⁶ But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code (Romans 7.5-6, ESV).

Paul could certainly affirm the righteous laws of God under the Jewish constitution, such as when he alluded to Leviticus 20.13 when speaking of homosexuality as a sin (1 Corinthians 6.9; 1 Timothy 1.10).  The moral law of Judaism was God’s law, not just a law for a particular people.  What changed was that Jesus had accomplished a change in the people.  We need to talk about more than just the law when discussing Paul and the Law of the Old Testament.  We need to understand that this matter is part of a larger discussion.  A constitution for a sinful nation struggling with the flesh and their sins was changed into a constitution for a righteous people of Jews and Gentiles in Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The Conversion of the Heart: Christian Theology, Ethics, and Ordination

 

Evangelicals are currently facing an ethical and clerical question framed in regard to the matter of ordaining same sex attracted but celibate ministers or priests.  I have written on this subject in earlier essays.  This is a matter of how we understand Christian ethics: Is it a matter of moral acts or also of the heart?  Underlying this question is a theological question of the relationship between justification and sanctification.  I would like to offer some dialogue with several Scriptures and what might also be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  It might seem strange to bring in the Catholic Catechism at all for a Protestant and Evangelical theological and ethical matter, but I would suggest that it is helpful.  It is helpful precisely because it understands grace in a way that is not ‘cheap grace’ and because it does capture key elements of historic Christian teaching about a conversion of the heart.  On these matters, the Anabaptist tradition in its understanding of justification as inseparable from sanctification, the Pietistic tradition in Lutheranism, the Reformed tradition in its understanding of justification in terms of regeneration, and the Anglican tradition in its Wesleyan call to holiness would agree.

The conversion of the heart is for all Christians, but it is particularly important understand that ordained persons should be exemplary to others in this regard.  That is, the ordained minister is not an example merely of God’s grace towards sinners but also an example of the work of grace producing the fruit of righteousness.  The Catholic Catechism quotes St. Gregory of Nazianzus in this regard.  Note how the character of the priest is not limited to outward actions but stems from an inward purification:

We must begin by purifying ourselves before purifying others; we must be instructed to be able to instruct, become light to illuminate, draw close to God to bring him close to others, be sanctified to sanctify, lead by the hand and counsel prudently. I know whose ministers we are, where we find ourselves and to where we strive. I know God’s greatness and man’s weakness, but also his potential. [Who then is the priest? He is] the defender of truth, who stands with angels, gives glory with archangels, causes sacrifices to rise to the altar on high, shares Christ’s priesthood, refashions creation, restores it in God’s image, recreates it for the world on high and, even greater, is divinized and divinizes’ (Oratio 2, 71, 74, 73: PG 35, 480-481).[1]

The early Church spoke of ‘divination’ as a goal for all Christians in the sense of moral transformation, not meaning humans actually become ontologically divine beings.  Peter makes this same point when he says,

His [God’s or Jesus’] divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 11 For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1.3-11, ESV).

The key language in this long quotation is in verse 4: ‘partakers of the divine nature’.  What is said in the rest of the quote clarifies that this has to do with escaping corruption from sinful desire.  The divine nature’s qualities are to increase in us—this is a development of virtue, having been cleansed from sin.  The calling of the Christian is to set about diligently to practice these moral qualities and become Godlike in character that is expected for entrance into the kingdom of our Lord.  Peter is quite clear that the Christian life is a moral life begun with Christ’s cleansing us and completed with our diligent development of Godly character by God’s divine power in us.  Paul might have spoken of God’s grace at work within us, but he, too, understands that the Gospel of salvation is not simply an outward guarantee of salvation by grace, a forgiving grace, but also a power (Romans 1.16) and equally an inward transformation, a renewal of a once depraved mind (Romans 1.28 and 12.2).  In the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith (Romans 1.17).  This must not only means God’s own righteousness is made manifest in the Gospel but also that it works righteousness in us through faith in God’s power of salvation, since Paul adds a quotation from Habakkuk 2.4: ‘the righteous shall live by faith’.  Thus, Paul says in his way what Peter says in his way, and they say the same thing.  Salvation is more than just an outward granting of grace through faith but also an inward working of grace through faith—‘faith’ because God is the one working righteousness in us, not we in our own power.

To understand the Catholic view of the need for an inner purification of the Christian, one might note, first, that the Christian is called to love God and to love others.  We might say that we advance from the Great Commandment of doing to others as we would they do to us (Matthew 7.12) to the summation of the Law in terms of love of God and love of neighbour (Matthew 22.37-40).  From this inward disposition follows our actions just as from these two laws follow all the Law and the prophets.  Furthermore, Catholic teaching distinguishes mortal and venial sins.  A mortal sin attacks our love of God and our love of neighbour, is grave (not venial), performed in full knowledge of God’s Law, and is committed deliberately (by our will).  The mortal sin attacks the vital principle of love, and therefore ‘necessitates a new initiative of God’s mercy and a conversion of heart’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1856-1857).

Some Protestants have begun in the right place, with God’s initiative, His grace, a rejection of salvation by works, the saving effectiveness of faith in God’s salvation, the work of Christ, His ‘alien righteousness’ given to us, but they have struggled to understand the connection between all this with sanctification.  So eager to reject a notion of ‘works righteousness’, they have struggled to find a theology of works that is compatible with salvation by grace through faith.  Yet, Paul easily does so in just a few verses in Ephesians:

 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (2.8-10).

The language I choose to use to capture this relationship is to say that God's grace is both forgiving and transforming.  In both cases, it is a work of God in us, not our work.  Paul says it is a gift of God (forgiving grace) and that we are created in Christ Jesus for good works (transforming grace) (cf. 2 Corinthians 5.17).

This understanding of the importance of inward righteousness has further implications to be found in social ethics.  Social ethics needs to proceed from the transforming power of God's grace in the hearts and lives of individuals who have been converted to Christ and are empowered by the Holy Spirit.  However, some Christians reduce ‘social justice’ to focussing merely on social reform through protest or legislation or social work—all outward activities to reshape society.  Public Theology is a recent theological exercise that seeks ways to engage in ethical activities along with non-Christians, as though Christianity provides a motivation for social engagement and perhaps a vision for it, but not much more.  It intentionally tries to 'de-Christianise' social justice so that it is something non-sectarian and public.  Furthermore, the Evangelical focus on conversion and salvation, on the other hand, sometimes leads people to ignore social justice.  Finally, in recent years, ‘social justice’ has become associated with a particular ideology derived from secular or Marxist ideology.  Over against this, the Catechism of the Catholic Church rightly provides a correction.  It says:

It is necessary, then, to appeal to the spiritual and moral capacities of the human person and to the permanent need for his inner conversion, so as to obtain social changes that will really serve him. The acknowledged priority of the conversion of heart in no way eliminates but on the contrary imposes the obligation of bringing the appropriate remedies to institutions and living conditions when they are an inducement to sin, so that they conform to the norms of justice and advance the good rather than hinder it (1888).

More succinctly a little later on, it says:

Where sin has perverted the social climate, it is necessary to call for the conversion of hearts and appeal to the grace of God. Charity urges just reforms. There is no solution to the social question apart from the Gospel (1896).

Here, again, we have the language of the conversion of the heart.  The Catechism says, ‘Conversion of the heart was taught by the prophets’ (2581), thus indicating that Jesus’ teaching of a righteousness of the heart is not distinct from the Old Testament but rather a continuation of it.  Thus,

From the Sermon on the Mount onwards, Jesus insists on conversion of heart: reconciliation with one’s brother before presenting an offering on the altar, love of enemies, and prayer for persecutors, prayer to the Father in secret, not heaping up empty phrases, prayerful forgiveness from the depths of the heart, purity of heart, and seeking the Kingdom before all else. This filial conversion is entirely directed to the Father (2608).

This summary of teaching in Matthew 5-7 rightly captures Jesus’ ethic in its distinction from that of the scribes and the Pharisees.  Jesus’ disciples were to exceed their righteousness, not through greater efforts or quantities of righteous deeds but through digging below the surface of external piety to an ethic of the heart.  Jesus did not so much oppose the scribes and the Pharisees for their legalism—though this was a problem—but for their use of the Law to limit righteousness and even to permit sin.  The necessity of exceeding their righteousness (Matthew 5.20) lay in the need for an inner transformation—a conversion of the heart.

A conversion of the heart involves grief over sin and the sinful condition.  One might recall the monastic emphasis on this point, as typified in Athanasius’ Life of Antony.  The efforts to which Antony went to overcome the sinfulness within his heart and mind strikes the Protestant as an almost unhealthy obsession with matters that are wonderfully triumphed over by Christ our righteousness.  Is Antony an example of works righteousness rather than of a piety that grieves over a sinful disposition and inclination to yield to temptation?  Perhaps he is better understood as someone who knew that the Christian life was not merely a free gift but also—and flowing from that gift—a pursuit of righteousness and holiness by the inward working of God our Saviour.

Beyond grief over inward and outward sin—an affliction of spirit—is also sincere repentance.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: ‘This conversion of heart is accompanied by a salutary pain and sadness which the Fathers called animi cruciatus (affliction of spirit) and compunctio cordis (repentance of heart) (1431).  What happens when we focus Christian ethics simply on acts?  If we say that someone’s internal disorder (e.g., same sex attraction) may continue as long as that person does not fulfill the disorder’s desires by performing certain acts, we leave the person in their internal disorder.  We also disavow the need for transforming grace or a conversion of the heart, and we deprive them of the necessary satisfaction of internal conflicts stemming from sin that an affliction of spirit and repentance of heart brings, given God’s grace.  Moreover, when we allow sin to remain as an example of God’s grace, we fundamentally misunderstand grace (Romans 6.1), and we provide a model for others to live Pharisaical lives of outward righteousness, dismissing the Spirit’s inward righteousness that Paul, following Old Testament language (Deuteronomy 10.16; 30.6; Jeremiah 4.4), calls a circumcision of the heart (Romans 2.29; cf. Acts 7.51).

Related Essays: 

Evangelicals and the Question of Same Sex Attracted, Celibate Ministers (27 June, 2024)

‘The Character of Ministers in the Pastoral Epistles,’ (13 May, 2024); https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-character-of-ministers-in-pastoral.html. 

'Platonists, Stoics, and Paul on Gender Fluidity, "Side B Christians", and "Conversion Therapy",' (18 April, 2022); https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2022/04/platonists-stoics-and-paul-on-gender.html.

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[1] As quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1589. Cf. https://dn790005.ca.archive.org/0/items/catechismofthecatholicchurch/Catechism%20of%20the%20Catholic%20Church%20-%20USCCB.pdf.