Anabaptist Ethics and Same-Sex Marriage (Part 1)
Bruce Hamill | Thursday, 9th July 2015
INTRODUCTION
I recently attended a Pastoral Theology conference which had the theme of “discipleship and formation in community”. It was not an Anabaptist conference but it could well have been. ‘Discipleship and formation in community’ is a good summary of the Anabaptist ethic. The Anabaptist tradition is not ‘liberal’ but ‘confessional’. It takes what happened in Jesus of Nazareth in the first century to be the turning point of the world rather than the developments of the 18th century enlightenment. Moreover it sees these events as a theological centre and not merely a historical turning point. For the Anabaptist world the specific reality and history of Jesus of Nazareth is ethically decisive for human existence and life in community.
I what follows I will, firstly, attempt to persuade you, dear reader, that this Anabaptist ethic is helpfully located in the theological tradition of apocalyptic theology — a tradition which is enjoying somewhat of a revival in our time and is arguably the dominant tradition within the New Testament itself. Secondly, I will attempt to show that this tradition provides strong support for extending our institutional practices like marriage in ways that make them available to same-sex couples. Here I will draw on the ground-breaking work of Eugene F Rogers Jr (and others).
NEW TESTAMENT ETHICS AS APOCALYPTIC ETHICS
The revival of apocalyptic theology in our time has been well documented. And I will not attempt to trace the diverse developments of apocalyptic thought that have arisen from the second half of the 20th century to today.[1] For the purposes of this essay I will simply clarify what I mean by apocalyptic theology by summarising New Testament apocalyptic. Obviously this strand of the New Testament is not the only source for understanding the moral life in the New Testament. I will contend however, that as the dominant strand it allows us to see conflicting modes of ethical reasoning in scripture for what they are — exceptions that prove the rule (perhaps the rule of faith encapsulated in the confession 'Jesus is Lord'?).
In talking of New Testament apocalyptic theology I need to state at the outset that I am not concerned, in the first instance, with a literary genre, but rather with a certain mode of thinking which arises out of core experiences and confessions. To identify these I would begin by distinguishing between the notions of eschatology and of apocalyptic. If the eschaton refers to the end or fulfilment of God's creative purposes then apocalyptic thought begins at the point where eschatology overlaps with Christology — the point where God's fulfilment of humanity is revealed (apocalypsed) and arrives in the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus. Once the resurrection, a central concept in Jewish eschatology, was aligned with Jesus of Nazareth the apocalyptic trajectory of Christian theology was set in motion. It was only a matter of time and spiritual experience before Paul would conclude that participation in Christ, in his death and resurrection, was nothing less than the arrival of a new creation (Gal 6:15, 2 Cor 5:17). It is this conclusion that defines what I am referring to as apocalyptic, namely, that newness of creation established by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
This realisation finds expression in a range of ways throughout the New Testament. Jason Goroncy has recently observed[2] that in the artistry of Luke (for example) the first proto-eucharistic Emmaus-road meal concludes with a clear echo of Genesis; "and their eyes were opened". Something like a new creation (perhaps a re-creation) begins, according to Luke, with a reversal of the primal meal in the garden.
In 1 Corinthians Paul describes his readers as those 'on whom the fulfilment of the age has come' (1 Cor 10:11). In John's gospel, Colossians and in 1 Peter this apocalypse is light in contrast to darkness. In 2 Corinthians Paul compares this light in the darkness with the first light of the creation narrative in Genesis 1 (2 Cor 4:4). John's Jesus describes both perception of and entry into the kingdom of God in terms of a birth from above (Jn 3:3–21). Indeed the New Testament is pervaded by a stark contrast between the world as it is and the new age arriving with Jesus. The 'anthropological earthquake'[3] that comes with the resurrection of the crucified is not merely anthropological, but at the same time 'cosmic and historical in scope'[4].
Moreover this contrast that the New Testament highlights is not merely a matter of difference but of animosity ('the world hates you', Jn 15:18). This hatred is reflected in their crucifixion 'of the Lord of Glory’ (1 Cor 2:8). It expresses itself in conflict by different means from both sides ('the darkness has not overcome it', Jn 1:5; 'the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world', 2 Cor 10:3).
The arrival of a new creation comes as liberation to a world in bondage to 'principalities and powers'. The unified character of these principalities and powers and the bondage in which they hold the world is seen by Paul to mean that the world can now be envisaged in terms of two spheres — the sphere of Christ and that of Adam. Thus in the apocalyptic perspective the darkness into which Christ comes is seen as having both a differentiated texture (principalities and powers) and a unity (Adam). If to be human is to be part of a world, rather than in some kind of autonomous independence, we find ourselves caught up in this great and world-changing act of liberation.
The epistemological implication of this stark contrast is that a logical gap opens up between the old aeon and the new. In 1 Corinthians (1 Cor 1:18–25; 2:6–8) the new aeon inaugurated by Christ crucified is incomprehensible as foolishness and inexplicable by the standards of the world (1 Cor 3:18). In 2 Corinthians the 'god of this age' (2 Cor 4:4) — presumably a reference to the unity of the principalities and powers represented by Satan — is the source of the blindness which defines 'the present evil age' (Gal 1:4). Moreover, for John, even the scriptures do not of themselves, apart from the presence of Jesus, provide access to the life of the age to come (Jn 5:37-39). One is reminded of Jesus’ refrain in Matthew 5, "You have heard that it was said … But I say to you". As the stories of the Emmaus Road and the Ethiopian Eunuch suggest, these scriptures need to be reopened and interpreted from the post-resurrection perspective of the age of the kaine diatheke. With a new hermeneutic comes a transformation of mind (metanoia) as a prerequisite for Christian ethical reflection on the will of God (Rom 12:2).
We will return in the latter part of this paper to the ethical implications of this logical gap. At this point is it sufficient to note that when Christ commissions his disciples to go to all nations (Matt 28:19), it is not for the sake of obedience to Torah that he sends them out, but to 'make disciples’. A new covenant calls for a life centred on and disciplined by Jesus’ own life and risen presence. For the Christian the moral life is one of discipleship — a process of working out our salvation which is simultaneously the work of the Spirit of Christ within us.
Indeed because, in an apocalyptic perspective, Jesus is not the epitome of what we already knew to be good, the emphasis for Paul in describing the process of discipleship is placed on how we are acted upon rather than on our action. So we read 'those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first born within a large family' (Rom 8:29). 2 Corinthians puts the same issues differently when Paul argues that the Spirit who is both Lord and the Spirit of the Lord sets us free so that we who ‘with unveiled faces, reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory’ (2 Cor 3:18).
And, of course, as both of these key passages remind us, this Christ-disciplined life is communal. It is described in the New Testament as a participation in Christ's death and resurrection and thus a baptism (Rom 6:1–14) into a new common life together — a 'large family' — whose life is both enacted and given in a common meal (1 Cor 10:14–17) — a meal that offers a counter-formation to the sacrificial pagan cultus (1 Cor 10:18–21). To cut a long story short it is best described as discipleship and formation in community.
Next instalment: Marriage in an Apocalyptic Perspective
[1] The principle sources of contemporary apocalyptic theology flow through Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonheoffer, William Stringfellow, Rudolf Bultmann, Jürgen Moltmann, John Howard Yoder, Ernst Käsemann, Louis Martyn, Paul Lehmann, Christopher Morse, Nathan Kerr and many other diverse thinkers.
[2] Jason Goroncy, in a private conversation.
[3] James Alison, “Befriending the Vacuum: Receiving Responsibility for an Ecclesial Spirituality” (2009), http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng57.html.
[4] Nathan Kerr, Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission (Theopolitical Visions; Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009), 13.
Rev Dr Bruce Hamill is the Minister at Coastal Unity Parish, a Presbyterian Church in Dunedin, New Zealand. He has a PhD in Systematic Theology from the University of Otago.