First Things First: Towards an Integrative Perspective on Same-Sex Sexuality (VII)

I came across a passage once in a book about the theological tradition of the Eastern Orthodox church that I’ve mulled over, off and on, ever since I read it. It was trying to explain the difference between the theological traditions of the eastern and the western church. I forget the exact words it used, but the gist went something like this: In the Eastern Orthodox church, theology is limited to its immediate subject: the person and nature of God. The goal of theology, in the east, is a right understanding of—so as to give proper glory to—the Divine. The direction of its gaze, so to speak, is upward.

In the west, it went on to say, theology tends to look outward as much as it looks upward, and assumes that, inasmuch as the world is the work of the Creator God, theology can also help us to understand our own human life in relation to the divine.

In the east, you might say, theology is about looking at the lightbulb, whereas in the west, theology is about trying to read by its light. That’s my analogy, not one that the passage I’m remembering used, but it did go on to say something like this: “This explains why, in the west, you can have a ‘theology of money,’ or a ‘theology of work,’ or (more to our purposes in this series) ‘a theology of sex.’” In the east, by contrast, none of these things are proper subjects for theology, because in the east, theology is much more strictly focused on the “theos” that gives the term its name: the person of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

Maybe this is a false distinction. Certainly, giving proper glory to God includes handling our money or doing our work in ways that reflect his heart for such things. Conversely, discovering the truth about who God is should lead us to adopt a “theologically informed” view about all of life (which would include, among many other things, the way we think about stuff like marriage or sex). Nevertheless, I have found this distinction to be profoundly important. However good and useful it might be to develop a Christian view of things like family, or politics, or art, still, when we’re talking about these things we are not, technically speaking, talking about the subject that makes theology theological. To do that we would have to speak, specifically, about God.

This is a crucial point for us to grasp, I think, as we continue to sketch out the contours of an integrative view of same-sex sexuality and the church. In the strictest sense of the term, theology is the stuff we say about God. When we are saying stuff about things other than God, we are not doing theology, per se. We may be doing something adjacent to theology, something that enriches our theology, or something deeply informed by our theology, but even so, talking about money, or government, or (in this case) gender and sex, is not doing theology. It’s doing economics, or politics, or anthropology, or some other category of human knowledge. Hopefully, if those things are being done from a Christian perspective, they will be illuminated by our theology, consistent with it and informed by it. But we do ourselves a great disservice when we confuse theology with these other categories.

We are doing ourselves, actually, two great disservices. On the one hand, if it’s true that theology, as category of human knowledge, is the stuff we say about God, then framing discussions about something like wealth, say, or sex as “theological discussions” can feed the natural human temptation to elevate those types of things to divine status (the biblical term for elevating created things to the same status as the creator, of course, is idolatry). The second great disservice is this: that even if we’re not making an idol of these “other things,” it makes it very hard to think objectively and clearly about them. If we tie them that closely to our theology, then any decision we make about them will actually impact our fundamental understanding of who God is, which is a terrifying prospect.

To anyone who wants to accuse me of melodramatic handwringing over a non-issue, I’d simply point to the growing and concerning tendency I’ve observed over the last decade or so, to make one’s posture towards same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ identities a credal matter, an essential theological issue, a question of Christian orthodoxy.

I have seen a number of evangelical denominations make subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle moves to make a “traditional view of same-sex sex” a shibboleth to determine who is “in,” theologically speaking, and who is “out.” I have seen more than one evangelical denomination take steps to require their clergy, or their members, or both, “sign off” on the belief that same-sex relationships are wrong, as a matter of continued fellowship. Some have added addendums to their statements of faith, specifying what they believe about homosexuality, subtly implying that this is for them a matter of creed.

All this regardless the fact that never before has any historical creed of the church ever made one particular view of sexuality, gender, or marriage a matter of orthodox belief. If it comes to that, none of the historic creeds of the church have included any statements about ethical issues: neither in regards to the hoarding of wealth, or the evil of racism, or the necessity of peacemaking, or any one of the many profound issues about which the Christian faith has important things to say. The historic creeds contain no reference to any of these things, in part, because the creeds are theological statements, and the things we say about sex and money and power and war are not, strictly speaking, theological statements.

They are ethical statements.

So, when Christians seek to answer a question like: what’s the right or wrong way to have sex? they are not doing theology. They are doing ethics. Christian ethics, hopefully, shaped by Christian convictions and belief. We could even call it “theological ethics,” if our ethics are informed by and done in response to our theology, which hopefully they will be, but on the perils of confusing these two categories, see above. If we don’t end up making an idol, we’ll at least muddy our thinking.

I can see a few protests cresting the pass that I’d like to head off.

“I don’t care about theology,’” we might say. “I only care about God’s word, the Bible, which clearly forbids homosexual sex.”

The problem with this statement is that, in a way, it’s impossible to not have a theology. To say that the Bible is God’s Word is to make a deeply theological statement about how the Divine communicates with human beings, and how the Bible functions in relation to that Divine communication. To say that the Bible, as God’s word, “clearly forbids” something is to say a few more things about God—how does he relate to human beings?—Is he especially the divine rule-maker?—and also a few more things about how the Bible fits into that relationship—is the Bible primarily his divine rulebook?—is it always as clear as we assume it is?

Those are not rhetorical questions: they are the deep theological issues that surface when we try to make overly simplified statements about “just” following God’s word, which “clearly” prohibits some behaviors and approves of others.

“That’s all well and good,” you might say, by way of a different protest, “but saying ‘God doesn’t want us to have homosexual sex,’ is saying something theological: that God intends some things and prohibits others.”

This is true, in one sense. It is theological to speak about the revealed will of God. The problem with this statement, though, is that it still conflates theology and ethics in ways that make it hard for us to tell the difference and puts us at risk of confusing the one with the other. Before we can decide how this or that activity might relate to the revealed will of God, we will have to understand that activity on its own terms: what are the stakes? What are the implications? What are the consequences? What’s really happening when people do it? Theology proper does not answer these questions; and for Christians to answer them, we may need to listen to the psychologists, or the sociologists, or the anthropologists or the (heaven forfend) the gender studies majors, before we decide how our theology should shape our response.

This has been one of my basic, underlying convictions as I’ve written this series, and it is a “weight-bearing wall” in the integrative approach I’ve been trying to construct. Our posture toward LGBTQ+ people is not, ultimately, a theological issue. It is an ethical issue. And as with all ethical issues—should Christians go to war or not? Should Christians use contraception? Should Christians divorce?—settling these questions is not “doing theology.” A wise Christian will let their theology deeply shape how they settle such questions, but they will also keep clear on when they are doing theology and when they are not.

In saying this, I do not mean to create an air-tight chamber separating theology from ethical concerns. The best kind of Christian ethics flows naturally from our theological convictions. That God is love, for instance, should deeply influence the way Christians treat people. Nor do I mean to imply that LGBTQ+ issues are “merely” ethical, as though there are not any theological issues at stake when we address them. But this is also why I am making the distinction—because there are theological issues at stake, and our theology does influence the way we treat people. If we don’t differentiate them, we may never really examine the theology that is actually driving our ethics, or worse, we may believe we have done theology, when all we’ve really done is made ethical judgements.

If we do differentiate, though, between what is ethical and what is theological, we may discover that it is possible to embrace and include LGBTQ+ people fully in the life of the church, without it shaking to the core our most deeply held beliefs about the nature and person of God.

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