Fr Josiah Trenham in Tbilisi: Homofascists not Welcome

[ialmisry]

The quote has nothing to do with Nazism. It is from two statisticians who did studies on election results. Let's not go down the road of Reductio Ad Hitlerum.

Same thing.  The Right wants their "godly society" no matter how many human lives are fed masochistically into the gristmill.  Ironic that we are talking about the "image of God", I can't think of anything more degrading than to evaluate somebody's worth in terms of whether or not their basic, natural biopsychology is oriented towards reproduction.

God can.

Reproduction is both basic and natural. Claims of "biopsychology" are man made and made up.

 

[Daedelus1138]

Quiverfull, homophobic morality is not the Gospel.    His entire ideology, on the contrary, has more in common with Presbyterian theonomism than the Good News that God has reconciled himself to the world in the person of Jesus Christ.

That's hardly the Good News.

How is it not?  In the Lutheran and Catholic churches, it is part of what is read at absolution.  "God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself, and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins...".

So just what is essential to the Gospel, in one paragraph or less?  I guess that is the crucial question.

Reproduction is both basic and natural. Claims of "biopsychology" are man made and made up.

We have observed homosexuality in dozens of animal species, including humans.  Do we need to preach repentance to penguins to give up their sinful lifestyles?

 

[ialmisry]

The Gospel says that "from the beginning He Who made them made them male and female...so a man cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh....what God has joined let no man draw asunder," the same God Who said "Be fruitful and multiply." THAT is the Gospel.

No, it's not the Gospel.  The Gospel is the Good News about Jesus Christ, not about the books of Moses, because there is no Good News in the Law of Moses, only bad news.  Jesus is the interpreter of Moses.  This is why it is rightly said the Bible must be interpreted through Christ alone.

Interesting Marcionist spin you put on your heresy there.

Since Jesus upheld Moses on this one in the Gospel ("Have you not read..."), your other gospel is out of luck.

 

[Mor Ephrem]

I agree with your first sentence and much of your criticism of Fr Josiah, but the rest of your post still sounds more like "what not to do" and less like "what we ought to do".  Do you or like-minded people have some sort of plan or outline for what our response ought to be? 

It sounds to me like the options are "Fr Josiah" or "Since we can't/don't/won't fix everything, fix nothing".  Neither of these is appealing IMO.   

Fair enough. It's not entirely a question of what do we need to do differently, but we are doing now that we should do more. Our witness to society needs to start with the assumption that people, even those raised as Christians, don't really know God or how to relate with him. They don't know who Jesus Christ is. They don't understand why someone might die rather than renounce his name, or forsake worldly possessions for him. We need to demonstrate the fundamentals. The two highest commandments are about love, toward God and neighbor- everyone knows this, abstractly, but it is obfuscated by the noisy grasping for continued political and cultural relevance. Let's start as people with no relevance, with no country, sojourners. Christendom produced many great things but it had fundamental flaws, so stop trying to revive it. Stop trying to preach through laws and armies and police.

We need to preach with deeds on the ground, from one person to another, with no coercion. Near where I live there's an Orthodox man who, with family and friends, feeds the homeless at great expense to himself, to the point where he chronically faces foreclosure on his own home. He gets support from the Church but not enough. People know he's a Christian, and he demonstrates Christ, but he isn't leaning on this label of "Christian" or shoving it down anyone's throat. He also has the courage to identify, name, and condemn the root causes of poverty. He is not afraid to alienate wealthy parishioners and clergy who might be more sympathetic if he kept his mouth shut about these things. There are people like him in a lot of places in the Church, doing different things too, but expressing that courageous Christian love that comforts the weak and discomforts the powerful. 

If we want people to adopt Christian ideals of sex and family, these need to be meaningfully demonstrated. If we expect society to respect our standards, we need to show some actual respect for them ourselves. Things which were traditionally abhorred in Christian tradition, such as premarital sex or contraception, are routinely condoned or winked at in our churches. As far as I can see, we can look at this two ways: 1. We need to be far more rigorous with our standards on these issues, and demand a far-reaching conformity to them which would involve profound and perhaps traumatic changes in parish life around the world; we can't expend the injunction against homosexuality to be rigorously maintained when these other standards are so lax- project purity from within or stop demanding it from outsiders; or 2 we need to recognize that this laxity has a strong pastoral motivation of preserving chastity without causing despair, of bending certain outward standards to preserve a kernel of purity, in which case we also recognize that tradition is far more flexible that many would care to admit, and this flexibility should be applied in other places, recognizing that chastity remains the same ideal but expressed differently in the modern world. Until we do either of these, as a Church- and I'm not simply talking about clergy imposing something, but as a movement of all Orthodox Christians- we really don't have anything to say to outsiders.

There's a lot more to be said but I'll stop here for now.

Awesome.  I hope you will continue to flesh this out because we need more of this sort of discussion in this thread.  I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, though I suspect we might not agree on some particulars of how to apply certain principles.  In any case, this is a great place to begin.  Thank you. 

 

[Mor Ephrem]

Quiverfull, homophobic morality is not the Gospel.    His entire ideology, on the contrary, has more in common with Presbyterian theonomism than the Good News that God has reconciled himself to the world in the person of Jesus Christ.

That's hardly the Good News.

How is it not? 

St Paul says that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ.  You said God was reconciling himself to the world.  That's not the gospel.

In the Lutheran and Catholic churches, it is part of what is read at absolution.  "God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself, and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins...".

Correct.

So just what is essential to the Gospel, in one paragraph or less?  I guess that is the crucial question.

I'm not sure you can do it in a paragraph or less.  I mean, you can, but a problem would arise if we took that summation as if it was the be all and end all of Christianity, or if we used the same words but understood them quite differently. 

We have observed homosexuality in dozens of animal species, including humans.  Do we need to preach repentance to penguins to give up their sinful lifestyles?

If humans are nothing more than any other animal, then no, we don't need to preach repentance to penguins or humans.  But therein lies the heresy. 

 

[Daedelus1138]

Interesting Marcionist spin you put on your heresy there.

Since Jesus upheld Moses on this one in the Gospel ("Have you not read..."), your other gospel is out of luck.

Not really, I think this is down to the Law-Gospel distinction, one of the more useful products of Luther's theology, as even Fr. Aidan Kimel has shown.  There is a basic difference in the performative aspect of God's word in terms of the effects produced upon the hearer when received in faith.  The Law kills, the Gospel gives life.  So the Christian life is a progressive, recapitulative movement from death to life, not a ladder-climbing to heaven but a deepening awareness of ones dependence on God's grace.    Anything else risks letting the Old Man live, even the old religious man.

 

[Mor Ephrem]

Interesting Marcionist spin you put on your heresy there.

Since Jesus upheld Moses on this one in the Gospel ("Have you not read..."), your other gospel is out of luck.

Not really, I think this is down to the Law-Gospel distinction, one of the more useful products of Luther's theology, as even Fr. Aidan Kimel has shown.  There is a basic difference in the performative aspect of God's word in terms of the effects produced upon the hearer when received in faith.  The Law kills, the Gospel gives life.  So the Christian life is a progressive, recapitulative movement from death to life, not a ladder-climbing to heaven but a deepening awareness of ones dependence on God's grace.    Anything else risks letting the Old Man live, even the old religious man.

So the choice is "Jesus" or "Luther-Kimel"? 

 

[Charles Martel]

  I'd like to see him take that one up with the Mother of God, who like many gay people was not a breeder.

so let me get this straight. Are you calling the Blessed Virgin Mary, The Queen of Heaven, the Mother of Our Lord, Jesus Christ Himself...."gay"?

That is damn blasphemy!

 

[Charles Martel]

I'd like to see you take up  contraception, abortifacients and abortion up with her as well.

What do those issues have to do with being gay?  You don't think a person can be both gay or pro-gay and pro-life?

who like many gay people was not a breeder.

Seems like your the one with issues using the militant homosexual lingo referring to normal straight women concieving and having children as "breeders".

Homosexuality by it's very nature is anti-life, it's very act closes the door to life. The homosexual act  is a direct attack against  God and what God had intended for the union of a man and a women in the marriage contract and  the perpetuation of children resulting in the family unit.

So no, you can't be both  pro-life and pro-sodomy.

 

[Onesimus]

Not really, I think this is down to the Law-Gospel distinction, one of the more useful products of Luther's theology, as even Fr. Aidan Kimel has shown.  There is a basic difference in the performative aspect of God's word in terms of the effects produced upon the hearer when received in faith.  The Law kills, the Gospel gives life. 

Amongst much of the nonsense you've posted...this is likely the most ill conceived.

So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. 13Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Certainly not! But in order that sin might be exposed as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. 14We know that the Law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.…

The law does not kill.  The law illiumines that we have already killed ourselves by departing from God.

The sooner you leave the false teachings of Lutheranism the sooner you'll begin to heal from all this mind twisting eisegesis.

 

[ialmisry]

Quiverfull, homophobic morality is not the Gospel.    His entire ideology, on the contrary, has more in common with Presbyterian theonomism than the Good News that God has reconciled himself to the world in the person of Jesus Christ.

That's hardly the Good News.

How is it not? 

St Paul says that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ.  You said God was reconciling himself to the world.  That's not the gospel.

but it is a Freudian slip. Or should I say Boswellian or Spongian?

 

[Daedelus1138]

The law does not kill.  The law illiumines that we have already killed ourselves by departing from God. 

What's the difference effectively?  Sure, the Lutheran may be a little less semi-pelagian in tone and more Augustinian, but its not like the Law itself gives life.

 

[minasoliman]

David Gushee, a Baptist ethicist, has said this is basically a science-vs.-religion issue, not unlike Galileo.

Joseph Bottum is a conservative catholic intellectual who recently has started to change his mind as well, though he seems at the point of merely conceding that the arguments against civil same-sex marriage are not sound, at least in the American context:  https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/things-we-share  I can particularly relate to his argument that the world we live in is relatively disenchanted.  Even younger people in eastern countries are increasingly finding traditional Christian stances on this issue incomprehensible and irrelevant, which is one reason that gay rights continues to advance despite a strong public face of religion.

I'm still trying to play catch-up here, but there's a difference between Iconodule's struggle with the concept, and your argument which supports it.  I can respect the struggle, but your argument is a huge fallacy.  To compare same-sex relationships to scientific struggle of heliocentricism is apples and oranges.  Morality and cosmology are two different subjects and incomparable.

 

[minasoliman]

I get that you want to use this thread to advance a certain progressive, pink agenda, ...

I did not get the same impression of Iconodule as you do.  I think Iconodule is searching (as I am as well) for an alternative to what is perceived as the "fire and brimstone" approach to bring LGBT people to the Church and to repentance.  I hope you can concentrate your discussion on that.

 

[minasoliman]

These words from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment are relevant:

“At the last Judgment Christ will say to us, “Come, you also! Come, drunkards! Come, weaklings! Come, children of shame!” And he will say to us: “Vile beings, you who are in the image of the beast and bear his mark, but come all the same, you as well.” And the wise and prudent will say, “Lord, why do you welcome them?” And he will say: “If I welcome them, you wise men, if I welcome them, you prudent men, it is because not one of them has ever been judged worthy.” And he will stretch out his arms, and we will fall at his feet, and we will cry out sobbing, and then we will understand all, we will understand the Gospel of grace! Lord, your Kingdom come!”"

I first encountered this passage in Brennan Manning's Ragammufin Gospel, but it lead me to more study of Dostoevsky's writtings, something I haven't seriously looked into before.

I don't think anyone is arguing universalism.  It still begs the question of the sinful action or not.

If you ask me personally, I would love that all people, especially the most vile of sinners, to enter into the Kingdom.  That gives me a fighting chance!  But that doesn't excuse the traditional understanding of the subject's immorality.

 

[minasoliman]

"Large families stem from a value judgement of the human person" - Fr. Josiah in his address

This sounds like the Quiverfull ideology popular among the extreme right of Evangelicalism.  So we can see what motivates Fr. Josiah.  Clearly, he implies that small families, single parenthood, and childlessness are ungoldly and the sign of the apocalypse.  I'd like to see him take that one up with the Mother of God, who like many gay people was not a breeder.

That's a gross misrepresentation.  Have you listened to what Fr. Josiah says about monastic communities?

Just because he believes in big families does not mean he condemns virginity.  To compare the Theotokos to "non-breeding gay people" is, to put it very very very very very mildly, a silly comparison.

Thus far, based on your posts in this thread, I think you need to take a break and let Iconodule do the posting.  It is frustrating to read your arguments.

 

[Daedelus1138]

If you ask me personally, I would love that all people, especially the most vile of sinners, to enter into the Kingdom.  That gives me a fighting chance!  But that doesn't excuse the traditional understanding of the subject's immorality.

I think the point of Dostoevsky's quote isn't about eschatology per se, but it does show that there is something about grace that stands above conventional morality, that the ethics of the Kingdom is rooted far more in faith, hope, and love.

 

[minasoliman]

If you ask me personally, I would love that all people, especially the most vile of sinners, to enter into the Kingdom.  That gives me a fighting chance!  But that doesn't excuse the traditional understanding of the subject's immorality.

I think the point of Dostoevsky's quote isn't about eschatology per se, but it does show that there is something about grace that stands above conventional morality, that the ethics of the Kingdom is rooted far more in faith, hope, and love.

Yes, where sin abounds, grace abounds more.  I believe that.  But I fail to see how this still answers the question.  What practical ways can you offer to achieve this without seeming complacent about the present moral crisis?

 

[minasoliman]

Homosexuality by it's very nature is anti-life, it's very act closes the door to life.

What do you mean by "anti-life"?  If you mean risking salvation and unity with the divine life, sure!  But if you mean not being able to reproduce, then I also have to disagree with your argument as a fallacy as well.  In that case, you inadvertently condemn celibacy in our traditions.

 

[minasoliman]

Okay, here's what I want from this discussion.  I do not want a rehash of old arguments.  It is understood that homosexual acts according to the Church teachings a sin.  That is the assumption we have from the very beginning of this thread.  But what I like, and I agree with Mor, is Iconodule's last post, trying to find a way to preach the gospel, or to be consistent with our moral teachings and not concentrate on a few more than others.

If we can have a productive discussion like this, I would appreciate it.  But if you're going to one up by offering the same old anecdotes, whether it be pro-homosexuality or anti-homosexuality, it poisons the thread and does not lead anywhere.

Thank you and God bless!