Some (Slightly Edited) Facebook Posts about Gay Marriage and Related Topics from Last Year

** In response to the Supreme Court's decision on gay marriage:

Okay, here's my rant-y, overly-long, and potentially incendiary post for the quarter (actually a cleverly disguised apology/call for love and understanding):

Thank you friends for being who you are. I'm proud to say that, given the recent Supreme Court judgment on gay marriage, Facebook pretty clearly shows I have friends on BOTH sides of the issue. This is a good thing (surrounding yourself only with those you agree with is not the best way to go about life). And frankly, you've all been, without any exceptions, extremely respectful and loving in every one of your posts on the subject, even when others may not be. Even the articles you share have been similar. On the one hand, you have been celebratory without being gloating or judging. On the other hand, you have been disappointed without being bitter or judging. Thank you for doing your part in making the internet and life in general a more respectful, friendlier, and generally more decent place for everyone.

In general, I get annoyed by debates over gay marriage or homosexuality in general. Not because I don't have an opinion on some matters (listen to my Cornerstone class on the Old Testament laws where I talk about biblical commands about sex) or that people don't agree with me but rather because of the tone and irrationality of the debate in most cases. Debates generally consist almost entirely in name calling, straw men, false analogies, condemnation for even making an analogy (without even considering the merits of the argument), begging the question, equivocation, ad hominems, genetic fallacies, etc.

On the debate over the legalization of gay marriage I just have a few points to make which, if taken seriously, would have at least as much chance as any in making things a bit more tolerable (though maybe not):

1) Just because someone supports the legalization of gay marriage does not mean they think it is morally permissible. You can think being a Jehovah's Witness is wrong, for instance, all the while thinking that people have a basic right to be a Jehovah's Witness. People can have rights to choose whether or not to do a bad thing.

2) Just because someone is against the legalization of gay marriage does not mean they think it is morally wrong. The majority of the legal and philosophical arguments against legalization do not depend in any way on the moral (or even religious) status of gay marriage. (Nor does anyone claim that gay marriage will harm their own personal marriage - that's a straw man) For instance, one argument is that marriage by definition excludes two persons of the same sex so that saying we should legalize same sex marriage would be akin to saying that we should legalize round squares. Whether the argument works or not, that has nothing to do with morality.

3) Similarly, just because someone thinks it's wrong doesn't mean they are against legalization and just because someone thinks it's morally permissible doesn't mean they think the law should recognize it. In other words, issues of legal rights and legal values are separate (though not always necessarily completely distinct from) issues of moral rightness and moral values. Just because it should be legal doesn't mean it's okay. Just because it shouldn't be doesn't mean it isn't. To repeat: these are distinct questions. How we relate the questions to each other will largely depend on the political and legal assumptions we adopt. It's not a matter of being a bigot or not, or being an approver of sin or not - it's about political and legal views, period. In general, Americans tend to confuse legal and moral values and jump to conclusions about one from a conviction about the other. "People should have the right to do X; it's none of your business if they do it, so mind your own business" quickly becomes "So doing X is okay"; and "Doing X is wrong" quickly becomes "We should outlaw X".

4) There's a distinction between what should or shouldn't be legal and what is or isn't constitutional. Someone can think the supreme court ruled correctly while also thinking that gay marriage should be illegal or think that it should be legal while thinking that the court ruled incorrectly. (A distinction that was lost on those who, simply because they thought it should be illegal, criticized Chief Justice Roberts for ruling in favor of "Obamacare")

5) The Bible does not explicitly and directly tell us which political and legal theories to adopt nor does it explicitly and directly speak about gay marriage, hence to say "the Bible says no to gay marriage", etc. is a bit misleading when we're talking about legal rights.

6) On the other hand, to say "The Bible says nothing about gay marriage" is also misleading since it does in fact (in my opinion) say direct things about homosexual acts and morality (note that I say "morality", not "legality"), which are topics obviously closely related to gay marriage.

Bottom line: As someone who has not chosen a specific political/legal reference point, I don't have a particular opinion on whether or not the Supreme Court made the right decision. I don't know - I haven't considered these reference points nor the arguments for and against gay marriage in enough detail to make an informed decision regarding legality. (I really can see both sides of the argument at the moment.) I make decisions based on warrant and right now I simply haven't acquired enough information. Some other people may have done this, but I haven't. I hope that's okay - it wasn't up to me to make the decision anyway. But let's be understanding of those who do not share our own views, whether of the legality or the morality of gay marriage. Let's listen and understand where they're coming from, WHY they hold the views they do, and let's see things from their point of view before we rush to condemn. Let's have empathy with others and drop the name calling, shaming, and judging. We're not enemies, we're family. We're people. Let's treat each other as such.

** In response to Kim Davis refusing to sign marriage licenses:

Not a popular opinion (feel free to disagree) - and I may be wrong about this - but I can't help but think regarding what's going on in Kentucky that recognizing that two people have met government requirements to enter into a government contract, regardless of whether entering into such a contract is sinful or unwise or otherwise inadvisable (and the clerk in question apparently has no problem recognizing other contracts she disagrees with), is in no way an endorsement or moral acceptance of such a contract. I'm a very strong supporter of religious liberty, but I don't think religious liberty has much of anything to do with what's going on here. That's just my initial reaction, though.

** In response to this bit of silliness:

Oy. Sorry, short rant: While I agree that Davis isn't doing the right thing here, I have to object to the way Huffington Post is trying to argue for that position. This is the sort of article you see again and again (not necessarily about this case, but in general), and it's really annoying since it completely ignores how biblical hermeneutics (the interpretation and application of the Bible) even works. The majority of these jobs are not "banned by the Bible". For one thing, most of the out-of-context quotes don't even match the job description given. Not eating pork, for instance, doesn't have much to do with selling other people pork (though if the former is wrong, one could argue the latter would be as well, but that doesn't follow automatically). For another, even if they did, it still wouldn't be relevant since lists like this ignore the fact that there are biblical and theological reasons why Christians follow some laws strictly and literally today and others not so much. Articles like this try to make it seem arbitrary, silly, and a case of picking and choosing. While many Christians might not be aware of the exact reasons WHY some laws are followed more strictly than others, that does not mean that there are no good reasons. This is precisely one of the many reasons why I did the Old Testament laws class I did, so people would understand biblically how to interpret these laws and how they are supposed to be applied today. Other than the psychic advisor or maybe the gossip columnist (which is kind of a scummy job to do anyway), I don't see how any of these would be a violation of biblical principles.

Vaccination is NOT a "Personal Decision"

I have seen many times recently where someone posts an article, a comment, or whatever about how vaccination of children is the moral thing to do and then all sorts of people chime in with bad science and bad reasoning.  It drives me crazy and, frankly, makes me a bit angry at all the innocent people, especially kids, who will get horrible diseases as a result of the perpetuation of this latest bit of American gullibility, scientific ignorance and anti-intellectualism.  (So apologies if this post comes across more strongly worded than usual) But what irks me the most (well, one of the things at least) is when people trivialize or dismiss the issue by saying things like "it's a personal decision" or "every family must decide for themselves", etc. 

Now, let's back up for a second.  There are five basic groups (here's where I'll probably get in trouble!) of which I think most anti-vaccine folks fall into at least one (often more): 1) Charlatans; 2) quacks; 3) people with poor reasoning skills; 4) people who, as a result of poor reasoning skills (thus making this a subset of 3), think that faith in God is incompatible with modern medicine; 5) people who have been deceived by any or all of the above.  It's really a very similar phenomena to snake oil, superstitions, and all manner of popularly spread falsehoods that have polluted society from its very beginning.  It's really all in the same boat.

So when people say the sorts of things I listed at the end of the first paragraph, I can't stand it. Seriously, it's only a personal decision in the same sense in which it is a personal decision whether to fire a gun into a crowded room is a personal decision.  And every family must decide for themselves, yes, but in the same sense in which every family must decide for themselves whether to commit murder (thankfully, most choose not to).  These attempts to sidestep the issue or ward off the ethical duties associated with it are perilously close to a lapse into utter ethical or even factual relativism - the whole vaccine thing might be true for you, but not for me! Such attempts make it seem like it's a matter of taste whether we ought to vaccinate or how safe vaccines are, rather than a matter of objective fact.  They make it seem like the issue is unclear in some way or that reasonable people, reasoning well, with the same facts available, would disagree with each other.  But, of course, none of that is remotely true.  Nor is it true that it is strictly personal, since the effects of such decisions affect others and society as a whole.

I think it is telling that the issue is often spoken of in terms of "my beliefs" or "personal beliefs" and other language usually reserved for matters of taste, "philosophies of life", or weakly-held religious convictions, as opposed to the language of scientific fact, evidence, or objective ethical realities.  The latter kind of language is appropriate here, not the former.  Yet I think the former actually does capture how this opposition to vaccines actually functions in many people, even though it shouldn't.  It is a quasi-religious belief held dogmatically and immune to actual evidence or reasoning (and not based on any good evidence or reasoning and certainly anti-scientific authority).  Whereas I think religious beliefs can in fact be justified, being responsive to evidence and reasons, and, if true, can have adequate epistemic grounding, this anti-vaccine position does not have the benefit of being a central node in a foundational world view or being even supposedly divinely revealed. Whereas religious beliefs, for instance, can at least make claims to divine authority, anti-vaccine positions do not have anything close going for them - there is no real claim to authority here and hence no reason to treat it in the way it gets treated by its proponents.

Ultimately, there should not be "sides" as to whether most children should be vaccinated - any more than there should be sides over whether we should let toddlers play alone in a pool with a live handgrenade and a family of water moccasins.  And, what's more, these "sides" matter - lives, health, and economy are all on the line here - but people do not think properly about them; they do not actually look at the evidence objectively and without resorting to logical fallacy.  People should stop merely "feeling strongly" about the issue and start thinking strongly (and, more importantly, thinking well).  Perhaps critical thinking classes or classes on scientific reasoning would be useful, assuming people would pay attention or actually absorb what they were taught.  At the end of the day, I would make vaccinations mandatory for everyone for whom there was no special health risk associated with them.  That way, people can be ignorant, deluded, and so on all they want without it hurting others. But then, that's why, in America, I'd probably never be elected for office in the first place!

Transgender Bill

A version of something I posted on Facebook:

So this passed.  I know some will disagree but I think there were much better ways of resolving this sort of issue than this bill. Sorry, but I'd rather not have my daughters shower with someone with male equipment just because that person has some innate wish they were born female. In my opinion, girls'/womens' restrooms were made for the female sex and transgender females are admittedly not of the female sex (hence the "transgender" label - although one could argue about this if they've had a "sex-change" surgery). Proponents of this bill, I think, are assuming that restrooms are segregated by socially constructed gender role, in which case it would make sense to allow socially female males to use female restrooms. But I think restrooms are actually segregated by the equipment you currently have (that is, by sex), which has nothing to do with which gender you identify with. In which case allowing only the female sex in the restroom for the female sex has nothing to do with transgender issues or discrimination against such people. There are other ways to accommodate transgender people, such as gender-neutral bathrooms or shower stalls, etc. that do not violate persons' privacy rights in regards to the opposite sex.

Why We Shouldn't Use the Word "Legalism"

Regarding my previous post, I'd like to make a qualification to my statement that Galatians 3 is not "about legalism".  The qualification would be that it really depends on what we mean by "legalism".  As it is normally used, "legalism" does not really have a strict definition - it is more a term of abuse - everyone says something different when asked to define what they mean by it.  In actuality, it is used of anything involving rules and which we do not like.  For instance: X says we should follow rule Y, but I don't like Y - legalism!  X applies Y in a way I do not like - legalism!  X applies Y in a way I do in fact like - ...NOT legalism....

The word therefore is not useful except to register one's disagreement and maybe to vilify what one disagrees with.  It does not tell us why you disagree with it - it's simply an easy way to condemn and scorn something by sticking it with a bad name, yet without actually giving any substantive reasons why we should think it is wrong.  This is argument through persuasive labeling, not actual reasoning.

But not only is using the word pretty useless, it can actually also be harmful (and, yes, I have in fact seen versions of what I'm about to describe - this isn't purely just made up).  Our preacher in a sermon we listen to might define the term as carefully as he can - say, in way W - and show that something A is legalistic in that sense and then go on to say some bad stuff P about A (or those who do A) because of W applying.  Now suppose we run across some new behavior B involving rules and we do not like it - we will not remember and use our "legalism" terms in way W like the preacher did but rather in the normal way as a term of abuse and will apply it to B even though, say, it doesn't fit with W.  So we will apply "legalism" to B and, because of the sermon, will associate P with B even though W doesn't apply as it did with A. 

Example: Suppose W has to do with trying to earn salvation apart from Christ through following certain pagan rules.  And suppose P is something like lacking true salvation in Christ.  We will remember, after the sermon, that "legalism" is associated with lack of salvation and, seeing someone, say, tell someone else that Christians shouldn't dance (a stance we don't like), we will be tempted to doubt that person's salvation since they are engaged in "legalism".  And then, of course, someone might disagree with us and think we are legalistic and in danger of not being saved.  And then someone else might disagree with them about that, and so on.  So we might have a mess.

In other words, let's stop using "legalism" and actually give reasons for what we disagree with instead of vilifying people and positions with that label.  (As an aside, in theology, I think "supersessionism" is another term like this - a term of vilification used for any view we don't like involving how Christians view Christian stuff in relation Jewish stuff and which puts Christian stuff in a good light)

Time Travel, Prenatal Ethics and other Miscellania

Random thoughts, mostly things I have posted online elsewhere:

Wow, this is simply HORRIBLE journalism. There are so many things wrong with this article - it's simply sensationalism. A text from hundreds of years after Jesus' death, written in the area from which we get all Gnostic writings which mixed up Jesus and Christianity with the mystery religions, has Jesus mention a "wife", a fact that even the person working on the text admits has nothing to do with whether Jesus was ever married, and what does the journalist say? "A small fragment of faded papyrus contains a suggestion that Jesus may have been married...The discovery, if it is validated, could have major implications for the Christian faith. The belief that Jesus was not married is one reason priests in the Catholic Church must remain celibate and are not allowed to marry. It could also have implications for women's roles in the church, as it would mean Jesus had a female disciple." Ugh. Then the journalist proceeds to undermine everything they just said. Way to go.

The real title of this article should be "I Like Incoherent, Logically Inconsistent Stories because I cannot Understand the Concept of Time Travel", but I think that would've been too long. It's because of writers like this that we have all the incoherent time travel stories that we do (and which I therefore despise, though I tend to give Doctor Who and Back to the Future a pass since criticizing them for lack of logic is like criticizing the Hitchhiker's Guide for letting Arthur turn into an infinite number of penguins). Seriously, this is horrible. Not all of the 4 options are even KINDS of time travel at all, nor even necessarily incompatible options. Number 3 is simply incoherent, 4 isn't really time travel but universe-hopping. Number 2, which is how non-contradictory time travel would work, has nothing to do with predestination, pre-ordination of events, or lack of any agency.

(1) New-born infants have a right to live;
(2) If there is no relevant intrinsic difference between the members of two sets, then the members of one set will have the same rights as the other;
(3) There is no relevant intrinsic difference between new-born infants and late-term, un-born fetuses;
(4) Therefore, late-term, un-born fetuses have a right to live.
This is a deductively valid argument, which means the only way to avoid the conclusion would be to reject at least one of the premises 1-3. But 2 seems to be a basic principle about rights and 3 is a scientific fact. 1 is therefore the most vulnerable, but few, I think, would be able to stomach the idea that infants have no right to live - to accept that would be pretty implausible. Since 1-3 are fairly certain and the argument is valid, then, we have to accept 4 as well.

Obama seems to deny 4, though, which makes me wonder which of 1-3 he would reject. But I'm sure he hasn't really thought about it (remember the "above my paygrade" remark?). This is just one of the reasons why I cannot understand people's enthusiasm for Obama (his unprecedented rolling back of various freedoms including religion and conscience are some of the other reasons). I understand people really liking some things about him or liking him more than Romney or liking him in general, but the unqualified enthusiasm some people have I cannot relate to. (Almost no one has any kind of enthusiasm for Romney (I certainly don't), so that's not an issue on his side!)

Since I did a potshot at Obama, here's one aimed at Romney: I think the rich should be taxed a lot more than the poor sheerly as a matter of fairness. Suppose we tax everyone 10% - then the person making 20,000 a year will be forced to pay 2000 - a chunk of their income they would be much better off holding onto. For them, missing that money is going to make a noticeable difference in their life. But suppose then we have someone making 100 million - 10 million is just a drop in the bucket and won't affect the quality of their lives in any noticeable way. Money has a diminishing marginal value as income goes up - 10% for a rich person, say, is an entirely different beast from 10% for a poor person. Suppose we actually scaled taxes according to the actual value money has for the individuals concerned (our tax brackets go some way towards this), then the rich person would be paying a much higher percentage of their income then the poor person and the two would be equally affected (or not affected) by the tax. And that's not even taking into account arguments you might make concerning the increased debt the rich have towards society for creating the possibility and infrastructure for such wealth in the first place. Those are just my own opinions, though.

 I don't always agree with him or think he's always fair to conservatives, but Jon Stewart is reliably hilarious. Apropos the above on taxation, this is pretty entertaining (be sure to click to watch on part two too).


I don't agree with all of this, but some interesting thoughts from a Christian philosopher on reforming higher education.

Christianity and Other Religions

More on the general topics of the previous post:

***

The fact that Jesus Christ is God forms the beginning of my views on how Christ relates to religious plurality. Others such as John Hick may reject this idea, but it seems to me to be the consensus of biblical and traditional sources which I regard as having authority in such areas. To reject this idea as Hick does because it gives a consequence one does not want is clearly question-begging. Against people like Hick or Samartha, truth should not be sacrificed for the sake of supposed practical benefits. There is such thing as absolute truth (to deny this would be to undercut that very denial, since it itself would have to be an absolute truth) and religions make claims of absolute truth, hence the truth or falsity of the claims of various religions matters indeed. Christ being God, he speaks truth and hence to reject or relativize his truth for some other gain is foolhardy to the extreme. Every religion, then, cannot be on a par since they make conflicting truth claims and hence at most one religious figure making these conflicting claims can be correct. At most one can be the ultimate authority who should not be relativized or rejected.

Since Christ is God, though, to reject Christ is therefore to reject God. Contra Hick and some other pluralists, then, Christ the one true God in the flesh. A theocentric vision of world religions such as advocated by Panikkar or Knitter, then, does not do justice to the Trinity, for it leaves out the Second Person in favor of the First (other thinkers would leave out the Second in favor of the Third). But the Trinity cannot be so divided, for we have one God working in the world who is not only Father or Holy Spirit but also Jesus Christ, the Son.

As God, then, Christ is unique – every other revered human’s life or teaching is at odds with Christ’s at some point or admits to being no different from other humans (unless it is by degree). As God, Christ’s life and teaching are perfect and of divine authority. Hence, everything inconsistent with those is to be rejected – he is the unique way, truth, and life. To treat Christ as if he was on par with other human religious leaders, then, as some pluralists do, is simply wrong. Mohammed, Buddha, or whoever else there may be do not teach all things consistently with Christ and since Christ is God, they are not and he is ultimate revealer and mediator, not they. He is the measure by which they are to be measured and none of them meet the standard.

The religious systems organized by and around these other figures, then, since they are not endorsed by Christ and conflict with his authority (I am putting pre-Christian Judaism to the side for the moment), do not have God-given authority since they lack Christ’s authority. These other religious systems, then, contain much that may be false, harmful, or keeping people from accepting Christ. With those who see religions as God-instituted systems for salvation, we can say that there is some truth in them and remnants of or distortions of memories or interpretations of actual revelation from God, but against those same thinkers, we must also say that the religious system itself as a whole cannot be seen as instituted by God in the way that biblical religion has been since these systems clash with rather reside in the authority of Christ. Jesus approved of the Old Testament as authoritative and of God and himself as the culmination of rather than contradiction of that revelation. Christ and his church then are seen in the New Testament as the continuation and fulfillment of Old Testament promises, the church as the continuation of and enlargement of God’s same covenant people. While not everything was revealed immediately in the Old Testament and was fulfilled and broadened in the New, this, unlike in other religions, was a matter of partial understanding or incomplete revelation, not misunderstanding or distorted revelation.

Other religious systems, then, contrary to some Roman Catholic thought, are not fulfilled by Christ or his teachings. Rather, as agreed by thinkers such as Tiessen, we can acknowledge that there may be true aspects in other religions which, when removed their contexts in those other systems, understood rightly and stripped of errors and reinterpreted in the light of Christ, the rest rejected or given entirely different content, then we may have something useful which finds a home in the context of Christian proclamation of Christ. Christ, therefore, is not the fulfillment of other religions, even if they contain some pointers to him or material that may be true or useful when transported into a new context. Rather than having, as in the Old Testament, partial revelation which is then completed by Christ, these other systems have much that must be rejected, though they may have useful points of contact to be used in dialogue or evangelism.

Humans are sinful and in need of redemption, which Christ alone provides since God provides salvation and Christ is God. Christ, in part, saves in virtue of his role as representative of his covenant people, who he cures from the curse of the Law, sin and death by taking these onto himself on the cross. Some Jews, who naturally belong, are removed in virtue of unfaithfulness, while some Gentiles are added in virtue of being incorporated into that people, who are understood as the body of Christ, the sign of which is faith. It is in Christ, then, that the defeat of sin and death become a reality, not in some other religions. And rejection of Christ, far from being a mere choice of religious ways to God, is rejection of God himself and either a cutting off or staying out of Christ and hence out of the covenant people and hence outside of the scope of Christ’s saving work. Such a person, then, devout in their own religion though they may be, has hence put themselves outside of salvation since, as already stated, salvation is from Christ himself for he is himself the God who saves. Far from being a way to God or a way to salvation, Christ is the way to God, the way to salvation – one, unique, unequaled and unsurpassed, Savior of his people.

So Christ is God’s ultimate, final revelation since he is God himself. Even if someone is able somehow to respond in faith to God and be part of the covenant people, part of Christ, without outwardly or knowingly being so incorporated because they have yet to hear the gospel (responding to genuine revelation and the internal call of the Spirit, not some other religion), such a person would still need the gospel and the church’s proclamation of Christ as well as outward knowing participation in the body in order to develop properly as a saved person. Initial salvation does not abrogate the need for growth in sanctification and the becoming of who we were really and truly meant to be in Christ.

Because of this, then, leaving people without the gospel because God will “take care of them” (as I have heard some people with inclusivist or pluralist leanings sometimes state) or because we accept their own faith in their own religion is illegitimate. The human destiny, after all, only finds its culmination and fulfillment in Christ and Christ alone. A knowledge of the gospel is more beneficial for a saved person than being without it, assuming inclusivists are correct that some unevangelized persons might be saved, which would require a grafting into Christ, into the people of God, without explicitly knowing it. For in knowing the gospel, we come to Christ in a more intimate, more explicit way and hence, since Christ is that ultimate revelation of God, we come to know God in a more intimate, more explicit way as well. We come to know God and his ways in a more perfect manner in Christ.

We ought, then, to engage in dialogue with other religions both so we can be better informed as to the religious beliefs and commitments of others and hence be able to understand them and their situations better so that we can better serve and witness to them, and also so that we can come to understand our own faith better and understand the uniqueness and supremacy of Christ and his difference from all other teachers or religious figures throughout history. It will also help persons of other religions to know more about Christ and our own convictions concerning him and can help them to be clearer on what they think and how it relates to Christ and the proclamation of him. If the Spirit moves such a person, that person may even come to accept Christ through this process or at least be more open to some lesser forms of God’s revelation, though they might not be to the point of salvation yet.

Tolerant engagement in both dialogue and proclamation, then, should be how we are related to persons of other religions in light of both the supremacy of Christ and the plurality of religions around us. We must both make peace with others who disagree with us in order to get on in the world and yet also not shy away from the truth which is found in Christ and Christ alone, making disciples of all nations and bringing them into a saving knowledge of that same Christ who is the unique Savior and God over all.

More on Ephesians 5 and Principles of Interpretation and Application of Scripture

It's commonplace for Christians to take the Bible as speaking directly to them - to individualize and personalize whatever is written and read it as addressed particularly to me in my current context (however wide or narrow I may take that). In this, Christians have a lot in common with the early Rabbis (and later ones, I believe) and certainly with certain strands in Paul and the rest of the New Testament. How we read in this way and how we take into account the fact that the human authors of the Bible did not, generally, have me in particular as their direct addressee, will differ, however. In what way we take the Bible to be addressed to me in particular is very important and has ramifications for the theological and ethical interpretation of the Bible. In my opinion, the Bible is addressed to me in particular in that the Holy Spirit uses the Bible to speak to me - words that were not originally addressed to me and perhaps with a different meaning are reused by the divine activity within me to address me in my particular situation. This, I think, retains both the freedom of God to speak to my current situation in Scripture while also retaining the integrity of the Scripture's original meaning. A lot of people, however, do maintain this sort of distinction in practice and treat Scripture as if in its original meaning it was speaking directly to me personally.

Another problem is to confuse description and prescription. Pastors must often appeal to this distinction when our favorite Bible saint obviously acts not-so-saintly, but otherwise the distinction unfortunately tends to get ignored. That the early church is described in Acts as doing things a certain way (or not doing it, as the case may be), for instance, does not tell us necessarily whether that is how we are to do things - i.e., description is not prescription. Telling us that something is happening a certain way (or will happen or did happen) is not the same as telling us that things should be thus and so or that we should do such and such.

The Ephesians 5 passage on wives and husbands, which I discussed in my last post, is a nice case to look at in regards to both the above problems. This passage, as hinted at in the other post, is a flashpoint in the gender wars going on in Evangelicalism today. On one side are the Egalitarians, who uphold things like women's ordination and functional equality in the home (anti-patriarchal, in other words). On the other are the Complementarians, who (at least for some of them) are against women's ordination and uphold things like patriarchal household structure as a Scriptural norm to be followed.

Ephesians 5, I maintain, is actually a difficult passage to use for either side, despite its current wide use. As argued previously, it first of all does not contain a single command for wives to submit - it merely says that they are or will do so (in other words, it describes but does not prescribe submission). But what about the whole "the husband is head of the wife" thing? Well, there's a big debate here over the meaning of "head" in Greek (kephale), which some Egalitarians argue always or almost always lacks any connotation of hierarchy (unlike the word for "head" in Latin, Hebrew, or English, all of which have exactly that connotation). Let's set that debate aside, however, and simply assume for the moment that the Greek word has the same meaning as the English one and here indicates a position of leadership or power over the household. What then?

Well, notice that the language here is actually on its surface at least descriptive, not prescriptive. Paul says, "the husband is the head of the wife as Christ of the church," but does not say "the husband should be the head of the wife as Christ of the church." That does not mean Paul did not think the latter or did not mean for us to believe it, just that he did not go out and write it, which makes it more difficult to argue that this is some kind of norm for the Christian family just from this passage. What Paul says, however, is also consistent with the thinking that, though the husband is head of the wife, that is not how things should be and that such an arrangement should be avoided where possible (ceterus paribus, of course).

Note also that we ought to avoid the problem noted in the first paragraph of this post. Paul uses the present tense to describe male headship. But, of course, Paul wrote in the first century, not the twenty-first! Which means, Paul is not even necessarily describing the current state of things but rather the way things were in the first century (and perhaps in an even smaller context than that even - he probably did not have in mind Native American societies, for instance, in his description - though, on the other hand, he may indeed have intended his description universally - unfortunately the text is not specific enough to tell for sure). In first century Asia Minor, his intended addressee, the male was indeed the head of the household. Both Jewish and Gentile cultures here were thoroughly patriarchal, after all. It is a mistake, then, to see a translation like "The husband is head of the wife" and automatically assume that Paul is saying this about our current time. Maybe he meant it as an eternal truth, but maybe not - the text does not obviously specify the former, in any case. At the very least, Paul is making an observation about the state of affairs in their cultures, but it's not easy to go beyond that. Even if, then, Paul did in fact mean male headship to be prescriptive rather than merely descriptive, that would not tell us directly whether or not it is prescriptive for us today (rather than being so only for those cultures to which Paul was directly speaking).

Take some of the other passages in the same series: Paul commands children to obey parents and slaves their masters. In the first instance, we think this is still a good arrangement and prescriptive generally across the board. In the second, nowadays, we tend to think that it addresses situations where slavery is socially accepted but is compatible with thinking slavery to be wrong. Similarly, the wife passage may be taken either in the same way as the children passage or in the same way as the slave passage - is female submission to male headship an eternal arrangement or just a way to deal with an unjust situation which is systemic in a particular culture (in this case, patriarchal dominance)?

Warren on the Purpose-Driven Life: A Short Historical Write-Up

The following ended up sounding more negative than I intended, since I really did like the book and thought it served FBC well years ago when the church went through it:

Rick Warren is undoubtedly one of the United States’ most influential pastors and one of the public faces of mainstream Evangelicalism. He and his church have had a huge impact on congregations across the country – and now across the world – through their ministries, in particular through the book The Purpose Driven Life and the small group curriculum/church extravaganza that it is designed to be paired with. The main goal of the book is to engage people in the task of living out God’s purposes for them on this earth in place of some other purpose or purposes that might be pursued instead. It aims to inculcate a sense of direction and of purpose that can be lived into and used to order the various priorities, desires, and goals one might have in day-to-day living that vie for volitional control within one’s mind or will. An orderly, energized, focused life is the ideal goal to be imperfectly pursued in a process of spiritual self-formation.

There are, of course, criticisms one could make of the book. It definitely is not meant to address every person in every circumstance where they might be at and does not show any awareness how particular uses of language may alienate some female readers, as it has in fact done in at least some instances. Nor does it do a perfect job with its use of (often very paraphrastic translations of) Scripture, though at least some of that can be chalked up to audience and format, which does not allow an in depth exegesis of particular verses in their contexts and a subsequent exposition based on this. At least from a critical view, of course, some of the uses of the Scriptures do not really support or say what he is using them to support or say. In Warren’s defense, however, it is hard to find a pastor who does not fall into this from time to time, particularly when speaking on such a popular level. There are certainly pastors who are also very good exegetes, but they are a minority and I do not think we should expect pastors to all be so (though that would be very nice indeed), since not all are given such gifts or talents. It does do a good job of portraying the sort of unsophisticated use of the Scriptures that we can work to improve and show by both example and explicit teaching how to go beyond.

As a kind of how-to manual for self-formation, of course, people are likely to criticize it for not being something else they would rather have. Such books, for instance, always have the danger of being too self-focused, a danger that Warren admirably does in fact try to ameliorate with his constant call to focus on God and others and to live as a member of a community of faith, though this is admittedly at times lost in a focus on one’s own self-interests (the rewards one can get, for instance, from God for being faithful). This, of course, is just a symptom of American Christians’ often not-so-successful struggle to get out of the bonds of individualism and self-focus that are practically bred into Americans and into their perceptions of religion and the Christian life. We want to know how something will benefit us and how it relates to us and focus on ourselves as the center and focus of our own spirituality or religious path. Religion is a consumer affair, like everything else in our culture.

This brings me to one of my biggest pet peeves about this book and about American (and much other) Christianity as well, which is the focus in parts on “going to heaven” when we die as if that was the great hope for Christians. Rather than the cosmic vision of the bodily resurrection of God’s people and the concomitant restoration of all of creation, the earth and the physical universe included, such as one finds in places like Romans 8 and in pieces all throughout the New Testament, we are given a limp, bland, self-centered picture of getting to go as a single solitary individual to a disembodied heaven away from the earth when I die. Christian eschatology has nearly dropped out of the picture, replaced with a kind of Platonist placebo. Such views, however, are common in the individualistic churches we find here in the West. “Going to heaven”, where this is understood as personal, individualistic persistence as a disembodied spirit in an immaterial realm separated from the physical universe, is seen as the great hope and goal of the Christian faith. This has usurped the classical and biblical view of our great hope as being the renewal of all things, including the resurrection of our own bodies, the hallowing of the physical, and heaven descended to earth. The cosmic, physical, redemptive gospel has become a personal, immaterial, escapist fantasy. This almost Gnostic flight from the historically and physically-oriented view of our destiny is something we ought to continue to work to correct in our churches.

The individualism of the book, particularly as it has infected its eschatology, is the main think I would correct in this book as I find it most irksome. The book as a whole, however, has much to say to many people, whether or not it falls short in all the ways listed here – what book does not fall short in many ways or fail to do everything one might want it to do? It offers hope and direction for a more real and deep relationship with God, realizing one’s divine purpose in life, and fleeing from self-serving goals and externally- or self-imposed purposes in favor of the purposes of our life that have been ordained by God, who is the center and anchor of all things.

Evangelicals: A Short Historical Write-Up

Evangelicalism is a long-running religious tradition in the United States which has had a huge impact on the American religious scene, on politics via activism, and on spirituality via revivals and evangelism. Evangelicals share many traditional Christian doctrines with other Christian groups but are distinctive in the especially strong emphasis they place on the Bible as an ultimate authority in religious matters, on the Cross (and Resurrection) as a central piece of devotion and theology, on activism in both missions or evangelism as well as in social justice and, to an extent, conversion or personal assurance of one’s place before God (which these days often takes the form of an emphasis on having a personal relationship with God).
Moving into the 20th century, there was an increasing battle in American churches between more traditional believers and those who were willing to sacrifice parts of traditional belief when they seemed to conflict with what was seen as rational or scientific or mature. Faced with attacks on traditional Christian beliefs, or what were believed as such, the Fundamentalist movement soon arose within the Evangelical fold. Unfortunately, this movement, whatever benefits or positive traits it may have had, also greatly hurt the Evangelical cause in the academy and in society. This separatist strain urged a separation from other believers who did not believe the same way (at times, even though they have been equally orthodox or even equally Fundamentalist) and, to some extent, from society as well, thus forming for many traditional Evangelicals in effect an intellectual, social, and religious ghetto. Who was outside, who inside was what often mattered most. Traditional doctrine and evangelism were seen as rejected by more liberal groups, replacing these with an almost-exclusive, it seemed, emphasis on social justice. The reaction, then, was a kind of guilt-by-association and separatist overreaction to these developments. To be distinguished fully from the liberals, fundamentalists gave the main emphasis to doctrine and evangelism and neglected social justice and activism as suspicious, liberal-like behavior, despite its key place heretofore in Evangelicalism.
Meanwhile, overreaction to excesses of some higher critics of the Bible and what was seen as a loose, symbolic use of Scripture by many liberals, drove fundamentalists beyond mere belief in the infallibility of Scriptures to a seemingly naïve, literalist interpretation of the Bible unfettered by scholarship, original (or, often, any) context, genre, or anything else seen as coming from outside. Instead, the Bible was treated as if it were a systematic theology handbook by a single author with a single point of view, answering all questions and doing so in a plain and straightforward manner admitting no ambiguity or difficulties, very often interpreted, ironically, through the theological lens of the 19th century dispensationalist theology which had become popular in the United States.
In the mid-twentieth century, however, there began a strong push-back within Evangelicalism against its Fundamentalist incarnation and a process began of reengagement and reentry into the academy, scholarly biblical studies, pursuit of social justice, openness to a diversity of views and increasing ecumenism, and so on. There is, however, still a stigma on Evangelicals as American popular culture, media, and other traditions have a tendency to see Evangelicalism almost exclusively through the lens of Fundamentalism and, often, the controversies between Fundamentalists and others in the early twentieth century. The stereotype of Evangelicals is pretty much how people see Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, in virtue of being such, are often labeled “Fundamentalist”. Evangelicals’ high views of Scripture, in particular, are often mistakenly all lumped together and treated as being all the same as the Fundamentalist take on Scripture, despite the sophistication of many Evangelical views of inerrancy and the acceptance of many of the tools of (as well as membership within) mainstream biblical studies. And this stigma persists despite the fact that Fundamentalism is merely the more separatist and militant right wing of the Evangelical family and not a paradigmatic representative of the whole – only one of the most well known.
Alternatively, Evangelicals are seen through the lens of particular evangelicals who are politically conservative (despite many, such as Billy Graham, not being so). Evangelicals, of course, tend statistically to side more with the Republican party than the Democratic, but this has stemmed in no small part (though there are other reasons as well) from the efforts of Ronald Reagan and those around him to woo Evangelicals and a comparative lack of interest on the part of Democrats in the early 1980s. Despite widespread Evangelical frustration with the Republicans, many still stick with them at least in part because Republicans at least pretend to take Evangelicals and their beliefs seriously or outright identify with them, creating the impression that this is the party Evangelicals are to be associated with, in contrast with the Democratic party which often either does not understand or care about Evangelicals or at least has had a hard time showing it. There is, however, a sizable minority of Evangelicals who are solid Democrats, in spite of general disagreement with the Democratic party over the issue of abortion.
The Evangelical tradition, then, both as it has been historically as well as how it manifests itself today, is a much more complex, diverse, and sophisticated movement than most people outside of it realize. Most simply do not understand or know about the distinctions within Evangelicalism that have been alluded to above and immediately associate Evangelicalism with the worst forms of Fundamentalism and political conservatism that they can think of.

Mormonism: A Short Historical Write-Up

Mormonism is an American-born religious movement that arose out of the general religious ferment of the American 1800s, which involved much creativity and bucking of religious traditions and a turn to creative, new, yet non-standard interpretations of the Bible and Christian doctrine and a distinct emphasis on prophecy. Out of this general milieu arose groups such as the Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and, initially as an import, the theological system of Dispensationalism. Out of all the many groups that coalesced during this time, the Mormons have definitely been one of the best organized, fastest-growing, and most influential, both religiously and politically (and increasingly marketing themselves as more and more mainstream, whatever their theological idiosyncrasies, in order to gain broader acceptance and to shake off feelings of discomfort that have been associated with them and their particularities).
One can see Mormonism as, in effect, a combined unity of two religious systems. One system, which is more embodied in the teachings of the Book of Mormon and most closely resembles traditional Christian teachings, is very similar to that of a standard Protestant church and is the form Mormonism took in its earliest days before it took on further developments under Joseph Smith and then under future prophetic leaders. This system is that of the local church, or stake, and involves going to church on Sundays for worship and moral instruction as well as the administration of the rites of baptism and communion, which are involved in granting salvation, which requires repentance in baptism and also faith.
The local church, then, represents a Protestant-like religious system focusing on the earthly life and on the procurement of salvation. Particularly Mormon teachings are not as common as general ethical exhortation and teaching from the Bible and hence this religious system is not, and may not seem to many Mormons who have not gone beyond it, to be really all that different from what other Christians do or believe. Mormon missionaries, in particular, tend to stress this system when evangelizing others, trying to avoid most of the particularities associated with the temple system which I will turn to next, and instead trying to present Mormonism as really just another church but one that has now got some things going for it that others do not (a living prophet, for instance). Focusing on this system, they say things such as that they “believe the same things” or “believe the same gospel” that other Christians do and focus, out of all their writings, on the Book of Mormon which well-represents the Mormon version of this sort of religious system.
As time went on, however, another sort of system was laid on top of the Protestant-like system by Joseph Smith and his successors. The salvation-oriented system of the local stake was but the beginning foundation for a much more glorious system oriented towards the exaltation of Mormons – that is, towards their being made into gods in their right just like the Father himself. Salvation, in this system, is merely one of the prerequisites to gain the chance to get one’s foot in the door. Exaltation is the real goal for the whole Mormon religious structure and the exaltation-oriented structure focused on and in the temple as opposed to the stake is the means for achieving it.
This temple system represents a kind of mystery religion, complete with esoteric knowledge and secret rituals designed to secure through the ritual power unleashed thereby the exaltation of the individuals so involved. Mormons who hope to participate in all of this have to meet certain stringent requirements and perform a number of different rituals at various discrete times in the temple before they can be guaranteed godhood. Mormons who have not been or cannot yet be involved in the temple and its uses of religious power may know little to nothing about it or the theological ideas associated with it, particularly given the secrecy and sacredness associated with the whole system.
To be exalted, Mormons must get married in an eternal marriage in the temple, which means that husband and wife will be able join together as gods and start the whole process of creation-fall-redemption-exaltation again with their own spirit children just as God the Father and his heavenly spouse have done with their own spirit children – a process God the Father himself has undergone in a process of embodiment-exaltation, having himself achieved godhood from a lower state. Creation, fall, and redemption are just part of a continuing process developing spirits from their initial states and into full godhood. This process required embodiment, which inevitably brings sin, which requires redemption, and which thereby provides an initial foundation on which to build and acquire final exaltation. Sin and the Fall, then, in this system were parts of the plan in order to turn spirit-children into gods. Christ was simply one of the spirit-children who volunteered and was chosen to carry out that redemption prior to the plan’s implementation, a very different Christ than the traditional Christian one and ultimately a very different system of religion as well.

Reformation for Women: A Short Historical Write-Up

During the time of the Reformation, there was a definite strain within the religious climate which seemed to have definitely negative views towards sex, even within the confines of marriage, and the body in general. This was particularly troublesome for women, as they tended to be associated with the bodily side of the dichotomy between body and mind or spirit and hence also with sex and sin as well. In part, this may have been a holdover from certain Gnostic influences which crept into the church, viewing the body and bodily matters as bad. But it also may be in part a result of the Stoic influence on the church (which is readily visible in, for instance, Boethius, whose work became very influential in the Middle Ages), emphasizing escape from the sufferings of the world through detachment from desires and happiness being found in what was internal and inviolable alone.
Add to these influences the monastic, ascetic strain in Christianity which, when Christianity became popular and filled with nominal believers, sought to display a greater devotion and higher degree of being set apart through extreme asceticism and self-denial. Reactions against pagan sexual excess probably had their fair share of influence as well. Given all of these influences, it is not surprising that many church leaders, who followed in the footsteps of these very influences and in principle followed a highly ascetic ideal, should at times display highly negative attitudes towards the body, sex, and, by extension, women.
All of this, of course, was in tension with the anti-Gnostic position of the church on the goodness of the material creation, the goodness of the body and sex, and the view that body and mind alike displayed sin (one finds such attitudes in Augustine, for instance, who argued that sex was part of God’s good, pre-Fall creation intent for humankind). One can see some of the Reformers such as Luther making a return to re-emphasize these historic views over and against the overly ascetic, monastic strain dominating the religious hierarchical scene. Sex, body, and marriage are all seen as good things created by God, part of his very good created order.
Things were obviously still not all roses, however. Female sexuality could still often be seen as especially dangerous in comparison to male, the idea being that females, often even unwittingly, lead otherwise pious men astray into sexual sin. The problem here seems to be a combination of a double standard coupled with male abdication of responsibility in their own sexual lives (passing the buck, as it were, onto the women much as Adam did with Eve). The men were not so bad since, after all, it was the women’s fault!
There was an even greater double standard in relation to sexual relationships outside of marriage. Males were not, in society, frowned on as much as women were they to engage in such relations. Women, meanwhile, could be considered “damaged goods” and exceedingly wicked. A number of factors probably contribute to this, including the desire to ensure the legitimacy of male heirs which attaches directly to female but not to male sexual expression as well as the fact that the males were in charge and hence were more likely to give themselves or other men a free pass in this arena than to do the same outside of their own gender group.
If we filter out the double standards and scapegoating, however, it seems like overall that folks like Luther actually achieved, in theory at least, a rather nice balance between the goodness of sex and the body, on the one hand, and, on the other, the realization that, like all human desires, sexual ones can be corrupted by sin and ought to be pursued within their proper, God-given bounds. In the past fifty years, we have seen a much greater emphasis on the former but also, with the sexual revolution, a loss in many areas of the church of the latter. In the rush to be rid of sexism, patriarchy, double standards, and so on, it seems that many church leaders and laity have thrown out the sexual discipline baby with the patriarchal, overly ascetic bathwater.
The balance has been lost (if we ever fully had it), some in response overreacting in the opposite direction, making sex again a taboo, others embracing sex yet casting off restraint, with sex and sexuality becoming almost an idol, thus contributing to the increase in our society of things like pornography and radical sexual expression, sexual peer pressure, the sexualization of younger and younger girls, the breakdown of family relations and the rise in the number of broken homes and “deadbeat dads”, the increase in the incidence of STDs along with teenage pregnancies and abortions, and so on.
The historic balance the church has always struggled with and yet has in one form or another always been committed to, seems to be the goodness of sex and body (and women!) but with the ethical view that sexual relations have a proper place within certain confines. Either one without the other, it could be argued (though obviously many will disagree) is not a happy thing. Though we may argue about which by itself is worse (some more Fundamentalist groups might argue that it is better to have the latter by itself than the former), it would be better to retain that balance between the goodness of a thing along with a recognition of moral constraints on it which is so essential to ethical thinking in general, let alone religious.

Some Random Song of Song Notes

"Deleted Scenes" (for various reasons) from a 45+ page paper I wrote for my Wisdom/Writings class during the Fall semester at the GTU (hopefully, without the wider context, they still make sense - note that the footnote links don't quite work very well at the moment):

The strongest and most pervasive intertextual allusion modern commentators have seen appears to be with the story of Creation and Fall in Genesis 2-3 (some even going so far as saying the Song is a kind of commentary on it), the Song of Songs representing for man and woman a kind of Return to the Garden where, for instance, the Curse does not show itself and the broken, now power-oriented relationship between male and female in Genesis 3:16 is at least in abeyance and the man and woman relate at least with each other, within their relationship if not in society, as equals – the survival of Paradise through love.[1] Indeed, the garden in the Song (here including nature in general) represents a kind of place of uninterrupted, unblemished intimacy and joy for the lovers (See Song of Songs 1:15-17; 2:1-7, 8-17; 4:10-5:1; 6:1-3, 11-12; and 7:6-13).

*****

With regard to sexual norms, it seems that in the biblical tradition the norms are very strict on what is sexually appropriate and this is seen by many as reflective of the strict norms in wider Israelite society – at least in regards to the sexual behavior of women (men in the ancient world, as now, were often given considerably more social leeway when it comes to sexual behavior). Importantly, in a patriarchal society, strict sexual norms confining sex to marriage (at the very least, for women) help to instill confidence in the legitimacy of any offspring, particularly male heirs. In addition, though we cannot be sure, of course, how people always behaved in ancient Israelite society,[2] it does seem that human love was often seen as divinely ordained, part of the created order[3] and to be pursued within the proper confines of that order, the wisdom and broader biblical traditions seeing these proper confines within the context of marriage.[4]

With regards to marriage itself, there is some speculation about possible cultural practices based on the evidence we have. The mother’s house and bedroom are related to marriage and perhaps the bringing of the groom there as well (as in 3:4), and there is some evidence it may have been a common practice for the bride to get ready with the groom waiting outside, a scene which we saw earlier in Section II.[5] In addition, we have good reason to believe that, given the patriarchal nature of ancient Near Eastern society, women in a marriage were in social status not wholly unlike the property of their husbands. Marriage in this sort of society was generally, whatever else it may have been, a socioeconomic institution with the husband at its head and the family and its possessions and earnings under his direct control, with one of the primary duties of the wife being the bearing of children which would in turn enhance the family (and hence the husband), maintaining the family property. It ought not to be surprising, then, if, in a work focusing on mutual, “egalitarian” love for its own sake (as we will see, some argue the Song is just such a work), marriage is not always directly mentioned since this could very well drag with it socioeconomic connotations that might distract from the examination of love itself.

*****

Given everything we have seen this far, we can see the Song as at times presenting a kind of reversal of the Curse of Genesis 3, the original exile, and the concomitant shattering of the relationships between man and woman, human and nature, and human and God – Creation is whole again. In ideal human love, intimacy between man and woman is at least partially healed, power plays are gone, and a kind of equality pervades the relationship. Gone is the struggle for power that is foretold in Genesis 3:16. As Murphy says, desire “can only nourish a love that is freely given and returned, a partnership that acknowledges the joy of being possessed by the beloved as well as the need to possess.”[6] The fracture between man and woman is at last, if only fleetingly, undone.[7]

The mutual enmity between human beings and the land or nature which one finds in Genesis 3:15, 17-19 is also undone as the woman becomes the land and the lovers find themselves and nature in their enjoyments as a harmonious unity. Love between man and woman is restored, as is love between human and land or nature (particularly, the land of Israel).[8] Human beings are no longer treating nature as something to exploit and nature no longer raises itself against the man and woman, but rather together they celebrate love’s return to Eden. Amid the longing and praise of the two lovers and the play of presence and absence, 2:8-17 illustrates both man-woman and human-nature restoration. Little that is negative slips into this realm of delight where, as mentioned briefly before, the line between man and woman on the one hand and human and nature on the other is hard to pin down (hence illustrating once again the shifts and indeterminacies characteristic of the Song as lyric love poetry).[9]

The relationship with God that was broken in the Fall, however, also receives a partial restoration in the Song. The woman as land and the echoes from the Bible of God’s longing for Israel (including the slippage between Israel and its land in the Bible already mentioned) point, for Davis, to the thesis that “[t]he Song is a lyrical evocation of the unbreakable three-way relationship among the people of Israel, the land of Israel, and the God of Israel, the unbreakable connection which Torah establishes, and over which the Prophets agonize.”[10] Here, unlike elsewhere in the Bible, God’s people return his love and longing in an equal way at last – in contrast to previous times, the vineyard of God’s people is now for God and God alone.[11] The one-sided relationship of God loving humankind has, in the garden, become a mutual enjoyment of seeking and finding.

The naturalness of this interpretation arises from, among other things, the slipperiness of the text and the symbolic complexity of the garden and other images in the Song, with its multiple layers of meaning, echoes of the Bible as well as Near Eastern mythic and sacred language, the status of the lovers as types and hence of standing in for any male-female lovers whatsoever, and the ancient view of humankind as female in comparison to God as male. All of these conspire to draw God into the warp and woof of the text, nearly silent and at first hidden behind the scenes, both present and absent as the man himself so often is, possessed of a freedom in love and movement not possessed by the woman[12] but giving himself in all his allusiveness to her nonetheless.

While it may be going too far to say that the Song on its own possesses an allegorical meaning (we, as part of reader-centered interpretation, may yet assign such) where the man always represents God (or humans) and the woman always represents Israel or humanity (or the land), the Song certainly seems, given the evidence, to invoke such relationships and speak allusively of male-female love in terms of divine-human love or love of the land. The ideal male-female love relationship is presented as a lot like ideal divine-human love, not a strange thought given what we saw in the work of Carr in Section III. There is a kind of mutual possession and inviolate commitment in ideal human love that parallels the divine (one can see this, for instance, in 2:16a, “My lover is mine and I am his”, which sounds a lot like “You will be my people and I will be your God”).[13] And like divine love, ideal love between a man and a woman is self-giving and gracious, as one can see in 3:1-5 and 5:2-8, where the woman takes risks and confidently enters the dangers of the city for the sake of her beloved. As Davis puts it, “Like the love of God, profound love another person entails devotion of the whole self and steady practice of repentance and forgiveness; it inevitably requires of us repentance and sacrifice.”[14] And in 8:6, we find human love having or resembling “the flame of divine love; both can be compared in intensity”.[15] And love, in the same passage, in another connection with Genesis, appears as a rival power over and against the primordial forces of chaos which are the enemies of God’s creative or restorative act.

*****

Given what we have seen so far, the contention of some modern commentators that the Song is a celebration of sexual pleasure begins to feel rather shallow. Instead, what I would contend, based on the interpretive work so far, is that the Song of Songs focuses on persons, not simply sexual or sensual gratification or even love by themselves and that it is by doing this that the Song teaches us about love. We see this in the expressions of mutuality, equality, exclusivity, self-sacrifice and commitment that have been mentioned from time to time throughout this paper (which can be seen in verses such as 2:16) and in the Song’s unique status of containing true dialogue, which highlights the mutual commitment and focused relationality between the two lovers.

At least some commentators seem, however, to be thinking of the woman in the Song as a child of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, styled as a countercultural and sexually “liberated” person subverting the stuffy, repressive sexual mores which oppressively restrict the proper domain of sex to the confines of marriage. What we have instead is personal sexual gratification, unfettered by society and its rules. The focus on sex itself thus has a tendency to go hand-in-hand with a view of sex in the Song as unrestricted by standard sexual norms. Imagery of virginity or marriage, when noticed at all, are seen as symbolic, ironic, or used in a sexually subversive manner. So Exum, who says, “There is no indication that the man and woman are married”[16], and, “Although the Song may occasionally allude to marriage […] the lovers are not a bride and groom, nor do they behave like a betrothed couple.”[17]

Sometimes this sort of subversive reading might be plausible with regard to, say, aspects of ancient gender roles (as can be seen in discussions above relating to Genesis), but this may be a stretch with regards to sexual restrictions throughout the Song. In my readings, not much direct evidence was given by these commentators that the couple in the Song is engaging in extramarital sexual relations – this is generally taken for granted as obvious. One can discern a few, generally undeveloped lines of support that are offered, however:

1. The Song does not say or insinuate that the lovers are married.[18]

2. If the lovers are unmarried in one part of the Song, they must be unmarried later too.[19]

3. The woman is treated badly (by her brothers and the watchmen, in particular) in the Song since she is sexually active outside of marriage.[20]

4. There is an element of secrecy or furtiveness to the relationship sometimes.[21]

5. For women, to be equal requires being unmarried and to be married is to be nothing more than property and “essentially breeders” – by contrast there is no submission in the Song.[22]

I will deal with each of these in order.

Regarding Statement 1, to think that just because it does not say or hint that the man and woman are married that they therefore are unmarried is to forget the genre of the Song. Even if they are determinately unmarried in one piece of a passage, it does not necessarily follow that they are in the next piece, even if the passage does not go out and say that they are now married. To defend this, one would have to rely on Statement 2. In order to use Statement 2, though, one must first establish that there is a point at which the couple is in fact unmarried in the Song. Even given this, however, it is not clear that one can make this sort of argument, given the lack of strict narrative logic in the Song. Just because something occurs later in the text of the Song does not mean it occurs later in time (indeed, the Song does not seem to have any determinate, global earlier-later temporal relations between what is portrayed in all of its sections).

Where the Song does not directly address whether the man are woman are married or not, it is as wrong to ask “Are they married?” as it is to ask “How tall are they?” or “What color hair does he have?” If the Song has not made that determination one way or the other in some section, it is indeterminate and, given the status of the two lovers as types meant to apply to any and all lovers, it is up to the reader to apply these types to real life, determinate people or situations. Not only that, but given the shifting roles and blurring between day dream, fantasy, and reality, as well as the highly symbolic nature of the Song and lack of strict temporal and narrative progression, saying that the two are determinately engaging in extramarital sexual relations (even in contexts where they elsewhere do not seem to be portrayed as behaving as one would expect a married or betrothed couple in that society to act) seems, barring the success of the other arguments to be examined, to be reaching beyond the text.

In fact, the status of the Song as wisdom, its intertextual relations with other biblical works, and its general cultural setting all seem to argue against seeing the couple as definitely unmarried. And contrary to the assertion in 1, the Song does give plenty of hints and nods to marriage. The motif of the groom calling outside to his bride who is inside which we find in 2:8-17 (and perhaps in chapter 5), the wedding procession in 3:6-11 immediately followed here in 4:1-5:1 by the man calling the woman his bride, the mother’s house as related to marriage which we find in 3:4 and 8:2, and – apart from these – multiple cases of images of virginity or chastity seemingly affirmed[23] all seem to speak against scholars such as Exum who must, oddly enough, maintain that all of this is mere imagery while at the same time taking anything that can be interpreted to support extramarital sex literally. This is not to say that the couple is always in the Song definitely married when they achieve sexual union (which itself is subject to shifting, given the multiple layers of meaning and dream-reality slipperiness), just that they are not definitely unmarried.

Statement 3 is perhaps the most interesting one, but here again we must remember not to take the Song too literally – why take it as almost woodenly literal, again, mainly in those bizarre episodes such as the beating by the watchmen in 5:7, but not in those places where marriage is mentioned or alluded to? The nature of the Song (and the abrupt shift in 5:8 as if nothing really happened – hardly evidence that 5:7 is meant to be taken as a literal report of a real encounter) seems to go against this.[24] The role of the watchmen, instead, seems to be a facet of the role of the city as the “real world” of opposition, sacrifice, and fallenness.

Statement 4 does not give any real evidence at all, since it is unclear where, apart from symbolic role playing, we see any language of secrecy. Even if there was, that would not imply that the couple was unmarried since real, married couples can and do make use of the same playful language and we have not been given any evidence to think that married couples in ancient times would not have done so as well. There may also be a connection to the City/Garden contrast explored earlier, but that would need further development which I will not explore here.

For Statement 5, even leaving aside the question of whether it is really being fair to the marriage institution, we have been given no decisive reason to think that the author of Song of Songs saw things that way in any case. The Song may undermine the extreme patriarchy of ancient society, but that does not mean that it – like many today – intends to throw the marriage commitment baby out with the ancient patriarchal bathwater. In any case, it is certainly false that there is no submission in the Song – on the contrary, what we find is mutual submission and mutual possession of one to and by the other. Statement 5, though, is still somewhat useful in that it does anticipate some of the reasons given in Section III as to why the Song of Songs might avoid always using explicit marriage language all throughout.

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[1] Exum, Song of Songs, 25.

[2] Exum, Song of Songs, 79.

[3] Exum, Song of Songs, 25; Carr, “Gender,” 241; Munro, Spikenard, 14.

[4] Exum makes this argument in a few places in her Song of Songs.

[5] Exum, “Ten Things,” 30-32; Pope, Song of Songs, 326.

[6] Munro, Spikenard, 14.

[7] Ostriker, “Holy of Holies,” 44, 49-50.

[8] For some examples and discussion of some of these images, see Garrett, Song of Songs, 261; Longman, Song of Songs, 155, 218; Pope, Song of Songs, 683;

[9] Dealing with the theme of the brothers would go beyond the focus texts of this paper, but their symbolic value, which is perhaps related to sexual or social control, need not be taken as implying any impropriety on the part of the woman. The texts in the previous note have some relevance to this question – as does, ironically, Exum, Song of Songs, 106!

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[10] Murphy, Song of Songs, 102.

[11] Longman, Song of Songs, 65-66; Murphy, Song of Songs, 102-103; Ostriker, “Holy of Holies,” 45.

[12] Davis, Proverbs, 235-236. See also the extended discussions in Davis, “Romance.”

[13] With Exum, Song of Songs, 128-130; Fox, Egyptian Love Songs; Garrett, “Song of Songs,” 160-161; and Murphy, Song of Songs, 141, I see 2:15 as a kind of tease and not really the introduction of any opposition or evil at this point. In other places in the Song, though, there may be hints of reality that break through from time to time in the midst of the garden imagery (this may not be clear to every interpreter) – 2:5 with its mention of faintness caused by love, for instance, may have a hint of this about it.

[14] Davis, “Romance,” 540.

[15] Davis, “Romance,” 542; Davis, Proverbs, 234, 245;

[16] On the social freedom of the man in ancient society as reflected in the Song and in comparison with the corresponding relative lack of freedom for women, see Exum, J. Cheryl, “Ten Things Every Feminist Should Know about the Song of Songs,” in The Song of Songs: Feminist Companion to the Bible (Second Series), ed. A. Brenner and C. Fontaine (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 30; Exum Song of Songs, 25.

[17] Longman, Song of Songs, 125.

[18] Davis, Proverbs, 233.

[19] Murphy, Song of Songs, 197.

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[20] See Fox, “Egyptian Love Songs,” 313-315.

[21] For this in the wisdom literature, see Keel, Song of Songs, 31.

[22] Garrett, “Song of Songs,” 103, 154-155; Longman, Song of Songs, 60; Murphy, Song of Songs, 97-101.

[23] Longman, Song of Songs, 131; Pope, Song of Songs, 392.

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[24] Trible, Phyllis, “Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion (1973): 30-48; Landy, Francis, “The Song of Songs and the Garden of Eden,” Journal of Biblical Literature 98 (1979): 513-528; Longman, Song of Songs, 65-66; Munro, Spikenard, 105. Contra Garrett, “Song of Songs,” 99.