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BILL: This part of the evening's presentation will feature an
interaction between Rev. Hansen and Rev. Rankin. And so gentlemen, just go
ahead and have at it. [laughter]
JOHN: Well you go
first.
CARL: Well let me say I'm a parish priest. The thought
crossed through my mind that I was like the local yocal Sheriff and the
hired gun was coming into town and I sorta had to outdraw him.
Most
of what you said I certainly agree with. The parts that I don't agree with
sound to me like a different kind of God than the one I know in Jesus
Christ. For example, to ask to prove the existence of homosexuality from
creation is to deny that we are made in the image of God, that we are
called to be co-creators with God, that we are to manifest in our
relationships with others the kind of love that Jesus called us to. I
think it would also deny things like flying in airplanes. I mean, it's
obviously not a natural part of creation for humanity to fly in airplanes.
You know, it's very easy to say prove it in natural law. But certainly God
has gifted us in a way that goes far beyond what was set in motion with
the biological processes of creation and the physical processes of
creation. That part I don't understand.
JOHN: Well, let me take the
airplane first of all. In the structure of creation we are made as God's
image-bearers to rule over all of creation, including the fish who swim
and the birds who fly. Therefore, I see in terms of filling and subduing
the planet and bringing it under our control and building cities and
having children, that the mind that God gave us to build airplanes and
submarines I see as very consistent with the order of creation. I see that
as a natural consequence of God giving us a mind and giving us the ability
to do that.
You mentioned natural law. I'm not a big fan of
natural law as it is defined historically, Augustine on forward. Some
elements are OK. But I don't think it's as vibrant as talking the order of
creation. The order of creation is language I have chosen.
I guess
my question is this. What we have in Genesis, and let me go back to Jesus
as well. You started with your interpretive basis on the love of Jesus.
Well, how can we separate Jesus from the order of creation, from the Old
Testament. He said I've come not to abolish the Law, I've come to fulfill
it. And so when he was asked the question about divorce and he said, well,
Moses gave that to you because of the hardness of heart in the cases of
infidelity, but from the beginning it was not so. And so he goes back and
says he fulfills the Old Testament law, he is the Messiah to restore us,
to redeem us to the purposes of the order of creation. And you know, so
many issues he didn't address. Jesus never once addressed the two most
cardinal sins for which Jeremiah prosecuted Israel for: worshipping the
starry hosts and child sacrifice. And the reason he didn't, it wasn't an
issue in first century Jerusalem at that time. And because the listening
ears, and Jesus was ministering to Jews in his earthly ministry, they knew
the Scriptures inside-out. They breathed them. The Pharisees knew every
jot and tittle. And therefore he had the power of assuming that they knew
what the Bible was all about. Therefore he says if you love me, so this is
Jesus's definition of love, you will obey my commandments. So what I see
there is the question of how can we separate Jesus from being a Jew, and
being a Jew that fulfills the seed of Abraham and fulfill the prophecies
in Genesis for reversing the reversal. Consequently, on those terms, we
take Jesus's love, it goes back to God made us, male and female. I will
argue that when we get into male and male sexual relationships, or female
and female sexual relationships, it is people who are looking for the POSH
L's of the image of God, but in the wrong places and on the wrong terms.
That's why I want to affirm their humanity, be accountable, open and
communicable. By the same token, if we want to get into it, I will argue
that homosexuality is intrinsically pathological at many physical levels,
and that's not saying that their practices are unique to homosexuals. But
those which many do are pathological. And I also believe at a deeper
level, emotionally, we need men and women in mutual submission in
marriage. And I believe the greatest socialization, as I was mentioning
about the men growing up without a father, is we need to know how to treat
those of the opposite sex. And I think that homosexuality is an expression
that has not been given the true role models for male and female, and
therefore they move into an ersatz sexuality. Back to the...
CARL:
Well let me respond.
JOHN: Sure, go ahead.
CARL: We don't
have a choice about accepting Jesus in terms of his own questioning of the
Levitical code. Many times he challenged the outward obedience to that
code without an inward obedience to the love of God which he was revealing
to those who followed him. We just can't simply say if Jesus accepted it,
then we have to accept it. Jesus was a Jew, therefore everything that's
written in the Hebrew Scriptures, in order to accept Jesus we have to
accept that.
JOHN: I didn't quite say that.
CARL: Well, he
himself challenged the kind of outward obedience that you're talking about
by these abstract structures that you've deduced from the order of
creation.
JOHN: Are they abstract?
CARL: Your abstractions
by putting them into four neat categories and then showing a progression.
That's a way of thinking about it. And I'm just saying that's a way of
thinking about it. It's not the way Jesus thought about it necessarily.
What he revealed to us and constantly confronted those who were very good
at talking about the order of creation and the hierarchy of creation and
the ways that we should feel about our relationships and all of that, was
to challenge those concepts. We don't have choice. In order to accept
Jesus we have to challenge that kind of thinking, that sort of outward
obedience to the legalisms of the holiness code.
JOHN: Well, can
you give me an example of something he challenged that you're referring
to?
CARL: Well, for example, when a man with a crippled arm was
brought to him early in the Gospel of Mark on the Sabbath. He violated the
code of not working on the Sabbath as it was interpreted by his religious
community, by performing an act of healing. That kind of thing happened
several times. There was another case where they picked grain and ate it
as they were going through a field, and things like this.
JOHN: And
what Jesus did was he pointed out how the Pharisees in that case were
unfaithful to the Sabbath, unfaithful to the Scriptures. The law that had
arisen between Malachi and John the Baptist had grown to thousands of laws
compared to just a few hundred laws. And what they had done, as Jesus said
when they were gleaning the grain on the Sabbath, was we are not slaves of
the Sabbath. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is meant
to be a rest for us. And which of you if your ox fell into a pit would not
lift him out. And so he was challenging the Pharisees unfaithfulness to
the Old Testament on its own terms back to the order of creation. And in
fact at one point when they were full of their legalisms, which he
challenged with passion, OK, he said you've tithed and that's good. But
the problem is you've done it with self-righteousness and you've trampled
the poor at the same time. Therefore, you've used the outward appearance
of the Law. I'm passionately in favor of that. But that doesn't say
anything against the order of creation. And it doesn't say anything in
terms of making an exception to call homosexuality a gift of God. In other
words, whether we're liberal or conservative, however we identify
ourselves theologically, or let me just ask you this way. When I talk
creation, sin and redemption, is that not the essence of Scripture? And is
that not the root of Genesis 1 through 3?
CARL: Well I think that's
one way of talking about it.
JOHN: What's a different way that's
equal?
CARL: Well, for example, it is the basis for all of
creation. And I think the traditional sin-redemption theology is the
dominant view of interpreting the creation narratives. But you also have a
basic affirmation of creation which does not look upon creation as being
sinful, but looking upon creation as being good. When God looks upon the
created order and says that it is good...
JOHN: But that's what
I've said.
CARL: ...it is pleasing to God.
JOHN: See, what
I've said is the order of creation is good. Out of human choice to disobey
we bring in brokenness, and Christ comes to redeem us from it. So he's
restoring us to the goodness of creation. So yes, creation is good. And in
creation he made man and woman. See, what's powerful about the order of
creation in my mind is it says nothing negative about other worldviews. It
simply gives us the positive, gives us the positive man and woman. And the
only thing in there that could be partially negative, I used as a point of
humor, it's not good for man to be alone. Which to me is a very powerful
statement of how the positive image of God is not complete without men and
women being equal image bearers of God. So when you say that's one way of
looking at it, I want to be a little bit tighter on this issue.
You're a Christian. You believe in the Bible as a source for faith
at some level. And it starts in the order of creation, the goodness of the
order of creation. And it would seem to me that if you're going to say
homosexuality is a gift of God, it must be a gift in the good order of
creation. Because everything the Bible assumes is good and given is in
Genesis 1 and 2, the order of creation. So if you can't show it's there,
then my argument is you have a non-Christian argument.
CARL: Well,
you're arguing from the argument of silence. It's often been called that.
You take the man and woman creation story, which is an obvious address of
where did we come from, why are we here, and where are we going. It puts
those kinds of values and perspective into human life. And doesn't say a
lot of other things. To talk about creation as man and woman does not
necessarily mean that that is the only paradigm for godly
existence.
JOHN: I think that's the argument of silence that you've
just made.
CARL: I'm saying that if God in creation, the only
paradigm offered is man and woman, then it is silent about other
possibilities besides homosexuality. There are other lifestyles that are
perfectly legitimate which are not addressed in the creation story. Are
all of those illegitimate? Are all of those sinful?
JOHN: Here's
the question then we have to ask ourselves. If there are other
possibilities that are not in the order of creation, then what is our
interpretive basis for knowing the difference between good and evil?
Because what we have in Genesis is good and evil and Adam called to
discern between the two. If we don't have in the order of creation, upon
which all Scripture assumes, as that which is good, and that which we are
restored to. I mean, if you look at the positive elements in Genesis 1
through 3, and you look at the last four chapters of Revelation, they're
all restored to us, including the Tree of Life finally for the healing of
the nations, and back into his presence. And so if you're going to say
there's something outside of the order of creation that is permissible, my
argument is that, number one, that's the real argument of silence. That
what I'm arguing for is the positive revealed. And then when sin breaks
that we see how it breaks it. I believe everything inclusively good is in
the order of creation. That's what my book deals a lot of time evidencing,
or at least I'm trying to evidence it. And so if we say that something is
outside of that, I then have to ask you, what is your interpretive basis?
My opinion before I hear your answer, OK, is it reverses the Wesleyan
Quadrilateral. Basically we're saying that your experience or my
experience or someone else's experience allows us to weave something else
in. If that's the case -- and that's certainly a fair human prerogative
you have in terms of the freedom God has given you -- but it is not being
biblical on its own terms. It's moving outside the biblical
assumptions.
CARL: Well I think that get's us back to our view of
the Bible.
JOHN: Absolutely.
CARL: Which I would not say is
a reversal of those but rather a recognition that none of those exists in
a vacuum. The Bible itself is the product of tradition. It's the product
of experience. It was not written by God guiding the hands of the people.
They were struggling like we are, trying to account for their experience
of God in their experience of the people of God. And that tradition, that
community which produced the Bible in various contexts in different stages
of history over a thousand years, reverses the order you're talking about.
How easy it is for us to come with the final product and say this is God's
Word. This is the product of what we are doing tonight. We are the living
word. And if we come up with things that violate the love of God as
revealed in here, then that is our standard. That is our canon. That's
what we go back to. But there are a lot of details in there, including the
creation stories, which we have to read in the light of tradition and
reason. The original three of those pillars you talked
about...
JOHN: Three-legged stool, yeah.
CARL: ...is reason.
And then Wesley added experience primarily not out of sort of a variety of
experience or thought, but that was mostly an emotional thing that had to
do with his passion and his conversion experience as being, in other words
it's like not just reason but faith and the fire of faith.
JOHN:
His passion was that there could be those who were so dry, intellectual
and systematic...
CARL: Right.
JOHN: ...that they missed the
goal of God's love, which is for us to experience his presence. But he
gave it its rootedness. Now you're right, it's a delightful discussion to
talk about the nature of God's inspiration. That would be fun to do
sometime. And I think you'd find that I don't have a narrow view of that.
I really see the dynamics of what's involved. And I take the final product
as inspired of God for various reasons intrinsic to the Bible's own
nature. But even if you don't accept that evangelical worldview about
Scripture, nonetheless, when you look at the final document right here,
and how it defines what a Hebrew worldview or a Christian worldview is all
about, the process which brought this to pass however we understand it
sets forth the order of creation very inclusively, very
straight-forwardly. And so I think that if you then want to bring in
something into the order of creation that is not there, I think what
you've done is you've basically rejected the Bible on its own terms and
you're bringing in something extra. And at that point I really believe
that the Wesleyan Quadrilateral has been reversed. And your experience or
someone else's experience, and I think you will find, too, that I am very
respectful and love to communicate with people's experiences. I learn from
people's experiences all the time. And the more I learn from them, the
more I communicate, and I go out of my way to communicate with people who
have different experiences than me and different backgrounds, the more I'm
convinced of the paradigms that I've shared from Scripture today.
And so for example, when I look at that which is healthful and
that which is productive for society, I mean John Calvin's argument. And
this gets a little into the Calvin and Hobbes argument. Not the comic
strip, but John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes [laughter], the Swiss reformer
and the British atheist. My advisor at Harvard, that was his focus. He
showed how the comic strip was a hall of mirrors on that. And I'm still
lost in that hall of mirrors, but it's the best comic strip I've ever
seen. Well, the guy's stopped writing it because he knew his creative
juices were running low, but I still buy the books. But John Calvin and
Thomas Hobbes had two views about how you build society. Calvin said
unless we have trust society can not exist. And the only place trust can
be learned is in a trusting marriage where mom and dad are seen to love
each other by the child and the child learns trust. If trust is not
learned we're in trouble. And that's why the early years of childhood
development are so critical. And so John Calvin was famous for defining
sin and total depravity, nonetheless had more confidence in the image of
God that preceded that in terms of the Spirit's work in our lives. So he
said in the political order and culture you need to have trust. Thomas
Hobbes, the atheist who didn't believe in sin theologically, still said
that we are all so irascible, that's a nice way of saying we're all so
nasty to each other, that we need a top-down, monster government to force
us away from each other. And so Hobbes started with the assumption that
there is no trust. And so we need government to come together to keep us
away from each other. Of course the funny part about that is how can you
have government without compact? You need trust to have compact to form a
government. And so unless you learn that trust, that giving and receiving,
husband and wife for the children, everything else falls apart from there.
That I see is the inclusive power of the order of creation.
And I
will argue, and I don't normally get into a lot of the debating issues
about homosexuality, because very simply we can get lost in statistics. As
you pointed out we can take our own prejudices into certain information
and so forth. That's why my focus is on the order of
creation.
CARL: John, you can talk about man and woman as somehow a
mystically God- given way of solving all the world's problems. But it's
very clear that just man and woman in marriage, even in fidelity in
marriage, and God knows it's not always faithful, does not solve all the
world's problems.
JOHN: You're right.
CARL: There has to be
a quality of life that is given in Scripture, that is not dependent upon
the ability to prove by people's outward appearances physically that they
qualify or live the Kingdom of God. The real level of what's revealed in
Scripture has nothing to do with the physical part of creation. It has a
lot to do with what's in the heart and what's in the Spirit in our
relationships. That's a bible-based, Spirit-based, Jesus-based order of
ethics and theology and biblical revelation which can apply in a variety
of circumstances, do not necessarily apply between a man and a woman.
JOHN: Very briefly what I would say is this, is that marriage is
not a panacea because we're in a sin-stained world.
CARL: Of course
not.
JOHN: But the order of creation for man and woman was God's
definition for us to experience the power to give and receive. Without
giving and receiving we don't have culture, and that is designed in the
order of creation. So once we understand how sin breaks that, and it
breaks it in many ways. That's why I don't want to make homosexuality an
issue apart from all sexual issues. I don't seek to do it, but that's a
cultural issue that draws people to look at the deeper issues. So I want
to go to those deeper issues. So I'm not saying that. But that's why we go
back to the order of creation, what God made for us in the order of
creation, how sin breaks that, how redemption restores us to it.
The final observation is, yes, the heart or the will is very
important, but the physical body is good. And this is one of the most
powerful elements about the biblical worldview compared to all pagan
texts. The pagan texts for the most part have a dualism, the spirit is
good the body is bad, we're trying to escape the body. From the beginning
the body is good. All our five senses to communicate are reflective of
God's greater communicative abilities. And we have the resurrection body
which is our goal in the New Testament.
BILL: That needs to be it
for this portion.
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