quote:

---

POW

Then WHY do you try to get leverage (This is what you are doing that is cynical.) by using the grace in one matter to attempt to force at hostage the issue of your wishing at the expense of others.

Iconoclast

It is called HYPOCRISY.

---

quote:

---

Christos Yannaras
"Man": Chapter 7 of Elements of Faith
(T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 53-88.

www.jbburnett.com/yannaras/yannaras-man.html


*


h. The distinction between the sexes

In the biblical narrative of man's creation, the truth of the image of God which is imprinted in man is followed or fulfilled with the distinction of the sexes, the differentiation of man and woman. "And God made man; in the image of God he made him; male and female he made them" (Gen 1. 27). In this phrase, ecclesial hermeneutics saw the joining of the "image" with the "power of love" of man, the power which drives him to realize life as communion with the other sex, while at the same time this same force is also constitutive of life; it is the way for human life to be constituted in new personal hypostases and so for man to be increased and multiplied, to fill the earth and to have dominion over it (Gen 1.28).

But there exists as well a second description of the creation of man, which the second chapter of the book of Genesis (vv. 4-25) preserves for us and which the philologists consider to be more ancient as a written formulation . There, the formation of man is not bound from the beginning with the differentiation of the sexes. God creates the first human, who has a masculine name, "Adam". But the name shows the quality of earthliness, not his sex. On this first and general human, God breathes his breath and establishes him as a "living soul". The differentiation of sex follows, only in order to serve the need for communion: "It is not good for man to be alone; let us make a helper for him who is like him" (2.18). And the distinction of the sexes is accomplished with the intervention of a special creative activity of God, a second formation: God imposes an "ecstasy" on Adam and takes one of his ribs and constructs the woman (2.21-22).

In this second description, the consciousness of sex is also the first expression of man's self-knowledge: Facing the existence which has come forth from his side, Adam gives himself a name, a name which arises from his relation to his partner. He is not longer simply "Adam", he becomes ish and she becomes ishah– he becomes a man since she is a woman (2-23). With the criteria of ecclesial hermeneutics, we must see in the image of the first and general human the undivided unity of human nature. But the natural similarity of flesh and bones (Gen 2.23) is not enough to ensure that unity of nature which would establish man as an image of the divine triadic unity. The triadic prototype of life is unity as a communion of love, a communion of separate and free hypostases, not a naturally given unity. So we return again to the necessity of the distinction of the sexes if the image or manifestation of the life of the uncreated is to be realized within the bounds of the created.

Facing the woman, Adam prophesies: "Because of this, man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife and the two shall be as one flesh" (Gen 2.24). The communion of man and woman is intended to be an event of freedom which is completed in a natural unity. The naturally given bond with the parents is broken so that a new bond can be created of free choice and devotion, which results not only in living together, friendship, an ethical and spiritual relationship, but in a physical unity, which means a unity of life, literally a co-existence, an existence-with. This is the way in which the triadic prototype of life is realized within the limits of created nature.

Consequently, in the biblical perspective the distinction of the sexes, while it has its foundation in the nature of man– it is a manifestation or demonstration of his nature– does not have the needs and expediencies of nature in view, but that unity of nature which is a fruit of freedom from nature, a fruit of personal love. In other words, the distinction of the sexes does not function in man as it functions in the animals where it is exclusively subordinate to the natural necessity of propagation. In Adam's prophecy which interprets the reason or goal of the distinction of the sexes, the physical expediency of propagation does not appear at all– the natural unity "as one flesh" is determined as a unique goal, a unity which is the result of the free "joining" to the person of the other sex. But also in the description of the creation of man which the first chapter of Genesis (vv. 26-29) gives us, the perspective of increase and propagation of people appears as a result of a special blessing of God (v. 28), that is of a special gift which is offered to man, and not as a given physical necessity as in animals. Only sin, the failure of man to realize life in accordance with its triadic prototype, will upset this order and displace the object of the distinction of the sexes from being the "image" of God to the relentless necessity of physical perpetuation.


*


i. The power of love

The distinction of the sexes has its foundation in the nature, but it is not identical with the nature, just as it is not to be identified even with the hypostasis of man. It is one of the energies of the nature about which we have spoken above, one of the ways in which the existential reality of the nature operates, the unique, distinct and unrepeatable character of every specific human hypostasis. The science of psychology today assures us that the erotic urge does not appear in man simply at the age when it is needed to serve the propagation of the species. But from the first moment of his birth, the erotic impulse toward the mother constitutes the first possibility of a vital relationship– a possibility which makes up the personality itself of man and the beginning of his entry into the world of people, into the area of life as communion.

Without the distinction of the sexes and the erotic impulse which accompanies it, the fact of relationship, of communion, of love, of eros, would perhaps be defined at the level of behaviour, of communication, of a simple psychological bond. Thanks to the distinction of the sexes, eros is an impulse and presupposition of life, the fundamental presupposition for the realization and manifestation of the personal hypostasis of life. The personal hypostasis of man, even in its biological origin, is a fruit of the eros of two other people. But the composition itself and manifestation of the personhood of the subject is a result of the possibility of relationship, of communion, of erotic reference. The relationship of the infant with its mother is erotic, not of course because it intends the perpetuation of the species, but because it is a relationship constitutive of life. The mother transmits life to the baby, not metaphorically and symbolically, but literally and really: She gives it the nourishment which is a presupposition of life, and with it the caress, the affection, the first words which are addressed to it; that is, she gives it the first possibility of relationship, the feeling of a personal presence without which the baby can never enter the world of people, the world of language and of symbols, of existential identity and names.

The connection of sexual distinction with the creation of man "in the image of God" is not, then, by chance or simply metaphorical or by analogy. Man is the image of God since he is a person, a personal existence. But the person differs from the biological individual, precisely since his existence itself is not naturally given, but is realized as an event of erotic relationship and communion. The distinction of the sexes permits man to give a physical hypostasis (an hypostasis of nature) to his personal existence– permits the personal reference to be effected as an event constitutive of the hypostasis and unifying for the nature of man.

Therefore it is not chance either that God's relationship with man (the principal relationship constitutive of life as a personal hypostasis) is always portrayed by the erotic relationship of a man and woman. When Israel is unfaithful to God and worships idols, the prophets charge that he is committing adultery Uer 13.27), dishonoring the uniqueness of the relationship by which God had elevated him to the place of the "beloved" (Hos 2.23; Rm 9.25). The relationship of God with his people, with each member of his people, is a nuptial secret, erotic, and this is the only reason, for the ecclesial interpretation at least, that a clearly erotic song, the Song of Songs, takes a place among the books of the Old Testament.

But the erotic relationship of God with Israel is only an image and copy of the union which God has realized with humanity in the Person of Christ and by means of his body which is the Church. This is the "great mystery" which the Apostle Paul describes in his Letter to the Ephesians (5.23-33) and which the parables of the Gospels portray with scenes taken from wedding dinners and banquets. In the New Testament, Christ is the bridegroom of the Church and the bridegroom of the soul of each one of us– God is passionately in love with the person of each human. And especially in the Gospel of John, eternal life which Christ comes to give us is defined by the verb "to know", which always renders the Hebrew word which means, in biblical language, the erotic relationship of a man and a woman: "Eternal life is this, to know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" Un 17.3).

In the patristic tradition, God himself in his internal triadic life will be defined as "the whole of eros", the falness of continuous erotic unity: "This eros is love, and it is written, that God is love". And this eros is ecstatic, "stimulating the erotic inclination of God' I which founds and constitutes the beings "outside him": "He, the cause of the universe . . . through the superabundance of his erotic goodness . . . is outside of himself ... and it is as if he feels fascinated by ... love and eros; and he descends from the condition of preeminence before the universe and of separation from the universe." The only way for man to describe the experience of receiving this eros and his response to it is again the relationship of man and woman: "Love for you has come upon me as the love of women." In the ascetical literature, the copy of the love of God for man and of man for God likewise is to be sought in the forms of human eros and especially of bodily love, not of the idealistic forms of platonic nostalgia: "Let bodily love be an example for you of the desire for God". "The most passionate lover of his own beloved does not desire, as God desires the soul he desires to repent. "Blessed is the one who has acquired such desire for God, as that which the passionate lover has for his beloved.

If love as we usually know it expresses more a blind and instinctive impulse for selfish pleasure and not the liberation of the person from the necessities and demands of nature (given that life is supposed to be accomplished as a loving coinherence of two persons), this is because we know love in its fallen condition, we know it as sin, that is, as an existential failure and loss of its purpose and goal. But even in the condition of the fall and of sin, love makes possible the natural union of two different hypostases and the formation of new personal hypostases, because something is preserved from the power to love which has been imprinted on our nature as an image of God. It is the power of love which makes possible the union not only of different hypostases, but also of different natures, and shows man to be "a participant in the divine nature , the whole man to be "co-inhering totally with the whole God and becoming all that God is, except for the identity of essence" The writer of the Areopagitic texts sees an "obscure echo" of this power to love even in the dissolute who "desires the worst life in accord with an unreasonable lust". And St Maximus Confessor recognizes even in the erotic attraction of animals without reason, as in the attractive power which forms the "common alleluia" of the whole creation, a single erotic impulse and movement turning back to the single form of divine life.

All this means that for ecclesial anthropology, the distinction of the sexes neither serves simply the physical expedient of perpetuation of the species, nor only an extension of social roles an extension which permits the creation of the "cell" of social life which is the family. Before anything else, the distinction of the sexes in man and the erotic attraction of heterosexual existences leads the general erotic impulse placed in the nature to its "natural" end and purpose: It serves the imaging in nature of the triadic mode of life– the personal coinherence of life within the limits of created nature. It intends finally the deifying union of man with God.

If man refuses this goal and purpose, love is perverted into an eneluctable suffering of the nature: The nature suffers love, endures it as a tormenting and always unfulfilled desire for existential completion and a relentless expedient for perpetuation of the species. Sin is precisely the failure of love to realize the goal which it has in view, which is the union of man with God. Love is transformed into an everlasting repetition of the tragedy of the Danaids, into an insatiable impulse for the satisfaction of nature, hedonism and pleasure of individual senses. It is no longer an event of communion and loving relationship, but a subordination of the other to subjective demand and the need for sensual pleasure.

Only when the love which is directed to the person of the other sex leads to the loving transcendence of physical individuality (which means: for man to go beyond his individuality, his private desires, needs and demands, to cease to aim at individual survival and to begin to live forJoy of the other, from love for the other), only then is the way freed for man's response to the erotic call of God and for love to become a way of life and a gift of life. Therefore the love of Christ for the Church, to the point of the cross (Eph 5.23-33), is also an xample of conjugal eros, the willing mortification of physical individuality if life is to be realized only as love and self-offering. First Christ incarnates the example of "real love" and makes possible our own erotic reference to his Person: "He first loved us," says Photius the Great, "while we were enemies and hostile. And he not only loved, but he was also dishonoured on our behalf and was smitten and crucified and counted among the dead; and through all these things he presented his love for us".

Within the Church, which is the place of the Kingdom of God– the place where the triadic way of "real life" is realized– "there is neither male nor female" (Gal 3.28).

Within the Church we exist in the manner in which we will exist even after the death of our physical individuality: Not with the powers and abilities of our nature, its psychosomatic energies, but thanks to the love of God "who calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Rom 4.17)– thanks to his own erotic call which constitutes our existence as an event of communion with Him.

This does not mean that our nature is taken away within the space of the Kingdom. It means that the way by which our nature is hypostasized (becomes an hypostasis) is transformed. Nature does not become any longer an hypostasis (a particular living existence) thanks to its own functions and energies, but thanks to the call of God's love. Therefore we no longer have any need to pass by way of the natural possibility of the distinction of the sexes in order to realize our natural existence as an hypostasis of life, that is, of love and communion.

The gospel word wishes to mark this reality when it affirms that in the area of "real life" sexuality is abolished, the distinction of the sexes is abolished: "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage; for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection" (Lk 20.34-36, RSV).

The resurrection which abolishes the marital relationship, as it also abolishes death, is a resurrection "from the dead". It presupposes the death of the autonomous physical mode for the composition of our hypostasis, the willing or unwilling death of the individual who draws his existence from the strengths and energies of his nature. It is necessary that a death interpose in order that "what is mortal may be swallowed up by life" (2 Cor 5.4, RSV). The monastics of the Church willingly brave this death. They refuse marriage, the natural way for the erotic self-transcendence of individuality and attempt the leap to hypostasize eros and the body in the mod, of the Kingdom, to exist only by obedience and spiritual exercise, only by self-renunciation from nature, to draw existence and life only from the call of love which God addresses to man.

Accordingly, the monastics of the Church are the pioneers and the first-fruits of the Kingdom– the Kingdom which is being brought to birth secretly within the bosom of the Church. We others, the majority, have need of a "helper" (Gen 2.18) of the other sex in order to arrive, with the example of Christ's cross, at the death and resurrection which the monastics attain with a leap. And both roads– both the monastic and the married– are equally revered and considered worthy within the Church, since the goal of them both is the same: Life free from space, time, corruption and death.


*

---

quote:

---

DLW

Pow, am I right to interpret the above as a statement of your viewpoints on this matter?

---

quote:

---

DLW: I don't have time to put into this issue anymore...

---

Then why post this. I didn't post the quote specifically for you, or anybody.


We've been more than twenty here who've posted, but many others read. I posted the topic of the God's creation of man because of its VALUE. (If one person dosen't have the schedule to read this, that's cool. )

..................................................

Iconoclast: How is it ... that the church can extend grace to people living in adultery yet ... refuse to extend grace to gay monogamous couples? I honestly don't get it.

PoW: I took my name out of your post, because I am not "the Church." You don't get it, Icon. And you would prefer to be impowered to control things, and set them up the way you wish. Ask God to allow you that ministry. But until I hear otherwise...

In your post, the "grace" that you wish the church to extend isn't grace, its permissiveness. The Church does permit remarriage after significant repentance and penance. And I doubt that it is a given. And obviously the Church, after hundreds of years, does not see things the way that you do. But then the Church's goals are quite a bit different than yours are. And what the Church calls grace and what you are calling "grace" are different too.

You can keep wishing.


Iconoclast: You then post all this stuff about how the complementarity of male and female is God's ideal. I agree, it is God's ideal. So is marriage until death.

PoW: I notice a hard left turn in your rhetoric. You began with the creation of man by God, and ended up with "homosexual marriage." Your error (in driving) came when you missed the landmark of Gen 1. 27 and what it tells us about the nature of man and man's constituting God's image. You went immediately to the heterosexual marriage institution and bipassed the community of humanity that is "male and female." Having made that navigational error you couldn't "get there from here." And instead of touring the richness of the community of faith of male and female, married and single, and widowed, you ran towards the only thing that interested you. And you were lost.

You declare the community, the distinctions and differentiations, the uniquenesses and unity unworthy. But it is glorious and God-breathed.

Yannaras concludes: "Only sin, the failure of man to realize life in accordance with its triadic prototype, will upset this order and displace the object of the distinction of the sexes from being the "image" of God to the relentless necessity of physical perpetuation."

The "triadic prototype" he speaks of is not centered on sex.

quote:

---

Icon: "Give the body its due, but no more." Committed couples do this for each other IN ORDER to help each other from letting their passions enslave them.

---

"Do this for each other..." is biological "necessity," or at least perceived necessity.

-VS-

quote:

---

The connection of sexual distinction with the creation of man "in the image of God" is not, then, by chance or simply metaphorical or by analogy. Man is the image of God since he is a person, a personal existence. But the person differs from the biological individual, precisely since his existence itself is not naturally given, but is realized as an event of erotic relationship and communion. The distinction of the sexes permits man to give a physical hypostasis (an hypostasis of nature) to his personal existence– permits the personal reference to be effected as an event constitutive of the hypostasis and unifying for the nature of man.

---

Icon, you BRING DOWN the idea of "ideal," and with it God's will, His design, His community. You want to enslave that to the flesh and its needs. Apparently you want to redisign Christianity to fit your goals. Is that it? "...it is God's ideal...marriage until death...the view that male and female marriage is God's ideal." You disparage "God's ideal" as being merely a "view." And yet you have narrowed the scope to individualisms, or a single male and a single female, and missed the communion aspect.

That same communion aspect is offered to all, married and single, within the Eucharistic community. THAT is where the "grace" is.

A close friend commented on the narcicism in homosexuality. (Such narcicism seems an enemy of community.) But the community is the fountain of personal identity and love.

quote:

---

Therefore the love of Christ for the Church, to the point of the cross (Eph 5.23-33), is also an xample of conjugal eros, the willing mortification of physical individuality if life is to be realized only as love and self-offering. First Christ incarnates the example of "real love" and makes possible our own erotic reference to his Person: "He first loved us," says Photius the Great, "while we were enemies and hostile. And he not only loved, but he was also dishonoured on our behalf and was smitten and crucified and counted among the dead; and through all these things he presented his love for us".

Within the Church, which is the place of the Kingdom of God– the place where the triadic way of "real life" is realized– "there is neither male nor female" (Gal 3.28).

Within the Church we exist in the manner in which we will exist even after the death of our physical individuality: Not with the powers and abilities of our nature, its psychosomatic energies, but thanks to the love of God "who calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Rom 4.17)– thanks to his own erotic call which constitutes our existence as an event of communion with Him.

This does not mean that our nature is taken away within the space of the Kingdom. It means that the way by which our nature is hypostasized (becomes an hypostasis) is transformed. Nature does not become any longer an hypostasis (a particular living existence) thanks to its own functions and energies, but thanks to the call of God's love. Therefore we no longer have any need to pass by way of the natural possibility of the distinction of the sexes in order to realize our natural existence as an hypostasis of life, that is, of love and communion.

The gospel word wishes to mark this reality when it affirms that in the area of "real life" sexuality is abolished, the distinction of the sexes is abolished: "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage; for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection" (Lk 20.34-36, RSV).

The resurrection which abolishes the marital relationship, as it also abolishes death, is a resurrection "from the dead". It presupposes the death of the autonomous physical mode for the composition of our hypostasis, the willing or unwilling death of the individual who draws his existence from the strengths and energies of his nature. It is necessary that a death interpose in order that "what is mortal may be swallowed up by life" (2 Cor 5.4, RSV). The monastics of the Church willingly brave this death. They refuse marriage, the natural way for the erotic self-transcendence of individuality and attempt the leap to hypostasize eros and the body in the mod, of the Kingdom, to exist only by obedience and spiritual exercise, only by self-renunciation from nature, to draw existence and life only from the call of love which God addresses to man.

Accordingly, the monastics of the Church are the pioneers and the first-fruits of the Kingdom– the Kingdom which is being brought to birth secretly within the bosom of the Church. We others, the majority, have need of a "helper" (Gen 2.18) of the other sex in order to arrive, with the example of Christ's cross, at the death and resurrection which the monastics attain with a leap. And both roads– both the monastic and the married– are equally revered and considered worthy within the Church, since the goal of them both is the same: Life free from space, time, corruption and death.

---

Who wants something less than "IDEAL?"


Icon closed with two rediculous thoughts:

• Do you really want to deny grace to anyone that is outside of God's ideal?
• Wouldn't we then have to live how Adam and Eve lived BEFORE the fall?

1. "Grace" according to your definition is different than the "grace" that I'm thinking about. But nothing is for me to grant. Ask God.

2. The second question presupposes that I can reverse the fall. Not only is that not my dominion, but God on the Cross did not reverse the fall by sending it back to "BEFORE the fall", but rather, Christ sent humanity, in His own flesh AHEAD to its fullness of being. And since we will share in THAT, that is the only thing relevant.


..........................

quote:

---

dlw

I am 100% with Ike on this point!!

---

I think that you said that.




Edited by - PotOnWheel on 05/26/2003 11:07:30 PM

quote:

---

Iconoclast

...since we won't be given or taken in marriage in heaven but we will love each other greater than we can possibly love even our spouse here on earth then I just don't see what the big deal is about making a perfectly reasonable and loving accomodation for those are constitutional homosexuals.

---

quote:

---

I think the goal of the church is to express God's unconditional love to all people, to be a source of acceptance and healing to sinners - just like Jesus was and is. To be a place where the unadulterated word of God is preached. Just like Jesus preached it on the Sermon on the Mount. Where the "sin-list" included and convicted every single person in the crowd in a totally unmistakable way, where the standard of behavior was set so high that ALL realized there was no way to meet it by "trying hard" to be "good", and where Jesus made it clear that the Kingdom of God is not about jumping through Pharasaical hoops - it is about loving one another.

---

quote:

---

POW

In your post, the "grace" that you wish the church to extend isn't grace, its permissiveness. The Church does permit remarriage after significant repentance and penance. And I doubt that it is a given. And obviously the Church, after hundreds of years, does not see things the way that you do. But then the Church's goals are quite a bit different than yours are. And what the Church calls grace and what you are calling "grace" are different too.

Iconoclast

Well now, maybe we are getting somewhere. What exactly are the church's goals that you are talking about here?

When you say the bit about "church permit ... without significant repentance and penance" it suggests to me that the church is trying to parent people to become better followers of the law. It is very hard for me to hear this as anything except a shame-based sort of guilt-tripping authoritarian control-drama. Isn't this what the Pharisees did? If this is the church's goal then no wonder we are at odds.

I think the goal of the church is to express God's unconditional love to all people, to be a source of acceptance and healing to sinners - just like Jesus was and is. To be a place where the unadulterated word of God is preached. Just like Jesus preached it on the Sermon on the Mount. Where the "sin-list" included and convicted every single person in the crowd in a totally unmistakable way, where the standard of behavior was set so high that ALL realized there was no way to meet it by "trying hard" to be "good", and where Jesus made it clear that the Kingdom of God is not about jumping through Pharasaical hoops - it is about loving one another.

thanks,
Iconoclast

"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

---