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I didn't know what to title this or where to put it.
These thoughts are just a stroll through the garden of God’s beauty. I’m going to try to apply the idea of God’s beauty as infinitely loving relationality to a very controversial issue. It might screwy, but it’s fun.
I expect that von Balthasar will fill in some blanks when I get ahold of him. He has several volumes that work out a “theological aesthetics” in terms of divine “beauty.” Looking forward to reading it. In the meantime, I’ll just work it out as best I’m able.
One Triune Being of Love
Just think about what constitutes the triune relations. We can't bottle it or totally comprehend it, but we can understand something of it. We’ve been talking about God as one divine being who exists as Father, Son and Spirit. The three are not carbon copies of one another. Father is not Son. Son is not Spirit. There is real distinction. (Please let’s not get off just yet into trinitarian controversies; just hang with me), but personal distinctions that constitute the oneness. The beauty which is God is the beauty of—I’m gonna massacre this, okay?—diversity within unity, or a oneness of diversities, or oneness which is itself the loving embrace of the ‘other’, a ‘different’ other. That’s what love is. God just IS this.
(Boy, that sucked.)
Anyhow, with this in mind, think of THIS love, this loving sociality freely creating contingent creatures—us—to image him in the world, to reflect him, to reflect the beauty of loving relationality. We experience God's beauty, are upheld and transformed by God, and we replicate that in all our relationships. We want to reflect that beauty, that “oneness of difference,” in all our relationships. That’s what we’re here for and that’s what it’s all about.
The ‘difference’ between persons in love with each other is important. It’s based on the triune relations—Father, Son and Spirit are distinct, but one. Just think about the sheer beauty of it. What’s more beautiful: the unification of ‘same’ or ‘similar’ things OR the unification of ‘different’ things? The latter of course. What’s more beautiful: Two white guys who both make the same salary getting along really well and hanging out together OR a black and a white guy from very different economic and cultural backrounds getting along well and hanging out together? The latter of course. Oneness between like existants is beautiful, yes. But there’s a difference in beauty between the oneness had by like-existants and that had by different-existants. The latter is more beautiful.
God wants creation to reflect this beauty, the beauty of loving relationality between distinct persons.
So far so good.
Sexuality: Reflecting the Divine Beauty in Our Bodies
Let’s talk about gender. What if we were to view human gender God installing the hardware necessary for us to reflect the beauty that God is, the oneness of ‘differents’ (to make a plural noun out of the adjective ‘different’). This might bring me into a conflict with Mephi who, I think, because of his recent identity explosion (laying aside race and gender as labels that ‘define’ us) might want to view gender as a necessary evil of sorts, something we ought to ignore or set aside when considering our individual identities.
I think that’s a mistake. Sure, gender can become an obstacle. But properly understood as THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL of human differences necessary for the sort of divine beauty we were meant to reflect, gender is hugely important, a constitutive component of human nature and identity. So, ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ aren’t merely capacities for ‘reproducing’ the human. They’re also capacities for ‘reflecting’ the divine—the beauty of a oneness that can only be had by different things/persons.
So I look at gender as necessary to our reflecting the beauty of God. It’s not about body parts; not JUST ‘seed carrying’ and ‘seed baring’ members of a species. It’s about being different enough at the most powerfully influential level of our being—gender and sexuality—to reflect the greatest beauty possible. And a unity expressed by two ‘dissimilar’ things is more beautiful than that expressed by two ‘similar’ things. God, I think, wants that beauty reflected materially by us.
My thought is that sex is just this. It’s THE most intense experience of divine beauty that can be had by embodied persons. God wants our bodies to participate in and reflect the intense beauty that God is. That’s what’s behind the genders ultimately. And it’s further appropriate that this oneness, this intense sexual beauty, turns out also to be the thing and the place where WE create new life—children. How like God to arrange that.
Let me go ahead and say where I want to go with this. The question is, How would this all apply to homosexual relations? I want to say that heterosexual relations are God’s intention for the human race. They’re the most beautiful expression of human sexuality because they most closely reflect the oneness of ‘differences’ and ‘differences’ that are more fundamental to our identity that any other difference that exists between human beings. Homosexual relations are a less beautiful expression of human sexuality. They’re a more beautiful expression of our sexuality than, say, beastiality is. Why? Because homosexual relations are relations between ‘persons’. And that’s necessary to the sort of loving relationality God intends to have us reflect (since that’s what God is). But humans having sex with cows sacrifices the ‘personal mutuality’ of divine beauty. It turns what the satisfying of physical pleasure what intended to be and to reflect into a selfish ‘taking’ or ‘grab’ (instead of getting the pleasure FROM the fact that there’s a ‘person’ on the other side of the relationship who is choosing to be a source of pleasure for me). See it? Beastiality sacrifices all loving-pesonal relationality because, well, because cows aren’t persons. It’s a complete perversion of God’s intention. Homosexual love at least retains enough of the required components, I think, to reflect SOME beauty. It’s at least two ‘persons’ seeking to serve and please the other. It’s hard to deny that this in itself is a good thing. But it still falls short of God’s intention because it’s a oneness of ‘same’ things and not a oneness of ‘differences’. Although affirming something of the beauty of loving relationality, it also denies something essential to the beauty of loving relationality.
If ‘sin’ is a privation, privation of the good, of the beauty of the good, then I feel comfortable saying homosexuality is sin, since it fails to express something essential about the divine beauty. But it also allows me to affirm that there is at least an attempt to actualize relational beauty.
I have no idea where to go with it now. Could this perhaps be grounds upon which a conversation between the Church and gays can procede?
Having opened that can of worms, I’m off.
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 9/27/2006 1:05:34 PM (GMT-5) |