I just took in a really good article (”A Church Asunder“) published in last month’s New Yorker. The news context for it is the recent appointment of Gene Robinson as the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop. But the piece does a really good job of putting the current controversy in historical and global perspective. It’s a rare article that brings the reader to an understanding of the philosophical and strategic concerns of both sides of an issue.

If your read on, I’ve excerpted some great quotes from Frank Griswold, the presiding Bishop of all Episcopal churches in the U.S.

I put these after the jump because they explore only the liberal side of the issue (my earlier point is that the article is so comprehensive.) But it’s fascinating stuff, illuminating the heart of the debate over how literally the Bible should be read.

It is true, Griswold says, that from “the classical point of view” sexuality “is to be exercised only within heterosexual, monogamous marriages.” But he notes that the church has, through time, come to an understanding of marriage and sexuality that is less rigid than that prescribed by the Bible and church tradition. “The Episcopal Church over the years has come to, let us say, an understanding of the human person that is more sophisticated, possibly, than the understanding on the part of the Biblical authors.” Griswold suggests that it is problematic to try to understand the meaning of the Bible plainly, because the authors of Scripture were, as we are, captives of their time and place. “St. Paul very clearly assumed that everyone was, by nature, heterosexual,” he says. Therefore, in Paul’s time, homosexuality was a willing choice made by the wicked against God’s natural order. Our current understanding, he says, has been altered by God’s unfolding revelation of truth.

That’s standard liberal stuff. You hear analogous stuff when liberal judges talk about a “Living Constitution.” What struck me was that there is a Biblical basis for this kind of reinterpretation:

“Let’s talk about truth,” he says. “I’m struck by the fact that in the Gospel, in John, Jesus says, ‘I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when the Spirit of truth comes, the Spirit will draw from what is mine, and reveal it to you.’ Now, when we look at how we have come to understand the cosmos over the centuries, how we’ve come to understand the complexities of our physicality, and have seen advances in surgery and medicine and all the rest of it, we can say to ourselves, ‘Why didn’t God simply plant the fullness of this knowledge in us at the beginning? Why has it taken us centuries to be able to cure fatal diseases that existed in the Middle Ages? How unkind and thoughtless of God not to give us all the information at the outset.’ And yet, we’ve been structured in a universe in such a way that truth is progressive.”

Here’s that quote from the Book of John in context. It really can be read (quite plainly, it seems) the way Griswold reads it. The quoted passage occurs as Christ, readying himself for death and resurrection, tells his disciples that his Word is not complete, and that the Holy Spirit will guide them, going forth.

I’ve never understood the concept of the Holy Trinity, but clearly it can resolve some very thorny issues in Christianity.

Related Posts:

• The Futures of Money (February, 2006)
• Yield/Stop (March, 2008)
• The Dangers of End-Time Thinking (December, 2005)
• Oral Sex at the Synagogue (November, 2005)
• Rhinocrisy: Al-Qaeda are mole people demon robots from another dimension (December, 2005)

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 4th, 2006 at 10:03 pm and is filed under marriage, politics, religion, society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.