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August 14, 2020 - 9:30am
I distinctly remember the first time I met James Alison. For a number of years I had been recommending his brilliant book The Joy of Being Wrong to students when I was teaching at Oxford. It is still my go-to book on why the doctrine of Original Sin is such a generous and forgiving idea.
But despite having admired his writing, we had never met. On the back cover of the book is the photo of a tall thin man with big sticky out ears. I imagined him as a bit geeky, shy, awkward. And then, after some correspondence, we met. He came to my house in Putney, and the moment he walked in I realised I had imagined him all wrong. He has that bearing — common among old Etonians and very posh people — that takes up all the space, that pulls in attention from every corner of the room. It is close to arrogance, but it is not the same thing. For want of a better word I will call it presence.
James’ latest essay published this week in The Christian Century shows a theologian at the very top of his game, writing theology as it should be written, as if your life depended on it. For James, theology is always an invitation to a kind of intensified autobiography — the drama of the human relationship with God, and the release that takes place when you discover that it’s not all about the drama.
James’ father was a Conservative politician and Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher. He was also a profoundly conservative evangelical — which is how James came to be baptised by Rev John Stott, the ‘evangelical pope’. His journey from such beginnings to becoming an out gay Roman Catholic theologian was always going to leave a considerable psychological trace, and one that would need to be reckoned with — though I should not describe him as a gay theologian, because that might be to risk marginalising his significance.
The role homosexuality plays in his work is more as a marker of the universal struggle to be fully and joyfully human before a God that is often unfairly cast as austere and judgmental. He writes so well about this fake God and its malign effects:
Do read this wonderful essay. And maybe even some of his books — he remains the foremost theological authority on Rene Girard. Perfect summer/lockdown material. He reminds me that theology can’t really be done unless it risks some kind of exposure. As St Augustine rightly understood, all theology is a kind of confession. And few people understand this better than James Alison — who remains the most interesting theologian writing in English today.
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SubscribeSadly James Alison’s work is an example of the common tendency to try and resolve contradictions between our own lives and the wider world by making the world conform to our own life. So now he finds his lifestyle is compatible with Christianity and the centuries of orthodox Christian teaching is all wrong and that reform of behaviour (or more specifically that part of his behaviour – different behaviours that others struggle with still need to be reformed) is no longer necessary and not really part of the Christian life. How stupid everybody has been for so long.
Orthodox Christian teaching? What did Christ have to say about homosexuality? Nothing. Not one word. The “orthodox” teaching didn’t come from Him.
Well he claimed not to change one iota of the law. I can understand people abandoning Christianity over its positions but there is precious little in either Old or New Testament to support a liberal reading of gay marriage.
I prove from Scripture, interpreted according to traditional methods, that God wills the Church celebrate homosexual marriage just as it celebrates heterosexual marriage. My argument has been criticized by many mature and learned Christians, including seminary professors; they have helped me improve it, but none has refuted any important part of it. If you promise to return your severest criticism, I will send you a copy of the latest version of my essay. Ask by email: [email protected]
With respect, I don’t doubt your scholarship or commitment, which church? The Catholic Church has immutable proscriptions on same sex marriage established through tradition and papal encyclical;Protestantism relying mainly on scripture has to suspend its own criterion to accept it. The Byzantine church had a service consecrating lifelong friendship but celibacy was mandated. I’m sure your arguments are considered and methodical but against you in the balance is 2000 years of tradition.
Feel free to make your arguments here. I doubt it will stand up to scrutiny – such arguments never do, which is not surprising when we consider that it is like arguing that triangles are actually the same as circles.
My essay is much too long for UnHerd comments. Will you subject my argument to your own scrutiny, so I can test whether it stands up? (You will have to do much better than baldly asserting that my argument is logically self-contradictory.)
Alas, I, a Christian conservative, have found that relatively few of my fellow conservatives are willing to discuss the issue of same-sex marriage in the Church. I pray you are an exception.
Can you summarize the main points?
There follow two paragraph’s from the Introduction.
Here, in a nutshell, is my thesis. God’s will for human sexual conduct is fully expressed in the Seventh Commandment. So, there is one sexual morality for all. Specifically, there is one sexual morality for heterosexuals and homosexuals, and its most general principle is that full expression of sexual desire is permitted only within marriage. God has provided the institution of marriage for all who need to express their sexual desires fully, and God wills that they all avail themselves of marriage. Therefore, it is God’s will that homosexual persons, not only heterosexual persons, marry if they do not have the gift of sexual continency. The Church should implement God’s will by treating homosexual marriage just as it treats heterosexual marriage.
My interpretation of the Bible contradicts the interpretations of almost all conservative Christians. My interpretation strikes many of them as preposterous, even shockingly so. I think it would require person-to-person dialogue for this impression to be allayed. What follows is my own side of an ideal conversation, as responsive to thoughtful, skeptical, open-minded conservatives as I can make it. In defending my interpretation, I do not insist that any words of Scripture have crabbed or otherwise implausible meanings, I do not make assertions about people’s pains and pleasures and then run accounts as if God’s morality were utilitarian, and I do not make appeals to anything like a vague law of love that is supposed to supersede moral rules and principles and make any conduct right if the actor wants very much to express a tender sentiment. I do not offer any of these fatuous lines of argument favored by revisionists; my fellow conservative evangelicals view these lines of argument with disdain, and I agree with them. Instead, I defend my interpretation of the Bible in ways that are quite consistent with standard methods.
You’d be surprised how much of an argument actually can be fleshed out here. Certainly enough to work with. None the less I will provide you with an email to which you can send it.
As for baldly asserting that it is logically self-contradictory; well, what extra would you suggest is needed to say that a three sided shape cannot be a circle or that something wet is not dry? The very idea of “same sex” marriage is ontologically impossible. We only make it possible by redefining semantic meanings of words but this doesn’t change the ontology of what we are actually describing.
In Christian conception, marriage is a relationship so perfect that it is like becoming one flesh. So, in Christian conception, same-sex marriage is ontologically possible. (I would not depend on redefining “marriage” because no interesting issue is settled by definition of words.)
I am grateful for your attention to my essay, which is sent you, and pray that you enjoy it.
Yes, orthodox Christian teaching because that is what orthodox Christianity has always taught and that is itself in continuity with what 1st century Judaism also taught – teaching that you are right in suggesting there is no evidence of Jesus having ever contradicted. Indeed, when it comes to what He did teach regarding sexual morality, it tended to even stricter standards.
My understanding (limited) of homosexuality is that there is as much choice involved as I had about being heterosexual. I did not choose to be straight, it was just there. And in terms of gay marriage, well my marriage is less than 1% sexual content-the rest is about mutual support, caring, nurturing and getting through life. Gay couples I imagine have similar experiences. I can’t get worked up about the stuff people may or may not do to each other in the sack, but I can get worked up about people wanting to be exclusively and faithfully committed to each other. This is the real issue-how dare I tell people they can’t care for each other based on stuff I imagine they may or may not do in private for less than 1% of their lifetime.
Firstly, if you don’t agree with Christian teaching on homosexual then fine – don’t be a Christian and and certainly don’t try to gaslight other Christians into thinking that what you want to do is acceptable to Christian teaching. This is the point that is actually being addressed.
However, your post doesn’t seem to grasp what Christianity actually does teach anyway. Whether or not somebody has homosexual or heterosexual inclinations is not the issue. Married heterosexual men don’t choose to be attracted to other women either – yet you seem to judge them if they fall short about being exclusive, faithful and committed in their relationships. This is an example of cherry picking Christian teaching.
The irony is that the Alphabet Brigade and their secular humanist cheerleaders state that homosexual desires are intrinsic to an individuals nature but sex is is not which is merely a social construct. Such wilful twisting of reason to conform the intellect to the appetite shows that modern man does not seek the truth but rather seeks to distort reality to justify and condone one’s emotions.
Giles, thank you for pointing to James Alison. I am not a theologian, and had not heard of him. Anyone who speaks from their own struggle is speaking from the heart to the heart, and this should compel the listener to respond in a like manner.
If you want ingredients for a recipe, a formula, use chopped, dried and bottled herbs. If you want to grasp life itself, and God’s pungent presence within it, go out and pick the real thing from the place where it grows, and dies – and lives.
“The role homosexuality plays in his work is more as a marker of the universal struggle to be fully and joyfully human before a God that is often unfairly cast as austere and judgmental. “
To be fully and joyfully human requires the rejection of sin and be in a state of grace. To use fancy words and clever arguments to condone sin is nothing more than trying to conform God to your will rather than your conforming yourself to God’s will. It is the rejection of the first commandment.
I would very much agree with John Alyson’critique of James Alison. I haven’t heard of Mr. Alison. The quote given shows he is a powerful writer, but if what is said about his theology is true it is too subjective to be helpful.
Once again we have gay matters put before us.
I believe the current obsession with the LGBT view of sex is temporary and will last for two maybe three generations. In 2100 historians will look upon this period of sexual lunacy as part of the West’s moral, spiritual, cultural and intellectual decline.
This article is typical of the short-sighted theology of liberal theologians who cannot see beyond the love, forgiveness and acceptance of God. Although these attributes are of His essence so are the attributes of holiness and purity. Sin is rebellion against God’s revealed will and all human beings have done that in one way or another. The entire witness of His Word (Bible) and the universal witness of the church teaches that the LGBT lifestyle and all other negative and harmful lifestyles are sin. His love comes into play at the point when He was prepared to take His judgement on all our sin upon Himself through the sacrificial and redemptive death of His Son, Jesus Christ on the Cross. God’s forgiveness and acceptance comes to us when we repent of our sin, believe in Christ and are filled with the Holy Spirit.
People like James Alison would be a lot happier if they just gave up on religion altogether, rather than trying to warp Christianity to fit their lifestyle.
All gods are fake gods, but I have the least sympathy for those who cherrypick from holy books. Fundamentalists are absurd, but at least they’re consistent.
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” is really quite unequivocal, and I’m not aware of any later statement from Jesus along the lines of “when I said that, I didn’t mean you”.
It’s tragic that so many intelligent people beat themselves up over invented constraints, and waste their lives pursuing theology, an academic discipline devoted to the study of imaginary beings.
I’m not gay, but like most civilised people I have no problem with homosexual acts between consenting adults. That’s their business, not mine. We shouldn’t let our lives be dominated by the prejudices of ignorant desert tribesmen who have been dead for thousands of years.
James Alison was a victim of his parents’ strange beliefs. He subsequently modified those beliefs to better suit himself. Just as well that he’s unlikely to have children.
Your response contains factual inaccuracies but more importantly crude insults. As such it hurts productive dialogue.
[(I meant this to go elsewhere, but as I can’t delete it, it may as well stay. Please excuse duplication!] My understanding is that anthropologists do not accept that ‘races’ exist at all. If they do, where are the genetic or geographical boundaries between them? Countries and cultures exist because they tend to self-reinforce by manufacturing identities and boundaries, for good practical reasons. Pigmentation of skin is real, but ‘colour’ is in the eye of the beholder. It puzzles me that the politically-correct are so quick to label people like President Obama, Meghan Markle and Senator Harris as ‘black’ as soon as they show the slightest hint of pigmentation, or admit to having any ancestry other than Northern European. (One must exclude swarthy Mediterranean types so beloved of early photographers of the primal and artless). Are these anti-racists and discrimination-haters saying that only pure Aryans can call themselves ‘white’? After a few months in supposedly dull and rainswept southern England, thanks partly to coronavirus preventing me from travelling far, I probably have darker skin than either of the two ladies mentioned. I must have at least two ancestors who came out of Africa. So what is it really about? History? But that’s a bit theoretical as the past is another country that busy people have time to visit only occasionally. Culture? I probably have more in common with those three ‘black’ people than with most of my fellow countrymen. At base, it’s probably about not having enough of something to go around, which is ‘situation normal’ because every organism will push itself to a state of subsistence given the chance. When that happens, groups form and separate because it’s more stable. So racial categories are reactionary, but I suspect not to ‘race’.
Well Jesus was only an SJW and if he condoned homosexuality he was just obsessed with wokeness and the Sermon on the Mount is just virtue signalling surely?
I wonder about that. I think as a society we need to reject homosexuality, but on an individual level we shouldn’t condemn nor mistreat homosexuals. Kind of hate the sin, but love the sinner.
No, Jesus did not change one iota of the Law. Instead, he threw most of it out in favor of the Golden Rule and a handful of more detailed preachings. The Law had already been substantially abandoned by the Jewish people before Jesus was born, and Jesus and Paul and the first Christians quickly dropped most of what was left. Legalisms and literalisms, old and new, were (re)introduced later but never the full Old Testament Law, not even by the most Orthodox Jews. And the old Law’s supposed references to Homosexuality have all long been disputed anyway. Incidentally, James Alison’s website and books and other writings provide an eye-opening insight into gay life in the Catholic Church today.
The Church over the millennia has believed different. Of course you can reject its teaching but only in the last five decades has anyone suggested it’s inauthentic. Secular humanism is a far better launch pad for universal rights than monotheism.
Interesting, but it depends which “Church” you mean. Christianity, for example, has been divided since its very start, with the authenticity of its various teachings variously debated and denied since then. Neither is it any coincidence that Secular Humanism as we know it arose in Christian cultures and is in practise a heresy of Christianity, in the literal sense of “heresy” as a choice.
I believe in a Secular state in the sense of not establishing any particular religion as the state religion. I am a Humanist in the popular sense of elevating Humanity above all other earthly creatures and rejecting the atheistic Anti-Humanism that seems to be growing today. I believe in universal rights and monotheism and see them as closely related. “Catholic” means “Universal”. Most people in the West and many elsewhere may be considered either Christian or Post-Christian, two groups who have a lot more in common than many on either side care to admit.
I suppose I consider the methods of secularism- separation of Church and State, universal suffrage and the burgeoning marriage equality movement- as being enlightenment projects. Thomas Paine and John Locke exalted empirical reasoning over revealed truth and that is basically, though fraying, still the reality of the West. Many liberal Christians are still venerating 18th century values as religious ethics, which is fine, but it’s wise not to forget that historically the faith has been an expression of suffering, asceticism and submission. Thoroughly non Western qualities.
Interesting, though the Christian faith underpinned the West and the two are not equivalent to Church and State or as easily separable. I also see the Christian faith as expressing much more than suffering, ascetism and submission.
At different times different elements have been dominant- self mortification and abnegation actually attracted vocations in the 17th century. People today don’t become Christians in search of a difficult life. That’s not a bad thing but it means the modern church is at odds with much of its traditional mentality.
Whoa, cowboy! As a wise man once said, “You may be entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”
Before you presume to tell people what the Christian faith teaches, at least take time to read the “owner’s manual”. If you want to use the Bible as part of your argument, then at least have the intellectual honesty to quote it in context, and in meaningful segments. The passage you are alluding to, in arguing that Jesus “threw out most of” the Law, begins in Matthew 5:17. Here it is in it’s entirety:
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 5:17-20
Well, it sure doesn’t seem to say that Jesus threw out any part of the Law now, does it?
So much for any conclusions based on that argument.
Try reading the whole counsel of Scripture, in detail, both the Old and New Testaments. The consistent teaching of the Bible is that God created humanity as male and female, and that sexual relations between members of the same sex ( you know, XX and XX, or XY and XY as the biology text 101 taught us before the LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ activists got ahold of education and science instruction innthe public schools ) is anathema to Him and His created order.
Now, you may or not agree with this worldview, but it is what the Bible, and Bible-based faiths, teach. Please don’t presume to tell us what our faith is or should be.
Your long-winded and insulting comment suggests you don’t even know what the Law was, much less its contents. NOBODY observes it today and nobody can. It tried to regulate vastly more than just sexual preference. Literalists and legalist have (ab)used it to try to justify slavery and polygamy and other evils. Which is why Jesus gave us the Golden Rule to over-ride EVERY other law.
True Religion must return to Light.
The heart must be permitted to achieve a universal feeling-ecstasy!
Always remember that your inherent heart-disposition wants and needs Infinite, Absolute, True, Eternal Happiness.
There is of course no such thing as original sin!
Nor are there two realities, this world and another world, nor two disparate levels of Reality, a material level and a spiritual other-worldly level.It is all a seamless continuum.
There is one Reality, one Truth. Every human being is ultimately responsible for this Truth Each one will either hit the mark or miss it. The alternative to responsibility is not human ordinariness but irresponsibility or the failure to live the Law of Sacrifice.
The alternative to real understanding is not a lesser, this-worldly understanding but illusion. Failure of the intrinsic human potential for self-transcendence is suffering. The missing of the mark is NOT original sin, expressed as an historical stamp upon the race of men (male and female), but the current practice of each person, a practice that will prevail for as many aeons as each one needs to wake up by inspecting his or her actual condition as a human being with utmost sobriety and openness. That movement is itself the Awakening of transcendental responsibility. The process set in motion is the inception of Transcendental or Real Understanding.
All good theology is autobiography. Good article.
As God does not exist, but is a concept of an infantile human race which refuses to grow up and accept their animal mortality, any concept of God is false, mired in easily proven, completely illogical, contradictions. Long before Feurbach, long before theism, Aristotle pointed out that all deities and gods are projections of mans own image. Nothing has changed.
All religions are fantasies.
It’s a viable perspective but Aquinas, Dostoyevsky and Dante are hardly infantile. They may even be cleverer than some atheists.
Perhaps, but what’s replacing it is much worse.
Richard Dawkins, the God that Failed 🙂
There is no God but Dawkins, and Fundamental Atheism is his creed. Ridicule those who insult the Prophet of Atheist Fundamentalism, and chop off the keys of their keyboards. Say: O believers in another God! To you you your religion, and to me my own! And Dawkins is the best of Tricksters.