Bernd Wannenwetsch replies to an advocate of Christian homosexual marriage, raising some interesting issues for applying the Trinity to our social relationships:
"This necessary move to the doctrine of creation within the doctrine of the Trinity makes a crucial difference to Rogers’ (pro-homosexual marriage) argument, which brings the Trinity into immediate relation with marriage. The Trinity may be the “paradigm or perfect case of otherness as an exchange of gift and gratitude”, as Rogers says. But it cannot as such render the proper model for sexual unions exactly because the Trinity is not a bodily union…
Now it is easy to see why this non-bodily “perfection” of communion may provide a model perfectly suited for Rogers’ claim, which feeds on the marginalization of the meaning of bodily differences. But invoking the Trinity to suggest a “richer” and theologically fuller account of marriage should not make us overlook the bare fact that nowhere in the Scriptures are human sexual unions intended to mirror the Trinity (or at least the union of the Father and Son). Rather, they are specifically assigned to mirror the union of Christ and the church which is a “material”, sensual, in fact a bodily relationship.
That these bodily differences characterize our creaturely existence, means that we should mirror God’s will for human beings to the extent that it can be known from (the witness of) God’s deeds in creation, salvation and perfection. Therefore, when Rogers claims “marriage can represent the Trinity in space and time” he claims at the same time too much and too little. Seeking the sort of perfect community in mirroring God’s Trinitarian life seems to be, at best, a triumphalist anticipation of the eschaton, and, at worst, a denial of our creaturely finitude. "
anyone?
13 comments:
Well, the obvious point is that the Bible never uses the trinity as a model for marriage, instead using the relationship of God/Christ with His people.
Only at the very broadest level can the Trinity inform us about marriage. And I think it is a very weak form of argument that pits a vague inference against a clear imperative (forbidding homosexuality).
Yes. I guess in our rush to respond to uses of the trinity to inform gender relations etc, though, I find conservative Christians making the same error...
I think there is a clear danger when one starts making Christianity a philosophy.
I don't think that we should be looking at the trinity at all as a model of living to emulate.
First of God made man and women in his image, and the Scriptures give us clear cut guidelines on how we are to live.
Secondly, we can learn how to live as humans by watching Jesus and learning from him as an individual, we can also learn from him how to have a relationship with our heavenly father through the indewelling of the Holy Spirit. This again has nothing to do with us learning to relate to one another or our sexuality.
3rdly, that we are to display fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives, it's not something that we can emulate, it's not something we can learn by watching others to do, though we can be encouraged by watching others display that very fruit. The fruit is shown through us as the Holy Spirit changes us to be more like himself.
I think that we are to live and to experience the Holy Spirit in our lives, and not just in a charismatic sense of having empowered gifts, I mean to live empowered lives. That people walk in the ways of homosexuality, embracing it, calling it good, tells me that they do not know the Holy Spirit, nor do they understand his work and how he relates to Jesus and God the Father in his work of making us Holy.
craig
Yes. I guess in our rush to respond to uses of the trinity to inform gender relations etc, though, I find conservative Christians making the same error...
True enough...
Oh, I'm slow.
Is the point of your post that we ought not to use the Trinity to inform gender debates, lest we "prove" more than we wish?
Yes craig s: I have heard for example people argue that because the Son is "subordinate" in some way to the Father, so women are to be order to men.
This comes from a response to an argument that runs the other way which says that because there is a perfect equality of relations within the trinity there ought to be full equality between the genders.
I am not happy with either, though Craig B, because we are made in the image of God I would have thought the discussion is relevant somehow!
G'day Michael,
I'm not 100% sure it is really relevant in how the trinity relates to one another for us to relate to one another.
God made Adam first and we don't know how long it was that he was on his own, and then God made a companion for him, being a woman.
Perhaps there is the sense that because God was already in a perfect relationship with himself that he could see how Adam needed a companion to have a relationship with in the same way God has with himself - yet I think we have to draw a long bow to make it work.
Genesis 2:18 talks about God seeing the need of a helper for Adam, and then Paul in 1 Cor 11:9 talks about the same thing.
If we are to show how people are to relate to each other from the trinity, then we need to say that man reflects one part of the trinity, woman the other and children the 3rd part,which is a huge stretch to do so, I think.
Now you have caused me to truly put my thinking cap on.... :)ouch my head is hurting....my brain, my brain,
I can see how the discussion may be relevant, but is it really helpful, and is it really good exegesis of the scriptures to do so.
Can we show that the authors of the scriptures wrote scripture with this understanding in mind, and did Christ ever make mention of his own relationship with his father for us to follow in our relationship with each other....I don't think he did, instead he brought us back into relationship with his father.
craig b
I agree Michael, I don't think it is helpful to either the complementarian or egalitarian debate to argue from the how the members of the trinity relate to how male and female should relate.
What then to make of 1 Cor 11:3?
If we are to show how people are to relate to each other from the trinity, then we need to say that man reflects one part of the trinity, woman the other and children the 3rd part,which is a huge stretch to do so, I think.
Yup Craig B, I think it is a big stretch. I think it brings about 2 options.
Either viewing those who aren't in marriage relationships, or those in one but without children as somehow not being in the image of God,
or
that they are in that position as a consequence of the fall.
I don't know if I am a fan of either option.
If we were created in the image of God (and remain so after the fall), does this justify an appeal to relationships within the Trinity as the basis for human relating?
I don't think so. Christ is the image of the invisible God. We are in the image. It is the Father whom we mirror (perhaps in a glass darkly sometimes), not the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The imago Dei relates us to the Father and identifies us with the Son, but it doesn't mean we (individually or corporately) mirror the community of the Trinity.
Rereading this made me think: while human sexual relationships are meant to mirror (image?) the union of Christ and His church isn't there a way in which a man-woman union reflects the "other-but-same in relationship" of the Trinity in some way? And that doesn't just apply to man-woman in marriage, but to the man-woman of all humanity?
And a side issue: every time I think of how Paul speaks of marriage especially in Ephesians, the way he suggests marriage is sort of like a gospel in miniature (I know that depends on how one undersands the 'mystery'), how it is prophetic, pointing too to the spiritual union of CHrist and His church at the end of the age, and how the gospel encompasses all humanity, how Christ takes up all humanity in himself (even to the resurrection of sinners to judgment), I can't help but think that a same-sex union somehow is "sexist" and "discriminatory" and "distorted" because it proclaims a gospel that excludes one gender.
I guess I should also pick a monicker instead of posting comments anonymously...I'll think of something soon.
Wow, I have been reading the original post by michael jensen and then reading the responses. I am not sure what to make of all this.
I do not see any Biblical or historical (i.e. Church history/tradition) implications between marriage and the Trinity. This is like tring to put a square peg into a triangular hole, so to speak.
The only implication that seems apparent between the Trinity, as relationship, and us, is the ability of God to relate or have relations (of course these are non-sexual) with us. Prior to creation there were obviously inter-Trinitarian relations, and thus with creation God was able to remain eternal and unchanged and yet still have personal relations with His creatures. Other than that, I cannot see any exegetical evidence for marriage in relation to the Trinity. This notion seems way over the top. Food for thought.
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Thanks for the post. I'm at Regent College and will be taking a class with Bernd on gender this July. Thanks for the intro into some of his arguments.
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