Marriage and Sexuality in the Light of the Eschaton: A Dialogue between Orthodox and Reformed Theology
Abstract
:1. Introduction
MacDougall’s understanding of eschatology’s “subversive” element is based on my earlier treatment of eschatology in the theology of the Eastern Church [2]. In this article I would like to follow up MacDougall’s insight by probing further into the relationship between marriage and eschatology. To this aid, I utilize the theology of John Zizioulas (Senior Metropolitan of Pergamon), arguably one of the most influential voices of Orthodox theology in our times. In my article I bring Zizioulas’s articulation of the eschatology of the Eastern Church in dialogue with Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In doing so, I hope that the discussion that follows will make a modest but original contribution to the dialogue between the Eastern and Reformed theological traditions.Rocketing like a bullet train from God’s promised future into our present, the (always partial) healing of our deep brokenness, our sin, by the irresistible reconciling power of God’s grace smashes dead certainties and moralistic conventions, subversively disclosing and bringing into being the radical, thoroughgoing relational communion of the new creation, now, in history, in the body, even if only by anticipation and never fully.[1]
2. “The Sacrament of Sin” [4]
Interestingly enough, it is only the third guest, the one who declines the invitation on account of his marriage, who does not ask to be excused. I leave it to others to draw whatever conclusions they may from this scriptural nuance. For us, it is enough to note that marriage, together with the other economic activities of buying a field or purchasing five yoke of oxen (and is marriage not really an economic arrangement after all? [14]), precludes the participation in the eschatological feast.A man once gave a great banquet, and invited many; and at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, “Come; for all is now ready.” But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, “I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it; I pray you, have me excused.” And another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them; I pray you, have me excused.” And another said, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.”(Luke 14: 16–20)
3. Marriage and the Self
So far removed, so distant is Christendom (Protestantism, especially in Denmark) from the Christianity of the New Testament that I continually must emphasize that I do not call myself a Christian and that my task is to articulate the issue, the first condition for any possibility of Christianity again.
It was incendiarism (this is how Christ himself describes his commission), it was incendiarism, setting fire to men by evocatively introducing a passion which made them heterogeneous with what is naturally understood to be man, heterogeneous with the whole of existence, an incendiarism which must necessarily cause discord between father and son, daughter and mother—in short, in the most intimate, the most precious relationships, an incendiarism with the intention of tearing apart “the generation” in order to reach “the individual”, which is what God wants and therefore the passion introduced was: to love God, and its negative expression: to hate oneself.
It was incendiarism. But it is not always water that is used to put out a fire—however, to keep the metaphor, I could certainly say that Christendom is the water that has put out the fire. But, as mentioned, one does not always use water; sometimes one uses, for example, featherbeds, blankets, mattresses, and the like to smother a fire. And so I say that if Christendom is the bulk that has smothered that fire once lighted, it now has such an enormous layer of the numerical beneath it that Christianity may serenely and safely be made into just the opposite of what it is in the New Testament.
Whoever you are, if it is your purpose, your idea to do your bit to help smother the fire still more, then get busily involved in this massive popularization, doing it under the name of spreading Christianity, and you will do as much harm as you can possibly do. But if you want Christianity again, fire again, then do all you can to get rid of the featherbeds, blankets, and mattresses, the grossly bulky stuff—and there will be fire.
The orders for busyness of that kind are: Away, away with abstractions: the state church, the folk church, Christian countries—for any effort of that kind is treason against the fire; they are the featherbeds and blankets that help smother the fire still more. But efforts of the kind that aims at dispersing, aims at “the individual”, are the solution.([19], XI 2 A 206 n.d., pp. 549–50)
As the nerve ends lie under the nails, so human egotism is concentrated in the sexual relationship, the propagation of the species, the giving of life. According to Christian teaching, God wants only one thing of us human beings—he wants to be loved. But in order that a human being may love God he must give up all egotism, first and foremost the intensified egotism: propagation of the species, the giving of life. That sexuality is the center of human egotism God knows too well, of course, and therefore this became the locus of attention. A person does not have to look very hard to be convinced that here human egotism is total. So God demanded the renunciation of this egotism—then God pointed to immortality. As I have often discussed in these journals, propagation of the species was a substitute for immortality (which both Plato and Aristotle explicitly state) both in paganism and in Judaism7.
Sexuality is the culmination of human egotism. Therefore, in a purely human sense, not only the woman but the man also feels life to be lost, a failure, unless he is married. Only the married are genuine citizens in this world, the single person is an alien (which is precisely what Christianity wants the Christian to be—and what God wants the Christian to be, in order to love him). Therefore the Jews (who knew all about the propagation of the species) regarded sterility as a disgrace for a woman. Therefore no mishap touches a person so painfully as one which affects propagation of the species; everything else (being blind, crippled, deaf, etc.) does not violate him, does not touch the tender point of his egotism.([27], XI 2 A 154 n.d., pp. 141–42)
Wherever the qualitative distinction between men and the final Omega is overlooked or misunderstood, that fetishism is bound to appear in which God is experienced in “birds and fourfooted things”, and finally, or rather primarily, in the “likeness of corruptible man”—Personality, the Child, the Woman—and in the half-spiritual, half-material creations, exhibitions, and representations of His creative ability—Family, Nation, State, Church, Fatherland. And so the “No-God” is set up, idols are created, and God, who dwells beyond all this and that, is “given up”.[28]
4. Marriage and the Political
Accordingly, the Truth himself calls us back to our original and perfect state, bids us resist carnal custom, and teaches that no one is fit for the kingdom of God unless he hates these carnal relationships. Let no one think that is inhuman. It is more inhuman to love a man because he is your son and not because he is a man, that is, not to love that in him which belongs to God, but to love that which belongs to yourself.
I’ll first try to persuade the rulers and the soldiers and then the rest of the city that…in fact they themselves, their weapons, and the other craftsmen’s tools were at that time really being fashioned and nurtured inside the earth, and that when the work was completed, the earth, who is their mother, delivered all of them up into the world. Therefore, if anyone attacks the land in which they live, they must plan on its behalf and defend it as their mother and nurse and think of the other citizens as their earthborn brothers.[31]
5. Marriage and Sexuality: Conclusions
Conflicts of Interest
References and Notes
- Scott MacDougall. “Three Questions for the Authors of ‘Marriage in Creation and Covenant’.” Anglican Theological Review. 2015. Available online: http://www.anglicantheologicalreview.org/static/pdf/conversations/ScottMacDougallResponse.pdf (accessed on 24 June 2016).
- John Panteleimon Manoussakis. “The Anarchic Principle of Christian Eschatology in the Eucharistic Tradition of the Eastern Church.” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007): 29–46. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- I leave aside for the moment the complex question of human and civil rights.
- I borrow this phrase from Hans Urs von Balthasar who, in his discussion of St. Maximus the Confessor, does not hesitate to call marriage “the sacrament of sin.” See Hans Urs von Balthasar. Cosmic Liturgy. Translated by Brian E. Daley. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003, p. 199. [Google Scholar]
- John D. Zizioulas. The Eucharistic Communion and the World. Edited by Luke Ben Tallon. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2011, p. 103, emphasis in the original. [Google Scholar]
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- Marriage is the par excellence economic activity for it establishes the household (oikos) whose upkeep necessitates the regulations (the nomos of the oikos) that become the paradigms after which economy writ large is modelled.
- In using the term “shadow” I have in mind Maximus’s tripartition of salvific history: “For the entire mystery of our salvation has been wisely arranged to unfold in a shadow, an image, and truth”. Maximos the Confessor. On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: Ambiguum 21:15. Translated by Nicholas Constas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014, vol. I, p. 443. [Google Scholar] where “shadow” refers to the times before Christ’s revelation in the flesh, “image” (eikon) pertains to the revelation of the New Testament, and “truth” to the things to come.
- Hans Urs von Balthasar. “Success is not one of the names of God, or of Christ, or of his Church.” In Theo-Drama, V: The Last Act. Translated by Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1983. [Google Scholar]
- Søren Kierkegaard. Journals and Papers, 2nd ed. Howard V. Hong, and Edna H. Hong, trans. and ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997, vol. 7. [Google Scholar] The entries listed under “marriage” in volume III include those numbered 2578 to 2631.
- Biological and ecclesial modes of existence become indistinguishable as the latter is absorbed by the former. For the distinction between the two see, Metropolitan John of Pergamon (Zizioulas). Being as Communion. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985.
- Søren Journals. Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers. Howard V. Hong, and Edna H. Hong, trans. and ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1854, vol. 6. [Google Scholar] I am grateful to my colleague Prof. Jakub Marek for bringing this passage to my attention.
- The case of ideological totalitarianisms (fascism, communism) as well as the historical examples of totalitarian regimes (e.g., Nazi Germany, USSR, Islamic theocracies) that allotted to marriage and family a central position, while beholding with hostility any form of “deviation” from marital normalcy, cannot be ignored. See the section on Marriage and the Political.
- Søren Kierkegaard. Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers. Howard V. Hong, and Edna H. Hong, trans. and ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1854, vol. 1. [Google Scholar]
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- Emmanuel Levinas. Totality and Infinity. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1961, p. 269. [Google Scholar]
- Maximus Confessor. Questiones ad Thalassium, PG 90, 313A. (Ὅσον γὰρ πρὸς τὴν οἰκείαν ἔσπευδε διὰ τῆς γεννήσεως σύστασιν ἡ φύσις, τοσούτῳ πλέον ἐαυτὴν τῷ νόμῳ τῆς ἁμαρτίας ἐπέσφιγγεν, ἐνεργουμένην ἔχουσα κατὰ τὸ παθητὸν τὴν παράβασιν).
- John Chrysostom. De Virginitate, 14, PG 48, 514 (Ὁρᾷς πόθεν ἔσχε τὴν ἀρχἠν ὁ γἀμος, πόθεν ἀναγκαῖος ἔδοξεν εἶναι; Ἀπὸ τῆς παρακοῆς, ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρᾶς, ἀπὸ τοῦ θανάτου. Ὅπου γὰρ θάνατος, ἐκεῖ γάμος).
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- The sixth prayer in the service of the vespers, in use in the Eastern Church, speaks of God as the one who “has given to us the worldly goods as gifts, and pledged to us the promised kingdom through those goods already bestowed on us” (ὁ καὶ τὰ ἐγκόσμια ἀγαθὰ ἡμῖν δωρησάμενος καὶ κατεγγυήσας ἡμῖν τὴν ἐπηγγελμένην βασιλείαν διὰ τῶν ἤδη κεχαρισμένων ἡμῖν ἀγαθῶν).
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- 1Metropolitan John of Pegamon (Zizioulas) believes that the fragmentation of the Church’s sacraments into seven distinct “sacraments” came at a time that the Orthodox Church developed several “confessions” (such as those of Peter Mogila, Dositheus of Jerusalem, Cyril Lucaris, etc.)—that is, from the sixteenth century onwards. So he writes: “[a]t this time the East, struggling to relate somehow to the on-going debate between Roman Catholics and Protestants, produced its own ‘Confessions’, which assumed without any criticism the problematic inherited in the West from medieval Scholasticism, and tried to reply to the Protestant views by using Roman Catholic arguments and vice versa. Thus, in the very centre of Orthodox theology and in spite of the continuous centrality of the Eucharist in Orthodox Church life, an ecclesiology developed in the academic level which regarded the Eucharist as one sacrament among many (usually seven)…” in [5].
- 2For a discussion of the various attempts to define religion, see [9].
- 3Instrumental here are the studies on Eucharistic theology by Metropolitan John of Pergamon. See, for example, [11] as well as [12]. In this last work, and in particular in the chapter entitled “The Identity of the Church”, Zizioulas observes that the first definition of the Church was attempted rather late, in the fourteenth-century, in the writings of St. Nicholas Cabasilas who gave the following aphorism: “The Church is signified in the mysteries (ἐκκλησία σημαίνεται ἐν τοῖς μυστηρίοις)”; Zizioulas makes clear that “mysteries” here refers to the sacrament of the Eucharist ([11], p. 26).
- 4The famous words from Augustine’s Confessions come to mind here: “I am the food of the mature”, Christ says to Augustine, “grow then, and you will eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food: You will be changed into me.” [13].
- 5So also Augustine who, speaking of familial relations, writes: “No one can perfectly love that to which we are called unless he hate that from which we are called” [22].
- 6Otherwise put, this is a desire that desires desire, that is, its own (eternal?) propagation. I have in mind Levinas’s treatment of eros from the last pages of his Totality and Infinity: “But the Other is not a term: He does not stop the movement of Desire. The other that Desire desires is again Desire; transcendence transcends toward him who transcends—this is true adventure of paternity, of the transubstantiation which permits going beyond the simple renewal of the possible in the inevitable senescence of the subject. Transcendence, the for the Other, the goodness correlative of the face, founds a more profound relation: The goodness of goodness. Fecundity engendering fecundity accomplishes goodness: Above and beyond the sacrifice that imposes a gift, the gift of the power of giving, the conception of the child. Here the Desire which in the first pages of this work we contrasted with need, the Desire that is not a lack, the Desire that is the independence of the separated being and its transcendence, is accomplished—not in being satisfied and in thus acknowledging that it was a need, but in transcending itself, in engendering Desire”. That such a conception of desire instrumentalizes the Other, turning the Other into a mere stepping stone, effecting a metaphysical violence, seems not to bother Levinas. Thus, we are told that the beloved “presents a face that goes beyond the face” ([24], p. 260); that the feminine constitutes an inversion and disfiguration of the face ([24], p. 262); that “voluptuosity aims not at the Other but at his voluptuosity; it is voluptuosity of voluptuosity, love of the love of the other” ([24], p. 266); that “the beloved…has quit her status as a person,” ([24], p. 263); and that “one plays with the Other as with a young animal” ([24], p. 263).
- 7It is disturbing how often Kierkegaard makes the accusation that Christianity’s uncritical endorsement of marriage constitutes a concession to Judaism. On the other hand, it is remarkable that the Orthodox service of matrimony borrows its language almost exclusively from the Old Testament (with the exception of the wedding at Cana). On the wedding at Cana as supposedly a ground for a Christian marriage, Kierkegaard points out that “Christendom’s repeated and repeated reference to this and to Christ’s being present at a wedding and providing the wine proves indirectly that men have a suspicion that Christianity is opposed to marriage, and therefore this story becomes as important to them as their reasoning based on it is ridiculous” ([27], XI2 A 160 n.d., p. 144).
- 8“When man loves as a biological hypostasis, he inevitably excludes others: The family has priority in love over ‘strangers,’ the husband lays exclusive claim to the love of his wife—facts altogether understandable and ‘natural’ for the biological hypostasis. For a man to love someone who is not a member of his family more than his own relations constitutes a transcendence of the exclusiveness which is present in the biological hypostasis. Thus a characteristic of the ecclesial hypostasis is the capacity of the person to love without exclusiveness, and to do this not out of conformity with a mere commandment…” ([18], p. 57).
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Manoussakis, J.P. Marriage and Sexuality in the Light of the Eschaton: A Dialogue between Orthodox and Reformed Theology. Religions 2016, 7, 89. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7070089
Manoussakis JP. Marriage and Sexuality in the Light of the Eschaton: A Dialogue between Orthodox and Reformed Theology. Religions. 2016; 7(7):89. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7070089
Chicago/Turabian StyleManoussakis, John Panteleimon. 2016. "Marriage and Sexuality in the Light of the Eschaton: A Dialogue between Orthodox and Reformed Theology" Religions 7, no. 7: 89. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7070089