It is not w-w.
Mike Horton tries to make a case that support for gay marriage is a function of w-w:
What this civic debate—like others, such as abortion and end-of-life ethics—reveals is the significance of worldviews. Shaped within particular communities, our worldviews constitute what Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann coined as “plausibility structures.” Some things make sense, and others don’t, because of the tradition that has shaped us. We don’t just have a belief here and a belief there; our convictions are part of a web. Furthermore, many of these beliefs are assumptions that we haven’t tested, in part because we’re not even focally aware that we have them. We use them every day, though, and in spite of some inconsistencies they all hold together pretty firmly—unless a crisis (intellectual, moral, experiential) makes us lose confidence in the whole web.
Every worldview arises from a narrative—a story about who we are, how we got here, the meaning of history and our own lives, expectations for the future. From this narrative arise certain convictions (doctrines and ethical beliefs) that make that story significant for us. No longer merely assenting to external facts, we begin to indwell that story; it becomes ours as we respond to it and then live out its implications.
It seems to me that gay marriage is much more a function of deeply ingrained American instincts than anything Nietzsche or Hegel might cook up. Equality and fairness is one aspect of American confusion over gay marriage. Why can’t everyone have the same access to the benefits of marriage? Another is a post-Civil Rights desire to keep anyone in America from feeling inferior? If gays can’t marry, doesn’t that mean we have a 2-tier social system and isn’t that like Jim Crow? Finally, Americans have learned to sever marriage from reproduction (largely thanks to Protestants). If marriage is more for fulfillment than for procreation, why can’t everyone have access to marriage?
This doesn’t mean Mike’s piece is wrong. But I do wonder whether the invocation of w-w will help with this conflict among Americans. By invoking w-w we conceivably turn this debate into a consequence of the antithesis. And that won’t do because so many non-Kuyperians (i.e. Roman Catholics) oppose gay marriage. And if we look around and see non-Reformed opposition to gay marriage, and still cling to w-w, then don’t we need to say that Roman Catholics have the same w-w as Reformed Protestants? Say hello to the Manhattan Declaration.
Better it seems to (all about) me simply to follow what God’s law requires in our churches and think through what changes in marriage policy mean for our societies. Has it not occurred to any baby boomer, rapidly approaching Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, that we need more babies who will grow up to pay taxes that keep our senior citizens medicated and fed? Has anyone heard of what’s going on Europe? Now is a bad time in the history of the West to make permanent a divide between marriage and child-bearing.
163 Comments
“And if we look around and see non-Reformed opposition to gay marriage, and still cling to w-w, then don’t we need to say that Roman Catholics have the same w-w as Reformed Protestants?”
This is very poor reasoning. You are saying that unless two groups agree on exactly every point, then they can’t even be said to be holding to the similar worldviews. So, unless they are perfectly identical, they must be 100% different. But this is simply not true. The Reformed Christian worldview is quite different than the Roman Catholic worldview. Indeed, RC theology goes very wrong on many points. But, that does not mean that Roman Catholics are absolutely wrong on everything. In other words, they still hold to some vestiges of the Biblical worldview. And if they oppose gay marriage, then they are following a true, Biblical worldview on that particular point.
“As for homosexuals, if not natural law what have you got? The Bible?”
Wow. How flippantly you dismiss the Bible from any relevance to the world around us. Amazing.
“An established church and Christian law? I don’t think natural law is going to solve everything. But Christendom didn’t work out so well either.”
Christendom didn’t work out so well in a previous example, therefore it will never work out well. Can anyone spot the logical fallacies?
“I’m all for limping along until our Lord strides back.”
Amazing. Where does the Bible teach limping? Chapter and verse? Where is the victory? Where is the triumph? Reading these comments is literally depressing. I don’t think this is how our savior wants us to live. Sad, pathetic lives of “limping.”
Jon,
How about pilgrims living in tents, waiting for a better city. Living quietly, minding our own business and praying for the peace of the city and submitting to those in authority. Suffering indignity for the name of Christ. If your triumphalism looks like that, then we can go celebrate our triumph over a pint.
Jon,
Where is the victory? Where is the triumph? Reading these comments is literally depressing.
Isn’t that the kind of stuff, Roman Pagans would tease the early Christians with?
Terry, not proof texts but some kind of acknowledgement that you don’t find the Bible approving of diversity among God’s people. If you want to find an affirmation of diversity, you can’t find it is accounts of redemption. Accounts of creation may be another matter.
But now I really don’t get you. You’re a tranformational libertarian? Anything goes in society, drugs, sex, rock ‘n’ roll? Wouldn’t you at least concede that driving on the same side all the time is good for the welfare of society? Or may people do whatever they want as in the time of Judges?
Even unbelievers seem more of a need for order than you do.
Jon, it is not reasoning but description. Have you not heard of evangelicals and Catholics together? You don’t think that unity in the culture wars has prompted both sides to think that their religious disagreements are trivial?
Jon, last time I checked Peter called us strangers and aliens. Breast beat about that.
I don’t disparage the Bible. I’m only trying to get Terry to own up to his theonomic leanings if he abandons some sort of general revelation. Now I learn he’s a full blown libertarian. What was I thinking?
Darryl, why do you come up with the most ridiculous responses. Do you really think that I make the jump you suggest or that it’s a necessary jump.
Terry, how is this ridiculous. All immigrants figure out ways to maintain group identity. The Dutch made Christian schools part of the mix. Nothing wrong with this at all, except once assimilation happens and the Dutch become Anglo. Back when I was in the CRC, I heard alot about how Anglos (ie the Dutch) needed to reach out to the Vietnamese and Mexicans around Chicago.
Darryl, in this thread “ridiculous” referred to your accusation that my “libertarianism” (pluralism) would lead to driving on the wrong side of the road. (The Christian school discussion is part of the other thread.) I still think that’s ridiculous and just a ploy not to engage.
Surely you don’t think I abandon general revelation. I am a theistic evolutionist after all. Where do you get that in the Bible? I’m just not so sure how you get anti-homosexual civil unions out of general revelation. Many of my colleagues in the American Scientific Affiliation (Christians in Science) who think about the genetic and neurological aspects of homosexuality have concluded that homosexuality is a God-created, natural orientation. They argue that the political/social/cultural ought to flow out of such an understanding. It doesn’t seem that far from what the pro-homosexual movement has been saying all along. The biological arguments (the parts don’t fit, difficulty of pro-creation, etc.) are secondary to the “higher” phenomenon of the human mind and human person. It seems to me that’s where general revelation and natural law arguments lead.
Alternatively, you can advance a pluralistic view of things, where different religions/worldviews will end up with different moralities. In our common grace age the political reality (notice how this is rooted in a Christian theological perspective) is that different groups need to be respected and allowed to develop side by side. This is where public education becomes so offensive. The secularizing of education is itself a consequence of a worldview. I would aim this critique at R2K in general as well. R2K embodies a worldview that’s different from a neo-Cal worldview. Your R2K vision imagines a world where religion is unimportant for functioning in the world. Imaging a neo-Cal wanting that to be taught in the school where their children attend when they fundamentally believe that “life is religion”.
I’d guess in Kuyper’s pillarized world in the Netherlands that the R2K’s would side-up with the secularist/Jewish/atheist pillar and leave the neo-Cal’s to their own devices. I wonder why would couldn’t do that here.
Darryl, what about every tribe and language and people and nation? Sounds like diversity to me.
Actually, I don’t think I was really talking about diversity among God’s people. I was talking about pluralism in the world. We have a pluralistic society and don’t know how to deal with because we try to imprint American civil religion on everyone. I just finished A Secular Faith and as I suspected I agree with much of your recounting of history and it’s analysis. One theme there is the anti-Catholic sentiment in the majority Protestant/American civil religion faith base. The Catholic school/American public school debate is a foretaste of an even more fragmented and multicultural America. If we insist on anything than a principled pluralism then we’re going to have one faction Lord it over the rest and the kind of Balkanization that has occurred elsewhere result. I’m not so sure we’re far from it in the red/blue divide. Okay, you may recognize some Jim Skillen influence there.
One thing I want to make clear is that this pluralism that I’m advocating is not as contrary to the transformational vision as you might think. I would suggest even that it is a bridge of sorts to R2K thinking in recognizing that one’s Christian commitment doesn’t necessarily lead to a theonomic or even Christian ethic informed political view.
Terry, first you argue for the Christian basis for scientific reflection and then you say that Christian scientists share a similar view of homosexual marriage that non-Christians do. You may understand my confusion. As for your colleagues in ASA, why not apply a little w-w magic on them and ask if they get their view of gay marriage from Christian convictions or from their colleagues at State U.? (In other words, why are you so cynical of 2k but not of your ASA colleagues who are likely not even Reformed?)
And then you make matters worse by saying that my religion has nothing to do with the world. Hello! Ordering my week in order to keep the Lord’s Day holy takes some effort to try to arrange my activitites in the world, as does budgeting our finances so we can tithe, as does figuring out what texts and hymns to use in family worship, not to mention distinguishing how my duties as a husband or professor differ from my responsibilites as an elder. Guys like you run rough shod over such deliberations and then on top of it all insinuate that I am worldly or indifferent to religion.
This is what’s wrong with neo-Calvinism — the self-righteousness it engenders against those who actually try to be devout. Sorry to sound snarky and all, but you hit a nerve and it the one that neo-Cals constantly bludgeon with overwrought claims about w-w.
Terry, the point stands. You don’t get a model for a pluralistic kingdom of Christ from the Bible. Israel got in trouble for tolerating diversity and the church fathers tried to eliminate departures from one faith, one baptism, one Lord.