Friday, March 26, 2004
(12:38 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
"Here I stand; I can do no other."
My post about "there is nothing outside the blog" might have been annoying, but it was a nice release valve from the heavy theoretical lifting I'm having to do on dialog. It's nice to write a half-ass parody of Derrida, instead of bringing up ever more details of texts and philosophy and cultural theory -- all the while being repeatedly dismissed as the burden of proof is continually expanded just slightly beyond the limits of what I've provided. If we can be certain of one thing, if one part of the Christian tradition is absolutely beyond any reasonable doubt, then it certainly can't be the orthodox doctrines of the Trinity, or Chalcedonian Christology, or Augustine's theory of state, or the centrality of Eucharist for worship, or God's preferential option for the poor, or the resurrection of the body -- no, the rock on which Christ will build his church is the sinfulness of any and all homoerotic practices. That is the Archimedean point that can ground the church's transformative critique and practice. If we lose that, then we've lost the authority of Scripture, lost any coherence in Christian moral teaching, lost any claim to be "different" from the world.
Every good evangelical is setting him or herself up to be the next Luther: "Here I stand; I can do no other." The parallel of the many Bush supporters who portray themselves as modern-day Winston Churchills cannot be accidental.
I'm not trying to start a fresh debate on homosexuality with this post, just saying that the whole topic is exhausting. It makes even less sense than the fundamentalist decision to put the inspiration of Scripture and the virgin birth before belief in God or Jesus Christ. (Maybe I'm wrong about this ordering, or maybe it's not widespread -- I just remember getting a pamphlet from a door-to-door evangelist that listed the beliefs of the church in numbered form, and Jesus wasn't very high up there. I knew what church he was from -- it couldn't have had enough money to get pamphlets that nice custom-made just for that church.)
Yes, I have gay friends, etc., etc., but I think the thing that keeps me coming back to the Gay Question is the sheer thoughtlessness of the debate, the sheer arbitrarity of the arguments used -- are people actually convinced of this stuff? Is this a conclusion that they came to through a disinterested process of logical reasoning? Or is this debate from the right nothing but desparate apologetics, trying to hold onto something that we seem to be stuck with due to other beliefs (authority of scripture, whatever), even though it makes less and less sense every day? I don't understand.
