Spluttering up the beach to Nineveh . . .
The writing of Fr. James Alison speaks to me in many ways. Spluttering up the beach to Nineveh . . ., from which I'm quoting below, is no exception - it contains a long excerpt from Fr. Alison's book, Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay, and uses the example of Jonah to explore a spiritual rebirth. It's long, so I've only used a small part of it below (best read the whole thing). This part I've posted is about the Creation story of Adam and Eve ... it caught my attention because I had been discussing it, and its impact on the idea of "right" relationships, on another blog some time ago ...
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... the doctrine of Creation. You all know what I'm talking about: creation has been presented as part of a moral story which goes something like this: God created everything good, and in particular God created male and female as complementary to each other. Original sin happened, so the order of creation, with its natural laws of flourishing as we grow towards the Creator, has been severely corrupted. Luckily, Jesus was sent along, and by paying the infinite price of agreeing to die so as to cancel out the infinite debt which humanity had amassed against God by perverting his creation, he saved us. This means that our lives now consist in being empowered to recover and live out the original order of creation, a task which is arduous but possible. Since in the original order of creation, male and female were made complementary to each other and told to multiply, it is manifest that any other form of coupling is intrinsically disordered and must of its nature be a partaker of the order of original sin, not of the order of renewed creation. Therefore, while many of us may be weak as regards avoiding particular incidents of inappropriate coupling, these can be forgiven so long as they are not justified. However, any attempt to justify any other form of coupling must be resisted as a serious offense against the objective truth of the order of Creation, and ultimately one which could exclude us from heaven ....
However many caveats are put into it concerning the distinction between acts and orientation, this package grinds down on us and says: "as you are, you are not really part of creation. While it is true that for heterosexual people their longings, desirings, seekings after flourishing and sense of what is natural really do correspond to the order of creation, however much they may need pruning and refining on their path of salvation, this is not true for you. Your longings, desirings, seekings after flourishing and sense of what is natural, however they be pruned and refined through experiences of partnership and love, have absolutely no relationship with creation. There is no analogy between them and creation. For you creation is a word whose meaning you simply cannot and do not know from experience, since everything most heartfelt that you take to be natural is intrinsically disordered, and it is only by a complete rejection of your very hearts that you may come to know something of what is meant by creation. Until such a time as this happens, limp along, holding fast with your minds to the objective truth about a creation which can have no subjective resonance for you, and when you are dead, you will enter into the Creator's glory."
I suspect that all of us have, to some extent or other, allowed this package to bear down on us, have interiorized it, and have allowed it to chew deep down into our souls. It is part of the theological double-bind: love but do not love; be, but do not be, which I mentioned earlier. This is a profoundly destabilizing force, since over time it means that our lives are not real lives, our loves are not real loves, our attempts to build stable and ordered relationships have no real worth, our minds and hearts can only produce sick fruit, not worth listening to or countenancing, let alone receiving or blessing. We are not children in a garden, we are living blasphemies, and since with every footfall we tread illicitly on a sacred lawn, it would be better not to tread at all, let alone walk confidently and make something of our stay. Many of us experience this as having killed us.
But here's the part which interests me: those who are killed are free from their killer, and can stand back and wonder what it was all about, not with a view to pointing out what was wrong with the story, but with a view to rescuing and revivifying what is right. Let me say this more strongly: where we have found ourselves killed by forces which include a blasphemous and sacrificial understanding of creation, as we come to find ourselves held by God in a being which is immune from death, so we are in a quite extraordinary position to begin to provide something new to offer Nineveh, its people and its cattle: an emerging understanding of creation that is tied in with the sense of an utterly gratuitous being held in being over against nothing at all. For this understanding, the particularly privileged starting point is that of those whom the apparent order of creation has reduced to nothing at all. I think St Paul was onto this when he told the Corinthian community:
For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (1 Cor 1:26-29)
We are in fact set free to begin to reimagine creation starting from our position as ones who, though a thing that is not, have found ourselves held in being by a force of invincible gratuity depending on nothing at all, part of no argument, simply giving life out of nothing. And this, let it be clear, is not only a permission to jump up and play, but is also an invitation to rescue a part of the Good News that has fallen prisoner to Babylon.
There are few more important dimensions of the Good News than the access which it gives us to our Creator as our Father, and to the sense of creation as of a given and undeserved participation in an extraordinary and constructive adventure out of nothing, the shape and fulfilment of which becoming and flourishing is as yet very difficult to sense, the rules and natural laws of which are discovered by its participants as they develop. And, wonder of wonders, we who were treated as "not-part-of His creation" are beginning to discover ourselves as "delighted-in co-workers in My creation" (cf., Is 62:3-5) ....
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Read more of Fr. Alison's writing at James Alison - Theology
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... the doctrine of Creation. You all know what I'm talking about: creation has been presented as part of a moral story which goes something like this: God created everything good, and in particular God created male and female as complementary to each other. Original sin happened, so the order of creation, with its natural laws of flourishing as we grow towards the Creator, has been severely corrupted. Luckily, Jesus was sent along, and by paying the infinite price of agreeing to die so as to cancel out the infinite debt which humanity had amassed against God by perverting his creation, he saved us. This means that our lives now consist in being empowered to recover and live out the original order of creation, a task which is arduous but possible. Since in the original order of creation, male and female were made complementary to each other and told to multiply, it is manifest that any other form of coupling is intrinsically disordered and must of its nature be a partaker of the order of original sin, not of the order of renewed creation. Therefore, while many of us may be weak as regards avoiding particular incidents of inappropriate coupling, these can be forgiven so long as they are not justified. However, any attempt to justify any other form of coupling must be resisted as a serious offense against the objective truth of the order of Creation, and ultimately one which could exclude us from heaven ....
However many caveats are put into it concerning the distinction between acts and orientation, this package grinds down on us and says: "as you are, you are not really part of creation. While it is true that for heterosexual people their longings, desirings, seekings after flourishing and sense of what is natural really do correspond to the order of creation, however much they may need pruning and refining on their path of salvation, this is not true for you. Your longings, desirings, seekings after flourishing and sense of what is natural, however they be pruned and refined through experiences of partnership and love, have absolutely no relationship with creation. There is no analogy between them and creation. For you creation is a word whose meaning you simply cannot and do not know from experience, since everything most heartfelt that you take to be natural is intrinsically disordered, and it is only by a complete rejection of your very hearts that you may come to know something of what is meant by creation. Until such a time as this happens, limp along, holding fast with your minds to the objective truth about a creation which can have no subjective resonance for you, and when you are dead, you will enter into the Creator's glory."
I suspect that all of us have, to some extent or other, allowed this package to bear down on us, have interiorized it, and have allowed it to chew deep down into our souls. It is part of the theological double-bind: love but do not love; be, but do not be, which I mentioned earlier. This is a profoundly destabilizing force, since over time it means that our lives are not real lives, our loves are not real loves, our attempts to build stable and ordered relationships have no real worth, our minds and hearts can only produce sick fruit, not worth listening to or countenancing, let alone receiving or blessing. We are not children in a garden, we are living blasphemies, and since with every footfall we tread illicitly on a sacred lawn, it would be better not to tread at all, let alone walk confidently and make something of our stay. Many of us experience this as having killed us.
But here's the part which interests me: those who are killed are free from their killer, and can stand back and wonder what it was all about, not with a view to pointing out what was wrong with the story, but with a view to rescuing and revivifying what is right. Let me say this more strongly: where we have found ourselves killed by forces which include a blasphemous and sacrificial understanding of creation, as we come to find ourselves held by God in a being which is immune from death, so we are in a quite extraordinary position to begin to provide something new to offer Nineveh, its people and its cattle: an emerging understanding of creation that is tied in with the sense of an utterly gratuitous being held in being over against nothing at all. For this understanding, the particularly privileged starting point is that of those whom the apparent order of creation has reduced to nothing at all. I think St Paul was onto this when he told the Corinthian community:
For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (1 Cor 1:26-29)
We are in fact set free to begin to reimagine creation starting from our position as ones who, though a thing that is not, have found ourselves held in being by a force of invincible gratuity depending on nothing at all, part of no argument, simply giving life out of nothing. And this, let it be clear, is not only a permission to jump up and play, but is also an invitation to rescue a part of the Good News that has fallen prisoner to Babylon.
There are few more important dimensions of the Good News than the access which it gives us to our Creator as our Father, and to the sense of creation as of a given and undeserved participation in an extraordinary and constructive adventure out of nothing, the shape and fulfilment of which becoming and flourishing is as yet very difficult to sense, the rules and natural laws of which are discovered by its participants as they develop. And, wonder of wonders, we who were treated as "not-part-of His creation" are beginning to discover ourselves as "delighted-in co-workers in My creation" (cf., Is 62:3-5) ....
********************************
Read more of Fr. Alison's writing at James Alison - Theology
posted by crystal | 1:13 AM
2 Comments:
I wonder what is the obligation of a heterosexual Christian person in such a context?
I totally understand the point that "once killed, one is free from one's killer" (and this is the sort of theological insight that makes Alison so mind-blowing to me), but it seems to me that all a heterosexual person can do is to point out that the anti-gay narrative is profoundly wrong. I'm sure that there is a way to do this in a Girardian paradigm and I think I understand the basics, but I don't think that I've got to the real "ah hah" place.
I just have this profound sense that the whole anti-gay approach is rooted and grounded in profound violence, even if it is unintended.
I like Faith Beyond Resentment but I also find it frustrating.
Hi Pam,
I haven't read anything of Girard, aside from some of what Fr. Alison has mentioned in his articles ... must look him up.
I agree with you about the anti-gay perspective. I think it's wrong, mean-spirited, and unchristian. I'm not sure what to do about it either, except to keep saying/writing that, and voting in a way that supports gay/lesbian rights.
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