Seeing the Light

There was nothing surprising about the pope's forceful condemnation of same-sex marriages earlier this week. After all, they clearly run counter the Roman Catholic understanding of marriage as a sacrament.
But by making this statement so unequivocally before 174 ambassadors accredited at the Holy See, John Paul II simply confirmed that he is the leader of the majority of faithful Christians struggling against a lethal heresy threatening all denominations worldwide.
"He is the world leader of orthodox Christians of every tradition," said Robert Benne, a Lutheran theologian teaching at Roanoke College in Salem, Va.
Nobody has castigated the menace to the Christian Church by North American and European preachers of a theology of carnal lust more energetically than Archbishop Peter Akinola, the Anglican primate of Nigeria.
He condemned priestly blessings of same-sex unions and the consecration of an openly homosexual prelate as Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire as a "Satanic attack on the church."
The palpable dismissal of Scripture by elements of the very institution called to propagate the Gospel is ripping the Christian church asunder almost everywhere north of the equator.
In Germany just recently, the synod (parliament) of the large state-related territorial church of Hesse-Nassau just elected a lesbian as the equivalent of deputy bishop even though she has been "wedded" to another woman in a religious service. This church is the official Protestant denomination in a geographical area that includes such major centers as Frankfurt and Darmstadt. At the same time, the Lutheran bishop of Saxony in the former East Germany resolutely refused to allow the ecclesial blessing of same-sex unions in his territory.
The two organizations belong to the same umbrella group, the Evangelical Church in Germany. But on a key issue they are on opposite sides of a growing divide: The Saxons are de facto with the pope and Akinola; the Hessians with Vicki Gene Robinson, the openly homosexual bishop for New Hampshire of a denomination for which the nickname "Episcopagan" has recently popped up in the Christian Challenge, a gutsy orthodox Anglican magazine.
"Today the family is often threatened by social and cultural pressures which tend to undermine its stability," John Paul II told the ambassadors. "But in some countries the family is also threatened by legislation which - at times directly - challenge its natural structure, which is and must necessarily be that of a union between a man and a woman founded on marriage. ...
"Families must never be undermined by laws based on a narrow and unnatural vision of man."
This statement shows that where the family is concerned, Bible-believing Christianity has progressed considerably from past conflicts between the Catholic/Eastern Orthodox interpretation of marriage as a sacrament, and the Protestant view that marriage is an order of creation, along with vocation and the state.
The pope did not speak of marriage just as a sacrament but in a way faithful Protestants can concur with if they affirm Luther's definition of marriage as a union between two human beings participating in God's own creative power.
Seen this way, marriage is a means by which living souls come into being, souls whom God promises access to his kingdom. Thus marriage truly serves God's kingdom yet theologically comes under natural law because it is not reserved to Christianity but exists throughout mankind.
Therefore the pope's condemnation of same-sex marriages conforms easily to these profoundly Protestant tenets. More than that, it also addresses the convictions of people of other faiths who according to the apostle Paul have God's law -natural law, that is - "written on their hearts" (Romans 2:15).
But where Christians are involved, Luther went far beyond the view of marriage as something governed by natural law. To him, marriage as the great opportunity for man to stand fast in his relationship with God by practicing neighborly love, which is what the theology of "calling" is all about: Man is called to his various vocations, including that of a spouse and parent, to serve his neighbor.
In the final analysis, marriage is from this theological perspective an academy where man learns to overcome selfishness. On the other hand, raising selfishness to a theological "virtue" amounts precisely to the "Satanic attack" pilloried by Archbishop Akinola and, implicitly, now by the pope.
The "virtue of selfishness," especially in the sexual realm, has wreaked havoc within all denominations: Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran - and, yes, Roman Catholic as well. It has divided faithful Christians in the global South from their narcissistic coreligionists in the global North.
Scripture and commonsense will tell you that this is a folly. Where the theology of the Self is preached as the guiding principle, empty sanctuaries, rapidly shrinking denominations and a de-Christianized populace are the logical consequence.
Where the opposite occurs, an 84-year old cripple, who more often than not cannot even finish a speech, is readily accepted as leader - even by those whose predecessors once thought of the pope as the Antichrist.