Goddard 2 Goddard: Andrew to Giles 8th March 2008

Sorry that once again – in part due to more ‘little local difficulties’ – I’ve taken a while to respond to your last letter. It was really good to spend a few days together along with others last month talking about many of the issues which we’ve been discussing and seeing some signs of hope that wider conversations might take place across what are often portrayed as unbridgeable divides.

As always there is so much I’d like to pick up and respond to in your letter but in addition to encouragement at a number of areas of common ground, a few things have been constantly on my mind as highlighting where we are still far apart and could perhaps benefit from further dialogue and so I’ll focus on them.

As you say, ‘we have to start engaging with the more crunchy issue, which is, of course, the place of sexual expression of love within same-gender relationships’. Your sentence at the end of that paragraph is I think the one that has kept haunting me ever since I first read it – ‘I think at the moment the place that I part company with the Church is that whereas I see their sexual expression as integral to the relationship’s godliness the Church sees it as inimical’. I appreciated your honest acknowledgment here that you part company not just with me but with ‘the Church’. I was also astonished at the way in which your soundbite summary captures why this is so crucial – how can the Church hold together and guide people in godliness when some are saying that something is integral to godliness which the Church declares to be inimical to it? We are here facing the stark fact that what you and others see as integral to being God-like in certain relationships, I and others see as embodying a rejection and denial of God’s character and purposes. Expressed like that I think we can see why this really cannot just be classed as ‘adiaphora’, ‘second-order’, somewhere where we can simply agree to differ and follow different practices.

Even more serious is the question of how we are going to resolve this fundamental incompatibility. Do you really mean it when you say (in response to “What are God’s commandments?”) that you answer this only by looking to Jesus and that when you do this you only find two commandments? I would have thought given your commitment to Scripture and the Anglican tradition you might have at least got the number of commandments into double figures! We talked early on – just over a year ago – about the Articles and I was encouraged that you said “I think they're a neglected resource for the Church of England - I re-read them last year to remind myself of this particular foundational aspect of our Church and was pleased that I could find little to disagree with” I wonder how your reading of Scripture here fits with Article 7 – “The Old Testament is not contrary to the New…Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral”?

Your further claim is that you find “no commandments…about the place of sex in same-gender relationships”. This not only ignores the obvious commandments in Leviticus (about which we may talk more I guess) but also the clear warnings of Paul in the New Testament and Jesus’ commandments and teaching about sexual immorality. These, when they are responsibly set and interpreted in historical and cultural context as the words of a first-century Jew and received by us as the words of the incarnate Son of God cannot be understood to say nothing about the place of sex in same-gender relationships.

So, strong as the term is, I think you are right that the Church and I do see same-sex sexual expression as inimical to godliness. Where I really would love you to say more is what you mean by saying that you instead see it as – in certain contexts – “integral to the relationship’s godliness”. Not just “not inimical to” or “indifferent to” but “integral to”. I also want to know how on earth you hope to persuade me or others of this strong claim which runs counter to how the Church has read Scripture and understood the phenomenon for two thousand years.

I have to confess that part of my problem is that I’m not even sure in what sense I’d describe sexual expression in marriage between a man and a woman as “integral” to the relationship’s godliness. Or on what biblical or theological basis I’d make such a claim. This would seem to imply that were sex to be lacking (totally? for a period? even by mutual consent?) then the relationship would be falling short and lacking in godliness. In other words, marriage’s godliness is in some sense therefore dependent on sexual expression between husband and wife. Sex, you appear to be saying here, is necessary for certain types of relationship to be truly and fully godly. Now of course I want to say that sexual expression in marriage is good and I do find it hard to see how a “marriage” where there is no sexual expression at all (eg an unconsummated union) is truly marriage. So, I guess in one sense because sexual expression is integral to marriage and is good in marriage it cane said to be integral to marriage’s godliness. However, a non-sexual “marriage” (whatever that would mean) could still be a godly relationship and I’m not sure how within marriage one correlates godliness and sexual expression. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood your point but I guess I find the language of “integral to the relationship’s godliness” remarkably strong for the role of sexual expression in any relationship, even marriage. It may be of course that we need to be clearer about “integral to godliness” and more specific about how we understand “sexual expression”!

If I find this difficult in relationship to marriage I find it, to be honest, impossible to understand and justify in relation to same-sex relationships. Say I were to accept – which I obviously don’t – that there is no biblical teaching making clear such expression is inimical to godliness. Even if I grant that, I can see nothing at all in Scripture that would allow someone to claim it was “integral” to godliness. What is there in Scripture or in what you describe as “the central event in Christianity – the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ” that makes clear to us that certain relationships between people of the same sex are only truly godly if they include sexual expression of love? If there is nothing in these sources of authority on what basis am I to accept the claim that sexual expression is integral to certain relationships’ godliness? To return to the Articles again, Article 6 is clear that “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation”.

The answer you might give – forgive me if this is a false assumption – is that the integral nature of sexual expression is learned not from Scripture but from experience. That, I take it, is part of the rationale for your reference to Stephen Coles’ speech in General Synod and perhaps also what you hope may result from the Listening Process. My problem is that I’m not sure how an appeal to experience alone can determine whether or not certain behaviour is integral to a relationship’s godliness. Stephen’s speech of course did not make such a bold claim. His argument was – if I understand it correctly - that because the depth of relationship in marriage was related to being allowed to express your feelings for your spouse physically, sexual intimacy should be permitted (even encouraged) in loving same-sex relationships. The problem with this of course is that it assumes what it is trying to prove – that same-sex loving relationships are the same sort of loving relationship as marriage – and it shifts between “express your feelings…physically” and “sexual intimacy”.

This takes us back to some of what we’ve discussed in our last letters to each other. A lot of my deepest relationships – most notably with my children and other family members but also with close friends, both male and female – depend on physical expressions of my love and are deepened by that physical expression. There are, however, certain ways of expressing and deepening my love for my wife (the parallel Stephen drew in his speech) which we would all agree should not look to be replicated or paralleled in those relationships. But why can we not draw such parallels and analogies between those other relationships and marriage if we can draw them with (certain types – unspecified - of) same-sex relationships ?

The case that I think Stephen and you need to make – biblically and theologically - is (1) that there is some structure of relationship between people of the same sex that is, in God’s purposes, equivalent to marriage, (2) that in such relationships there are forms of sexual intimacy between people of the same sex which are equivalent to sexual intimacy between people of the opposite sex in marriage despite the biological differences and lack of procreative capacity, and (3) that such sexual intimacy (though never commended in Scripture and always condemned in Scripture – which itself therefore requires certain hermeneutical and perhaps other moves) is in fact intrinsic to the goodness, holiness, sanctity and godliness of such relationships whereas it would – to pick up your language –be inimical to godliness in any other sort of relationship.

I’d originally intended to end by addressing your final question to me about what reasons would need to be given to justify development in the Church’s thinking in this area but perhaps I’ve just done that, or at least begun to do it as I’m not sure these points cover everything (eg I think there would probably also need to be something about some people being made in God’s purpose as inherently and solely homosexually oriented).

One point of clarification is you seem to take me to hold that sexually active same-gender relationships can have integrity and I wonder if I’ve not expressed myself clearly here. I confessed back in my second letter in January last year that I had problems with the language of ‘integrity’ and we’ve come back to this term at various points though never really pinned it down. On 12^th November I quoted with approval some words of Oliver O’Donovan – “Relationships may have moral integrity in varying degrees without the church's formal authorisation. The integrity that is claimed for some homosexual unions does not depend on any ceremony”. The point here is not that I think they do have moral integrity but that if they do then they do so whether or not the church has a rite which recognises this fact. I really would like to explore further how what I’ve said here in response to the “integral to” vs “inimical to” question relates to this and so will end by floating some of my current thinking.

You obviously know that I do not believe the Church can bear witness that sexual expression in same-sex relationships is godly. That is why I find the language of “integrity” difficult. That is why I oppose the blessing of same-sex unions as currently proposed – it does seem in our context to entail the strong claims you make about sexual expression being godly, indeed integral to godliness. I can however acknowledge some degree of moral integrity in loving same-sex relationships while believing that sexual expression within them is inimical to that integrity and to their capacity to bear witness to Christ. I am also clear of course that all relationships – including all marriages - have patterns of (sexual but obviously much wider than that) behaviour within them that are also inimical to their capacity to bear witness to Christ. Those patterns may destroy the moral goods that are present in the relationship but they do not necessarily do so. It can therefore be the case that those goods can be acknowledged and nurtured and the relationship celebrated by the wider Church even when the goods are alongside behaviour inimical to godliness.

The question therefore I would put back in return to yours to me about development is one about how – as someone who conscientiously dissents from the Church’s moral judgment in this area – you are willing in practice to relate to the reality of the Church’s stance. Given you acknowledge the Church holds same-sex behaviour to be inimical to godliness, how are you prepared to respect that stance even as you dissent from it? Are you willing to help me and the wider Church find ways - while we hold that moral stance - to acknowledge and support (pastorally and perhaps even liturgically) the goods that are to be found in loving same-sex relationships and in the lives of those in such relationships? Or is your conviction about the place of sexual expression of love within same-gender relationships so fundamental and so firmly held that the only solution you can accept is one that requires us to abandon the “inimical” stance and to allow the Church to embrace your “integral to godliness” view?

Look forward to hearing from you and with prayers for you and your parish this coming Holy Week and Easter as we remember together Christ’s passion and his destruction of the dividing wall of hostility to bring peace and reconciliation.

Yours in Him,

Andrew