Since I am not that familiar with “Generous Orthodoxy,” I don’t know whether this address is supposed to be an example of it.

It doesn’t seem very generous or very orthodox to me. Instead, its almost pure Pelagianism mixed with xenophobic fears of those savages over there and their “taboos.”

To the best of my knowledge, MMA has never claimed the GO label; I posted a link to her address here b/c I thought some readers here would be interested. No one can say that I didn’t warn them that it was hard-hitting!

Sometimes when you try to make room for some (e.g., full participation in the life of the church for gays & lesbians), you’re going to have to step on the toes of others (those who would exclude them — not to mention imprison them [in the cases of some of the most illiberal winds]) to do so.

(For the benefit of those who have not read the actual address but who are reading these comments: Though Adams does use some strong language, she never refers to any opponents as “savages” or anything like that — which would have been most unfortunate, given some history of Western attitudes, since some of the “illiberal winds” Adams is opposing are blowing in from Africa. I feel this needs to be pointed out b/c Mr. Knott was obviously was not speaking in his own voice when he chose that word, so some readers might conclude that he was trying to represent the attitude of Adams there. Adams does use the term “taboo,” which some might feel is unfortunate enough already, and suggests that she thinks of her opponents as savages, whether or not she uses that term. Having read much of Adams’s work and having had many talks with her, I can report that she very often speaks of the “taboos” that guide us, even when she’s speaking just of, say, Americans.)

Yes, Adams does not use the word “savages.” I think this does express her, as you put it, “attitude,” though of course not her actual language. Of course you could use the word “taboo” to speak of Americans or Western Europeans and their “anti-GLBT” beliefs. However, historically and I think still today the word suggests precritical, odd or strange assumptions about proper behavior that is more at home among ancient or non-Western peoples. It has always meant what modern civilized people do, or ought to, leave behind.

Of course you could use the word “taboo” to speak of Americans or Western Europeans and their “anti-GLBT” beliefs.

What I was reporting was that this is not only possible, but that Adams uses that very word when talking of people generally (in the absence of anyone involved who is from a part of the world that westeners might think of as backward) all the time. Reading your comment, one might think that this is a word she trots just when she’s dealing with someone from Africa or some other place some might think of as “backward.” But in fact she uses it all the time; it’s part of an explanatory framework she utilizes often in trying to understand the human condition, usually in the absence of any special issue of people from any particular parts of the world. (Try Googling:
taboo OR taboos AND “marilyn adams” OR “marilyn mccord adams” )
I know that a book that was important to Adams, and that Adams often cites when discussing taboos, is Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo (Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1966).

Conceding all of that, I can still plausibly contend that the historical association of the word “taboo” with backwardness, its use as a word that “The civilized” use to denigrate customary beliefs about proper behavior that they do not share, makes the word a condescending term, no matter whom it is directed toward.

I would not, moreover, be so quick to conclue that if it were not for how condescending I find the entire address. For instance, there certainly are those who fit the “fairly definite descriptive sense” she gives to the word “homophobia,” but to assume that it hits its mark whenever anyone stands against gay marriage and/or ordination (not the same as insisting people stay in the closet or change their orientation, least of all by fiat) is a very bold claim indeed, one that I would wager would be difficult if not impossible to prove. It is for this reason I assume, that some prefer “heterosexism” (still a problematic term in my mind, but better than “homophobia”). [Cf. Patricia Beattie Jung and Ralph F. Smith, _Heterosexism: An Ethical Challenge_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993)]

Of course, if you could prove that any particular pathology was the only possible cause of opposition to Adam’s views, you might get somewhere. But if that has not been done, assuming it as she does is very condescending, and of course with the clinical-psychological ring of the term it rhetorically positions itself on the side of science against, what else?, prejudice.

I notice you’re not as interested in defending her against the charge of Pelagianism, by the way.

This is not one of my areas of expertise, but, arguably, taboos play a very important role in our thought, even if talk of them might be found condescending by some. (I understand that psychologists have done a lot of work on this — and when they do so, they’re generally studying people around them, not people from the “developing world.”)

As for Pelagianism: You just tossed that charge out there with no explanation, so there was nothing much to respond to. (And perhaps it’s best to keep it that way!) When people fling charges of heresy around easily, it’s often best to just let it slide.

At least with your judgment of xenophobia I thought I had some idea of what might be behind your making of the accusation, so I thought I might be able to help.

I didn’t explain it because I thought it was obvious, even more so than the condescending tone of the address. I didn’t think I was just throwing it around. Clearly I was mistaken.

Pelagianism is clear in the address in (1) the constant assumption that there is no original sin but everyone is good the way they are and can “stand up to their full stature in Christ,” meaning, I presume, to express the plenitude of their biological inheritance, so a world without struggle can be created before the eschaton: “God calls us each to grow up into our full stature, and God has a way, God is determined to make a way for each and all to do it at once.”
(2) The claim that “God made us living and active so that we could add human to Divine artistry and invent new ways to be.” Adding human to divine artistry is, okay, only semi-Pelagian.
(3) But that we bring the apocalyptic triumph?! “I tell you, that [if we all become like Desmond Tutu] will be the day when the trumpet sounds and Jericho’s taboo-walls come tumbling down! Imagine Jesus’ grinning with tears of happiness. Imagine His renewed exclamation, ‘I saw Satan fall!'”

I don’t see how anyone reading this, and knowing anything about Orthodoxy or Pelagianism, could fail to find Pelagianism in that address. But I guess I was too optimistic.

You condemn what you read into the address. What’s actually in there is quite different. You speak of “the constant assumption that there is no original sin but everyone is good the way they are.” Everyone is good the way they are?! There is no such assumption. So far from that being a constant assumption, it’s in reality a quite constant theme of Adams’s work that in all sorts of ways, before God works on us, humans start out massively messed up — much more than we like to think.

“Pelagianism is the heresy that people can take the initial steps towards salvation by their own efforts, apart from Divine grace. So says The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Of course, nothing in Adams’s address speaks to this. In the section you’ve focussed on, she is speaking of redeemed people becoming what God intends them to be and overcoming (what she takes to be) ungodly patterns of thought that she thinks are extremely important to overcome. You may disagree with her prescription, but there’s no Pelagianism here — unless you’re going to accuse every Christian writer who gives advice on how, with God’s help, people can live more Godly lives. Nowhere does Adams assert that what she suggests can be done apart from Divine grace; in fact, she explicitly describes the process as one of God working with us. With us? Is that semi-Pelagianism? I wouldn’t think so, unless, again, you want to charge every Christian writer who advises redeemed Christians on disciplines by which, with God’s help, they might live more Godly lives. Why do you think Adams is talking here of the process of obtaining salvation? Why would you not read this as a proposed discipline by which redeemed people might, with God’s help, become more Christlike? She explicitly describes the relevant section of her talk as addressing the question, “How can we survive and grow as Christians?” And if making such proposals constitutes Pelagianism, then, I guess, there is a whole lot of Pelagianism going on out there in the Church — including among many of Adams’s opponents. (Indeed, by that standard, I’d say there’s a considerable degree of Pelagianism in the Bible. — So much the worse for that standard.)

(Though this is pure speculation,) the real problem here *may* be that you have a very different opinion from Adams on what kind of person should emerge when a GLBT person has God work with her to become what God would have her to be. Perhaps because your ideas are so different, you can’t help but read Adams as proposing that such people try to attain their own salvation, apart from God’s grace and God’s help. But that’s not what Adams is saying. Nothing about obtaining salvation apart from grace. Again, she’s explicitly addressing the question, “How can we survive and grow as Christians?”

I’ll take this opportunity to add this remark. Pelagianism is supposed to be guilty of over-emphasizing the importance of human free will. Christian philosophers, especially when addressing the problem of evil, often give human free will a very large role in their explanations. (Interestingly enough, the Free Will Defense is supposed to have some of its deepest roots in Augustine, the arch-enemy of Pelagianism.) Adams’s has been one of the clearest voices in recent discussions warning against over-emphasizing the importance of human free will. So I find it quite ironic to find her accused of Pelagianism, of all things.

I am certainly not saying that working out our salvation with fear and trembling is Pelagianism. I’m a Methodist after all!

The issue between Adams and myself is that I do not think we can know what God wants us to be, even when we are already Christians, by biology or our own experience of inherent and/or ineradicable tendencies, desires, etc. Even in the sphere of grace, we know only by God’s revelation in Christ (and I take this to be present to us through Holy Scripture) what we are called to be, and whether this is in accord with our genes or our inherent tendencies is not decidable beforehand. This is because of original sin and the continuing effects of it even in the sphere of grace, that means we may be fighting errant desires, however inherent in our bodily existence, until the eschaton. Aside from other, perhaps even more important, differences between Augustine and Pelagius, I think it important how they differed in their view of the ongoing struggle for sanctification, significantly when speaking about sexuality! Forgive me for lacking the specific reference here, but Peter Brown’s The Body and Society is helpful on this issue.

Adams in this address does not address the exegesis of texts that she no doubt knows divides many on GLBT issues. Rather, I take her to be arguing that because of something outside of scripture (experience, psychology, etc.) we know that God created some people to be gay, others to be lesbian, etc. Or perhaps more precisely, we know in revelation that God created us, so whatever we discover to be our biological inheritance (even outside of revelation) is God’s intention for us. If this is not what Adams is arguing, how can she say, “When it comes to what we fundamentally are, rock-bottom, we can be sure that God is for us, for whoever it is that we really are, because if God had wanted something different, God would have made something else?” Surely she means us to understand that God made some to be gay because we know that is what they are “rock bottom.” But how can she know that that is what they are? Surely not Holy Scripture! Then what? Biology? People’s stories of their experiences? And if this tells us what we are “rock bottom” and thus what God wants us to be (and to express contrary to whatever taboos may hinder it), then where have the continuing effects of original sin got to? They may be present on some levels but we can, apparently, delve beneath them to some pristine level.

Maybe I’m wrong here, and Adams has some reading of revelation that tells her that God created some to be gay, and that therefore we cannot allow that homosexual orientation is a result of the fall. But I doubt it. More likely, it’s that she thinks of the fall only or almost only in social terms, and thus thinks she has found an immanent criteria for discerning between good and evil. And if so, however much she thinks we are “massively messed up,” she’s already made some fundamentally Pelagian choices in her theology.

And yes, I do think that God’s grace will confront GLBT people differently than Adams does. But the difference seems to go deeper, for I will allow from the beginning that God in mercy and judgment will sometimes command us to step away from ways of behaving that we have biological tendencies toward. That, I think, is why I am open to the possibility that even if homosexuality is biologically determined (or otherwise inherent and unchosen) God can still reveal a will that this orientation not be expressed in action but denied expression. It is not that I just hate homosexuality or worse, homosexual people, or fear that they or their sexual practices will hurt me or my family somehow, and then decide that it must be against God’s will. Nor that everything inherent is against God’s will. But that it is possible that something inherent would be sinful. Of course, I do not mean by “inherent” here “inherent in God’s originally intended creation” but “inherent in the creation as marred by sin.” The Adam, after all, was taken from the adamah, or earth, and so the actions of the Adam meant that the adamah was cursed. We should expect that there would be desires and tendencies that go to “rock bottom” or “dirt bottom” of our being after this “curse.” I do not assume that homosexuality is the only example, that is. There may be infinitely more. Then, only because I take it to be revealed by Holy Scripture that God’s will for human sexuality is (among other things!!) that it be heterosexual, only then do I conclude that the Church should not sanction same-sex intercourse. And because I believe in the ongoing effects of original sin, I am not dissuaded from that position because of any discoveries of the inherent nature of homosexual orientation.

I take it that Adams will insist that no matter what Scripture says, we may rightfully conclude that God’s will is for gays and lesbians to express their sexuality because we can see that it is natural, inherent, or some such. Therefore, if that is the case, before we get to the difference in opinions on the specific issue of homosexuality, we start with different premises.

You presume much. I’m glad at least that charges of xenophobia and Pelagianism have seemed to have fallen away. There may well be a fundamental difference between you & Adams on how exactly you approach scripture. I can’t be sure, not knowing enough about the details of your approach.

No and no.

I don’t think I’m presuming so much because I cannot see how she could be making the claims she makes without something like what I take to be her assumptions. Of course I could be wrong but we all make assumptions/presumptions; the real issue being whether they are likely to be true based on the info. you have.

And no, charges have not fallen away fundamentally. I still think she’s (perhaps unintentionally) tapping into reserves of cultural snobbery, which by the way can be operative vis-a-vis anybody, no matter how close they are to you, as long as they participate in differing cultural assumptions such as “taboos.” And as for Pelagianism, I said above that she seems to be making some fundamentally Pelagian choices in her theology.

Speaking of presumptions, how does Adams know that everyone who disagrees with her is “homophobic,” and therefore thinks that GLBT persons need to be, or pretend to be, other than they are, in order for us to be all we are? Has she sat each and every one of us down and talked us through our positions, or subjected us to a thorough psychoanalysis? At least my “presumptions” of Adams’ views are based on what she said, at least in large part (of course supplemented by assumptions…when does interpretation ever do otherwise?). She has never met me or read anything I have said, but apparently she knows what motivates me better than I do.

I think you’re extremely quick with charges of heresy & the like. That it turns out you still stand by those accusations is very disappointing. But we’ve each made our case. Readers can decide.

Yes we have. And I of course stand willing to change my charges should anyone wish to enlighten me on (1) how Adams knows God makes some to be gay and/or lesbian other than how I think she must think she knows and/or (2) how her address is not condescending, and thus can be held to the same standards of non-presumption and charity that you try to hold me to.

I may be sinning boldly, but I’d prefer that to what seems too often to be the case, namely conservatives cowed by “hard-hitting” comments like those of Adams to being good quiet “Christians” who never speak up when they’re treated like pathological reactionaries. In any case, if that’s what we are, permit us to speak as such fools!

Well, you might think that the relevant biblical texts underdetermine how we should see the question. You might quite plausibly think that our hermeneutic itself is underdetermined by the text, and that certain extra-biblical assumptions are going to need to do some pretty hefty interpretive lifting. It’s not at all clear that appeals to ‘nature’ can’t do some of this work, or that such a strategy is incapable of finding inductive support in the Bible itself. After all, we’ve got a new creation on our hands. How to decide what belongs to the old, and what to the new–in the presence of hermeneutic and exegetical underdetermination? That seems to be the nub of it.

Jason Knott: I could maybe understand why you might say you will stand by the charges of going against Scripture and using a condescending tone until someone enlightens you about (1) and (2). But are you really going to stand by the charges of xenophobia and Pelagianism until then, given what has transpired in this discussion? I hope others don’t judge you as “boldly” as you’re inclined to judge them. And yes I am making a judgment about you here. It is, however, a restrained one. Like Prof. DeRose, I can’t help but judge that you harshly misjudged Adams on grounds inadequate to the bold accusations you made. I’m not accusing you of anything close to as bad as heresy or xenophobia. For the record, I didn’t like either Prof. Adams’ tone, or your tone. But at least in Adams’ case, she is diagnosing people who have already declared that gays are in some way pathological. It is then a little delicate of them to get all upset about that being condescending when such a diagnosis is turned back at them. That still doesn’t excuse her, however.

— This is starting to become a case of ganging up on Mr. Knott. So, please no more criticisms or arguments aimed at him. Other comments about Adams’s address are still welcome. —