Let’s clear a few things out in the first paragraph. Nature is nature, which seems obvious enough, but less obvious is that nature has a nature. The grain of the natural order runs in a particular way. It is not amorphous goo that can be shaped by any volunteer demiurge that happens by. It is not an inert substance that can successfully be altered by an act of Congress, or runaway judges. I just read in the news this week that a federal judge determined that in Michigan water must now run uphill.
This why sex change operations are such a fine example of pomosexual confusion. If nature does not have a nature, then subsets of nature (that would be us) would not have a nature either. If we do not have a nature, then it cannot be possible to contradict or violate it. But if we do have a nature, as established by nature’s God, then one of the first things that rebels against that God will want to do is declare war on it.
Not only does nature have a nature, nature also has a way of instructing us about herself. We see this in the realm of sexual customs. For example, nature teaches us that long hair is a disgrace for a man, but is a woman’s glory. But this creates an interesting set of questions.
We alter nature when we comb our hair, brush our teeth, take a bath, get braces for our teeth, or get a haircut. Now — and I am serious in asking the question — why are all these things lawful, and a sex change operation is not lawful? Why are the former examples of cultivating nature, and the latter an example of insulting her?
Nature was intended to be tended. Adam was placed in an untended garden that was entirely natural, and he was commanded to make it more like itself. A garden is more like nature than a weed patch. Nature was created to be cared for. Now when it is cared for, that care shows. It is manifested.
Up to a point, it is appropriate and lawful to force things “against nature.” Paul uses an example from grafting to make this very point. “For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree?” (Rom. 11:24).
Grafting a wild olive branch into a cultivated olive tree is described as being “contrary to nature,” and yet doing do is perfectly fine. This is something that stumps the simple. The wild branch is wild “by nature,” and the good olive tree has natural branches (that were cut off) that can be grafted back in again. In other words, wild trees are natural and domesticated trees are also natural–and better.
This is why Jews can be Jews “by nature” (Gal. 2:15). Circumcision was natural. Nature was not intended to be left alone. Man was given dominion over it, and is expected to exercise that dominion. The cultural mandate is not authorization for environmental rape. At the same time, rape of nature is a possibility. That category does exist. It is just that the people who are most likely to chatter on about it have no earthly idea of what they are talking about. A guy in San Francisco prepping for a sex change operation decides to have lunch after his most recent hormone shots. At lunch, he will inquire carefully into whether or not the chicken in his chicken salad had any hormones in it. Ah, I see. Hormones must be bad.
So how can we know how to draw the line between getting braces so that you can someday get a girl, and getting hormone shots so that you can someday become a girl? There is no way to draw this line without resorting to natural revelation or natural law, and the Bible requires us to draw this line. Biblical wisdom must therefore learn how to read the world.
When Adam was tending the garden, it was perfectly fine for him to figure out how to prune a tree, and how to oversee a process like grafting. But if Adam starting trying to plant trees with their roots in the air, so that fish could build their nests up there, we would all start to worry that a serious problem had developed. We would begin to suspect that Adam had been taking some graduate classes.
In other words, there is a line. Nature wants to be messed with, up to a point, and nature must not be messed with past that point. What is that point exactly? Well, we have to pay close attention to nature to let her tell us.
Think of it this way:
“Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion” (Lev. 18:23).
Leviticus does not say that for a woman to have intercourse with a beast is contrary to this verse — although it is. The question is this. What was it contrary to before the verse was revealed? The law is certainly prescriptive: don’t do that. But the verse is also descriptive: it is confusion, and it would be confusion in ancient China, Peru, or any other place that had never heard of Moses. It would already be confusion. Confusion about what? It would be confusion about how God shaped the world.
The poet Horace put it this way, and we should all pay closer attention than we have. Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret. You can drive out nature with a pitchfork, but she keeps on coming back.
It is tempting for some Christians to appeal to this or that datum in science, as though the issue can be quantified. In a sex change operation, the DNA of the patient remains exactly what it was before. He is still male in that sense, just the eunuchs of Scripture remained male. Differences between them become manifest, obviously, just as we clearly distinguish between a steer and a bull. We have the noun eunuch for a reason. But castrating a man doesn’t make him a woman. As well hang a silicon udder on a steer and call it a cow. Doesn’t matter what you call it — you have plainly crossed the line we were talking about earlier, and graduate classes were probably involved in it.
But if we determined such things that way, why would it be lawful for a man to receive a woman’s kidney in an organ donation, but not lawful for him to receive a facsimile of a woman’s sexual organs via a surgeon’s knife? In the former case, he would have a bunch of cells that actually were female. How much sand can you put in the sugar bowl before it isn’t sugar anymore? Why would I, conservative Christian guy, not have a problem with that one and I would with the other?
The answer is that nature speaks everywhere, including in the heart of every man, woman, and child. God speaks through nature in the galaxies, in the buttercups, and under the breastbone of every proud atheist. This is routinely denied, but only by people who are trying to yammer loudly enough that they can’t hear Him anymore. But if you have questions about it, nature speaks to the Scottish common sense realist, and he doesn’t even need a microscope to answer you. Check in with him.
Athletic discipline is unnatural in one sense, and natural in another. Athletic discipline for women is unnatural in one sense, but natural in another. We see the grace of cultivated nature when she competes on the balance beam. We see the epitome of secularist stupidities when she competes in boxing and shot put. Ain’t natural, especially if she is good at it. It is called an abomination in Scripture (Dt. 22:5), but it was an abomination before Deuteronomy plainly called it that. If I were admonishing a carpenter for trying to pound nails with a tea cup, I wouldn’t need a verse.
And this is why the category of nature is such an essential one. Any denial of the nature of nature, or the reality of nature, or the goodness of nature, or the direction that nature’s grain naturally runs, or the complete authority of Jesus in and through all nature, is a catastrophic denial. We might be talking about Aquinas, or the doctrine of regeneration, or common grace, or Van Tilian apologetics, but depend upon it — any denial of nature will eventually be revealed to have been an essential part of an opening gambit designed to recreate all nature as playdough for the pomosexual.
Pastor Doug–I know you don’t respond to all the comments because of lack of time (I don’t blame you at all) but if you do want a stimulating read, I HIGHLY recommend this article by Peter Jones about androgyny. It traces the roots of this movement all the way back to the ancients.
http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/43/43-3/43-3-pp443-469_JETS.pdf
John, thanks. I really like Peter Jones’ stuff. Is this related to his God of Sex book?
Pastor,
I don’t know if it’s related to a book of his, I just know that this is one of the best google results I’ve ever come across regarding the linkage between sexuality and religion–something I (and probably most Christians) don’t normally associate. Enjoy the paper and keep up the excellent blog posts!
A girl competing in certain sports is sinful? That sounds awfully legalistic and culturally based. Appreciated the rest of the article though!
I am not in agreement about the sports issue. However, it is a wonderful article and I have gleaned wisdom from it. Thank you.
It’s like Aslan told Lucy, “…battles are ugly when women fight.” And certain sports (football, boxing, wrestling to name a few) are essentially battles.
I just read the PDF.
Remember in The Lord of the Rings scene–The Charge of the Rohirrim when King Theodin looks up after the initial charge to see the army of elephants coming his way and he has to regroup? yep, that’s how reading that made me feel.
I think you are going to need another thread, pastor.
And some nature is unnatural — needing eradication, not just domestication. Darkness, residual formlessness, voidness, capacity to sin, death…. Right from the git-go, God planned obsolescences and extinctions.
On a side note. Calvin contends that this “nature” Paul appeals to, with respect to the issue of hair length, is in the context of the Roman employment of barbers “around the time of Africanus the elder” (Calvin’s commentary on 1 Corinthians). This particular age saw long hair (relative to the common length in Rome at the time) worn by men, as effeminate, perhaps even a symbol of a passive recipient of male perversion. Thoughts? And hello from Zeltenreich URC church in PA where we wait eagerly for your gracious visit to our congregation.
Cameron, the article in the pdf link raises the same possibility.
Right on, and we know when nature is “natural” and when it is not based on the metaphors god uses to share with us an understanding of the world. We “really” learn a narrative and understand nature through that narrative rather than having some meaning forced upon us by the mere existence of matter. More of a “semiotic realism” than a “common sense realism”.
There is a woman who works in my office who could probably kick start a jumbo jet. If she showed up at Doug’s church on a Sunday morning, I am absolutely certain she would be the most masculine person there, and I say that without ever having been to Doug’s church myself. And the idea that she has anything other than a lesbian nature is completely absurd. She couldn’t be June Cleaver if she wanted to. If you’re going to appeal to nature, how about the common sense approach of not trying to hammer individually-round humans into square holes (or… Read more »
Eric, Saying that all individuals have a different individual natures is essentially the same as saying there is no such thing as “nature”. It’s no different from Nominalism, which saw all universals as fictions. Doug’s whole argument though is against Nominalism and in favor of something (dare I say?) more Thomistic. If everyone has their own individual nature, then however anyone acts is according to nature. If, however, humans are built a certain way with a certain telos, then any use of a human contrary to the manufacturer’s instructions (the telos) constitutes misuse. This latter view… Read more »
Rick, I wouldn’t say that all universals are fictions, though I do think there aren’t nearly as many universals as one might think; the more we look, the more exceptions we find to what were thought to be universals. And part of it comes down to taxonomy; humans love neat and well-defined categories, and in nature such neat, well-defined categories often don’t exist. But the real question here is what to do with anomolies. For most people, gay marriage will never be a personal issue because most people aren’t gay. Some are, they have limited if any control over what… Read more »
Whether individual or not, the problem is the same. As lying, cheating, and stealing are every bit as natural as any other behavior, and no one wants people to simply act on whatever desire they have at the moment like a barbarian, one must separate human nature into good and bad. Christians do this by appealing to the Bible, other religions by appealing to their own sacred traditions, but the secularists have a harder time of it.
Eric, You say this woman would be the most masculine person at Doug’s church . . . how many guys at Doug’s church, or at your office, do you think you could identify as “a woman” ? Alright then. You’re exhibiting the upshot of Rick’s comment above – about denying nature and the categories that flow from that. There’s an inherent contradiction there, too. Folks want to deny basic categories, and label all the associations and divisions that flow from those natural categories as illegitimate social fabrications. But then in an attempt to shuffle and confuse those… Read more »
Eric, I like that argument a lot. I’ve been hankering for some way out of this whole monogamy thing in marriage ever since my wife lost her shape. And the fact is, by nature I am inclined to desire every attractive woman that walks by, especially the ones that look like they wouldn’t mind sleeping with a married man. Poor, benighted Christians keep trying to monogamize me but it just makes me miserable. And besides, I’m pretty sure my wife and three kids will understand that I should be allowed the same pursuit of happiness as everyone else. Now I… Read more »
Hey Rick,
Can you give me a description of how you got those spaces between paragraphs? Nothing I try works. Thanks,
Matt
Matt, and Dave, comparing lying, cheating, stealing and adultery on the one hand to homosexuality is apples to oranges because those behaviors cause harm and homosexuality doesn’t. Irresponsible homosexuality, like irresponsible heterosexuality, causes harm, but the harm is caused by the irresponsibility and not by the orientation itself. If you want an apples to apples comparison, you’re going to have to come up with a behavior that doesn’t hurt anyone but which religion nevertheless condemns. I’m betting you can’t, at least not that will stand up under examination.
Matt Massingill, if we’re talking about the majority of the population, then you’re probably right. Most people are clearly and unambiguously either male or female; most people are clearly and unambiguously heterosexual (at least most of the time, if we factor out circumstantial homosexuality like drunk frat boys and one-time experimentation and people confined to institutions where opposite sex sexual partners aren’t available). But I’m talking about the anomolies. There is a small but not insignificant percentage of the population that isn’t straight, and another small but not insignificant percentage of the population that isn’t clearly male or female. Most… Read more »
Matt M., I just add a couple of blank spaces, highlight them, and click the “quotation mark” button. Also, Eric the Red, you said, “why not allow her the same pursuit of happiness the rest of us take for granted?” The problem with that statement is that one must define happiness; it can’t just be left nebulous and vague. I think that your worldview necessitates that happiness is as multiform as individual essences are, whereas, in the view of someone who believes in natures (both general human nature and male/female nature), happiness is a specific thing, and it is… Read more »
Rick, while I don’t believe in a creator, I do think Plato and Aristotle mostly got it right about happiness and virtue; real long-term happiness comes from being a virtuous person, even if it may be temporarily pleasurable to set virtue aside. But other than a raw, naked appeal to your religious beliefs, what’s the argument that homosexuality can’t be virtuous? And if the manufacturer intended that my co-worker not be a lesbian, then why didn’t he manufacture her not to be? It’s not like people choose what they’ll be attracted to. I don’t see how God can create her… Read more »
And if I need to drive a nail, a hammer may be the preferred method of doing it, but if the only tool available to me is the handle of a screwdriver, I may have to improvise.
Eric, In the event there’s no Creator then homosexuality can’t be virtuous because virtue doesn’t exist, along with any moral/value categories it happened to be standing on. And good luck defining what you mean by “right” when you describe Plato and Aristotle’s teachings, since we also need God for reason. For that matter, you might want to take a minute and consider the value in engaging in argument in a universe with no objective standard for morality or reason. Or, to say it another way, we’re happy to argue with you but first you need to give our categories back.… Read more »
Eric the Red wrote: “Matt, and Dave, comparing lying, cheating, stealing and adultery on the one hand to homosexuality is apples to oranges because those behaviors cause harm and homosexuality doesn’t.” Causing harm is quite natural. (See nature.) In fact, evolutionism depends on harm as a mechanism to cull the weak and promote the “fit”. Imagine how soft and weak and stupid everything would be if all the animals were polite and shared and helped all the other animals find food and shelter. Why do we have to keep reminding Eric of the consequences of his naturalism/materialism? Eric continues: “Trying… Read more »
Eric the Red wrote: “Rick, while I don’t believe in a creator, I do think Plato and Aristotle mostly got it right about happiness and virtue; real long-term happiness comes from being a virtuous person, even if it may be temporarily pleasurable to set virtue aside.” Clearly Eric has developed a severe case of amnesia, or else he thinks we have, or else he has begun treatment for a worldview-change operation. All his sudden talk of right and wrong and virtue, one would think that he had discarded his utilitarianism. For those who aren’t aware, virtue ethics are on the… Read more »
Matt, and Dave, comparing lying, cheating, stealing and adultery on the one hand to homosexuality is apples to oranges because those behaviors cause harm and homosexuality doesn’t. The point is more that secularists can’t account for the duality of human nature, and hence can’t appeal to nature consistently. Homosexuality is good because it is in their nature, but it is in the nature of a thief to steal too. People don’t choose who their attracted to, but then they don’t choose what they’re attracted to either, either in terms of material things or behaviors. There’s no way around declaring certain… Read more »
All this talk of nature, whether wild or cultivated, and no mention of fruit? Circumcision was a deliberate boundary for cultivation of one nation, and the curses of the Law were a regular pruning. But neither circumcision nor the Law could bring forth fruit per se. This goes back to Eden: Adam was natural, but cut open that he might bear physical fruit. Adam and Eve were qualified (tested) that the Land and the womb might be opened to them. So a crucial part of discerning what “natural law” actually is, has to do with whether it makes something more… Read more »
Eric, Without a creator there can be no telos, and without a telos, there can be no virtue, for there is no definite purpose at which to aim. That ancient atheist, Lucretius, was more consistent than you in that he recognized this fact. “…nature for herself,” he wrote, “barks after nothing save that pain keep off, disjointed from the body, and that mind enjoy delightsome feeling, far from care and fear! Therefore we see that our corporal life needs little, altogether, and only such as takes the pain away, and can besides strew underneath some number of delights.” … Read more »
Eric the Red, So, are you really comfortable with applying this rule of “statistical anomaly classification” to all questions of morality? Are all inclinations within moral bounds as long as they are statistical anomalies? If not, what authority decides which, and which not? I see no justification for the presupposition that taxonomy has comprehensive point for point analogous correspondence with questions of moral determination. Besides, taxonomy is a matter of drawing up human-made classification conventions based on observations of tendencies and traits of various species. Much of it based on Darwinistic assumptions to boot. Unless those conventions and… Read more »
Gentlemen, the idea that without a creator there can be no virtue is comparable to the idea that without goldfish there can be no bicycles. The idea that without a creator there is no basis for morality is comparable to the idea that without basketballs there is no basis for organic chemistry. It is so completely silly that the appropriate response is a blank stare. The only argument I can think of that’s even sillier is that a God who acts as completely immorally as the one described in the Bible is somehow the fountain of morality and the basis… Read more »
Katecho, the reason nature causes harm is because that benevolent creator you claim to be the fountain of virtue created a world that had far fewer resources than are necessary to support the life it contains, thus guaranteeing that a lot of animals are going to starve to death simply because there aren’t enough resources to go around. He could have created a universe in which animals could afford to be kind and loving and helpful to one another, but instead chose to create one in which for almost all animals, the cost of being born is to die a… Read more »
Rick, “because of the fall” has become a mantra among theists to explain pain and suffering, but have you actually thought through the implications of that argument? Evil exists in the world because a woman listened to a talking snake and ate some fruit. Furthermore, people and animals suffer today for the sins of someone who lived 6,000 years ago. What would you think of a third-world dictator who decided to punish someone because of something that happened in his family tree 6000 years ago? How is it just to inflict suffering on someone who (in the case of humans)… Read more »
Matt Massingill, no, taxonomy isn’t the sole arbiter of moral questions. It’s taxonomy plus harm. The classification “homosexual” has no moral implications because homosexuality doesn’t cause harm (at least not exercised responsibly). The classification “serial killer” is different because it does cause harm. Even though one cold argue that serial killers are basically a biological anomoly as well. Which is why I’m comfortable saying that society needs to protect itself from pedophiles even if the pedophile can’t help being attracted to children: Pedophilia does an enormous amount of damage, so while I may feel compassion for someone who didn’t ask… Read more »
Comrade Eric, you said: If you want an apples to apples comparison, you’re going to have to come up with a behavior that doesn’t hurt anyone but which religion nevertheless condemns. I’m betting you can’t, at least not that will stand up under examination. You lose. Exodus 20: 1-11. The first table of the law. Of course you could try to wriggle out of it by saying that breaking those rules does offend (hurt) Jehovah, but the catch 22 is that if you admit that to win the bet, you have admitted that homosexuality itself offends (hurts) God. And really,… Read more »
Comrade Eric, in the very first comment on this post there is a link to an article by Peter Jones. I would be interested to hear your response to it, if you feel so inclined. I am done for now, since I am off to what we non-pagans call “church.”
Eric, I am so happy to hear you talk about our creator even if it is only because you are angry at the way He has chosen to run His world. You bring up the important objection of why morality can’t equal pleasure and pain can’t equal immorality. To a child an immunization hurts, yet as parents we know it is for our child’s welfare. When we complain that our Father should have sent His son much earlier, or that it isn’t fair we are all being punished for Eve, we sound just like the children we all are to… Read more »
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St. Lee, the linked article is 27 pages. I’ve printed it out and I’ll read it this afternoon and get back to you.
St. Lee, before I respond to your first table of the law argument, can you please tell us how exactly homosexuality hurts God?
Carole, I’m not angry at God. It’s impossible to be angry at something that doesn’t exist. I think the idea that the God of the Bible is just, righteous and merciful is a world-class howler because of some of the examples I’ve given and many others I could have given. On your broader point, yes, an immunization hurts, but the hurt is for the benefit of the child to whom the immunization is being given. The examples I’ve given are more along the lines of hurting a child to vindicate the hurt feelings of a deity to whom not enough… Read more »
David, the idea that God is a necessary precondition to an intelligible universe is just plain silly, and every time someone makes it, I roll my eyes. OK, you’ve made what I consider a silly argument; I’ve rolled my eyes; neither of us is going to convince the other on that point, so let’s move on.
Eric, Homosexuality does not hurt God. Rather, it is an affront to God because it is a deliberate blurring of the maleness and femaleness with which he made people, and through which He demonstrates and conveys His image to us. Homosexuality does hurt people, because when unrepented of, it condemns a soul to hell. Further, according to Paul in Romans 1, a society so backslidden as to not only tolerate but to actually condone such perverse behavior requires a degree of moral turpitude such that there are a host of other culturally decaying factors present long before. You can… Read more »
Eric, You are not engaging my argument. The idea of preconditions (transcendentals) in philosophy as a way of assessing competing ultimate authorities was used by Aristotle and Kant, and others. Giving a cavalier dismissal is not an answer. When you speak about morals, or logic, or math, and you simply pretend that “we all know those things are real”, you are basically saying either that you do not know, or you do not care how it is your moral assessments, for example, are nothing more than your subjective preference rapped in the language of futility. When you condemn murder or… Read more »
First of all, maybe there really isn’t a “male nature” and a “female nature” as you understand them, and if that’s the case, then so what? I’m not completely convinced that gender is entirely a social construct, but there are some good arguments for that position, and if it turns out to be right, then facts are facts and that’s all there is to it. Probably most men and women actually do appear and behave as you think they should, but your religion has nothing except misery to offer those few who don’t. I suppose you can say they aren’t of the… Read more »
David, I’m not engaging your argument about preconditions because if you will read the archives of this blog, you’ll find I’ve already given a substantive response, many times over in fact. That, plus it’s a silly argument that deserves dismissal. That, plus it’s a change of subject designed to sidetrack my underlying point, which is that your theology of human sexuality is both baseless and cruel. Yes, I know, you’d much rather talk about my presuppositions, real or imagined, than the pain and suffering your theology inflicts on gays and lesbians. Well, in earlier threads, I’ve already given substantive answers… Read more »
Eric, Election has nothing to do with what I engaged you in. My family and I are quite happy, as most of the Christians I know are also. However, if the pleasantness of our situation changes, how would that have any bearing on the existence of God? Suffering is accounted for in the Bible, and there are times that the just do suffer, and that for a season, the unjust seem to go unpunished. In your world view, how do you make sense of suffering, the way that you are using that word in your post? Somewhere in the Nile… Read more »
Eric, You have not given substantive answers in your previous log posts. I have read them, perhaps not all of them, but I searched for them, and I am familiar with your posts. I am asking you a question that a Sunday School child could answer. How do you have good and evil in a world that is only material, for example? If your preconditions do not explain your behavior, then what you are doing is living in a manner that does not comport with what you describe the universe as being like. That is a fair cross-examination. We keep… Read more »
Comrade Eric, you said: St. Lee, before I respond to your first table of the law argument, can you please tell us how exactly homosexuality hurts God? You may notice in my previous comment that I put it this way: ” …homosexuality itself offends (hurts) God,” a link that most would understand to be a form of rhetorical judo since equating offending to hurting someone is one of the primary weapons used by the LGBTP activists to push their agenda. BTW, I could add fornication (sex outside of marriage) to that list. In your worldview that also is harmless, so you… Read more »
David writes: “Rather, it is an affront to God because it is a deliberate blurring of the maleness and femaleness with which he made people”. So gay couples are really just “getting back at daddy”? Kind of like when a white girl from Alabama dates a black guy, right? “Homosexuality does hurt people, because when unrepented of, it condemns a soul to hell”. So does idolatry and unbelief, right? Yet, no one here seems to be raging against idolatrous Mormons, Catholics and Jews and insisting that their religious practices should be outlawed lest He send yet another flood to… Read more »