A good professor
The following excerpt comes from an interview by World magazine with Robert P. George--a specialist in constitutional law and jurisprudence at Princeton University. The full interview can be found here, but I thought his defense of the traditional view of marriage and the pro-life position was excellent enough to earn a posting.
WORLD: Most readers of this magazine have a biblical worldview and are inclined to accept your arguments. What do you say to those coming from a secular liberal perspective?
GEORGE: Most of my professional life is spent interacting with secular liberal academics. What I tell them is that they are living off the cultural capital of Judeo-Christian moral understanding and depleting it quickly. Most liberal academics say they favor marriage and just want it to be available to homosexuals and heterosexuals on equal terms. They support "tolerance," they say, and oppose "discrimination," but they misconceive both toleration and discrimination.
I try to show them the unsavory logical consequences of their willingness to equate sodomy with marital sexual love. To justify same-sex "marriage" one must abandon the concept of marriage as a one-flesh union of sexually complementary spouses. But if we do that—if we embrace the idea that marriage is fundamentally an emotional union of people who find their relationship enhanced by mutually agreeable sex acts of any type—we eliminate the rational ground for restricting marriage to two people (as opposed to three or five or eight) and for regarding marriage as intrinsically requiring mutual pledges of exclusivity and fidelity. People who accept same-sex "marriage" have no basis of principle (as opposed to mere sentiment or subjective preference) for opposing polygamy, polyamory (group marriage), promiscuity ("open marriages"), and the like. What then is left of marriage? Nothing.
Similarly, most secular liberal academics do not want to join Peter Singer in endorsing infanticide and the mass production of children to be killed in infancy for the purpose of harvesting transplantable organs. I try to show them that by accepting abortion they remove any principled moral basis for objecting to such a nightmarish view. After all, birth is of no moral significance. The child a moment or a month or nine months prior to birth is the same living human being as the child a moment or a month or nine months (or 90 years) after birth. My argument against the rather chaotic collection of moral views held by many secular scholars is not that they violate the tenets of Jewish or Christian faith (though they do); it is that they fail—sometimes spectacularly fail—the test of reason.
4 Comments:
Now THIS is required reading.
britt
The professor in question does not understand the biblical view of the relationship between faith and reason.
It is never reasonable to do other than what God commands, or to teach anything logically inconsistent with what He says. On the biblical view, the Bible itself -- that is, the Word of God is the alone final authority in all matters of knowledge.
By disjoining faith and reason, the professor has bid his students serve two epistemological masters. This is not only UNWISE, it is also IMPOSSIBLE, for "no man can serve two masters." And again, "All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid in Him [Christ]" (Col. 2:3).
Moreover, there is no "Judeo-Christian" anything, for Judaism --hostile as it is to the gospel of Christ -- can no way form some "neutral ground" outside the gospel. In denying the once-for-all atoning sacrifice of Christ as the only sufficient basis for salvation, the Jew is lost. For Jesus said, "All the Law and the Prophets speak of me."
Thus, no Jewish person (where Jewish refers to his religion, not his ethnicity) can inherit the kingdom, since his religion is no more biblical than Islam, Jainism, or Zoroastrianism.
He may point now and again to the Bible, but his understanding of it is no better than that of a Jehovah's witness.
Thus, your professor is not as "good" as you suggest. He is teaching what is contrary to the Word of God, and on several counts.
When Jesus was called a "good teacher," he inquired, "Why do you call me good?"
That is the same question I am asking here about your "good professor," but for quite different reasons. But enough for now.
Thus the distinction between "religious" concepts of marriage (of which there are many, this being only one) and the legal definition. From the perspective of the law, marriage is simply incorporation; this entire issue wouldn't exist if people began to refer to legal marriage as "civil union" which is, after all, what it is.
Even aside from that, however, this professor's "slippery slope" argument falls flat. The legal reasoning for permitting only two people into a marriage contract is for pragmatic as well as emotional reasons - issues of next-of-kin status, survivorship rights to property, and so forth would all be negatively implicated by the expansion of contracting rights to more than two parties. The professor's confusion lies in a limitation of how he conceives marriage: as an expression of spiritual unity rather than a legal incorporation.
He also seems to disbelieve in homosexual love, as opposed to homosexual sex. I know that many men get so turned on by the idea of hot lesbian sex that they forget any possibility that the two women may love each other as he loves his wife, but that - at its core - is the issue of sexuality. It is not about who you are attracted to physically as much as who you are attracted to, period. Sex is one part of marriage or a relationship, but to assume that it is the entirety is to debase the institution and emotion himself. Who is undermining marriage here?
His argument about abortion is similarly specious. The distinction between pre- and post-birth is made because of dependency on the mother. If a baby could be extracted from the mother without harm or cost to her and raised to viability in an artificial environment, this would be a totally different issue; in fact, it would be a non-issue. The problem comes with requiring an individual person to sacrifice its health or wellbeing for another; we don't require that in our legal system except in very, very limited instances. Moreover, the individual wouldn't even be expected to make a sacrifice for a legal -person-, but an entity with no determinable characteristics. Name? Male or female? Footprint or fingerprint? Blue, brown, hazel eyes? Birthdate? The only way we have to define the in-utero baby as a "person" is by classifying it through its mother: "the fetus of Amanda Johnson," for example. The potential or imminence of a legal person does not take precedent over the well-being of a person who already exists; the only legal rationale for imposing a duty on the mother would also impose on each of us obligations to others which few of us would want to assume.
Also, it's kind of amusing that neither Prof. George or World can use the word "liberal" without placing "secular" in front of it. Who are the trying to distinguish the liberals from? Theocratic fascists? Muslim extremists? What about non-secular liberals, or secular conservatives? 9_9 Political rhetoric at its most asinine.
Kes
In response to Ophir:
I disagree that the professor is necessarily serving two epistemological masters. One can argue against same sex marriage in more than one way. In other words, there is a logical, or reason-based analysis that one can entertain just as there is a Biblical analysis. Both point to the same conclusion. I do not believe that both are equal in their force. But I do believe that one can be more geared towards a certain group of people than another.
The Bible is very clear that the natural man does not accept the things of the spirit of God (I Cor. 2:14). So if a Christian hopes to convince a non-believer of why he should be opposed to gay marriage, a spiritual or Scripture based arguement will not work. The Word of God will have no force and simply will not be understood by the non-believer. It would, in essence, be like throwing pearls before swine.
Therefore, it stands to reason that in the context of gay marriage, a reason-based analysis will have its proper place with those who do not accept the validity and authority of the Bible (which is the bedrock upon which a Christian's faith should be grounded). A person is more likely to respond favorably to an argument built on logic and reason than to a religious text he automatically believes is invalid or suspect. A positive response to a reason based argument is at least a positive step towards that person ultimately questioning his entire world view and eventually coming to the conclusion that only the Bible can fill in the gaps and only the atoning work of Christ can fill the void in their life. I would maintain, however, that if the conversation were to turn to the question of salvation and eternity that the only way a Christian can rightly defend the faith and Christian doctrine is through the Word of God. It's at that point that the reasoning of man will be of no significance compared to the power of the Word of God.
None of this is to say that a Christian is to shy away from the Word of God in any field of Christian apologetics. God forbid! I am saying, however, that there is more than one way to make a compelling point and that God in His sovereignty is just as capable of using any line of reasoning to convict the souls of those who embrace doctrines or beliefs contrary to His Word.
Consider also that the arguements of reason put forward by the good professor are not proffered as a substitute for the substance of faith. Rather, they serve to butrress the underlying rationale and coherency behind the institutions and laws that God has established. Reason rightly applied illuminates the power of faith because it reveals that faith is grounded on truths and principals that are ultimately grounded in a just and righteous God.
I would also like to state that as far as salvation goes, I would agree that the Jew is as lost as the Muslim or the athiest--one cannot inherit eternal life apart from him or her placing their faith in the atoning work of Christ on the cross. And part and parcel of this is the belief that Jesus is the Christ--the Messiah--the Son of God. That being said, the underlying morality of Judaism and Christianity as its applied to human affairs on earth is very similiar. They both recognize the absolute sovereignty of an all powerful, all knowing God. They both recognize the existence of an absolute right and wrong that eternally binds the affairs of man to God's objective standard of what's pleasing to him and what's not. And while Judaism believes in the letter of the law contained in the Torah, the Christian believes in the principles behind them. I think this is the point when someone uses the phrase "Judeo-Christian." It seems presumptuous to say that that person is equating to two religions. Rather it recognizes that Christianity emerged out of Judaism and as such, both have similar moral constructs.
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