Rowan Williams' Confusion

Rowan Williams on the Christian Duty to the Environment

It is a rather different reading of the biblical tradition to that often (lazily) assumed to be the orthodoxy of Judeo-Christian belief. We hear regularly that this tradition authorises the exploitation of the earth through the language in Genesis about "having dominion" over the non-human creation. As has been argued elsewhere, this is a very clumsy reading of what Genesis actually says; but set alongside the Levitical code and (as Ellen Davis argues) many other aspects of the theology of Jewish Scripture, the malign interpretation that has latterly been taken for granted by critics of Judaism and Christianity appears profoundly mistaken. But what remains to be teased out is more about the nature of the human calling to further the "redemption" of persons and world. If liberating action is allowing things and persons to stand before God free from claims to possession, is the responsibility of human agents only to stand back and let natural processes unfold?

In Genesis, humanity is given the task of "cultivating" the garden of Eden: we are not left simply to observe or stand back, but are endowed with the responsibility to preserve and direct the powers of nature. In this process, we become more fully and joyfully who and what we are – as St Augustine memorably says, commenting on this passage: there is a joy, he says, in the "experiencing of the powers of nature". Our own fulfilment is bound up with the work of conserving and focusing those powers, and the exercise of this work is meant to be one of the things that holds us in Paradise and makes it possible to resist temptation. The implication is that an attitude to work which regards the powers of nature as simply a threat to be overcome is best seen as an effect of the Fall, a sign of alienation. And, as the monastic scholar Aelred Squire, points out (Asking the Fathers, p.92), this insight of Augustine, quoted by Thomas Aquinas, is echoed by Aquinas himself in another passage where he describes humanity as having a share in the working of divine Providence because it has the task of using its reasoning powers to provide for self and others (aliis, which can mean both persons and things). In other words, the human task is to draw out potential treasures in the powers of nature and so to realise the convergent process of humanity and nature discovering in collaboration what they can become. The "redemption" of people and material life in general is not a matter of resigning from the business of labour and of transformation – as if we could – but the search for a form of action that will preserve and nourish an interconnected development of humanity and its environment. In some contexts, this will be the deliberate protection of the environment from harm: in a world where exploitative and aggressive behaviour is commonplace, one of the "providential" tasks of human beings must be to limit damage and to secure space for the natural order to exist unharmed. In others, the question is rather how to use the natural order for the sake of human nourishment and security without pillaging its resources and so damaging its inner mechanisms for self-healing or self-correction. In both, the fundamental requirement is to discern enough of what the processes of nature truly are to be able to engage intelligently with them.

From here.


What I find interesting is this sentence:

in a world where exploitative and aggressive behaviour is commonplace, one of the "providential" tasks of human beings must be to limit damage and to secure space for the natural order to exist unharmed.

If we apply this to the divinely established order of male-female relations, we are faced with the providential task of defending marriage between a man and a woman and opposing homosex as against the natural order. Had Rowan Williams taken this step the Anglican Communion would have been spared a great deal of pain and suffering during his beleaguered term. However, the Archbishop fails to make this logical connection because of his consent to convergent evolution. He appears to be influenced more by Richard Dawkins (as in his The Blind Watchmaker) than by the book of Genesis. Either the Bible is right in asserting a fixed order with fixed genetic boundaries, or it is wrong.  Apparently, Rowan believes it is wrong because he makes this contrary statement:

the human task is to draw out potential treasures in the powers of nature and so to realise the convergent process of humanity and nature discovering in collaboration what they can become.

Clearly the Archbishop is spinning a "Christian" viewpoint on creation that is not a Biblical viewpoint.  He is committed to green action, but not to the divinely-established order of creation.




What does the Bible teach?


The Bible teaches a fixed binary order in creation, not a convergent process of becoming. Obviously, Rowan Williams cannot have both a fixed order and a convergent process of becoming, so which is it, Sir?

Homosex was in the same category as onanism. Both were regarded as grievous violations of the fixed boundaries in the order of creation. The seed that should fall to the earth is the seed of plants, which spring forth from the earth. The seed of man should fall on his own type (the womb), from which man comes forth.

In our pleasure-consumed society, sex has become a comodity. The more orgiastic and pornographic, the better the comodity. Sex as comodity misses the mark of God's righteousness by so far that it isn't even proper to discuss the two together.

There is much we do not understand about sexual attraction. There is also much false information about homosexuality, much of it built upon the discredited Kinsey Report. The issue is not homosexuality or even heterosexuality, but the use of the body, which is to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. Sex within marriage is the only approved sex in the Bible and in Holy Tradition, and both understand marriage as between a man and a woman.

Related reading:  Levi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida on Binary Oppositions; Binary Distinctions and Kenosis; How to Invite Ridicule; Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin; More Questions on Sex; Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition

How to Invite Ridicule

Alice C. Linsley


To understand the biblical worldview we must grasp the supplementary nature of the binary opposites. This involves understanding of what is meant by binary opposites and supplementary.

Supplementary is about meaning.  It is not an egalitarian principle. That is to say that meaning is derived from the relationship of the binary opposites. I experience hateful acts as evil because I have experience of loving acts and know them to be good. The reverse is also true. The male-female relationship has meaning because of the supplementary nature of male-female.

Supplementary doesn’t mean equal, since one of the opposites is perceived as greater in some way. This is how the biblical worldview avoids dualism.

Supplementary is what makes a relationship meaningful. In fact, meaning is derived from the supplementary nature of two things.

Consider Law and Grace. St. Paul presents these as binary oppositions, and their meaning is found in the supplementary relationship of the oppositions. One is greater, stronger, brighter, etc. than the other in its attributes. Grace is superior to the Law, but makes no sense without the Law. For as St. Paul says, the Law was our "school teacher" until grace should be revealed in the Incarnate Son.

The Sun is brighter than the Moon and the Moon's light is a reflection of the Sun's light. The western Afro-Asiatics thought the Chaldeans and Babylonians were confused because they venerated the Moon. Since the Moon merely reflects the Sun's light, it is a lesser entity. Why would anyone want to venerate a lesser entity? Abraham's father was accused of being an idol worshiper (Joshua 24:2) because he lived in the region of Ur and Haran where people worshipped the moon god.

Binary distinctions are not figments of the ancient imagination. They are observed in the order of creation. Men are physically larger and stronger than women.

Among Abraham's people it was taboo to allow distinct entities to become confused. This is why both men and women were circumcised, a custom that continues in many parts of Africa. Male circumcision is seen as an enhancement of maleness and the complement to the circumcised male could only be a circumcised female.  Circumcision in its original context derives meaning only when considered in this supplementary way.

Many examples of supplementary binary distinctions are found in Scripture. Consider the distinction between heat and cool. Abraham was visited “in the heat of the day” by God in 3 Persons (Gen. 18:1). Compare this to the binary opposite of “in the cool of the day”, the time of God’s visitation to Adam and Eve in Paradise (Gen. 3:8). Why are the two accounts posed as hot and cool encounters with God? Because in the first God has come to punish the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the second God has come to enjoy fellowship with the Man and the Woman.

Bible verses which forbid sowing two types of seed in the same field, weaving two types of fabric in the same garment, and boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk - are about NOT blurring the distinctions God has created in nature. The last is especially troublesome because the offspring meets death in the life-giving mother's milk.

The prohibition against mixing types, be they fibers, seeds or blood, is like the prohibition against confusing the holy with the unholy, or blurring the distinction between life and death, such as happens when a baby goat is boiled in its mother's milk (forbidden 3 places in Scripture). That is why each seed is to go to its own kind. As plants are born from the earth, so the seeds of plants return to the earth. As the man is born from the woman, so the seed/semen of man is to return to woman. The spilling of seed called 'onanism' was regarded as an evil deed, a violation of the order of creation and therefore an affront to the Creator. So obviously was homosex.

Bloods were never permitted to mix or even to be present in the same space. For example, men were not permitted in the birthing hut. Women (and many men also) were not permitted where animals were sacrificed. This is why women were never priests and why in church tradition they waited 40 days to return to church, following the ancient custom requiring purification after shedding blood.

Ancient peoples recognized a fixed order in creation. The male is larger and generally stronger than the female. The male is equipped for war and hunting while the female is equipped for cultivation and childbirth. This leads us to the distinction between the blood shed by men and the blood shed by women. Male "blood work" was expressed in hunting, war, execution of lawbreakers, and in animal sacrifice by the rulers, priests or prophets.

The blood work of women is supplementary to the blood work of men. Women sacrifice blood in first marital intercourse. They bleed in their monthly cycle and in childbirth. The blood shed of women represents life and is distinct yet supplementary to the blood shed by men in hunting, war and animal sacrifice.

I’ve found that speaking about the binary distinctions draws fire. Suggesting that they are important invites ridicule. Yet this is how the ancient Afro-Asiatics made sense of the world and their thinking informs us today through the Bible, Law and Ethics. Abraham's ancestors were not spinning an illusion that we moderns in our superior knowledge may set aside, they were describing a cross-shaped reality.


Related reading:  Levi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida on Binary Oppositions; The Origins of Circumcision; Circumcision and Binary Distinctions; Genesis and Genetics; Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin; More Questions About Sex