Nicholas Wolterstorff's Unconvincing Case for Same Sex Marriage

Wolterstorff is one of my heroes. He is a philosopher, and I am a student of Philosophy; He writes on justice, and my PhD dissertation was on justice; and he is a Christian, and I am a Christian too. I have learned so much of moral and political philosophy from his writings. And when I learned of his support for same-sex marriage within the church, I was so disappointed; and when I listened to his lecture in youtube, I was even more disappointed.  One of the reasons for my disappointment with his lecture was because of the unusual pattern that I observed in his work. I have found his work to be dense. His engagement of Scripture is always rigorous. Yet in the lecture, the usual rigor is missing. It was rather a shallow piece of engagement, an uncharacteristic mark of his scholarship.

Let me summarise his line of reasoning. Is expression of homosexual orientation like kleptomaniac expression of stealing someone's belonging? Well, the issue is not with the orientation; the issue is with the expression. Stealing someone's belonging is wrong; no doubt about that. Is a homosexual practice wrong or right? To figure that out, we have to go to the biblical text. The holiness code of Leviticus contains explicit teaching against same sex practice. But the same chapters also include injunction not to stitch two different fabrics of cloth together. Shortly put, the Old Testament holiness code is not really the proper guideline for the Christians. For this reason, one must go to Romans 1 in the New Testament. However, the text in Romans that speaks of homosexual relation as unnatural refers to the kind of practice that evil people practice; it does not refer to the loving, caring and nurturing kind of relationship that we find today in many same sex couples. Moreover, the church tradition that speaks of procreation as a purpose of marriage does not mean to include procreation as an essential purpose of marriage. After all, couples who are way beyond their fertile age also get married.

Without delving into the text in Romans, let me go elsewhere to argue against same sex marriage within the church. ( My point is not to be extrapolated onto the polity and the law. For that we have to see how Bible interacts with Political Philosophy.) In Genesis, it is said, " For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife." If we take the narrative in Genesis 1 and 2 as God's original intent, what we find is a heterosexual marriage. The text did not say " For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his partner". ( We cannot expect the text to say "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to her partner.) Wolterstorff has written a great deal on the idea of "image of God", drawn from the Genesis text. Now I don't know why he just skipped the creation narrative that speaks of one male and one female and jumped onto some other text. I find this surprising.

If we go to Revelation, we again find this symbol. In Revelation 21, the new Jerusalem is pictured as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband, Jesus Christ. The symbol is not of Jesus uniting with his partner. It was a symbol of the uniting of the bridegroom and the bride, a male and a female. Isn't marriage as God showed John symbolised by the union of a male and a female? Well, in Revelation that is what we find. It is not the image of a male and a male. Given the culture, John might as well have been shown that way. But John was not shown that way. He was shown the Holy City dressed as a bride for her bridegroom.

If the creation narrative and the eschatological narrative show marriage as a union of bridegroom-bride or man-woman, same sex marriage is a distortion of God's intent for marriage. I won't dispute the fact that some same sex couples can be loving  just as some heterosexual couples can be uncaring. But this observation should not distort what the Scripture teaches. The Scripture teaches, as the church has understood throughout her history, that God's intent is for heterosexual marriage; not same sex marriage.

Given that Nick is committed to engaging with the biblical text, I would love to see him engaging the issue from a different perspective.  

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This chapter is titled 'Justice and Beauty'. In this chapter Nick makes two important points. First, about the nature of beauty; second, connection between justice and beauty. Nick tells about a poet who spoke about his poetry. This poet says that at one point he scribbled a line of the poetry as ' a dog wagging its tail'; later the poet refined his poetry to say 'a dog swinging its tail'. Why so? Well, 'swinging' is better than using 'wagging'. Nick then makes a philosophical point that beauty does not always lie in the eye of the beholder; it is rather the other way round i.e because it is beautiful, it gives delight to the beholder. There is something called beautiful philosophy paper, beautiful sunset. beautiful music, beautiful painting etc. 

Given that there is something called beautiful, is it injustice if some people are forced to live in a condition where sensory delight that comes from experiencing beautiful object are not present? Yes, argues Nick. Humans are by nature a creature that requires certain amount of autonomy to be truly human. Similarly, human are by nature a creature that requires certain amount of beauty in one's life to be living a truly human life. Justice requires that 'aesthetic decency' is present in a human life. 

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The title of this chapter is 'St. Paul's Rejection of Retributive Punishment'. In this chapter Nick comments on what St. Paul says about the role of the government as one reads in the book of Romans (or rather Paul's letter to the Christians at Rome.) Then he combines this Pauline idea with the idea of punishment. Nick's comment on punishment is illuminating, moving away from the traditional discourse on punishment. 

So what does Paul say about the role of the government when he says that government is the servant of God to execute... wrath on the wrongdoer. 'Vengeance is mine' says our English translation of the Bible. The Greek word for 'vengeance' there is 'ekdikesis'. And Paul is saying that if there is to be vengeance, it's God's job; not ours. But is 'vengeance' government's job? Is government the 'servant' to execute...wrath on the wrongdoer? Nick argues that the idea that God executes vengeance is different from the idea that says that government who is the 'servant'  executes the wrath on the wrongdoer. The state does not execute vengeance; only God does. But what the state does is to punish; not vengeance. But what's the difference between the two?

Vengeance is to pay back evil with evil; it's an eye for an eye kind of thing. Whereas punishment is not quite so. Punishment is to give hard measure but with the intention that includes deterrence, security and reforms. Deterrence so that others will not repeat similar wrongdoing. Reform because such hard measure may serve as a lesson to the wrongdoer and elicit character change. Security because sometimes the person may harm other people if allowed to go on with his usual life. St. Paul does not give a synopsis on a theory of punishment, but understanding punishment with these elements -- deterrence, reform and security -- seems to be a more accurate interpretation than the so called traditional idea that government can punish as if it is exercising vengeance. 

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The title of this chapter is 'A Visit to Honduras'. In this chapter Nick writes about his visit to Honduras and also shares a lesson that he's learnt over the years, which gets re-confirmed from his experience in Honduras. When some people speak about their want for justice, they may use 'justice' in a way that may mean criminal justice i.e which is putting people in jail. But certain people speak about justice, they may be referring to the kind of a situation where social practices cease to perpetuate injustice. For example, seeking for justice in the context of Apartheid South Africa may be trying to rectify practices that discriminate people based on colour. Both kinds of seeking justice are important. 

In Honduras, there is widespread injustice because criminals are not behind bars. Criminal law is not quite alive. When there is corruption, assassination etc. the victims or the poor people are not in a position to seek criminal justice. 'Poor people do not trust the police, the judicial system, or the bureaucracy. The police do not trust the prosecutors; the prosecutors do not trust the police'. If you testify/work against a criminal, the criminal may hire an assassin to kill you, whatever you are. And the result is that criminals continue to get away with their unjust actions. 

Nick then argues that if justice is to prevail, criminal justice must be alive. Without criminal justice, vicious cycle of injustice will continue and eventually a culture of distrust and fear will prevail; and the longer such fear takes hold on the people, the more difficult it is to rectify injustice. 

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This chapter is titled 'The Structure of Social Justice Movements.' Injustice can be meted out to an individual by another individual, but it can also be in the form of one community towards another community over a long period of time. In the latter case, removing injustice gets complicated and oftentimes it takes times too. But history has shown that injustice of such sort has been addressed. Addressing injustice at social level take three stages, generally speaking. First, it involves identifying the victims. Laws may be discriminatory towards certain group of people or it could be public practice or perception. Whatsoever, identifying the victims comes as a first step. Second, it involves responding the situation emotionally. Responding must involve emotions because unless people come up with 'this must not continue anymore', it is unlikely to generate social change. Third, it involves activation, which is to critique the ongoing practice or analyse the source of such practice and then critique. Critiquing this way may generate social conflict because those who perpetuating the practice may not want to change their way of functioning or those who are enjoying power at the expense of the victim may not want to give up power. Given that a social change is required, oftentimes this may generate hostile conflict. 

Of course, Nick mentions that not all the social justice movements may follow this pattern in exact sequence. But then it's fair to generalise the pattern! 

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This chapter is titled 'Human Right'. In this chapter, Nick develops his concept of human right. When we talk about Human Right, one is reminded of the UN Declaration on human right. The UN document gives a list of human right, but it does not explain the concept of human right. One way to arrive at the concept of human right, therefore, is to take UN list and derive a concept out of it; another way is to take the theoretical formulation of philosopher, political theorist, legal scholar etc and arrive at a concept. Being a philosopher, Nick takes the second approach. 

Many accounts of human dignity and therefore human right are grounded on the idea that human have certain capacity; for example, the capacity to reason. This viewpoint has been criticized because it seems to undermine the dignity of those who are unable to reason, say, due to certain sort of deformity. It's just that if my dignity is based on my capacity to reason, then what happens to the dignity of those who are in permanent coma. This viewpoint is therefore problematic. Because of such problem, there are those who don't want to go beyond the point that human persons have dignity and therefore right. 

Nick goes further. In the previous chapter, Nick mentions about the difference between his concept of justice and that of the right order conception of justice. The difference needs to be born in mind if we want to examine whether he is successful in development an account for grounding human right in a consistent manner. Nick says in the previous chapter that a right order theorist holds that "there has to be an external standard of some sort that directly or indirectly bestows rights on them" whereas inherent rights theorist holds that "there does not have to be anything outside them that somehow confers those rights on them". With regard to human right that all human persons possess, Nick writes that God's desire for fellowship upon human persons (and not animals or birds) is that which bestows worth upon human persons. " ...every human being has the honor of being chosen by God as someone with whom God desires to be a friend, and that this desire endures. Then every human being has the equal and ineradicable worth that being so honored bestows on him or her". I understand Nick as saying that it's God's desire for fellowship that bestows human's dignity  or worth that gives rise to human right. Quite fine! 

But the issue when Nick says that I wonder how he is saying that his concept is an inherent right based conception of justice. Because human worth/dignity is not then inherent; it rather is bestowed upon by an external agent i.e God. With regard to right order conception of dignity, he uses the phrase 'external standard', and not 'external agent'. But if one is a right order theorist of justice and a Christian, then it cannot be an abstract standard (remember Plato's Euthyphro) that bestows the worth; the one who bestows the worth has to a person i.e God. Given this leading, I wonder if Nick can consistently claims if his conception of justice is an inherent right based conception of justice. It seems to me that his is also a right order account, at least by this way reasoning about human right. 

There is another point that I find problematic in Nick's account of human right. But I am not dealing with that point here! 

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The title of this chapter is 'Does Scripture Imply a Right Order Conception of Justice?' There was a brief discussion on the difference between right order conception of justice and inherent right conception of justice in chapter 5. In this chapter, Nick gives little more detail between the two. 

Ambrose, Basil and John all based their idea about rights in the Scripture/Bible. They believed that human person possesses certain sort of natural right. Well, proponents of right order conception of justice as well as inherent right conception of justice can both endorse natural right; the difference lies deeper. Nick does not say this, but it seems to me that he is implying that whether Ambrose, Basil and John were all in the former camp -- right order conception of justice -- or in the latter camp -- inherent right conception of justice -- one cannot ascertain; they were not providing a theory of justice and they all assume natural right, which both the camps can endorse. The question, however, is which view fits better with that idea which is explicitly or implicitly there in the Scripture. 

But before a note on the difference between the two conceptions of justice. The former camp holds that having a dignity is not enough to generate right; there has to be an external agent that confers right to a person. This right could be natural right! The latter camp holds that being a human generates certain right. The former camp would say something to the effect that a captain in the army has right to issue command because he has been conferred authority/right to issue command; without an external agent having conferred that authority/right, he would have no right to command and even if he commands, it would mean nothing if he was not given the authority/right to issue command. The latter camp would say to the effect: of course, that example holds true there; but take other instance. Does a parent have authority/right to issue command to her child because of being conferred the position/status by an external agent? No. Does God have authority/right to issue command to human kind because he has been conferred the position  by an external agent? No. God has that right to issue command by virtue of being the creator; and that right is inherent right. 

Nick does not develop an account of inherent right of a human person here; possibly he will do that in later chapter. But his account shows that God has inherent right. And this plausibly suffices to show the inadequacy of right order conception of justice who would insist that rights always must be conferred by an external agent. After all God does not need to be conferred right to possess a right; the right in inherent! 

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There are different sorts of reasons given against rights-talk; against the language of rights being employed to talk about fairness in the society. One of the main arguments against rights-talk, as Nick sees it, is that this sort of thing amounts to strong sense of individualistic thing. 'My right' 'my right' 'my right' kind of thing conveys a sense of individualistic thought. Nick concedes that this might be there, but then the fact that this is there does not mean that we throw out the whole concept of rights. If we throw out the whole concept of rights, this would be throwing the baby with the water. What is the required is that where there is wrong employment of the concept or where there is abuse of rights language, there needs to be correction. After all many social movement like civil rights movement in the US or the movement against apartheid in South Africa and so on employed the language of rights and brought social change, yet they are hardly about excessive individualistic thinking. 

What critics of rights-talk often leave unsaid is what will be lost or what moral category/concept would be lost if this language or concept of rights is altogether discarded. And Nick would venture on to argue that something very key to moral discourse would be lost if this language of right is altogether discarded from our society. Therefore, rights-talk or language of right must continue to be part of our moral discourse. 

Journey Toward South 1

Journey Toward Justice

By Nicholas Wolterstorff

Baker Academic

2013

This is the first chapter of the book. In this chapter Nick tells the story of how he came to believe that he got a call from God through the words of the ones wronged and  that he needs to speak up for the wronged ones. He did not have such a conviction earlier, but after having gone through certain experiences his understanding of things changed. There are two experiences that he tells in the book. 

The first is his encounter of Apartheid in South Africa in a Conference in 1975. In the Conference, he heard and saw blacks and coloured people speaking out angrily about the dehumanising experiences they faced daily due to state policy called Apartheid. The Afrikaners deflected the charge by saying that such a policy was required to enable different people group to maintain their ways of life. They further said that they showed benevolence to these blacks and coloured people by giving them used clothes occasionally, food during Christmas etc. The Afrikaners did not see the issue in term of justice vs. injustice. But Nick saw the issue through the lens of justice vs. injustice. 

The second episode was when Nick was invited for a Conference on Palestinian rights in 1978. He saw and heard from Palestinian themselves about injustice meted out to them. 

Nick asks two questions in this chapter. First, why can't benevolence substitute for justice? Second, why did certain people look into the same eyes, yet not saw the issue as matter of justice/injustice while others saw it that way. Nick defers the answer to later chapters.