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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
In an article published in this journal in December 1980 I sought to draw out some of the moral and theological implications of a punitive attitude on the part of the Church towards a kind of minority which it could not comprehend and by which it felt challenged. Since that time it has been borne in upon me, both through experience and through discursive reasoning that the implications are far deeper and more terrible than I had thought. For that reason I beg the indulgence of readers for a further exploration. I am aware that such a fusion of introspection and exospection is spiritually dangerous, since the subjective and objective can only coinhere in one who is pure in heart. Nonetheless, I feel that the effort is worth the risk.
I should perhaps explain at the outset that my own theology is rapidly developing in a radical ‘materialist’ direction; that is to say, my understanding of both the Gospel kerygma and Tradition is confirming my intuition that the material, and in particular our being-in-body, has normative spiritual value. I am not at all shocked by Bishop John Robinson’s suggestion in the famous lady Chatterly trial that sexual intercourse has precise sacramental signification. Those who cannot go along with this perspective will not be able fully to appreciate the following argument and may even be offended by it. Reader, be warned!
1 Pinnington, Judith, “Sexual Minorities as a Challenge to Christian Fellowship”, New Blackfriars, Vol. 61 (1980). pp 524–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Vagaggini, Cipriano, O.S.B. The Flesh: Instrument of Salvation ‐ A Theology of the Human Body, (New York, 1969), pp 128–9Google Scholar
3 von Hildebrand, Dietrich, Liturgy and Personality (2nd ed. Baltimore, 1960). p 10Google Scholar.
4 Ibid. p23.
5 Vagaggini, op. cit. p 19.
6 MerleauPonty, Maurice, Phenomenologie de h perception (Paris, 1945), p 231Google Scholar.
7 Cf. Schillebeeckx, Edward O P, Christ the Encounter with God. (London, 1963). pp 92–93Google Scholar.
8 Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh in Allchin, A. M. (ed), Sacrament and Image: Essays in the Christian Understanding of Man, (London, 1967), pp 37–38Google Scholar; Wisdom, 19:18; Sachs, Curt, Rhythm and Tempo, (New York, 1953), p 13Google Scholar.
9 In Allchin, op. cit. p 10.
10 Dimitru Staniloae, “Christian Responsibility in the World”, Romanian Altar Almanach, 1973, pp 77–18.
11 Lossky, Vladimir, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, (London, 1957), pp 119–20Google Scholar.
12 St Maximus the Confessor, “Answer to Talasie” in the Philokalia, cited by Staniloae in “Divine Economy ‐ the Basis of Church Economy”, Romanian Altar Al‐manach, 1914/5, p 48; Berdyaev cited by Evgeny Lampert in The Tablet, 16 Nov. 1974; Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh in Allchin, op. cit. p 36.
13 Staniloae, “Christian Responsibility”, op. cit. pp 77–78.
14 St Macarius the Great, Homilies, V, 9 (Migne, Pat. Graec., 513, CD.)
15 Vagaggini, op. cit. pp 130–2;cf. Clément, Olivier, “Living in the Body”, Ecumenical Review, Vol 33 (1981), pp 128–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Clément, ibid. pp 128–30. Clément comments that despite its being essentially a religion of incarnation Christianity has been largely at a loss to know how to cope with bodyconsciousness.
17 Hildebrand has written that the genuineness of being a person is to be found in the state in which a person's external being is not stamped ‘inorganically’ on the inner being but is a genuine projection. Liturgy and Personality, p 15. I am not at all happy with Siter Ruth Burrows' rather dismissive reference to “the fine control of the mind” as if selfdetermination was a hindrance to knowledge of God. Buddhist self‐emptying of the mind is certainly dangerous, but a Chrisian‐humanist search for balance in both body and mind seems to me to be a condition for loving. Cf. Burrows, , Guidelines for Mystical Prayer, (London, 1976), p 19Google Scholar.
18 Robinson, J. A. T., The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology, (London, 1952), p 10Google Scholar. Lossky pointed out in 1953 the difficulty which the Pre‐Vatican II Roman Church had found in trying to revive the doctrine of the Church as the Body of Christ. It was, he thought, in danger of replacing one type of totalitarianism (the juristic) with another (the psychoantological). By teaching that Christ, as it were, contained in Himself all human beings who were members of the Church, it somehow threatened the uniqueness of individual persons. Having escaped from a theological determinism it thus fell into a sacramental determinism. Cf. his In the Image and Likeness of God, (London and Oxford, 1974), p 105Google Scholar.
19 Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis. 6.
20 Vagaggini, op. cit. p 75.
21 Ibid, p 137.
22 Ibid. p50.
23 Cf Maynard Clarke's review of J. N. D. Kelly's Jerome in The Listener, Vol 94 (1975), 767 and Ruth Burrows, op. cit.
24 Vagaggini, op. cit. p 144.
25 The recusant theologian, Nicholas Sander, wrote much the same in 1566 when he argued that in the new birth of the sacramental economy both flesh and spirit are recreated so that at the Last Day the whole body (“same flesh”) will rise agah in virtue of it.
26 St Symeon the New Theologian, “Hymns of Divine Love”, cited by A. M. Allchin in his The Kingdom of Love and Knowledge, (London, 1979). p 43Google Scholar.
27 Robert G. Stephanopoulos in Meyendorff, John & McLelland, Joseph (eds), The New Man: An Orthodox and Reformed Dialogue, (New Brunswick, N J 1973), pp 15660Google Scholar.
28 Vagaggini, op. cit. p 144.
29 St Thomas, Summa, III, 69 a 4 ad 2, 80 a 1 ad 3; De Veritate, 27 a 4 c.
30 Vagaggini, op. cit. pp 138–42.
31 Ignatius of Antioch, Ep. Eph. 5: 2; Vagaggini, p 71.
32 Taplin, E. O., On Spiritual Gifts, (London, 1833)Google Scholar.
33 Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh in Allchin, Sacrament and Image, op. cit. p 41; Evdokimov, Paul, L 'Orthodoxie, (Neuchatel, 1965), p 73Google Scholar.
34 Cf. Stephanou, Eusebius A., “Can anyone claim he is saved The Logos, VIII (1975). 14;Google Scholar Berdyaev, Nicolas, The Destiny of Man, (London, 1938), pp 334–5Google Scholar. For the reference to the ikon see Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh in Allchin, Sacrament and Image, op. cit. pp 40–41.
35 See the essay by John Davies in the forthcoming (1983) volume to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Oxford Movement, Essays Chtholic and Radical, ed. Kenneth Leech and Rowan Williams.
36 Hildebrand, op. cit. pp 76–77.
37 Stephanou, Eusebius A., “The Medicine of Immortality: Antidote against Death”, The Logos, V (1972), 54.Google Scholar
38 Irenaeus, , Adv. Haer. V, 2.Google Scholar
39 Stephanopoulos, op.cit. p 159.
40 Soelle, Dorothee, Suffering, (London & Philadelphia, 1975) p 76Google Scholar.
41 Jungel, Eberhard, Tod (Berlin 1971)Google Scholar. cited by Soelle, op. cit.
42 Wadimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, op. cit.pp 112, 115, 120, 122–3
43 For thorough catena of quotations from Ignatius' letters, see Vagaggini, op. cit. p 69.n15.
44 Cf. Vagagghi, pp 97–126; St Thomas, Summa, III 3 d 22 q 3 a 3 q 1 ad 3.
45 Cf. Vagaggini, p 65.
46 Athanasius, Contra Arianos, III, 33, 57 (Migne, P. G. 26, 396, 444); Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catechetical Discourse, c. 37 (P. G. 45, 93 A ‐ 97B); John Chrysos‐tom, In Jo. Hom, 46, 3 (P. G. 59, 260).
47 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Temptation, (London, 1955)Google Scholar, p 10;Cullmann, Oscar, Salvation in History, (London, 1965) pp 78, 116, 123Google Scholar; Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, op. cit. pp 160–1.
48 Quoted in Stoller, Robert J., Sex and Gender: On the Development Of Masculinity and Femininity, (London, 1968), p 200Google Scholar.
49 Wed, Simone, Waiting for God, (New York, 1951), pp 122, 125Google Scholar; cf. Duncan Fallo‐well quoted by Tina Brown in The Tatler, March 1982, p 125.
50 Soelle, op. cit. pp 1389. Cf. Joanna Lyall, “Quarantine of Grief”, The Observer, 3 May 1981.
51 Soelle, ibid. pp 61. 69.
52 Ladislas, Boros, Meeting God in Man. (London, 1968) pp 16, 18, 36, 68, 121Google Scholar.
53 Lossky, In the Image. op. cit. pp 106–9.
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