Creation and Covenant - A guest post by Chris Roberts

 

This is a guest post by Chris Roberts, the author of Creation and Covenant:  

Creation and Covenant is, in part, a survey of the history of the theology of marriage, from the patristic era to the present. I began the project because I was agnostic and confused about traditional sexual ethics, but, by the end of the project, I found myself persuaded by the traditional arguments.

For me, the story begins in the late 1990's, when I was a journalist for PBS television. I got my start as Bill Moyers' research assistant, and eventually became a correspondent for the program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. I covered gay marriage debates for that program, including the Lambeth Conference in 1998 and the World Council of Churches meeting in Zimbabwe that same year.

While covering those debates, I was disappointed with both the liberal and conservative arguments that I heard. On the one hand, progressives tended to root their arguments in the experience of gays and lesbians, as well as appealing to notions of autonomy and justice. I was never persuaded that those arguments were sufficiently theological; these arguments did not seem to address the doctrines of creation, sin, Christology, or ecclesiology in sufficient depth.

On the other hand, I wasn't finding the ordinary conservative arguments particularly persuasive either. I would interview Bishops and activists who would thunder about order, tradition, and scripture. Little of that sounded like good news to me; these arguments were not transparent to joy and love, and I thought that a properly theological account should ultimately lead to a place of joy and love.

One thing lead to another, and I realized that this issue required me to think through some of the basics of my faith. Having spent several years as a journalist "in the field," I then proceeded to essentially lock myself in a library for five years, and the result is this book. I studied Tatian, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Barth, John Paul II and a slew of contemporary authors.

In each case, I tried to follow the links between basic theological beliefs about creation, the fall, God's covenant with Israel and in Christ, as well as the human person, and to see how those beliefs enabled ethical proposals about marriage, sexual differences, and celibacy. In the end, I conclude two things: (1) there is a thread of continuity across the Christian tradition with respect to the theology of marriage, and that thread is beautiful and persuasive. (2) recent progressive attempts to revise Christian sexual ethics tends to be theologically inadequate, and liberals should not expect to persuade the church at large until they attend to the lacunae in their arguments.

In the end, the research for this book lead me to embrace orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. I hope that people who sympathize with this perspective will appreciate the book for its clear restatement of often under-developed and latent ideas within the tradition. Meanwhile, I hope that those who disagree with my conclusions - such as the undecided types that I once was, and the liberals with whom I interact - will feel like my book raises the standard of conversation for everyone, and helping them in particular to make better and more precise arguments.

Comments

[Michael Bird]

Sounds like a fascinating book!