Tuesday, May 22, 2012

"I'm Against it Personally, But it Should Be Legal"

(Follow up to a previous article on gay marriage)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the deluge of comments on this matter on Facebook and here. There was a common theme running through many of the comments, and especially the ones coming from professed Christians. It went something like this: We shouldn't impose our private ethical views upon the populace, or something to that effect. I decided to write a brief post on this to expose what I believe to be a serious logical deficiency in the various arguments I heard. I'm hoping this will cut through some of the inherent vagueness in the Church and state matter as well.

Let me first arrange the argument I heard in a clear logical syllogism:

Premise 1 - If our ontological (beliefs about reality) and epistemological (beliefs about knowledge) commitments are not shared by a significant portion of the population, then we should not attempt to impose our views by enshrining them as public/state values (laws).

Premise 2 - The ontology and epistemology of Christianity are not shared by a significant portion of the population.

Conclusion - Christians should not attempt to enshrine their values as law.

I think this is fair to the position of many people on the topic. But surely we can readily see that if premise 1 is true, then there can be no reason for Christians to publicly promote any of their values. Not only would this stultify any Christian votes with respect to gay marriage, but it would also shut out any Christian influence in the public square, even in matters like abortion. Why should we promote our values when others disagree as to the ontological status of the unborn? Won't we just offend people and do damage to the gospel?

And so the Christian must resign from public discourse on matters of state values. And get this, it is the Christians among us arguing this. Now that is truly amazing! Christians are telling other Christians to just shut up and keep our opinions to ourselves in the churches. And so we are losing the worldview battle from the bottom up, and we are losing the political battle from the top down. But it should be clear that we are losing not because of any defect in Christian truth. The defect is in the Christians.

Back to the argument above for a moment. What if we were to consider democracy itself in the context of that argument. Is democracy an ideology that came from a certain ontology and epistemology? And isn't it the case that there are significant numbers who disagree with the ontology and epistemology from which it flows? So should we then impose democracy itself on anyone? The logic of this appears to be, well, flawed.

Perhaps what my interlocutors meant was something like this:

Premise 1 - All laws are ontologically and epistemologically grounded.

Premise 2 - Some ontologies and epistemologies promote only private laws.

Conclusion - Some laws are to be only private laws.

So can anyone suggest that Christianity is consistent with premise 2? Does it promote only private laws? Does it make no claims of public import? Does it not offer a stern critique of Jewish culture and law, or Roman culture and law, or American culture and law? If it is meant to be a sub-culture utterly cut off from any public influence, then of course it will be a threat to no one. The reason it was a threat in Rome was because the Romans knew that Christian claims had far-flung implications for the state. Our flaccid Christianity in this nation is a threat to nothing!

And what of other ideologies influencing the state presently, such as metaphysical naturalism, postmodernism, etc.? Are they going to maintain fidelity to premise 2? Not likely!

One last thought. Yes, there are some practices within the Church that need not be promoted to the state. But surely there are others that should. It is just silly to suggest that we should wait for ontological and epistemological homogeneity before we cast a vote on these urgent matters (such as the definition of marriage and the status of the unborn, at least).