A few years ago at a college ministry training event, I was delighted to hear James K.A. Smith speak. As expected, his insights were profound, timely, and gave a useful trajectory for how we might share the gospel with the next generation.
During the Q&A time, however, I asked Smith why - with his love of liturgy, church history, Charles Taylor, etc - he didn’t simply become a Roman Catholic. His answer surprised me. I could not quote it verbatim, but essentially, it came down to the fact that without women in the priesthood, we could not possibly see “the full power of God’s kingdom”, and that we couldn’t fully be living into God’s mission. It struck me as an oddly pragmatic way to think about ethics, orthodoxy, and the like. I was confused by the answer, to be honest. I’d expected something more robust.
But after sitting on it for a few hours, I told a group of my RUF friends and colleagues that I think I figured out why Smith - as intellectually nimble as anyone - had such a seemingly narrow reason for his rejection of the RC church.
“I think he’s affirming. He just hasn’t come out with it yet.” That’s what I said 6 years ago. Something intuitionally about his odd answer told me his trajectory was already set.
Two years ago, those fears were confirmed when a friend of mine wrote to Smith asking for guidance regarding same sex attraction, and Smith recommended James Brownson’s book “The Bible, Gender and Sexuality”, which I read with dismay. The book argues, in essence, that marriage is simply about “forming kinship bonds”, which, really, opens the door to any possible sexual ethic you’d like. The book is built upon the back of dozens of false dichotomies (Marriage is about sameness, so it can’t be about difference; It’s about “kinship” so it can’t be about procreation; The cultural mandate is a blessing, so it can’t be a command, etc.), so it felt out of place to me that Smith bought into such poor logic (I’m not even touching the exegesis!), as a brilliant thinker himself.
The appeal of the book, I’ll admit, is that Brownson does make a successful argument against modern evangelical notions of complementarity, in my mind. However, the danger of the book is that, in response to these poor arguments, Brownson argues for abandoning the vision of the historic, global church’s ethic…which has little or nothing to do with modern evangelicalism’s particular fixations. This was what most surprised me about Smith’s recommendation: The book deals with none of church history’s teaching that sexuality is designed for procreation and that is why gender difference matters.
Here I suppose I should defend this, and clarify the difference between evangelical complementarity and historic, global complementarity. To say that men and women are meant for relationship because they are different - the evangelical tack - is a woefully flimsy defense of orthopraxy. It’s like saying the reason a wheel goes on an axle is because of their “beautiful difference”…just look at how great they look together! Well, okay. Sure. But the difference is about something else: functionality. The wheel and the axle together are “complementary” in the sense that they can drive somewhere when they go together. Procreation has always been the normative compass of the Christians sexual ethic. This is the “driving” function of whatever similarities and differences we have as men and women, much as that can make us evangelicals squirm.
But Brownson’s book makes the exact same evangelical mistake by missing the entire point of complementarity. His book simply shows that the wheel and the axle also have similarities, and maybe that’s why they go together…which misses the point just as widely on the other side. Perhaps, he reasons, the point of wheels and axles is to join more metals together (“kinship bonds”)! So, in that case, who cares which metal we use? Both of these ways of thinking about sexuality are entirely foreign to the way the global, historic church has thought on this issue. Surely Brownson and Smith must know this. They must. Which makes Brownson’s book - and Smith’s endorsement of it - tantamount to theological malpractice.
When I brought this point about the way Brownson’s book sidesteps the global, historic church’s entire argument for sexual ethics to my friend, he pointed to an article by James Smith which argues for a minimalist, creedal-only approach to orthodoxy. Again, my Spidey sense was tingling: the article felt a bit to me like a teenager asking, “So how far is too far, exactly?” because…what are the teenagers looking for? A whole-hearted, cheerful embrace of God’s good plan for marriage? No. Their heart isn’t in it. So, in my estimation, Smith was really arguing for a heartless orthodoxy. The kind of orthodoxy you might have as a Pharisee who follows all the OT laws but misses the greater matters. The question for him became, “Well how far is too far?" And his answer? The creeds. Not the spirit behind them. Not the ethics that flow from them. Not our humility to align ourselves with what all Christians, everywhere, have always believed.
And so, this is where we find him.
But here is the point of all this. Smith has been a great gift to the church. In fact, I’m working through one of his books with a new Christian friend now. Smith is a brilliant apologist. But I take Smith’s journey as a warning to myself, and here’s why. We cultural apologists are always flying close to the sun. Tertullian, a brilliant Christian apologist, eventually became a heretic. As did Origen. And yes, as did Smith.
But that is because the task of apologetics is a bit pragmatic. Sure, there is plenty of Christianity that I’ve learned to translate in a way that lands with those skeptical of the faith. But there are, and always will be, places where no matter how compelling, clever or winsome our arguments are, the cross is simply too much to bear. Sexuality, in our generation, is one such issue. I do think I’ve learned how to frame the Christian sexual ethic in a way that is far more helpful to unbelievers than the typical evangelical approach. But at the end of the day, I’ve watched many rich young rulers walk away from the cross at this point.
This feels, as an evangelist, like a failure.
So I understand moving the goal posts. I really, really do: “I’ve not yet figured out how to make this point of Christian faith compelling. Let me try this way. Now this way. Still not working…still not working…well what if it’s not working because it’s just not right in the first place?” I’ve started down this road, as an apologist, time and again. So I disdain critiques of Smith which suggest that he has somehow caved into peer pressure. Surely he’s lost far more than he’s gained, and he knows that, from a career perspective.
But at the end of the day, I must look to Jesus, the most compelling man of all time, who translated God’s kingdom into typical, everyday language, dealt with objections, lived the most beautiful life imaginable…and was left alone, at last, on the cross. That is the Jesus I follow. And that is the Jesus, at the end of the day, to which all of us cultural apologists must pledge our allegiance.