Calvin on Gay Marriage

I was recently reading Calvin's discussion of the 10 commandments in his Institutes, as part of my ongoing campaign to understand the contribution of Christian theologians to moral theory.

Calvin discusses each of the commandments, but a couple of his discussions in particular caught my attention. The first was his discussion of the 7th commandment: "You shall not commit adultery." I'll discuss the other in a subsequent post.

Calvin does not base his argument for this commandment on the notion of the importance of families, for example. Rather, he follows in the Greek traditions (e.g., stoic): human beings should strive to rise above their base emotions and instead rely on reason. (Recall the Greek tradition of equating reason (logos) with God.)

With this in mind, Calvin states that the ideal is actually not monogamy but celibacy! Unfortunately, few people are capable of being celibate, so God gives them a backup option of being in a life-long, monogamous relationship.

What's intriguing about this argument is that it applies equally well to heterosexual and homosexual people. A homosexual person, in Calvin's view, should be trying to be celibate, but since, like most people, they likely cannot achieve this, they should limit their sexual activities to be within a life-long monogamous relationship.

In other words, it would seem that Calvin is (perhaps unintentionally) making an argument in support of Gay Marriage.

I found that very interesting. On the other hand, I also think Calvin's view sounds antiquated to modern ears. My general impression is that modern philosophers are fairly critical of the Greek tradition that says all emotions are base and should be ignored and overcome.

From a theological point of view, you would have to wonder, if emotions are bad, then why would God have created them. Unless you take the view that life is simply a test that you must past to get into a subsequent, better reality — a view largely rejected by Protestants, I would think — you are left without an explanation for why emotions should exist at all.

A more attractive view (at least, in my opinion) is that emotions are a critical part of the human experience, and that the meaning of life, at least in some small part, is to experience a full, human life.

This view, by the way, is certainly not anti-Christian. Indeed, Christians place critical importance on God, in the form of Jesus, living a full, human life, including all of the emotions. And indeed, the typical Christian view (as I understand it) is not that Jesus was simply trying to show us that these emotions could be overcome — what one might call the "See. Was that so hard?" Christian tradition.

Before this post runs completely off the rails, though, let me just summarize by saying that Calvin's views, though in some ways antiquated, still make for an interesting read.