Who Creates the Human Social Order?

God, or humans?

The key questions dividing Christians from Christians have changed. They have moved from being questions about doctrine to being questions about the fundamental assumptions Christians bring to the ordering of human society. These in turn hinge on different understandings of the nature of revelation and who has the authority to interpret it.

The recent Vatican Document on Human Dignity has, along with the recent division of the UMC (and earlier divisions in other Christian groups) further lay bear these differences within Christianity. 

On one hand there are those who believe that the ordering of human society, and thus what it means to be human in society, was fixed by God from the beginning of creation. Any deviation from that order is an offense against human dignity. On this view same-sex marriage diminishes human dignity because humans were created for the union of a man and a woman or to be celibate. This doesn't mean humans in a same-sex marriage have no dignity, because they have an inherit individual dignity of a different order. That dignity cannot be denied. As the Vatican document makes clear, as do many traditionalist protestants, it isn't a matter of having dignity versus not having dignity, but recognizing that the fullness of human dignity can only be realized in the divinely mandated social order. 

On the other hand there are those who believe that the task of ordering human society has been given by God to humans on the basis of applying principles rather than implementing divine mandates. Thus under changing circumstances and increases in human knowledge the social order may change in fundamental ways, including those related to marriage and families. In this understanding the fundamental dignity of the human is manifest in making choices about the social order, not least personal choices about what constitute relationships based on divinely revealed principles. These are choices that God has mandated humans to make.

In one approach human freedom must be constrained to maintain human dignity. In the other human freedom must be expanded to maintain human dignity.

The difference between these two understandings of the ordering of human society is rooted in a difference in the understanding of revelation. One understanding is that revelation is essentially the Creator of humans telling humans how they should live. Scripture, as interpreted by the Church, is a user manual for those in possession of a human life. 

The other understanding is that revelation is God making known the basic principles for living a fruitful life and having fruitful human relationships. It is then up to humans themselves to shape their lives and relationships according to those principles in whatever way is best adapted to their particular situation. 

This distinction, and conflict, between a revelation of structures and a revelation of principles is found in other religious traditions besides Christianity. I first encountered it most clearly in 20th century Islamic discourse, but it is present in contemporary Judaism as well. And arguably contemporary Hinduism and Buddhism. 

It arises in turn from changes in the nature of authority in modernity. These changes moved the locus of authority from outside the human person and society to inside the human mind and the relationships between minds. That shift is an essential feature of modern democracy. For what is democracy but humans taking into their own hands the structuring of their social relations?

Of course there are those who want revelation to encompass both fixed human social structures and the principles that guide human freedom. But the democracy that results is always limited, and is not consonant with the full emancipation of the human mind and person. It is democracy as the ability to choose from a small buffet of curated options offered up by religious authorities. And that is not democracy, nor is it in my view the human freedom for which humans were set free by Christ. 

But I again want to emphasize that both views understand scripture to have authority. What is at stake is whether that authority is manifest in delineating structures or delineating principles

(There are those who want it both ways; structures when they like the structures, principles when they don't. But this simply leads to ever more complex forms of hermeneutics until it becomes clear that the only real underlying hermeneutic rule is getting the result the interpreter wants. It is hard to have dialogue with incoherence.)

What this will mean for ecumenical relations remains to be seen. I suspect that the difference between structured and principled understandings of the ordering of human society, and the related difference in understanding and interpreting revelation are irreconcilable. 

The only path forward then is to dispense with seeking agreement on this front, and instead to work toward a mutual understanding on those matters of human action upon which both principled and structured understandings of human social order agree.