#oths

Eschatology, properly viewed, is thus not correlative with a dematerial­ization of creation, nor can it serve as a form of “religious escapism” di­verting attention from time, history, and social affairs. Far from lending support to such hollow goals, it can actually kick­start critical theological reflection to a whole new level: As a merciless deconstructor of cultural tri­umphalism and historical determinism, eschatology looks at history as an unpredictable and inconclusive affair, maintaining that the best is yet to arrive—albeit not without terrible setbacks at every turn in history. In that capacity, eschatology is uniquely endowed to undermine theological com­placency, conventional thought, and fixed perspectives on life that block social change. Above all, eschatology urges Christians to resist the temp­tation of glorifying (and, in effect, idolizing) the past, in recognition of the intrinsic imperfection of every historical era and human accomplish­ment. It nurtures constant alertness and readiness for the unfamiliar and the unpredictable, thereby training the mind to ceaselessly expand its frame of reference.

Alongside the willingness to face historical challenges head on, to be able to exercise its prophetic ministry, the Christian Church must be ahead of society, not behind it (i.e., the opposite of what it has mostly done in its historical record, invoking as it does an ossified view of “tradition” usually turned into an idol). ... the Eschaton poses an ontological priori­tizing of the future (the promised Kingdom of God—i.e., creation in its conclusive form, as God ever intended it, had the Fall not intervened), from which flows a reverse causality rearranging past events under the Kingdom’s lights. As an outcome of divine initiative (independently of historical evo­lution), this posthistorical vision of the Kingdom affords us a vantage nor­mative yardstick by which to arraign any preceding historical milieu, even the most glorious, as at best incomplete and wanting—as inescapably fall­ing far short of divine righteousness, inclusiveness, and catholicity. The Es­chaton, as alluded to in the Gospels, promises startling reversals of what we have perennially thought of as natural and appropriate. It is the unfa­miliar terrain where “the last shall be first and the first last,” the trans­formed landscape where death, from a biological perspective the most natural thing in the world, is no more.

Thus, sexuality seems to refer to two things, one very specific and the other more general. Specifically, sexuality means sexual orientation: that is, the sex of a person to whom someone’s sexually attracted. In this sense, sexuality is bound to an individualized and physicalized desire, assuming that sexual enactment somehow exhausts it. More broadly, sexuality is everything about someone’s personhood and energy: the way they interact with others and the world. In this second understanding, sexuality is about everything that stimulates our excitement, creativity, and engagement with the world around us. In this sense, sexuality is linked to a broader understanding of desire(s). In this sense, desire is a very inclusive term (referring to a mode of being—that is, to longing itself). (...) In terms of the patristic tradition, desire is no less than that which continuously animates us to God, as Gregory of Nyssa also taught: It gives us the energy of the participation in the divine life.

The most important implication of the decree [Novella 89 by Byzantine Emperor Leo VI] was that the Church was invested with the responsibility of giving legal status to mar­riage, something quite unusual in the previous centuries. (...) The new situation, in principle, gave the Church an upper hand over the morals of all citizens, but the Church had to pay a high price for the new social responsibility that it had received. One serious consequence of this development was the obliteration of the distinction between the “secular” and the “sacred,” (...) and in our case between the so­ called marriage as contract or civil marriage of the time and marriage as sacrament, since the Church was obliged not only to bless marriages that it did not approve, but even to “dissolve” them (i.e., give “divorces”). (...) As soon as the sacrament of marriage—received in the Church—became legally obligatory, compromises of all sorts be­came unavoidable; and, simultaneously, the idea that marriage was a unique and eternal bond—reflecting the union of Christ and the Church—was obliterated in the pastoral practice of the Church and in the conscience of the faithful. Emperor Leo VI himself, the au­thor of the novella, forced upon the Church his own fourth marriage with Zoe Carbonopsina in 906.

Though the evidence is not plentiful, yet there is indisputable material wit­ness from earliest Christianity right through the Byzantine era of persons who lived as committed, long-­term, same-­sex couples. (...) Several homoerotic love charms survive from the early Christian period, on papyri or lead tablets. One, a lead tablet from Upper Egypt, presents a woman, Sophia, beseeching the attraction of an­other woman, Gorgonia, through a spell invoking powers to “inflame the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore.” Papyri charms besought the attraction of one woman for another woman, or one man for another man, “now, now; quickly, quickly,” “soul and heart.” Such evidence does not contain emotional content in forms we might easily recognize, nor does it indicate sexual activity. But it does preserve the names of real men and women in relationships otherwise occluded.

In theological trajectory the Orthodox Church differs radically from the Protestant denominations that emerged from the Reformation. Whereas the latter are leaning on the foundation of a single biblical corpus, Ortho­dox theologizing cannot rely on one voice or one library of texts but needs to engage the whole complex heritage of the Church. (...) Orthodox theology knows no car­tesian secure foundation for knowledge but a dynamic cohabitation with the Spirit. (...) Tradition cannot simply embrace the “stupid mistakes” of the past, nor imagine that antiquity trumps novelty. Tradition leaves no easy solutions. Tradition draws no simple maps for the future. Tradition comes with trans­formation.