Power and Purity by Mark T. Mitchell

Author:Mark T. Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gateway Editions
Published: 2020-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7 Life, Death, Sex, Babies, and Gender

For the past several decades, controversies related to life and sex have been at the heart of the so-called culture wars. This is not surprising, for these questions go to the heart of our understanding of what it means to be human. As that understanding changes—or more accurately, as our views diverge—tensions will increase. Tensions are high because there are competing ideas of what it means to be human. These differences are not easy to resolve, but they can be identified.

In the Christian West, human beings have long been understood to possess an inherent dignity by virtue of their creation in God’s image. Men ought to be treated with respect; murder, theft, and lying are wrong. From this understanding emerge doctrines of equality and human rights. This view of the human person begins with a theological claim and builds from there. Remove the theological foundation, and the entire edifice goes wobbly.

From this view there also emerges a certain teleology—that is, an understanding of the design or purpose in nature. Aristotle was able to construct a teleological account of human nature without the benefit of Christian theology, but he did ultimately rely on a divine principle he called the Unmoved Mover. Christians easily appropriated his basic structures and gave a specific name to this hitherto anonymous Mover of All Things. Aristotle and his later Christian appropriators argued that all things are endowed with a nature. A thing thrives by living in accordance with its nature. Man’s proper ends include seeking knowledge, having friends, and caring for his children. To revel in ignorance, to live a life without friends, to abuse one’s offspring—all of these are indicators of an unhappy, unhealthy life, one ill-suited to human beings. One can ground such an account in a conception of nature, but as Aristotle’s work indicates, teleology tends, perhaps unavoidably, toward theology.

In Christian thought, the sexual urge is seen as natural and proper to human beings. It leads to the continuation of the species and fosters the bond between husband and wife, who are charged with caring for the children begotten by the sexual union. These children are, in turn, God’s image-bearers, and parents inherit a profound responsibility to raise them so that they too will acknowledge their responsibilities to God, their parents, and future generations.

Sex is therefore natural, but best expressed within limits. Marriage between a man and a woman is the proper context for sexual expression. Sex requires a sort of discipline. It is not simply the expression of love or a source of pleasure but a union of two physically and otherwise complementary persons for the purpose of procreation, communion—and yes, pleasure.

Nietzsche, of course, would have none of this. In denying God, he necessarily denied teleology. He denied that nature is designed with a purpose or that human nature in particular is morally ordered toward definitive ends. There is only the will to power. The strong prevail and the weak submit. There is no good

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