Tom’s Big Picture

Al Mohler recently got himself attacked from both the dogmatic left and right by posting the following piece talking about the possible biological origins of homosexuality:

www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=891

For my part, I find it hard to believe that it could truly be genetic, especially occurring as often as claimed in the sheep studies. Microevolution would deal with that defect quite handily it would seem. However, the fetal development of male mammals would imply some level of vulnerability. While genetically male, every male starts out as female, and as I have heard it explained, there are three relatively discrete exposures to testosterone that occur during fetal development that develop the three essential traits of the male organism:

1. The most robust feature, the development of male anatomy. Though, there are rare women out there who are women in every way but who have an XY genotype but never experienced any of the testosterone exposure, even this first one.

2. The second feature, and second most robust, that of sexual attraction to females. The “female” fetus with an XY genetic code must have its brain reprogrammed by testosterone to hard-wire attraction to females, and,

3. The third feature, and least robust, is male behavior patterns and male ways of thinking. This tends to produce male traits like logical thinking, male ego, reduced emotional response, etc, i.e. male personality traits.

We can see how these three discrete testosterone exposures can function like dip switches to produce the variety of phenotypes (i.e. the physical manifestation of a genotype) of the same genotype, XY. We have homosexual-inclined males, who obviously received burst 1, but not bursts 2 and 3. We have heterosexual males with feminine personality traits, which would reflect bursts 1 and 2 without burst 3. And of course, there would likely be a normal distribution and continuum surrounding these “discrete” bursts, as everything is variable to some degree.

The interesting thing about this is that it is all incredibly Calvinistic, which I think accounts for the evangelical criticism of Mohler’s comments. If one must believe in free will, as most evangelicals do, then we must all have “equal opportunity” for sin, or else our conception of justice is misinformed. Cognitive dissonance ensues, causing the usual reaction of shooting the messenger of uncomfortable news.

Phenomena like this explain my own reluctant embrace of Calvinism. My main reasons for finally resolving myself to the concept of predestination are A) it is the only internally consistent and logical explanation for our understanding of God and B) it accounts for observed phenomena like the possible predestination of some people for sinful, destructive behavior.

My objections to Calvinism reflected my own offended sense of justice. One of the darkest Biblical verses from a Calvinist view is from Romans 9:

9:21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? 9:22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: 9:23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.

The thing that always bothered me about this vessels of wrath concept was offense at the idea that I myself might have the unlucky role to play as a vessel of wrath. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the concept of total depravity implies that anyone worried about being a vessel of wrath probably isn’t, but has been gifted by God with conviction of his sin and thus is well on his way to being a vessel of mercy.

Throughout college, I resisted Calvinism, often arguing against it with my roommates- the problem with arguing about it is that free will requires a lot more faith, since I would estimate that the Bible is 70%/30% biased in favor of a Calvinistic view. I had to fall back on essentially existential arguments about justice, making “fairness” the arbiter over Scripture and logic.

The final fall was logic itself. In college physics and chemistry, one learns about the concepts of relativity and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. These are complicated mathematical expressions of observed reality that make no sense to the human brain. Yet, observed data confirms their essential truth. If the hard data of science could show that human senses are more unreliable than abstract, impossible-to-really-understand mathematical expressions, then it would also be possible for the human sense of justice to be limited in its perspective as well.

What seals the deal for me logically is chaos theory- this is the idea that things only appear random because we lack information on the hyper-sensitive initial conditions of a chaotic function. A roll of the dice or weather are examples of such functions- they are not truly random, but are hyper-sensitive to small, unknowable changes to human senses that make them appear random.

Similarly, unless we completely reject our Western heritage and the idea, first derived independently by Aristotle, of a completely omniscient and omnipotent God (an example end-run around this is what’s known as “Kingdom Theology”, which holds that God does not know the future and exists within time), then we must assume that God knows every function and every initial condition, including the chemical reactions in our very brains that determine what we do and who we are. And that when He laid the foundation of the Universe, and at every subsequent “edit” with Creation and Man, He knew exactly what changes in initial conditions would be wrought and thus the exact outcomes of His actions. Thus, predestination happens by default, which means it happened on purpose since God had the means to modify the initial conditions as He saw fit.

I have hope that God did the best He could to optimize the equations, to maximize the number that would be predestined into the Kingdom without violating His holiness. But it would not be required on His part.

Which brings us back to Mohler’s points. Many Calvinists insist that those predestined were out of “God’s pleasure” and nothing worthy in those predestined. This is technically true, since all deserve eternal punishment. But I’m not sure that it’s very useful practically, as any practical application would imply a somewhat random distribution of the predestined, when what we see are clumps of the elect, running through families, nations, tribes, maybe even genes themselves. In fact, if God DID optimize the equation, then genetics would be one of the most robust (i.e. relatively insensitive to initial conditions) ways to maximize the elect.
Our genes are no credit to ourselves either, since we didn’t get to choose them- they are a gift, or a curse, as the case may be. And God obviously will save some in spite of predilections to the contrary, to increase His glory in individual cases, but this would not change the overall slant of evidence.

Twin studies have shown that genetics account for 44% of a person’s likelihood to be religious. Now Mohler reports that specific sins may have their own biological markers.

I used to agree with this statement by Luther regarding the utility of Calvinism as a practical concept:

A dispute about predestination should be avoided entirely… I forget everything about Christ and God when I come upon these thoughts and actually get to the point to imagining that God is a rogue. We must stay in the word, in which God is revealed to us and salvation is offered, if we believe him. But in thinking about predestination, we forget God . . However, in Christ are hid all the treasures (Col. 2:3); outside him all are locked up. Therefore, we should simply refuse to argue about election.Such a disputation is so very displeasing to God that he has instituted Baptism, the spoken Word, and the Lord’s Supper to counteract the temptation to engage in it. In these, let us persist and constantly say., I am baptized I believe in Jesus. I care nothing about the disputation concerning predestination.

For this you should know: All such suggestions and disputes about predestination are surely of the devil.

From his commentary on Romans:

In chapters 9, 10 and 11, St. Paul teaches us about the eternal providence of God. It is the original source which determines who would believe and who wouldn’t, who can be set free from sin and who cannot. Such matters have been taken out of our hands and are put into God’s hands so that we might become virtuous. It is absolutely necessary that it be so, for we are so weak and unsure of ourselves that, if it depended on us, no human being would be saved. The devil would overpower all of us. But God is steadfast; his providence will not fail, and no one can prevent its realization. Therefore we have hope against sin.

But here we must shut the mouths of those sacriligeous and arrogant spirits who, mere beginners that they are, bring their reason to bear on this matter and commence, from their exalted position, to probe the abyss of divine providence and uselessly trouble themselves about whether they are predestined or not. These people must surely plunge to their ruin, since they will either despair or abandon themselves to a life of chance.

Luther couldn’t have known at the time, but the concept may have more practical utility than we think, especially if the line of predestination manifests itself in physical form in our very genetic code.