So, I’m working on Das Elefant – I’ve got two chapters to go – and am enjoying writing about Nestorius’ Marian thinking. So far so good.

Problem is, one translation of his Book of Hereklides is preferred to another, and . . . .it’s in French! I’ve only recenly broke down and decided to succumb and learn French after refusing to do so for over 30 years. Romance languages simply don’t do it for me – and one look at the “seven compound verbs” makes me reach for the hruškovica.

But never fear – technology is here! My lovely Mac comes with an auto translate program which gives one no end of amusement as the following example from Nau’s French edition of Nestorius’ text demonstrates.

Here’s the French: “il en est ainsi au sujet des (deux) natures qui sont séparées dans l’essence, mais qui sont unies par l’amour et dans le même prosôpon.”

Ok. . . .now here’s the mechanical translation from my computer into English: “it is thus about (two) natural which is separate in the gasoline, but which is linked by the love and in same the prosôpon.”

*BOOM* – So essentially if I follow this translation our Lord’s incarnation was a rather explosive event! Poor Mary!

Thankfully this was a test run – and I do have an english translation of this phrase which (assuming McGuckin (pg. 162) is a decent translator) should read as follows: “He is the subject of the two natures which are separated in essence, but united by love, and in one and the same prosopon.”

This morning I watched the most recent clips from PBS’ Religion & Ethics Weekly which I often enjoy. In this week’s batch is this report on the challenge faced by Christian communities in California now that gay “marriage” is legal.

One point raised in the interviews got me thinking, on the topic in a way I had previously not. One Presbyterian minister pointed out that this creates a situation of finalising, to seal an arrangement between two people which “is not of God’s design”.

This idea of “God’s design” for the mode of human relationships is of course an important one. As I understand the teaching and tradition of our faith – at its root the idea is that the other is a reflection, an icon of Christ, thus we approach our relationships with him or her as we would approach our relationship with the Master. Later in the same interview another Presbyteran minister raised the point that our contemporary expression of “God’s design” for our relationships does not approve of models deemed perfectly acceptable in Scripture. Today we do not allow men to have multiple wives, and there is no social, religious or legal recognition of concubines (slaves).

Here we are faced with an immediate challenge – how do we OC/IC folk approach Scripture?

Normally when I think of Lv. 18.22 I reflect on the holiness code of priests serving in the temple in Jerusalem. Now I’m sitting here reflecting on an entirely diferent approach – it’s both fun and enlightening. If our basic approach to relationships is to see the divinity in the other, if a particular bond is deep, enriching, and unites two people of the same gender, how could it not be according to “God’s design”?

I can think of one problem with this model – balance. Both Genesis and the writings of Paul extol the balance and contributions of male and female in a “whole” image of human nature. The challenge here is to talk about how, as a community we address this idea of complimentary wholeness. It seems to me that it takes us down a path that I’ve often thought about (and I’m not the only one, others have written some rather interesting books and articles on it) we have, it seems, placed such emphasis on “marriage” and the theology of marriage that we’ve left other relationships out in the cold. The result I think is that we’ve been living in theological poverty – not getting the full benefit of the teaching to approach one another as icons of Christ – a model that is seriously “un-balanced” and lacking wholeness.

Here, I think, is where we OC/IC folk can once again be a vanguard – our openness to new ideas and new expressions of our tradition is both a blessing and a curse – here, however, I think it can be a real blessing. Most of our communities are not victims to what I’ve previously called “the cult of the family” – this means that we have a different perspective on the composition of our relationships, and our communities. Perhaps we could begin by sharing our individual experiences of different relational models. Perhaps too, we could call upon the wealth of examples in Scripture and Tradition to point the way out of this unhealthy over-dependence on a single model. I’m sure you can think of other ways that we can constructively engage with the theology of other relationships.