It seems like there isn't really such a distinction. In reality both are motivated by feelings, which can be placed in either register depending on if one sees feelings as something belonging to the body or the mind. Or rather if one sees the mind as a part of the body or the body as a part of the mind.
Given our materialistic culture most would probably stuff it all in the lower register.
Affirming sees it as a case of empathy or that the homosexuality feels natural. While the confirming feel that their tradition and order gives a security and that something is lost with changes.
I actually started making a video about this, and my answer to this particular part of the discussion is that it goes back to the internal conflict in the Bible. The conflict between Jesus and Paul. Where the affirming priorities Jesus, while the confirming prioritize Paul.
The conflict can only be solved if that underlying conflict is solved. Which one should have priority?
(of course Jesus isn't always so forgiving and Paul isn't always so demanding. They have both sides, but there is a stronger weight towards one thing for them).
Your insight on the fronting of differing themes confessionally is really helpful. The following line is something, however, I find quite unsettling.
"The mis-aligned flesh should through technology and society be brought into conformity with the revealed (inner, upper-register) experience for authentic fulfilment."
It has an overly idealized/utopian sort of bent and I can't help but recall an essay on Tolkien's use of the Ring of Power in Lord of the Rings as a symbol for technology. We may have the power to change ourselves, society, and the world. But as Gandalf lamented to Frodo, "I would use this Ring from a desire to do good. But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine." If we are bent at the core - what monstrous things might we unleash on the world in the name of the 'good?'
Paul, I am dying to have a conversation with you about this but for the last few months every time I've checked your one-on-one conversation availability calendar nothing has come up. Is there a certain period I should check for, maybe in the new year? I think that discussing my story and perspective on where the church is at and this cultural issue would be very fun and interesting for the both of us. Love your content! And I pray for you and your church everyday.
Former baptized and professing member of the CRCNA here...
Paul, I see you are framing this in terms of a culture war, but where is Jesus Christ in all this? Is the God Incarnate on the side of an abstract set of sexual norms or on the side of concrete, individual persons?
The division between a "higher" and "lower" register overlooks that individual persons are not one or the other. They are a synthesis of both--and as a synthesis of both, they (as Kierkegaard says) will work out their salvation in fear and trembling. I worry that such an analytic division between higher and lower prevents you from encountering persons in the places and times of their lives.
When a member of the Confessing CRCNA comes to the end of their life and stands before the throne of God, how impressed will the Almighty, the Holy One of Israel, be when he looks down and sees that they spent a good portion of their life denying persons who identified as homosexual standing in the CRCNA? Do we think that the same Jesus who supped with prostitutes and sinners is going to applaud such efforts?
The real culture war is between persons defending abstract propositional truths and persons demanding we pay attention to our fellow human beings.
John 1 describes how the Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us, so I am comfortable inferring that the priorities of the Confessing CRCNA are way out of whack here.
Dear Paul I thought the synopsis of my book would explain the collapse of our western world and our Neo-Platonic Christian culture:
Our Western cultural conversation, as invented by Plato, is made up of a dialectic between unity and diversity. Plato had thought to harmonize the unchangeableness of Parmenides with the constant change of the thinker Heraclitus. He invented this uni-verse in which we have, up until now, been happily living. Unfortunately, the diversity/progressive side of this conversation has now destroyed whatever unity we could ever hope to have. The uni-verse is kaput.
How this came to be as it is, and what we can do to create a new cultural conversation that stands outside of Plato’s duality, is the purpose of this book.
The first section lays out the facts of the case regarding the science of nothing. Science can do nothing to help us solve this problem, since science itself is in a crisis. Our cosmos started from nothing 13.74 billion years ago and there is no matter as such-but only a conscious rational mind which is the matrix of all matter. And there is no infinity—as much as astrophysicists like to dream about an infinite multiverse as the source of our own cosmos. No one knows what number is—we have known this for a hundred years but scientists still think that numbers are reality. They would desperately like to dismiss the nothing, as Martin Heidegger would say,“with a Lordly wave of the hand.”
Our crisis is all due to a trick that was played on Parmenides, and which has become the central pivot of our problem: Persephone forbade us to say “Nothing.”
Though Plato suspected that he might have been wrong in so doing, he excluded “the nothing,” from our Western logos. Instead of a trinity of being, becoming and non-being, we ended up inside of this inherently unstable uni-verse. Becoming has now destroyed being—nothing remains.
How does one even talk about this?
There is a way.
And only those of us who are in Christs can do it. Return to a first-century apostolic way of gathering as the body of the Christ.
Paul, the problem is our foundation in Plato's dualism: uni-verse has collapsed. I discussed this in the book I sent you: Nothing: A Sober Discussion of Being and Non-Being. What is happening is the word that Paul had quoted: As it is written, I will destroy the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. 1 Cor 1:19. See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NP8Y4HL
It seems like there isn't really such a distinction. In reality both are motivated by feelings, which can be placed in either register depending on if one sees feelings as something belonging to the body or the mind. Or rather if one sees the mind as a part of the body or the body as a part of the mind.
Given our materialistic culture most would probably stuff it all in the lower register.
Affirming sees it as a case of empathy or that the homosexuality feels natural. While the confirming feel that their tradition and order gives a security and that something is lost with changes.
I actually started making a video about this, and my answer to this particular part of the discussion is that it goes back to the internal conflict in the Bible. The conflict between Jesus and Paul. Where the affirming priorities Jesus, while the confirming prioritize Paul.
The conflict can only be solved if that underlying conflict is solved. Which one should have priority?
(of course Jesus isn't always so forgiving and Paul isn't always so demanding. They have both sides, but there is a stronger weight towards one thing for them).
Your insight on the fronting of differing themes confessionally is really helpful. The following line is something, however, I find quite unsettling.
"The mis-aligned flesh should through technology and society be brought into conformity with the revealed (inner, upper-register) experience for authentic fulfilment."
It has an overly idealized/utopian sort of bent and I can't help but recall an essay on Tolkien's use of the Ring of Power in Lord of the Rings as a symbol for technology. We may have the power to change ourselves, society, and the world. But as Gandalf lamented to Frodo, "I would use this Ring from a desire to do good. But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine." If we are bent at the core - what monstrous things might we unleash on the world in the name of the 'good?'
Paul, I am dying to have a conversation with you about this but for the last few months every time I've checked your one-on-one conversation availability calendar nothing has come up. Is there a certain period I should check for, maybe in the new year? I think that discussing my story and perspective on where the church is at and this cultural issue would be very fun and interesting for the both of us. Love your content! And I pray for you and your church everyday.
Former baptized and professing member of the CRCNA here...
Paul, I see you are framing this in terms of a culture war, but where is Jesus Christ in all this? Is the God Incarnate on the side of an abstract set of sexual norms or on the side of concrete, individual persons?
The division between a "higher" and "lower" register overlooks that individual persons are not one or the other. They are a synthesis of both--and as a synthesis of both, they (as Kierkegaard says) will work out their salvation in fear and trembling. I worry that such an analytic division between higher and lower prevents you from encountering persons in the places and times of their lives.
When a member of the Confessing CRCNA comes to the end of their life and stands before the throne of God, how impressed will the Almighty, the Holy One of Israel, be when he looks down and sees that they spent a good portion of their life denying persons who identified as homosexual standing in the CRCNA? Do we think that the same Jesus who supped with prostitutes and sinners is going to applaud such efforts?
The real culture war is between persons defending abstract propositional truths and persons demanding we pay attention to our fellow human beings.
John 1 describes how the Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us, so I am comfortable inferring that the priorities of the Confessing CRCNA are way out of whack here.
What say you?
Seems to me the conversation should have happened prior to the creation of the human sexuality document not after.
Dear Paul I thought the synopsis of my book would explain the collapse of our western world and our Neo-Platonic Christian culture:
Our Western cultural conversation, as invented by Plato, is made up of a dialectic between unity and diversity. Plato had thought to harmonize the unchangeableness of Parmenides with the constant change of the thinker Heraclitus. He invented this uni-verse in which we have, up until now, been happily living. Unfortunately, the diversity/progressive side of this conversation has now destroyed whatever unity we could ever hope to have. The uni-verse is kaput.
How this came to be as it is, and what we can do to create a new cultural conversation that stands outside of Plato’s duality, is the purpose of this book.
The first section lays out the facts of the case regarding the science of nothing. Science can do nothing to help us solve this problem, since science itself is in a crisis. Our cosmos started from nothing 13.74 billion years ago and there is no matter as such-but only a conscious rational mind which is the matrix of all matter. And there is no infinity—as much as astrophysicists like to dream about an infinite multiverse as the source of our own cosmos. No one knows what number is—we have known this for a hundred years but scientists still think that numbers are reality. They would desperately like to dismiss the nothing, as Martin Heidegger would say,“with a Lordly wave of the hand.”
Our crisis is all due to a trick that was played on Parmenides, and which has become the central pivot of our problem: Persephone forbade us to say “Nothing.”
Though Plato suspected that he might have been wrong in so doing, he excluded “the nothing,” from our Western logos. Instead of a trinity of being, becoming and non-being, we ended up inside of this inherently unstable uni-verse. Becoming has now destroyed being—nothing remains.
How does one even talk about this?
There is a way.
And only those of us who are in Christs can do it. Return to a first-century apostolic way of gathering as the body of the Christ.
Paul, the problem is our foundation in Plato's dualism: uni-verse has collapsed. I discussed this in the book I sent you: Nothing: A Sober Discussion of Being and Non-Being. What is happening is the word that Paul had quoted: As it is written, I will destroy the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. 1 Cor 1:19. See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NP8Y4HL