J. Budziszewski

J. Budziszewski On the Meaning and Purpose of Sex

Here is an excerpt from Budziszewski’s recent book On the Meaning of Sex (OMS). OMS was an excellent, albeit short, book that I would recommend to anyone interested in natural law sexual ethics. I have a book review that will be featured on Apologetics 315 on July 7th. So stay tuned for that! But here are a couple of things Budziszewski has to say that’s taken straight from his book:

What then are the natural meanings and purposes of the sexual powers? One is procreation—the bringing about and nurture of new life, the formation of families in which children have moms and dads. The other is union—the mutual and total self-giving and accepting of two polar, complementary selves in their entirety, soul and body.  These two meanings are so tightly stitched that we can start with either one and follow the threads to the other. (24)

With regard to the unitive meaning, he writes:

We join ourselves by doing what? By an act which is intrinsically open to the possibility of new life. In other words, whenever I give myself sexually, I am doing something that cannot help but mean that happy chance […] Now for two persons to give themselves to each other totally is to give what they are wholly; what they are wholly includes their bodies; and into these bodies is written the potentiality to bring a third person into being. […] Mutual and totally self-giving, strong feelings of attachment, intense pleasure, and the procreation of new life are linked by human nature in a single complex of meaning and purpose. For this reason, if we try to split them apart, we split ourselves. (27-29)

The purposes of unity and procreation cannot be separated, and this is the kind of separation we see in same-sex marriage (I believe Budziszewski briefly points that out, and if I am mistaken that he does mention that, my apologies).

J. Budziszewski on Liberalism

“That is the real significance of the Casey plurality’s “right to define one’s own conception of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” (and my excuse for returning to it yet again). This proclamation is every bit as religious as the Nicene Creed, a veritable anthem of nonjudgmentalism–yet what a judgement! Have I blown up the Oklahoma federal building? According to my concept of existence, maybe those people weren’t real. Have I tortured and raped the woman in the next-door apartment? According to my concept of meaning, maybe her suffering wasn’t meaningful. Have I gathered some buddies and kicked a homeless man into a coma? According to my concept of the mystery of human life, maybe he didn’t have a life. Don’t forget, I have a right to my definitions. Everything is permitted, nothing denied, for I am the center of the universe I define.

Such is the logic of liberalism, but the Supreme Court resists logic, as liberalism always must. It hoards its elixir carefully; the acid of nonjudgmentalism may be uncorked from time to time, but only to dissolve the judgements of someone else. This raises the interesting question of how long a universal solvent can be bottled up. Eventually it melts through the cruet.”

-J. Budziszewski in The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction page 182-183

J. Budziszewski on Naturalistic Evolution

“We are to think of a mindless process as using technique to put things in place. Though it has no intentions, we are to conceive it as enforcing its edicts by fobbing things off on us and using ploys. Though it is incapable of purposes, we are to suppose that it designed us. And though it is insusceptible to moral judgement, we are to be scandalized by its shamelessness [...] And so the very idiom these thinkers choose to tell that God is nonexistent and nature devoid of purpose insinuates, at another level, that nature is full of wily purposes and rules as a crafty, shameless god.” – J. Budziszewski in The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction page 81.

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