I have decided
to take one of the papers that I wrote for my doctoral program and break it
down into several parts for the blog. I have tried to make it a bit more
readable - but it will likely still feel a bit academic. I hope, however,
that it will cause people to think and start some robust conversations:
A Trinitarian and
Incarnational Foundation for Sexuality:
Unlike a creation
order starting point that focuses on the complementary nature of male and
female as the foundation for a theology of sexuality, Trinitarian theology is
focused on the relational nature of the Godhead. Existing in eternal, self-giving love, the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit created the world out of the overflow of their
love. “Because God is an internal community within God’s very
being, this collapses the usual difference between the self and the other (that
is, otherness as being “external” to one’s self). Thus, God consists of both the “self” and the other.”[1] This love is described as perichoresis which is a profoundly
intimate interpenetration of three persons.
Trinitarian theology provides a rich foundation from which to envision a
radical love that dwells within the communion of persons.
C. Baxter Kruger
is a contemporary Trinitarian theologian.
He says, “In sheer grace, the Triune God decided not to hoard the
Trinitarian life and glory, but to share it with us, to lavish it upon us. Why this
is so, why God is this way, why the Father, Son and Spirit set the fullness of
their love and lavish grace upon us and determined such a glorious destiny for
us, can only be answered by peering into the mutual love of the Father and Son
and Spirit. For in one way or another,
the existence of everything, not least of every human being, finds its purpose
in the deep and abiding love of the Triune God.
That circle of love, that circle of intimacy and togetherness and
fellowship, that circle of purity and mutual delight and eternal wholeness, is
the matrix, the roux, of all divine thought and activity.”[2] The lavishness and intimacy of Kruger’s
language demonstrates the kind of foundation that Trinitarian theology can
offer for the construction of a theology of sexuality. There is no talk of complementary
ontology. Rather, within this generous
relational experience of God humans are invited to participate where
self-giving is given primacy as the attribute of this love. While a creation order starting point might
argue that true self-giving is tied to procreation, and that the ultimate
expression of God’s self-giving love within the Trinity resulted in the creation of the world, it can
be argued that fecundity can be experienced in many ways, not only in the
giving birth to children.
God is not
gendered. He transcends the categories
of gender. While the persons of the
Trinity may be described with male pronouns for Father and Son and female
pronouns for the Holy Spirit, the Godhead is not limited by gender
categories. Gavin D’Costa draws on the
theology of Hans von Balthasar who conceived of each person of the Trinity as
both act and pure receptivity. D’Costa
then suggests that each of the three persons of the Trinity is “simultaneously
supramasculine and suprafeminine in its own giving and receiving, which spills
forth into the universe.”[3] Such Trinitarian views challenge the
necessity of binary gender roles in our experiences of covenant intimacy.
The Trinity can
be described by the notion of perichoresis
and the mutual interpenetration of three distinct persons who become one in
their union. Some queer theologians
challenge the gender binary of male-female heterosexuality as the only way to
image God by suggesting that the interpenetration of three persons of the
Trinity would actually, if taken literally, imply that humans should image God
through a polyamorous union of two males and a female (given that the Father
and Son are most often associated with male pronouns while there is the
tradition of wisdom and Sophia that may lend a feminine identity to the
Spirit). The point is not to force this
kind of literal application, but rather, the point is to suggest a more
generous way of imagining the human potential to image God through our self-giving
relationships. The intimacy and
relationship that is longed for ought not to be reduced nor focused upon a
genitalized sex act. Rather, by
reflecting on the perichoresis of the Trinity we are invited to imagine a
generous, fully trusting, fully knowing, relational intimacy that is beautiful
and wondrous in its purity and lack of defensive self-protection.
The Incarnation
of the Son can be described as coinherence
where two ousias (natures)
indwell the one person. The Incarnation
is the mysterious enfleshment of the divine in the person of Jesus Christ. Out of the overflow of love of the Trinity came the gift of Incarnation wherein
the Son would assume the nature of a human being. Philippians 2 describes it vividly, “Who, being in very
nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used
to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by
taking the very nature of a servant, being
made in human likeness. And being found
in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even
death on a cross!”[4]
Body theology has arisen from reflection on the significance
of the Incarnation. “Body theologians
maintain that the incarnation is a sign and revelation of the way that God
works generally – in and through bodies….. An embodied theology relocates
salvation in and through the body. Our
alienation from our bodies is healed and we experience the saving grace of God
within them. It is the discovery of
ourselves as we are, as bodies. Grace to
become enfleshed, this is the message of the incarnation, and it reaches out to
us through other fleshly creatures.”[5]
One of the noted scholars in body theology is James Nelson. In his book, “Embodiment: An Approach to
Sexuality and Christian Theology” Nelson addresses two key dualisms that
infiltrate many Christian perspectives on sexuality. The first is the anti-body dualism that
separates body and soul and views the body as a temporary vessel. The second is the male / female dualism which is developed as the view that
male and female have fundamental differences, sometimes even understood to be
opposite to one another. Often connected
to this is the notion that maleness is superior.[6] Nelson deconstructs both of these
dualisms. Body theology formed from an
Incarnational starting point clearly draws very different conclusions than that
of a creation order starting point that particularly emphasis the
distinctiveness of male and female.
Another aspect of Incarnational body theology is to explore
the ways that the experiences of our sexuality help us to understand God. In an essay that focuses specifically on
women’s sexuality as an invitation to see God in new ways, Rebecca Todd Peters
says, “If we start with women’s bodily experience of sexuality as a window into
the divine, its very mutability can offer insight into redefining the way we
think about God/ess. Opening up our
understanding of God/ess to the possibility of change can resonate profoundly
with men as well as women.”[7] Peters goes on to contrast a male-centric
theology of God that tends to emphasize control and order with a willingness to
look at the stories of God who wrestles with humans, negotiates with humans,
and changes his mind in engagement with humans.
Women’s sexuality, and indeed sexuality in general, can help us to
reimagine and have a much larger and richer sense of God. Peters says, “A God/ess open to change,
vulnerability, and partnership exercises a non-traditional form of power rooted
in relationality and reciprocity. These,
then, can become the moral ground for ethical behavior in the world, including
sexual behavior.”[8] This idea of the power of powerlessness is,
at its core, confirmed in the Incarnation.
The Incarnation reminds us that God took on human flesh in Jesus
Christ. He took on the entire human
experience in a way that transcends the binary of male / female.
However, to even invite such theological reflection can be
profoundly threatening to those who are accustomed to having built a
theological system around an unconscious sense of God as male and theological
order resting on very definitive separation between male and female. Peters says, “The accusation of pagan worship
is levied against feminist, womanist, mujerista, and other liberationist
theologians whenever they explore female images and embodiments of the
divine. The strategy of the right wing
has been to obfuscate meaningful theological efforts to reexamine God language
and moral norms for sexual behavior by quoting people and ideas out of context
and by playing on people’s fears of change and difference. The fact that the terms “homosexuality” and
“goddess worship” have become lightning rods for conservative and
fundamentalist factions of mainline churches is not coincidental. Changes in these two areas of theo-ethical
discourse – language about God and sexuality – will require an enormous
paradigm shift.”[9] The potential richness of theological
imagination that is opened through these pathways of reflection ought not to be
ignored because it is threatening. Like
everything in
theological reflection, there needs to be testing, discernment, and searching
of the Scriptures. However, to outright
refuse to engage on the basis of predetermined binary constructs seems to
enlarge the potential for an impoverished and increasingly rigid engagement
with God.
Virginia
Ramey Mollenkott stretches the boundaries even further in her focus on
transgender realities. She points to the
work of an evangelical biologist, Edward L. Kessel, who draws out the
biological implications of the virgin birth.
She says, “All parthenogenetic (virgin) births result in offspring with
two X-chromosomes. Because Jesus
apparently underwent a sex reversal to a male phenotype (as sometimes occurs in
parthenogenesis), he appeared to function as a normal male. However, if the Scriptural account is to be
read literally, then the fact is that Jesus was chromosomally female all his
life. By this interpretation, Jesus is
not a male Savior, but an intersexual Savior; so that even from a
biological perspective, women “resemble Christ” just as closely as men, and
transgenderists resemble Her/Him most of all!”[10]
While such
thought might seem to be nearly, if not completely, blasphemous to many
Christians who hold a traditional, creation order view, stretching such boundaries
helps to expose how gendered much theology is.
Today there is much consensus that a sense of appropriate gender is
socially constructed and that the concepts around gender evolve and change
throughout the course of history and culture.
Theology that can transcend these constructs of gender may reveal a God
that we cannot easily control to fit our boxes.
Interpretive engagement with Scripture that risks different starting
points and different emphasis can enrich our journey with God. David Carr reminds us, “One might argue that
such untamability is a problem, that we must find some way to stabilize
interpretation so that it will yield a single meaning from the Bible. Yet I
would argue the contrary. It is precisely the multi-voiced, untamable character
of texts like Genesis that has served divergent faith communities through the
ages. Not
only is the text itself untamable, but interpreters—especially in the present
(post)modern period—can be counted on to expand that untamability by reading it
in varied ways.”[11]
Trinitarian / Incarnational theological
starting points can introduce new levels of generous spaciousness into the
conversations about sexuality. Because
such starting points help us to transcend a fixation on the complementary
nature of male / female, they can provide a wonderful opportunity to expand our
Spirit-shaped imaginations as we consider how to best navigate questions of discipleship for sexual minority persons.
Next Post: Concluding Reflections
-wg
-wg
[1]
Patrick Cheng. Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology New York: Seabury
Books 2011 p.56
[2]
C. Baxter Kruger. Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (Jackson: Perichoresis Press 2003) p.
19
[3]
Gavin D’Costa, “Queer Trinity” in Loughlin, Queer
Theology p. 274
[4]
Philippians 2: 6-8 NIV
[5]
Elizabeth Stuart and Adrian Thatcher. People of Passion: what the churches teach
about sex London: Mowbray 1997 p.98
[6]
Cited in: Bev Harrison. Making
the Connections “Misogyny and
Homophobia” 1985
[7]
Rebecca Todd Peters. “Embracing God as
Goddess” in Body and Soul: Rethinking
Sexuality as Justice Love ed. M.
Ellison S. Thorson-Smith (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press 2003) p.163
[8]
Ibid. p. 168
[9]
Ibid. p.161
[10]
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott. “Crossing
Gender Borders” Body and Soul: Rethinking
Sexuality as Justice Love ed. M.
Ellison S. Thorson-Smith (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press 2003) p.192
[11]
David McLain Carr. “Untamable text of an
untamable God: Genesis and rethinking the character of scripture” Interpretation 54 no 4 O 2000, p 356
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