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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
As part of the broad project of reconceptualizing the world in theological as opposed to secular terms, some “radical orthodoxy” theologians have begun to address the issues surrounding gender, sexuality, and marriage. These include, most notably, Graham Ward, Eugene Rogers, and (perhaps better classified in the post-liberal “Yale School”) Miroslav Volf. These theologians, however, have made only limited (or poor) use of the extensive conceptual apparatus that has been built up over the last two decades by postmodern feminists and queer theorists. By using these tools in a Christian, orthodox manner in accord with the radical orthodoxy project, I will show that we are led to drastically different conclusions, to a sexual ethic that is no longer “sexual,” but rather refocuses on friendship and celibacy.
1 Richard Niebuhr, H., Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 37Google Scholar.
2 John Milbank, “‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’: A Short Summa in Forty Two Responses to Unasked Questions,” Modem Theology 7:3 (1991): 225; 234. Milbank also makes reference to eros and agape, but is using them in a technical, Deleuzean sense that will not be considered here.
3 Milbank, “‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’,’’ 235.
4 Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow, 3 quoted in Michel, Foucault. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca, NY Cornell University Press, 1977), 143Google Scholar.
5 Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 146.
6 Milbank, “‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’,” 228.
7 Butler, “Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions,” The Journal of Philosophy 86:11 (November 1989): 601-607.
8 Milbank, “‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’,” 225.
9 Miroslav, Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 183Google Scholar, for example, raises this point.
10 Eugene, Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Body, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 2Google Scholar.
11 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1, 318 quoted at Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Body, 153.
12 Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Body, 238.
13 see Gilbert Meilaender’s long review: “What Sex Is—And Is For,” First Things (March 1994): 15-21.
14 Wayne, A. Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” History of Religions 13: 1 (August 1973): 207Google Scholar.
15 Volf, “‘The Trinity is Our Social Program’: The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Shape of Social Engagement,”Modern Theology 14:3 (July 1998), 410
16 Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 174; emphasis in original.
17 Ibid., 175; emphasis in original.
18 Ibid., 187.
19 Judith, Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, (New York and London: Routledge, 1999 [2nd ed]), 18Google Scholar.
20 Graham, Ward, Cities of God, (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 182Google Scholar.
21 Ibid., 188.
22 Ibid., 183.
23 Ibid., 200.
24 Monique Wittig, “One is Not Born a Woman,” Feminist Issues (Winter 1981), 53.
25 Dale, B. Martin, “Heterosexism and the Interpretation of Romans 1:18-32,” Biblical Interpretation 3:3 (1995), 343Google Scholar.
26 Eric Fuchs, Sexual Desire and Love, 117 quoted in Peter, Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 402Google Scholar.
27 John, Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 223Google Scholar.
28 Brian McGuire, Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience, 350-1250, (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1988), 303.
29 See Stanley Hauerwas’ interesting and suggestive discussion of this question in Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994). I think one could take this analogy even further, and make the case that all sex is a form of violence, and celibacy is the Christian pacifist position.
30 Thanks are due to Julia Salzman of Stanford University, in dialogue with whom many of the ideas expressed here were begotten.
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