7

CHAPTER 2

THE THEOLOGICAL STUDY

OF SEXUALITY

ELIZABETH STUART

Introduction

For the latter quarter of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first
century Western Christianity found itself riven over the issue of homosexuality. As
I write I have a sense that Christians of all persuasions and positions are just exhausted
with the argument. Meanwhile, across much of the Western world, governments have
or are in the process of legalizing same-sex marriage as the culmination of a steady
march towards equality which may have been sometimes stalled but never halted by
Christian debate. While the Church debates have become predictable and intellectu-
ally desiccated, perhaps because the Holy Spirit has been moving elsewhere, theologi-
cal reflection upon sexuality, largely but not entirely divorced from ecclesiastical spats,
has produced a rich seam of theological discourse focused not only on homosexuality,
though homosexuality was undoubtedly the catalyst for the emergence of the discourse,
but on human sexuality in all its diversity and complexity.
Theologies of sexuality are distinctly modern phenomena. This is because the concept
of sexuality is one brought to birth in modernity. In pre-modernity the focus of theologi­
cal and philosophical discourse regarding matters sexual was on sexual acts and whether
they were sinful/immoral or not. There was no sense that a person’s sexual behaviour
gave an insight into that person’s self. It might tell you that person was a sinner when it
carne to that particular aspect of their life but that was all. Scholars have different views
on when precisely the contemporary concept of sexual orientation emerged but agree
that it happened between the late eighteenth and late nineteenth century. Different theo-
ries as to why it emerged are also evident; some attribute it to the reconstruction of fam-
ily life under capitalism, others to the development of medical discourse and the modern
focus on deviance, others to the development of molly-house culture in London. What
scholars tend to agree on is that it was the construction of the homosexual that carne first
 THE THEOLOGICAL STUDY OF SEXUALITY 19

and which led, in turn, to the notion of the heterosexual and bisexual: in other words
what began to emerge was the notion that it was possible to classify people according to
their sexual desire (as distinct from their sexual activity) and that sexual orientation was
a key characteristic of selfhood. Though this classification began as an attempt to order
and control perversión, as Foucault (1990) famously pointed out, those so classified were
able to use the classification as a form of resistance to construct first an identity, then a
community, and finally human rights as a minority group.
Foucault argued that the Román Catholic Church has played its part in creating the
context in which the modern discourse on sexuality could emerge by encouraging the
practice of confession and the confession of sexual sins. The Churches, however, had
marginal input into the emergence of sexual orientation. That discourse was generated
by a new breed of secular scientists—psychiatrists and sexologists—whose claim that
sexuality was central to selfhood presented certain theological challenges, particularly
to those traditions which had valorized celibacy over marriage. However, the notion
that people have a sexual orientation and that the human self is in some sense a sex­
ual self gradually became secular orthodoxy. The homosexual orientation was initially
pathologized, but that pathologization began to be challenged by those ‘suffering’ from
the condition. This resistance to the dominant discourse of the homosexual as a sad per-
vert is symbolized by the Stonewall Riots of 1969 when the patrons of a New York bar
popular with all kinds of sexual and other minorities resisted a regular pólice raid and
rioted for four days. The Stonewall Riots are really the creation myths of the gay libera-
tion movement. They symbolize the rejection of the pathologization of homosexuality
by those labelled homosexual. Stonewall represents the creation of the lesbian and gay
selfhood, the claim of an identity with its own cultural distinctiveness and depth, the
claim to belong to a stable minority group, the claim to be able to speak with ultímate
authority on their ‘condition’. They were able to do this because modernity had displaced
external authority with the authority of the self.
In its early days the gay liberation movement adopted a radical approach to sexuality
arguing that human sexuality was fundamentally androgynous and polymorphous but
that approach gradually gave way to a more reformist agenda based upon a more stable
and, indeed, essentialist view of sexuality. It is easier to argüe for an equal place in soci-
ety on the basis of a secure, coherent identity. However, developing in parallel with the
gay liberation movement was the lesbian feminist movement. This has retained a more
radical attitude to human sexuality with lesbianism understood less as a sexual orienta­
tion and more as a defiant choice against patriarchy.
During the 1970S a variety of different identity and sub-identity sexual minority
identities emerged, often out of protest against one group (e.g. white lesbian women)
claiming to be able to define the experience of all. Often enormous tensión existed
between these various groups. These debates and discourses coincided with growing
tolerance towards sexual minorities in Western secular society. That tolerance was dra-
matically dissolved with the arrival of AIDS when, once again, sexual minorities found
themselves pathologized, stigmatized, and, in many places, subject to increased legal
discrimination. However, what AIDs also did was to bring together these diverse and
20 ELIZABETH STUART

disputatious minorities in solidarity with one another. It also revealed the inadequacy
of the contemporary classification of sexual minorities. Sexual behaviour was revealed
to have only a tangential relationship to sexual identity. AIDS was also one of the signi-
fiers of the end of modernity with its trust in Science, medicine, clearly defined iden-
tities, and unstoppable progress. AIDS brought the death of many people and many
things including the stable sexual subject but it also gave birth to a new political and
philosophy known as ‘queer’ which subverted all established sexual identities.
It was inevitable that following the example of black and feminist gay and lesbian peo­
ple, Christians would begin to reflect theologically upon their experience of margin-
alization and oppression. It was in the mid-t97OS that a distinctive branch of theology
based upon gay experience began to emerge. The key characteristics of this theology
were the existence of a gay selfwhich needs to move into an authentic State and as such is
the point of contad with the divine; the existence of particular gay wisdom and spiritual
gifts which sometimes incarnate Gospels’ valúes more authentically than heterosexual-
ity; and a belief in the authority of gay experience which exceeds that of scripture and
Christian tradition, and reflects cultures which had no concept of a homosexual self.
The 1970S also saw the Churches begin to wrestle with the issue of homosexuality
under pressure from gay and lesbian members and contemporary understandings of
sexual orientation. Seeking to balance these against readings of scripture and tradi­
tion many took the view that, while being gay itself was not sinful, engaging in sexual
acts was, or at least fell short of the ideal of heterosexual marriage. With one or two
notable exceptions, that debate still goes on at various levels in almost all Christian
denominations.
In order to interrógate the dominant methodological approaches used in this dis-
course I have borrowed some categories from Meister Eckhart (via Matthew Fox’s par­
ticular interpretation of him—Fox 1991). Eckhart’s four paths will provide a theological
grid to make some sense of theologies of sexuality. It is artificial, of course; there will
be other ways of representing this still quite young theological development, but using
Eckhart reminds me at least that what theology, all theology, must be about is the nature
of God and our way into unión with the divine, and that as we contémplate our confus-
ing, complex, and changing humanity in the dazzling light of the divine we are stum-
bling our way towards the truth. There is no one royal, direct road but a multitude of
paths, some of which may get us further along the road than others but all of which have
their obstacles and cul-de-sacs.

Via Positiva

In terms of theological reflection upon sexuality, the vía positiva is one walked upon by
both conservativas and liberal theologians. It is built upon the theological propositions
that maleness and femaleness are theological categories and that therefore sexuality is
caught up in the drama of salvation. These ideas are thoroughly modern but are claimed
 THE THEOLOGICAL STUDY OF SEXUALITY 21

to be a legitímate development of scripture and tradition. Both Dietrich Bonhoeffer

and Karl Barth proposed that humanity bears the image of God through male-female
relationality. Same but also different, men and women find oneness in each other and
in that process fulfil their vocation to image God (Grenz 2006: 70-94). Human beings
only become truly human when men and women are in relationship to each other. Barth
offered some sustained reflection upon this theme. For him marriage between men and
women offers the means to particípate in and to reflect the divine both in terms of its
triune nature and the relationship between Christ and the Church. It is therefore the ful-
filment of maleness and femaleness (although Barth did acknowledge that other forms
of non-sexual fellowship between men and women also particípate in some sense in
marriage: Rose 2010:156-161) that propels heterosexuality to the heart of the Christian
project. For him, it is essential for men and women to be in relationship with each other.
Obviously, since for Barth humanity is only complete and fulfilled as the imago dei in
male-female relationships homosexuality is problematic (as is monasticism in this
regard). Indeed, in seeking a partner of the same sex, homosexual people commit idola-
try, substituting an image of themselves for the other (Barth 1961:165-166).
For the Román Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1986) sexual difference
was equally theologically important. For him men and women together in their differ­
ence constitute the fullness of the Christian life. Balthasar understood the Church to be
constituted with two aspects: the Marian and the Petrine. The former refers to subjective
holiness, the latter to objective holiness. Together they express the nuptial nature of the
Church. The marriage of men and women is therefore the sacrament of the Church.
Again sexuality, and more particularly heterosexuality, is at the heart of the theological
project.
In a similar vein to Barth, Pope John Paul II (2006) also placed sexuality at the heart
of theological anthropology. He developed a theory of the nuptial meaning of the body
which suggested that in marriage men and women sacramentally reveal the nature of
the divine. For Pope John Paul the nature of the divine is self-giving and generative and
therefore reproduction and openness to it is an essential element of the marriage bond.
Thus any form of non-marital sex or sex which is closed to procreation is sinful.
The afRrmation of the goodness of human (hetero) sexuality and its crucial place in
human nature, providing the locus of the imago dei, was a radical and innovative asser-
tion that signáis the moment when Protestant and then Catholic theology embraced the
thoroughly modern notions both that people have a ‘sexuality’ and that their ‘sexuality’
in some sense tells the truth about who they are and what they are for, more profoundly
than any other aspect of their humanity.
Liberal theologians started from the same place but carne to different conclusions. If
sexuality is the sacred heart of humanity then, liberal theologians such as James Nelson
(1992) argüe, one must begin theological reflection upon sexuality with the lived expe-
rience of it, not with some romanticized ideal. Human experience of sexuality then
becomes the starting point of theological reflection. This means speaking the truth
about the less than ideal experience of heterosexual marriage for many women living
under patriarchy and the love, devotion, and generous self-giving of many of those in
 7

22 ELIZABETH STUART

non-married, non-reproductive sexual relationships. Apparent biblical prohibitions

related to homosexuality can be negotiated on the grounds that the authors knew noth-
ing of the notion of sexual orientation and that there were people for whom same-sex
desire might be natural. Thus liberal theologians seek to argüe that it is not the gen-
der of those in relationship that matters but whether their sexual relationship manifests
the valúes and virtues of the kingdom of God and one of these is to receive the gift of
sex with joy and gratitude. Exactly what these virtues may be are a matter of debate but
many liberal theologians would take the view of Jeffrey John (1993) that these virtues
inelude faithful, covenanted commitment. In other words and whether they explic-
itly acknowledge it or not, liberal theologians, just like their conservative colleagues,
accept that marriage is the primordial sacrament or covenant relationship—that which
is caught up in, mirrors and mediales, the mysterious relationship between Christ and
his Church—but seek to open it to the non-heterosexual. Despite protestations to the
contrary, there is little theological space in both conservative and liberal sexual theology
for the celibate or single person.
Both conservatives and liberáis in reflecting theoiogically upon human sexuality
approach it ffom a fundamentally essentialist perspective. Sexuality and gender are
God-given categories and though their meaning may change through time and across
cultures there is nevertheless a transhistorical, transcultural family resemblance between
men and women today and men and women of the past, and gay people of today and
those who expressed desire for those of the same sex in pre-modernity. What modernity
did was to recognize and identify sexual orientations; it did not invent them. These cat­
egories are therefore stable enough to invest with theological meaning and build theolo­
gies upon. It is this latter assumption that some theologians have sought to challenge.

Via Negativa

In this methodological approach human beings do not simply manifest the divine when
desire draws them into unity with another, rather in the vía negativa the divine becomes
desire; we might even say it disappears into desire. The language of eras is not alien to
Christian theology. Many of the medieval mystics approached the divine through the
language and the imagery of the erotic, the soul and body together yearning for God
(McGinn 1998). But in the 1980S theologies of sexuality began to emerge which went
much further than this. They identified God with the erotic. These theologies are partic-
ularly associated with lesbian theologians. Cárter Heyward (1989) defined God as erotic
power and right relationship, the energy that calis us out of ourselves towards others
into relationships based upon mutuality. Heyward acknowledges that not all relation­
ship can be equal, but all relationships can be based upon mutuality, by which she meant
that they can be characterized by the desire to cali forth the other person into the full-
ness of their possibilities. In so doing, we are engaging in ‘godding’, bringing forth God
into the midst of our lives.
 THE THEOLOGICAL STUDY OF SEXUALITY 23

Her theology does not isolate sexual relating but insists that all relating must be
grounded in friendship, from relations with our partner to relations to the earth.
Heyward is also reluctant to define how that friendship is best manifest in sexual relating,
mutuality being the only defining requirement of right relationship. However, there are
certain virtues associated with such mutuality: courage, which requires us to overeóme
fear to embrace vulnerability; compassion, which recognizes the connectedness of all
life; anger, which is a bodily signal when right relationship is not present; forgiveness, by
which we release ourselves and others from the past; touch, through which those in right
relationship transcend individuality; healing, which is a commitment to live in right rela­
tionship with all living creatures; and, finally, faith which involves being determined to
live in right relationship in the midst of structures which encourage wrong relating.
Heywards influence upon theologies of sexuality is hard to overestimate. It is par-
ticularly evident in the virtual disappearance of the divine into reflection upon what
constitutes right relationship and the implications of living in right relationship. So,
for example, Lisa Isherwood (2000), reflecting on the theological implications of body
politics, seeks to purge religious constructions of sex and sexuality from patriarchal
assumptions. In doing so she postúlales the existence of a divine body which it is pos-
sible to possess, a body which lives in the world in conscious cognitive dissonance,
unconstrained and untethered by power structures and oppressive thinking. This body
is a space that is beyond patriarchal control. It is in this space that the possibility of sex
becoming a manifestation of erotic power exists. Isherwood refers to this space as a
divine body but there is little explicit reflection upon the nature of the ‘divine’ whose
body it is. God, as what Isherwood called a metaphysical concept, is abandoned in such
an approach, to be replaced by a trace, a radically immanent presence manifest in the
midst of human relating (Isherwood 2000: 20-34).
A similar approach is adopted by some male gay theologians who argüe that the trag-
edy of the AIDS pandemic requires a reconstruction of the concept of God. J. Michael
Clark (1989,1997) argües that AIDS has taught gay theologians to abandon the God of
salvation and eschatology. This ‘vertical’ notion of God has to be replaced by a ‘hori­
zontal one’, a radically immanent power for justice and right relation. The gay Christian
project becomes, in this understanding, living ethically and ‘coming out’ of heterosex-
uality and patriarchy. This notion of the gay community as an exodus community (a
notion borrowed from liberation theology) became a popular one among gay theologi­
ans. Richard Cleaver (1995) argües that scripture reveáis the divine to be one who cre-
ates new types of peoples, the people of Israel and the Church. Salvation is never just
an individual matter, it is about being part of the creation of a community called to be
different, to live differently. It would be a tragic mistake, then, for gay and lesbian people
to yearn for the same sort of lives as heterosexual people. Marriage and even monogamy
cannot just be accepted as the ideal ways of relating. Everything must be open to being
rethought from the basis of gay experience. The gay community must resist short cuts to
liberation by constructing a mirror image of heterosexuality.
The great valué of this approach is that it focuses the theological lens on actual
human relationships. It avoids the idealization of particular ways of sexual relating
 24 ELIZABETH STUART

and concéntrales instead on the ethics and virtues of relating sexually within the larger
context of relationships including non-personal relationships, for example, with the
earth. A high concept of relationality requires the consciousness and interrogation of all
types of relating. The divine is encountered in the act of relating rightly and in the act of
reflecting upon relationality. The focus is not on the self but on what is going on between
people and whether the divine is manifest in that or not. Furthermore, the experience
of sexual relating (and indeed other types of relating) becomes a source from which to
interrógate the tradition. For example, Maaike de Haardt suggests that monotheism
undermines relational sexuality by idealizing the one male in whom there is absolute
power (de Haardt 2010:181-194). Or, more positively, many gay theologians find in the
relationship between David and Jonathan a covenanted relationship in which God is
present in the love between two men.
The dangers of the via negativa are that so immersed does God become in the act of
right-relating that the erotic can become an idol, engulfing the divine without remain-
der. There is no transcendent perspective from which to interrógate a relationship or
type of relating. This is clear, for example, when Isherwood reflects on the phenom-
enon of sadomasochism, pointing out that some women reject it on the grounds that
violence is always antithetical to right-relating, while other women regard it as an
expression of mutuality and trust. She asks who is right and concludes ‘ultimately eve-
ryone, since I suspect that both claims are true depending on the people and the cir-
cumstances ... How we act, in each moment, is charged with divine/political meaning

5 and it is the consciousness of that which shapes reality’ (2000: 223). The dangers of
the radical privatization of sexuality are evident here—who has the right to question
where I find or how I define right relation? This approach to sexuality in fact has all
the weaknesses of situation ethics. Theological reflection becomes rather blinkered,
focused on the local and even further into personal relationships, which is at once both
empowering and seducing. There is nothing in this approach which forces people to lift
their sights to a horizon from which to interrógate their relating. Though undoubtedly
extremely empowering, the notion of any community as an exodus community con-
structs it as oppressed and infused with special theological insight. This can lead to a
lack of self-reflection and criticism, and a temptation to identify God with a particular
experience.

Via Creativa

In the vía positiva, the divine is manifest through specific types of sexual reiations and
human beings find their completion in such relationship. Sexuality is therefore an inte­
gral part of Christian discipleship. In the via negativa, the divine is erotic power, the
forcé of right relationship which cannot be predefined except by the qualities of mutual-
ity. In the via creativa, human beings particípate with God in the bringing to birth of a
new creation, the new creation which Christ inaugurales and into which Christians are
 THE THEOLOGICAL STUDY OF SEXUALITY 25

baptized. One of the chief characteristics of this new creation, according to St Paul, is
that all identity markers are removed including those of gender (Gal. 3:28). It is from this
theological proposition that the approach to sexuality known as queer theology begins.
Queer theology is not the preserve of gay people. It is in fact against any notion of
sexual identity. It takes its ñame from queer theory, a post-structuralist approach to
gender and sexuality which emerged in the 1990S in the wake of Michel Foucault’s
work and is particularly associated with the critical theorist Judith Butler. The use of
the term ‘queer’ is a play on the term often applied in a derogatory fashion to gay and
lesbian people and also the use of the term to desígnate oddness. As David Halperin
has put it (1997: 82), ‘“queer” then, demárcales not a positivity but a positionality vis-a-
vis the normative’. That positionality involves interrogating and contesting dominant
concepts of sexuality and gender. Butler famously argued that gender and desire are
not stable categories. Far from being expressive of some inner nature or truth about
ourselves, Butler (1992) suggested that gender is in fact a performance, a performance
learned from cultural Scripts which through repetition are written onto bodies, not
least through sexual acts. The performativity is exposed through the art of drag and
indeed through lesbian and gay people who perform the dominant Scripts of maleness
and femaleness badly. However, that performativity is masked by the creation of homo-
sexuality as an essential identity alongside heterosexuality. What many assume was a
helpful or, indeed, liberating development has in fact, according to Butler, locked con-
temporary Western culture into a collective depression as we subconsciously wrestle
with desires that are foreclosed to us by the construction of the self in terms of sexual
identity and gender.
Critics of Butler have argued that she too quickly erases identities which people have
fought and sacrificed much to own and that her theory has no grounding in people’s
real, everyday (Wolfe and Penelope 1993). How can we live without stable concepts of
sexuality or gender? This is where queer theologians come in to argüe that there is one
community where in fact such living is encouraged and indeed divinely mandated and
that is the Church. They argüe that the Church should be the place where sexual iden­
tity has no ultímate status. Eugene Rogers (1999) notes that, according to St Paul, every
Gentile member of the Church is there because God chose to act para phusin, contrary
to nature (Rom. 11:24) (significantly, a phrase he also uses of people engaged in same-sex
activity), in grafting them into the community of salvation. God acts in a queer way,
transgressing expectations to inelude Gentiles, and this reveáis that the rhythm of the
divine is that of inclusión rather than exclusión.
Kathy Rudy (1997) makes a similar point when she notes that it is baptism, not biol-
ogy, that incorporales Christians into the people of God, into God’s very self, which
eclipses all other forms of identity. She maintains that Christians do not need catego­
ries of sexual identity or, indeed, of gender. Christianity has never been about biological
reproduction; it has always been about conversión. Christianity grows by opening itself
to the stranger in hospitable embrace. Rudy maintains that sex has to be understood as
part of Christian discipleship and therefore must be judged according to its ability to
build up a hospitable Christian community.
 26 ELIZABETH STUART

Rogers also notes that baptism makes a Christian a Citizen of the city of God which
requires a different way of being. Rogers argües that the Christian tradition offers two
models of being by which believers are moulded into the shape of Christ: marriage and
monasticism. Both these ways of life are designed to make the believer hospitable and
both swoop up those involved into the life of the Trinity, a community of self-giving love.
This community has been represented in the Christian tradition through analogy which
makes use of male, female, and neutral imagery. This ‘gender-bending’ is a vital part of
the Christian tradition, according to queer theologians. The original human accord-
ing to Génesis 1:27 was male and female, non-gendered. The baby Jesús was male but
born of no male matter, and chose to transpose himself first into non-gendered bread
and wine and then into the omnigendered Church. Scattered throughout history have
been saints who have defied and crossed cultural gender roles. Think for example, of St
Joan of Are. Bodies can cross boundaries, and gender and sexuality can be dissolved.
Christianity is at its heart what Marcella Althaus-Reid (2000) has termed ‘indecent’ but it
has become ‘vanilla’ under the reign of patriarchy and heterosexism. It needs to become
obscene: instead of dealing with sexuality and gender, the ordered categories by which
we are controlled and control, it needs to deal with sex in all its complexity and messiness.
Elizabeth Stuart (2003) explores what it means for the Church to live without cat­
egories of sexual identity, believing that notions of sexuality and gender are simply not
stable enough to build theologies upon. She argües that this must first mean that no
one is excluded from any aspect of Church life on the grounds of sexuality or gender.
The celibate life must be valorized as a reminder that desire has its ultímate fulfilment
in God, not in human relating. She also argües that the Church is called to parody, to
\ repeat with critica! difference, cultural constructions of sexuality and gender whether
* that be marriage or singleness, the family, the couple, maleness or femaleness, to expose
their non-ultimacy.
Many queer theologians claim that there is much in the Christian tradition that can be
read as ‘queer’, and Christian theology often crafts a space full of paradox, fluidity, mys-
tery, and apparent contradiction. Take, for example, the figure of the Virgin Mary, a figure
often put to the Service of sexual and gender essentialism and yet as often loved by those
who suffer under such a system. Tina Beattie (2007) has argued that Mary is a queer space.
She is the first to benefit from the new, redeemed humanity wrought by her son, a human-
ity freed from the cyde of sex, birth, and death, her virginity anticipating the resurrection
and death having no hold on her. The significance of the story of the Annunciation is
precisely that it is a non-sexual conception, its radical difference from normal conception
destabilizing the valorization of sex and, in particular, heterosexuality. The Virgin mother
catapults the mind beyond the binary opposites with which we constrict our world view
to a paradoxical space in which the divine can be encountered. As the ‘new Eve’ early
Church theologians understood Mary as redeeming Eve and all women, not standing in
opposition and contrast to her as later theologians have understood Mary.
Beattie argües that the figure of the Virgin Mary invites us into a transgressive space
between worlds, a space in which we can learn to become what we are, redeemed selves.
This space is a space of paradox and ambiguity in which we can expect to be both
 THE THEOLOGICAL STUDY OF SEXUALITY 27

delighted and disturbed by the disruption of our identities and constructions. It is a

queer space in which identity, gender, and sexuality become playfully fluid. In prayer we
too can play with our desire for a God who is both mother and father, lover and brother,
husband and wife, and the Virgin Mary plays a key role in that (Beattie 2007: 293-304).
Althaus-Reid argued that Mary was the strangest thing in Christianity (Althaus-Reid
2003: 71) and it is not hard to see why: the Virgin who gives birth to a son who is also her
father and her spouse, and who becomes the mother of us all, she is probably the most
obviously queer thing in Christianity.
Another figure often cited by queer theologians is Gregory of Nyssa. This early Church
theologian appeals to queer theologians because he suggested that the Christian journey
was one towards the resurrection in which the body will be restored to its prelapsarian,
non-gendered State, and on its journey to this State the soul moves through male and
female roles. So though the soul is propelled towards God by desire and the longing
for good, it finds that that desire is fulfilled in a context beyond sexual difference. For
Gregory, his sister Macrina in her ascetic State was evidentially moving beyond gender.
As Stuart (2003) notes, in his visión of the soul moving through gender categories to a
place beyond gender Gregory oflfers a visión as queer as any contemporary theorist.
If Patrick Cheng is right that sin should be understood as opposition to what God
has given humanity in Christ, and Christ has brought in a new creation in which sexual
identities are abolished, then, for queer theology, sin is sexual and gender essentialism is
the perpetuation of the notion that these categories tell the truth about us and about our
relationship with God (Cheng 2011:71).
Queer theology is not without its weaknesses. It can be accused of being too theo-
retical and idealistic with no grounding in lived reality, even, and perhaps especially, in
the Church which remains in most part hidebound by notions of gender and sexuality.
The great danger facing queer theology is that it will atrophy and become another form
of fixed identity. It must not itself become normative. Though it can be frustratingly
inconclusive, with its tendency to expose and pose rather than answer questions, this
is actually its greatest strength because it creates a space for Christians to do some hard
thinking. It must always be in the process of contesting and deconstructing as it seeks
to map out a space beyond identity. As Susannah Cornwall has put it, the role of queer
theology is to pulí the rug out from under theology (Cornwall 2011:252). But in order to
have an impact beyond the academy it needs to find a way on to the rug-covered floors
of the Churches.

Via Transformativa

What is the future of theology and sexuality? If the mission of Christianity is to cooper-
ate with the divine in the realization of the kingdom of God upon earth then theologians
now need to focus on how the resurrected life, a life beyond gender and sexual identity,
can be lived. Such a life must first be piloted and modelled in the Church. However, as
28 ELIZABETH STUART

previously noted, while the Church has agonized and twisted and turned on these issues,
Western society has begun to resolve them. But this should not absolve the Church of its
duty to stop talking about sexuality and gender and to focus instead on love, justice,
desire, tnercy, and equality in relating, including sexual relating. Theologians of sexual­
ity need to turn to issues around the right ordering and channelling of desire towards its
end in God.
While both Church and society have been struggling with issues around homosex-
uality, both the monastic and marriage vocations have been undergoing something
of a crisis. Probably the most pressing task for theologians of sexuality at the current
moment is therefore reflection upon the demands of faithfulness in sexual relating and
its place in the ordering of desire towards the divine. It is interesting that theologians of
the vía creativa have been more open than those on the other paths to the valué of the
celibate life as pointing to the true end of desire and providing a site of resistance to
the notion that sexual identity and relating in some way tells the truth about a person in
the way that nothing else does. For, as Sarah Coakley has argued, what Christianity may
well be in need of at this current time is a new asceticism, an understanding of the part
that desire plays in Christian discipleship that will enable Christians to steer a course
between the rampant libertarianism of contemporary culture and a disordered repres-
sion of desire. And perhaps, as she suggests, what we also need are living examples of
how to live beyond the end of sexuality and gender, how to live according to a proper
erotic asceticism (Coakley 2010).
This post-sexuality asceticism will need to wrestle with the extraordinary complexi-
ties posed by living in a digital age. Many have claimed that we are becoming cyborgs,
creatures in whom the flesh and technology—particularly digital technology—begin to
merge. It is possible for us to have a virtual self, indeed many virtual selves, all of whom
may engage in cybersex assuming different sexual identities in the process, an activ-
ity which engages the fleshy body albeit at a distance from the object of desire. In the
process of all this, some claim that we are becoming post-human. If to be human is to be
located in a web of relationships, as Elaine Graham has argued, then there is a danger of
us moving into a State where at least some relationships are disengaged from our bodily
presence and we need to explore whether that does or may undermine the authenticity
of the encounter (Graham 2004:10-32).
Brett Lunceford (2009) has suggested that if the sacred is essentially unmediated
experience, then increasingly mediated forms of sexual activity may be luring us further
and further from sacred sexuality (2009:77-96). And if that is the case how is Christian
theology to deal with those for whom this is the only possible form of sexual expres-
sion? More thought on the relationship between sexuality and social justice needs to be
undertaken and the onus there is on those of the via positiva who want to suggest that
there is a cióse connection between sexual relating and true humanity.
The via positiva approach should be welcomed because it represented a radical change
of attitude, particularly in the Román Catholic Church. No longer was (hetero) sex to
be approached with suspicion or fear but celebrated as part of the created order and
the human vocation. The via negativa goes further in identifying the divine with sexual
 THE THEOLOGICAL STUDY OF SEXUALITY 29

desire as long as it is ordered towards mutuality. The danger with these two approaches
is that they overlook the fact that sex may be violent or exploitative and indeed those
who advócate the via creativa may move too quickly to the glorious liberty of the resur-
rection for those who are still pinned to the crucifix of violence and exploitation. In a
post-sexuality world, theologians need to find a way of reflecting upon such violence.
Sex is not always good. Theologians are naturally wary of a return to a sex-negative dis­
course but we cannot be afraid of acknowledging the fact that at its worst sex can be a
weapon of evil and even in its most loving form it can be, and often is, messy and ambig-
uous. It may be caught up in the economy of salvation but it itself is not salvation.
There are also groups of people whose lived experience challenge all the viae exam-
ined in this chapter. Transgendered people challenge the biological essentialism that
underpins the theology of the via creativa and the dissolution of that essentialism by
queer theologians. Asexual people are currently an almost completely silenced group
within theology of sexuality. Asexuality is not the same as celibacy, many asexual people
are in relationships (Bogaert 2012) and the asexual person should raise uncomfortable
questions for all of us who have valorized sex and sexual desire perhaps at the expense
of relationship. Have we in the process aided the alienation of our asexual brothers and
sisters and placed them outside the economy of salvation? In the Church, intersexed
people are beginning to find a voice in theological discourse as are bisexual people and it
is vitally important that their voices are heard as theologians begin the project of devel-
oping the asceticism needed in a post-sex context. They must become part of the forma-
tion of this ascetic.

CONCLUSION

In 1977 Michel Foucault, the father of queer theology, decried the ‘austera monarchy
of sex’ and suggested that we need to say ‘no’ to all the Systems that valorize sexuality
(1990:159). Ironically, as Foucault was declaring himself bored with sex and issues of
sexuality, the theological discourse on these matters was just getting going. It has flour-
ished into a discipline coalesced around a range of methodologies represented in this
chapter as four paths or viae. These paths have wound around the Christian tradition,
the body, heteronormativity, homosexuality, eras, the divine and its disappearance, and
ended up pretty much where Foucault was in 1977 questioning the fundamental notions
of sexuality which dominated the theological discourses of modernity, and regarding
them as obstructions on the way to the kingdom. Part of the reason for Foucault’s bore-
dom lay in an experience he had in the late 1970S. He was run down by a car and believed
he was dying. He described the experience as one of intense pleasure and one of his
best memories (Macey 2004:131). This near-death experience, the joy of death, provided
Foucault with a horizon, an ecstatic experience from which to assess other types of pleas­
ure and desire. For him death was an ultímate pleasure and a limitless one, whereas sex
is a fleeting, limited pleasure which can only be recalled through repetition. Sex always
30 ELIZABETH STUART

points beyond itself to a space, to a reality where desire finally finds its consummation.
The purpose of theological reflection upon sexuality must be to hasten our journey to
that space. Perhaps, then, theologians now need to focus more than they previously have
on the dissatisfaction that sex inevitably induces because it is perhaps here in the very
limits of sexual satisfaction that God is found. Christian theology cannot just have an
affair with sexuality, it has to move beyond the honeymoon period that it has enjoyed
with it during modernity and move into the dissatisfaction, disappointment, and bore-
dom because it is these experiences that point us beyond a pleasure anticipated and even
experienced in sex, to the joy of death in which we will be making love with God.

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