God, Sexuality, And The Self - Unifr.ch
god, sexuality, and the selfGod, Sexuality, and the Self is a new venture in systematic theology. SarahCoakley invites the reader to reconceive the relation of sexual desire andthe desire for God, and – through the lens of prayer practice – to chart theintrinsic connection of this relation to a theology of the Trinity. The goalis to integrate the demanding ascetical undertaking of prayer with therecovery of lost and neglected materials from the tradition, and thus toreanimate doctrinal reflection both imaginatively and spiritually. Whatemerges is a vision of human longing for the triune God which is bothedgy and compelling: Coakley’s théologie totale questions standard shibboleths on ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’, and thereby suggests a way beyondcurrent destructive impasses in the churches. The book is clearly andaccessibly written, and will be of great interest to all scholars and studentsof theology.sarah coakley is Norris–Hulse Professor of Divinity at the Universityof Cambridge. Her publications include Religion and the Body(Cambridge, 2000), Powers and Submissions: Philosophy, Spirituality andGender (2002), Pain and its Transformations (2008), The Spiritual Senses(with Paul L. Gavrilyuk; Cambridge, 2011), and Sacrifice Regained(Cambridge, 2012). Coakley is also the editor of Re-Thinking Gregory ofNyssa (2003) and co-editor (with Charles M. Stang) of Re-ThinkingDionysius the Areopagite (2009).
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United KingdomPublished in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New YorkCambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit ofeducation, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.www.cambridge.orgInformation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521552288 Cambridge University Press, 2013This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place without the writtenpermission of Cambridge University Press.First published 2013Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow CornwallA catalogue record for this publication is available from the British LibraryLibrary of Congress Cataloguing in Publication dataCoakley, Sarah, 1951–God, sexuality and the self : an essay ‘on the Trinity’ / Sarah Coakley.pages cmIncludes index.isbn 978-0-521-55228-81. Trinity. 2. God (Christianity) 3. Spirituality. 4. Sex – Religiousaspects – Christianity. I. Title.BT111.3.C63 20132310 .044–dc232013005144isbn 978-0-521-55228-8 Hardbackisbn 978-0-521-55826-6 PaperbackCambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy ofURLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,accurate or appropriate.
GOD, SEXUALITY,AND THE SELFAn Essay ‘On the Trinity’SARAH COAKLEY
ContentsList of illustrationspage viiiPreface and acknowledgementsxiiiList of abbreviationsxxiPrelude: the arguments of this book121Recasting ‘systematic theology’: gender, desire, and théologietotale33Doing theology ‘on Wigan Pier’: why feminism and the socialsciences matter to theology663Praying the Trinity: a neglected patristic tradition1004The charismatic constituency: embarrassment or riches?1525Seeing God: trinitarian thought through iconography1906‘Batter My Heart’: reorientations of classic trinitarian thought2667The primacy of divine desire: God as Trinity and the‘apophatic turn’308Coda: conclusions and beyond340Glossary of technical terms and names345Scripture index353General index355vii
Preface and acknowledgementsThis book assumed its first, preliminary, shape a very long time ago,in the 1990s, when I was invited to give the Hulsean Lectures atCambridge University. Soon afterwards, when I migrated to a newpost at Harvard, I became rapidly – and vividly – aware of thebarriers of cultural difference that made my undertaking, indeed mywhole theological approach, bemusing to my new American interlocutors, and especially to those in the liberal religious tradition.The impenitent philosophical realism in this project, the absolutecentrality granted to the practice of prayer, the talk of the entanglement of ‘sexuality’ and ‘spirituality’ (both terms laden with differentcultural baggage in the two continents), the insistence that earlyChristian – and especially celibate, monastic – traditions couldthrow some crucial and positive light on celebrated current dilemmas about ‘sex’ and ‘gender’: these traits were seen as at bestquaintly English or Anglican, and at worst manifestations of afeminist false consciousness. Thus, for a long time the project wasshelved while I reflected with real seriousness on the force of suchcriticisms, adjusted to my new cultural milieu, and took stock of theconcomitant resistance, in an era of postmodernity, to the veryproject of a Christian systematic theology.At the same time, however, a set of ecclesiastical paroxysms wasoccurring: Christian churches worldwide, but especially RomanCatholics in Boston and Episcopalians and Anglicans in NorthAmerica, England, and Africa, were thrown into new and profoundcrises by sexual scandals, divisive debates about homosexuality, andxiii
xivPreface and acknowledgementscontinuing disagreements about women, gender roles, and churchleadership. In this context of simultaneous exposure and threatenedschism, I became newly aware that the approach I had been essayingin my earlier lectures fitted neither the standard liberal nor conservative approaches to these debates; but it was not a compromisebetween them either. Rather, it cut across the disjunctive divides alltoo familiar from press coverage and mutual accusation, insistinginstead that prayer and a renewed asceticism (not, note, repression)had to be at the heart of any attempt to solve the profound questionsof desire with which the churches struggled; and – perhaps evenmore counterintuitively to many – it argued that only engagementwith a God who has been ineluctably revealed and met as triunecould hold the key to contemporary anxieties about sexuality,gender, and feminism. However, this was not the approach to theTrinity that had by this time become almost commonplace amongst‘social trinitarians’, including some feminists, who looked to thepersons of the Trinity as imitable prototypes for good political,ecclesial, and personal relations. On the contrary, I saw myapproach as involving a much more profound, challenging, anddisconcerting engagement with God in prayer and scriptural reflection to be easily subsumable into the existing range of political andecclesial agendas. In short, it seemed I wanted to say something thatwas not otherwise being said, and which, in practice, proveddifficult to be heard by the existing theological parties of dissent.Yet thus it was that finally, after various other published prolegomena had been completed first, the last lap in the writing of thisbook was reached. I had written a book (Powers and Submissions)which had already focused centrally on the practice of contemplation; I had followed that with edited studies of Gregory of Nyssaand Dionysius the Areopagite. So now theological couragereturned, and a reconceived version of my original text was forged
Preface and acknowledgementsxvinto the first volume of a larger systematic project which, as it isplanned, will eventually have several parts. As currently conceived,the second volume (Knowing Darkly) will adumbrate my theologicalanthropology of the ‘spiritual senses’, and at the same time turn tothe vexed modern category of ‘race’. The third volume (Punish andHeal) will address the public realm of the polis with its secularinstitutions of prison and hospital, and so re-examine the doctrinesof sin and atonement. Christology (Flesh and Blood) will advisedlybe left till last, not as demotion but as climax: the mystery of theincarnation will be approached via a theology of the eucharist.The rationale for my newly conceived understanding of the taskof systematic theology, and for its intrinsic connection to thesepressing contemporary questions about sex, sexuality, and gender(terms to be carefully defined), is provided in the opening sectionsof this book. This volume on the Trinity, however, is just the initialsegment in the larger systematic project, to be entitled overall, OnDesiring God. Thus to reconceive questions of sexuality and genderin relation to the trinitarian God is but the first, albeit adventurous,step in a new theological landscape.This book is also an experiment in a form of writing that academictheology unfortunately increasingly eschews. It aims to be comprehensible to the general educated reader as well as to the professionaltheologian, but without – I trust – any loss of scholarly acumen. It iswritten, certainly, for colleagues and students; but no less too forthose in the churches – and those who hover agonizingly at the edgesof institutional religion – who occasionally wonder how Christianityremains intellectually defensible as a worldview at all, and how it maygo forward in the face of the exposure of its massive historic collusionin gender blindness and abuse of power, its tragic (and continuing)mismanagement of the economy of desire. In short, it is written for allthose who continue to seek a vision of God for today, one attractive
xviPreface and acknowledgementsenough to magnetize their deepest human longings so as to order theirdesires in relation to God.To set oneself this task of communication to a wider theologicalreadership is not easy, and involves a certain risk for the establishedacademic, especially one who is now subject to regular government‘assessments’. The author in the academy habitually writes with oneeye on the reviewer, friend or foe; and the tendency to heap upextraneous references, to engage in self-aggrandizing polemics, orto employ impressive, if inflated, jargon is at times almost irresistible. Here, however, I have consciously attempted to deflect suchtraits; and I have enlisted the help of several long-suffering students,friends, and parishioners to call me to account on this score. If theacademic reader seeks further references, or indications of my ownengagement in current scholarly debates, I here refer also to myother writings; and I provide in the bibliographic notes at the end ofeach chapter the detailed links to the material that has informed myargument. In this way I have kept the number of footnotes to aminimum. I have also supplied a glossary of technical terms at theend of the volume. I take this calculated risk – of relatively simpleand direct communication – for a reason. For even as systematictheology today undergoes a remarkable revival, it is in gravedanger of rendering itself socially insignificant by sheer obscurityof expression.Yet my alternative form of writing is in no way a resort to apopular mode, let alone to anti-intellectualism. Indeed, I stronglyresist certain false and stereotypical disjunctions: between belief andpractice, thought and affect, or, for that matter, academic andaccessible writing. As the argument of the book unfurls, it willbecome evident why the theological method employed here isappropriately conjoined with a direct style of writing. For thebook is written for all those who struggle at the intersection of
Preface and acknowledgementsxviithe theological, the political, the spiritual, and the sexual, as well asfor those whose particular theological vocation it is to interpret thisnexus. The method I here call théologie totale involves a complexrange of interdisciplinary skills; and to link the theoretical to thepastoral in this way is a task of some considerable spiritual andintellectual delicacy, just as to write so as to be ‘understanded of thepeople’ makes its own ascetical demands on the author.So much by way of brief introduction to this book’s undertaking.The rest of this preface must now be devoted to the giving ofthanks.Despite the long delay in production, I remain much indebted,first, to the Hulsean electors at Cambridge for the honour of myoriginal election; and I am especially grateful to those who gave mehospitality and friendly criticism during my weekly visits toCambridge from Oriel College, Oxford, where I was then teaching.Nicholas Lash, David Ford, John Milbank, Tim Jenkins, BrianHebblethwaite, and Janet Martin Soskice must be singled out formy special thanks, and their influence may be detected at points inwhat I have written. But I am no less grateful to the other seniormembers at Cambridge who attended the lectures, and to thegratifyingly large audiences of students, who also offered theircomments.At Harvard I was fortunate to enjoy the criticism (sometimesdeservedly severe) of graduate students in several seminars andclasses devoted to the subject of the Trinity. Their influence isparticularly evident in Chapters 1 and 2 of this book. I thank themall, and trust that what I have learned from them, and also from myHarvard feminist colleagues, as I gradually became attuned to theAmerican theological milieu, will be manifest in what I havewritten. Others outside Harvard did me the honour of engagingmeticulously – whether approvingly or critically – with the
xviiiPreface and acknowledgementssubstantial argument about patristic trinitarianism, and its systematic import, that lies at the heart of this book: Lewis Ayres, BrianDaley, SJ, Kevin Hector, Andrew Louth, Kilian McDonnell, OSB,Robert Murray, SJ, the late Lloyd Paterson, Columba Stewart,OSB, Kallistos Ware, Robert Wilken, and the late Maurice Wiles.Various Harvard research assistants – Philip McCosker, RobertSt Hilaire, Philip Francis – were a considerable help to me ingathering bibliographical materials and nobly lugging them to mydoor. The two Philips, especially, ensured in their distinctive waysthat this book got finished, Philip McCosker invaluably assisting meagain in Cambridge with the bibliographic notes in the final push, asdid Mark McInroy and David Grumett as research associates thereearlier. Michon Matthiesen (then a doctoral student at BostonCollege) was a constant source of encouragement at a time whenI was despairing of completion. I must also mention the continuingluxury of a ‘priest’s hole’ in which to hide, pray, and write, whichwas for a while vouchsafed to me by the rector of the local Jesuitcommunity in Cambridge, Massachusetts, John Privett, SJ, whoclaimed he was paying me back for some hiding done by Jesuits inEnglish houses ‘in more turbulent times’. My parishioners inBoston, Deborah and Joseph Dyer, also gave me such sanctuary.For me, the solitude they provided was an invaluable aid toreflection.Despite the cultural shifts I underwent during my sojourn inNorth America, this book remains – I am assured by my critics – adiscernibly Anglican product. Be that as it may, I am glad to recordmy indebtedness to the Church of England Doctrine Commission(on which I served for ten years long ago, from 1982 to 1992) for thestimulus it provided to my thinking at that time; and more especiallyto Bishop Alec Graham (sometime chair of the commission), and toChurch House Publications, for allowing me to reuse the material
Preface and acknowledgementsxixon charismatic spirituality that I originally wrote for one of theDoctrine Commission reports (We Believe in the Holy Spirit,London, Church House Publications, 1991, ch. 2). As will be clearfrom that material (now reworked as Chapter 4 of this book), I owea great deal to the people in both of the charismatic groups inLancashire whose membership I investigated. They welcomed meinto their worship, and in their interviews with me generously gaveme their time, their trust, and the depth of their spiritual insights. AsI hope Chapter 4 will show, there is much buried theologicaltreasure in the parochial life of contemporary churches and groups.The late Mary Douglas was a constant source of inspiration andencouragement as I sought to bring social science and theologicalmethods creatively together in this regard.Without two periods of sabbatical leave from Harvard, the firstgenerously funded by the Henry Luce III Fellowship programme,the second by the Lilly Foundation, this book – and the otherrelated projects, mentioned above – could never have been completed. The first period of leave also allowed me to spend some timein Princeton gathering materials for the iconographical chapter ofthis volume at the Index of Christian Art; the staff there wereparticularly gracious and helpful. On the practical publishing side,Alex Wright at the Cambridge University Press, and then hissuccessors Ruth Parr and Kevin Taylor, encouraged and assistedme all along the way. When I asked for yet more time to redevelopthis text as the first volume of a proposed systematic theology,Kevin Taylor remained unflappably supportive. And Kate Brett,Laura Morris, and Anna Lowe firmly helped to bring the project tocompletion.Finally, as any honest author knows, and especially any feministscholar, books are not written (let alone finished) without certaincosts and compensatory adjustments to the lives of others in the
xxPreface and acknowledgementsfamily. Our daughters Edith and Agnes have over the years developed a good line in lampooning technical trinitarian jargon, and willdoubtless be glad to see this particular project complete; whileI have struggled with the Trinity they have grown into womanhood. My beloved husband Chip can alone count the cost todomestic comfort, or to the speed of his own research, and hemust be mightily tired of hearing about the ‘progress’ of thisbook. He thought it would never be done. My thanks to him maybe inadequate, but to him I dedicate this first volume of systematicsin its final form.Trinity Sunday, 2012
Prelude: the arguments of this bookInstitutional Christianity is in crisis about ‘sexuality’. Its detractorsin the supposedly secularized and liberal climes of Northern Europe,who nonetheless yearn for what they call a satisfying ‘spirituality’,see this crisis as a sign of its failure to engage the contemporaryworld. Its conservative defenders, to be found mainly in religiouslyobservant parts of North America and throughout the southernhemisphere, take it as an indication of cultural decadence and adeficiency in scriptural obedience. Probably both sides are right, butperhaps neither, exactly; this book notably does not aim to solve theproblems in the terms currently under discussion. Instead, it aims togo deeper: to come at the issue that is now called sexuality through adifferent route – that of the divine itself.For this is a book about God, and more specifically about theChristian God. It is written for those who puzzle about how onemight set about coming into relation with such a God in the firstplace; and who wonder how – without sacrificing either intellectualintegrity or critical acumen – one might discover this baffling,alluring, and sometimes painful encounter to require thematizingin trinitarian terms: ‘Father’, ‘Son’, and ‘Holy Spirit’. Further (andthis may seem odd to the contemporary reader), this book is writtenin the fundamental conviction that no cogent answer to the contemporary Christian question of the trinitarian God can be givenwithout charting the necessary and intrinsic entanglement of human1
2Prelude: the arguments of this booksexuality and spirituality in such a quest: the questions of rightcontemplation of God, right speech about God, and right orderingof desire all hang together. They emerge in primary interaction withScripture, become intensified and contested in early Christian tradition, and are purified in the crucible of prayer. Thus the problemof the Trinity cannot be solved without addressing the very questions that seem least to do with it, questions which press
pressing contemporary questions about sex, sexuality, and gender (terms to be carefully defined), is provided in the opening sections einitial segment in the larger systematic project, to be entitled overall, On Desiring God. Thus to reconceive questions of sexuality and gender
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