A year ago the bishops of the Episcopal Church received a 95-page report by eight theologians to provide the church with a “theology of same-sex relationships.” (The report was published in the Winter 2011 issue of the Anglican Theological Review.) As you might expect, the panel split into two parties, “traditionalist” and “liberal.”

What you might not expect — if you follow such debates in mainline Protestant bodies — was how the sides began to meet. Certain familiar arguments disappeared. New arguments took their place. And some of the new arguments converged in ways their authors perhaps had not intended.
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Even if you grant the premise of “Ephesians does not require heterosexual complementarity, even if it uses gendered language,” you still must find grounds for the contention that _marriage_ does not require “heterosexual complementarity.” Instead, Rogers has assumed that physical reality (ie Creation) does not clearly imply heterosexual complementarity (or at least waved his hands firmly at the notion).

There was a great article in *First Things* that pointed out the inherent gnosticism in much liberal argument in favor of same-sex unions. This is another example. Rodger’s argument is that what is really important is the _symbolism_ of two people’s union representing god, rather than the true full union (becoming one flesh) of two _embodied_ people pointing us toward the mystery of Christ and the Church.

Non-material sacramentals are not sacramental at all.

Well put, Charlie; thank you. Are you thinking of a piece by Gilbert Meilander in FT, per chance?

It was Robert P. George in the Aug/Sept 2009 issue. Here is the first paragraph:

Everyone agrees that marriage, whatever else it is or does, is a relationship in which persons are united. But what are persons? And how is it possible for two or more of them to unite? The view typically (if often unconsciously) held by advocates of liberal positions on issues of sexuality and marriage is that the person is the conscious and desiring aspect of the self. The person inhabits (or is somehow associated with) a body, certainly, but the body is regarded (if often only implicitly) as a subpersonal reality, rather than a part of the personal reality of the human being whose body it is. The body is viewed as an instrument by which the individual produces or otherwise participates in satisfactions and other desirable experiences and realizes various goals.

The whole article is here:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/07/what-marriage-is-and-what-it-isnt

What strikes me in the Christian Century post is how quickly a turn to one aspect of tradition (example the Cistercian “mother Jesus”) is adopted rather uncritically as a proper lens for interpretation of Scripture.  Tradition, like Scripture, isn’t a buffet where you sample your favorite voices, but must be consulted as a whole.  And then the whole “neither male nor female” is imported from one Scriptural context to another in same fashion as Harold Camping’s “a day unto the Lord is 1000 years” and his May 21st doomsday prediction.  Classic prooftexting!

[sorry this is so long; I find the Rogers’s article both interesting and flawed]

Generally, I find this article a little unfortunate simply because the train of its argument is a little difficult to follow. A friend and I are actually going to sit down and discuss it soon, partly because it assumes a number of important issues without mentioning them. Its argument really needs to be reconstructed, and I’ll try to do so briefly before bringing up some problems I think I see.

What is interesting about the article, at least to me, is how it attempts to say that sexual difference and/or complementarity became a major concern in both the conservative and liberal papers on same-sex marriage presented to the HOB last year. Further, it attempts to address this issue by arguing a few points that it thinks are crucial: 1) In marriage, any human sexual pair can signify the relationship of “Christ and the Church,” primarily because 2) Christ somehow transcends gender, due to his divine nature, and is both male and female in many descriptions of him, and 3) the personal gender of those in Christ was interpreted theologically in a rather fluid way in previous ages and is definitely effaced in Gal 3:28.

[There might be other ways of construing or elaborating Rogers’s argument; it’s a little convoluted, and I admit I’m leaving out certain points.]

Clearly, 2 and 3 bear the primary weight of the argument in the article and are the points which ought to be addressed. I’ll simply be addressing the points I find most troublesome. 2, for instance, “the maleness of Christ is a curious thing,” seems somewhat unclear to me, at least as Rogers presents it. Take the following quotation:

“As for Christ, orthodox theology makes him fully human and fully divine. As God, Christ occupies neither gender, since God is the source of it all. As the medieval axiom goes, God is not in a category, *Deus non est in genere*. The corollary reads like a translation: “God is not in a gender.”“

I have to start by applauding Rogers’s attempt at starting out confessionally Chalcedonian, but I’m not sure he really grasps the point of the council. Yes, Christ is fully human and fully divine; that’s the Chalcedonian Christology that orthodoxy accepts. But that doesn’t mean we simply think the qualities of God, considered in themselves, as overwhelming all the specific qualities of Christ’s incarnate body. That is not Chalcedonian Christology; it’s practically Monophysitism. Rogers also does not succeed in arguing that the maleness of the human body of Christ is “a curious thing,” by taking Graham Ward’s odd claim that Jesus had no ‘Y’ chromosome by his lack of a human father (how would we know that the ‘Y’ chromosome wasn’t made *ex nihilo*, for instance). He also assumes too much by citing points familiar from Caroline Walker Bynum’s monograph *Jesus as Mother*: the side-wound of Christ is like a womb which births the Church and individual believers; Christ feeds the faithful from his ‘breasts’ (an image often tied to the side-wound, to Origen’s commentary on Song of Songs 1:2, and to the figure of the pelican, wounding itself to nourish its young).

Rogers doesn’t show that Christ’s body or nature is somehow not male by these examples. Really, all Rogers succeeds at in this article is raising the question of the purpose of gendered theological speech about God, about Christ, and about the Church, both considered as a whole and in its visible members. For instance, does the fact that there are ways of talking about Christ which speak of him as other than male necessarily imply that Christ’s nature was (and is) other than male? And, with that point, there is the corollary which Rogers brings up: should similar ways of talking about individual Christians (e.g. Paul’s speech about being “in birth pangs” for his congregation in Gal 4:19) be seen as impacting the actual gender of said person? And, finally, does this impact on the person’s gender mean that “maleness” and “femaleness” is fluid to the point that any human(regardless of biological sex) may become, in their nature, either male, female, or any mix of the two? And, finally and most importantly, does all of this have anything to do with Ephesians 5?

That is, even if we were to grant nearly every point of the article, would it still impact our discussion of marriage in Ephesians 5? Let us grant that Christ is not fundamentally male in every aspect of his person and may be described as female in certain aspects or salvific roles. Let us grant that the same holds true for human beings “in Christ.” Should Ephesians 5, then, be read without a sexual duality in mind? Is the marital figuring of the male/female, Christ/Church relationship an open figuration for all persons since Christ and his people may be all genders and none?

(remember, we are granting this only for the sake of argument; all the previous points could be argued negatively)

It seems to me that the answer is no, for several reasons. First, the question of metaphorical language and actual gender. The fact that Christ can be metaphorically described as birthing the Church from his crucified, opened body hardly makes Christ fundamentally female or not male in other aspects of his life and nature. Similarly, the fact that the celibate Paul can speak metaphorically of his relationship with his congregations as one of “birth pangs” does not make Paul fundamentally female or not male in other aspects of his life and nature. Second, even if we ignore “actual gender” in favor of “metaphorical gender” or we decide that a human’s nature is not gendered, it is unclear that we can simply mix our biblical passages and theological metaphors willy-nilly. That is, Christ *is* compared to a *male* husband in Ephesians 5, so it seems, at the least, not immediately relevant that he is figured in other ways in other contexts.

What I think we ought to be doing with all these metaphors of Christ as mother, as husband, etc., instead of what Rogers does, is learning how to read our theological metaphors well, in their integrity, before we start leaping to various kinds of strained conjunctions. In other words, there seems to be a certain divine purpose in the multiplicity of images in Scripture and Tradition for God, for Christ, and for the Church, a purpose which is incredibly important and expresses necessary things about both divine and human persons in language that we can just barely understand. But, I am simply not convinced that we can do with these metaphors what Rogers does.

As another salvo, Rogers also wants to make the marital relationship primarily about being an icon of love and a “moral matter”, involving the ascetic discipline of “love for the neighbor.” He focuses on this language in Ephesians 5:

“He who loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of one body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself.”

What Rogers rather crucially does not say, though, is that his choice to focus on this particular passage of Scripture presents him with peculiar difficulties. After all, the marital relationship in this passage is not only about love but about submission and obedience. Yes, the man is to love the woman as Christ loves the church, but the woman is also called in this passage to do something iconic: “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.”

Rogers never brings up this aspect of the passage. If he really wanted to make his argument complete, that same-sex couples can potentially represent the relationship of Christ and the Church, then he would have to incorporate a discussion of more than marital love, but also marital obedience. He would also have to admit a certain amount of difference in marital roles in order for same-sex complementarity to work, which I sincerely doubt he is interested in contemplating. Of course, this passage also raises certain difficulties for conservative arguments that want to screen out same-sex couples, while not talking about love/obedience here.

This is a fascinating and necessary conversation which I am enjoying reading up on.  I am especially glad to see the comments by Zack Guiliano, who raises many good points.  I would like to add a few reflections of my own.

I am curious whether or not one can gloss Gal. 3:28 - “In Christ there is no male and female” - to read, “In Christ, there are neither bodies nor ends for them to attain.”  Rogers seems to argue that typology means negating the sign rather than recognizing its participation in and relation to the thing signified.  Hence his theological use of Judith Butler, which he sums up as, “Christian traditions still have surprising things to teach us about how to expand the terms male and female — how to displace them from contexts in which they confine the realities of Christ and the church.”  If this is the case, perhaps we ought to “displace” all language and all words “from contexts in which they confine the realities of Christ and the church.”  Whether intentionally or not, Butler’s normative project has become Rogers’s project as well, the only difference being that the latter is interested in how it might interface with theology.  Rogers’s work is therefore driven by an explicitly anti-theological agenda, as Butler is quite blunt about her intent to undermine all notions of Logos in the opening pages of Gender Trouble.  The effacement of the typological signifier does not therefore liberate the signified, but deprives it of all meaning because in following Butler, Rogers tacitly agrees to deny the Logos.  The Christology advocated is not Chalcedonian, however much it may pretend to be.  It is at best Arian.

Related to this, Rogers claims that in the medieval era, the body was typologically gendered.  He does not claim that it was typologically sexed.  Yet it is the sex of the body that is under discussion in all discussions of same-sex marriage.  Conflating gender with sex allows Rogers to pull the ultimate sleight-of-hand by writing that “Ephesians does not require heterosexual complementarity, even if it uses gendered language.”  Sex has been subsumed to gender which, as Rogers rights points out, is merely a linguistic construct - but then he uses the linguistic nature of the latter to deny any meaning to the former (both the word “sex” and the physical realities it is intended to signify).  But Paul never claims that the sexed type is only a gendered type.  There is no reason to believe that he, as a Pharisee of Pharisees, would have rendered biological sex an irrelevant matter.  Historical context itself is therefore undermined - a rather problematic proposition as it lifts the Biblical text (and any other text) from its con-text and therefore opens up signifiers to hermeneutical and discursive privation.  But where might we find a theological justification for private language?  Philosophers have not discerned it in the Book of Nature and it is advocated nowhere in Scripture.  Related to this is perhaps the fact that the ecclesial basis of marital typology has been wholly ignored, which dovetails with ignoring the ecclesial basis of viable Biblical interpretation.  Rogers would have the body, language, and Scripture wholly denuded by depriving each of any and all contexts, including those which are ecclesial.

In sum, the effacement of the textual signifier in Scripture (the sexed body) is inspired and driven by the anti-theological denial of the Logos, and this in turn effaces the meaning of the inspired text by denying that meaning might be located and given within space and time, past and present.  Reading the Biblical text thus becomes an opportunity for interpretive domination: only a sovereign power can impose limits upon the play/s that the text is invoked to justify.  Rogers appears in the end to be something of a Hobbesian nihilist.

Thanks to Benjamin for bringing in the necessary point on sex and gender. I apologize because this next post will only address yours indirectly, as I’m still thinking through these issues as I go.

To add another layer to the discussion (and lay a few of my cards on the table in the process), I actually do often wonder about the Gal 3:28 passage. It has been the favored verse for liberal/progressive discussions, at least since the debates on women’s ordination. At least in Rogers’s use, it is taken up as an example of the dissolution of sexual difference in the human person. Although this interpretation has often been vehemently argued against by certain sectors of historical-critical scholarship, I am somewhat conflicted on this point for several reasons.

First, it is by no means a simple task to actually figure out exactly what Paul means in this verse, in its full ramifications. In the context of the first part of the letter, he is talking about shared table-fellowship among Jewish and Greek Christians. It seems clear how there is “neither Jew nor Greek” in Christ. But, how then do we apply the talk about “neither slave nor free, no male and female,” particularly when the latter seems to be an oblique reference to the creation narrative? What sort of divisions are overcome and in what way? Second, the use of this phrase in patristic exegesis is inconsistent. Some take it to men that sexual difference was at some point “cosmically” overcome in the body of Jesus as he reconciled the whole universe (Maximus the Confessor in Ambiguum 41) or that the original human being had no sex and neither will post-resurrection humans (Gregory of Nyssa in On the making of humanity). But others, namely Augustine in his commentary on Galatians, see it as many historical-critical scholars see it today: the breaking down of relatively specific social customs in light of common baptism into Christ.

But I often wonder whether we might not need to bring in some discussion of the way this common baptism involves clothing oneself with Christ and participating in a new humanity, ala the language in Col. 3:0 and Eph. 4:22 of “stripping off the old humanity” and putting on the new. Might we see sexual difference only overcome, then, inasmuch as one begins to participate more and more in Christ and in the life of the age to come, in which we are to be equal to the angels, neither married nor given in marriage (Matt. 22:30)?

In this case, we actually could see Gal. 3:28 as a legitimate reference to the overcoming of sexual difference. But we would have to deny that the end of this distinction somehow implies that same-sex couples may marry and, by doing so, image forth the Christ/Church relationship typologically. Instead, we would have to affirm, as the Western monastic tradition often did, that one participated in the life of the angels, in the new humanity, and in the age to come, only when one became celibate and no longer participated in the old humanity established in the body of the fallen Adam. Only by dissociation with the current temporal order can one claim to have overcome these differences, and marriage is rather clearly of this order and not the next.

Just some thoughts.

Gentlemen, thank you for wonderful reflections, that we have been allowed to overhear, as it were. I am learning a lot. Kudos to you both for contemplating all of this as carefully as you have. Please continue!

First, and as a mere addendum to my post yesterday, I noted that Rogers identified gender as a linguistic construct and that the body in the medieval era was typologically gendered.  It now occurs to me that if both of these claims are correct, then Rogers further errs by claiming both that “Christ, as human, assumes humanity, not maleness” and that “Because Christ can be the bridegroom to a male believer, he resembles the same-sex spouse. Gender does not limit Christ, because he is its Lord.”  On the one hand, we see here again the same problem: the conflation of gender with physical sex.  Yet there is a further problem because if gender is culturally constructed, then same-gender union (which is a linguistic union, and thus not the same as same-sex union) could only have existed in a shared cultural context between the human Jesus and his male disciples.  Yet this is no longer a possibility for any of us as our own cultural construction(s) of gender are not shared between ourselves and whatever the cultural construction(s) of gender were for Jesus of Nazareth and his day.  Ergo, even if I speak of Christ as male and myself as male, I cannot assume that these typologically signify same-sex relationships because existing in different cultural contexts, Jesus and I also exist in different linguistic contexts and therefore have different genders.  Same-sex union and same-gender unions are fundamentally different.  This brings us then to the work of someone like Alan Bray, whose book The Friend points to the existence of liturgical blessings of friendship - same-gender unions, certainly - but as Bray notes, these were not conceived of as same-sex or homoerotic unions.  So, on the one hand, there is no same-gender union between male and female believers with the bodies natural and ecclesial of Jesus Christ.  On the other hand, even where the church has blessed same-gender relationships, it has never done so as a blessing of same-sex/homoerotic relationships.  So even if we conflate gender with sex as Rogers does, we still find no place for same-gendered union as either typologically indicative of, or coterminous with, same-sex union.

Second, to touch on points made by Zack, I have two thoughts.  On the one hand, I think that the reference to the angelic life as one that is beyond desire and thus beyond sexual activity - in other words, celibate - is key to the whole argument and needs to be brought forward.  Rogers writes like a typical capitalist: “Christ orients all desire to himself to satisfy every living thing”.  The point seems to be that we as human beings are not homo sapiens but homo devorans.  We are consuming creatures, ever consuming, and will find ourselves satisfied not through the askesis and corresponding cessation of desire, but only through consuming infinitely (which is taken as a type of satiety).  Yet the angelic life is one of hesychia, contemplation, and harmony.  It is my own observation - and I welcome correction on this! - that queer theology takes concupiscence, defined literally as desire and not merely as sexual desire, as the sine qua non of human being.  It is a libidinal anthropology, not a Christian one.

On the other hand, and unrelated to this, you write, “it is by no means a simple task to actually figure out exactly what Paul means in this verse, in its full ramifications.”  If I may propose, these are two different tasks; knowing what Paul meant is hermeneutical while determining the full ramifications is moral (unless, of course, you mean in terms of our determining the “full ramifications” of Paul’s stated intent, which means only determining “exactly what Paul means”).  While I am happy to grant hermeneutically that no one is fully able to determine authorial intent, I do believe that we are able to construct via historical context a range of plausible meanings for any given text.  Quite obviously, the Apostle could not have written Gal. 3:28 with a mental eye turned towards contemporary notions of transsexuality (the term transgendered, following Rogers’s definition of gender as linguistic and cultural, makes no sense when referring to the sexed body).  However, given what we know of both Jewish and early Christian baptismal rites, Paul could have referred to a moment of ecstatic sacramental (baptismal) union with the divine (Christ, specifically) in which physical sex was, like one’s status as Jew or gentile, slave or free, irrelevant.  (Such is the interpretation of Wayne Meeks, and following him Daniel Boyarin.  I hear that N. T. Wright has a similar interpretation, but I haven’t read him on point yet.)  At the very least, a patiently attentive eye to historical context allows us to construct significant portions of the mental architecture of any given writer - and that is saying quite a lot.  The refusal of certain kinds of theorists and “theologians” (who slavishly follow said theorists) to grant this is indicative of a lack of critical rigor and, perhaps above all, a lack of imagination - such theorists and “theologians” cannot imagine a world different than their own, so they force themselves violently and without shame onto a text so that they might bring forth and then take from it their own normative agenda.  It’s ridiculously bad work, and not a little unethical (the preceding image is, of course, intentional).  But such is the political imaginary of 1968.  Happily, we are not bound to it if we do not wish to be.

Ben,

What I think you point to here, particularly in your first paragraph, is the way that progressive accounts want to sound more theoretically precise, in tune with current developments in theory, and adventurous. Yet they are also relatively inconsistent in their approach as they attempt to make applications from Scripture or Christian tradition. They attempt to look historically careful and aware of changes in conceptions of gender, for instance, yet end up being unconsciously anachronistic as they attempt to leap the historical gap.

I think your second paragraph is crucial also, and I’d like to address it, particularly the statement:

“It is my own observation - and I welcome correction on this! - that queer theology takes concupiscence, defined literally as desire and not merely as sexual desire, as thesine qua non of human being.  It is a libidinal anthropology, not a Christian one.”

I think the situation is complicated because there actually are Christian anthropologies which are, in some sense, “libidinal,” and which make countering some emerging queer theologies slightly more difficult. Queer theologies are tricky because they often tap into genuinely Christian accounts of desire or eros as the constitutive element of both God and humanity, a move which gives queer anthropologies a veneer of Christian orthodoxy, particularly if one simply views their citations without following up on them. The key difference, though, is that they twist such accounts of eros into contemporary discussions of sexual desire, something which those who created libidinal or erotic accounts of anthropology would vehemently deny. Take Origen and (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Areopagite, both of whom were profoundly influential in Christian discussions on eros: Origen through his commentary on the Song of Songs, and Dionysius through sections 4.11-18 in his treatise *The Divine Names.*

Both Origen and Dionysius are quite comfortable with using *eros* in reference to God’s relationship to human beings and with human beings striving upwards to God. But they are quite explicit in attempting to dislodge these accounts from discussions of human sexuality. Admittedly, they seem to rely on the sexual resonance of *eros* in their accounts in order to provide metaphorical force. Origen, though, will say that one cannot enter such discussions or read “erotic” passages in the Song of Songs in the proper manner until one has been purified from base images and sexual desire. Dionysius will say:

“For, since the true Eros is hymned in a sense befitting God, not by us only, but also by the Scriptures themselves, the multitude, not having comprehended the Oneness of the Divine
Name of Eros, fell away, as might be expected of them, to the divided and corporeal and sundered, seeing it is not a real Eros, but a shadow, or rather a falling from the true Eros. For the Oneness of the Divine and Singular Eros is incomprehensible to the multitude, wherefore also, as seeming a very hard name to the multitude, it is assigned to the Divine Wisdom, for the purpose of leading back and restoring them to the knowledge of the true Eros; and for their liberation from the difficulty respecting it. And again, as regards ourselves, where it happened often that men of an earthly character imagined something out of place, (there is used) what seems more harmonious. A certain one says, “Your affection fell upon me, as the affection of women.” For those who have rightly listened to things Divine, the name of Agape and Eros is placed by the holy theologians in the same category throughout the Divine revelations, and [this name] is the name of a power unifying, and binding together, and mingling pre-eminently in the Beautiful and Good…”

Current queer appropriations of this sort of material are particularly odd because they seem to fall into the precise pit which Origen and Dionysius warned against. Anyway, I suppose my main point in all this is that there might, in some sense, be a fully Christian *erotic* anthropology, in which love and desire for God is what constitutes the human person, but queer accounts have missed the mark by focusing on sexual desire for another human being as the constitutive element or by conflating the two. And, I can’t help but speculate that they know they’re doing so when there is such strong language in the sources they’re working with.

As for what I meant on the meaning of Gal. 3:28 and its full ramifications, I meant both constructing Paul’s intent and doing a theological reading of the passage. To start with, what I mean is that I find much of the letter of Galatians particularly difficult to interpret because Paul is often rather oblique. It takes a lot of slow, patient reading in context to really follow the full train of his argument and one often feels like it might be impossible to recover his intent fully. It’s not as difficult as I think some people claim (a rising category of Scriptural agnostics), but it is, nonetheless, difficult. I also wonder about the moral thrust. So, it seems clear that Paul is referring to the baptismal rite and the lack of barrier to union with Christ. But, then, Paul is bringing this up just after his discussion of the practice of table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles (this is the point N.T. Wright often adds). There is a social or moral dimension to unity with and in Christ. This is what I mean when I say that I get what he’s doing with Jews and Gentiles (to some degree). They are bound together into a new people through the body of Christ. But I wonder about where the rest of the verse could be going (slaves, free, male, female); I wonder a lot about what Paul doesn’t say, or what lies behind his thinking in this verse. He doesn’t follow up on his latter points, as much as he does with Jews and Gentiles, both in Galatians and in the rest of his letters. Perhaps we get some hints about slaves in Philemon. Maybe we see something in 1 Corinthians 7, 12, 14, about relationships between men and women, both ecclesial and marital. But there’s not as much to work with, which is why I proposed the language about “putting on the new human/humanity” as a way to continue any constructive theological work with this verse which might come up.

In other words, I find it difficult to determine what to do with Gal. 3:28 in a variety of ways. Certainly historical-critical work can rule certain things out: does Paul have in mind contemporary transsexual or transgender persons? No. But, I think the verse does carry more theological freight than it might seem to on first examination, which leads me to ask about the constructive work or the theological reading which can be done with Gal. 3:28 in conjunction with other Pauline material and the rest of the Scriptures, not to mention the rest of the theological tradition. Some later orthodox writers seem to think Paul made some oblique comments on sexual difference here, which they tried to pick up and use in interesting ways, though they remained, in Maximus the Confessor’s phrase, *ambigua*. Ultimately, what I think such writers focus us on, as well as what contemporary debates might be leading us to, is the development of a robust theological account of Christian anthropology, both in light of creation and in light of our participation in the risen body of Christ, an account which addresses issues in human sexuality and Christian marriage, as it attempts to understand what human nature might be after the resurrection.

And may I note that all of the contributors to this passage have wonderfully bare foreheads. Just an observation on strange congruences. Perhaps Lenny has broken the chain?

Good point, Zack. That’s funny!

I am glad that Zack has made explicit what I assumed would be well known - that there are ideas about eros within Patristic writings which assume, via Platonic metaphysics, that there is in some ways a pull, as it were, that God exerts (almost gravitationally) upon human beings.  However, as Zack also mentions, “Current queer appropriations of this sort of material are particularly odd because they seem to fall into the precise pit which Origen and Dionysius warned against.”  I think that is the real issue.  Within Platonic thought (and even that of other ancient philosophical schools; see Pierre Hadot on this), exitus/reditus is not about sexual desire or even physical appetites, but about re-orienting oneself toward death - as Socrates notes, philosophy is itself preparation for death - and, depending upon the metaphysic, this is also preparation for the One beyond death.  Within Christian thought, all of the above holds but there is a twofold narrative of being oriented (note the passive construction) by God and also orienting oneself through askesis - but the latter is always preceded by the former, whether one is a synergist or a monergist (to impose, anachronistically, later theological terms).

As for the constructive reading of Gal. 3:28, perhaps this is where I become uneasy.  It is a question of method, though, rather than a question of opposition to constructive theology.  I fear that the constructive theologian suffers all too often from a nervous tick - an almost compulsive need to read and re-read every text to make sure that every possible meaning and application is being squeezed from it.  I’m not sure that this is healthy.  It seems to me that methodologically, we must first look at the plain, intended sense; second, we must consider whether or not any new application either contradicts any other portion of Scripture or, what is no less important, subverts the authority of the Church (which would include both its current standing and tradition in some way).  I am increasingly convinced that the sixteenth century did not see the crisis of authority that is so often imputed to it, and that even if some groups did, the Church of England did not because it had a hierarchy and a monarch, both of whom had considerable authority - and it is their considerable authority that defines every major squabble between [proto-]Anglicans and Puritans from Elizabeth I and the Restoration.  The Church has authority to determine controversies.  Within that sort of framework, there is a tremendous amount of freedom for historical study and theological argument, insofar as one recognizes the authority of the Church to say “the buck stops here”.  The tendency of too much of theology today is to argue confessionally - that is, to argue without reference to any sort of authority within the church, whether papal or synodical.  We have the latter, and that is something that ought to be respected (yet too often it is not).  The good of constructive theology is limited by the good that it produces in the life of the Church - and perhaps that too is something that queer theologians ought to consider, giving the indifference shown to the ecclesial side of St. Paul’s letters!

Sorry I’ve got to run at the moment, but I look forward to keeping this discussion going.

I can’t resist chimeing in regarding the question of eros/desire. James K. A. Smith at Calvin College has written a very interesting book _Desiring the Kingdom_ in which he argues we are at heart _desiring_ creatures (he has harsh things to say about older spiritual anthropologies). The key question is what _kingdom_ does our desires need to be aimed at.

So Queer theologies needs the question, “How are we to know what disires are allowed?”

And back to my original point (and Smith is really good here), our desires are wrapped up in our embodiedness. This makes Ben’s point about the importance of sex over against gender that much more important.

The place of a theology of Creation (and by implication, anthropology) is the great divide between progressive and conservative views on human sexuality.

BTW, what do you think of the idea that Gal 3:28 is a deliberate (anti-)echo of the daily Jewish prayer:

“Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a Gentile.
Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a slave.
Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a woman.”