Abstract
The ordering of terms in the title God, Sex, and Gender is representative of the book as a whole, in which the divine character and action frame the ethics of ‘having sex’. As such articulations have been politically fraught in recent years, it is refreshing that the author aims to convey ‘the exhilaration of thinking theologically about sex, sexuality, sexual relationship, and gender roles’ (p. xi). Adrian Thatcher teaches at the University of Exeter and has published widely on sex, marriage and family, becoming an important voice on these themes (he is editing the Oxford Handbook of Theology, Sexuality and Gender, planned for 2015). The present publication is an opportunity for Thatcher to offer his scholarly and pastoral experience in a ‘comprehensive core text’ for university and seminary students as well as general readers (p. xi).
The book’s format provides well for its intended audience, succinctly defining terms—from transgender to kenosis—in offset panels in the margins while interspersing the main body of text with shaded panels directing questions to the reader. The queries are often challenging and appropriately open-ended, such as when he asks the reader to consider how her place of worship might already be ‘gendered’, as well as how ‘gendering’ takes place within it (p. 19). At times the queries lead rather overtly along the flow of argument, especially given the immediate proximity of Thatcher’s commentary, but invitations to scrutinise the author’s position effectively provoke the reader’s own thought (e.g. pp. 160, 173).
Thatcher provides ample resources for interacting with his questions, citing an admirably wide range of sources—from catechism to philosophy, liturgy to medical history, classical to contemporary theologians. Acknowledging and naming his own perspective rather than presuming an authoritative ‘neutrality’, he states broad sympathies with ‘progressive or revisionist themes, as long as these are deeply rooted in traditional theological sources and doctrines’ (p. x). This commitment leads to a work that should be challenging to both ‘revisionist’ and ‘traditionalist’ positions, its unpredictable conclusions calling for a fresh hearing of the texts typically arrayed on either side. To that end, Thatcher’s broad learning, keen analysis and pastoral sensitivity make him highly capable of facilitating a study of frequently antagonistic positions.
The work is divided into five parts, with Part I defining terms and arranging theological sources, adeptly alerting readers to the power dynamics already underway in the act of naming (pp. 23-28). Adopting a ‘moderate constructionist’ position, Thatcher seeks to challenge conventional notions of gender, providing freedom for ‘performativity’ while still holding to divine intentionality in both creation and redemption (pp. 19-22). He also draws on recent scholarship in classics and medical history in his account of the ancient Greek understanding of a single sex existing on a continuum, with only a difference of degree between genders. This ‘one-sex theory’ held a hierarchical valuation that the masculine was closer to perfection, which was only reinforced by warnings of a regression into effeminacy (pp. 6-12). This provides for a sustained critique of the power dynamic in the language of ‘mankind’ in Christian Scripture and tradition, which Thatcher tends to see more as a product of this background than as an encultured polemic against it. For instance, he troubles even such assumed sexual ‘equality’ statements as Galatians 3:28 by stating that Paul’s understanding of ‘neither…male nor female’ likely alludes back to an aboriginal androgyny in Genesis, intimating a singular, restored form of masculinity that subsumes the female (pp. 150-51).
In Part II, Thatcher begins with a theological account of sex, considering the nature of human desire before asking whether marriage remains a proper framework for its expression. He first considers the case against the institution, including the ‘mixed messages’ from Scripture and tradition. Although overstating references to ‘the anti-family teaching of Jesus’ and to marriage as a ‘different institution altogether’ according to era, he rightly relays that marriage is subject to sharp eschatological relativisation in the New Testament (pp. 79-85). He then sensitively treats alternative contemporary frameworks for sexual relations such as justice and friendship, arguing nevertheless for an irreplaceable ‘marriage-shaped morality’ (pp. 76, 92).
Thatcher’s counter here to liberalising proposals also exposes the theological leanness of dominant conservative polemics, noting that the New Testament does not justify marriage or sex on the basis of its procreative purpose. Drawing on deeper doctrinal content, he shows that Scripture rather ‘rewrites relations within households and families… Christ’s death as an outpouring of divine love becomes the organizing principle, a new theological method, for thinking about and putting into practice human relationships that are now also ‘in Christ’” (pp. 107-108). Challenging another widespread assumption, he seeks to show that Scripture does not often depict marriage in the overt language of ‘covenant’, and that Christian tradition only makes this link explicit in such later writings as those of John Calvin and Vatican II (pp. 101-102). Thatcher himself develops this unfurling emphasis by beautifully framing the marital covenant within the Eucharist as Christ’s New Covenant act, emphasising God’s desire and the totality of divine gift in bodily form (pp. 111-13).
Part III turns to gendered and gendering language related to both the Trinity and the Church. As to the former, Thatcher seeks to undermine the ‘widespread and idolatrous assumption’ that God is male, countering this by defining both the Father and Son as ‘suprasexual’—more than sexual, though not less (pp. 117-19). Although the historical Jesus was a man, Thatcher shows how early theologians and councils emphasised his common human nature as well as distinguishing this from his divine personhood (pp. 123-25). Then, in challenging notions of gendered representation of God by the clergy (pp. 125-27), Thatcher’s argument draws its compelling force from engaging on the level of such theological sources, refusing an easy appeal to the zeitgeist of ‘equality’.
As for the Church, Thatcher seeks to show how the ‘body of Christ’ can incorporate members in their varied sexual identities, a task specifically extended to minorities such as intersex or transgender persons in the final chapter. In laying the groundwork for this claim, he argues for the ecclesial body’s androgyny (pp. 137-39), uses rhetorical lead questions about its sex-specific parts (which he acknowledges may seem ‘needlessly coarse’, p. 142), and later makes shorthand reference to the ‘queer body of Christ’ (pp. 253-54). While such moves certainly trouble masculine associations, they also work against his claim that Christ transcends such freighted categories (p. 139)—as well as eliding his previously acknowledged distinctions among the body’s physical, mystical, sacramental, ecclesial and ethical referents (p. 136). Perhaps the recognition of intersex members would be better performed by Paul’s emphasis on the body’s unity through the Spirit’s charismata, and their attribution to relatively prosaic, and refreshingly common, body parts such as the hand and ear.
Part IV offers a theological approach to same-sex love, arguing that long-standing arguments no longer provide warrant for the Church’s resistance to the ‘full recognition’ of gay and lesbian couples (p. 189). In making this case, Thatcher points out that the term ‘homosexual’ is nowhere used in Scripture, distinguishing its Greek and Hebrew descriptors from contemporary discourse. Further, he recognises in some of Scripture’s narratives what he terms a ‘“homophilic” social environment’ (p. 171). This section makes some rather quick and predictable identifications, such as when Thatcher allows that the relations between David and Jonathan ‘make little sense unless they were lovers’ (pp. 171-72). Had Thatcher maintained reticence on the assumption that profound union must be expressed in sexual ‘acts’, this section could have made for a retrieval of covenanted same-sex friendship, as deeply sacrificial as Ruth’s vow to Naomi. This foreign form of life would offer strong counter-testimony to both the social transience and hypertrophied sexualisation in much of western culture. It would also be congenial to Thatcher’s robust notion of celibacy as an expression of the whole person, including the sexual (pp. 200-202).
In considering Thatcher’s advocacy of same-sex love, it is instructive to trace the way in which he renders sexual difference. In the first chapter, Thatcher prompts reflection on a poetic passage that exemplifies the uniqueness of ‘gynocentric’ eroticism, characterised as ‘more diffuse and complex’ than men (p. 5). His vivid depiction of the differentiated contours of arousal between a woman and a man in the Song of Songs, including appreciation for the ‘fecundity of nature’ (pp. 69-72), further gives the lie to the appellation ‘straight sex’. However, such statements, gathered in his appeal that ‘sexually active Christians today should want to relate to each other in other-centric, not phallocentric ways’ (p. 213), appear lost in his shorthand references to coitus as ‘penetrative sex’ (e.g. pp. 15, 208, 211-14)—a pejorative and male-oriented description that severely reduces his own depiction of the act. On the strength of his earlier recognitions, why not also refer to the act as ‘enveloping’?
Such flattening at the level of basic description might alert readers to a deeper loss. Drawing on a distinction in Catholic teaching between the biological and personal elements in the argument for gender complementarity, Thatcher criticises the fact that ‘biology drives the theory’. He counters that ‘heterogenital’ difference need not determine ‘affective’ fit (p. 187). While complementarity is about more than biology, though, Thatcher’s account is susceptible to making it less, separating the ‘personal’ too cleanly from the material for an account of the creaturely ‘given’. Moreover, this demurral on bodily complementarity sits uneasily with Thatcher’s persistent criticism of the ancient ‘one-sex theory’. In his account, a robust ‘complementarity’ of equality-within-difference is a more recent development, ironically imported back into Scripture by traditionalists (p. 187). Thatcher is rightly critical of sexist hierarchy rooted in biology, as well as how that cultural assumption can go undetected in approaching ancient texts. But is there not an element of irony in how Thatcher’s argument for solely ‘personal’ complementarity between members of the same sex becomes a ‘one-sex’ theory in its own right, only here without gendered difference? While he may do away with the assumed power differential of the older account, does he also abandon the rhythmic pleasure, and challenge, of union between the bodily heteroi that was integral to his compelling depiction of arousal—an aspect that might expand creational intent beyond the ‘procreative imperative’?
Part V is entitled ‘Learning to Love’ and treats a complex of life states such as celibacy, chastity, and what is often called the ‘pre-marital’ period, as well as how these relate to the uses of contraception. His account of the drive for sexual exploration and experimentation is surprisingly sanguine (p. 204), given his earlier critique of how capitalism forms and ‘endlessly stimulates’ our desire (p. 63). Nevertheless, his commendation of chastity includes a rich portrayal of the spiritual dimension of waiting constitutive of an eschatologically framed life. This is not merely a negative discipline, but a whole person’s encounter with God in yearning for the world’s restoration, vivified by the Spirit’s virtue of hope (pp. 205-206).
Thatcher’s ensuing treatment of ‘betrothal’ begins promisingly, with a layered treatment of how Jesus subverts the betrothal type scene with the Samaritan woman (pp. 236-37) and a careful excavation of ‘processual marriage’ in our currently conflated liturgies (pp. 240-45). Nevertheless, pastoral sensitivity to today’s later age of marriage and ‘taking for granted’ widespread sexual activity beforehand (pp. 209, 212) lead him to propose betrothal as a period of sexually active pre-nuptial cohabitation. While this state is characterised by the couple’s ‘emphatic intentions’ to marry, it remains dissoluble should ‘incompatibilities’ that arise in this heightened state of intimacy prove too great (p. 244). The provisional element here would seem susceptible to an all-too-common contractual logic between ‘partners’, making this another proposal that would benefit from Thatcher’s critique of capitalism. More importantly, his profound earlier account of how the unreserved self-giving of Christ’s Eucharistic body frames the marital covenant should call into question which reality is taken as ‘granted’ in articulating a pre-marital ethic.
Many of the critiques of God, Sex, and Gender offered in this review emerge from Thatcher’s own lines of interrogation. In this and other ways, the book succeeds in drawing readers into what is truly an exhilarating mode of reflection. As such, it offers a major contribution towards theological depth and creativity in this important set of discourses, renewing the often reflexive ethics of sex and gender through witness to the Word become flesh.