Eve Tushnet v. Luke Timothy Johnson
Hierothee mentioned an article to me that he had seen over at Commonweal in which Luke Timothy Johnson and Eve Tushnet discuss Church teaching on the issue of homosexuality. Tushnet and Johnson take different points of view on the issue. Johnson takes his usual approach. He does not even address the issue of Magisterial authority and reduces his discussion of the topic to the words of Scripture versus personal experience. For Johnson the experience that he has had with his daughter, who considers herself a lesbian, is proof positive that Scripture is wrong and must be reinterpreted. He then sets about to present rather facile arguments for his pre-commitment that are very close to the historical-critical only scholarship that he elsewhere eschews.
Tushnet is not exhaustive in addressing Johnson’s pseudo-arguments but she does ably counter his major mistakes, though not exactly as I would. Among these mistakes are his invention of a magisterium of the individualist experience and his ignoring of the reality of fallen human nature. However, in arguing again Johnson some of the assertions that she makes in her essay prompt me to comment.
I have heard of Eve Tushnet before but I admit that I didn’t know much about her. While I know more now, I still don’t know much about her. From what I do now know, I can say that I am in awe of her faith and her steadfast desire to live a chaste and holy life. I am inspired by her willingness to accept the Church’s teachings, even in areas that demand so much sacrifice from her. She is certainly an heroic witness in this way. She has my admiration and my prayers.
Nevertheless, I was surprised to hear that she considers herself a Catholic and a lesbian. The reason for this is that earlier in her article she seems to reject Johnson’s assumption that homosexual inclinations reflect an underlying ontology, responding that this idea is a recent anti-Christian psychological construct. For Johnson, who seems to betray the anti-metaphysical outlook of postmodernism (with its attendant philosophical origins in Ockhamist Nominalism), this is a self-contradiction since there is no ontology to begin with so how can sexual attraction have any essence with which to comprise personal identity? But this is the irony of postmodernism; it is inherently self-contradictory at root. Making my way back from the rabbit trail…I am not sure I understand why Tushnet would continue to consider herself a lesbian if she recognizes that sexual attraction does not ontologically constitute one’s personal identity.
There were smaller issues that I am not sure that I follow such as her use of ambiguous terms such as “homophobic” which can mean everything from hateful acts toward people with SSAD to referring to anyone who rejects the claims that the “gay” lifestyle must be accepted/embraced by everyone. I am not sure about the analysis she provides, identifying reasons for the personally hateful attitudes of some against those who suffer from SSAD. Namely, by rooting it exclusively in masculine insecurity her assessment seems overly facile and it also seems to smack too much of radical feminist conspiratorial theories to me.
Neverthless, I was left somewhat more perplexed by other more substantial statements. Let me mention a few:
This approach [John Paul II's Theology of the Body], or my understanding of it, is imperfect; but it’s much more convincing to me than the often mechanistic natural-law approaches, which tend to assume cultural consensus on teleology.
I’m not sure what she means by its being imperfect. Not being God Himself, it necessarily is imperfect and so I would agree from this perspective. However, if she means incomplete to the point of not being completely coherent or self-consistent then I cannot agree. I think I know the answer to which of these possibilities she infers and will take the issue up again below. On the issue of approach I would argue that the Theology of the Body (TOB) uses a personalist approach to explaining natural law. I would also say that natural law is by definition, not mechanistic. If it appears so, it is because of the culturally bound, Nominalist hermeneutic of the writer and/or reader. This is not meant as a criticism but an analysis of a problem of which I am sometimes guilty myself. Finally, while it is true that TOB does not assume a cultural consensus on teleology, it is not true that it does not assume teleology. Rather it assumes the truth of nature and the truth that nature has an inherent teleology. Because teleology is not recognized universally does not mean one cannot or should not argue for it. Only for the committed nihilist is it not possible to defend the position. Regardless, one cannot miss this point and understand the TOB at any depth. Another comment of note:
Although marriage is the primary focus of the theology of the body, sexual difference is a recurring theme.
I would argue that sex difference is more than a recurring theme in these catecheses. It is the foundation of JPTG’s entire project and as such, sex difference makes marriage not just intelligible but possible. Man reflects the image of the Trinitarian God by the fact that he is made male and female. This emphasis seems to suggest that JPTG takes as his point of departure, St. Thomas Aquinas’ insight that man reflects God’s image more perfectly than do the angels in his capacity for fruitful relations (though angels more perfectly reflect God’s image in their immaterial substance). Tushnet’s next statement needs clarification:
The theology of the body, almost alone among theories of la différence, avoids the listmaking trap. Here, man is defined by his longing for woman, woman by her longing for man; this is the “nuptial meaning of the body.” The male becomes a man and the female a woman in their yearning for each other. Love of the other both creates and reconciles the sexes.
Tushnet rejects the idea that one can identify in “lists” the differences between male and female. For her, these “lists aren’t just false, they’re also boring.” Rather, she understands JPTG to be saying that masculinity and femininity are defined by the sexes’ mutual self-longing and this act of love is what creates and reconciles the sex differences. The first thing to say is that love as self-longing requires some precision. This is an aspect of human eros which arises because of complementary attraction. Thus, authentic eros is not possible between two of the same sex. Furthermore, eros must be purified in total-self gift which is disinterested love. This love is possible conjugally only because of complementarity. Thus, complementarity must be understood to understand the meaning here. In addition, there seems to be another problem in interpretation.
Now Tushnet may very well be following some interpreters of JPTG who do indeed believe that he reverses the scholastic dictum agere sequitur esse (act follows being) but these interpreters are incorrect. They mistake JPTG to be a Munich phenomenologist who departed from Thomist metaphysics. Rather, one can clearly demonstrate that JPTG died still a Thomist who explicitly rejected the Munich school’s Kantian metaphysics. Rather, he incorporated the analytical tools of phenomenology into Thomism, relying on its metaphysical foundation to counter the errors of modern personalism that arose from Kantian presuppositions.
JPTG explicitly embraces the metaphysical truth that acts follow upon one’s nature. One does not and cannot redefine his nature based upon his actions. Rather, one damages and can even destroy himself by refusing to acknowledge and act in accord with his nature. The existence of nature is the only way in which there is the possibility for self perfection and self actualization. There must be a perfect state which one can pursue and this, in part, defines one’s nature. Tushnet seems to give priority to action of the will over nature. This is not in accord with JPTG’s anthropology and one cannot accurately understand his TOB catecheses from this perspective.
While JPTG does not create “lists” he does identify characteristics of femininity and masculinity that arise from the givenness of sex difference. In his treatment of Genesis, it is the femininity of the woman who is both another “I” (i.e. shares the same nature) who also complements his masculinity that gives rise the man’s joy. It is not his love that creates her otherness, it is her otherness that creates the conditions of possibility for conjugal communion and nuptial joy. On the same note Tushnet opines:
There are some obvious attractions of this theology. It’s very beautiful. It reconciles two seemingly irreconcilable facts (the enduring importance of sexual difference, and the impossibility of defining that difference through lists of qualities).
I do not quite follow her here. While it is a mistake to try to define masculinity and femininity first by their manifestations, it is not problematic to define them first by their ontology and then observe how general traits (that yes, do exhibit variation and even distortion in concrete cases but this is due, in some part, to our fallen state) correspond to this ontology. JPTG does not provide a worked out theology of sex difference though I believe that one can be extracted from his writings (which I have done and hope to get published soon). However, he does provide general characteristics of sex difference that one can put in a list (though it will certainly not be exhaustive). But we must be clear that first comes a human nature that entails being male and female and it is this nature that gives rise to these complementary traits of masculinity and femininity. The givenness of masculinity and femininity that establishes the framework for the way that we interact with each other is a foundational point that JPTG is trying to make in his TOB catecheses. Tushnet goes on to observe some problems with applying JPTG’s Genesis model to the problem of SSAD:
But there are equally obvious problems with applying this Genesis model to homosexuality. I’ve never found that lesbian women were less womanly, or gay men less manly. Either I’m misunderstanding the implications of the theology of the body, or I’m misunderstanding my own experience. (Or both, of course!) Moreover, showing that homosexual relationships are imperfect, that they do not echo our life in Eden as well as heterosexual relationships can, might not be the same as showing that gay sex is always and everywhere wrong. …And the “theology of the body” approach doesn’t give any guidance on the questions currently most pressing to me: How can I express my love of women in ways consonant with church teaching; and how can I deepen my love of Christ through all the other loves in my life, including romantic love?
I understand by Tushnet’s comments here that she believes that JPTG’s catecheses appeal to human experience. That it true but in a qualified way. JPTG uses phenomenological tools to discover universal experiences that are universal because they arise from a common human nature. The method brackets subject specific coloring of the experience and reveals experience that is common to all human beings. These experiences cannot have universal applicability if there is no nature from which they arise. Further, he uses the “control” (in the sense of establishing the nominal case in empirical studies from which to judge deviations from the norm) for his analyses by going back to a pre-lapsarian state. In other words, it is not experience that establishes the truth. It is truth that can (but is not always) manifested in the experience.
In reference to her final issue, TOB and its Genesis model do in fact apply to the experience of those who suffer from SSAD. It can be found in JPTG’s treatment of sexual complementarity, the stability of human nature, the spousal meaning of the body (as it is more accurately rendered in the new translation), in the distinctions between arousal and emotion, and, quintessentially, in the analogy of human marriage to the Trinitarian “Nuptial Mystery.” Thus, it does in fact provide guidance (though not explicitly articulated) in ways to express love of the same sex in ways consonant with Church teaching. But it is important to say that these ways will be consonant with Church teaching because these teachings arise from the order of creation and what ultimately will lead to human joy and happiness. It also provides insight into romantic love (though one would be better served by first reading Karol Wojtyla’s Love and Responsibility before trying to extract these insights from the TOB catecheses). This though, would be another article so I won’t try to do it here.
Again, I am truly taken with Eve’s witness of faith in God and in His Church. I say this to reiterate that I do not mean to sound personally critical in my comments. I myself am continually uncovering mistaken philosophical presuppositions that have been ingrained in me from growing up in a postmodern culture with a materialist mechanistic world view. I only comment as an opportunity to further explore what JPTG wants to express in his TOB.
I see that Eve lives in DC. Perhaps if anyone knows her they might suggest to her that she consider studing the TOB more deeply at the JPII Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family downtown.
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Thanks for discussing this. Here is where Eve discusses her ownership of lesbian “identity” (scroll down to August 22, 2006):
http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_eve-tushnet_archive.html
My comments on Eve’s article…I’m not an expert on TOTB, but I did have some gut-level anthropological reactions:
http://andalsowithyou.blogspot.com/2007/06/gay-identity-rears-its-head.html
Hey, you changed my icon from my Francis pic to my Joseph pic. That’s cool, I like to be shifty.
Comment by franksta — July 7, 2007 @ 2:39 PM
Franksta -
Thanks for the links. Reading the link to Eve’s 22 Aug 2006 post I understand her thinking more I suppose and find it ever the more perplexing. I am no psychologist but it seems to that she must be experiencing some nearly unbearable interior conflicts if I understand what she is saying.
It is not clear to me that she considers SSA a disorder. If she does not, it must be very perplexing to believe that God has given her a personal identity that she is prohibited from acting upon. I will keep her in my prayers.
Comment by David — July 7, 2007 @ 8:29 PM
“I’ve never found that lesbian women were less womanly or gay men less manly”
This is the sentence that I’d like to comment on. She states this in order to point out where she thinks JPII fails in his TOB to address the issue of SSA.
My take on JPII’s TOB (and in NO WAY am I an expert) is that our female and male identities come before our sexual desires. Meaning we are male and female in order that we can love, desire and join with our complement to demonstrate (in a very small way) the Holy Trinity.If this understanding of mine is true then I can explain the problem with SSA and personal identity like this.
How we define manliness and womanliness is the root of the problem for those with SSA. Authentic womanhood and authentic manhood are NOT developed and illustrated through heterosexual desire and acts. Rather they are developed on a deeply spiritual level first. Our natures as male and female are so much deeper than our physical manifestations of them. This means that for those with SSA they cannot simply be “womanly” or “manly” from a physical and cultural perspective, but they must come to embrace their womanliness or manliness on a completely spiritual level first. For those of us who do not suffer from SSA we take this for granted maybe. Those with SSA at the core are fighting a spiritual battle. It may manifest itself in the physical – desiring those of the same sex – but never the less the confusion lies much deeper. This is even true for those heterosexual people who fail to be authentically man or woman as they are called to be. It is just easier for one without SSA to “tap into” their authentic self than those with SSA.
I don’t know if I’m making any sense at all.
Simply put – I feel being man and woman demands a perfect integration of the spirit and the body. This then leads to an ability to act and demonstrate one’s authentic identity through love and desire and relationships with others. This then shapes and forms the culture wich in turn helps to form a proper society.
I really believe that TOB can change the world! I never looked more deeply at my own spiritual, physical and personal identity like I did when I read Love and Responsibility and TOB (Christopher West’s book)If I could make it mandatory somehow for everyone, I WOULD!
Hope my ramblings didn’t give the readers a headache… Kris
Comment by Kris — July 8, 2007 @ 5:41 AM
OK now I’ve gone and read the original article you referenced and I see another problem. Ms. Tushnet’s use of the word love it seems maybe anissue to address further. Sexual desire or even “minor” lusts like looking at someone of the same sex and thinking them beautiful in an amorous way, is not an idication of love. For me, a woman, to love another woman with an authentic love I must see her as my sister. In fact JPII tells us that we must first love those of the opposite sex as our brothers (or sisters as the case may be) in order for it to be authentic love. This kind of love demands that we separate our sexual desire from our will to love. In marriage (which is the great beauty of it) we are called to join our love of our “brother” to our God-given sexual desires and to then live out this unity as “married love”.
Whatever feelings those with SSA may have for those of the same sex (of whom they are attracted to sexually)it cannot be authentic love. This sounds harsh I know. But it is true. The love they feel for those in their lives such as friends or parents or siblings is a better starting point for them. They must learn how to see and love with those eyes so to speak. Our sexual desires are so powerful that they can blind us to this.
To be an authentic woman we must love our womanliness in light of its limitations and recognize the gifts our brothers offer us. Only then can we love rightly. The same goes for men. To live out authentic manhood a man must look at himself in light of his limitations and see the gifts his sisters have to offer. Only then can we be free to love and not lust for one another. Homosexuality is rightly seen as “threatening” to this. It twists so tightly together love and lust that it is almost impossible for those involved to pull them apart. But, in order for love to be genuine they MUST be separated from each other. This may explain Ms Tushnet’s hanging on to a lesbian identity. She has not been able to untwist her lusts from her love. She may think that to reject her “love” for women completely she will lose her ability to love at all. This would in fact be devasting if it were true. But it is not. Once she is able to untangle lust from love she will be free to love women as her sisters. Then she can go on to love herself as an authentic woman called by God to be fully woman and everything that that demands and even limits us to be.
Comment by Kris — July 8, 2007 @ 6:15 AM
Kris – I think that you have identified two major issues with which I agree. The first is anthropological. The human person is created in the image of a Trinitarian God as male and female. Marriage is the most perfect way, as a body-soul unity, that we can express live giving love of total self gift in the way we image the Trinity.
I think that you are also correct that Eve seems to conflate different phenomena which she understands as love. Karol Wojtyla’s Love and Responsibility does a very good job of distinguishing the various phenomena…but again, I think you have correctly identified the conflation of sexual urge and the affective response of giving yourself to another is likely part of the issue.
Thanks for the thoughts.
Comment by David — July 8, 2007 @ 4:47 PM
“While JPTG does not create “lists” he does identify characteristics of femininity and masculinity that arise from the givenness of sex difference.”
Could you say a little more about what these are, or give references so I can look them up myself? I am not a Catholic, and I know nothing about TOB, but I am interested in knowing how it understands masculinity and femininity.
Thanks,
DM
Comment by disputed mutability — July 9, 2007 @ 10:08 AM
DM -
A quick summary of TOB with respect to sex difference can be found in our five part series Sex and Human Personhood (if this link doesn’t work you can find it in the sidebar below the blogroll). With respect to the characteristics of masculinity and femininity. I think that these begin from John Paul the Great’s (JPTG) statement in Mulieris dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, paragraph 29): “The Bridegroom is the one who loves. The Bride is loved: it is she who receives love, in order to love in return.” This phrase, in the context of his entire anthropology, indicates that sex difference at root, structures the way in which love is mutually exchanged in a conjugal relationship. Masculinity is a love of initiative and femininity is a love of active receptivity. This is inherent in the soul and therefore is manifested throughout the entire person, body and soul. From this model, one can see the coherence of the thought in TOB.
If after reading through the sidebar you would like to discuss this further please feel free to contact me via e-mail (my address can be found in the About this Blog section). I could also send you a draft of the article that I am working on that discusses this in more detail.
Comment by David — July 9, 2007 @ 11:07 AM
It’s always important when dealing with these topics to define one’s terms; in this case the term “love”. English is notoriously opaque when using it so we almost need to use just the Greek words to distinguish sex, eros, filia, and aggappe. The physical act of sex can be an expression of love but it’s not co-terminous with it entirely because it can also be an expression of hatred or complete indifference to the good of the other.
Similarly, the hungry utilitarian desire in eros can sometimes lead to useful interaction with both parties, but its focus is obviously directed towards the “good” of the desiree not desired.
Filial love – friendship, is likewise useful, and good per se, and possibly the common default human good we all require for sanity and holiness (cf. Nicomachean ethics). Here I would locate the essence of what Eve or other chaste singles struggle to discover and live out from their conditions as folk with SSAD. The trick though is that while true friendship is a good thing, and as human beings they’re fully capable of true friendship with others, it’s not BECAUSE of SSAD that they can be friends as opposed to utterly animalistic sex machines or lust-mongers, but DESPITE SSAD.
I don’t buy their assertions that “only” those with SSAD can emphathize or understand marginalized people, a disorder does not endow one with insight beyond the capacity of those who do not have disorders. One does not need to have cancer to completely understand what pain and suffering is, and one need not exhaust one’s flesh to understand perfectly well what ennui is.
Aggape love, the true completely altruistic “that the beloved may become more and I may become less” love witnessed in the life of John the Baptist and others, has moved beyond sex, eros, and even Filia. A person who loves purely because the beloved is worthy of all good things does not even stop to reflect whether their service is physically satisfying, useful, or emotionally pleasant. It’s enough that the other receive goodness and be introduced via our efforts to the ONE WHO IS GOOD.
Now who can understand health or holiness except those who are healthy and holy? Yet the healthy and holy can definately understand sickness and sin – in as much as they conquered them en route to the Kingdom. CS Lewis describes this by refering to who knows the German Army better – one who surrenders immediately to it, or one who resists and defeats it?
Sinners flatter themselves on their insight and knowledge – indeed the first Eve saw the acquisition of knowledge as one of the bonuses of her sin, yet it’s a falsehood. Christ – true man and truly sinless – alone reveals man to himself. He alone is “the answer to the question that is each human life”. To believe that suffering SSAD or any other malady somehow reveals knowledge inaccessible to the healthy or holy is to indulge in a bit of after the fact justification of one’s situation. If anything SSAD obscures interpersonal relationships, one’s own motives and issues as well as the indentity and destiny of ‘the other’! (How else to explain the common explosive emotions bordering on the infantile they offen exhibit when confronted with someone who begs to differ? It’s almost a truism that deeply self-reflective people don’t spontaneously combust when disagreed with.)
If one prides oneself on being an ‘outsider’ it’s hard to reconcile that with a belief of having keen insight to the whole panoply of “insider” life and love. One only gets “into” something after having left the “outside” so the converse is not true: those with SSAD do not fully understand those without it just as people who have never loved to the degree of agappe do not understand it.
One truly comes to ‘know’ sin by resisting it, not by capitulating to it. One comes to know one’s friend and beloved by resisting the urge to objectify them or the ‘experience’ of ‘friendship’ one gets from being around them.
Only by losing oneself does one find oneself; only by becoming an altruisitic friend, a husband, or a father – ready and willing to “lay down one’s life for one’s friend/wife/child” does a man mature – it’s by seeking first the kingdom for the good of the beloved that one becomes what a human being ought to be. And only in that zone is one healthy, holy, and “in the know” about life, love, and the truth in goodness and beauty.
For this reason it’s not surprising that those who suffered SSAD but were healed, discovered the way out via friendship and then discovered the new hitherto unknown horizon of love in a vocation or marriage. Indeed, of all the “pastoral care” one can offer to those who dwell in darkness, the best is to befriend them as our little brothers and sisters, sons or daughters, in need of the experience of patient, non-selfish, completely altruisitic looking friendship and then hopefully introduce them to Our Lord who will finish the good work in them.
Comment by Joe — July 10, 2007 @ 9:06 AM
Joe! – Fantastic!
Comment by Kris — July 10, 2007 @ 9:55 AM