Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

A couple of days ago, I began what might turn out to be a series of reflections on the anthropology of sex difference as exposited by one of Radical Orthodoxy’s representative thinkers, Gerard Loughlin. Here I am continuing to concentrate on an essay of his, entitled “Erotics: God’s Sex.”

I had mentioned that Loughlin cannot seem to get beyond his reductionist, postmodern concepts. Furthermore, his importation of a world view from morally bankrupt postmodern thinker, Georges Bataille, further exacerbates his ability to understand, and so critique, the Trinitarian theology and anthropology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In Loughlin’s defense, while Balthasar is dependent upon an Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics, he is often loathe to acknowledge it. Without recognizing this metaphysical perspective in Balthasar’s thought, his theology can appear to be somewhat arbitrary. Loughlin’s apparent lack of understanding of this metaphysical tradition might contribute to his misreading of Balthasar.

Recall that Loughlin chose to replace theological analogy with a postmodern “parody,” with all of the latter’s attendant vulgarity. Loughlin seems to make the same amoral move with his understanding of eros, blundering into the same irony. Loughlin’s definition of eros is “ravenous desire” (p. 148). Eros for him, as we saw in the previous post, seems solely associated with animalistic desire. It is of interest to note that the meaning of the term ravenous is focused on taking something for oneself in a greedy way, quite antithetical to Balthasar’s anthropology, which requires disinterested and total self-gift as the foundation for an authentic eros. Etymologically, the term “ravenous” arises from the Old French word meaning “to seize,” itself coming from a word meaning “extremely hungry.” This is consistent with Loughlin’s adoption of Batailleian carnal vulgarity.

Loughlin seems to have in his mind when he talks about sex difference that a constitutive aspect of sex must include the various disordered sexual behaviors in which animalistic consumption masquerades as sexual intercourses’ proper telos, a communion of persons.

Loughlin’s obsession with corporal sex betrays an inability to understand the human person as a body-soul unity, a hylomorphic composite of body and soul in which the soul is not joined to a preexisting body, but the soul interpenetrates, gives existence, shape, and animation to the body. The human person is not, therefore, an enfleshed soul or an ensouled body, but a single nature that has two unified aspects, body and a spiritual soul.

Loughlin also seems not to understand the tradition of Trinitarian Persons as subsisting Relations, which distinguish the Persons from the one divine nature and the way that this is analogically manifested in the human person. The category of relation, a sort of quasi-substantial category, is essential to understanding how Balthasar and other personalists think about the human person and the way the human person is differentiated into two different sexes.

Loughlin seems only to be able to think in terms of Cartesian substance, which is simply matter, or - in the case of the human body - corporeality. For non-corporeal beings it is not as clear what his thinking is, but it does not include the category of relation. Thus, when Loughlin reads Balthasar writing of the Processions (the begetting of the Son and the Spiration of the Holy Spirit) in terms of the structure of Self-giving love, he sees this in terms of the movement of some substance from one Person to another. Human persons inevitably “parody” this postmodern monism in Loughlin’s anthropology.

Thus, Loughlin criticizes Balthasar’s concept of unity in difference. For Balthasar the unity in difference, which can be seen in creation (body and soul, individual and community, the Incarnation, male and female), is the created analogy of trinitarian unity (unity in nature and distinction in Persons). Loughlin does not appear to understand relation so he ends up collapsing every characteristic into some sort of substance (read as Cartesian extension).

Without a properly Trinitarian metaphysics, Louglin is unequipped to understand the Processions, the Incarnation, the Church, the Eucharist, or sex difference. It leads him to claim that his “parodic substitution allows Christianity to place at its symbolic centre certain cultural taboos-against cannibalism, incest and homosexuality-and there break them” (p. 152). Loughlin sees the Processions as “the incestuous homosexual coupling of Father and Son” (p. 156). Of course, the Eucharist is cannibalism. The Marian Church wedded to Christ the Bridegroom is incestuous.

Ironically, Loughlin accuses Balthasar of misreading “the flow of the trinitarian parodies” (p. 154) when the latter declares that humanity is primarily feminine. Loughlin claims that Balthasar’s own logic requires human nature to be masculine. His reasoning is that because Balthasar says that the Father is supramasculine in relation to the Son, and because the Church comes through Christ on the Cross, who is male, and that Eve comes from Adam’s flesh, which is male flesh, there is a masculine sexual monism that is later differentiated into male and female.

Loughlin clearly sees matter as the primary reality here, at least for creatures. Substance for him is extended matter. In fact, he does not seem to have any other category. Sex difference for him is real, and so in his limited, modern/post-modern categories, sex difference must be something arising from the flesh alone. This is inevitable without the category of relation, especially in this case, sex difference being a relational category which conditions the relational person (see this metathread for a short primer on these ideas).

Loughlin is not the only RO theologian with these views. Rowan Williams promotes similar thinking in his essay, “The Body’s Grace.” This essay was published in a collection of pro-SSAD articles entitled, Christian Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God [ed. Charles C. Hefling (Boston: Cowley Press, 1996)]. Hankey (see the previous post) shows that Williams was an original member of the Radical Orthodoxy movement. Hierothee pointed me to a recent article online that shows that Williams’s unfortunately soft thinking in this regard is not at all unlike that of Loughlin.

In conclusion, I would note that it appears to be not so much that Louglin’s and Williams’s distortions/perversions of Christian truth stem from a misunderstanding of classical theology. Rather, the problem begins with their pre-commitment to said perverted notions. Their articulation of an incoherent metaphysics is simply a rationalization for a subversively depraved anthropology. Indeed, with the likes of Loughlin and Williams as guides to the movement, one might argue that Radical Orthodoxy is at root an expression of radical depravity.