Jung - Sex on earth as it is in heaven: a Christian eschatology of desire

A Christian Eschatology
of Desire

PATRICIA BEATTIE JUNG

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Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2017 State University of New York

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Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jung, Patricia Beattie, author.

Title: Sex on earth as it is in heaven : a Christian eschatology of desire / Patricia Beattie Jung.

Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016031463 (print) | LCCN 2016048535 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438463810 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438463834 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Future lifeCatholic Church. | Resurrection. | SexReligious aspectsCatholic Church. | DesireReligious aspectsCatholic Church.

Classification: LCC BT903 .J85 2017 (print) | LCC BT903 (ebook) | DDC 236/.2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031463

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Acknowledgments

T his argument was several years in the making. It was interrupted by the development and publication of other books and research projects, as well as by a major change in my teaching context. It is an understatement to say that it lost momentum more than once. Thus, it is with truly heartfelt gratitude at this happy juncture that I acknowledge the ongoing support of many colleagues who encouraged me to continue working on the manuscript. Special among these good-humored promoters of sex in heaven were Aana Marie Vigen, Angela Sims, and Mary Jo Iozzio. I would also like to acknowledge the support of Harold Washington, who while serving as vice president for academic affairs and dean at Saint Paul School of Theology, supported my request for a semester-long research leave in the spring of 2014, during which I was nearly able to finish drafting this book. I would also like to thank the Reverend Joy Simpson and the Reverend Dr. Melissa Browning. Their service as my graduate research assistants while I was researching this text proved invaluable. Dr. Browning also graciously agreed to help me copyedit the manuscript in its final stages. Several colleagues read and gave me much-needed feedback on various portions of the manuscript. They include Drs. James L. Bailey, Young Ho Chun, Richard Deibert, Arland Jacobson, Israel Kamudzandu, Elizabeth Leeper, Brian J. Matz, Darryl Stephens, and Edward Vacek. I am deeply indebted to the support of two editors at SUNY Press: the late Nancy Ellegate, who steadily encouraged me as I revised the manuscript, and Beth Bouloukos, who shepherded the manuscript through to production and marketing.

This book is both dedicated to and inspired by my beloved husband, colleague, and friend, the Reverend Dr. L. Shannon Jung, with whom I have enjoyed sex on earth for well over four decades and with whom I hope to celebrate life in the world to come.

Introduction

Thinking Eschatologically about Sexuality

A t the end of his volume Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church , N. T. Wright concludes that people who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present. Our call as Christians includes the call to transform the world in light of our convictions about this new creation. I argue here that this includes a call to transform and cultivate our sexuality.

This book defends the notion that there might well be sexby which I mean sexual desire and delight as well as genderin heaven in a healed and transfigured sense. Thus the Christian mission on earth includes a call to form our sexual lives in light of those eschatological convictions. In contrast, the church has taught for the most part that there will be no experience of sexual desire or delight in heaven, though saints might be gendered as male or female. This book critically examines the rationales for the traditional view that sexual desire will not be transfigured and concludes they do not make good theological sense. This book explores the reasons for associating sexual desire and delight only with those other dimensions of life (such as disease, defect, diminishment, and death) that we hope to leave behind in the fullness of risen life. I find those arguments wanting. Why conclude this good of creation will have no enduring and glorious future? The purpose of this book is to outline a cogent, theologically well-grounded, alternative to the traditional perspective on sex in heaven in Western Christianity. I then trace the import of two of its ethical implications for our perspective(s) about sex on earth.

This work joins a growing chorus of theological voices raised in the construction of a new theology of erotic, including sexual, desire. We claim that however warped our experience of sexual desire might now beand certainly within the desire one can vividly encounter the depth of sins embodimentsexual desire can be healed and transfigured so as to bear glorious witness to God. When we groan for the redemption of our bodies, we are groaning in part for the transformation, not erasure, of our experiences of sexual desire. I invite the reader to look afresh at sexual desire, to look at it with Easter eyes, and to consider the possibility that the eschatological hope in our bodily resurrection might well entail the eventual perfection o n earth as it is in heaven of our sexual desires.

Theologians have for centuries imagined heaven as completely bereft of sexual desire and activity. Traditionally, most theologiansAugustine and Thomas Aquinas among themspeculate that we will remain distinctly male or female in risen life, but they retain little place for other aspects of sexuality in heaven. They argue that in risen life while some transformed experience of gender difference may abide, sexual attraction and joy will be left behind. Though not quite a conviction that has been held always, everywhere, and by everybody, the conclusion that there will be no sexual desire and delight in heaven enjoys nearly such unanimity.

The purpose of this book is to examine that conclusion critically and to develop a new theology of sexual desire that explores how it is being healed and transformed here as it might well be in the life of the world to come. If sexual activity is one of the most decisive ways humans draw near to each other, quite physically, quite literally, as theologian David Jensen puts it, then it might well be a key way we draw near to, commune with, and make room for one another in glory.

It might be helpful at this early juncture to differentiate my argument from some others. I will not be wrestling seriously with any Mormon-like efforts to make the restoration of nuclear or extended forms of marriage and family life central to eternal life. In fact, my own view is that a considerable portion of the Jesus tradition is almost radically anti-family or anti-clan. With one notable exception to the contrary discussed in , I think there are numerous Jesus sayings that reflect a view of earthly conjugal and blood ties that would seem countercultural, certainly in many patriarchal societies.