Conclusion: Theology as Failure

This conclusion draws together the themes of the book, exploring what a theology of failure looks like in relation to four overarching themes: freedom, materiality, hierarchy, and universalism. This account of ontology, desire, and Christian theology suggests not only that completeness is impossible but also that purity is impossible. The internal rupture that both constitutes and disrupts every individual economic identity is also the rupture between the social economy of the relationship between the individual and others, language and the body, theology and philosophy, God and the created order. Theology can no more remain immune from its others than it can completely encompass them. Once there was no secular; and yet the genealogy of the church, of Christian theology, is constantly interrupted, contaminated, and enriched by the profane, the abject, and the horrific. Theology is failure; the task, then, is to fail better, to liberate our others in order to begin the difficult work of learning how to love them.

Gender Ideology: For a ‘Third Sex’ Without Reserve

‘Gender ideology’ is a term used by many, but especially the Vatican, to chastise the view that sexual difference is more than just male and female, sexuality more than desire of the opposite. Each of the three books discussed in this article defends some version of this supposed ideology; each argues—though in different ways—for the need to move beyond a dimorphic account of sexual difference. Their arguments are taken up and deployed against what is here presented as the ideology of sexual dimorphism, as it is seen in the body theology of John Paul II. It is argued that such a theology dehumanises intersexed people, along with homosexuals, and undermines Christian soteriology. The church needs to acknowledge as fully human all who don’t conform to heterosexual dimorphism; it needs to embrace a ‘third sex’ without reserve.

Experience and Constructive Theology

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the scope of the work, situates it in the scholarly field, and defines terms repeatedly used throughout the book, such as bodily experience, difference, constructive theology, and body theology. The chapter notes that the important question regarding bodily experience is not whether but how it will be valued. All experience is essentially bodily experience, and theology as a critical inquiry into our being in the world needs to consider experience as a resource by attending to bodily experience and the way it situates us in the world. The chapter previews the book’s aim to provide a robust and complex notion of “body theology” and demonstrate what kinds of analyses this re-envisioned approach can do, and to offer an integrated view of the role of perception in bodily experience.

Orienting Familiar Body Theologies

Chapter 7 constructively applies body theology to the works of Carter Heyward and Marcella Althaus-Reid, and provides the author’s own god-talk based in bodily experiences. It explains that to do body theology is to talk about our bodily perceptual orientations, our body-sense in and of the world, connected to specific contexts, locations, and experiences. Body theology can be done while pursuing other overarching theological goals, for example, within a systematic approach or a contextual/sexual theology. Or it can be done as constructive body theology “on its own,” focusing on the specific ways in which bodily experiences make sense and create meaning, without connecting it to specific theistic concepts or commonly associated religious artifacts such as scripture or rituals.