As premodern as Dumbledore appears to us, with his flowing beard and ancient wisdom, we need to see him as the quintessential split subject; but inasmuch as he lives out the victory of love over death, he is the split subject that makes it, that lives not in this world but in the next (where Harry last sees him) and when he was in this world, lived as if in the wound of Christ. There is a picture from Flanders which shows believers bathing in the blood pouring out of Christ’s wound. Then another from Caravaggio which shows Thomas poking his fingers into this wound. We must remember that this wound characterizes not the living body of Christ, but the resurrected body, the spiritual body that lives beyond death. Zizek calls this body un-dead, but this is needlessly shocking. We don’t know much about this body, but we do know that it is neither given or taken in marriage, and that, sexually, it is like an angelic body. But we also know that our spiritual bodies are given us in a wedding feast. So are they sexualized or not? Is the love that grapples with death and wins (like Jacob did) in any way sexual? In some religions, Mormonism as well as Islam come to mind, the afterlife is seen in some ways as like the family life we know here. Heterosexual intercourse is mentioned, encouraged, and it seems that children play a part as well. We cannot say this about our tradition, and yet our language is perhaps the most sexualized, what with marriage feasts, brides and bridegrooms, consummation, etc. So what kind of sex are we talking about? And if the beatific vision is the consummation of all our desires, clearly that includes erotic desire (I don’t think any decent theologian would argue with me here). It is clear that Christians tend to be feminized in regards to Christ, but Christ also takes on something feminine–the slit in his side, that bleeds not monthly but continually. This split of course heals Adam’s wound through which Eve was born, and in gushing both water and wine, found the church and its sacraments (as well as its fantasy in the grail which caught this shower), and I think the picture of the Christians bathing in the blood which flows from this slit are seen to take on the saviour’s new sexual characterics. Which is . . . . what? He is not given or taken in marriage, but he bleeds, he loves, and of course he enjoys, forever, his desire is fulfilled in gazing at God and at uniting with his adopted children.

So is the resurrected body gay, or feminine? We need to be careful here, but we can say that in passing through death this body’s sexual wound has profoundly changed. It is no longer a source of division (etymologically sex means simply division) but a source of unity. The elect are erotically bonded to each other. What all this goes to say is that the sexuality of the Christian is profoundly changed, and I don’t believe this has ever really been considered. What does it mean to be feminized? What does it mean to be erotically bound to each other. What does it mean to be perfect, and yet still to bleed, to be wounded? Homosexuality is an issue now because the gay person is a witness to this. I’m not saying that all Christians would be more honest if they were gay. I’m saying that homosexuality brings the topic to the forefront. Etymologically again, gay of course means happy, but what if we see this person to be happy not because they just bought a killer sweater, but rather because their sex is no longer divided but resurrected? Again, homosexuality brings this question to the place where it can no longer be ignored, which is why, as much as intellectuals hate to dirty their hands in hopelessly dualistic debates on issues “which are not of primary importance (didn’t Rowan Williams say something like this?), it is time to realize that the wise among us (hint, Rowan) need to make this topic their own, and no longer leave it to the hungry ghosts and ravenous dogs of mindless debate.

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So much has happened this week in several blogs that we all frequent, not to mention outside or prodigious circle. Moreover, several noteworthies from the summer escaped my mention one way or another. Take this posting as my unofficial and abridged “I Don’t Know What You Did This Summer, But Here’s What You Should Have Been Reading.” I reserve the right to add to this list, to expect you all to follow up on the items herein, and to mock the many, dare I say most, of you who don’t. We’ll start with this week and work backward.

August 8. Fr. Edward T. Oakes published a charming and timely piece on the First Things blog on Wednesday called “On Canons”. If you’ve been keeping up with Janet and the most recent discussion over at Deep Grace of Theory, or you’ve been following the discussion on the nature of Christian philosophy or the comments under the Balthasar podcast, or you haven’t had your head buried in the sand, you might find his article illuminating. You’ll at least be tickled by such lines as: “No one disputes Hegel’s status as a canonical philosopher; but anyone who has tried to work through his rebarbative prose quickly comes to see how little literary merit counts when it comes to admittance in the ranks of canonical philosophers.” Ok, that’s hilarious to me. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t know what “Rebarbative” means. Hell, my spell checker doesn’t even recognize it. So, for all you playas out there -

Rebarbative: adjective; from French rébarbatif, from Middle French, from rebarber to be repellent; REPELLENT, IRRITATING

Here’s the really salient bit, especially for Janet. “To add to the problem [of defining what's canonical in philosophy and what's not], there is the fact of Western intellectual history that no one fails to notice: Science makes progress, philosophy doesn’t. The repetition of both errors and truths embarrasses the history of philosophy when compared to history of science, where – according to the standard modern (as opposed to postmodern) narrative – error is corrected by truth and does not recur.” Contentious enough for you, yet? Well, how does Oakes propose we deal with this problem of how to determine our philosophical canon. It’s not quite as easy as picking and choosing our favs and our despised: “I think Etienne Gilson gets close to my point when he drolly says in his book The Unity of Philosophical Experience: ‘There is more that one excuse for being Descartes, but there is no excuse whatsoever for be Cartesian.’ Nearly all philosophers of whatever stripe are united in contemning Cartesianism; yet there Descartes sits, like the Cheshire cat perched on his branch in the canonical tree, smiling at all the derision he gets from behaviorists, Thomists, Aristotelians, animal psychologists, neurologists – undislodgeable!” The answer – Scott will love this – is Thomism.. well, not quite, but in another bad nutshell, the problem with philosophy today is that, while having all the earmarks of Christian tradition, it is constantly trying to get away from reacting to, and making ample use of Christianity. In the words of Mortimer Adler, “Christianity has made problems for [philosophers] which they can not solve without faith, but which they will not refrain from discussing in rational terms.” But are Thomists dealing with the current problems of philosophy? Oakes: “The temptation for the Thomist here is to made Thomism a filly coherent, internally cohesive, locked-in while, a sealed-off bathysphere or an impregnable siege engine, impermeable to the lessons, both good and bad, that modern philosophy teachers … Good luck trying to overcome that prejudice. Because of the influence of seminary Thomism before Vatican II, the impression often arose that Thomism is a fully formed system… Are Thomists being trained in the history of modern philosophy to take up where, for example, James Collins left off in his magisterial God in Modern Philosophy?” Please read his entire article.

Next, the August 6th New Yorker rings the alarm we rang on May 30th (thanks to Salon.com.) Apparently, the honey bee decline is getting so bad that California is eventually going to have to rent the entire honey bee population currently in North America just to pollinate its almond crop. Where that leaves the needs of the rest of us is anyone’s guess.

Now, for the summer:

Archbishop Rowan Williams was interviewed and had his mug featured on the cover of Time magazine. You can read the interview here, and you can listen to the podcast here. Williams expresses his view that both sides must come together in compromise for the sake of the church. The article does a nice job of couching the issue not only in terms of the sexual ethics but, but also in terms of stability for the countries involved.

On the flip side, First Things published the Ugandan Archibishop Henry Luke Orombi. Orombi argues that the decisive element of Anglicanism, pace Williams, is not liturgical practices and mutual respect in dialogue. Rather, it’s martyrdom and evangelization, all aimed at advancing “The Word of God.” All tools of communion must be oriented toward “holding each other accountable to Scripture”. He then describes how the call to the Scripture in Ugandan society has transformed cultural practices there. In his eyes, backing down from the demands made on TEC would be comprimising on sexual ethics, thereby denying the transformative power of Scritpure and its effects in his own society. Yet, reading the article, one wonders at his seemingly black and white understanding of cultural issues and how he argues through examination of cultural norms and transformation in Uganda for what he expects to be the common Anglican element. The Church of England certainly didn’t get its start with conservative sexual ethics, and I doubt that stances such as Orombi’s will change many minds. Moreover, when we look at what has really been common to the Anglican church, and then read Orombi’s article, something is suspiciously amiss- what happened to The Book of Common Prayer. Hmmm. The real common anchor of Anglican life has been a liturgical one all along. Go figure!

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Adams offers a helpful, while opinionated, reading of the situation. I say helpful because she attempts to present a broad scope reading of the situation before launching into detailed critique and suggestions for ways forward. She also makes the theology behind many of her clear to the audience. However, she fails in one area: she begs the question about the equivalence between sexual identity and personal identity. Yet, I admit that had she stated from the get go that such was her presupposition, I believe I probably could hang with the arguments that she had built from the presupposition.

Nevertheless, I think its safe, and sad, to say that many will be drawn to the mercifully irenic tone of her argument when compared with the alternative offered by Forward in Faith, which spends much less time telling a convincing story and much more time bickering details.

Aron said the other day that he thought the way forward in this argument is not the political bashing and name calling that even the Anglo-catholics have resorted to these days. Rather, the solution must come from well-reasoned and charitable theological formulations. Hopefully, Adams can continue to move in this direction and encourage others to follow.

Moreover, as recently re-iterated to me by a much loved priest, the Church is once again becoming embroiled in another difficult controversy to which many are directing much attention when they should be attending to the details and needs of their own parishes and dioceses.

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