Voices from the Edge: Centering Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology (Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology) 9780198848844, 0198848846

Table of contents :
Cover
Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectivesin Analytic Theology
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Contributors
Introduction
1.
2.
References
I METHODOLOGY
1 Seeking out Epistemic Friction in the Philosophy of Religion
1. Disagreement and Arbitrariness: Results from Experimental Philosophy
1.1 Picking out the Rotten Apples?
1.2 How Home and Educational Background Influence Philosophers of Religion
2. The Epistemic Landscape of Philosophy of Religion
2.1 The Value of Actual Disagreement
2.2 Demographics in Philosophy of Religion
2.3 Beyond Epistemic Bubbles and Echo Chambers
3. Objections to Seeking out Epistemic Friction
3.1 Epistemic Partiality
3.2 Imaginative Resistance
3.3 Facilitating Oppressive Views
4. Conclusion: Intellectual Diversity and Epistemic Friction
Acknowledgements
References
2 Toward an Analytic Theology of Liberation
1. Analytic Theology and Liberation Theology
2. Values and Reasons for Acting: Pro Tanto vs All Things Considered
3. Liberation and the Value of True Explanatory Theories in Theology
4. Liberation as Subject Matter and Method of Christian Theology
5. Christian AT as LT
References
3 Mary as Mediator
1. A Doctrine of Sin with Reference to Mary
2. Luke 2
3. The Ministry of Women
4. Women in Ministry
5. Mary as Exemplar
References
II SOCIAL IDENTITY, R ELIGIOUSEPISTEMOLOGY, AND RELIGIOUS AFFECT
4 Non-deference to Religious Authority: Epistemic Arrogance or Justice?
1. Epistemic Oppression—What Is It?
2. Detecting Epistemic Oppression in a Christian Community and Correcting for It
3. Non-deference and Z’s Thesis
4. Conclusion
References
5 Shattered Faith: The Social Epistemology of Deconversion by Spiritually Violent Religious Trauma
1. Spiritually Violent Religious Trauma
2. Faith and Love
3. Love and Union
4. In Order to Form a More Perfect Union
5. The Practice of Worship and Knowing How to Engage God
6. Shame, Spiritual Violence, and Personal Union with God
7. Conclusion
References
6 Sacramental Shame in Black Churches: How Racism and Respectability Politics Shape the Experiences of Black LGBTQ and Same-Gender-Loving Christians
1. Sacramental Shame
2. Racist Spiritual Violence and Respectability Politics
3. Black LGBTQ and Same-Gender-Loving Christians’ Experiences of Sacramental Shame
3.1 Alienation from God and Church
3.2 Exiled Within, Quietly Ostracized
3.3 Invisibility and Silencing
3.4 Compartmentalizing
3.5 Controlling Perfectionism
4. Resources for Healing and Resistance
5. Moving Forward
References
7 Conceptualizing the Atonement
1. Traditional Theories of Atonement
2. Criticisms and Context
3. Traditional Models and Their Implications
4. The Atonement and Epistemic Injustice
5. An Alternative Way Forward
References
III SOCIAL BODIES AND THE ESCHATON
8 The Shape of Trans Afterlife Justice
1. Gender Dysphoria, Transitioning, and Justice
2. Three Proposals for Satisfying Trans Justice
3. Conscripting Transphobes
4. Trans (After)Life
5. Conclusion
References
9 Defiant Afterlife: Disability and Uniting Ourselves to God
1. Historical Views on the Exclusion of Disability from the Afterlife
1.1 Disability in Scripture
1.2 Luther
1.3 Calvin
1.4 Historical Implications
2. Contemporary Arguments
2.1 Ehrman
2.2 Yong and Mullins
2.3 Cross
3. Heavenly Disabilities
4. Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OXFORD STUDIES IN ANALYTIC THEOLOGY Series Editors Michael C. Rea

Oliver D. Crisp

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OXFORD STUDIES IN ANALYTIC THEOLOGY Analytic Theology utilizes the tools and methods of contemporary analytic philosophy for the purposes of constructive Christian theology, paying attention to the Christian tradition and development of doctrine. This innovative series of studies showcases highquality, cutting edge research in this area, in monographs and symposia.   : Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God William Hasker The Theological Project of Modernism Faith and the Conditions of Mineness Kevin W. Hector The End of the Timeless God R. T. Mullins Ritualized Faith Essays on the Philosophy of Liturgy Terence Cuneo In Defense of Conciliar Christology A Philosophical Essay Timothy Pawl Atonement Eleonore Stump Humility and Human Flourishing A Study in Analytic Moral Theology Michael W. Austin Love Divine Jordan Wessling

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

Voices from the Edge Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology Edited by MICHELLE PANCHUK MICHAEL REA

1

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2020 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2020 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933784 ISBN 978–0–19–884884–4 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

To Miroslava Panchuk and Penelope Rea

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

Contents Contributors

ix

Introduction

1 I. METHODOLOGY

1. Seeking out Epistemic Friction in the Philosophy of Religion Helen De Cruz

23

2. Toward an Analytic Theology of Liberation Sameer Yadav

47

3. Mary as Mediator Amy Peeler

75

II. SOCIAL IDENTITY, RELIGIOUS EPISTEMOLOGY, AND RELIGIOUS AFFECT 4. Non-deference to Religious Authority: Epistemic Arrogance or Justice? Teri Merrick 5. Shattered Faith: The Social Epistemology of Deconversion by Spiritually Violent Religious Trauma Joshua Cockayne, David Efird, and Jack Warman 6. Sacramental Shame in Black Churches: How Racism and Respectability Politics Shape the Experiences of Black LGBTQ and Same-Gender-Loving Christians Theresa W. Tobin and Dawne Moon 7. Conceptualizing the Atonement Kathryn Pogin

97

119

141 166

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

viii



III. SOCIAL BODIES AND THE ESCHATON 8. The Shape of Trans Afterlife Justice Blake Hereth

185

9. Defiant Afterlife: Disability and Uniting Ourselves to God Kevin Timpe

206

Index

233

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

Contributors Joshua Cockayne is a lecturer at the Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology at the University of St. Andrews. Joshua’s research focuses on issues of spirituality, spiritual practice, and ecclesiology in analytic theology. He completed his PhD at the University of York for work on Kierkegaard and the spiritual life. He has published articles in Religious Studies, Faith and Philosophy, The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, and Zygon. His book, on Kierkegaard and spirituality, will be coming out in 2020 with Baylor University Press. Helen De Cruz holds the Danforth Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University. She works in philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of religion and experimental philosophy. Her research is concerned with the question of how and why humans can deal with abstract, difficult to grapple concepts such as God or mathematical objects (see e.g., De Cruz and De Smedt, A Natural History of Natural Theology. MIT Press, 2015). She also examines how philosophy can help us engage in discussions in the public sphere, for instance in her recent monograph Religious Disagreement (Cambridge University Press, 2019). David Efird is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York, and a priest in the Church of England. His research focuses on analytic theology, particularly in the philosophy of the spiritual life. He is presently working on the interpretation of morally problematic passages in the Bible. Blake Hereth is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arkansas. Ze works in animal theology and LGBTQ theology. Ze has defended animal immortality, animal universalism, and zootheism, the view that the Godhead necessarily includes animal members. Zir latest volume, The Lost Sheep in Philosophy of Religion: New Perspectives on Disability, Gender, Race, and Animals, was recently released by Routledge. Teri Merrick is a professor of philosophy at Azusa Pacific University. Her current areas of interest are post-Kantian German philosophy and epistemic injustice in science and religion. Most recent work in these areas include “From ‘Intersex’ to ‘DSD’: A case of epistemic injustice” ’ to ‘DSD’: A case epistemic injustice” Synthese doi:10.1007/s11229017-1327-x and Sinning Against Science: Helmholtz, Cohen, and Frege on Progress and Fidelity under contract with Springer. Dawne Moon is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Marquette University. She is author of God, Sex, and Politics: Homosexuality in Everyday Theologies (Chicago, 2004). A qualitative sociologist, she has published articles on sexuality, gender, religion, and culture. Her current research, with Theresa W. Tobin, explores the conservative Christian LGBTQI movement.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

x



Amy Peeler is Associate Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, IL and Associate Rector at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Geneva, IL. Author of “You Are My Son”: The Family of God in the Epistle to the Hebrews (T&T Clark, 2014), she continues to research and write at the intersection of theology and gender. Kathryn Pogin is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at Northwestern University and a J. D. Candidate at Yale Law School. She is a student fellow with the Law, Ethics, & Animals Program at Yale, and has elsewhere written at the intersection of social philosophy and feminist philosophy of religion. For example, Pogin authored “Discrimination is UnChristian, Too” (2014), which was a commentary on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., for the New York Times’ philosophy blog, The Stone, as well as “God is Not Male” (2019) in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (2nd Edition). Kevin Timpe presently holds the William H. Jellema Chair in Christian Philosophy at Calvin University. He’s published extensively on free will, philosophy of religion, virtue ethics, and the philosophy of disability. His two most recent books are Disability and Inclusive Communities (2018) and The Lost Sheep in Philosophy of Religion: New Perspectives on Disablity, Gender, Race, and Animals (2019, co-edited with Blake Hereth). Theresa W. Tobin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Marquette University where she also currently serves as Associate Dean in the Graduate School. She publishes on topics in ethics, feminist philosophy, and philosophical methodology. Her current research focuses on spiritual violence and the role of emotions in moral transformation and political resistance. Jack Warman recently finished his PhD in Philosophy at the University York. He is interested in social epistemology, the ethics of belief, and the philosophy of religion. He is currently based in Santiago, Chile. Sameer Yadav (Th.D., Duke Divinity School) is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Westmont College. He is a systematic and philosophical theologian who works on Christian mysticism, religious experience, and the intersection of race and religion. Sameer is author of The Problem of Perception and the Experience of God (Fortress Press, 2015) and a number of articles in edited volumes and journals on various topics such as the nature of doctrine, Scripture, divine hiddenness, liberation theology, and mystical experience in religious epistemology.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

Introduction Over the past several decades, scholars working in biblical, theological, and religious studies have increasingly attended to the substantive ways in which our experiences and understanding of God, and of God’s relation to the world, are (partially) structured by our experiences and concepts of race, gender, disability, and sexuality. These personal and social identities and their intersections (for better or worse) serve as hermeneutical lenses for our interpretations of God, self, others, and our religious texts and traditions. However, these topics have not received the same level of attention from analytic theologians as other more traditional topics, and so a wide range of important issues remains ripe for analytic treatment. One might well wonder, however, whether analytic theologians are wellequipped to reap this particular harvest. Analytic theology has a reputation for being inhospitable to careful and experientially informed exploration of the various philosophical-theological issues connected with culturally and theologically marginalized social identities. This reputation is due in part to the demographics of the discipline and the particular kind of academic culture that is thought to characterize it; but it also arises out of misconceptions about the nature of the activity of analytic theology. These two issues are not unrelated, as assumptions about the nature of the activity have often arisen from observations of how the activity has been practised. But we try to address them in turn. In so doing, we hope to offer the positive vision for this volume and others like it, as well as respond to potential concerns. Unlike some unaddressed questions within analytic theology that simply offer fertile soil for new ideas, we believe that the topics explored in this volume (and other related topics that we are, unfortunately, not able to include¹) need to be considered for the sake of the health and integrity of the discipline. The agenda for the discipline for the past decade—and for analytic philosophy of religion for much longer—has largely been set by individuals who do not inhabit culturally or theologically marginalized social identities, and it has, accordingly, tended to reflect their interests, their experiences, and their assumptions about how to engage in analytic reflection. Panchuk has argued elsewhere (2020) and several contributors argue in the present volume that this history has had (unintended) ¹ For example, topics such as class, age, childhood, animals, size (fat studies) are all absent.

Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Introduction In: Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology. Edited by: Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848844.003.0001

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

2



negative effects on the quality of the work done in analytic theology, on the practitioners and potential practitioners in the discipline, and on the broader human community. It is not simply that interesting questions have gone unanswered, but that some questions, that tend not to be relevant to the lives of more privileged people, have been tacitly or explicitly considered less serious or even suspect as legitimate lines of inquiry. Certain ways of engaging with questions (e.g., that bring emotion and lived-experience to bear), have been assumed inappropriate. One might think (as indeed we do), that these historical circumstances have resulted in the exclusion of certain voices and that the discipline has missed out on an entire range of epistemic goods that differently positioned theologians might offer. We hope that the articles in the present volume will contribute to ameliorating these harms in (at least) the following ways: 1. Expanding the range of topics recognized by analytic theologians as theologically important. 2. Expanding the range of social identities represented in the discipline.² 3. Deploying arguments for the importance of the first two contributions. 4. Expanding our conceptions of what it looks like to do analytic theology well. Together, these papers address various ways in which culturally and theologically marginalized social identities intersect with, shape, or can be shaped by the questions with which analytic theology and philosophy of religion have typically been concerned, as well as what new questions they suggest to the discipline. Although the possibilities raised by this line of inquiry are myriad, we focus in this volume on three central areas of analytic theology: methodological principles, the intersection of social identities with religious epistemology, and the connections among eschatology, ante-mortem suffering, and ante-mortem social perceptions of bodies. In the second part of this introduction, we briefly introduce each of the nine papers that follow.

1. Analytic theology is, roughly speaking, theology that is done more or less in conformity with the style and ambitions of analytic philosophy, and in conversation with the literatures of both analytic philosophy and contemporary and historical theology. As such, it is an interdisciplinary activity that prioritizes explanatory theorizing and a certain kind of clarity and rigour in argumentation—namely,

² We recognize that this volume only represents a small expansion in those identities. We hope that other volumes will continue to encourage the expansion of identities, by including contributions from Muslim, Jewish, Pagan, Hindu, Jain, Daoist, and, Buddhist scholars, among others.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi



3

whatever clarity and rigour come from trying, as much as possible, to work with well-understood primitive concepts and concepts defined in terms of those, and to lay bare the presuppositions, premises, and inferential moves in one’s own arguments.³ For the sake of these priorities, those working in the ‘analytic’ mode are often willing to sacrifice other worthy goals that philosophical and theological writing might aim to accomplish. Sometimes, philosophers (on both sides of the so-called analytic/Continental divide) talk as if what analytic theorizers are willing to sacrifice are goods like rhetorical power and the elegance that often gives rise to that, relevance to human life, wisdom and insight, sensitivity to one’s own social and historical situatedness, and engagement with the history of thought on the topics about which one is theorizing. But even if it is true that analytic theorizers would sacrifice at least some of these goods on particular occasions for the sake of greater clarity and rigour (of the sort they prioritize), it is a mistake to suggest that they place no value on these other goods, and it is likewise a mistake to suggest that they are categorically willing to sacrifice them. Moreover, it is a mistake to suggest that goods like clarity and rigour are prioritized to a uniform degree by everyone theorizing in the analytic mode. (Those working in analytic feminism, or analytic Thomism, for example, will likely prioritize some of the other goods just mentioned, like relevance to contemporary concerns or historical accuracy, to a much higher degree than, say, those working in analytic metaphysics.) It is perhaps more accurate, generally speaking, to say simply that the standards for what counts as, or how best to produce, work that is sufficiently elegant, relevant to human life, sensitive to one’s own situatedness, engaged with relevant historical literature, and so on are different (in ways that are recognizable but hard to articulate) when one is engaged in analytic philosophical or theological writing from the standards in play when one is engaged in other forms of writing. None of this, of course, rises to the level of a precise account of the nature of analytic theology.⁴ But we hope it is clear enough to give some idea of how certain misconceptions can arise, how they play into the reputation of analytic theology as inhospitable to the sorts of conversations to which the papers in this book contribute, and why they count as misconceptions. There are three on which we would like to focus: (i) that analytic theology is a school of thought invested in epistemological,⁵ metaphysical, and theological realism, and that this investment

³ For a fuller characterization, see Rea 2009. ⁴ For more detailed discussion of the nature of analytic theology, each reflecting a somewhat different take on the enterprise, see (for starters) Abraham 2009 and Crisp 2009. ⁵ Roughly, ‘epistemological realism’ is used here to describe the position that it is possible to have objective knowledge of the external world, and that it is possible for our concepts and beliefs to ‘match up’ with external reality rather than simply constructing that reality. As such, it is related, although not identical to, the third aspect of realism described below.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

4



makes it inhospitable to assumptions that drive a lot of contemporary reflection on marginalized social identities, (ii) that analytic theology embodies presuppositions that lead it to focus on the abstract and idealized rather than on the historically situated and particular, and (iii) that analytic theorizing is objectifying in ways that presuppose a certain kind of social power and privilege on the part of its practitioners. The first misconception we have mainly encountered in conversation with colleagues rather than in print. Analytic theology is often thought to be committed to metaphysical and theological realism; and, to the extent that it is, it is sometimes thought to lead to a denial of or deprioritization of inquiry into social constructed kinds, of which gender and race are widely taken to be paradigmatic. If this is correct, then it is quite natural to assume that analytic theology would not provide fertile soil for the investigation of theological issues pertaining to many (or perhaps any) marginalized social identities. It is true that the explanatory ambitions of analytic theology are naturally accompanied by some form of theological realism; and it is likewise true that theological realism is naturally accompanied by some kind of broader metaphysical realism. But, as Rea explains elsewhere (2020), there is no good reason for thinking that analytic theology is committed to either form of realism. But even if it were, there are at least two other ways of addressing this misconception. One is to focus on the question of whether commitment to some kind of realism in theology and metaphysics is fully compatible with recognition of and theoretical interest in a wide range of socially constructed kinds. Although realism is often characterized in terms of mind-independence, and although mindindependence is often characterized in such a way as to preclude social construction, these are not the only plausible characterizations of either realism or mindindependence. So, for example, in ‘Realism in Theology and Metaphysics’, Rea (2007) characterizes realism as follows: • where ‘x’ is a singular term, realism about x is the view that there is a y such that x = y; • where ‘F’ is a putative kind-term, realism about Fs is the view that there are Fs and that F is a genuine kind-term; • where ‘T’ refers to the linguistic expression of some claim, theory, or doctrine, to interpret or treat T realistically is (a) to interpret T as having an objective truth-value (and so to interpret it as something other than a mere evocative metaphor or expression of tastes, attitudes, or values); and (b) to interpret T in such a way that it has realist truth-conditions—i.e., it is true only if realism about the xs and Fs putatively referred to in the theory is true; • where ‘D’ refers to a discipline (like metaphysics or theology), realism in D is or involves interpreting the canonical statements of theories or doctrines in D realistically.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi



5

As should be evident from these characterizations, realism about some kind of thing does not imply that things of that kind are not socially constructed; and realism in theology and metaphysics can be more or less limited so that, e.g., one might be a realist about many of the kinds and objects that enter into one’s theories but not about all of them. Thus, absent substantive argument to the contrary, there seems to be no good reason to think that analytic theologians as such should be averse to inquiry into paradigmatically social kinds or the theological issues pertaining to them. Another way to challenge this misconception is by re-evaluating assumptions about the nature of contemporary reflection on marginalized social identities. It is true that some branches of feminist philosophy (especially postmodern feminism), critical race theory, and disability studies, reject some forms of realism that are commonly accepted in analytic theology. However, it would be a mistake to assume that this is a necessary feature of important, liberatory work on social identities. Quite a number of theorists are realists about socially constructed properties. For example, Charles Mills argues that race is both objectively real and socially constructed (1998, see especially p. 45 for a helpful chart of the various objectivist and anti-objectivist positions⁶), as do Sally Haslanger (2000) and Charlotte Witt (2011) with regard to gender. Furthermore, there is much work in these fields that not only assumes but depends in important theoretical ways on realism in epistemology. For example, both Sandra Harding in philosophy of science (1993) and Pamela Sue Anderson in philosophy of religion (2001) have argued at length that centring marginalized standpoints not only produces the better practical results of reducing social disadvantage (the pragmatic argument) but that it results in better, more accurate, theories (the theoretical argument). Indeed, Harding argues that beginning scientific inquiry from the questions and concerns that arise within the lives of marginalized knowers and conducting inquiry from their point of view results in greater, rather than less, objectivity. The problem with the conventional conception of objectivity is not that it is too rigorous or too ‘objectifying,’ as some have argued, but that it is not rigorous or objectifying enough; it is too weak to accomplish even the goals for which it has been designed let alone the more difficult project called for by feminism and other new social movements. (50–1)

The problem with conventional understandings of objectivity according to Harding is that they only exclude values that are visible from the perspective of privileged, dominant reasoners. The values that remain invisible—things like ⁶ Mills uses ‘objectivism’ to denote the independence of objective reality from what we choose or what we believe (45). We follow Rea (2007) in using ‘realism’ to describe the same relationship.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

6



sexist and racist assumptions about the world—remain and taint the results of inquiry. But because these dominant values are more easily visible to marginalized individuals, starting and conducting inquiry from their point of view results in greater objectivity and gets one closer to the truth. As Anderson puts it in her defence of the legitimacy of taking ‘standpoint’ into account in a realist epistemology: We must be able to make true claims . . . but our perception of what there is is potentially distorted or obscured by actual states of oppression, and these states of oppression can only be discerned by thinking from the lives of marginalized others. And this is precisely the point at which the conception of standpoint should be brought in as an epistemologically informed perspective achieved as a result of struggle to recognize significant differences in material and social positionings. The role of standpoint, then, is to enable less partial thinking that, ultimately, seeks to transform unjust power relations. (2001: 145–6)

We turn now to the second misconception. It is uncontroversial that analytic philosophy has sometimes been practised in ways that focus on the abstract and idealized rather than on the historically situated and particular. Some have even claimed that such focus is an essential component of its methodology. One thinks of Bertrand Russell saying that ‘the free intellect will value more the abstract and universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do not enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses.’⁷ Charles Mills maintains that the abstractness of ‘ideal theory’ consciously or subconsciously plays the ideological role of papering over or ‘steering away from disquieting questions and unresolved issues’ (Mills 1998, 5), and we agree that the tendency toward abstraction in analytic philosophy and theology has had similar effect. When we deal with the abstract and the universal, we need to, indeed cannot help but, confront the reality that concrete racialized, gendered, classed, and (dis)abled people are not all regarded in accordance with the abstract ideal. But we do not believe that a focus on the abstract is essential to the methodology of analytic theology. This misconception is gestured at early on both in Michael Rea’s introduction to Analytic Theology and Simon Oliver’s (2010) review of the volume, and it has been recently developed at length by Martin Westerholm (2019). Westerholm states the objection in two substantively different ways. (Perhaps as he sees it they are two separate objections; it is hard to tell. But even if he does regard them as distinct objections, for purposes here, there seems to be no harm in treating them as one.)

⁷ Russell 1957: 160.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi



7

At the outset of his article, Westerholm says that analytic theology ‘rests on presuppositions that generate a drift into abstraction through which ideal objects of inquiry are substituted for real’ (232). Thus stated, the objection is virtually identical to one derived from Bas van Fraassen’s work (2002) that was raised in both Rea (2009) and Oliver (2010) and addressed in Rea (2009).⁸ That Westerholm intends the connection with van Fraassen’s work is clear from the part of his discussion that references it (though, oddly, he both misunderstands van Fraassen and makes no mention of Rea’s reply). The other way of stating the objection, which appears part way through his (by his own admission) ‘more impressionistic than tightly argued’ (244) defence of the first form of the objection, seems to express a somewhat broader critique. After some brief supporting remarks, he writes: ‘We can see, then, that analytic work opens the door to questions about its relation to empirical actuality by developing accounts of the real that are set apart from the understandings that are shaped by life’s “ordinary business” ’ (244). Again, this might be a distinct objection from the claim that analytic thought tends to focus on abstract idealizations—simulacra, as van Fraassen puts it—rather than real-world objects and properties. But it is easy to see them as just different ways of putting a common thought: analytic methodology is inherently a form of theorizing that deals in abstract idealizations rather than with objects and attributes as they are encountered in ordinary experience; and, as such, the theories it produces are substantially disconnected from any ‘understandings’ that are shaped by ordinary life experience. It is easy to see, too, how, if correct, this objection implies that analytic theology will be little conducive to the exploration of notions like gender, disability, and race, about which theories dealing in abstract idealizations will mostly be worse than useless. But there are several problems with Westerholm’s ‘defence’ of this objection, two of which are especially pertinent here, as they reveal the extent to which the objection rests on misconceptions about analytic approaches.⁹ First: Westerholm’s opening salvo raises ‘concerns about the relationship between analytic work and empirical actuality’; but in developing these concerns, he does not focus on contemporary work in analytic philosophy or theology, but rather on Moore and Russell, writing: Whereas Kant supposed that the analysis of concepts cannot be detached from accounts of experience and synthesis because the conditions of the formation of concepts must govern their later analysis . . . G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell ⁸ In Rea 2009, the objection that analytic theology deals more in abstract idealizations than realities was developed with reference to both van Fraassen and Marion; and Rea conceded that there was some merit to Marion’s version of the objection. Rea only responds to van Fraassen (and, notably, Westerholm does not reference Marion in developing his version of the objection). ⁹ There are others that we won’t attend to here. One is that Westerholm mischaracterizes analytic theology; see Rea 2020 for discussion. Others are discussed in Cockayne et al. (Unpublished).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

8

 thought Kantian accounts of experience and synthesis unduly psychologistic, and sought to recover elements of a pre-Kantian empiricism in claiming that the act of knowing makes no difference to the object known. [footnote omitted] These thinkers inaugurated a pattern that came to full flowering in the work of the positivists in using appeals to ‘givenness’ to justify separating the analysis of concepts from consideration of experience and the formation of concepts. Concepts were to be considered apart from attention to ‘the behaviour of physical, or even mental, objects’ and ‘questions of empirical fact’. (244)

He acknowledges that defenders of analytic theology ‘often’ distance themselves from positivism; but, he says, ‘they do not question that foundational aim of separating analytical consideration of the content and consequences of concepts from consideration of experience and the formation of concepts’ (244). A citation to Wolterstorff (2009) is attached to this sentence; but a careful read of Wolterstorff ’s article reveals him only distancing analytic work from positivism, not affirming the unquestioned nature of the ‘foundational aim’ of separating consideration of the content and consequences of concepts from consideration of how experience enters into their formation.¹⁰ Moreover, I know of no contemporary analytic philosopher who self-consciously recognizes this sort of foundational aim and, as anyone familiar with contemporary work in (e.g.) analytic social ontology, feminist epistemology, philosophy of race, and various other subfields will be aware, plenty of analytic philosophers are committed to the rejection of any such aim. Second, Westerholm rests substantial argumentative weight on what he takes to be the ‘assumptions that inform analytic conceptions of the real’ (245). Setting aside the oddity of supposing that there is any class of conceptions appropriately labelled ‘analytic conceptions of the real’, Westerholm’s main interest seems to be in defending the claim that ‘the renewals of metaphysics that have fuelled analytic interest in theology have been marked by the adoption of broadly Platonic assumptions regarding the relation between the conceptual and the actual, the ideal and the real’ (245). Indeed, he takes these assumptions to be so manifest in contemporary analytic metaphysics that no more than a brief glance is required to see that deployment of the Platonic principles that Hegel puts at the root of philosophy [viz., that “thought and being are related in such a way that what appears clearly and necessarily to thought is a reliable guide to the actual” (245)] have been operative in the

¹⁰ Perhaps tellingly, Westerholm cites pages ‘11–13’; but Wolterstorff ’s article runs from pages 155 to 168. There is another article by Wolterstorff cited in Westerholm for which such a citation would make sense; but a look at those pages reveals no affirmation of the unquestioned nature of analytic philosophy’s foundational aims either.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi



9

revisionary accounts of the real that we encountered a moment ago [viz., the metaphysical views of Peter van Inwagen and David Lewis]. (245–6)

He goes on to claim that David Lewis’s modal realism is ‘rooted in the claim that possible worlds are to be taken as real because of the clarity that this supposition brings to thought’ and that Peter van Inwagen’s denial of the reality of tables and chairs is likewise defended on the grounds that ‘this denial gives maximal cogency to our system of thought’ (246). On his view, both arguments are ‘rooted in a willingness to take clarity and cogency of thought as a guide to the content of being’ and ‘[b]oth develop ontological claims by attending to the consistency and cogency of systems of thought—Lewis speaks of “paying in the coin of ontology” for “theoretical unity and economy” ’ (246). But, though it is easy to agree with Westerholm that such ideas might plausibly be attributed to Lewis and van Inwagen on the basis of ‘no more than a brief glance’, it is very hard to see how anyone who has taken more than a (very) brief glance at their work could characterize their views and arguments in such a way. Perhaps the easiest way to see this in Lewis’s case is to focus on the remark about theoretical unity and economy that Westerholm quotes. Here Lewis is arguing that the reasons to believe in a plurality of possible worlds are similar in kind to important reasons mathematicians have for believing in a ‘vast hierarchy of sets’ (Lewis 1986, 3). Set theory, he says, ‘offers the mathematician great economy of primitives and premises, in return for accepting rather a lot of entities unknown to Homo javanensis’ (1986, 4). His idea is that, just as embracing set theory provides a variety of important theoretical benefits in mathematics, so too embracing modal realism provides similar theoretical benefits in the realm of metaphysics; and just as these sorts of benefits constitute (defeasible) reason for mathematicians to endorse set theory, so too they constitute (defeasible) reason for metaphysicians to endorse Lewis’s modal realism. To characterize this as resting his defence of modal realism on a Platonically rationalistic privileging of ‘clarity and cogency of thought’ is, at best, confused.¹¹ But, as mentioned above, even if this were an accurate characterization and viable critique of Lewis’s and Van Inwagen’s methodology, it would be an expansive (and mistaken) leap to attribute the same methodology to all or most analytic metaphysicians. We now turn to the final misconception: that analytic theorizing is objectifying in ways that presuppose a certain amount of privilege and social power on the part

¹¹ One might say similar things in response to the characterization of van Inwagen; but demonstrating this here would be somewhat more complicated in light of the relative sparsity in van Inwagen’s work of explicitly methodological remarks. We trust that our point has been made sufficiently clear through what we have said about Lewis; but we recommend that interested readers take their own (preferably extended) glance at van Inwagen 1990 to see whether any appeal is made to the ‘clarity and cogency of thought’ as justification for the main conclusions therein. See also Crisp (2009: 41–3) for discussion relevant to Westerholm’s objection.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

10



of its practitioners. If it were true that analytic reflection necessarily involved objectifying some or another class of persons, that would be a strong reason against engaging in the practice at all, but especially against focusing that reflection on social identities that are most socially vulnerable to objectification, as contributors do in this volume. Sally Haslanger (2001; 2017) and Rae Langton (2000) have argued at length that it is not analytic theorizing, as such, that is objectifying, but a certain set of assumptions about one’s own epistemic situation with respect to the objects about which one is theorizing that enables, but does not strictly entail, various interrelated kinds of objectification. So while analytic theorizing has sometimes been deployed by socially privileged individuals in order to justify their objectification of others, it should not for that reason be considered as falling exclusively within the purview of objectifiers. Nonetheless, because their arguments have been discussed primarily within analytic feminist philosophy, rather than in theological circles, it may be helpful to summarize them here for those who remain concerned. Why might one think that objectification is part and parcel of the analytic project? Roughly, the concern is that analytic theorizing is committed not only to certain forms of realism (understood as the ability to express propositions that have objective truth values), as mentioned above, but also to the ability of the ‘man of reason’ to occupy an epistemic perspective approaching the God’s-eye point of view—to ‘see as God might see see, [and to value] the abstract and universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do not enter’ (Russell 1957: 160). Haslanger calls this assumed objectivity (2001: 233). From this (imaginary) a-perspective, the privileged reasoner is tempted to assume that their act of observation has no impact on the phenomenon observed, and that the conditions to which they are accustomed are ‘normal conditions’. Thus, when the man of reason observes a regularity, they are tempted to assume that these regularities point to features that flow from the nature of the thing observed rather than from accidental features of the situation. Haslanger calls this kind of ‘naturalization’ ideological objectification (2017: 285). For example, when men observe that women are especially nurturing toward young children, they might assume that there is something about the nature of women that makes them especially nurturing: nurture is an inherent feature of womanhood. And since things tend to flourish when they are able to manifest their natures, it is good for women to be nurturing. Thus, society should be structured in ways that encourage them to be. But if, on the other hand, the male observer does not occupy the God’s-eye point of view, and if his desire to have women perform traditional nurturing roles helps to create a world in which women are rewarded for nurturing behaviour, then there might be another story to tell. That is, men tell themselves and others that nurturing is an essential aspect of womanhood. Then believing that it is good for women to be nurturing constitutes a motivation for women to try to be nurturing, and for men to

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi



11

encourage (or coerce) them to fulfil this social role. This siutation, in turn, ensures that women will demonstrate nurturing behaviour with a high degree of regularity. The world comes to be as the ‘ideal reasoner’ wishes to see it. Haslanger describes this process of ‘naturalization’ as a form of objectification because it is not simply a benign failure of the scientific method. Rather, it arises from a culpable refusal on the part of the privileged to recognize that they, like everyone else, reason from a social, historical, embodied position that is related to (and has effects on) the objects of observation. They, and only they, are able to appropriately occupy this assumed objective, a-perspectival position. Everyone else becomes an object of their knowledge whose nature is scrutable to the ideal observer. As such, Haslanger claims that ‘one objectifies something just in case one views it and treats it as an object that has by nature properties which one desires in it and, further, one has the power to make it have those properties’ (2001: 235). If one can accomplish this, the door is open for other forms of objectification that disadvantage and otherwise harm women. Thankfully, it is only when one adopts the entire package, so to speak, of assumed objectivity (assuming that one occupies an a-perspective, that one can read off the nature of the observed based on observed regularities, and that things should be encouraged to manifest their natures) that this (pseudo-) objectivity serves as a foundation for objectification. And, as Haslanger and Langton acknowledge, there is nothing about analytic theorizing, just as such, that requires the practitioner to adopt all of the problematic norms in question. On the contrary, we believe that using well-defined concepts and arguing with clarity and rigour about the theological implications of social identities like gender, race, ability, and sexuality will contribute to greater awareness of the roles that these concepts and phenomena play in the world, which will in turn help analytic philosophers avoid ‘naturalizing’ the effects of social structures in ways that are objectifying. Thus, far from engaging in objectification, we see the present volume as one kind of antidote to it.

2. As we noted earlier, the papers in this volume explore various ways in which marginalized social identities intersect with, shape, or can be shaped by alreadyfamiliar questions in analytic theology, and they also suggest a variety of new questions that deserve further analytic-theological exploration. Although the possibilities raised for such inquiry are myriad, our focus in this volume is on three central areas of analytic theology: methodological principles, the intersection of social identities with religious epistemology, and the connections among eschatology, ante-mortem suffering, and ante-mortem social perceptions of bodies.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

12



The first section of the volume addresses methodological concerns that arise from or may be addressed by consideration of social position. This section comprises four papers which progress from exploring how social position has been ignored, but nonetheless actually shapes the contemporary practice of philosophy of religion, to how it should guide research agendas in analytic theology, whether analytic theology can address the concerns of such identities, and what resources already exist within the tradition that might help scholars in that process. In the first chapter, Helen De Cruz argues that philosophers of religion should seek out epistemic friction (Medina 2013; Sher 2010) by deliberately exposing themselves to points of view and philosophical and religious traditions that are contrary to their own. Doing so, she argues, will help to create an epistemic landscape that is less hostile to important epistemic goods. In the introduction, De Cruz points out that most work in analytic philosophy takes peer disagreement as a problem to be solved rather than as an opportunity to embrace. As such, we fail to recognize the nature of, and strive to change, the hostile epistemic landscape in which much analytic philosophy of religion takes place. She draws on work in experimental philosophy of religion to show that one’s pre-theoretical beliefs, which are strongly influenced by one’s upbringing and education, play a greater role in what philosophical positions one occupies with respect to religion than the force of the arguments, as Descartes and al-Ghazālī argue they should. Indeed, how one judges the strength of philosophical arguments about religion seems to depend to a significant degree on whether one is already inclined to accept the conclusion. She then goes on to show that both the practitioners and topics of discussion represented in analytic philosophy are far from representative of the religious and ideological diversity both in the academy and in the community of human reasoners at large. Christian theism, and to a lesser degree scientific naturalism, are privileged as philosophically interesting topics of inquiry, while other religious traditions and viewpoints are downplayed or ignored entirely. There is evidence in the psychological literature that groups of people working to solve a set of problems perform better when they are made up of a group of diverse and marginalized individuals than they do when they consist in a homogenous group with greater expertise. This coheres with work in standpoint epistemology that argues that those who have developed an epistemic standpoint from the margins are more likely than those who occupy central and dominant epistemic viewpoints to get at the truth. Given this, we should think that the current epistemic landscape in philosophy of religion is hostile to our philosophical purposes, and we should strive to overcome this problem by seeking out epistemic friction. Finally, De Cruz suggests one diachronic and one synchronic approach to finding epistemic friction. Philosophers can engage with more diverse perspectives in the history of philosophy, rather than simply sampling them selectively to reinforce their own positions. Philosophers can also engage with

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi



13

more living philosophers and religious practitioners who endorse views contrary to their own, in order to make our discipline more diverse. Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of De Cruz’s chapter is that it not only argues for exposure to diverse views in philosophy of religion, but actually practises philosophy of religion engaged with diverse perspectives. In this chapter, readers will encounter the work of Chinese philosophers, Islamic philosophers, Christians, Muslims, Catholics, agnostics, and men and women, both contemporary and historical. In Chapter 2, Sameer Yadav explores questions about the extent to which analytic theologians ought to be concerned about their field’s reputation for being inhospitable to reflection on theological issues of significance to people who inhabit marginalized social identities, to what extent they ought to work to rectify it, and to what extent the very nature of analytic theology might raise obstacles to rectifying it. He focuses on two key questions: (i) whether theology that fails to reflect on such issues with an eye to improving conditions for marginalized and oppressed groups—or, more precisely, theology that lacks a liberative ambition—can possibly count as good theology; and (ii) whether the defining style and ambitions of analytic theology are somehow at odds with the project of liberation theology. He begins by noting that analytic theology has utterly failed to engage substantively with liberation theology, and this despite the fact that it has managed to engage fruitfully with a great many other movements in academic theology. Thus, for example, he observes that ‘no discernible strand of [analytic theology] contributes centrally to the current state of black or womanist theologies, more critical and revisionary feminist theologies, queer theologies, or any other radical social and political theologies.’ Granting that this state of affairs might be due in part to misunderstanding of the central claims of liberation theology, he devotes a significant portion of his essay to unpacking precisely what liberation theology consists in. He goes on to show, in light of this analysis, that there is no in-principle incompatibility between the projects of liberation theology and analytic theology, and then he offers substantive defence of the conclusion that ‘a liberative ambition is an obligatory norm for Christian theology.’ The upshot of his essay is that any ambition of providing true explanatory theories in Christian theology (one of the defining ambitions of analytic theology) must be guided at least in part by values that prioritize the practical goal of promoting flourishing for and securing the freedom of groups suffering social and political oppression. In Chapter 3, Amy Peeler explores a novel way in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, might serve as a kind of mediator—not between God and human beings, but rather between conflicting theological viewpoints. Different strands of Christianity are deeply divided in their understanding of Mary’s story and her role in the economy of salvation; and there is also deep theological division within Christendom on topics pertaining to the different social identities she inhabited as one who was poor, Jewish, female, a mother, and so on. Peeler takes a close look at

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

14



some of the key passages reporting on Mary’s story and points out ways in which the text underdetermines the proper interpretation of her story. She argues that this underdetermination, combined with the robust amount of information we have about Mary (in comparison with other important Christian women, like Junia the Apostle, or Priscilla, the teacher of Apollos) and her centrality to the gospel story, is precisely what makes her so suitable for the kind of mediating work Peeler envisions. On her view, parties to a variety of important theological disputes can ‘meet up at Mary’, as it were, and use continued reflection on her story—and on the way her story has been understood and appropriated by others—not only to sharpen their own views but also to have them challenged. Moreover, a commitment to meeting others at Mary in this sense can help foster and ground a commitment to remain in dialogue with those who appropriate and understand her story differently, and so can help induce a kind of humility in engagement with other Christians. Such a process might, in the end, lead to the settling of some of these disputes; but at the very least, we can hope that it would lead to a deeper kind of peace amidst disagreement than we often find between theological disputants. The second section of the volume considers ways in which either inhabiting a marginalized social identity or attending to some of the particular difficulties faced by those who inhabit such identities can make a difference in the formation, interpretation, preservation, and rationality of religious beliefs and religious faith more broadly. The first paper in this section addresses how the marginalization of certain social identities within religious communities should impact our credence in the doctrinal deliverances of that community and our deference to authority within the community. The second two explore the ways in which trauma endured by marginalized groups at the hands of their faith communities impacts their faith, the rationality of their loss of faith, and their religious emotions. The final paper in this section develops a novel critique of traditional interpretations of the Christian doctrine of the atonement in light of recent developments in feminist epistemology. In Chapter 4, Teri Merrick considers Linda Zagzebski’s argument for deference to religious authorities, and argues that ‘[one’s] conscientious judgment that epistemic oppression is evident in the teachings or directives of my religious community provides me with an adequate reason for thinking that if I defer, the results will not survive conscientious self-reflection.’ Moreover, religious practitioners should expect that a Kuhnian-style conceptual revolution will sometimes be necessary to respond in epistemically virtuous ways to the testimony of historically marginalized persons. She begins by presenting Kristie Dotson and Miranda Fricker’s understandings of first- and second-order epistemic injustices and argues that the two are practically (even if not logically) interrelated in a causal cyclical manner, such that redressing one will require attention to and correction for the other. She then goes on to provide evidence for thinking that

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi



15

epistemic injustice is present in and, indeed, second nature for the North American Protestant tradition in which she locates herself. She argues that correcting this will involve a respectful silence before those others whom the community has traditionally marginalized. Finally, Merrick argues that fully developing and internalizing the virtues of epistemic justice within religious institutions will sometimes require a revolution of the very theological concepts and hermeneutical resources of the community, similar to a Kuhnian revolution in the sciences, but that this is compatible with the coherence of the community’s identity over time. In Chapter 5, Joshua Cockayne, David Efird, and Jack Warman use the example of spiritually violent religious trauma (Tobin 2016; Panchuk 2018) against lesbian and gay Christians to argue against a popular conception among Christians that if human failures and wrongdoing undermine an individual’s faith in God, then that person must have had faith in people, rather than God, to begin with. On their view, in corporate worship, one’s fellow Christians have the capacity to strengthen one’s faith in various ways, by directing and redirecting one’s attention towards God, and by highlighting aspects of God and God’s work in the world that one might have failed to see outside the presence of the community. One’s experience of God depends not only on oneself as an atomic individual, but is facilitated importantly in and by community. But a corollary is also true. If one’s fellow Christians can play a positive role in the development of faith, they can also undermine it. On Cockayne, Efird, and Warman’s view, this happens not because the actions of others cast doubt on God’s trustworthiness, but because Christians often use Scripture and tradition to shame other Christians, especially lesbian and gay Christians, for who and what they are. They suggest, following Eleonore Stump (2010; 2016), that the feeling of shame arises from the belief that one should be rejected. When internalized, this sense of shame can cause a person to hide their own face from God, because they feel unworthy of God’s love and relationship. Thus, contrary to the popular view, losing faith because of spiritually violent religious trauma does not show that a person lacked faith in God; rather, it demonstrates that faith can simultaneously be in God and dependent on other people. In Chapter 6, Theresa Tobin and Dawne Moon identify what they call ‘sacramental shame’ as an important experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTQI) and ‘Same-Gender-Loving (SGL)’ Christians in predominantly Black congregations.¹² As they characterize it, sacramental shame is a form of spiritual violence perpetrated against LGBTQI people. Spiritual violence occurs when religious leaders or institutions use religious doctrines or practices in ways that hinder their ability (a) to participate in religious life or (b) to see themselves as ¹² For their explanation of the origins of the term ‘same gender loving’, see note 3, p. 141 in this volume.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

16



people God loves and whose well-being God desires to promote. The term ‘sacramental shame’, in turn, refers to the (usually tacit) communal treatment of shame, and expressions thereof as a kind of sacrament—a visible, outward sign to the community of God’s grace in a person’s life, and as necessary condition for their continued positive standing within the church. Their paper traces the roots of the sacramentalization of Black LGBTQI/SGL shame to the toxic entanglement of white supremacy with the doctrine of gender complementarianism, and the consequent stigmatization of Black sexuality as it is understood through the lens of racist stereotypes. They argue that this form of sacramental shame is informed by the ‘politics of respectability’ (Higginbotham 1993) that has arisen in response to the stigmatization of Black sexuality and which imposes an expectation upon Black people to disprove racist stereotypes of Black sexuality. Drawing on their hybrid sociological-philosophical study of LGBTQI and SGL conservative Christians and their allies, Tobin and Moon then go on to identify five different dimensions of the experience of sacramental shame in predominantly Black churches, mostly focused on the various forms of alienation and self-censorship that arise out of being forced to suppress or permit, in the course of one’s engagement with one’s religious community, the continued rejection and denial of a central element of one’s capacity to relate to others. In Chapter 7, Kathryn Pogin explores some of the epistemological and gendered implications of traditional interpretations of the Christian doctrine of the atonement. After describing the three traditional categories of atonement theory and surveying some of the more familiar feminist critiques thereof, Pogin goes on to develop a novel critique of her own in light of recent work in feminist epistemology. Drawing on the work of Miranda Fricker (2007), Pogin argues that traditional theories of the atonement, in conceiving of Christ’s suffering and death as central to redemption, have corrupted the shared hermeneutical resources of Christian communities. On Pogin’s view, such views normalize violence and idealize suffering in a manner that hinders the capacity of abuse victims in Christian communities to conceptualize their experience as abuse that is to be resisted rather than tolerated for the sake of redemption. In light of her critique, Pogin recommends reinterpretation of the doctrine of the atonement along moral exemplarist lines, favouring in particular an interpretation according to which Christ’s suffering and death are not inherently redemptive. Instead, Christ provides a compelling example of ‘refusal to cooperate with injustice, even when the results of doing so may be fatal’ (Ch. 7, p. 166). The third section begins with the question of what the God of classical theism (to whom Blake Hereth refers using the gender-neutral name ‘Gaia’) owes those who suffer injustices in this life, focusing on the unique injustices experienced by trans persons who are unable to transition in the present life. In this paper, Hereth defends the view that Gaia owes it to trans persons to both allow and to help them to transition in the afterlife if they so desire. Hereth builds this argument by

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi



17

defending four central claims. First, ze argues that gender dysphoria is a harm to trans persons, and that because this harm is permitted by an all-knowing, allpowerful being, Gaia, it counts as an injustice. Second, ze shows that because heaven is a place where all the injustices of ante-mortem existence are made right, Gaia will repair the harm done to trans persons by helping them transition to a body of their choosing in heaven. Third, Hereth contends that those most responsible for the trans persons’ dysphoria—transphobes and those who explicitly or implicitly promote cisnormativity—have a special obligation of justice to assist trans persons in their transitions. Finally, ze considers the opportunities that will be afforded trans persons after their transition that they did not have in their ante-mortem life. This includes the opportunity to bear children and the opportunity to pursue new or renewed romantic relationships in their new bodies. It follows from all of these claims that we have moral, in addition to metaphysical and theological, reasons to believe that the resurrection is a bodily one and that gender exists for some length of time (though not necessarily eternally) in the life to come. The final paper in the volume considers how one’s conception of bodies in the afterlife shapes one’s perceptions of, and judgements about, disabled bodies in this life. Many of the Church’s leading theologians have struggled with the question of how individuals with disabilities in this life could be perfectly united to God in the afterlife. Owing partly to philosophical and theological views that associate disability with suffering, disease, sin, or other bad states of affairs that are traditionally thought to have no place in the afterlife, some theologians have thought that all disabilities would have to be removed prior to heavenly union with God. Some have even suggested that certain profound disabilities might make it impossible for an individual to have such union (as might be the case if, e.g., removal of the disability is both necessary for union with God and incompatible with the individual’s continued existence), thus suggesting that such individuals have no eschatological place in the Body of Christ. In ‘Defiant Afterlife’, however, Kevin Timpe defends the possibility of individuals enjoying complete union with God (and, through God, with others) in the eschaton while retaining their disabilities. Timpe concedes that his argument as it is developed here is neither decisive nor equally applicable to all disabilities, but it does pose a powerful challenge to philosophical-theological views according to which disability has no place whatsoever in heaven. Not only does each of these papers constitute groundbreaking work in analytic theology, those in the last two sections also embody the methodical principles explored in the first section. All reject the mythical (and privileged) ‘view from nowhere’ as an accessible position from which to theorize; many are instances of the liberation theology that Yadav recommends, take the lived experience of marginalized groups as the data that an adequate theology must account for, or draw on the resources and silences of the tradition in finding their way forward, as

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

18



Peeler suggests. All address important theological questions previously un- or under-explored by analytic theologians and philosophers of religion. As such, we believe they make an invaluable contribution to the fields of analytic theology and philosophy of religion.

References Abraham, William. 2009. ‘Systematic Theology as Analytic Theology.’ In Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael Rea, 54–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Pamela Sue. 2001. ‘“Standpoint”: Its Rightful Place in a Realist Epistemology.’ Journal of Philosophical Research 26: 131–53. Crisp, Oliver D. 2009. ‘On Analytic Theology.’ In Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael Rea, 33–5. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cockayne, Joshua, Kimberley Kroll, D. Weston Meaddors, Timothy Pawl, Jonathan Curtis Rutledge, and Chandler Warren. Unpublished manuscript. “Standards of Adequacy for Analytic Theology: In Dialogue with Martin Westerholm.” Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. New York: Oxford University Press. Harding, Sandra. 1993. ‘Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is “Strong Objectivity”?’ In Feminist Epistemologies, edited by Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, 49–82. New York: Routledge. Haslanger, Sally. 2000. ‘Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?’ Nous 34 (1): 31–55. Haslanger, Sally. 2001. ‘On Being Objective and Being Objectified.’ In A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, edited by Loise M. Antony and Charlotte E Witt, 209–53. Cambridge: Westview Press. Haslanger, Sally. 2017. ‘Objectivity, Epistemic Objectification, and Oppression.’ In The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, edited by James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr, 279–90. London: Routledge. Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. 1993. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Langton, Rae. 2000. ‘Feminism in Epistemology: Exclusion and Objectification.’ In The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, edited by Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby, 127–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, David K. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell. Medina, José. 2013. The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice and Resistant Imaginations. New York: Oxford University Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi



19

Mills, Charles. 1998. Blackness Visible: Essays in Philosophy and Race. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Oliver, Simon. 2010. ‘Review of Crisp and Rea, Eds., Analytic Theology.’ International Journal of Systematic Theology 12: 464–75. Panchuk, Michelle. 2018. ‘The Shattered Spiritual Self: A Philosophical Exploration of Religious Trauma.’ Res Philosophica 95: 505–30. Panchuk, Michelle. 2020. ‘That We May Be Whole: Doing Philosophy of Religion with the Whole Self.’ In The Lost Sheep in Philosophy of Religion: New Perspectives on Disability, Gender, Race, and Animals, edited by Blake Hereth and Kevin Timpe, 55–76. New York: Routledge. Rea, Michael C. 2007. ‘Realism in Theology and Metaphysics.’ In Belief and Metaphysics, edited by Conor Cunningham and Peter Candler, 323–44. London: SCM Press. Rea, Michael C. 2009. ‘Introduction.’ In Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael Rea, 1–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rea, Michael C. 2020. ‘Introduction.’ In Essays in Analytic Theology, vol. 1, edited by Michael Rea, $$–$$. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Russell, Bertrand. 1957. The Problems of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Sher, Gila. 2010. ‘Epistemic friction: Reflections on knowledge, truth, and logic.’ Erkenntnis 72 (2): 151–76. Stump, Eleonore. 2010. Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stump, Eleonore. 2016. ‘The Atonement and the Problem of Shame.’ Journal of Philosophical Research 41: 111–29. Tobin, Theresa W. 2016. ‘Spiritual Violence, Gender, and Sexuality: Implications for Seeking and Dwelling among Some Catholic Women and LGBT Catholics.’ In Seekers and Dwellers: Plurality and Wholeness in a Time of Secularity, edited by Philip J. Rossi, 133–66. Washington, DC: The Council of Research in Values and Philosophy. van Fraassen, Bas C. 2002. The Empirical Stance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. van Inwagen, Peter. 1990. Material Beings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Westerholm, Martin. 2019. ‘Analytic Theology and Contemporary Inquiry.’ International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 80: 230–54. Witt, Charlotte. 2011. The Metaphysics of Gender. New York: Oxford University Press. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 2009. ‘How Philosophical Theology Became Possible within the Analytic Tradition of Philosophy.’ In Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael Rea, 155–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

I

METHODOLOGY

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

1 Seeking out Epistemic Friction in the Philosophy of Religion Helen De Cruz

As a practice, philosophy of religion is characterized by two features relevant for social epistemologists. The first is arbitrariness. Philosophers of religion hold religious beliefs (or lack of religious beliefs) as a result of factors beyond their control, such as where they were born or the education they enjoyed. This arbitrariness is not unique for religious beliefs. It also plays a role in how other beliefs are shaped, but it nevertheless has occupied a prominent place in discussions on the justification of religious beliefs, as I will discuss below. The second is disagreement. Philosophers of religion find themselves frequently disagreeing with their interlocutors, not only fellow philosophers but also people from their wider community, including family, friends, and colleagues. Moreover, as they are keenly aware, religious disagreement is widespread and frequently occurs between interlocutors who seem similar in how thoughtful and diligent they are, and in the evidence they have access to—these are often referred to as epistemic peers (see e.g., Kelly 2005; Feldman 2007; Elga 2007; Christensen 2011). The fact that our religious beliefs are tightly linked to circumstances of our birth and upbringing, and the fact that we find ourselves in disagreement with thoughtful interlocutors, are often presented as problems. We would merely need to find the right doxastic attitude to adopt in light of these bodies of second-order evidence. The literature on peer disagreement has focused on the question of what attitude is rationally permitted or required in the light of a disclosed disagreement with a dissenting peer. Conciliationists tend to hold that disagreement requires belief revision in a range of circumstances (e.g., Feldman 2007). At the very least we should become less confident about our religious convictions, and perhaps we should suspend judgement altogether. Proponents of steadfastness, on the other hand, think disagreement does not require us to change our credences or suspend judgement. For example, one might claim some special insight that is not readily shareable with a peer (van Inwagen 1996). In a discussion that is quite analogous to the peer disagreement literature, authors who examine the problem of arbitrariness ask whether it is permissible for two agents to adopt different doxastic attitudes, given a particular body of evidence. Helen De Cruz, Seeking out Epistemic Friction in the Philosophy of Religion In: Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology. Edited by: Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848844.003.0002

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

24

  

Proponents of uniqueness (e.g., White 2014: 312) think this is not permissible, but instead hold that ‘there is just one rationally permissible doxastic attitude one can take, given a particular body of evidence.’ By contrast, permissivists (e.g., Schoenfield 2014) hold there is more leeway, and that in many cases two agents can rationally hold differing doxastic attitudes about a proposition,¹ even when they have access to identical bodies of evidence. This focus on doxastic attitudes comes at a cost: we neglect the broader epistemic landscape in which our beliefs are shaped, and how features of that landscape influence positions we come to endorse and defend. If one treats the presence of thoughtful dissenters only as a problem to be solved, rather than as an opportunity, then it would seem one could increase one’s justification merely by surrounding oneself with people who have similar points of view, or by shutting out dissent (Kelly 2005). This is not to say religious disagreement doesn’t pose challenges. It does, because it raises questions about the legitimacy of our beliefs. Moreover, I do not deny that the traditional response to it, laying down epistemic norms, is important—after all, we do need to know whether our beliefs are legitimate. But if this is our only response, we miss the bigger picture of what we can learn by harnessing epistemic differences to our advantage. There are alternative approaches to disagreement, for example, William James’ (1920) melioristic pluralism, or Helen Longino’s (1991) concept of scientific objectivity, which look at disagreement as a welcome source of knowledge. This paper examines how the epistemic landscape in philosophy of religion is formed, and what we can learn from this. Rather than focusing on the rationality of doxastic attitudes in the light of disclosed disagreement and arbitrariness, I want to examine how philosophers of religion, as socially engaged beings, can turn a fuller consideration of disagreement and arbitrariness to their advantage. I am concerned with questions that are at the heart of regulative epistemology: how can we improve our learning from others, and how can we improve our social epistemic environment? My main argument is that a deliberate seeking out of epistemic friction benefits philosophers of religion, and I indicate ways in which this can be achieved. The concept of epistemic friction appears in, among others, José Medina (2013) and Gila Sher (2010). Sher (2010) sees a precursor of this concept in Kant, who faulted metaphysicians for not being sufficiently engaged with the external world as it affects us through our senses and cognitive apparatus. Medina (2013) sees epistemic friction primarily in social terms, for instance, when people from a dominant social or racial group are confronted with the perspective of marginalized people. Epistemic friction provides us with constraints but also with freedom, because it broadens our conceptual space. This is captured aptly in Kant’s dove metaphor: ¹ For work on the relationship between conciliationism and uniqueness, see for example, Ballantyne and Coffman (2012) and De Cruz (2019).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

        

25

The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. Likewise, Plato abandoned the world of the senses because it posed so many hindrances for the understanding, and dared to go beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of pure understanding. He did not notice that he made no headway by his efforts, for he had no resistance [Widerstand], no support, as it were, by which he could stiffen himself, and to which he could apply his powers in order to get his understanding off the ground. (A5/B9, 129) (Kant 1781 [2005])

Here I am primarily concerned with social origins of epistemic friction, marginalized viewpoints within academic philosophy of religion. Engaging with these could help philosophers to make headway in their efforts, by providing a rich range of intellectual options and considerations that they can apply their powers to. I draw attention to the structural features of academic philosophy that have resulted in a distorted epistemic landscape. While this paper is primarily concerned with philosophy of religion, it also has ramifications for religious belief formation by non-experts. The paper is structured as follows. Section 1 examines arbitrariness and disagreement in the philosophy of religion, drawing on my earlier work in experimental philosophy of religion. This work shows that philosophers of religion, like people more generally, come to their religious views as a result of a variety of factors outside of their control, such as the religious beliefs of their parents. I then argue that the demographics of philosophy of religion give rise to a skewed epistemic landscape, which privileges some religious views over others, especially Christianity and atheist naturalism. Section 2 shows that because of these skewed demographics, the epistemic landscape in which philosophers operate is distorted. I propose that epistemic friction can help us improve our epistemic situation. Section 3 considers objections based on epistemic partiality, imaginative resistance, and promoting oppressive views. I argue that none of these responses negates the call for seeking out epistemic friction. Section 4 concludes by sketching how philosophers of religion could broaden their range of philosophical views.

1. Disagreement and Arbitrariness: Results from Experimental Philosophy 1.1 Picking out the Rotten Apples? Descartes (1641 [1996]) considered someone who has never engaged in philosophy before; this person would hold many unexamined beliefs, accumulated since childhood. He thought that one ought to critically examine these preconceptions as one would sift through apples in a basket, throwing out the rotten ones and

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

26

  

keeping only the ones that are sound: ‘Now the best way they can accomplish this is to reject all their beliefs together in one go, as if they were all uncertain and false. They can then go over each belief in turn and re-adopt only those which they recognize to be true and indubitable’ (seventh set of objections and replies, CSM II, 324) (Descartes 1641 [1984]). Coming from a different tradition, the Muslim philosopher al-Ghazālī (c.1100 [1952], 21) saw that children tend to grow up endorsing the beliefs of their parents. This observation led him to critically question his own assumptions, as he declared, ‘inherited beliefs lost their grip upon me, for I saw that Christian youths always grew up to be Christians, Jewish youths to be Jews and Muslim youths to be Muslims.’ Both Descartes and al-Ghazālī thought that philosophers ought not to unthinkingly accept the beliefs they acquired throughout their childhood and education. The very fact that those beliefs were acquired through tradition and testimonial transmission made them suspect. Although analytic philosophers have recently warmed to testimony as a potential source of knowledge, many of them still tend to operate with the assumption that the view from nowhere is achievable—an objective, dispassionate view that abstracts away from our lived circumstances and experiences, including disability, gender, class, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs (see Panchuk 2020, for critical discussion). But this assumption is coming increasingly under scrutiny from fields such as feminist philosophy, social epistemology, and the philosophies of race and gender. In the related field of theology, queer, womanist, and feminist theologies draw attention to the problem of epistemic injustice, where people by virtue of their gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity are not accorded a fair hearing to their testimony. Recently, experimental philosophy has called into question the extent to which philosophical reflection can pull us away from our unexamined views. For example, empirical evidence (e.g., Schwitzgebel & Cushman 2015) suggests that philosophers are subject to framing effects when thinking about ethical dilemmas. I will here review evidence that philosophers of religion are also subject to non-epistemic influences in forming their beliefs.

1.2 How Home and Educational Background Influence Philosophers of Religion The context in which philosophers grow up and receive their education has a profound influence on their subsequent intellectual trajectory. In a survey consisting of open questions (De Cruz 2018), I asked philosophers of religion (N = 134) to reflect on the influences that led them to specialize in this philosophical subdiscipline, ‘Can you tell something about the factors that contributed to your specializing in philosophy of religion?’ Two independent coders categorized the responses, and the findings are summarized below (in

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

         Proselytism

27

7.2

Other

7.9

Childhood

10.8

Interest in religion

14.4

Education

20.1

Philosophical interest

33.1

Religious identity

36 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Percentages

Figure 1.1 Reasons offered by philosophers of religion for why they specialized in this subdiscipline (total is over 100 per cent, as multiple reasons were offered). Figure reproduced from De Cruz (2018).

percentage of respondents, Figure 1.1). The most important factor was personal religious belief, which was cited by 36 per cent of respondents, for example ‘I am a Catholic, and philosophy of religion helps me in deepening my faith by way of—paradoxically—putting the faith itself into question and even criticizing it.’ Pure philosophical interest only came second (at 33.1 per cent), and education, such as an inspiring professor during one’s undergraduate years, came third (at 20.1 per cent). There are limits to self-report, but, if anything, we might expect philosophers to under-report such influences on their philosophical work, for instance, because they are unaware of possible factors that influence their thinking. I obtained similar results in a focus group study that I conducted with academic philosophers of religion from under-represented demographics (De Cruz 2020). Members of the two focus groups discussed their experiences in the discipline and the factors that led them to decide to specialize in philosophy of religion. All of them came from religious backgrounds (including the atheist and agnostic philosophers). For example, one participant, Chris² (an African American Associate Professor in the US) recounted how he fell from faith due to various circumstances, but also noted that his work in philosophy of religion was still informed by his personal experiences: One respect in which my personal beliefs led to the work that I’m doing, it was for me the loss of the religious faith and my being troubled by that initially and ² ‘Chris’ is a pseudonym, as are all the names of participants in this study.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

28

   wanting to reconnect with and understand the value of what I had that led to some of the questions that I’m now talking about in philosophy of religion. But also I think that the work that I’ve done in philosophy of religion has helped me get some peace about my own agnosticism. I feel that I have a better understanding of what was important to me about my earlier religious practice and I’ve been able to rejoin a religious community and focus on those things—like going to church again, for example, and I feel like I’ve been able to do that wholeheartedly and find it valuable in part because I have a better understanding of things through working through some of these issues.

I probed the source of disagreement among academic philosophers about religious beliefs in several studies. One study asked academic philosophers (N = 802, at least graduate student level) to evaluate arguments for or against theism in terms of their strength from 1 to 5 (De Cruz 2014; De Cruz & De Smedt 2016). There were eight arguments for theism (generically presented as ‘cosmological argument’, ‘design argument’, ‘argument from religious experience’, etc.; they were not spelled out), and eight arguments against theism (presented as ‘argument from evil’, ‘argument from lack of evidence’, ‘argument from divine hiddenness’, etc.). Adding up the scores of the eight arguments for theism yields a possible highest score of 40 (if a participant finds all eight arguments maximally compelling) and a lowest score of 8 (if a participant finds all eight arguments very weak), the same is true for the eight arguments against theism. Theists, atheists, and agnostics differed in how strong they found these arguments. Unsurprisingly, theists found arguments for theism stronger, whereas atheists found arguments against theism stronger. Agnostics occupied an intermediate position but on average found the arguments against theism stronger than the arguments for. Mean scores are summarized in Figure 1.2. As these arguments were not spelled out, these numbers have their limitations. For instance, it is conceivable that on average theists have in mind a stronger version of the cosmological argument than atheists. To control for this possibility, Kevin Tobia (2016) presented two modal ontological arguments to his participants, one for theism and one against theism, which were structurally very similar: the theistic version argued that it is possible that there is a being with maximal greatness, and therefore, necessarily, there exists a being with maximal greatness. The argument against theism was almost identical, but stated that it is possible that there is not a being with maximal greatness, and therefore, necessarily, there does not exist a being with maximal greatness. Tobia confirmed that participants, who were either philosophers of religion or theologians, were influenced by their religious beliefs. Theists rated the theistic modal ontological argument more positively, atheists rated the atheistic one more positively. Moreover, theists were more inclined to hold that the theistic modal ontological argument was logically valid, compared to atheists and agnostics. These effects held even when

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

        

29

30 25.5

25.6

25 21.5 20

17.7

16.6

15

13.4

Arguments for theism Arguments against theism

10 5 0

Theists

Agnostics

Atheists

Figure 1.2 Evaluations of the eight arguments for theism (dark bars) and eight arguments against theism (light bars), combined mean scores. Data from De Cruz (2014).

controlling for expertise (whether participants held a PhD or only a Master’s degree). These numbers do not reveal the direction of causation: it might be the case that the perceived strength of arguments against theism led former theists to become atheists, or that the perceived strength of arguments for theism helped persuade former atheists to adopt theism. But in my qualitative survey (De Cruz 2018) I found that arguments only occasionally played a role in conversion, and that straight-out conversions were rare. Here is an example, In the beginning of my studies in philosophy of religion, I was an atheist (at least in the sense of lacking belief in God). I investigated many many arguments for and against the existence of God. I discovered that my initial impression of “the” arguments was overly simplistic . . . In the end (or the next beginning), the arguments for God seemed to win out, and so I began to lean toward belief in God. As I’ve progressed further in philosophy, I seemed to find many reasons to think God exists, and the reasons against God seemed less persuasive. Of course, I’m aware of the problem of polarization, and so I try to keep testing various arguments and listening to those who see things differently . . . rechecking the arguments.—male assistant professor, researchoriented university, United States.³

³ I did not collect data on ethnicity for this study, only gender, geographic location, and academic rank/position.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

30

  

For the most part, someone’s religious home background played a large role, and conversions, especially conversions prompted by rational argument, were relatively rare. Philosophers of religion do not differ from other people in this respect; conversions often occur as a result of non-epistemic factors, such as a desire to belong to one’s social group, friendship, or romantic attachments (see e.g. Kox, Meeus, & Hart 1991; Kelley & De Graaf 1997, for studies on religious identification and conversion as a result of primarily non-epistemic factors).

2. The Epistemic Landscape of Philosophy of Religion 2.1 The Value of Actual Disagreement Suppose that you and I argue. If you get the better of me, and not I of you, are you then really right and am I really wrong? If I get the better of you and not you of me, then am I really right and you really wrong . . . Whom shall we ask to decide? If we ask someone who agrees with you, how could he judge correctly, since he already agrees with you? If we ask someone who agrees with me, how could he judge? If we ask someone who disagrees with both of us? If neither you nor I nor others can decide, shall we then wait for yet another? (Zhuangzi, Höchsmann and Yang [3rd century] 2016: Book 2, 96) This brief thought experiment in the Zhuangzi points to key problems of an epistemology of disagreement that ignores the broader epistemic landscape in which we form our beliefs. If we focus narrowly on the contents of our beliefs, without due consideration of how we came to those beliefs, the philosophy of disagreement risks becoming a numbers game. We could simply tilt the numbers in our favour by surrounding ourselves by like-minded people, exemplified in the extreme by Kelly’s (2005) tyrannical dictator who kills everyone who does not agree with him. Also, by focusing on whether the credences of my interlocutor align with my own (in Zhuangzi’s thought experiment), I am not really looking for a range of views, which could potentially enrich my perspective and help me think about unexplored possibilities. I’m just looking at whether their views align with mine. Seeking out differing opinions, in such a view, would reduce my justification for any belief I held, whereas surrounding myself with like-minded people would increase it. Moreover, the psychological literature shows that diversity consistently trumps ability in problem-solving tasks presented to groups. For example, diverse groups of problem-solvers beat more homogeneous higher ability groups when working on focused solutions (Hong & Page 2004). A naturalistic study analysed a series of 166 broadcast searches, where firms invited teams of scientists to come up with

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

        

31

solutions to specific research and development problems, i.e., specific engineering and design problems that scientific teams can solve (Jeppesen & Lakhani 2010). A total of over 12,000 scientists competed in these searches. The data indicate that teams composed of so-called ‘marginal’ individuals, who were either technically marginal (i.e., in a field removed from the problem at hand), or socially marginal (i.e., from a low-prestige institution, or being a female STEM scientist, as female scientists usually had less social clout within scientific communities) were significantly more likely to find a solution to these problems than more centrally located individuals. As Jeppesen and Lakhani (2010) note, being socially marginal comes with significant disadvantages such as lack of resources, isolation, lack of access to information, but different perspectives and greater inherent diversity (elite institutions tend to be more demographically homogeneous, e.g., white, upper class) have epistemic advantages. Such experiments in business and science settings cohere with the observation in feminist standpoint epistemology (e.g., Harding 1991) that being socially disadvantaged may offer unique epistemic advantages. The epistemology of disagreement, which still for the most part focuses on idealized epistemic peers who are almost homogeneous by definition (for instance, who have access to the same evidence or who are cognitive equals), does not address, let alone explain, the dynamics of superior performance of more diverse groups of individuals. Disagreement should be situated in a broader epistemic landscape, which consists of those features of our social and natural environment that are relevant for belief formation. An epistemic landscape can exhibit various degrees of hostility or congeniality to good epistemic practices or knowledge acquisition. An epistemically benign landscape has features that are conducive to our acquiring desirable epistemic states, such as understanding, knowledge, or accurate beliefs.⁴ By contrast, an epistemically hostile landscape has features that make it difficult for learners to acquire epistemically desirable states. Such features of the epistemic landscape can help us understand why, for example, children routinely acquire knowledge—including propositional knowledge and skills—through testimony in spite of not being epistemically vigilant. This is because children are usually surrounded by benevolent testifiers such as parents and teachers. By contrast, an epistemically hostile landscape has features such that even an epistemically virtuous person can fail to acquire knowledge. Katherine Furman (2018) provides the example of state-endorsed denialism that HIV would cause AIDS. The South African President Thabo Mbeki supported fringe scientists who also argued that retroviral drugs (that prevent the virus from replicating) were toxic. Members of Mbeki’s party, the ANC (African National Congress), who privately disagreed with the president, remained silent. The ANC enjoyed a high ⁴ I will here focus on knowledge as a desirable epistemic state we can acquire, including in the religious domain.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

32

  

degree of trust, leading people to believe that AIDS was not transmitted through HIV. This prevented the adoption of retroviral drugs, leading to over 300,000 preventable deaths. Furman’s example demonstrates that lack of dissent can be caused by insidious factors, such as the deliberate silencing of others. Thus, an epistemic landscape can look homogeneous but nevertheless be hostile because the homogeneity can have sinister causes such as state-endorsed denialism. The homogeneity can also be part of an epistemically benign landscape, for example, the clear information children get in a school environment. The underlying causes for lack (or presence) of dissent thus matter in evaluating whether an epistemic landscape is knowledge-conducive. The problem of actual disagreement is distinct from possible disagreement. If disagreement is reducible to a form of higher-order evidence, without actually taking into account interpersonal dynamics, it would seem that we should not only take into account actual disagreement, but also possible dissenters we might never encounter. Nathan Ballantyne (2014: 374), for example, countenances not only actual philosophers you disagree with, but also counterfactual philosophers you might possibly disagree with: ‘But how can we hold onto our opinions while we recognize full well that counterfactual philosophers very likely would offer us reasons to abandon them?’, he asks. For the domain of religion, J.L. Schellenberg (2013) draws on observations of deep time and evolution to argue that the range of possible religious beliefs humans might entertain is far from exhausted. Given that religion is very recent in evolutionary terms, who knows what our species might come up with in the future? Schellenberg exhorts readers to become less dogmatic in the light of this. Furman (2018) thinks that actual disagreement has priority over mere possible disagreement, because the latter would lead to an unacceptable scepticism. She favours a closer attention to voices that have been silenced. Is there agreement that p because people have carefully considered it, or is there agreement that p because people who believe that not-p have been pushed out of the discipline? These are two very different situations, because they tell us something about features of the epistemic landscape. There is another pragmatic reason for favouring actual over mere possible disagreement: if we think of disagreement as a source of improvement, it is unclear how entertaining mere possible disagreement would provide useful epistemic friction. A possible, counterfactual philosopher lacks substance— a ghost without well-developed philosophical ideas, without lived experiences that might influence her work. By contrast, the actual philosopher, particularly from an under-represented religious tradition or non-dominant demographic, can be engaged with and can help us be grounded. She might have insights as a result of Duboisian double consciousness. Du Bois (1903 [2007]: 8) defined double consciousness as ‘this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity’, in other

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

        

33

words, a black person sees herself both from her own point of view and from the point of view of the majority white population. It is a negative feeling as it is a sense of being divided from oneself. However, Du Bois recommended a merging of the two perspectives that does not deny either one. Medina (2013) argues that double consciousness provides potential epistemic advantages: by virtue of their social status, minorities (gender, ethnic, sexual orientation, class, etc.) have to simultaneously consider their own point of view, and how people of the majority conceive of it. Similarly, philosophers of religion who are not Christians and not atheists need to be conscious of their own views, as well as of how other people in the discipline view them. This provides opportunities for insight about how there are alternative ways of perceiving a particular religious position which are not as readily available to people who work in a majority religious tradition. In my focus group study with minorities in philosophy of religion (De Cruz 2020), I found that philosophers with minority religious views exhibit this double consciousness. For example, Zahra, a female philosopher of religion who is also a Shia Muslim, found it challenging to engage in a critical fashion with Islam without thereby further ostracizing or reinforcing stereotypes about that religion (as woman-unfriendly): And so as a woman or as a Shia Muslim, but particularly as a woman, how do you push on the boundaries within religion or how do you talk about religious issues as a believer without ostracizing that religion within the bigger society?

Likewise, David, a Jewish philosopher of religion, always has in the back of his mind how his mainly Christian audience would react to what he writes: I’ve noticed that I, as a Jewish philosopher, working in this space, where most of my readers are either going to be Christians or naturalistic atheists, is that I end up almost subconsciously tailoring what I’m writing to a Christian audience. That is to say, I’m thinking, how might Jewish conceptions of atonement be interesting to Christians, who spend all this time thinking about atonement? And had I not been to loads of Christian conferences on the atonement, I might never have even thought about Jewish conceptions of atonement . . . I’m not saying it as a negative thing, I’m very grateful to my Christian colleagues for what I’ve learned from them, but being a minority religious identity within this milieu, it just has as a consequence that you find yourself tailoring what you write and how you speak to the majority.

But David also felt he had to take care that his writing is presented as distinctively Jewish: ‘a Christian could have said it just as well, or a Muslim could just as well’. So, on the one hand we’re trying to tailor and cater ourselves to our mainly Christian

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

34

   audience, but on the other hand, we’re also very eager to make sure that we must pepper our document with enough quotes from the Midrash otherwise . . . a Christian could have written it! I don’t think my Christian colleagues have that kind of worry.

2.2 Demographics in Philosophy of Religion The epistemic landscape of philosophy of religion does not reflect the broader intellectual landscape of religious viewpoints, even if we restrict ourselves to the Western cultures in which these departments are situated. Philosophy of religion is overwhelmingly focused on Christian theism and naturalistic atheism, at the expense of other religious belief systems. Very often, these are presented as the only two serious options, for example, Alvin Plantinga (2000) assumes that the main competitor to Christian theism is naturalism. As a result, non-Christian religious traditions such as Daoism, Hinduism, Shinto, Buddhism, or even Judaism or Islam get short shrift. This focus on Western traditions is not exceptional for philosophy of religion. It reflects a broader trend of a serious underrepresentation, and often a total absence, of non-Western traditions in Western philosophy departments. While there are good specialist journals for non-Western philosophy (for example, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy and Philosophy East and West, it is still almost absent in the most prestigious journals, such as Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Review, Mind, and Noûs (Olberding 2016). Bryan Van Norden (2017) argues that an exclusive focus on Western traditions in philosophy is a relatively recent and historically contingent phenomenon. The idea that philosophy has Greek origins was not mainstream in the eighteenth century, although today many philosophy courses, programmes, and handbooks present it as such. The more common idea in the early modern period was that the origin of philosophy was Asian, either Indian or perhaps Chinese. When Jesuits first translated Confucian philosophy, it was immediately recognized as philosophy. So the focus on Western traditions is a relatively recent and culturally contingent phenomenon. Next to this, philosophy of religion shows poor gender diversity, in line with academic philosophy in general, with estimates of women and non-binary people in the philosophy of religion as low as 10 per cent (Van Dyke 2015) to about 17 per cent (De Cruz 2018), which is below the estimated 25 per cent of women faculty in philosophy. Anecdotally, philosophy of religion also shows low ethnic diversity, although I am not aware of any systematic attempts to get a picture of the demographics. Philosophers of religion are overwhelmingly theists, and most of these are Christian theists, with estimates ranging between 60.5 per cent (De Cruz 2017)

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

        

35

and 72.3 per cent (Bourget & Chalmers 2014). By contrast, in philosophical specializations outside of philosophy of religion the percentage of theists is low, with estimates ranging from 11.6 per cent (Bourget & Chalmers 2014) to 15 per cent (De Cruz 2017). Theists (mainly Christians) form a supermajority in philosophy of religion, but a minority outside of this subfield. This creates peculiar multilayered intersectional dynamics, where theists in philosophy of religion find themselves disparaged by their philosophical colleagues in other fields. This disparaging can take the form of dismissals of theism as a serious intellectual option, to even the open belittling of the good faith or intellectual rigor of theistic authors (e.g., Levine 2000). On the other hand, theists find themselves in the majority within their subdiscipline, and also, if working in countries such as the United States, find a more congenial environment in the broader cultural context (although this needs to be qualified, depending on the religious tradition one adheres to). To give a sense of how these intersectional dynamics might play out, here is an example of an empirical study I did on professional philosophers’ ideas about epistemic peer disagreement. I asked academic philosophers (N = 518) whether they considered philosophers they disagreed with on religious matters to be epistemic peers (De Cruz 2017).⁵ Unsurprisingly, philosophers of religion found themselves frequently dissenting with epistemic peers on religious matters, more so than other philosophers. But when I asked philosophers if there is a difference in how well informed both parties are, who is in a better position (they or the other philosopher), atheists were more likely to respond than theists that they were in an epistemically better situation (in particular, 81.9 per cent of atheists thought they were in a better epistemic position, compared to 59.8 per cent of theists—this difference is statistically significant, at the p < 0.001 level).

2.3 Beyond Epistemic Bubbles and Echo Chambers C. Thi Nguyen (in press) draws a distinction between two kinds of epistemic social phenomena: epistemic bubbles and echo chambers. Both bubbles and echo chambers lack intellectual diversity. Epistemic bubbles lack relevant voices because of accidental factors, such as self-selection. Echo chambers, on the other hand, actively discredit relevant voices. As a result of the exclusion of relevant voices, both epistemic bubbles and echo chambers lack what Goldberg (2010: 160) calls coverage-reliability. Because of coverage-reliability we can sometimes justifiably

⁵ The exact formulation was ‘When you read or hear the views of another philosopher on religious matters, if this philosopher holds a position that is incompatible with yours (e.g., if you are an atheist and the philosopher in question is a theist), how often do you consider them to be your epistemic peer?’

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

36

  

come to believe that not-p because we have never heard someone say that p. The reasoning behind this is something like ‘If p were true, I would have heard about it by now.’ But in order to make such justifiable inferences, two conditions need to be met. First, the source has to be there: members of the hearer’s community who ‘are disposed to report about the relevant sort of matters’. Second, the source must be reliable in finding out and broadcasting truths about the domain in question. Epistemic bubbles and echo chambers do not satisfy these conditions. But whereas epistemic bubbles can be easily popped by mere exposure to relevant information, echo chambers are more robust and actively insulate their members against relevant exposure. They accord a credibility excess to members, while discrediting any dissenters. While it is useful to draw this distinction between more accidental, innocent features of an epistemic landscape, and more deliberate features, Nguyen’s categorization neglects situations where the epistemic landscape is the result of both accidental features and more deliberate forms of exclusion. This seems to be the case in philosophy of religion, the demographics and views of which do not reflect the global diversity of religious viewpoints. The preponderance of theists in philosophy of religion is a result of self-selection, but the exclusion of non-Western philosophical traditions is the result of a series of less innocent choices in Western academic philosophy that have led to the marginalization and dismissal of non-Western traditions as either inscrutable or nonphilosophical. Given the complexity of the religious domain, it is doubtful that we would have coverage-reliability in the broad sense of covering every philosophically viable religious option. But we might get coverage-reliability in a narrower sense, namely in developing a wider range of philosophical views that better reflect humanity’s rich theological and religious traditions. By deliberately seeking out perspectives that are in tension with their own viewpoints, philosophers of religion can improve the epistemic landscape they find themselves in. Disagreement is not a temporary problem to be solved, but a welcome source of Kantian Widerstand (resistance or friction) by which we could anchor ourselves and sharpen our philosophical viewpoints (see also Dormandy, in press, who makes the broader claim that religious disagreement is an epistemic positive good for considerate, thoughtful religious believers).

3. Objections to Seeking out Epistemic Friction This section will consider three potential objections to the call for epistemic friction in philosophy of religion. Even if we acknowledge that analytic philosophy of religion presents an incomplete picture of religious views and that it does not provide coverage-reliability, this does not automatically pose demands on philosophers of religion to seek other perspectives.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

        

37

3.1 Epistemic Partiality When we consider whether to adopt the testimony of others, we are moved by several competing demands and goals. Sometimes these goals can be in tension. As James (1896) already showed, there can be a tension between aiming for true beliefs and avoiding false ones. But our beliefs are also driven by considerations such as friendship, affiliation, or belonging. Perhaps these considerations are so important, at least in the case of religion, that they outweigh other demands. Being part of a religious community often means, implicitly or explicitly, to be epistemically partial to its intellectual tradition, which often extends far back in time. According to Sarah Stroud (2006), friendship poses the doxastic demand to overestimate one’s friends. If friendship requires epistemic partiality, then perhaps religious or ideological affiliation does the same. For example, being epistemically partial to the Catholic tradition is what it means to be a good Catholic. Epistemic partiality to friends relates to a broad range of cases; for the purposes of this paper, I will take epistemic religious partiality to be narrower in scope: to be epistemically partial to a religious tradition is to exhibit partiality to it on issues of faith. Samuel Lebens (2020) has recently defended a claim along these lines: religious belief entails epistemic partiality to a given tradition. The example he gives is Judaism. To be Jewish is to be part of a tribe one is either born in, or chooses to become part of through conversion. This means being epistemically partial to claims within Judaism, as well as engaging in earnest in the practices (mitzvot) that are constitutive of Judaism. He argues it is permissible for Jews to not seriously entertain some ideas as live options, for example, that Jesus is the Messiah. Lebens particularly thinks it is permissible for Jews to not consider Jesus as the Messiah given the sacrifice that Jews were willing to make throughout history to defend Jewish identity in the face of forced conversion and other forms of oppression. If a Jew were to convert to Christianity, this would surely alienate her from family and friends. To further specify, religious epistemic partiality is the constitutive claim that in order to be a serious adherent of a given religious tradition, particularly a tradition that is predominantly exclusivist, having epistemic partiality is (in part) constitutive of being a faithful adherent to that tradition. A further normative claim (in line with the epistemic partiality literature on friendship) would be that one ought therefore to show religious epistemic partiality. A number of authors have argued against the constitutive claim, i.e., in the case of friendship, being a good friend does not entail being epistemically partial to that friend (Arpaly & Brinkerhoff 2018). In many cases, it is better for the friend to have an accurate assessment of them rather than an unrealistically positive epistemic evaluation. The same could apply to religious beliefs. Take Isabella, a devout Roman Catholic concerned about women’s equality and justice. Isabella reads an article claiming that the fact that

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

38

  

Jesus had only male apostles is sufficient grounds for denying women to be ordained as Catholic priests. Religious epistemic partiality would mean that Isabella, if she is a good Catholic, should accord more weight to arguments that support the Catholic tradition than to arguments in support of women’s ordination (as this is not in line with the Catholic tradition). But in doing so, Isabella might be sacrificing other goods, such as her concern for gender equality in a church she cares about. I am not denying that epistemic partiality might play a role in religious traditions, especially those with an exclusivist bent, rather, it is unclear that epistemic partiality would require an over-evaluation of the religious tradition, or would be enough reason to resist the call for epistemic friction. Moreover, epistemic partiality is not in line with the role of philosophical reflection in religious traditions. As Bill Wood (2014) has argued, doing analytic philosophy is ‘to present the truth as the author sees it. This single-minded focus on truth, when combined with the specific techniques of analytic philosophical argument, allows analytic theology to become a spiritual practice.’ It is a spiritual practice, because it is truth-oriented. Just like mystic practitioners as the Sufi alGhazālī or the Roman Catholic nun Teresa of Ávila sought to come closer to God through cultivating religious practices, the analytic philosopher of religion attempts to come closer to God through a relentless seeking of the truth. Wood sees precursors of this mindset in Anselm and Aquinas. He emphasizes the ability to identify imaginatively with one’s intellectual opponents, something that can be seen in, for example, Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles, as a key element of doing analytic theology (and, by extension, analytic philosophy of religion). In the light of this, epistemic partiality does not seem like a desirable stance for philosophers of religion.

3.2 Imaginative Resistance It may be difficult for philosophers of religion to entertain some religious positions as live possibilities. The hesitance of a Jew to imagine Jesus as the Messiah might be a case of what Tamar Gendler (2000) termed imaginative resistance. Imaginative resistance is the phenomenon where we encounter a potential scenario—in Gendler’s seminal discussion, a fictional scenario—that evokes a certain resistance in us that prevents us from imagining it fully. For example, we might find it unproblematic to imagine a flat Earth, but we might find it difficult to imagine a world where it is morally praiseworthy to murder one’s siblings. We seem to be either unwilling or unable to countenance such scenarios.⁶ ⁶ Empirical support shows people find morally deviant scenarios more difficult to imagine, for example, that an Aztec human sacrifice would be the right thing to do (Liao, Strohminger, &

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

        

39

Just as it is hard for Jews to imagine Jesus as the Messiah, even in the context of philosophy, it might be hard for a Christian to imagine that Christ would be mad or bad, rather than God, grasping the two other horns of C.S. Lewis’s trilemma. If it turns out that imaginative resistance plays a major role in how our religious beliefs are shaped and maintained, this would go some way to absolve philosophers of religion from personally engaging in alternative religious practices or entertaining religious beliefs. Some philosophers have gone to great lengths to engage in such practices. For example, John Hick worked in a Christian and postChristian context, but when he moved to multicultural Birmingham (a city in the British Midlands with large ethnic minority populations) he worked together with leaders of Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, and Jewish communities, and attended their local places of worship. Immersing himself in these different ritual contexts, Hick moved away from Christian exclusivism and formulated a pluralist position (Badham 2014). But next to this rather exacting way of seeking epistemic friction, we can make our epistemic environment more congenial, by taking active steps that make our environment more epistemically diverse. To read authors who defend religious positions quite different from our own does not mean we have to fully countenance these, or consider them as live options. At the very least, we could reason as follows, ‘these alternative systems look false to me, but lots of intelligent, well-informed, thoughtful people endorse them. It would be intellectually irresponsible of me to dismiss them without understanding the reasons these people have to support these views.’ Intellectual engagement with such alternative systems would be possible even if engagement with them at other levels (e.g., emotional) remained difficult. One might still worry that the call for epistemic friction would be too onerous. It clearly would be too intellectually demanding, even for a philosopher of religion with ample research time (let alone one who works at a teaching-focused, underresourced school) to acquaint herself with all religious traditions to a sufficient extent that she gains a basic understanding of them. But it does mean that it is commendable for philosophers of religion to at least gain some understanding of one or more traditions outside of Christianity and naturalistic atheism.

3.3 Facilitating Oppressive Views One final worry about the call for epistemic friction is that it would put an unreasonable burden on people who are already oppressed to further engage with and take seriously views that have the potential to further oppress them. How much intellectual space does, say, a gay philosopher of religion need to give Sripada, 2014). To my knowledge, there is no work specifically on how imaginative resistance relates to religious beliefs.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

40

  

to philosophical positions that say that being gay is a disability⁷ that ought to be socially discouraged, and, if possible, cured? While I cannot offer full treatment of this problem (which is not unique for philosophy of religion, see e.g., the ‘Nazi problem’ against Longino’s concept of scientific objectivity, Hicks 2011), I will offer a few comments on it. First, philosophers of religion from socially disadvantaged positions have likely already encountered views that are degrading or demeaning to them. Such views are likely widespread in religious communities (e.g., anti-LBGTQ stances). As Elisabeth Barnes (2018) argues, while some arguments can cause harm (she offers the example of Peter Singer’s arguments about disability), such arguments will continue to be made in the public sphere, ‘The idea that disabled people are lesser or defective is part of everyday reality for disabled people and caregivers.’ For this reason, Barnes (2018) recommends engaging with and pushing back against these offensive philosophical arguments. Second, the demand for epistemic friction does not require that one engage in detail, and exhaustively, with each and every position. It only requires that one widen one’s scope beyond one’s own religious and philosophical position and tradition. There are a great many possible and actual philosophical positions, and it is not practically possible for any one philosopher to engage with them exhaustively. Rather, what the call for epistemic friction demands is that one widens one’s scope of philosophical investigation and engagement beyond that of like-minded people.

4. Conclusion: Intellectual Diversity and Epistemic Friction The call for increased intellectual diversity and for epistemic friction in philosophy of religion cannot be divorced from the broader context in which authors in this subdiscipline write. As citizens of heterogeneous societies, we have minimal epistemic duties to be informed about the religious traditions of others. To investigate what these duties amount to, Medina (2013) looks at an incident in 2005 when a student placed a pig’s head at Vanderbilt’s Schulman Center for Jewish Life, which also happened to be next to a vegetarian café. The student claimed that he did not know pig’s heads were an anti-Semitic symbol and instead argued that he merely pulled an anti-vegetarian prank while drunk. According to Medina, the student’s alleged ignorance is not justified, as the student, being a member of American society, has a responsibility to inform himself about different religious traditions and their interrelations. It was religious privilege that allowed the student to get away with being ignorant. Moreover, if he didn’t

⁷ See for example, Swinburne (2007: 303–6, fn. F, 361).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

        

41

know about Judaism—as he claimed—why was he not taught about this religion as an undergraduate? Philosophers are part of this broader intellectual community, and by educating students, we also bear what Medina calls network responsibility. Network responsibility does not put responsibility entirely on individuals or on groups, but rather looks at one’s doxastic and ethical responsibilities within a broader network. Philosophers play a role as educators, public speakers, and writers, and thus play a role in the broader context in which students are educated about other religious traditions. It’s also notable that philosophers of religion themselves have a desire to engage more with living religious traditions and to increase diversity. For example, in my open question survey (De Cruz 2018) I did not ask participants explicitly to evaluate philosophy of religion as a discipline, but nevertheless several of them spontaneously commented on what they perceived as its insularity in answer to the optional final question (‘Are there any additional anecdotes or personal observations that you think are relevant for this study?’). As one assistant professor working in China wrote, Philosophy of religion is a field well-suited to contribute helpful resources for clarifying confusion as well as disagreement at areas of cross-cultural contact, but the field may be hindered in this effort so long as it employs models of religiosity that have been derived from philosophical debates within Western Christianity.

Epistemic friction can be obtained in diachronic and synchronic form, both by looking at past traditions and at the views of current interlocutors. Hence, one form of low-hanging fruit is to look within the traditions that philosophers of religion have engaged with already, and reappraise how those traditions can reinvigorate our philosophical reflection. Much philosophical reflection, in the West but also elsewhere, took place within the context of religion. Philosophy of religion tends to dip into this rich history rather selectively. For example, Sarah Coakley (2009) notes that philosophers such as Alston and Swinburne have turned to female contemplative mystics such as Teresa of Ávila to support their claim that religious experience can be a source of knowledge. But they tend to present a sanitized version of those mystics, filtering out their ‘apophatic caveats and their bodily responses’, which Coakley (2009: 285) suspects are ‘elements of their witness that will not quite fit the laudable epistemic purposes that these philosophers intend’. History of philosophy can thus be a source of epistemic friction. Historical sources should not merely be mined selectively for punchy quotes, or as a form of historical sock puppeteering that lends authority to contemporary philosophical ideas. Rather, a detailed engagement with historical sources can be corrective and complementary. Christina Van Dyke (2018) cites the phenomenological character of mystical experiences as female and embodied, for example, the vivid sensory

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

42

  

imagery that the medieval mystic Hadewijch of Brabant used to describe her union with Christ. Such work challenges the narrow focus on mystic experience as a source of knowledge of God in analytic philosophy of religion, but doing this non-sanitized, non-selective history of philosophy of religion well requires an honest engagement with historical sources. History of philosophy also helps against boundary policing, sometimes seen in philosophy, where the question ‘Is this paper philosophy?’ is a conversationender. Indeed, if we look at the history of philosophy, we can see how the range of philosophical argumentation was broader than it tends to be in contemporary philosophical practice. This includes genres such as fiction, poetry, and philosophical dialogues. Take, for example, Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan ([twelfth century] 2003), about Hayy who grows up alone on an island, removed from all human society, and is brought up by a female gazelle. Growing up, Hayy learns not only relevant facts about biology, anatomy, astronomy, and botany, through experience and reason, he also discovers philosophical truths about the existence of God through the formulation of natural theological arguments. This short story is not supposed to be realistic, but the story nevertheless shows something about the value of natural theology, and supports Ibn Tufayl’s idea that revelation is not necessary for proper religious belief. Getting out of our comfort zone will also mean more engagement with philosophy of religion beyond the dichotomy between naturalistic atheism and Christianity. Given many good translations, it is no longer required to understand, say, classic Chinese, Arabic, or Sanskrit in order to read primary sources. Good translations can be incorporated into philosophy of religion undergraduate and graduate courses. Organizations such as the American Philosophical Association provide useful resources to do this. By engaging with religious traditions outside of Christianity, we can expect a broadening of the scope of philosophy of religion. To give some recent examples, engagement with the work of the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi has given rise to new ideas in the philosophy of religion about fictionalism (Chung 2018) and about cosmic emulation as a way for people to acquire moral virtues (Kidd, 2020). To obtain thorough epistemic friction, a detailed and sincere engagement with dead philosophers will not be sufficient. Living philosophers from diverse traditions and demographics can provide even more friction and can enrich the philosophical community. As philosophers we shape the field and prioritize certain phenomena in our experience as worthy of philosophical attention, and even what kinds of engagements count as philosophical. It is important that philosophical communities become more diverse, so as to reflect the wider diversity of religious beliefs and approaches to religion in the world. Making philosophical communities more diverse is a long-term project. Efforts might include editing volumes specifically focused on marginalized voices and traditions in philosophy of religion, prize competitions for works that seek to diversify

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

        

43

philosophy of religion, or even just subtle cultural changes within graduate studies departments to provide a more welcoming climate. In conclusion, I have argued that philosophers of religion should seek more epistemic friction. As a result of innocent and less innocent factors, philosophy of religion presents a hostile epistemic landscape that can hamper knowledge acquisition. Epistemic friction can be accomplished by both individual and collective efforts. By providing a rich range of intellectual options and considerations, philosophy of religion can become more connected to wider intellectual communities and can achieve coverage-reliability in the narrow sense of looking at religious options that are options for engaged thinkers across the world.

Acknowledgements Many thanks to Michelle Panchuk, Michael Rea, Katherine Dormandy, Katherine Furman, Jonathan Robson, Samuel Lebens, Ted Vitale, Kenny Pearce, Jonathan Jacobs, and Johan De Smedt for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

References al-Ghazālī, Abū Hāmid Muḥammad. c.1100 [1952]. ‘Deliverance from Error.’ In The
Practice and Faith of al-Ghazālī, translated by W. M. Watt, 1–359. London: Allen & Unwin. Arpaly, Nomy, and Anna Brinkerhoff. 2018. ‘Why Epistemic Partiality is Overrated.’ Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 37–51. Badham, Paul. 2014. ‘John Hick.’ In Twentieth-century Philosophy of Religion, edited by Graham Oppy and N. N. Trakakis, 233–44. London: Routledge. Ballantyne, Nathan. 2014. ‘Counterfactual Philosophers.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 88 (2): 368–87. Ballantyne, Nathan, and E. J. Coffman. 2012. ‘Conciliationism and Uniqueness.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90: 657–70. Barnes, Elizabeth. 2018. ‘Arguments that Harm—And Why We Need Them.’ The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2018. https://www.chronicle.com/ article/Arguments-That-Harm-and/242543 Bourget, David, and David J. Chalmers. 2014. ‘What do philosophers believe?’ Philosophical Studies 170: 465–500. Christensen, David. 2011. ‘Disagreement, Question-Begging, and Epistemic SelfCriticism.’ Philosopher’s Imprint 11 (6): 1–22. Chung, Julianne. 2018. ‘Is Zhuangzi a Fictionalist?’ Philosopher’s Imprint 18 (22): 1–23.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

44

  

Coakley, Sarah. 2009. ‘Dark Contemplation and Epistemic Transformation: The Analytic Theologian Re-Meets Teresa of Ávila.’ In Analytic Theology. New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea, 280–312. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Cruz, Helen. 2014. ‘Cognitive Science of Religion and the Study of Theological Concepts.’ Topoi 33: 487–97. De Cruz, Helen. 2017. ‘Religious Disagreement: An Empirical Study among Academic Philosophers.’ Episteme 14: 71–87. De Cruz, Helen. 2018. ‘Religious Beliefs and Philosophical Views: A Qualitative Study.’ Res Philosophica 95 (3): 477–504. De Cruz, Helen. 2019. Religious Disagreement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Cruz, Helen. 2020. ‘Philosophy of Religion From the Margins: A theoretical analysis and focus group study.’ In The Lost Sheep in Philosophy of Religion: New Perspectives on Disability, Gender, Race, and Animals, edited by Blake Hereth and Kevin Timpe, 31–54. New York: Routledge. De Cruz, Helen, and Johan De Smedt. 2016. ‘How do Philosophers Evaluate Natural Theological Arguments? An Experimental Philosophical Investigation. In Advances in religion, cognitive science, and experimental philosophy, edited by Helen De Cruz and Ryan Nichols, 119–42. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Descartes, Rene. 1641 [1984]. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol II. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dormandy, Katherine. In Press. ‘The Epistemic Benefits of Religious Disagreement.’ Religious Studies. Du Bois, W.E.B. 1903 [2007]. The Soul of Black Folk. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Elga, Adam. 2007. ‘Reflection and Disagreement.’ Noûs 41: 478–502. Feldman, Richard. 2007. ‘Reasonable Religious Disagreements.’ In Philosophers without Gods, edited by Louise Anthony, 194–214. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Furman, Katherine. 2018. ‘Moral Responsibility, Culpable Ignorance and Suppressed Disagreement.’ Social Epistemology 32 (5): 1–13. Gendler, Tamar. 2000. ‘The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance.’ Journal of Philosophy 97 (2): 55–81. Goldberg, Sanford. 2010. Relying on Others: An Essay in Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hicks, Daniel. 2011. ‘Is Longino’s Conception of Objectivity Feminist?’ Hypatia 26 (2): 333–51. Höchsmann, Hyun, and Yang Guorong. 2016. Zhuangzi. London: Routledge.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

        

45

Hong, Lu, and Scott Page. 2004. ‘Groups of Diverse Problem Solvers Can Outperform Groups of High-Ability Problem Solvers.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101 (46): 16385–9. Ibn Tufayl, M. 2003. Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (A Philosophical Tale). Translated by Lenn Goodman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. James, William. 1896. ‘The Will to Believe.’ The New World: A Quarterly Review of Religion, Ethics and Theology 5 (9): 327–47. James, William. 1920. A Pluralistic Universe. Hilbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy. New York and London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Jeppesen, Lars Bo, and Karim Lakhani. 2010. ‘Marginality and Problem-Solving Effectiveness in Broadcast Search.’ Organization Science 21 (5): 1016–33. Kant, Immanuel. 1781 [2005]. Critique of Pure Reason. Edited and translated by Paul Guyer Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kelley, Jonathan, and Nan Dirk De Graaf. 1997. ‘National Context, Parental Socialization, and Religious belief: Results from 15 Nations.’ American Sociological Review 62: 639–59. Kelly, Thomas. 2005. ‘The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement.’ In Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Vol. 1, edited by John Hawthorne and Tamar Gendler, 167–96. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kidd, Ian James. 2020. ‘Following the Way of Heaven: Exemplarism, Emulation, and Daoism.’ Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 6 (1): 1–15. Kox, Willem, Wim Meeus, and Harm’t Hart. 1991. ‘Religious Conversion of Adolescents: Testing the Lofland and Stark Model of Religious Conversion.’ Sociological Analysis 52 (3): 227–40. Lebens, Samuel (2020). Pascal, Pascalberg, and friends. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 87 (1): 109–30. Levine, Michael. 2000. ‘Contemporary Christian Analytic Philosophy of Religion: Biblical Fundamentalism, Terrible Solutions to a Horrible Problem, and Hearing God.’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 48: 89–119. Liao, Shen-yi, Nina Strohminger, and Chandra Sripada. 2014. ‘Empirically Investigating Imaginative Resistance.’ British Journal of Aesthetics 54 (3): 339–55. Longino, Helen. 1991. ‘Multiplying Subjects and the Diffusion of Power.’ Journal of Philosophy 88: 666–74. Medina, José. 2013. The Epistemology of Resistance. Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and the Social Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nguyen, C. Thi. In press. ‘Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles. Episteme. Olberding, Amy. 2016. ‘Chinese Philosophy and Wider Philosophical Discourses Including Chinese Philosophy in General Audience Philosophy Journals.’ APA Newsletter: Asian and Asian-American Philosopher and Philosophies 15 (2): 2–9. Panchuk, Michelle. 2020. ‘That We May be Whole: Doing philosophy of Religion with the Whole Self.’ In The Lost Sheep in Philosophy of Religion: New Perspectives on

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

46

  

Disability, Gender, Race, and Animals, edited by Blake Hereth and Kevin Timpe, 55–76. New York: Routledge. Plantinga, Alvin. 2000. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press. Schellenberg, J. L. 2013. Evolutionary Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schoenfield, Miriam. 2014. ‘Permission to believe: Why Permissivism is True and What it Tells us about Irrelevant Influences on Belief. Noûs 48: 193–218. Schwitzgebel, Eric, and Fiery Cushman. 2015. ‘Philosophers’ Biased Judgments Persist Despite Training, Expertise and Reflection.’ Cognition 141: 127–37. Sher, Gila. 2010. ‘Epistemic Friction: Reflections on Knowledge, Truth, and Logic.’ Erkenntnis 72 (2): 151–76. Stroud, Sarah. 2006. ‘Epistemic Partiality in Friendship.’ Ethics 116: 498–524. Swinburne, Richard. 2007. Revelation, 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University. Tobia, Kevin. 2016. ‘Does Religious Belief Infect Philosophical Analysis?’ Religion, Brain & Behavior 6: 56–66. Van Dyke, Christina. 2015. ‘Don’t Get Your Panties in a Bunch: The Dilemma of Addressing the Absence of Women in the Philosophy of Religion.’ Blogpost, September 20, 2015. Retrieved from http://whimsyandwisdom.ghost.io/2015/09/ 20/dont-get-your-panties-in-a-bunch-the-dilemma-of-addressing-the-absence-ofwomen-in-the-philosophy-of-religion/ Van Dyke, Christina. 2018. ‘What has History to do with Philosophy? Insights from the Medieval Contemplative Tradition.’ Proceedings of the British Academy 214: 155–70. van Inwagen, Peter. 1996. ‘It is Wrong, Everywhere, Always, for Anyone, to Believe Anything upon Insufficient Evidence.’ In Faith, freedom and rationality, edited by Jeff Jordan and Daniel Howard-Snyder, 137–54. Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. Van Norden, Bryan W., 2017. Taking Back Philosophy. A Multicultural Manifesto. New York: Columbia University Press. White, Roger. 2014. ‘Evidence Cannot be Permissive.’ In Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, edited by Matthias Steup, John Turri, and Ernest Sosa, 312–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wood, William. 2014. ‘Analytic Theology as a Way of Life.’ Journal of Analytic Theology 2: 43–60.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

2 Toward an Analytic Theology of Liberation Sameer Yadav

1. Analytic Theology and Liberation Theology The open secret of analytic philosophy of religion since its twentieth century revival has been that it is for the most part a revival of philosophical theology, and particularly Christian philosophical theology.¹ More recently, Christian analytic philosophers and theologians sympathetic to them have transformed this open secret into a research programme by explicitly thematizing the use of analytic philosophical tools for the particular work of Christian theology. Dubbing this work as ‘analytic theology’ (hereafter, AT) and editing an eponymous volume on the subject, Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea (2009) have succeeded in inaugurating AT as a distinct subregion in the philosophy of religion. Besides prompting a spate of first-rate philosophical work theorizing a variety of Christian theological commitments, the advent of AT has also prompted a good deal of metatheological reflection: What kinds of theology are ruled out by the methodological commitments of AT? Is AT more conducive for certain conceptions of Christian theology than others?² A casual glance at the AT literature would suggest that AT has been most conducive to generating traditional and orthodox Christian theology and least conducive to generating the revisionary projects of liberation theology (hereafter, LT). As William Wood observes, we can distinguish between the ‘formal model’ of AT and its actual manifestation as a research programme. Formally speaking, a theologian does not need to adhere to any substantive theological or philosophical views in order to count as an analytic theologian. She only needs to

¹ For a qualitative demographic study of the religious constituency of analytic philosophy of religion, see DeCruz 2018. In Wood 2016, William Wood summarizes the data as follows: ‘On the best data that we have, approximately 70 percent of philosophers of religion are theists, and about 58 percent identify as Christians. By contrast, among philosophers in general, about 73 percent identify as atheists.’ (258, fn. 8). ² This question is raised perhaps most strikingly and controversially by Randall Rauser’s ‘Theology as a Bull Session’, wherein he suggests that analytic theology is a safeguard against ‘academic bullshit’ in theology (2009: 71). However, the task of discerning which ways of doing theology are excluded by norms of AT has been taken up less polemically via, e.g., Rea’s engagement with Merold Westphal in Rea 2009 (pp. 9–15) or Adams 2014. Sameer Yadav, Toward an Analytic Theology of Liberation In: Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology. Edited by: Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848844.003.0003

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

48

  explicate whatever substantive views she does hold using the tools and methods of analytic philosophy. (2016: 255)

However, when one looks at the existing literature in AT to see how the formal model is actually being enacted, the empirical reality one discovers is a substantive theological program: theology that draws on the tools and methods of analytic philosophy to advance a specific theological agenda, one that is, broadly speaking, associated with traditional Christian orthodoxy. (2016: 255)

By ‘traditional Christian orthodoxy’, Wood seems to have in mind something like ‘conciliar’ or ‘creedal’ Christianity. However, the theological association of AT with traditional orthodoxy in that sense may be construing AT too narrowly. It is more accurate, I think, to say that AT has been associated with traditional Christian orthodoxy in a broader sense that encompasses the literatures and debates of the mainstream Western European and American theological canon—one that does not exclude figures often credited (or debited) with breaking from the creedal and conciliar tradition, such as Schleiermacher, Bultmann, or Tillich. LT, on the other hand, is characterized by a critical posture toward the established Western theological canon, not only in its maintenance of a generally theologically conservative Christianity, but also in its more traditionally liberal revisions, insofar as both that conservative tradition and its liberal revisions can be thought to mediate various forms of social and political injustice and oppression.³ But one finds it difficult to find any monographs or articles intuitively recognizable as instances of AT that have as their primary purpose to substantially engage the positions, literatures, or debates that define contemporary LT. At best, there have been a few analytic theologians (Sarah Coakley chief among them) who have broached the concerns of feminist theology from within that traditional theological canon.⁴ Nevertheless, there remains no discernible strand of AT that contributes centrally to the current state of black or womanist theologies, more

³ Devin Singh follows Jon Sobrino in distinguishing two distinct philosophical trajectories in the Western tradition: the more dominant one that runs from Kant to various post-Kantian projects, and the less dominant one that runs from Marx to various radical social and political philosophies. Whereas Christian theology and philosophy of religion has tracked with the various developments of the postKantian legacy, liberation theology (particularly in its Latin American instantiation) has found a greater resource in Marxist thought. See Singh 2017: 552. ⁴ See Coakley 2002, 2013. On my reading, Coakley’s significance as a feminist theologian consists precisely in her creative attempts to construct a Christian feminism normed by orthodox Christian theological traditions (especially those retrospectively identified as ‘Christian mysticism’). As a traditionalist of sorts, her feminist credentials are often subject to scrutiny by Christian feminist theologians who take up a critical stance toward those traditions as more corrupted by patriarchy than Coakley allows. See, e.g., Mercedes 2011 or Tonstad 2015.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

49

critical and revisionary feminist theologies, queer theologies, or any other radical social and political theologies. The lacuna is striking, because the development of AT from its forebears in analytic philosophy of religion has managed to generate fruitful engagement with a host of other movements in academic theology. The growth of AT has, for instance, generated many works of confessional or ecclesial theology including evangelical,⁵ Reformed,⁶ liberal Protestant,⁷ and Roman Catholic theologies.⁸ Analytic theologians have emerged from amongst various theological orientations—there are prominent analytic Thomists,⁹ analytic Calvinists,¹⁰ analytic Barthians,¹¹ Schleimeracherians,¹² and more. Analytic theologians have accordingly waded into various meta-theological debates over the proper aims, methods, and sources in theology as these are construed in conservative,¹³ liberal,¹⁴ and post-liberal theology.¹⁵ Why, then, given this impressive and ambitious intellectual market share in contemporary academic theology, have analytic theologians by and large failed to so much as engage or assess—much less generate— any substantial LT? Why should one thousand other analytic theological flowers bloom while this one has not even begun to bud? One suggestion might be that AT and LT are simply incompatible with one another. Perhaps what Wood calls the ‘formal model’ of AT logically excludes or makes very unlikely something essential to the project of LT. To assess whether there is any such incompatibility, we need working definitions of AT and LT. Michael Rea’s account of AT has been perhaps the most widely endorsed. Rea emphasizes that AT is not adequately characterized by any shared substantive philosophical theses in analytic philosophy that all analytic theologians endorse as such, because there are no such theses. Rather, AT is just any sort of theology that adopts the ambitions and the style broadly exhibited in contemporary analytic philosophy. Those ambitions are (i) to identify the scope and limits of our powers to obtain knowledge of the world, and (ii) to provide such true explanatory theories as we can in areas of inquiry (metaphysics, morals and the like) that fall outside the scope of the natural sciences. (Rea 2009: 4)

In addition to these ambitions, Rea characterizes AT as rhetorically conforming to five stylistic prescriptions widely exhibited in contemporary analytic philosophy:

⁵ ⁸ ¹⁰ ¹² ¹⁴

See, e.g., McCall 2015. ⁶ See, e.g., Crisp 2014. ⁷ See, e.g., Dole 2010. See, e.g., Pawl 2016. ⁹ For example, John Haldane, Bruce Marshall, Eleonore Stump. For example, Oliver Crisp, Ray Yeo. ¹¹ For example, Kevin Diller, Alan Torrance. For example, Robert Adams, Andrew Dole. ¹³ See, e.g., McCall 2015. See, e.g., Wood 2017. ¹⁵ See, e.g., Yadav 2017.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

50

  P1. Write as if philosophical positions and conclusions can be adequately formulated in sentences that can be formalized and logically manipulated. P2.

Prioritize precision, clarity, and logical coherence.

P3. Avoid substantive (non-decorative) use of metaphor and other tropes whose semantic content outstrips their propositional content. P4. Work as much as possible with well-understood primitive concepts, and concepts that can be analyzed in terms of those. P5. Treat conceptual analysis (insofar as it is possible) as a source of evidence. (Rea 2009: 5–6) The virtues of Rea’s way of identifying AT include its minimalism, its success in capturing our intuitions about what might rightly be judged to be instances of AT, and despite its minimalism its nonetheless managing to say something substantive about what makes AT distinct from non-analytic ways of doing theology. It is also important to note that Rea’s analysis aims to be descriptive, not normative—it does not attempt to prescribe what AT ought to be, but only to plausibly describe what it is. Offering a similarly virtuous descriptive definition of LT that can capture whatever it is that unites all liberation theologians across all of the width and depth of their mutual disagreements would be a difficult undertaking. Just as there are no substantive philosophical theses shared by all analytic theologians, there are likewise no substantive theses regarding the proper subjects, grounds, means, or methods of LT among liberation theologians. Nevertheless, LT can similarly be marked out in terms of a shared ambition in theology, as well as two shared meta-theological commitments about the normative role played by that ambition in theological theorizing. The defining feature of LT is the commitment to a liberative ambition in theology, which can be summarized as the ambition to do theology in service of the cognitive and practical goals of securing freedom for groups who suffer social or political oppression. A key feature of LT, however, is that this ambition is intended to serve not merely as a psychological motivator for liberation theologians or as a mere moral scruple, but as a meta-theological norm for theology as such. On some explications of the liberative norm for theology, a liberative ambition must be satisfied in order for any putative instance of theology to genuinely count as theology at all. Thus, for example, we find James Cone (a founding figure of black liberation theology) claiming that there can be no Christian theology that is not identified unreservedly with those who are humiliated and abused . . . Christian theology is never just a rational study of the being of God. Rather it is a study of God’s liberating activity in the world, God’s activity in [sic] behalf of the oppressed. (1986: 1, 3)

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

51

Cone appears to take the liberative ambition of LT to be a defining norm for Christian theology in the strong sense of imposing a condition that must be satisfied for the term ‘Christian theology’ to be properly reference-fixing. Any putative instance of Christian theology that fails to live up to a liberative ambition is thus not an instance of Christian theology at all, but merely a Christian theology manqué. This meta-theological thesis about a liberative ambition in theology makes ‘Christian theology’ a success term, such that the designative meaning of the term includes only that which satisfies that ambition. But not all liberation theologians make a liberative ambition normative for the meaning of ‘theology’ per se. Some take that ambition to instead be a merely evaluative norm that determines whether any instance of theology counts as an instance of good theology, theology done well, properly, or as it ought to be done. On this weaker reading, there can be Christian theology that is ‘just a rational study of the being of God’, and which is not essentially concerned with ‘God’s liberating activity in the world’, but Christian theology of that sort, in virtue of failing to satisfy a liberative ambition, is bad theology, theology poorly executed.¹⁶ As a matter of descriptive definition, I leave open the question of whether we ought to accept the stronger or the weaker reading of the meta-theological role that a liberative norm plays for LT—this seems to be an in-house debate among liberation theologians. There is much greater agreement, however, about the domains to which a liberative norm must be applied in order to satisfy a liberative ambition in theology. Namely, for any instance of theology to count as an instance of LT, it must serve the interest of securing freedom for a socially or politically oppressed group in two ways: (a) substantively and (b) methodologically. Theology exhibits a substantive interest in liberation only when its subject matter is normatively determined by a liberative ambition, while it exhibits a methodological interest in liberation only when its mode of inquiry is normatively determined by a liberative ambition. Various kinds of LT are individuated by the forms of political and social oppression that substantively and methodologically motivate their theological theorizing. In his Invitation to Analytic Theology, Thomas McCall claims that ‘there is nothing about analytic theology . . . that precludes the use of analytic tools by, say, feminist, womanist, or liberationist theologies’ (2015: 29). Given that we take him to be referring to what Wood calls the ‘formal model’ of AT, and given the minimalistic formal definitions of AT and LT above, it should be clear enough that McCall is correct. There is nothing about the liberative ambition of LT or its proposed normative role for theological content and method that contradicts Rea’s ambitions (i) or (ii), or any of his stylistic prescriptions P1–P5. It remains ¹⁶ See, for example, Margaret Kamitsuka’s allowance for an internal dispute among feminist liberation theologians regarding what I’m calling strong and weak readings of the liberative norm in Kamitsuka 2007:117ff.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

52

 

possible, of course, that there are liberation theologians who construe the kind of freedom from oppression constitutive of their theological theorizing in some way that runs contrary to the analytic ambitions or style constitutive of AT. For example, perhaps there are liberation theologians who embrace LT but who also think that trying to determine the scope and limits of our powers to obtain knowledge of the world is inconsistent with the explication of liberation for the oppressed. In that case, such a construal of LT would be incompatible with AT in virtue of excluding one of the ambitions it adopts from analytic philosophy, i.e., the first one. Or perhaps there are liberation theologians who embrace LT but who take metaphorical meanings that outstrip their propositional content to be indispensable to the way that theology must methodologically convey freedom from oppression. Such a construal would be incompatible with AT in virtue of being inconsistent with one of the stylistic prescriptions it adopts from analytic philosophy, i.e., P3. Something similar might be said for a range of possible construals we might give to AT that would contradict LT as defined above.¹⁷ But potential inconsistencies of that kind do not show that LT per se is necessarily incompatible with AT per se, only that on some narrow range of construals, LT is incompatible with AT. There is thus no apparent logical incompatibility preventing analytic theologians from engaging in LT. Why, then, are there so few, if any, proponents of AT who also embrace LT? I doubt that proponents of AT are unaware of LT as a live option in academic theology.¹⁸ Rather, I suspect that proponents of AT fail to engage with or in LT principally because they misconstrue LT as engaged in an enterprise aimed at the moral or ethical consequences of Christian theology rather than as theology per se, or because they recognize LT’s claim that a liberative ambition is an obligatory norm for (good) Christian theology per se, but regard that claim as obviously false. One might see how we could properly motivate a substantive and methodological commitment to a liberative ambition in theology as reasonable or permissible, but it seems prima facie implausible to suppose that Christian theologians in general, or analytic theologians as such, are under any sort of obligation to adopt that ambition as constitutive of (good) Christian theology. There are, after all, plenty of truths about Christian theism other than its liberative dimension for which true explanatory theories appear to be perfectly well motivated. Granting even the weaker version of LT, there is no apparent reason to suppose, for example, that whether or not God is a metaphysical simple makes much (if any) difference for human liberation, but it seems absurd to suppose that a true explanatory theory of divine simplicity would thus be an instance of bad theology. ¹⁷ In private correspondence, Rea suggests a possible contradiction between a construal of AT as prizing ‘objectivity’ and the anti-liberative dimensions of that notion as suggested in Haslanger 2001. ¹⁸ Still, this tends to be mere awareness. One observes a general ignorance among analytic theologians about the landscape and content of LT as a research agenda, and likewise, a general ignorance amongst proponents of LT about AT as a research agenda.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

53

Moreover, any attempt to make a doctrine of divine simplicity satisfy a liberative criterion would seem at best a strange (at worse, a tortured) use of that doctrine, and this makes it seem bizarre to require that it satisfy that criterion in order to be considered (good) Christian theology. If this diagnosis is correct—that AT (not formally, but as an active research programme) has sidestepped LT either out of misunderstanding or out of a lack of confronting any plausible argument for it—then the goal of including LT within the ambit of AT would be well served by offering a construal of LT that satisfies the following three desiderata. First, such a construal would have to make clear what it is that makes LT a meta-theological proposal about the proper content and method of Christian theology rather than merely an ethical application of theology. Second, such a construal would have to challenge the underlying intuition about LT’s obvious falsity that enables theologians to dismiss or neglect it as a serious meta-theological proposal. While such a desideratum doesn’t demand a full-blown defence of LT, it does seem to demand a plausible story about what makes a liberative ambition a necessary criterion for (good) Christian theology, and why instances of theological theorizing that do not satisfy that criterion merit the negative evaluation that the proponent of LT assigns to them. Finally, since such a construal is aimed at developing LT as a research programme of AT, we should be able to see how it can satisfy both the analytic ambitions of AT as well as broadly exemplifying its stylistic prescriptions P1–P5. The remainder of the chapter aims to offer a construal of LT that satisfies all three desiderata. My claim is essentially that any ambition of providing true explanatory theories in Christian theology (Rea’s analytic ambition ii) must be guided by values beyond the narrowly epistemic that determine the relative cognitive and practical significance of theological explananda and explanata— and this is so however one prefers to theorize the nature of epistemic value per se. In the second section below, I offer a philosophical framework for thinking about how various sorts of values might impinge on one another in normatively guiding our practices. In a third section, I make the case that Christian analytic theologians ought to be guided in their theory construction not only by epistemic value, but also by the moral and prudential value of liberation for the socially and politically oppressed. I go on in a fourth section to elaborate some of the constraints on content and method in theology that we might expect to find if we construe Christian theology as in part constituted by its liberative value as LT claims. As the specification of a meta-epistemological normative constraint on the scope and limits of our power to obtain theological knowledge, LT therefore also satisfies Rea’s ambition (i). Having thus shown how the liberation theologian can make a case for LT that appeals to the ambitions constitutive of AT and in a style consistent with AT, I conclude with some brief suggestions about what an analytic theology of liberation as a research programme of AT might involve.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

54

 

2. Values and Reasons for Acting: Pro Tanto vs All Things Considered On Rea’s analysis, AT is theological inquiry guided by the analytic ambition of seeking to ‘provide such true explanatory theories as we can’ (2009: 4). Since AT is just ‘the activity of approaching theological topics with the ambitions of an analytic philosopher’ (Rea 2009: 7), the analytic theologian is therefore someone who approaches the subject matter of Christian theology not only with the resources of analytic philosophy but also with its aim of providing true explanatory theories regarding that subject matter. The proponent of LT can accept this minimal conception of the aim of theological theorizing, but liberation theologians would regard it as an insufficient specification of that goal. On the weaker reading of LT, a necessary condition of any theological theory’s being a good theological theory is that it aims not merely at truth, but also at justice for the socially and politically oppressed. How might one go about motivating and defending that claim? I think a case for LT can be made on the basis of a commonly held view in contemporary analytic epistemology that, as in ethics or aesthetics so too in epistemology, the right is grounded in the good.¹⁹ Our epistemic permissions and obligations, whatever they are, are grounded in epistemic value in a parallel sort of way that aesthetic, moral, or prudential duties are respectively grounded in aesthetic, moral, or prudential value. If it is true that we have a moral obligation not to commit genocide, then this is because genocide is morally bad, and mutatis mutandis for prohibitions arising from aesthetic and prudential badness. Similarly, if we are morally permitted (but not morally obligated) to pursue a graduate degree, then this is because getting a graduate degree is not morally bad, and mutatis mutandis for permissions arising from aesthetic and prudential notbadness. Likewise, if we have an epistemic obligation to avoid falsehood and pursue truth in our beliefs, this is because false beliefs are epistemically bad, and if we are epistemically permitted, but not required, to ignore certain kinds of evidence, this is because ignoring it is not epistemically bad. The various kinds of norms governing our beliefs and practices are not merely grounded in absolute values of good and bad, but also in comparative values of better and worse. For example, if from a moral standpoint we have an obligation to prefer the cultivation of virtue to mere continence, then this is because, considered from that standpoint, virtue is better than mere continence. If from an aesthetic standpoint we have an obligation to prefer a Picasso to a Kincaid, then ¹⁹ Of course, the common view has been challenged. See, e.g., Cote-Bouchard 2017. My argument in favour of LT can therefore be interpreted as establishing only a conditional claim, ‘if the common view is correct, then Christian theologians ought to be committed to LT.’ Nevertheless, in order to avoid the cumbersome intrusion of constant conditional qualification, I simply proceed henceforth as if the more commonly held view were correct.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

55

this is because, considered from that standpoint, the Picasso is aesthetically better than the Kincaid. On the other hand, if we are aesthetically permitted to prefer whichever we like or neither, then it is because one is not objectively better than the other from the aesthetic point of view. Likewise, if from an epistemic standpoint we have an obligation to prefer the acquisition of true beliefs by way of knowledge rather than, say, luck, this is because, considered from that standpoint, knowledge is epistemically better than merely true belief. If it is epistemically permissible to believe either truths of trivial existential import or truths of great existential import, this is due to the fact that neither class of truths is better than the other, considered from an epistemic point of view. Finally, in our failure of conformity to the norms grounded in the relevant values, we are subject to blame from these corresponding evaluative standpoints. Our accountability to the norms rationally afforded us by these various kinds of value consists minimally in our responsibility to avoid blameworthiness in what we think, say, and do. Our failing to respond to the prohibition on genocide rationally afforded by its badness makes us morally blameworthy. Where the pursuit of virtue is morally preferable to the pursuit of mere continence, we can become morally culpable for eschewing virtue in favour of mere continence. Likewise, for most ordinary adults, believing that the moon is made of cheese is blameworthy from an epistemic point of view insofar as it involves some culpable failure to respond to the epistemic badness of that belief (i.e., its being false or epistemically unjustified); if not, believing it is epistemically blameless.²⁰ We can thus recognize a structural parallel between various kinds of goodness, the corresponding kinds of norms fixed by them, and our rational accountability to those norms. But the way that these distinct kinds of value and their corresponding norms impinge upon us in our practices is not neatly distributed. Virtually nothing we think, say, or do matters in only one kind of way (e.g., morally but not epistemically, prudentially, aesthetically, or aesthetically but not morally, prudentially, epistemically, etc.). Accordingly, virtually nothing we think, say, or do is responsive to only one class of normative reasons or subject to appraisal from only one evaluative point of view. Rather, most of the practices we choose to undertake exhibit a complex profile of distinct respects in which such practices are good and bad, and a corresponding complex of comparative considerations about which among these goods are most worth having and thus which normative considerations fix our permissions and obligations. ²⁰ There are many complications here about the nature of culpability connected to the notion of rational affordance. Should we think of such affordances in internalist or externalist terms? Should we think of them as defeasible or not? Is our doxastic blameworthiness dependent on that which is within our voluntary control? Do different classes of norms merit different answers to these questions and thus different analyses of culpability? Etc. I don’t intend to prejudge on any of these questions. It is enough for my purposes that each distinct sort of value imposes a corresponding sort of norm and that each distinct sort of norm imposes a corresponding basis of rational evaluation for our beliefs and practices.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

56

 

Because of the multidimensional value profile of any given course of action we might undertake, the various normative considerations that guide our acting (or refraining from acting) can be related to one another in different sorts of ways. What we have reasons to do given one dimension of value, pro tanto (i.e., as far as that value is concerned) might agree with what we have reasons to do given another distinct dimension of value, also considered pro tanto. For example, under certain circumstances, it might be that my deciding to go to a baseball game is not a morally, aesthetically, epistemically, or prudentially bad thing to do, while deciding not to go would also not be bad in any of those respects. Thus, all things considered, I can rightly regard my going or not going to the baseball game as permissible from every evaluative point of view. In cases like this, where one evaluative point of view would guide us to act in the same way as any another, the permissibility of acting considered from one evaluative point of view in isolation from the other dimensions of value (i.e., considered pro tanto) would not be affected at all by any further and final consideration of any other dimensions of value that might be relevant to the act. However, in many cases a consideration of what we are permitted or obligated to do from only one evaluative standpoint, pro tanto, is insufficient for discerning what our duties are.²¹ For example, suppose there is someone who is being severely and unjustly harmed by my boss and that I am the only person in a position to expose the injustice and prevent further harm. But I am also the primary breadwinner for my family with no prospects for alternative work and exposing my boss would almost certainly damage my career, perhaps even getting me fired. Considered from a purely prudential point of view, I ought to refrain from exposing my boss due to the prudential badness of putting my livelihood in jeopardy, while considered from a purely moral point of view, I ought not refrain from exposing my boss due to the moral badness of becoming complicit in an injustice. My exposing my boss could be regarded as prudentially blameworthy but morally blameless while the reverse is true for my refraining from doing so. Given the conflict in normative considerations generated by the value profile of my action, knowing what I am permitted or obligated to do can in this way depend on knowing which value ought to trump the other in guiding my actions, and this is a matter of knowing which sort of outcome ultimately matters more. In order to resolve the dilemma about exposing my boss I must determine which is the more important aim to achieve—the prudential aim of preserving my job or the moral aim of preventing the injustice. To take a less controversial example: suppose I have an idiosyncratic and overwhelming hatred for wet shoes but also recognize a moral obligation to help people in need, and I subsequently encounter a child who is drowning but whom I cannot help without getting my shoes wet. The

²¹ See, e.g., Frederick 2015.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

57

prudential badness of wet shoes might give me a pro tanto prudential reason to suppose that I ought not help the child, but it does not give me an all things considered reason to refrain from helping. Rather, taking the relative badness of wet shoes as compared with dead children into account, I should obviously take the moral badness of the latter to outweigh or override the prudential badness of the former. I should aim at the moral good of saving the child, my shoes be damned, because the moral value of helping is, all things considered, better than the prudential value of dry shoes.²² More generally, then, when acting or refraining from acting in some way that is permissible or favoured pro tanto is nevertheless impermissible all things considered, it is because the good (or at least not bad) end at which it aims according to one evaluative standpoint would nevertheless not be good enough considered from another evaluative standpoint so as to override or outweigh the reasons one might have had to act or refrain from acting in accordance with one’s merely pro tanto reasons permitting or favouring it. This eminently plausible principle accords with our intuitions about the badness, wrongness, and blameworthiness of acting or refraining from acting in ways that prefer what is less valuable or important over that which, by comparison, we have sufficient reason to value more, even if the relevant overriding or outweighing value is of a different sort. Nor does the principle require us to hold that genuine goods can conflict with one another. What conflicts is rather the relative preferability of acting on some (types of) goods as compared with others. It might also be that for any possible action situation, some sorts of goods (e.g., moral) always override others (e.g., prudential) in relative preferability.

3. Liberation and the Value of True Explanatory Theories in Theology The central claim of LT is just that theological inquiry, while accountable to epistemic goodness, nevertheless exhibits normative encroachment by other kinds of value. The fact that we are engaged in practices of belief formation aimed at epistemic goods of truth, knowledge, or understanding does not ensure that those practices are entirely unconstrained by moral, aesthetic, and prudential considerations as relevant factors in our search for truth, knowledge, or understanding. Recognizing the relevant kind of encroachment does not require liberation theologians to hold to any substantive epistemological theses about, e.g.,

²² This does not necessarily mean that there is any overarching dimension of value transcending moral and prudential value that affords a ‘commensurating’ standpoint from which to compare them, for it could also be that there are principled ways in which the norms fixed by moral value include prudential considerations, and vice versa. Compare, e.g., Chang 2004 and Sagdahl 2014.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

58

 

pragmatic encroachment on knowledge of the sort endorsed by Stanley, Hawthorne, Fantl & McGrath, etc. That is, my claim is not that non-alethic considerations might determine whether or not someone may in fact be rightly said to possess theological knowledge. The claim instead is that what we ought to seek to know and how we ought to seek to know it in theology must be guided by moral and prudential norms over and above epistemic norms, whether or not epistemic norms properly understood include some non-alethic considerations. Considered pro tanto, epistemic values are too permissive to determine what we ought to theorize about and how. Construing our goal of theory construction solely in terms of amassing truths or acquiring knowledge confronts a practical problem that we could term ‘the problem of plentitude’: there are simply too many truths and thus too much to know about any given subject matter we might be inclined to theorize about. Consequently, in all our knowledge-seeking activities, including that of theory construction, we must draw on non-epistemic values to determine what we ought and ought not theorize about as all-things-considered normative constraints on the pro tanto epistemic permissiveness of our search for truth. For example, consider the project of bringing all the speculative and revealed resources of the Christian intellectual tradition to bear on the question of which type of flooring God most prefers in a church (wood? tile? carpet?). Or consider the project of partially explaining the scope and content of divine omniscience by successively performing plus-one operations on a random number (‘Necessarily, God knows the following truths: 3 + 5 = 8, 3 + 6 = 9, 3 + 7 = 10 . . . ’). Suppose that for each of these projects of theological knowledge-seeking there is some fact of the matter about what we seek to know and that we have sufficient reason to suppose that the means of theorizing at our disposal stand a good chance of making the facts we are targeting accessible to us. If epistemic value were the only normative consideration for theological theory choice, then both of these projects would be eminently worth pursuing to achieve that goal. But quite obviously, divine flooring theory and divine plus-one analysis are not worthwhile projects of theological knowledge-seeking. They both target trivialities that bear no significant connection to anything we ought to care about enough to invest our intellectual and material resources in pursuing them. That is not to say, however, that they are simply worthless. Insofar as knowledge is a valuable thing to have for its own sake, and insofar as knowing is more valuable than merely true belief, knowing what sort of flooring God might most prefer in our churches and identifying precisely some subset of mathematical truths God must know are valuable things to know. But while whatever pro tanto credentials such projects might have making them worthwhile from a purely epistemic point of view, that value is clearly too impoverished and limited to be of much use in determining whether we ought to take up such projects. Rather, the sorts of things we ought to seek to know are those that we have further, non-epistemic reasons to care about in

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

59

some overall conception of human flourishing—our knowledge-seeking is normatively guided more holistically by the epistemic, aesthetic, moral, and prudential goods constitutive of our cognitive and practical lives. As Ernest Sosa has recently argued, it is only ‘knowledge of certain matters [that] adds so importantly to the flourishing of one’s life individually, and of life in community’.²³ Sally Haslanger had developed this thought of Sosa’s at least a decade earlier, but highlights both the regulative role that the notion of human flourishing plays in the practice of theorizing and the potentially controversial nature of that notion: [G]ood theories are systematic bodies of knowledge that select from the mass of truths those that address our broader cognitive and practical demands. In many contexts the questions and purposes that frame the project are understood and progress does not require one to investigate them. But in other contexts, e.g., especially when debate has seemed to break down and parties are talking at crosspurposes, an adequate evaluation of an existing theory or success in developing a new one is only possible when it is made clear what the broader goals are. (Haslanger 2000: 35)

Like Sosa, Haslanger (1999) appeals to a quasi-Aristotelian notion of eudaemonia or some conception of the natural, social, and political conditions of individual and communal human flourishing. However, Haslanger emphasizes more so than Sosa that it is some such shared background story about the social and political conditions of human flourishing individually and in community that determines precisely which non-epistemic cognitive and practical goods encroach on our search for knowledge. Accordingly, it is this shared background that explains our shared judgements about the most important lines of theory construction to pursue. Some such shared background among theologians is what would make some true explanatory theories in theology (like divine flooring theory or divine number-knowledge theory) not worth having as compared with, say a theory about why God allows evil to exist in the world. But, as Haslanger points out, sometimes disputes arise about what counts as the cognitive and practical goods that ought to guide our judgements about what sorts of true explanatory theories are most worth pursuing. While we all might agree on the triviality of divine flooring theory, theologians nevertheless disagree about what we ought prefer to theologically theorize about, or what we are thus blameworthy or practically and intellectually irresponsible for failing to prefer theorizing about. LT is predicated on the fact that we need to know, broadly, what non-epistemically matters and also what matters more and less in order to know how to construct and evaluate all-things-considered good theories in theology. But it also contends for a ²³ Ernest Sosa, ‘Value Matters in Epistemology.’ The Journal of Philosophy 107 (4) (April 2010): 189–90.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

60

 

particular substantive claim about what in some sense matters most—knowledge and understanding of social and political oppression and the forces that contribute to them matter in such a way as to outweigh or override other competing nonepistemic goods that might guide our search for truth, knowledge, or understanding in theology. LT’s criticism of ‘traditional’ theology as ‘bad’ theology is not only that it neglects the importance of striving to promote freedom from oppression as an essential moral and prudential constraint on giving true explanatory theories in theology. Rather, the worry is that much traditional theology is undergirded by an assumed or implicit eudaemonistic background that it fails to acknowledge and critically examine. Some such background picture of human flourishing is bound to be highly contestable while also determining what sorts of theological theory construction are deemed most worth pursuing. By failing to identify or critically interrogate the values that guide theory choice, it is often unclear just what the cognitive or practical goals are that make a good deal of traditional AT worth doing, even if it were to yield true explanatory theories. This is one way of understanding a trope commonly expressed by liberation theologians in criticism of a kind of ‘scholasticism’ in theology. The ‘scholastic disposition’ as described by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1990) is just that of sharply divorcing the task of theorizing from our moral and prudential interests in what we are theorizing about.²⁴ While questionably connected to the medieval movement of theology from the monastery into the school, theologians such as J. Kameron Carter and Willie Jennings who appeal to Bourdieu to criticize a ‘scholastic disposition’ in theology are not so much criticizing any particular historical conception of theology as a theoretical rather than practical science. Rather, they are criticizing a tendency to neglect the activity of theologizing itself as one necessarily shaped by the practical concerns of our eudaemonistic interests, and encouraging us instead to theorize what it is to do theology ‘on the basis of . . . a non-practical point of view founded upon the neutralization of practical interests and practical stakes’.²⁵ In contrast, LT consists in recognizing that, as Michael Eric Dyson puts it, ‘learning takes place in a world of trouble’, imposing on our knowledge-seeking an explicit accountability to non-epistemic goods and non-epistemic virtues.²⁶ Since our knowledge-seeking takes place against the background of the cognitive ²⁴ See Jennings 2010: 7; Carter 2008: 373. ²⁵ Bourdieu 1990: 383. I suspect that the scholastic fallacy as a problem of performative contradiction is a good way of understanding Haslanger’s critique of, e.g., sexist knowledge attributions as a performative problem of the ‘utterance conditions’ rather than truth-conditions of our speech, wherein we engage in performative utterances that contradict our assumed background commitments to, e.g., equality, autonomy, etc. See Haslanger 1999: 463–5. Despite the intuitive appeal of seeing some kind of performative contradiction involved in analysing beliefs constitutive of religious practice from a standpoint that ignores the practical constraints on truth-seeking, some further work would need to be done to clarify what the charge of performative incoherence amounts to. For some useful analyses on that, see Errázuriz 2014, Hintikka 1962, and Dayton 1977. ²⁶ Quoted in Carter 2008: 376.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

61

and practical interests and stakes associated with our flourishing as individuals and in community—interests and stakes thoroughly shaped by unjust and oppressive social arrangements—the scholastic disposition to prefer the pro tanto epistemic permissiveness of theological knowledge-seeking to transcend these actual non-epistemic demands on our theorizing is unjustified, all things considered. For the practice of, say, theoretical physics, or pure mathematics, the nonepistemic interests and stakes in our knowledge-seeking seem to be clearly contextual rather than constitutive constraints on our theorizing—immorality among mathematicians might corrupt the practice of mathematical theorizing, but it does not necessarily corrupt the content of mathematical theory.²⁷ Similarly, liberation theologians have likewise thought it important to identify practical interests as contextually guiding theology. Thus, whereas analytic theologians in thrall to the scholastic disposition have attempted to offer true explanatory theories about the divine nature on the basis of, e.g., perfect being theology, liberation theologians have responded by critiquing the practical interests served by those theories, including the ways in which such theories might historically and presently function as technologies of oppression for, e.g., women, sexual minorities, those with disabilities, and people of colour.²⁸ Most often, the rejoinder to critiques like that is that even if, e.g., divine power has been associated with male power in a way that has proven disastrous for women, this is theologically irrelevant just insofar as it may nevertheless be true that a divine being is necessarily omnipotent. Liberationist criticisms, it is alleged, name a historically contingent fact about a classical conception of divine omnipotence, namely that such a conception happens to have been put to bad use—a fact that is independent of and hence irrelevant to the question of its truth. Indeed, there are liberation theologians who take the moral or prudential badness of traditional perfect being theology to be evidence of its epistemic badness as well, and who therefore go looking for alternative theories of God. But even if a simplistic inference from moral and/or prudential badness to epistemic badness is itself epistemically bad,²⁹ it does not follow that the moral ²⁷ See Anderson 1995: ‘Is physics a “pure” science? In the twentieth century, a highly significant question for physics has been: under what conditions will a mass of fissionable material enter into an uncontrolled nuclear reaction? This question is significant only because states of have conceived a political interest in building nuclear weapons and have funded most research in physics with military ends in mind. Is even number theory a “pure” science? A significant question in number theory includes: what algorithms can rapidly factor very large numbers? This question is significant only because states and businesses have political and commercial interest in constructing and decoding encrypted messages. There is no clear way to isolate a special subset of sciences or fields of inquiry in which no such interests play a role in defining significance, and hence in which no such interests play a role in theory choice’ (43). ²⁸ See, for example Jones 1998, Mercedes 2011. ²⁹ Though I also believe that the matter is not so simple as it is sometimes made to appear. The inference from moral or prudential badness to epistemic badness in theology often functions against the background of some assumptions about the semantic/pragmatic interface of theological language, and divine intentions in self-revelation. If the meaning and use of theological terms/sentences are

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

62

 

and prudential badness is irrelevant. True, it is irrelevant for our all-thingsconsidered view of the truth of, e.g., perfect being theology. Still, it might be highly relevant for revising our all-things-considered view of the importance of engaging in perfect being theology, or the moral and practical value of engaging in it in one way rather than another. If a theologian holds or assumes a picture of human flourishing that is significantly undermined by the relevant moral or prudential badness of a true explanatory theory in theology, then this might give that theologian a pro tanto reason for revising her interests in pursuit of that theory. If the relevant theory is some species of perfect being theology that has been weaponized against the flourishing of women, this might rationally require her to make more explicit the patriarchal interests and stakes in our pursuit of perfect being theology. The chequered history of perfect being theology as a means for comprehending or worshipping God in Western Christianity might even afford her a decisive reason to move away from traditional ways of theorizing divine perfection as something worth doing in theology, or at any rate something worth doing independently of or at the expense of the limited epistemic resources we might devote to theologically theorizing the liberation of women from the church’s misuse of divine omnipotence. All things considered, therefore, it is our eudaemonistic interests that govern our practices of theological knowledge-seeking, and those interests include not only whatever it is that epistemic value contributes to our flourishing individually and in community, but also whatever non-epistemic moral, prudential, and aesthetic values contribute to our flourishing. Whatever sort of eudaemonism serves as a guiding norm in our search for true explanatory theories in theology, therefore, our practice of theorizing must attend to the ways that our (true) theological theories might, or do in fact, practically undermine our eudaemonistic interests. ‘Good’ theology is not merely epistemically good theology but eudaemonistically good theology. Still, why think that social and political oppression takes any kind of privileged place as a criterion for meeting an all-things-considered eudaemonistic constraint on theological knowledge-seeking? There are plenty of possible ways of thinking about a theological picture of human flourishing individually and in community on which freedom from social and political oppression in this life is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of that

inextricably linked (e.g., if their aptness for certain uses figures into the satisfaction conditions of those terms or truth-conditions of those sentences), then maybe the inference from moral/prudential badness to epistemic badness goes through. Similarly, suppose divine self-revelation is given for the sake of the creation of a particular kind of community, but that there is no evidence that an understanding of God as construed in the classical tradition can properly motivate or generate the requisite sort of community, while there is a lot of evidence that such an understanding of God discourages the requisite kind of community. That would seem to count as evidence against a classical understanding of God. Perhaps the linguistic as well as the revelatory arguments that liberation theologians sometimes make and sometimes assume face insuperable difficulties. Still, those arguments and assumptions should be engaged rather than ignored or cavalierly dismissed.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

63

flourishing. Still, I think liberation theologians can plausibly hold that freedom from social and political oppression is not merely a contextual value of Christian theology but also a constitutive one, a defining feature of its subject matter.

4. Liberation as Subject Matter and Method of Christian Theology Liberation theologians have by and large recognized the disagreement that arises regarding the significance of social and political oppression in this life that they require as a minimally adequate specification of the eudaemonism that normatively constrains theological knowledge-seeking. To do Christian theology, however, means that one’s theory choice and what one deems worthy of pursuing theologically must be consistent with (and, perhaps, justified with reference to) a minimally Christian conception of human flourishing, individually and in community. Relying on a Christian conception of eudaemonistic goodness in our theory of the eudaemonistic goodness of theological theorizing admits of a benign kind of epistemic circularity,³⁰ in a similar sort of way that, e.g., Plantinga supposes that we must rely on a Christian conception of the epistemic goodness of Christian belief in our theory of the epistemic goodness of Christian belief.³¹ There is, it seems to me, a good case to be made that the amelioration of social and political oppression in the present life is a crucially important and thematically central feature of a Christian picture of human flourishing individually and in community. I won’t offer any full-blown case for that here, but just mention a few significant reasons to think it plausible. A Christian story of God’s creation and redemption of the world is essentially structured by a ‘problem/solution’ paradigm in which the problem centres on the fall of humanity from a place of cooperative caretaking over the portion of creation to which human life is bound. The vocation of humanity that defines its flourishing in the Edenic ideal of Genesis is that of human individuals in community mirroring, representing, or ‘imaging’ God’s own care for the created order by cooperatively caring for it. Essentially constitutive of our flourishing qua images, therefore, is our capacity to mediate divine care in our mutually dependent relations with one another, and in our cooperative nurture of land and non-human life. The human ‘Fall’ interrupts not only human life but introduces a breach in the created order, one that involves a devolution and aberration of our relationship with God. This broken relationship is evidenced primarily by our failure of mutual dependence on and cooperation with one another and our consequent abuse of one another, land, and non-human creatures.

³⁰ See Alston 1986 (reprinted in Alston 1989) and Bergmann 2004.

³¹ See Plantinga 2000.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

64

 

The principal human expression of this breach with God and nature, in Christian Scripture, is social and political enmity, oppression, and violence, which is equated with an alienation from divine judgement and a moral ‘pollution’ of land. God’s work of redemption on that story is therefore a work primarily aimed at the restoration of a renewed form of human community freed from these material distortions of human life. The vision of that freedom is just the ‘kingdom of God’—a form of divine ordering of human social and political life within which human mediation of divine caretaking for one another and non-human creation is recovered. That vocation is what is embodied by God’s redemption of Israel and ordering of its social and political life by the promise of the Law, which had as its intended end the recovery of the Edenic ideal, and fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, through whom God has recovered that ideal. The church, Christians have held, is the community that bears witness to the realization of God’s social and political ideal for humanity in the present as a kind of ‘preview’ of the eschatological completion of that ideal that awaits us in the age to come. Christian social identity and practice is essentially oriented by this ‘already’ and ‘not yet’ of divine redemption for which God’s victory over sin and death has already been partially and imperfectly realized in Christ’s present presence and agency for the church while also not yet consummated in the restoration of the world that awaits Christ’s return. On this picture of eudaemonia given in a Christian story of creation and redemption, we ought to place a high relative importance in our theological theorizing about the subject matter of our present and future liberation from social and political oppression. The significance of social and political oppression in this life for a Christian eudaemonism is a function of its significance in the ‘already’ of this story—the mission of the church to enact a present-day preview of the form of communal life it awaits in the age to come. Accordingly, to justify LT’s privileging of liberation from social and political oppression in this life as a substantive all-things-considered requirement for good theology, liberation theologians need only show that this mission centrally involves attention to social and political conditions of liberation and oppression. Thus Cone, for example, argues that the rescue of Israel from slavery in Egypt and Jesus’s proclamation of God’s rescue of the poor and marginalized in the Gospels are not incidental to the Christian Gospel, but partially constitutive of it (1986: 2–4). Other liberation theologians similarly point to Paul’s proclamation of the reconciliation of all people in Christ, and the overcoming of the enmity of ethnic, economic, gendered, and sexual identities evinced by the ruling powers of the present age as points to be plotted along the same trajectory (in, e.g., Gal 3:28). As Paul puts it in Galatians, it is ‘for freedom that Christ set us free’ (Gal 5:1). Many also rely on the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament witness, which demands what Latin American liberation theologians identify as a ‘preferential option for

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

65

the poor’,³² and condemns nationalistic fantasies, even when they are Israelite. While Israelite and Christian communities across the Scriptural witness do not always properly proclaim or live up to the conceptual or material requirements of the liberative trajectory set by Scripture itself, that trajectory is what God intends for the Church in its continuation of Jesus’s proclamation of ‘good news’ to the poor, the marginalized, the victims of injustice at the hands of worldly systems of power. Suppose that the liberation theologian’s construal of Christian eudaemonism is right. That would mean not just that Christians have a unique interest in identifying those who suffer oppression in this life and articulating the hope of freedom as realizable through the present victory of Christ in and through Christian community, but also that this vocation is of central importance to Christian identity and practice per se. Thus, while it could be that there are other ways in which the practice of theological theorizing might contribute to human flourishing on a Christian conception of what that means—our theorizing could very well be an expression of worship, contemplative prayer, or cognitive intimacy with the Lord³³—these goods might be overridden or outweighed by theorizing that serves the interests of the oppressed. In the absence of theorizing in conformity to the ‘Great Inversion’ of Jesus that exalts the lowly and humbles the pride of the powerful, Christian theological theorizing might be a form of worship on par with the Temple sacrifices of those who refuse to do justice: a stench in the divine nostrils (Amos 5:21–7). So on the appropriate background picture of human flourishing, Christians might regard liberation from social and political oppression to be a ‘substantive’ criterion for good theology, a normative constraint on theological theory choice that prefers theories that serve the interest of liberation over those that don’t. But this does not require liberation theologians to hold that we ought not theorize about matters that seem only distantly related to the identification of the oppressed or a specification of the conditions for proclaiming and enacting as God’s people Christ’s liberation for them. Rather, it is just that any non-liberative subject matter of our theorizing faces a kind of justificatory burden about what makes its putative deliverances worth knowing. Whether God in fact possesses any of the attributes classically ascribed to divinity, whether libertarian freedom exists, etc., may well turn out to be of great importance in light of a Christian conception of human flourishing. Proclaiming good news to the poor on a Christian conception of what that means may require a proper understanding of the asymmetric divine accessing relations between the human and divine natures of Jesus (Morris 1986: 106). But according to LT, much AT mistakenly proceeds

³² See Singh 2017: 551–63, Bennett 2007, and West 2007. ³³ See Adams 2014, Griffiths 2016: 24–6.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

66

 

simply as if the all-things-considered importance of any such projects is either self-evident, or immaterial to the permissibility of pursuing them. If Christian theologians ought to prefer to offer theories about God and God’s relation to the world that appropriately reflect the central eudaemonistic importance of God’s liberating activity in the world, then it would be practically incoherent or self-defeating to adopt a strategy of theorizing that runs contrary to God’s liberating activity in the world. It is something like taking up the game of chess with a strategy—whether out of refusal or ignorance—that undermines the norm that defines the goal and purpose of playing the game in the first place. While there might be many possible ways that such an ignorance or refusal might be realized, there is a wide range of ways that are entirely consistent with a conformity to the rules of permissible movement for each piece, such as, e.g., trying to lose each of one’s pieces as quickly as possible. Likewise, there are potentially many ways that one might fail or refuse to do Christian theology in conformity to the non-epistemic goods internal to it that guide theological theorizing, while nevertheless being faithfully guided by its epistemic goods. It is in virtue of a recognition of this fact that LT places not only a substantive but also a methodological constraint on Christian theology. Miranda Fricker highlights two ways that social and political oppression might impose itself on the practice of offering true explanatory theories that are especially relevant for Christian theology as construed by LT. First, she emphasizes the intuitive idea, grounded in Marx but developed more recently especially by Lukács, that a life led at the sharp edge of any given set of power relations provides the critical understanding (of the social world, in the first instance) where a life cushioned by the possession of power does not . . . [S]ocial identity and power relations . . . may influence epistemic access to the world.³⁴

If we ought to be guided in our theorizing about God and God’s relation to the world by our eudaemonistic interest in the comparative importance of God’s liberating activity for the oppressed, then our ability to evaluate or assess the significance of our explanatory theories for a Christian liberative ambition will depend on our epistemic access to the relevant facts about liberation for the oppressed. We will need to know, for example, what sorts of oppression humans suffer, where and how the effects of that oppression are registered in our cognitive and practical lives, and how central loci of theological interest are connected to God’s liberating activity as it is, e.g. grounded in the divine nature, enacted in God’s creation, providence, election, incarnation, and manifest in the life of the Church. But as Fricker notes, epistemic access to facts such as these is not evenly

³⁴ Fricker 2000: 147. See also Harding 1991.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

67

distributed—not everyone is in an equally good position to identify or evaluate them. Whatever else it might mean to belong to an oppressed group as a woman, a sexual minority, a person of colour, a person with a disability, a person of a lower socio-economic class, or some intersection of these, it is to occupy a particular kind of social position, what Harding calls ‘ “nodes” of historically specific social practices and social meanings that mediate when and how suffering occurs for such socially constructed persons’.³⁵ Harding explains the kind of relative advantage and disadvantage of epistemic access to the relevant social and political facts about oppression in terms of the non-epistemic interests that affect our capacities to notice and attend to those facts. As she puts it, ‘members of oppressed groups have fewer interests in ignorance about the social order and fewer reasons to invest in maintaining or justifying the status quo than do dominant groups.’³⁶ The flip side of this is that those belonging to privileged groups who benefit from the material disadvantages of oppressed groups are very strongly prudentially motivated to maintain a kind of insensitivity to the relevant facts that would threaten their relative advantages. Thus, for example, in speaking about racial identity, Charles Mills has famously drawn our attention to the ‘cognitive and moral economy psychically required for conquest, colonization, and enslavement’, as a kind of ‘consensual hallucination’ that ‘precludes self-transparency and genuine understanding of all social realities’ (Mills 1997: 18–19). The infrastructure of social meanings and relations constitutive of racial identity, Mills argues, has systematically distorting cognitive effects on the racially privileged (i.e., whites), which include ‘processes of cognition, individual and social’ including ‘perception, conception, memory testimony, and motivational group interest’ (2007: 23–33). ‘Oppressors’, Cone says, ‘never like to hear the truth in a sociopolitical context defined by their lies’ (1986: xvi). Those non-whites who are oppressed precisely by this consensual or structurally reinforced ignorance of white social position, on the other hand, enjoy a kind of privileged access to precisely what whites in virtue of their social position miss. Commenting on James Weldon Johnson’s remarks that, ‘colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them’, Mills observes that Often for their very survival, blacks have been forced to become lay anthropologists, studying the strange culture, customs, and mind-set of the “white tribe”

³⁵ Harding 1991: 122. There are important questions about what socially constructed kinds are (e.g., whether or not they are a species of natural kind, objective types, or what, as well as how particular group kinds should be analysed), and whether or not social identities are reducible to social positions (as, e.g., Haslanger sometimes seems to suggest), but we needn’t pronounce on any of those ontological questions for the epistemic consideration I’m interested in here. ³⁶ Harding 1991: 126.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

68

  that has such frightening power over them, that in certain time periods can even determine their life or death on a whim. (2007: 17–18)

But while there is therefore some sense in which oppressed social and political identities have a privileged mode of epistemic access to that which Christians ought to deem matters of central theological importance, Fricker further points out that, secondly, ‘social identity may constrain participation in epistemic practices—practices of asserting, denying, telling, asking, giving reasons, etc.’ (2000: 147). On the one hand, in seeking to provide true explanatory theories of any sort, one must necessarily engage in such practices, but on the other hand those practices are in large measure interactive, so that a person’s full participation in them depends on certain reciprocating background attitudes on the part of fellow participants—attitudes which, for instance, provide for the appropriate distributions of trust and of credibility. If relations of gender, class, or race cause distortion in these background attitudes, then social identity and power have intervened in a manner that can be the concern not merely of the sociologist of knowledge, but of the epistemologist. (2000: 147)

For theological inquiry in particular, the two factors that Fricker identifies above work in tandem, so that those who are best positioned epistemically to identify the sites of theological inquiry that Christian theologians have most reason to prefer, all things considered, are the worst positioned to shape the practice of theological inquiry. The kind of epistemic ‘privilege’ associated with identifying oppressive social arrangements and forms of agency enjoyed by those of disadvantaged social classes also imposes corresponding epistemic deficits, such as their acceptance as credible sources of testimonial knowledge or interpretive competence.³⁷ In addition to the potential inaccessibility of these epistemic goods, belonging outside a dominant social class can also bring with it disadvantages in the ability to identify and access the prudential goods required to prosecute the kind of theological inquiry consistent with a Christian eudaemonistic interest in that practice. These considerations go a long way towards explaining why it is that the theological market share of LT tends to be insulated from significant engagement with modes of theological inquiry that place comparatively less importance on matters of social and political oppression. As Cone puts it White theologians wanted me to debate with them about the question of whether ‘black theology’ was real theology, using their criteria to decide the issue. With ³⁷ For a detailed account of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as species of epistemic injustice, see Fricker 2007.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

69

clever theological sophistication, white theologians defined the discipline of theology . . . [as] unrelated to the problem of slavery and racism. Using a white definition of theology, I knew there was no way I could win the debate . . . Racism is a disease that perverts one’s moral sensitivity and distorts the intellect . . . They who are responsible for the evil of racism also want to tell its victims whether bigotry is a legitimate subject matter of systematic theology . . . Why then should I spend my intellectual energy answering their questions, as if their experience were the only source from which theology derives its questions? (1986: xvii–xviii)

Cone here reflects on just the situation of asymmetric distribution in epistemic and prudential advantages and disadvantages that Fricker analyses—one that accords the most significant regulative control over theological knowledge-seeking to those who occupy epistemic positions least well suited to discern and evaluate the eudaemonistic significance of oppression that is partially constitutive of the practice of Christian theology. But even where the more traditional and orthodox research programmes of theology adopt a more epistemically permissive attitude toward proponents of LT than the sort Cone describes, they are often subject to what José Medina (riffing on Hilary Putnam (1973)) calls a ‘social division of cognitive laziness’—a form of culpable ignorance that is justified by a kind of buck-passing under the banner of a disciplinary division of labour.³⁸ As in the substance of theological inquiry, so too for its mode, liberation theologians have described this dynamic as an epistemic consequence of the ‘great inversion’ of God’s liberating activity. In the Gospels we find Jesus emphasizing that those invested in the success and maintenance of various worldly systems of oppressive power, including religious people thus invested, are those who fail to properly discern the theologically trivial from the weighty. Those who adopt the vantage of the oppressed, however, occupy a position of privileged access to revelatory knowledge. As St Paul memorably puts it: the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God . . . Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe . . . Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God

³⁸ Medina 2013: 145–7. For a particular analysis of the way this works itself out in philosophy, see Outlaw 2007.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

70

  chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.³⁹

The unique epistemic access to theological knowledge afforded by one’s oppressed social status is just the sort of fact that Fricker identifies and Cone incorporates into his approach to theology that gives black voices a privileged methodological place. M. Shawn Copeland’s womanist theology identifies this as a kind of ‘critical cognitive praxis’ that expresses ‘subjugated knowledge’⁴⁰ constitutive of an ‘ethics of thinking’. Copeland develops the idea of a theological ‘canon’ that accords with St Paul’s analysis of Christian theological knowledge-seeking. An alternative canon of those socially and politically deemed lowly likewise expresses the mind of an alternative tradition—one that Paul identifies with the mind of Christ. ‘It leads and trains a mind in an appropriation of a tradition of epistemic, aesthetic, moral and cultural decisions, priorities, and desires.’⁴¹ Overcoming the coercive epistemic silencing, dismissal, and privilege-blindness of non-liberation theologians who represent socially and politically dominant identities requires a retrieval of such a canon that represents the interests of the socially and politically oppressed across time and space.⁴²

5. Christian AT as LT Despite the considerable and impressive theological market share that AT has acquired in contemporary academic theology, it has by and large failed to engage in or with theologies of liberation. If the case for LT I’ve made above is right, then Christian theologians who have become enthusiastic about AT have neglected the ‘one thing needful’ in that enthusiasm. Namely, they have not reckoned with a meta-theological case for LT, according to which any instance of good theology will be an instance of theology substantively and methodologically committed to the cognitive and practical importance of serving the interests of the socially and politically oppressed. My defence of LT aims in the first place to be an instance of

³⁹ I Cor. 1:18–30, NIV. ⁴⁰ Copeland 2006: 227–8. Copeland’s ‘subjugated knowledge’ approximates Harding’s conception of epistemic advantage of the oppressed, Mills’s conception of survivalist anthropology, and what Rowan Williams calls the ‘ “intelligence of the victim,” [note omitted]—not because it is good or holy in itself to be a victim, far from it, but because looking at the world from the point of view of those excluded by worldly systems of power frees us from the need always to be securing our own power at all costs’ (Williams 2003: 46). ⁴¹ Copeland 2006: 231. ⁴² Copeland 2006: 232.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

71

AT, insofar as it conforms to the ambitions of offering a true explanatory theory falling outside the natural sciences, illuminates a normative constraint on the scope and nature of our knowledge of the world, and does both in a manner that does not obviously violate any of Rea’s stylistic prescriptions P1–P5. But even if it fails as a defence of LT, and as such fails to prompt any analytic theologians to take up a theological commitment to LT and produce exemplary instances of it, the argument might serve to raise a secondary question that I find isn’t adequately addressed in the AT literature: namely, what should we think it is that makes theology in general, and AT in particular, worth doing? Why should we be granted the requisite space, time, money, material, and intellectual infrastructure to do it? LT may not be the only viable answer, but any attractiveness it has depends on seeing the pressing significance of the question. So suppose that a large proportion of particularly Christian stakeholders in AT do recognize the pressing importance of the question and moreover that it prompts us toward the development of a research programme in analytic theologies of liberation. What sorts of revisions to the present state of AT would that require? Arguably, it would require a significant revision in the content, the constituency, and the canon of theology as standardly construed in AT. As it presently exists, analytic theologians have not taken up theological topics with any demonstrably liberative ambitions with respect to the most important forms of social and political oppression that contribute to human misery in our lives here below and in via. To engage AT as LT would require us to remedy this in the subject matter we choose to treat and the questions we are seeking to answer by way of our treatments. That implies no shift away from theological metaphysics or epistemology toward ethics in particular, only a shift in perspective about issues and questions in theological metaphysics and epistemology are made especially salient from the standpoint of the oppressed. A shift of that sort, however, would also require a corresponding shift in the constituency of AT, which at this moment remains predominantly made up of those socially and politically dominant groups and as such remains subject to the systematic distortions in the distribution and significance of epistemic and non-epistemic goods that order their knowledgeseeking. Finally, the inclusion of socially oppressed groups, while necessary, is insufficient for bringing about the requisite move toward LT apart from representing a corresponding change in the sources or canons of theological reflection that shape our aims and interests in the practice of theology.⁴³, ⁴⁴ ⁴³ As Linda Martín Alcoff points out, it is always possible that ‘members of oppressed groups also have specific reasons to maintain their own ignorance about the social order . . But such reasons . . may be outweighed by the need to know the true reality of the social conditions within which one must survive’ (2007: 43–4). ⁴⁴ I would like to thank Michelle Panchuk, Michael Rea, and Kevin Timpe for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

72

 

References Adams, Marilyn McCord. 2014. ‘What’s Wrong with the Ontotheological Error?’ Journal of Analytic Theology 2: 1–12. https://doi.org/10.12978/jat.2014–1.120013000318a. Alcoff, Linda Martín. 2007. ‘Epistemologies of Ignorance: Three Types.’ In Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, 39–58. Albany: SUNY Press. Alston, Wiliam P. 1989. Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Alston, William P. 1986. ‘Epistemic Circularity.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47: 1–30. Anderson, Elizabeth. 1995. ‘Knowledge, Human Interests, and Objectivity in Feminist Epistemology.’ Philosophical Topics 23: 27–58. Bennett, Zoë. 2007. ‘ “Action Is the Life of All”: The Praxis Based Epistemology of Liberation Theology.’ In Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, edited by Christopher Rowland, 39–54. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bergmann, Michael. 2004. ‘Epistemic Circularity: Malignant and Benign.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69: 709–27. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. ‘The Scholastic Point of View.’ Cultural Anthropology 5: 380–91. Carter, J. Kameron. 2008. Race: A Theological Account. New York: Oxford University Press. Chang, Ruth. 2004. ‘All Things Considered.’ Philosophical Perspectives 18: 1–22. Coakley, Sarah. 2002. Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Coakley, Sarah. 2013. God, Sexuality, and the Self : An Essay ‘On the Trinity’. Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York: Cambridge University Press. Cone, James H. 1986. A Black Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Copeland, M. Shawn. 2006. ‘A Thinking Margin: The Womanist Movement as Critical Cognitive Praxis.’ In Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society, edited by Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, 226–36. New York: NYU Press. Cote-Bouchard, Charles. 2017. ‘Is Epistemic Normativity Value Based?’ Dialogue 56: 407–30. Crisp, Oliver D. 2014. Deviant Calvinism: Broadening Reformed Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Crisp, Oliver D., and Michael C. Rea, eds. 2009. Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dayton, Eric. 1977. ‘Pragmatic Contradiction.’ Ethics 87: 222–36. DeCruz, Helen. 2018. ‘Religious Beliefs and Philosophical Views: A Qualitative Study.’ Res Philosophica 95: 477–504.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

73

Dole, Andrew C. 2010. Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order. New York: Oxford University Press. Errázuriz, José Antonio. 2014. ‘The Performative Contradiction as an Argumentative Device: An Analysis of Its Reach and Scope.’ Logique et Analyse 225: 15–44. Frederick, Danny. 2015. ‘Pro-Tanto Obligations and Ceteris-Paribus Rules.’ Journal of Moral Philosophy 12: 255–66. Fricker, Miranda. 2000. ‘Feminism in Epistemology: Pluralism without Postmodernism.’ In Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, edited by Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby, 146–65. New York: Oxford University Press. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Griffiths, Paul J. 2016. The Practice of Catholic Theology. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. Haslanger, Sally. 1999. ‘What Knowledge Is and What It Ought to Be.’ Philosophical Perspectives 13: 459–80. Haslanger, Sally. 2000. ‘Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?’ Noûs 34: 31–55. Haslanger, Sally. 2001. ‘On Being Objective and Being Objectified.’ In A Mind of One’s Own, edited by Charlotte Witt and Louise Antony, 2nd edition, 209–43. Boulder, Colo: Routledge. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1962. ‘Cogito Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?’ The Philosophical Review 71: 3–32. Jennings, Willie James. 2010. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. New Haven: Yale University Press. Jones, William R. 1998. Is God A White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology. Boston: Beacon Press. Kamitsuka, Margaret D. 2007. Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference. New York: Oxford University Press. McCall, Thomas H. 2015. An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Medina, José. 2013. The Epistemology of Resistance. New York: Oxford University Press. Mercedes, Anna. 2011. Power For: Feminism and Christ’s Self-Giving. London: T&T Clark. Mills, Charles W. 1997. The Racial Contract. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. Mills, Charles W. 2007. ‘White Ignorance.’ In Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, 11–38. Albany: SUNY Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

74

 

Morris, Thomas V. 1986. The Logic of God Incarnate. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Outlaw, Lucius T. 2007. ‘Social Ordering and the Systematic Production of Ignorance.’ In Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, 197–211. Albany: SUNY Press. Pawl, Timothy. 2016. In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plantinga, Alvin. 2000. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press. Putnam, Hilary. 1973. ‘Meaning and Reference.’ Journal of Philosophy 70: 699–711. Rauser, Randall. 2009. ‘Theology as a Bull Session.’ In Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, 70–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rea, Michael C. 2009. ‘Introduction.’ In Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, 1–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sagdahl, Mathias Slåttholm. 2014. ‘The Argument From Nominal–Notable Comparisons, “Ought All Things Considered”, and Normative Pluralism.’ The Journal of Ethics 18: 405–425. Singh, Devin. 2017. ‘Liberation Theology.’ In Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology, edited by William J. Abraham and Frederick D. Aquino, 551–63. New York: Oxford University Press. Tonstad, Linn Marie. 2015. God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude. New York: Routledge. West, Gerald. 2007. ‘The Bible and the Poor: A New Way of Doing Theology.’ In Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, edited by Christopher Rowland, 159–82. New York: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Rowan. 2003. Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgment. 2nd Paperback Edition. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Wood, William. 2016. ‘Trajectories, Traditions, and Tools in Analytic Theology.’ Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (May): 254–66. Wood, William. 2017. ‘Analytic Theology as Liberal Theology?’ Fuller Seminary Analytic Theology Colloquium, 12 April, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. Yadav, Sameer. 2017. ‘Christian Doctrine as Ontological Commitment to a Narrative.’ In The Task of Dogmatics: Explorations in Theological Method, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders, 70–86. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

3 Mary as Mediator Amy Peeler

‘ . . . the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.’ Luke 1:26–7 NRSV She is female, Jewish, young, unmarried, and a virgin. Later Luke reveals that she is poor (2:23–4). None of these social identities put her on the side of power. Quite to the contrary, she is about as vulnerable as a person could be in the first century, especially as the story unfolds and she is found pregnant before her betrothal became a consummated marriage. Yet she became, of course, one of the most powerful figures in the Christian tradition with many vying for her graces or seeking to contain her story. From an academic standpoint, she seems ideal as a mediator. Ideal as a study for thinkers who value the intersection of different disciplines, her scriptural story enriched by the insights of historical criticism and narrative exegesis flowers into the richness of the many philosophical inquiries and theological doctrines that must reckon with her. As such, study about her provides a meeting space for multiple fields of study. Once one departs from the tower of ivory, however, her story is, of course, a battleground, a territory for war rather than union. Doctrines about her are only one of the many, but surely one of the most well-known and deep-seated causes for divisions in the fractured body of Christ. In addition to doctrinal debates, ideological wars swirl around her. Both theologies from the margins and theologies from the centre exalt her, often exalting very different pictures of her, as ideal. Both doctrinal debate about her and ideological critique of her story remain entangled in her particularities, her many vulnerable social identities. A response to Mary’s story is a response to all the pieces that make her who she is, and that response is shaped by all the pieces that make the interpreter who she is, including her theological identity. For many, especially those drawn to think about Mary, theological identity is one of the many social roles a person can inhabit, or in the language of Sally Haslanger, one of the many ‘gels on a stage light’ (2012: 9). Religion is one of the gels that adds colour and shapes the dimension of a person’s life. There is a degree to which this social role is voluntary in that one chooses to adopt certain Amy Peeler, Mary as Mediator In: Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology. Edited by: Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848844.003.0004

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

76

 

theological beliefs. Yet, these are chosen often because respected people (frequently one’s family) adopt similar beliefs.¹ Michelle Panchuck states, ‘our understanding of our experience is also influenced by the existing conceptual apparatus that we inherit from the social groups in which we find ourselves. Thus, the shape of our knowledge is partially determined and, at times, constrained by our social situation’ (Unpublished: 4). A person thinks in particular ways about Mary as a Jewish, poor, young, unmarried, and pregnant woman as influenced by their theological identity. Not all readers agree on the nature, significance, and conclusions that should be drawn about social identities in some part because of the theological colour of their lives. Moreover, thoughts about this particular woman Mary—a woman who cannot be ignored because she is integral in all the theological systems—issue forth into actions. This is in line with the nature of theology as a voluntary social role; as such it is ‘subject to certain norms or reasons for acting’ (Witt 2011: 43). The Catholic or Protestant² is held to certain standards defined by beliefs or practices of other members of the group, and these beliefs and practices impact responses to social issues. Theological identity as I employ it here fits into the category of an ideology as defined by Haslanger: ‘These ideologies, and the practices they partly constitute, make a difference . . . . In particular, they enable both the reproduction and disruption of social inequality by guiding our perceptions and responses to existing social conditions’ (2012: 19). Thoughts about Mary’s social identities shaped by one’s own complex social identities—including theology—issue forth in action for the pressing social issues touched by her identities. Contemplating Mary, then, may not be just academic, but maybe academics can set an example of how to do so, especially with those of different theological groups. It is these identities that create disagreement about her, but once named, theology can provide the location for understanding and even connection for action. My research focuses upon the theme of kinship across the New Testament, including the explicit and implicit references to Mary the mother of Jesus the Messiah. This exegetical attention has convinced me that her story can mediate between different responses to social identities that arise out of different doctrinal commitments. It is important to clarify at the outset what the meaning of ‘mediate’ at play is here. I selected this title as an intentional provocation. Mary as Mediatrix is one of ¹ Moberly discusses the importance of influential persons in the adoption of theological belief in The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith (2018). ² I will focus on these two broad and varied groups in this address. As a Protestant speaking at a Catholic institution when I initially wrote the address out of which this chapter arose, this seemed most fitting to the contextual setting. I hope other traditions can find points of connection for how their theological identity might read her story.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

77

the most debated issues between differently theologically situated people.³ Such a title immediately elicits a response that questions the possibility of any agreement at all. From that place of defensiveness or doubt, I want to show the way in which she mediates, not focusing on her mediation between God and humanity (the doctrine in debate) but between differently located humans. One might imagine that I am asking for some kind of ‘common meeting ground’ that asks for compromises on both sides. Not so. Instead, I suggest that the story of Mary mediates as a common meeting space. People of many different identities can meet up at Mary, so to speak, and use continued reflection on her story—and on the way her story has been understood and appropriated by others—not only to sharpen their own views but also to have them challenged; and a commitment to meeting others at Mary in the sense I’m vaguely gesturing at here can also help foster and ground a commitment to remain in dialogue with those who appropriate and understand her story differently, and so can induce a kind of humility in engagement with other Christians and might after all lead to a kind of disputesettling, or, at any rate, peace amidst disagreement. From that place common action for pressing social issues becomes more natural. And more focused. Any story shared by different theological communities could mediate between them in this way. One might ask why I would not focus on the story of Jesus himself. I do not seek to make the claim that Mary is the only one who could do so, but her story is a particularly good choice for three reasons. First, her story is more limited than that of Jesus. As a biblical scholar I can in a manageable way focus on the places where the text refers to her. The dataset that different communities share in the sacred text is inexhaustibly rich but feasible for focused analysis. Second, Mary’s story—her combination of identities—provide the ground for taking up especially pertinent actions for our time: advocacy for Jews, the poor, and women. The question ‘Why Mary?’ still lingers because if limited text and advocacy for the vulnerable are the criteria then another contentious but rarely mentioned female character like Junia (Rom 16:7) or Priscilla (Acts 18:2, 18, 26; Rom 16:3; 1 Cor 16:19; 2 Tim 4:19) might serve just as well. Their lives too are fascinating topics for study and have even served as a muse for me in an effort at passionate yet bridge-building writing.⁴ Mary, however, stands alone. Unlike other female characters, her story is one that creates deep-seated divisions and therefore provides a meaningful test case for being able to create a space for conversation. People may debate about Junia, but the debate about her does not touch the deep cords of their identity as does the story of Mary. If common space is possible with Mary’s story, it is a real achievement. Because of her unique role in the Christian

³ See Pelikan 1996: 125–39.

⁴ Peeler 2017: 273–85.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

78

 

imaginary, her story offers a unique and powerful meeting space for contemplation, conversation, and action. I seek to show that kind of mediation in this essay by devoting focused exegetical attention first to a theological debate: Mary’s sinlessness (or not). As a New Testament scholar, it will be no surprise that I begin with the text and in so doing present both its limitations and its possibilities. The text in and of itself is limited in that it is quite minimal as it refers to her so that differences over her story arise not from the text alone but in the complex interplay of these commitments shaped by particular contexts employed as one reads the texts. Hence, the purpose of my work on Mary is not to wade into millennia-long debates to convince readers of affirmations about Mary or their denials. The text cannot do that. This limitation, at the same time, is also the text’s promise. In it, very different readers find the common ground that various doctrines share, and from that common ground comes the opportunity for mutual understanding and conversation. From that place I turn to the ideological debates about responses to her story, in particular, the debate around women’s ministries. Here too, theological identity shapes response, and in this instance, response has real-life implications. Some readers may perceive that this issue is minor in the scope of the many pressing social concerns of the present era, but for the many women for whom faith is an integral and active part of their lives, this is no minor question. Moreover, answers to this question about ministry by the many religious people in the world impacts their thoughts and actions toward gender issues outside the religious arena. If different theological identities can find common ground on both doctrine and ideology, that provides a place to converse about the actions that Mary’s story elicits. When, through her story, those engaged with her consider that which is held in common, we have a place to understand more fully the many who hold that which is common so that conversations about responses to her social identities and those who share them can take place in a less charged and more productive way. If Catholics and Protestants can discuss a common Marian theology and common ideals for women’s ministries, these will be small but meaningful acts that begin to name and overturn oppression against women writ large.

1. A Doctrine of Sin with Reference to Mary Many in the ancient church affirmed that Mary lived without sin.⁵ It is difficult for me to describe the level of disbelief this reality elicits for many of my Protestant ⁵ For an extensive treatment, see Graef & Thomposon 2009. Tina Beattie presents a summary in ‘Mary in Patristic Thought’ (2007: 99–102).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

79

students. ‘Really?’ the Protestant says, ‘Does not Luke portray her as saying that God is her Savior (1:47), and if the Savior saves from sins (1:77), she would be included.’ The wide scope of the sinfulness of humanity as described in Romans 1–3 and the singular attestation that Jesus alone was without sin (Heb 4:14) suggests that Mary too would stand in need of redemption. On this point, of course, no theologian would disagree, she was saved by the work of God in Christ as any other human, but precisely when this saved-from-sin state came to her was the source of debate. That it was true of her, during her life even, was the dominant position for several hundred years of the Christian Church.⁶ Hence, many early theologians did not see any evidence of her sinning in the accounts of her life. She questioned Jesus, and like the other disciples probably did not understand him or his mission fully, but in no text is there clear evidence that she sinned in relationship with him or others. So I will argue.⁷ Two stories in the gospels have been suggested as evidence of her error. First, in a particular pericope which all three Synoptics record (Mark 3:31–5/Matt 12:46–50/Luke 8:19–21), she and his adelphoi, normally translated as ‘brothers’ but it could indicate more distant familial relations, stand outside the crowd (Mat 12:46/Mark 3:31/Luke 8:19). They are not in this moment within the circle of listeners. When the crowd makes Jesus aware of their presence, he points out those in the circle (at least in Matthew (12:49) and Mark’s (3:34) version) and replies that his mother and brothers are those who do the will of God. Matthew has already clearly presented an account in which Mary hears the will of God and does it, so by virtue of her past actions she is included in Jesus’s definition of his family even if he does not point to her in that moment. It is Mark’s version that seems most to suggest her at fault. He narratively joins the ‘who is my true family’ pericope (3:30–1) with an account where some in association with Jesus think that he is ‘out of his mind’ and seek to take him away from the crowd (3:20–1). It could be that the phrase in question in 3:21, oi par autou, literally ‘those from him’ means family,⁸ which is then explicitly articulated as his mother and adelphoi in 3:31. It could also be that they, his family, are the third-person plural ‘they’ who want to snatch him away because they think him existemi—‘out of himself ’, which means that they think he is insane. The narrative

⁶ Sarah Jane Boss traces the debate in ‘The Development of the Doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception’ (Boss 2007a: 207–33). ⁷ A similar argument could be made for Junia or many other rarely mentioned persons in Scripture. There is no evidence that she sinned either. The difference is, of course, Mary is integral to the story in a way that Junia is not. Moreover, the issue of Mary’s sinlessness is a point of doctrinal division. I seek to show that even at these points of division, her scriptural story provides a place for meeting, which will provide mutual understanding and shared experience. ⁸ This is one among several options for the phrase (‘para’, Bauer et al. 1999: 3.b 756–7).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

80

 

structure could suggest Mary believes something false and demeaning of her son and seeks to take him out of the work to which God has called him. At each point along this possible path, however, there are other interpretive options.⁹ It could also be that oi par autou are other associates of Jesus, not his family.¹⁰ It could be that this group simply wants to remove him from a huge crowd—so large that he cannot find time or space to eat (3:20)—for his own good rather than to remove him from his ministry. It could also be that the crowd is the subject of the third-person plural verb elegon, and so it is them who are saying that he is existemi, not the group who comes to him. It could be whoever is making this statement thinks not that he is insane but worries that he has lost his senses in that he is not normally caring for himself. In other words, thinking that Jesus is functioning in a way that is outside the bounds of healthy reality would not necessarily have to be a derisive position about his mental or spiritual state. It would not necessarily be sin. My point is this: one would have to adopt all the ‘negative’ Marian possibilities to argue that she is among the group who thinks that crazy Jesus should be taken out of public ministry. If that interpretation is adopted, then this would be the only canonical text that shows her misunderstanding of who he is and what he should be doing. Conversely, because the pericopes in Mark 3 offer so many interpretive possibilities, it would be more in line with the story preserved in the other authors of the New Testament and the Christian tradition to adopt one of the many interpretive combinations that lean toward a more positive picture of Mary’s thoughts about Jesus.¹¹ All that to say, this story in Mark seems to me a very weak text upon which to hang any assurance that Mary sinned. As a second example, Marian misunderstanding also appears as an interpretive trope in the treatment of the Cana narrative. When she alerts Jesus to the problem of the flagging wine supply, some interpreters suggest that this shows her distance from Jesus.¹² Irenaeus suggests she shows ‘untimely haste’ in her request.¹³ She is grasping for honour. She desired, according to Chrysostom, to ‘render herself more conspicuous . . . to gain credit from his miracles’.¹⁴ She displayed a misunderstanding of the path of shame he must walk before his glorification.¹⁵

⁹ Tim Perry lays out several of the interpretive options and their supporters (2006: 33, n. 1). ¹⁰ This phrase can also indicate envoys or relatives, rather than just immediate family (‘para’, Bauer et al. 1999: 3.b 756–7). ¹¹ This is not to say that each author of the New Testament who mentions her makes exactly the same point about her life. It must be recognized that Mark considers her story not important enough to include. That being said, it seems more fitting that his account is at least positive, even if it is not prominent. ¹² Moloney 1998: 67; Barrett 1978: 191. ¹³ Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.16.7. (The Ante-Nicene Fathers 1994, vol. 1, p. 443). ¹⁴ John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. John 21.2 (The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers 1994, vol. 14, p. 74). ¹⁵ Rissi 1967: 76–92; Köstenberger 2004: 94–5.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

81

John the Evangelist, however, does not say that she lacks understanding. To the contrary, I argue that her interactions with Jesus recounted here give evidence of a deep understanding of who he is. When she learns of the problem with the wine, she goes to him (John 2:3). If it is going to be solved, she seems to know that he is the one to do something about it. In his response to her, he names a dual hesitancy, first that this solution would create a burdensome type of connection with the family (ti emoi kai sui, ‘what is [this problem] to me and to you?’)¹⁶ and second, that the timing of a public event would not be right. He does not, however, deny her implied request. So, any continued focus on the issue on the part of Mary is not any kind of flagrant disobedience because he has said no to her. Instead, he has only presented implications he must avoid. I have deep respect for the way that Mary at this point threads the needle, or at least the way that John has portrayed the character of Mary. She does not give up, but she also does not disagree. She turns her attention to the servants, instructing them not to do much of anything other than to go to the right person. ‘See that person over there, walk over and see what he tells you to do. Whatever it is, do it.’ It certainly seems that she hopes he will grant her request, and she acts on that hope. She is persistent. At the same time, she gives him the freedom to say anything. He might tell the servants, ‘Be at peace!’ and nothing about the lack of wine would change. The presentation of the problem and direction of the servants indicates her belief, though, that if anything is going to happen, Jesus will be the one to do it. She puts her hope, by word and deed, in him and does so with respect to his freedom. It is a dialectic of tenacious yet deferential faith. She knows who he is, and so she engages with respectful persistence. Hence this text as well does not support any account of her acting in sin.

2. Luke 2 On the other hand, neither these texts nor any others in the New Testament canon say explicitly that she was, during her life, without sin. It seems to me that the text alone allows but does not demand a doctrine of Marian sinlessness. Adherents of different doctrinal systems will continue to disagree, but as they do so, her story invites different types of believers to something more, something all adherents hold in common. But in order to see this, I must focus more particularly on an implication of the doctrine of sin with respect to Mary.

¹⁶ Ritva Williams traces the sociology and economics at play in this kind of interaction in ‘The Mother of Jesus at Cana: A Social-Science Interpretation of John 2:1–12’ (Williams 1997: 684–5).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

82

 

The affirmation of her sinlessness carried the concomitant assertions that Mary would need not have experienced death.¹⁷ The text offers us nothing here. She is last mentioned with the disciples at the birth of the church (Acts 1:14), but nothing in the canonical text describes her end of life. More fruitful for exegetical reflection would be sinlessness’s other partner, namely, the affirmation that Mary would not have experienced pain in childbirth. The logic proceeds in this way: because such pain was the result of the fall into sin, if she was sinless, she would not be under that curse of Gen 3:16.¹⁸ The canonical texts, however, make no comment either way. Both Matthew and Luke—and Paul for that matter—simply say that Mary bore Jesus (Matt 1:21, 25; Luke 1:31; 2:6, 7), that Jesus was born of her (Matt 1:16; 2:1, 2; Mark 6:3; Luke 1:35; 2:11; Gal 4:4). Without any comments to the contrary, it could be fitting to see these as normal births, complete with pain. On the other hand, without any explicit mention of pain, a theological system that sees Mary as the vessel of the sinless, and therefore in need of being free of sin herself, also has the scriptural freedom to assert that since her son is unlike any other, so his birth would be unlike any other.¹⁹ Neither can Revelation 12 settle the debate. There the woman is in the pains of labour (Rev 12:2, wdinousa), but because of its complex apocalyptic imagery it does not demand that all aspects that describe the woman apply to Mary. This element could be a symbol of the persecution of Israel or the Church.²⁰ So, she may have experienced pain in labour; she might not have. The texts do not say or, maybe better, the texts can support the saying of either. Here we meet the text’s limitation head on—since it says so little, likely adherents of different doctrinal systems will continue to disagree about her experience of pain in childbirth. It is completely possible, however, from the canonical text alone to say definitively that Mary experienced pain later in life. Two instances offer the proof. The first passage is the statement of Simeon in the temple at Jesus’s presentation. Luke has cast Simeon as a trustworthy character. He is in close relationship with God, most emphatically asserted in that the Holy Spirit rests upon him (2:25); and he ¹⁷ ‘She by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body’ (Pius XII 1992: 5). ¹⁸ Sarah Jane Boss explains this trajectory of the tradition thus: ‘ . . . when God became incarnate in a human baby, to redeem the world from the consequences of the Fall and prepare it to attain its proper glory, the danger and sickness of childbirth were done away within his very birth. Since Christ became human in order to take away the world’s sin, it was right that he should enter the world in such a way that the woman who gave birth to him in his humanity would not by that action suffer any consequence of human sin’ (Boss 2007b: 101–2). ¹⁹ A pain-free childbirth appears in the early (150 ) Odes of Solomon: ‘And the Virgin became a mother with many mercies: And she travailed and brought forth a son without incurring pain’ (19:7–8 in Charlesworth 1983). Debated by early fathers, Zeno (Bishop of Verona from 363 to 372 AD) states ‘Mary brings forth not in sorrow, but in joy’ (Tractatus 2.9.1 [PL 11:415–17]). Maximus the Confessor (2012: 69): ‘Nothing of the customary pain and weakness in childbirth appeared in her.’ ²⁰ J. Massyngberde Ford discusses Israelite, Jerusalemite, priestly, and communal possibilities for the symbolic meaning of the woman (1975: 197–8).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

83

affirms what other characters have said or will say in the narrative, including the heavenly messenger (Luke 2:10–11; 31–2). Consequently, the reader knows that what he says is true. Therefore, when he speaks to Mary directly that a sword will go through her soul, he affirms that her experiences will be comparable to a weapon of death piercing her being. It does not seem a stretch to me to conclude that he is describing an experience of pain. The precise referent is debatable, but the emotional experience is not.²¹ The second passage is Mary’s own statement. When she and Joseph find Jesus in the temple, she says that they have been looking for him as ones in pain (odunaw, 2:48). It was painful for her not to know where Jesus was. Gaventa comments, ‘The NRSV’s bland translation (“your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety”) fails to capture the poignancy of the word Luke selects (odynoun) . . . . [she is] a mother whose search is accompanied by nothing less than anguish’ (1999: 68). Other scriptural references are also possible examples of her experiencing pain. As my earlier treatment of the Synoptics’ ‘true family’ passage suggested, if she is in the group seeking him out when he could not eat because of his popularity, she need not think he is crazy to be pained for Jesus when his ministry caused him to lack space for necessary bodily care (Mark 3:20–1). Even more clearly, because John places her at the cross, he strongly suggests her pain. Those of you who have stood at the grave of a child with his mother or have stood there yourself know the crushing weight of that pain. If Jesus himself wept at the death of his friend (John 11:35), even if she trusted the ultimate outcome, I cannot be convinced otherwise than that she would have felt the incalculable pain of watching her child die on a Roman cross. As the Stabat Mater hymns At the Cross her station keeping, stood the mournful Mother weeping, close to her Son to the last.

What these certain and possible passages share is a similar ground which gives rise to her pain. She experiences pain because of her relationship with Jesus. As his mother, she is worried to the point of being in pain about his absence. As his mother, she would have hurt when he lacked normal care. As his mother, she would have been grieved by people’s negative response to him. As his mother, she would have experienced the gut-wrenching pain of watching his shameful death. Her particular relationship with him makes her pain distinct, but the fact that she experiences pain would be true of anyone who is in a relationship with Jesus, anyone for whom theological identity makes up one important aspect of their experience in the world. Any person who knows him, especially one who is his sibling as the powerful fictive kinship of the New Testament declares, would be ²¹ Gaventa traces the various interpretive options for this ambiguous statement, including doubt, death, shame, and the fall of Jerusalem (1999: 64–5).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

84

 

pained if he were absent or shamed. No one but her could experience those feelings as his mother, but all confessors with her could experience those feelings of pain. Doctrinal discussion will continue concerning her experience of pain in birth and death as implications of her experience of sin. Even if that debate is never settled, adherents of the various traditions, adherents with various theological identities, can contemplate the pain she experienced in relationship with her son, and such contemplation may lead them to emulate her pain over the horror in the world that ultimately led to the death of her son and her pain over his absence in the Church and in our cultures. Whether her body experienced corruption or not, whether she had pain in childbirth or not, whether she was sinless or not, her story preserved here mediates between all Christian theological identities as members in their own particular situations of Christological absence could emulate her pain, and from that place of shared grief, move toward shared action.

3. The Ministry of Women If the branches of the Christian Church disagree over the doctrine of her relationship with sin, even more fractured are the disagreements with regard to the meaning of her gender. Let me trace some of the fault lines as I see them. One example: a debate over women’s ministry, by this I mean ministry particularly that humans embodied as women can and should do. What is it that Mary did? Matthew and Luke are excellent sparring partners on this point. For all they share as the two long-winded members of the Synoptics, arms locked in their similar vision of the contours of Jesus’s story, they could hardly be more different in their presentation of Mary. In Matthew’s narrative, shades of grey fall over Mary from the mention of the four women’s stories in his opening genealogy. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, all who, to one degree or another, fall short of the Judeo-Christian norm for marriage relationships. The four stories preview the unusualness of Mary’s, but, that being said, they also set Mary’s apart. While in the other examples, God worked in unfortunate (or even horrific) situations to bring forth the earthly King of Israel, in Mary’s case God interrupted a virtuous situation to bring forth the eternal King of Israel. Matthew distinguishes Mary as the final generation through which the king comes.²² ²² Matthew’s counting method in his genealogy (Matt 1:17) is highly debated because it is not immediately clear that it works out as he says it should, three groups of fourteen. If the third group does not repeat in its counting the last name from the second group (Jechoniah), as is true from the first to the second grouping (David), then Mary must be supplied as the final generation through whom Jesus comes. Donald Hagner’s commentary presents a thorough argument for two different spellings of Jechoniah resulting in the appropriate number fourteen. He dismisses the Marian option with the statement, ‘it is impossible that both Joseph and Mary are to be counted as separate generations’ (2000: 5–7). In Luke’s birth narrative, Gabriel has something to say about impossibility (Luke 1:37), but even

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

85

From this adulation of her, at the beginning of his account, Matthew keeps his focus upon Mary for a while. He restates her name, her relation to Jesus, and her relation to Joseph (1:18). She was discovered as being pregnant by an act of the Holy Spirit before the consummation of the marriage. Joseph is her husband. At verse 19, however, Matthew turns his attention to Joseph’s motivations, visions, and actions. The angel of the Lord speaks of her action, that of bearing a son (1:21), reiterated by Matthew in his fulfilment citation of Isa 7:14 (1:23) and again in his narration (1:25), yet this is all readers know about Mary. She bore a son. Mary appears again in the magi encounter. When they enter the house, they saw the child king with his mother Mary (1:11). Their coming stirs the vicious pride of Herod, and in response, Joseph, warned by a dream, acts again and takes Mary and the child to safety in Egypt. Herod inflicts his wrath on the families of Bethlehem, and once he has met his end, Joseph takes Mary and the child again (1:21) back to Israel. Mary is rather passive in this birth narrative, at least grammatically. She is hauled along by Joseph, not unlike her small child. But she is not a child. She is, as Matthew says six times (1:18; 2:11, 13, 14, 20, 21), his mother. She may be being acted upon, by the self-sacrificial protectorate of Joseph, but she is also acting. She does two things in Matthew’s gospel. She bears a child (repeated five times: 1:16; 2:21, 23, 25; 2:4) and mothers him, and these are no small things indeed. She gives birth to and raises the Messiah. The power of such mundane acts only increases in intensity as Matthew portrays the storms swirling around her. She conceives and carries while Joseph contemplates her fate. She bears and raises while Herod searches to kill. While the slaughter of the innocents may display Herod’s evil and fulfil Scripture’s lamentation, it also discloses Mary’s tenacity. She would have known these women and their sons. They would have been her friends, Jesus’s playmates. She keeps about the business of loving her child when none of her townswomen can do the same. In honour, but also in fear, in travel, in displacement, and in grief, she mothers the miraculous yet vulnerable child. In the midst of wild and life-threatening extremes she is the steady support most intimately close to him. Matthew’s words about her may not be many, but they are powerful. She does the steady, the simply profound ministry of motherhood.²³ Christian traditions continue to debate whether Mary bore other children in addition to Jesus or remained a virgin her entire life,²⁴ but what the sides of that oft-heated debate share, and what this attention to Matthew has attempted to

within the world of Matthew, if he is arguing that Joseph and Mary provide different kinds of generational connections, patrilineal and ontological, their division into two different generations seems extremely possible. ²³ Readers familiar with Beverly Gaventa’s work on Mary will perceive the debt I owe to her interpretations. See both Gaventa 1999 and Gaventa & Rigby 2002. ²⁴ Beattie 2002: 87–114; 2007: 96–9.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

86

 

show, is that the texts affirm Mary’s motherhood of Jesus. Even if his birth took place uniquely without pain, henceforth she would have done the hard work of caring for him and parenting him: the feeding, changing, and teaching. She was a real mother. Luke also portrays her as mother, and with even more colour than does Matthew, but he also does more. As an eyewitness to the life of Jesus, she joins the other followers of her son in prayer (Acts 1:14), and she too receives the Holy Spirit (2:2–4) who inspires the prophesying of men and women (2:17–18). The scriptural text does not give readers an account of her particular prophesying activity, but because she is included by name in this prayerful group it attests that she too would be gathered with them when they did so. My point is that Mary, in Matthew and in Luke-Acts in particular, gives a picture of a woman’s response to God in multiple spheres: family and Church, secular and sacred, natural and supernatural. It seems to me that her story is a demonstration that human response to the Redeemer God does not have to be one-dimensional. Instead, it involves a comprehensive response, a saying yes to whatever God’s call might be, to common acts and to uncommon gospel tasks, and sometimes it is hard to discern which is which. This multivalent treatment of Mary’s life moves to the debate about the practicalities of ministry, the ministry of women in particular. I am most interested here in debates about the timing of when and how their work should take place. Mary had several ministries, including prophet, parent, and proclaimer. In Luke’s presentation she prophesies the Magnificat, one of the most influential Christian texts, while pregnant, so those two are joined. Henceforth, at least according to the explicit canonical record, she raises Jesus—does the ministry of motherhood—and then once he is an adult and even after his passion, resurrection, and ascension, in other words, when his work is done, she does the ministry of proclaiming. Some strands of the Christian tradition, particularly the monastic movement with its scriptural roots in Paul’s preference for singleness (1 Cor 7), urged the separation of family and full-time ministry. Yet Christian ethics also urges all Christians to practise their particular giftings inside and outside the assembly (1 Cor 12; Rom 12). Debate continues between those who say that spheres of service must be separate and sequential and those who say that these spheres can overlap. I should acknowledge explicitly that I’ve got a dog in this fight. For myself, ministry inside and outside the home has been ever intertwined, from my dissertation defence at nine months’ pregnant to my ordination with a twoyear-old at my leg, to my regular transition from LEGO to liturgy to lectures. But I acknowledge my need and desire to hear from others whose stories and convictions are different. And this conversation really matters for those generations who will come after us. Am I dangerously misleading men and women students when I tell them that they can do it all or are others squelching the work

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

87

of God’s Spirit when they are told to wait or to choose? Mary’s story presents an important conversation for all genders, married and single, parents and not, for it asks the question about the balance of mundane and sacred, family and vocation, personal life and public service. Her story, it must be acknowledged, has a particular import for women, especially women who bear children. One’s theological identity, and the convictions present therein, will exert influence on which avenue one prefers. Moreover, I would also argue that other identities—primarily gender and fecundity—will make a profound difference. Only women who are mothers can say what they can and cannot do in their various seasons of parenting. An outsider might imagine such balance would be too difficult, but an insider would be intimately connected with both her limitations and her strength. Mary’s story could be used as support for either simultaneous ministry or distinct seasons of ministry. It affirms multiple ministries, but it does not explicitly tell the timing in which they should be practised. It does affirm—for all—the ministering of women and demands respect, based in her exemplary story, for the multitudinous ways in which each woman of faith decides to implement that ministry. Whether women choose vows to chastity, commitment to motherhood, answer a call to gospel proclamation, or some combination thereof, no one can deny that these women are following some aspect of the life of the Mother of God, and therefore stand in the realm of holy honour.

4. Women in Ministry To a second fault line, not about women’s multiple ministries, but particularly about the sacramental ministry of women. All readers can agree that Mary was mother, prophet, and proclaimer, but was Mary priest? In the Christian accounting of the foundational story, God certainly entrusted her with the body and blood of Christ. It could be argued that since God was not uncomfortable with a woman handling the incarnate one, God would not reject a woman’s handling of the elements. Since all confessors of Jesus are, in the language of Paul, in Christ, caught up into a male Jewish Messiah whose flesh comes from his female Jewish mother, then all—Jew and Gentile, male and female—could be called into his priesthood. I have processed this question and reached this conclusion. At least to me, her story, shaped by particular theological commitments, points in the direction of affirming women’s priestly ministry, although I recognize there are many other conversations—i.e. apostolic selection and succession—to be had. Honest and gracious conversations are necessary to hear how those who have reached a different conclusion have done so. I think it possible to uncover at least some aspects of those theological commitments that cause theological communities and individuals within them to read

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

88

 

her story differently. One commitment centres on her role as exemplar. Is what is true for her true of all, or only true for her because her story—because she— is utterly unique? This question of sacramental ministry returns this essay to the first question, to the issue of sin. Initially it seemed to me that if Mary is sinless in life, then whether or not she was mother, minister, or priest matters little for anyone else. If she is both free of impurity and without error then she can be a priest all day long, and that means nothing for women who are unclean and fail morally. I began to think differently on a Sunday morning during worship, at Eucharist particularly. On that Sunday in the parish that has welcomed my family during my overseas sabbatical, for the first time I was serving as the deacon. As I stood at the side of the male priest when he began the sursum corda, I realized the disgruntled question that grumbled in my head, ‘Why do some say he can serve this meal and I cannot?’ was, in fact, the wrong question. He, fantastic rector and man of God that he is, is not sinless. He can serve because and only because he has been redeemed. The same would be true of Mary. When Luke conveys Mary’s poetic magnification of God, he does so with her proclaiming that God is her Saviour (Luke 1:47). As the first instance of the swzw word group, Mary’s word names the action God has begun to do on behalf of the humble, to save them from their oppressors and save them for abundance (1:51–3). She recognizes her redemption, names a theme that will run through Luke’s two-volume work,²⁵ and thereby invites all readers to do the same. Conversations about Mary’s impeccability frequently include the example of a person in a boat with Jesus. It is a wonderful thing, if the person falls into the water and starts to drown, that Jesus would draw them out of the water and save them. It is also a wonderful thing if Jesus would keep the person from ever falling into the water. Mary’s impeccability mimics the second example. According to this view, she is not redeemed out of sin, she is redeemed before she sins, but either way she is redeemed. The doctrine of the immaculate conception, the Ineffabilis Deus states, ‘The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception by the singular grade and privilege of almighty God and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.’²⁶ In other words, whether or not she was sinless during her life, she served as mother, as proclaimer, as bearer of the body and blood, only as one who had been redeemed by the work of God in Christ.²⁷ So too, if anyone does ministry

²⁵ Readers may want to consider the ways Luke develops this theme by reading these texts in their context: Luke 6:9; 7:50; 8:12, 36, 48, 50; 9:24; 13:23; 17:19; 18:26, 42; 19:10; 23:35, 37, 39; Acts 2:21, 40, 47; 4:9, 12; 11:14; 14:9; 15:1, 11; 16:30–1; 27:20, 31. ²⁶ Pius IX: 1854. ²⁷ In a book aiming to translate Catholic doctrine for largely Protestant readers, Scot McKnight says it this way: ‘Mary’s sinlessness was not because she was divine. Mary’s sinlessness in official teaching is solely the product of God’s grace’ (2007: 121).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

89

in the name of Jesus Christ, sacramental or otherwise, he or she does it as one who has been redeemed. While the Catholic Church reserves ordination for men, based on Jesus’s selection of male disciples, even those so recognized must acknowledge that, ‘Like every grace this sacrament can be received only as an unmerited gift.’²⁸ When Christian adherents of all theological identities recognize what they all share with her, that equal ground before the resurrected and crucified Messiah, it just might provide a place to have those hard conversations about what work they, in their redeemed particularities, can take up from there.

5. Mary as Exemplar I have sought to argue that in Mary’s sparse but rich scriptural story, adherents of various religious identities can find common territory for meaningful conversation because they can find aspects of their own social identities in her story. She can serve as an example for any human’s relationship with God.²⁹ Like her, confessors are redeemed for ministry, and like her, the faithful experience pain on account of the relationship with their Redeemer. This is true because, first and foremost, the story told of her is that she embraced the call to be the site and means for the union of God and humanity, the mother of God the Incarnate, and as such her story also facilitates a space for the meeting of all humanity. Hence, I too would agree with Elizabeth Johnson that, ‘affirmations about [Mary] are affirmations about the nature of human salvation.’³⁰ Such a method has its dangers, however. Out of a desire to find common exemplary ground for all, I risk losing her particularity. I ultimately risk losing vision of the story that is hers. It would be unjust then to leave without comment the way her particularities make affirmations not for all, but specifically for some. She is Jewish and the texts portray her as a practitioner of the Jewish law in covenant relationship with the God of the people of Israel.³¹ She affirms that the God who reconciles the whole world reconciles through the Jewish people, as had been the plan since the beginning of the covenant (Gen 12:1–3). She is poor. Luke portrays her as being in need of offering the less expensive sacrifice (Luke 2:24), and her song affirms God’s preferential option for the poor (Luke 1:53).³² She

²⁸ Catholic Church 2012: 1577–8. ²⁹ As does Deborah F. Middleton in ‘The Story of Mary: Luke’s Version’, where she concludes, ‘ . . . in Luke’s story of Mary we find a new model of discipleship for all humanity, male and female alike’ (1989: 563). ³⁰ Johnson 1984, cited in Endean 2007: 286. ³¹ Luke portrays her as one who praises God with words that echo the Scriptures of Israel (Luke 1:46–55), circumcises her son (2:21), sacrifices for her purification (2:22–4), and annually attends the Passover (2:41). John portrays her as an integral member of her Jewish community (John 2). ³² See Gebara and Bingemer 1989.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

90

 

affirms that the God who reconciles the whole world has a special care and call for the poor. In addition to ethnic and economic identities, the story of Mary speaks with power about the status of women in the Christian narrative.³³ If certain loud strands of scriptural interpretation based on a few opaque passages have argued or benevolently suggested that women qua women are morally and intellectually inferior by virtue of their descent from the deceived deceiver Eve, Mary’s story stands as a strong counterexample. God chose to partner with a woman in the grand plan for salvation. God has decided that a woman was not ‘too unclean’ to be the residence of God. In fact, her carnality, her embodiment, was the precise resting place of God. Then, as Luke narrates, Jesus was not delivered to the temple to be raised by priests in seclusion, he was raised by Joseph and Mary. Though they be few, she is present at every stage the New Testament records his early life. Hence, as the authors emphasize the divine will driving this life, the divine will saw that a woman’s influence was not unworthy to contribute to the character formation of the Messiah. Then, just as God entrusted women with the first knowledge of the resurrected Messiah, similarly she and the other women gathered in the upper room were given of the Spirit to prophesy just as Joel said they would (Acts 2:17–18 citing Joel 2:28–9). They were not unfit to testify to him. Her story joins with other texts in the New Testament which affirm the value and ministry of women, yet because there would be no Christian story without her, without this woman, her story ensures that Christian reflection, if it is faithful to its texts, cannot completely exclude or devalue women. ‘Foul!’ some feminists will cry, and rightly so.³⁴ One need not think long nor read far to find examples in the Christian tradition of the exclusion and devaluation of women, even traditions that retain appreciation of Mary. I am grateful for feminist critique that names these injustices with honesty. That dark side being recognized, however, as a biblical scholar who seeks to affirm and support women, I remain unconvinced that these texts and the tradition that arises out of them offers no resources for the inclusion and valuing of women. Instead, as an adherent of the Christian faith, I am arguing that attention to the scriptural text of the story of Mary offers a vital way to ensure that the plight of women in a patriarchal, corrupt world is not only not forgotten, but also overturned. I recognize that different interpreters and different traditions will see different, even contradictory, pathways for that work of inclusion and valuing to happen, but if all adherents are listening to her story, I think all could agree that it should happen because the God affirmed in all Christian traditions worked with Mary in

³³ Sarah Coakley (1993: 106) argues that such a focus on Mary as ‘a type of the poor’, or, I think I can add, a type of the ‘Jews’, lacks ‘ “gender specific” [she is quoting from Jaggar 1983] forms of alienation’. ³⁴ Marina Warner’s influential text, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (1976), stands as an oft-cited voice in these conversations.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

91

these inclusive and valuing ways. In my own teaching, I have seen students propelled and supported by her story to go do the actions of supporting women in ministry, providing medical care for impoverished pregnant women, and engaging in interreligious dialogue, just to name a few examples. Her story says that God redeems all people through his covenant people the Jews, as do the rest of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Her story says that God champions the poor, as does the rest of the Scripture. Her story says that God chooses to work in and through women, as does the rest of the New Testament. With her story as common ground, all adherents can discuss our different responses, but we must respect the people of Israel, the poor, and women. If God afforded her such honour, how can those who share her story do any less? Such discussions would be woefully impoverished if they are conducted by people who do not connect with any of her social identities. All can appreciate and advocate for those ostracized for their religion, economics, or gender, but only Jews, the poor, and women can speak with the authority of experience to connect her story with effective actions. Conversations should be diverse and broad, but they should have people in them who in some ways are like Mary. In my studies, then, I cannot deny that she has become a mentor to me, if not a friend. I see in her story an affirmation that all women are invited to hear, trust, follow, and proclaim this radical Messiah, as mothers, as preachers, as priests, in whatever time and way the wind of the Spirit blows. But I have to ward against her becoming my possession, a Mary in the well who reflects my image. Instead, she invites me to a room where all disciples are gathered, all redeemed ones joined in prayer waiting on the leading of the Spirit. All adherents, whatever their doctrines, whatever their practices, serving the same Saviour. And so, following her lead, we do not want to cause pain, grieve the Holy Spirit, through divisions. Gathered around her story, we discuss honestly and passionately what we see, that which we share in the text, but also the theological assertions we cannot embrace or cannot deny and why. She mediates between us, not in worship and not yet at the table, but quite aptly in spaces of common conversation, where various disciplinary expertise and limitations, confessors, dependent upon the humility and patience that I would say the Holy Spirit cultivates, can converse about and work with her, our mediator.

References Barrett, C. K. 1978. The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text. 2nd edition. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. Bauer, W., F. W. Danker, W. F. Arndt, and F. W. Gingrich. 1999. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

92

 

Beattie, Tina. 2007. ‘Mary in Patristic Thought.’ In Boss 2007b, 75–106. Beattie, Tina. 2002. God’s Mother, Eve’s Advocate: A Marian Narrative of Women’s Salvation. London: Continuum. Boss, Sarah Jane. 2007a. ‘The Development of the Doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception.’ In Boss 2007b, 207–36. Boss, Sarah Jane. 2007b. Mary: The Complete Resource. London: Continuum. Catholic Church. 2012. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd edition. Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Charlesworth, James H., ed. 1983. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 2 vols. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. Coakley, Sarah. 1993. ‘Mariology and “Romantic Feminism”.’ In Women’s Voices: Essays in Contemporary Feminist Theology, edited by Teresa Elwes, pp. 97–110. New York: HarperCollins. Endean, Philip. 2007. ‘How to Think about Mary’s Privileges: A Post-Conciliar Exposition.’ In Boss 2007b, 284–92. Ford, J. Massyngberde. 1975. Revelation. AB 38. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Gaventa, Beverly Roberts. 1999. Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Gaventa, Beverly Roberts, and Cynthia L. Rigby, eds. 2002. Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Gebara, Ivone, and Maria Clara Bingemer. 1989. Mary: Mother of God, Mother of the Poor, translated by Phillip Berryman. Tunbridge Wells: Burns and Oats. Graef, Hilda, and Thomas A. Thompson, S.M. 2009. Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion. Revised edition. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press. Hagner, Donald A. 2000. Matthew 1–13. WBC 33A. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Haslanger, Sally. 2012. Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jaggar, Alison M. 1983. Feminist Politics and Human Nature. Brighton: Harvester. Johnson, Elizabeth. 1984. ‘Mary and Contemporary Christology: Rahner and Schillebeeckx.’ Eglise et Théologie 15: 155–82. Köstenberger, Andreas J. 2004. John. BECNT. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Maximus the Confessor. 2012. The Life of the Virgin, translated by Stephen J. Shoemaker. New Haven: Yale University Press. McKnight, Scot. 2007. The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press. Middleton, Deborah F. 1989. ‘The Story of Mary: Luke’s Version.’ New Blackfriars 70: 555–64. Moberly, Robert. 2018. The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

93

Moloney, Francis J., S.D.B. 1998. The Gospel of John. SP. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press. Panchuk, Michelle. Forthcoming. ‘Distorting Concepts, Obscured Experiences.’ Hypatia. Peeler, Amy. 2017. ‘Junia/Joanna: Herald of the Good News.’ In Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible, edited by Sandra Glahn, 273–85. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic. Pelikan, Jaroslav. 1996. Mary through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press. Perry, Tim S. 2006. Mary for Evangelicals: Toward an Understanding of the Mother of our Lord. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic. Pius IX, Pope. 1854. Ineffabilis Deus: Defining the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: Apostolic Constitution of Pius IX, Issued December 8, 1854. Boston, MA: St Paul Books & Media. Pius XII, Pope. 1992. Munificentissimus Deus: The Definition By His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, of the Dogma That Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, Was Assumed Body and Soul Into the Glory of Heaven: Issued November 1, 1950. Boston, MA: St Paul Books & Media. Rissi, Mathias. 1967. ‘Die Hochzeit in Kana (Joh 2,1–11).’ In Oikonomia: Heilsgeschichte als Thema der Theologie, edited by Felix Christ, 76–92. HamburgBergstedt: Reich. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. 1994. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. 1885–1887. 10 vols. Repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. Warner, Marina. 1976. Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Williams, Ritva. 1997. ‘The Mother of Jesus at Cana: A Social-Science Interpretation of John 2:1–12.’ CBQ 59: 679–92. Witt, Charlotte. 2011. The Metaphysics of Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

II

SOCIAL IDENTITY, RELIGIOUS EPISTEMOLOGY, AND RELIGIOUS AFFECT

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

4 Non-deference to Religious Authority Epistemic Arrogance or Justice? Teri Merrick

In Epistemic Authority, Linda Zagzebski argues for the following: The authority of my religious community is justified by my conscientious judgment that if I engage in the community, following its practical directives and believing its teachings, the result will survive my conscientious self-reflection upon my total set of psychic states better than if I try to figure out what to do and believe in the relevant domain in a way that is independent of Us. (Zagzebski 2012: 201; I will refer to this as ‘Z’s thesis’)

Z’s thesis directly concerns justifying the authority of long-standing religious communities,¹ and a primary aim of the book is showing that this justification is derivable from an Enlightenment respect for individual autonomy. A secondary aim, however, is warranting a community member’s deference to this authority, for the same self-reflection justifying the authority of a religious tradition justifies me in basing my beliefs on that authority (ibid.: 231).² Zagzebski claims that because ‘I can trust my tradition more than my own experiences in many cases’, it is rational for me to trust the testimony of my tradition in asserting certain beliefs

¹ Zagzebski tends to use the terms ‘religious tradition’ and ‘religious community’ interchangeably. So unless otherwise specified, I will do the same. The presumption throughout this chapter is that the Christian religious communities under consideration are those tracing their lineage back to Jesus’s teachings and practice and, more specifically, to the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Protestant traditions of Christianity. In fact, my focus will be on North American Protestant communities simply because these are the ones with which I am most familiar. ² My use of personal pronouns intended to foreground Zagzebski’s distinction between first-person (‘deliberative’) reasons and third-person (‘theoretical’) reasons. Theoretical reasons are reasons that cite intersubjectively available facts considered relevant to the truth of a proposition p and where the degree of relevance and support for p is, in principle, calculable by any reasonable person. In contrast, deliberative reasons cite experiences, commitments, intuitions, or states of a person or group of people which are relevant to the truth of p only for those who bear those experiences, commitments, intuitions, or states. On Zagzebski’s account, any appeal to religious authority as a reason for belief or action functions as a deliberative reason; it counts as a reason only for those participating in or committed to the relevant religious community. Teri Merrick, Non-deference to Religious Authority: Epistemic Arrogance or Justice? In: Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology. Edited by: Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848844.003.0005

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

98

 

or deciding certain courses of action (202). Displaying such trust is an expression of ‘the virtue of intellectual humility’ (199). In his review of her book, John Cottingham underscores Zagzebski’s claim about epistemic humility: It would indeed be a strangely perverse kind of arrogance to insist that if I try to figure out what to do all by myself, the outcome is more likely to survive my own future conscientious self-reflection than if I defer to the authority of a community that has flourished for many hundreds of years. (2014: 37)

I agree with Zagzebski and Cottingham that as a member of the United Methodist Church and faculty member of a self-identifying evangelical institution, I owe proper deference, humility, and even gratitude to the forebears of the traditions to which these communities belong and for the rich legacy contained in their teachings and directives. However, I also agree with Marilyn McCord Adams that refusing to ever deviate from traditional authority ‘would make the church an agent of cruelty and injustice for generations to come’ (2011: 28). In short, there are constraints on the deference owed to the testimony of one’s tradition. In this chapter, I argue that addressing epistemic oppression functions as one of these constraints. Non-deference to the authority of one’s religious community is not always a matter of epistemic arrogance. Rather, it may be, and most certainly will be, required in order to cultivate the virtues of epistemic justice.³ I will argue that detecting epistemic oppression in the formation or promulgation of traditionally held beliefs of one’s community—Zagzebski refers to these as ‘Webeliefs’—suffices for claiming that her criterion of justification will not be met. That is, my conscientious judgement that epistemic oppression is evident in the teachings or directives of my religious community or in their development and promulgation provides me with an adequate reason for thinking that if I defer, the results will not survive conscientious self-reflection.⁴ If successful, my argument shows that non-deference to religious authority as a means of redressing epistemic oppression is not merely compatible with Z’s thesis but follows from it. Moreover, the conscientious religionist should expect her tradition to encounter epistemic crises requiring revolutionary changes in the ³ My account of epistemic oppression and the means of redressing it draws substantially from the work of Kristie Dotson and Miranda Fricker. I present this account in the next section. ⁴ In his review of Epistemic Authority, C.A.J. Coady notes that Zagzebski tends to treat trust in communal authority as ‘an all or nothing affair’ (2014: 10). He worries that she places ‘too much trust in trust and not enough in what I would call selective mistrust’ (2014: 1). My chapter echoes and elaborates Coady’s concern. I maintain there is ample evidence of ecclesial institutions perpetuating epistemic oppression and that indiscriminate trust in or deference to Church authority thus violates a well-recognized ethical and religious obligation to combat oppression. Given Fricker’s position that combating epistemic oppression requires cultivating the virtues of testimonial and hermeneutical justice, my position is that a conscientious religionist will cultivate these virtues, which includes displaying a selective mistrust towards ecclesial authority.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

-   

99

interpretation of authoritative texts and practices. I contend that Zagzebski fails to recognize these as implications of her thesis because she draws too sharp a distinction between the domains of scientific and religious beliefs and because she fails to see that addressing ecclesial epistemic oppression may well require a Kuhnian-scale paradigm shift. To highlight Zagzebski’s error in this regard, I introduce the work of Hermann Cohen, a nineteenth-century neo-Kantian German Jewish philosopher. Like Zagzebski, Cohen persuasively argues that relying on the testimony of one’s religious tradition to ground beliefs and practical decisions is compatible with valuing autonomy in Kant’s sense. Unlike Zagzebski, however, he recognizes that scientific, philosophical, and religious traditions are knowledge-producing enterprises that are and should be interrelated. Cohen witnessed first-hand how revolutionary changes in the sciences generated epistemic crises not only for scientific practitioners but also for the practitioners of philosophy and Judaism. Furthermore, he insisted that alleviating systemic oppression to ensure everyone has a share in knowledge-production is an ethico-religious directive characteristic of Abrahamic monotheisms. For Cohen, properly responding to an epistemic crisis and pursuing this ethico-religious directive requires that conscientious Jewish religionists remain open to revising and perfecting the hermeneutical framework used to interpret the Hebrew Bible and other authoritative religious texts or teachings. I thus find in Cohen’s work a recognition of the epistemic crises and epistemic oppression that practitioners of Abrahamic traditions must be prepared to address that is missing in Zagzebski’s account of deferring to religious authority. In the first section, I present Kristie Dotson’s and Miranda Fricker’s account of epistemic oppression and what it takes to redress it. The second section identifies an instance of epistemic oppression extant within my own Christian community. The third section argues that detecting epistemic oppression serves as a general constraint on the deference due to the authority of one’s religious tradition.

1. Epistemic Oppression—What Is It? Dotson defines ‘epistemic oppression’ as any ‘persistent and unwarranted infringement on the ability to utilize persuasively shared epistemic resources that hinders one’s contribution to knowledge production’ (2014: 116). She resists stating necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying instances of epistemic oppression on grounds that such efforts cannot capture the ubiquitous and multitudinous character of this oppression and thereby inadvertently perpetuate it (Dotson 2012: 25). Nevertheless, her examples make it clear that by persistent infringement, she means historically long-standing, societally systemic, or reliably predictable infringements. Unwarranted infringements or hindrances include those based on phenotypical features like skin colour, hair texture, gender

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

100

 

expression, or an atypical bodily characteristic, namely, features persistently applied to identify members of sociopolitically marginalized groups. Any longstanding, systemic, or predictable disposition towards perceiving non-whites, non-Europeans, non-males, or the atypically embodied as sub-par epistemic agents—a perspective that illicitly hinders someone identified with these groups from effectively participating in knowledge-producing or knowledge-transmitting practices—counts as an instance of epistemic oppression in Dotson’s sense. Dotson also offers a helpful classification of oppressions based on the order of change needed to redress them. As Dotson and Miranda Fricker point out, knowledge-production and mutual understanding does not happen in a vacuum. Members of communities, institutions, and entire societies draw upon a common pool of hermeneutical and epistemic resources to understand experiences and render them ‘communicatively intelligible’ (Fricker 2007: 162). These resources may be explicit and formalized as in the case of the taxonomies employed by healthcare professionals or more implicit and informal like the tacitly understood language games characterizing differing forms of life. Demonstrated competency as a knowledge-producer or transmitter, as well as a successful communicative or dialogical exchange, depends on an agent’s ability of effectively and persuasively utilizing these resources. First-order oppressions are ones that can be addressed without having to modify these resources, and Dotson identifies the testimonial injustice described by Fricker as falling within this class. Testimonial injustice occurs when speakers are perceived as less credible due structural identity prejudice (Fricker 2007: 29). This is a long-standing, systemic prejudice whereby an entire people group is viewed as rationally sub-par or unreliable conveyors of knowledge. Individuals identified as members of this group are thus saddled with an unwarranted credibility deficit. Consequently, their testimony is not given the weight or credence it deserves. Fricker cites the discrediting of black people’s testimony within US and UK criminal justice systems as paradigmatic examples of testimonial injustice. Since, in principle, this type of injustice might be addressed by training hearers to correct for these deficits when listening to a speaker identified with a group typically subject to structural identity prejudice and without modifying the hermeneutical resources utilized by the hearer, testimonial injustice counts as a first-order epistemic oppression. Redressing second-order oppressions, on the other hand, does require modifying these resources, and here Dotson references Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice. Fricker defines hermeneutical injustice as: ‘the injustice of having some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to a structural identity prejudice in the collective hermeneutical resource’ (2007: 155 italics in the original). Here, agents per se are not perpetuating the injustice, but rather the resource deployed in trying to understand or effectively communicate someone’s experience. Because victims of structural identity

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

-   

101

prejudice are prone to hermeneutical marginalization, they tend to be excluded from the places and occupations where collective epistemic resources are developed and gain institutional or cultural traction. As a result, these resources often contain prejudicial gaps or biases, making it difficult to understand or share certain experiences. Fricker cites the difficulty American women had in fully comprehending and effectively communicating their experiences of post-partum depression or sexual harassment before these concepts became a familiar part of our cultural lexicon (ibid.: 148–51). Dotson cites the inability of women of colour to successfully communicate their experiences of sexism to white/Anglo feminists (2014: 128). Since addressing hermeneutical injustice requires substantially altering the unwarranted prejudicial resource, it falls in the class of second-order oppressions. Dotson follows Rae Langton in arguing that combating hermeneutical injustice requires ‘a conceptual revolution’ (Dotson 2012: 31). Dotson suggests that first-order oppressions may be addressed without necessitating a second-order change but acknowledges that, practically speaking, this is unlikely. I go further, maintaining that it is practically impossible. To see this, I need to say more about correcting for testimonial injustice. On Fricker’s account, the assessment of another’s credibility is a spontaneous, perceptual kind of judgement. These judgements are strongly influenced by pre-reflective, socially situated interpretive resources that hearers bring to bear on the communicative exchange and by their feelings of trust or empathy for the speaker (2007: 72–80).⁵ Recall that a primary harm of a hermeneutical injustice is the victim’s inability to render their experiences communicatively intelligible. This inability often gives rise to additional harms, including self-doubt concerning the reliability of one’s own cognitive and interpretive capabilities. These harms may in turn stymie the development of epistemic virtues like intellectual courage and steadfastness (2007: 49). Now consider Dotson’s observation that shared epistemic resources typically specify the behavioural traits serving as reliable markers for distinguishing trustworthy from untrustworthy conveyors of knowledge (Dotson 2012: 38). It follows that those harmed by hermeneutical injustice will likely be perceived as less credible, less trustworthy testifiers, resulting in future credibility deficits and continued hermeneutical marginalization. Second-order hermeneutical injustice often stands in cyclical causal relationship to first-order testimonial injustice such that making inroads on addressing the one may depend on simultaneously addressing the other.⁶

⁵ In addition to the sources Fricker cites to support her account of testimonial credibility judgements, see Zagzebski on the critical role that trust plays in accounting for testimonial knowledge (2012: 120–8). ⁶ Though I believe that this is often the case, I do not want to suggest that hermeneutical injustice is a necessary or sufficient condition for first-order testimonial injustice. As an editor of this volume pointed out, not all cases of testimonial injustice are the result of hermeneutical injustice. I am grateful to them for recommending that I clarify this point.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

102

 

Finally, let me unpack and affirm Fricker’s conclusion that combating epistemic oppression ‘calls for the virtues of epistemic justice possessed by institutions and by individuals’ and that these are corrective virtues (2007: 176). On her account, testimonial and hermeneutical injustice are vices, intellectual and moral vices. ‘Testimonial sensibility’ is Fricker’s term for our capacity to perceive testimonial credibility. The contours of this sensibility are largely a matter of acculturation (2007: 71). By detecting the salient features in a communicative exchange and delivering an accurate assessment of a speaker’s credibility, testimonial sensibility enables us to achieve epistemic goods like understanding and truth. As she and Dotson rightly insist, structural identity prejudice of one sort or another is pervasive; these prejudices are simply ‘part of the social air we breathe’ (Fricker 2012: 294). Therefore, it is safe to assume our testimonial sensibility is intellectually vicious. It is disposed towards delivering illicitly deflated credence to the testimonies of historically marginalized speakers, thereby depriving us of the mutual understanding and collaborative knowledge production more accurate assessments would afford. Furthermore, it is inclined to be morally vicious insofar as it fails to recognize the status of these speakers as competent or mature epistemic agents in their own right, thereby depriving them of the human goods deriving from that status. In sum, conscientious epistemic and moral agency calls for acknowledging the high probability that the vices of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice have become second nature to us and our respective epistemic communities. It calls for recognizing that cultivating the virtues of epistemic justice will, of practical necessity, involve correcting for the individual and communal disposition toward these vices. I now turn to my argument that I have good reason for thinking these vices are second nature to me and my religious community and that nondeference to some traditionally held We-beliefs is a proper part of cultivating the requisite corrective virtues.

2. Detecting Epistemic Oppression in a Christian Community and Correcting for It For the North American Protestant communities of which I am a member, the inherited understanding of the Bible and, to a lesser extent, the understanding of the liturgies and sacraments serve as core elements in the shared epistemic resource. Piety dictates we draw from this resource to make collective and communicative sense of our lives. This conceptual and hermeneutical framework grounds our shared understanding of who we are and helps us discern the significance and function of each member relative to the flourishing of the entire church body. Zagzebski shares this conception of how the received interpretation of Scripture and religious praxis functions in Christian communities. ‘Tradition’,

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

-   

103

she writes, ‘is the memory of a community’ (2012: 191). Here ‘tradition’ refers to religious creeds and practices handed down from one generation to the next. For Christian communities, as for other Abrahamic communities, tradition includes oral and written teachings on proper biblical exegesis. The community draws upon this inherited pool of biblical, ethico-religious, and practical resources for the purpose of ‘training the emotions’ and cultivating ‘a particular world view’. The tradition also contains an authoritative structure functioning as a watch guard over ‘the faithfulness of its development’. The governing pool of traditional resources thus determines what it means to be and to be recognized as a properly pious and faithful member of a Christian member, now and in the foreseeable future. So, is there reason for thinking that the governing pool of resources for my Christian communities promulgates hermeneutic injustice? The answer is yes. Space does not permit me to adduce all of the evidence showing that women and others whose bodies deviate from the so-called ‘able-bodied’ male type have been victims of structural identity prejudice throughout church history. Suffice it to say I agree with Brian Brock, co-editor of Disability in the Christian Tradition: ‘strands of the Christian tradition have worked to stigmatize and marginalize those it deemed disabled’ (2012: 4). And as contributing author to that volume, Jana Bennett, demonstrates, what the tradition has typically deemed ‘ “normal” is a young, physically muscular, perfectly formed adult male body, which by default is rational’ (ibid.: 428). For McCord Adams, evidence of structural prejudice and hermeneutical marginalization against women and those who fail to conform to a hierarchically ordered sex and gender binary is so strong that it forces the question: ‘why does biblical religion that sees every person as created in God’s image so easily become a sponsor of human rights violations in the area of sex and gender?’⁷ My own work has focused on the biomedical and ecclesial treatment of intersex people. ‘Intersex’ is an umbrella term for variations in the biological markers of sex identity—chromosomes, gonads, hormones, or anatomical structure—such that they do not line up under a rigid male or female classification (Arboleda & Vilain 2014). Incidence figures of intersex births vary depending on the conditions classed as intersex, but the global incidence rate is typically reported as ranging ‘between 1.7% and 4%’ (Sanders et al. 2011: 2220). The World Health Organization estimates that five children are born in the United States each day who are visibly intersex (WHO: n.d.). I have argued that despite the advocacy of intersex people and their allies, the biomedical community still gives too little weight and credence to intersex patients’ testimony in the crafting and ⁷ Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘Face to faith’, The Guardian, 16 May 2009, https://www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/16/conference-faith-religion-institute-education, accessed 4 April 2017.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

104

 

administering of treatment protocols (Merrick 2017).⁸ When it comes to ecclesial institutions, Lianne Simon, a self-identifying intersex Christian housewife, accurately summarizes the situation: ‘historically, intersex has not only been silenced but erased.’⁹ To say the predominant strands of the Christian tradition have hermeneutically marginalized those whose bodies differ from the ‘normal’ male type is not to say the tradition lacks resources for responding to the biases and gaps this marginalization has caused. As Dotson points out: The power relations that produce hermeneutically marginalized populations do not also work to suppress, in all cases, knowledge of one’s experiences of oppression and marginalization within those marginalized populations. As a result there is always more than one set of hermeneutical resources available. (2012: 31)

To make sense of their experiences, marginalized populations in Christian communities have often produced alternative readings of the Bible and the writings of the Church Fathers. Much of the recent work by Christian theologians and biblical scholars on disability studies aims at further developing these alternatives and encouraging their uptake within a broader circle of clergy and laity. The importance of these alternative pools of Christian resources particularly in terms of their capacity for fostering communicative intelligibility within marginalized populations and for generating resistance discourses rooted in theological hope and liberation is undeniable. Nonetheless, the mere existence and use of alternative Christian resources among the marginalized does not correct for the epistemic oppression resulting from the hermeneutical resource utilized by the dominant majority and underwritten by the tradition’s structure of authority. For this reason, Dotson and Gaile Polhaus Jr distinguish Fricker’s second-order hermeneutical injustice from a third-order contributory injustice, namely, wilful hermeneutical ignorance. This type of oppression occurs when dominantly situated knowers do not forge ‘cooperative epistemic interdependence’ relations with marginally situated knowers (Pohlhaus 2012: 725). In contrast to hermeneutical injustice, which Fricker describes as strictly structural fault devoid of agent culpability, wilful hermeneutical ignorance is both structural and agential. As Pohlhaus explains, by failing to recognize the marginalized members of their community as epistemic peers or to consider alternative resources that they have developed for making sense of their experiences, dominantly situated knowers persist in and perpetuate a wilful ignorance: ⁸ See too Merrick 2016 and Merrick 2011. ⁹ See Lianne’s story on growing up intersex and Christian at https://www.intersexandfaith.org/.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

-   

105

An en masse refusal to recognize alternate epistemic resources, when enacted by those with material power is hard to overcome. It is important to note, however, that such refusal is not an inherent inability, but rather a willful act . . . [I]t is a willful refusal to acknowledge and acquire the necessary tools for knowing whole parts of the world. (ibid.: 729)

Now consider the We-belief recently asserted by a Christian community, a community within the same branch of the tradition as my own: We affirm that God’s original and ongoing intent and action is the creation of humanity manifest as two distinct sexes, male and female. We also recognize that due to sin and human brokenness, our experience of our sex and gender is not always that which God the Creator originally designed.¹⁰

I submit this as an instance of a communal body manifesting the vices of hermeneutical and testimonial injustice and as an instance of wilful hermeneutical ignorance. The affirmation of the binary as the Christian theological norm certainly has the weight of tradition behind it. However, we also know, and those authorizing this statement are in a position to know, that women and those deviating from this norm have been long-standing victims of hermeneutical marginalization. Yet, there is no evidence that those authorized to assert the We-belief were aware of or consulted any alternative readings of the Bible or the Church Fathers that might have challenged this assertion. For they continue, ‘We believe that the only authoritative and trustworthy norm for proper moral judgements is what God has revealed in his Word.’ This revelation expresses itself in ‘the teachings of the Bible as understood in the Protestant Evangelical theological tradition’, which in turn grounds the ‘long-standing institutional religious identity’ of the community. Note too that the policy statement from which these beliefs are excerpted contains no biblical citations or exegesis to support the claim that God’s original and ongoing intent and action is the creation of two distinct sexes. The authors consider this unnecessary, since reading the Bible as if it supported this claim is simply part of what it means to be a faithful member of this branch of Protestant Evangelicalism.¹¹

¹⁰ From a 2016 policy statement on human sexuality by a Christian university with an ethos similar to my own. I leave it uncited because my point is not to engage in public shaming but to present this as an example of a We-belief widely held, if not explicitly asserted, by many Christian communities of which I am a part. ¹¹ I say ‘branch’ of evangelicalism because it would be a false and hasty generalization to say that all self-identifying evangelical churches and institutions endorse the theological norms and biblical hermeneutics expressed in this policy statement.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

106

 

The fact that a competent consideration of alternate interpretations of the Scriptures and classical Christian texts is neither expected nor encouraged indicates that the religious communities of which I am a part have yet to confront the likelihood that hermeneutical injustice is second nature to Us. On Zagzebski’s account, long-standing religious communities are like selves, entities about which one can legitimately ascribe ‘beliefs, historical memory, and reasoning faculties’ (2012: 222).¹² She argues that since the Enlightenment, most of us have become increasingly self-conscious and critically reflective of our particular processes of formulating decisions and beliefs. For this reason, it makes sense to speak of an ‘executive self ’ (230). The executive self is that part of the self that reflects on its own psychic states, registering or predicting any dissonance, and determining if and how such dissonance should be resolved. The executive self is a self-manager insofar as it manages beliefs, emotions, desires, and decisions and makes higherorder judgements about when change is needed to better harmonize psychic states and the self generally (236). When discussing the proper functioning of the executive self, Zagzebski focuses on individual rather than communal epistemic agents. The individual executive self may well decide that deferring to communal authority is the best way of motivating and sustaining the requisite change to restore harmony. It is in this way that Zagzebski conceives of Kantian autonomy, i.e., conscientious executive self-reflection, as compatible with and perhaps requiring deference to authority. My concern, however, is with the proper functioning of the communal executive self. So long as the communal We persists in utilizing prejudicially biased or incomplete resources licensed by our tradition, the vices of hermeneutical and testimonial injustice and the harms they inflict will go unchecked. Non-deference to ecclesial statements like the one presented above is a matter of epistemic arrogance only if the executive self is making a good faith effort to practise the virtues of epistemic justice. Elizabeth Anderson (2012) was among several who questioned whether Fricker’s initial emphasis on individual corrective virtues was an adequate remedy for the type of epistemic injustice she described. Anderson argued that one needed to stress the importance of epistemic justice as a virtue that institutions and collective bodies must intentionally cultivate. Fricker agreed that harm to victims of epistemic injustice would continue until they can effectively communicate their experiences to the ‘relevant institutional bodies’ (2013: 1319). It is also important to stress that institutional bodies may consult with historically marginalized members without genuinely listening to them as competent interpreters or reliable testifiers of their experiences. Linda Martín Alcoff puts the point thus: ¹² Zagzebski suggests a ‘rough test’ for deciding if a community or institution should be viewed as an extended self. If members refer to it using ‘we’ or ‘us’ as opposed to a third-party neutral ‘the’, it passes the test (2012: 153).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

-   

107

In some cases, we may take a person’s word, but in an objectifying manner, treating them as a source of raw information rather than a rational informant capable of reasoned analysis . . . . In such cases we are treating the person as little more than an object-like measuring instrument, without the rational capacity of interpretation and judgment that is generally accorded to subjects. (2010: 131)

Therefore, by ‘a good faith effort’ I mean that the relevant communal body has made Fricker’s corrective virtues part of its normative identity. By ‘normative identity’, I am referring to the communal self-managing agent charged with making the changes necessary for bringing itself more in accord with the epistemic and ethical norms it should espouse. So, is there good reason for thinking that the executive selves of my Christian communities have made these virtues part of their normative identity? Sadly, the answer is no. For Fricker, cultivating testimonial justice involves intentionally trying to neutralize prejudice when crediting the testimony of someone from a historically marginalized group. Hermeneutical justice aims at correcting for any adverse dialogical effects due to biased epistemic resources in an effort to arrive at a clear mutual understanding of what is being said. She describes the exercising of these virtues as practising a positive form of silence: ‘[This] is the active, attentive silence of those who are listening, perhaps trying to make out a voice that is seldom heard. This kind of silence belongs with a moral attitude of attention to others—an openness to who they are and what they have to say’ (2012: 287 italics in the original). Consider what such silence would amount to if cultivated as part of a Christian community’s normative identity. Notice that the burden of understanding has shifted from those on the discursive margins to those in the centre. Rather than assuming the reason why certain voices are seldom heard within our Christian communities is that they are inarticulate, foolish, or worse, the virtuous listener is open to the possibility that any incoherence, dissonance, or miscommunication is due to a prejudicial bias or gap in the hermeneutical resources governing the dialogical exchange. We are now in a position to see why Zagzebski’s account of trusting in religious authority must be modified if we hope to encourage our religious communities to practise epistemic justice. When discussing the autonomy rightly accorded to individuals and communities, she draws upon Kant’s notion of heteronomy and distinguishes between internal and external perspectives on respecting an agent’s autonomy. Viewed from ‘the inside’, a community is functioning autonomously if its executive self is capable of engaging in conscientious self-reflection without any internal restraints. One such restraint would be a significant mistrust in the community’s process of arriving at assertible beliefs and directives. This is because self-trust ‘is a condition for conscientious reflection with the community’ (2012: 237). Viewed from ‘the outside’, respecting autonomy implies allowing the community to engage in conscientious reflection ‘without interference from

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

108

 

outside communities’ (ibid.). The problem with this description of autonomous functioning is that prejudicially biased hermeneutical resources illicitly draw the boundaries between those falling well within the community, those outside the community, and those on the margins. By characterizing a community that allows ‘outsiders’ to ‘interfere’ with its conscientious self-reflections as unduly heteronomous, Zagzebski inadvertently discourages cultivating the virtues that correct for epistemic injustice. Zagzebski fails to appreciate that a conscientious effort to address epistemic oppression perpetuated by the community may well involve calling into question the perspective from ‘the inside’ and a lessening of the self-trust it has hitherto enjoyed. Remember hermeneutical injustice is a second-order epistemic oppression, redressing it requires substantially altering the pool of resources governing a communicative exchange. The virtuously listening Christian community will thus be open to modifying dominant interpretations of the Scriptures, extra-biblical authoritative texts, and sacramental literature for the purpose of understanding the experiences of its marginalized members. Zagzebski rightly discerns that such listening poses an existential risk, rendering the self-constitution of the community vulnerable to what a ‘marginally pious’ person might have to say. To consider the real possibility that the prevailing hermeneutical framework may be in error or stand in need of a paradigm shift is a threat to the self-understanding of our Christian community, for now it is the experience of the community itself, as well as the experience of its most well-ensconced members, that is in danger of becoming obscured. Therefore, it is not surprising that despite the oft-stated and presumably sincere intentions of ecclesial authorities and policymakers to make their communities more inclusive, there is resistance to practising the kind of silence that Fricker enjoins. Christian theologian and disability theorist Nancy Eiesland confirms that well-intentioned efforts by ecclesial authorities aimed at rectifying discriminatory and exclusionary practices are stymied unless hitherto marginalized members are moved to the discursive centre of church polity and until the We-beliefs and communally authorized readings of the Bible, liturgies, and sacraments reflect the fact that their voices were genuinely heard (1994: 75–86). Throughout this section, I have argued that the We-beliefs and directives affirming the sex binary as a theological norm fall into the class of traditionally authorized assertions towards which my deference is not due. My argument rests on the premise that the executive selves of my Christian communities are not listening to the testimony of members whose lives are most impacted by these assertions in the manner urged by Fricker and Eiesland. For final support that this is indeed the case, consider the testimony of Poppy, an intersex Christian: I always felt that God made me and that the Bible says that God wove me together in my mother’s womb and has always known me and knows everything about me, so that I felt that I couldn’t be some horrible mistake or some terrible

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

-   

109

accident. And so that kind of gave me hope . . . Certainly when I was younger I would probably have really, really struggled to accept myself except for the fact that I just felt, well, God accepted me, and it just made me feel that there was a purpose to it. It wasn’t just a complete accident. And that was really the biggest thing for me, feeling like, well, God planned it for some reason. And that the Bible tells me that everything works for my good. So therefore it must be for my good, even if sometimes it felt the complete opposite. (Poppy)¹³

In contrast to the asserted We-belief that binary-sexed bodies are the divinely instituted theological norm, Poppy reports that God spoke to her otherwise. Her intersex body is not a mistake deviating from God’s purposive activity. Rather, God intends it and considers it a good for her and presumably for the community of which she is a part. Adam Green and K.A. Quan refer to experiences like Poppy’s as ‘scripture mediating experiences of God’ (2012: 418). These are religious experiences where one senses that God is using the Bible to communicate something to them directly. Such experiences are recorded throughout church history, and there is precedent for according them some degree of authenticity. In other words, there is precedent within Christian tradition for assigning some credibility to the testimony of these experiences rather than merely dismissing them out of hand. Poppy is not alone. Intersex Christians often report that the Bible helped them form positive identities as both intersex and Christian, and the passages referenced tend to be the very ones cited by ecclesial authorities in support of the tradition’s commitment to the binary standard (Cornwall 2013: 225). Given that the testimony of intersex Christians about God’s intent concerning their bodies contradicts the traditionally authorized We-belief of my religious community, what to do? I am not claiming that these testimonies and my argument thus far would warrant a complete discrediting of the weight of traditional authority. But I am claiming that they suffice for thinking that this is not one of those cases where I should simply trust my tradition more than my own experiences or the reported experiences of my contemporaries. In light of this testimonial disagreement and the long-standing hermeneutical marginalization of intersex people within my religious community, I conclude that I have good reasons for not deferring to prevailing religious authority regarding this matter.

3. Non-deference and Z’s Thesis In the last section, I focused on a particular instance of ecclesial epistemic oppression for the purposes of showing that non-deference towards religious

¹³ Cited in Cornwall (2013): 225.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

110

 

authority would be warranted in such a case. In this section, I argue that epistemic oppression is a general constraint on the deference owed to the prevailing authority of one’s religious community. I contend that Christian communities will almost certainly never entirely rid themselves of this oppression, and so deference to or trust in ecclesial authority cannot have the broad scope that Zagzebski suggests. I intend to show that this follows from her thesis on the justification of religious authority. According to Z’s thesis, the authority of my community is justified by my conscientious judgement that if I believe its teachings and follow its directives, the resultant psychic states are more likely to survive future reflection than if I proceed otherwise. Even a minimally conscientious Christian knows, however, that some traditionally held We-beliefs and teachings survived future reflection and some did not. In other words, there are domains of belief about which current members of our religious communities are equally or better epistemically situated than are past religious authorities. An obvious example is the domain of scientific beliefs. I presume it goes without saying that I should place more trust in the testimony of the biologist or physicist currently in my congregation than the teachings of St Augustine and St Aquinas with respect to embryonic development or the validity of the Copernican hypothesis. Zagzebski presumes this as well: [T]here are domains of belief in which the beliefs of contemporary experts are more authoritative than the beliefs of authorities of the past. Progress in these domains means not only accumulating knowledge, but replacing much of what was previously believed. This is reasonable in science because we know that if the past members of a scientific community were alive today, they would trust the contemporary experts more than themselves. (2012: 199)

Here Zagzebski acknowledges that progress in attaining the epistemic goods of scientific practice depends on trusting the testimony of relevant contemporary experts and that this sometimes necessitates a radical modification of previously held beliefs. That said, she neglects the fact that these Kuhnian-sized modifications often produced or were preceded by epistemic crises where the future development and continuous identity of the community was precisely at issue. Historical studies of the transitionary periods between one scientific paradigm to the next—from Newtonian to Einsteinian mechanics or the inclusion of non-Euclidean structures as a proper part of geometric research—show that those committed to the validity of the former hermeneutical framework did not easily convert to seeing the world as depicted by the latter. Indeed, some never converted. The idea that past members of the scientific community would quickly defer to their contemporary counterparts is highly dubitable. If large-scale belief replacement and trusting in the testimonies of current experts is a rationally permissible and progressive

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

-   

111

managerial move by an executive self with regard to its scientific beliefs, the explanation and justification cannot be that past authorities would have countenanced this move. Furthermore, when contrasting the reasonable management of scientific and religious beliefs, Zagzebski sounds as if she ascribes to something like Stephen Gould’s non-overlapping magisterial thesis, according to which science and religion have sovereign epistemic authority over disjoint domains of inquiry: [T]he net, or magisterium, of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry . . . (Gould as cited in Stenmark (2010): 278)

This thesis has been roundly criticized for resting on the assumption that science trades only in facts not values, a positivist view of science no longer tenable. More directly related to our concerns is that neither Gould nor Zagzebski adequately account for the fact that domains of inquiry, however well delineated, overlap in such a way that a paradigm shift in one often initiates an epistemic crisis in another. Consider the Grand Duchess Cristina of Lorraine’s reaction upon hearing of Galileo’s astronomical discoveries and their implied support of Copernicanism. She objected on grounds that it contradicted a prima facie reading of Joshua 10:13, where it is the sun, not the earth, which miraculously stops moving (Sobel (2000): 62–3). Notice too how Galileo responds. He doesn’t cite additional empirical data or evidence on the reliability of his telescope. Instead, he proposes an alternative biblical hermeneutics and a method for deciding the relative weight of epistemic authority accorded to the Scriptures on questions of concern to natural science (Galileo (2012): 61–94). The looming Copernican revolution in physics had a ripple effect on a domain of religious We-beliefs because it challenged the prevailing literalist reading of certain biblical texts, a point that the Grand Duchess and Galileo clearly understood and sought to address. Rapid and revolutionary changes in the scientific domain can thus legitimately call for rethinking and perhaps revising a tradition’s biblical hermeneutic. Revolutionary change in the domain of philosophical ethics can similarly create an epistemic crisis for a religious community’s moral beliefs and teachings. This is precisely what happened with the general acceptance of Kant’s claim that wellfounded ethical precepts derive from the concept of autonomy. Hermann Cohen explains the problem Kantian ethics posed for his nineteenth century German Jewish community: The problem is aggravated by the nature of Jewish tradition, which more than Christianity and Islam, is dominated and controlled by laws of Scripture, and

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

112

 

even more by laws of oral transmission, regulating in detail the ethical conduct of all individual and social activity. It would seem that in such an authoritarian system, there is no room left for the autonomous exercise of ethical judgment, for moral law followed on the basis of pure principle. (2004: 26)

Similar to Zagzebski, Cohen demonstrates that basing one’s beliefs, particularly ethico-religious beliefs, on the authority of a religious tradition does not violate norms of Kantian autonomy. However, Cohen’s and Zagzebski’s accounts of a religious community conscientiously exercising its epistemic agency and authority differ significantly. For Cohen, ‘a religion’s right to exist derives from its concept of God’, a concept that ‘must be constantly reaffirmed and perfected’ (1993: 45). In specific, Judaism must be practised and respected as an epistemic enterprise in its own right, tasked with continually developing a deeper, clearer understanding of the ‘inexhaustible meaning [“Bedeutung”]’ expressed by the concept of God characteristic of Abrahamic monotheism. Like Gould and Zagzebski, Cohen treats religious traditions as discrete domains of inquiry with a well-circumscribed subject matter, specified epistemic goals, and a distinct methodology. He insists, however, that the boundaries separating religious, philosophical, and scientific domains are permeable. Whereas Gould and Zagzebski try to preserve the epistemic autonomy and authority of religious communities by immunizing them from ‘outside’ influences, Cohen maintains that their ongoing vitality, cultural relevance, and unique contributions to the growing body of human knowledge depends on their remaining open to the fruitful results of any ‘conscientious intellectual endeavor’ (2004: 3).¹⁴ Cohen’s account of science, philosophy, and religion as discrete but interrelated domains of inquiry not only provides a more accurate description of the actual, historical relations between these domains, but also a better basis from which to derive prescriptions for wisely navigating the epistemic crises that sometimes result and for rationally resolving them. Because Zagzebski neglects the overlapping nature of scientific, ethical, and religious forms of inquiry, she draws too stark a contrast between properly managing their respective progressive developments. While downplaying the need to preserve and transmit knowledge to the next generation of scientific practitioners, she takes this to be of primary importance for religious practitioners. Progress in religious and moral domains is likened to ‘the progress of knowledge and understanding of a single person throughout a lifetime’ (ibid.: 199). Recall ¹⁴ The translator’s use of ‘conscientiousness’ is certainly not meant to indicate that Cohen intends this term as Zagzebski does. That said, the originally German reads ‘Gewissenfrages des Wissen’ with a literal English translation of ‘conscience-based questions of knowledge’, so it comes pretty darn close. In this passage, Cohen is specifically referencing the relationship between ethics and natural science. However, since he sees theological ethics as falling within the purview of Judaism and Abrahamic monotheisms properly practised, his point extends to religious traditions.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

-   

113

that massive belief replacement posed no apparent problem for the continuous identity and development of scientific community, not so for a religious one. In the latter case, change must be gradual and strictly accumulative, since otherwise its transgenerational identity is fractured: ‘We can change, but when we change we should be aware that we have a responsibility to future members of the community not to deprive them of their past’ (ibid.: 200). In contrast to Zagzebski, Richard Swinburne argues that limited and gradual change to a societal body’s aims and organization is a necessary criterion for it treating as the same across different times and spatial locations, and this holds for both religious and scientific communities (2007: 174). I agree with Swinburne that members of religious and scientific communities should be equally concerned that any proposed change to the inherited beliefs, aims, and organizational structure can be seen as a reasonable extension of the aims and structure of the founding community. For this reason, I maintain, pace Zagzebski, that the executive self of a scientific community also bears a responsibility to future members not to deprive them of their past. The writings of scientists and philosophers of science composed during periods of trans-paradigm shifting provide ample evidence of their concern to dispatch this responsibility. Where I differ from both Swinburne and Zagzebski is in thinking that limited and gradual change is necessary for treating a religious community as the same over time and place. Given that contemporary physicists legitimately see themselves as members of a well-circumscribed scientific community that includes Galileo and Newton and that contemporary geometers rightly identify as practitioners of domain of inquiry inaugurated by Euclid’s Elements, we must reject Swinburne’s view that limited and gradual change is a necessary criterion of identity for long-standing epistemic communities. If scientific and mathematic traditions can retain their identity and progress in attaining their respective epistemic goods, despite having undergone paradigm shifts and conceptual revolutions, why not expect religious traditions to be similarly resilient? Just as current members of our religious communities may be better epistemically situated than past religious authorities in the case of scientific beliefs, so too in the case of ethical and religious beliefs. According to Swinburne and Zagzebski, a primary aim of Christian communities is ensuring the transmission of propositional doctrines that are implicit in apostolic writings, articulated by the Apostolic Fathers, and subsequently refined and ratified by church councils. This is surely correct. Another aim, however, is identifying and redressing systemic injustices and oppression, an aim expressed in Jesus’s life and teachings and the teachings of other Hebrew prophets. In a paper prepared for the Faith and Order Commission of the National Council of Churches, Richard Mouw states that ‘the church has a crucial and central calling to promote the liberation of the oppressed’ (1981: 413). He supports this statement by citing apostolic teachings throughout the New Testament to the effect that ‘In Jesus God takes human poverty and helplessness

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

114

 

upon himself, in order to stand helpless before the political, economic, and cultural structures of society’ (412). The very life and death of Jesus is thus a testament to God’s participation in and exposure of societal structures that render certain groups—‘the poor’, ‘widows’, ‘orphans’ and ‘the stranger’—helpless. Mouw then identifies the common characteristic of these biblically referenced groups: ‘Each of these types is someone who is without a voice before the legal, economic, political, and cultural structures’ (411). In other words, Christ stands with the victims of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, those whose voices are silenced because of structural injustice and calls on his church to address the institutionalized barriers disabling them from being heard. According to Cohen, the prophetic writings of the Hebrew Bible should be credited with introducing the idea that ethical and religious maturity is marked by an ability to empathetically understand the experiences of marginalized others and perform the knowledgeable actions required to alleviate their suffering. He contrasts this distinctly Jewish conception of the virtuous self with Aristotle’s. Whereas Aristotelian ethics upholds ‘the lone thinker in his eudaemonian bliss’ as the surest route to mature selfhood, Judaism teaches that ‘the ethical self cannot exist as an I without a You.’ The I–Thou relationship of a fully developed ethical self is achieved by ‘paying heed to the suffering of another’, for it is in attending to this suffering that ‘this other appears no longer as him or her but as Thou’ (2004: 152–3).¹⁵ Proper humility about our fallibility and propensity toward sin also tells us that the work of understanding and responding to the suffering of ‘this other’ is unending: ‘The Self results from the eternal relationship between I and Thou; that is, it is the infinite ideal of this ever-continuing relationship. The ideal always remains ideal; the task remains a task’ (2004: 152). Becoming the fully mature self posited by the Jewish tradition thus functions as a regulative ideal towards which the community and its members strive. In order to asymptotically approach this ideal, the standing pool of traditional resources must undergo constant review and ‘everinnovative rejuvenation’, since ‘every new solution’ yields ‘new challenges’ (2004: 15). McCord Adams shares Cohen’s and Mouw’s position that identifying and redressing institutionalized oppression is a historic and distinctive aim of Abrahamic monotheistic traditions. She also agrees with Cohen concerning the ongoing nature of the work involved. The fact that humans are social and socially challenged entails that ecclesial Christian institutions, despite being ‘headed by Christ and directed by the Spirit of Christ’, will be ‘riddled with systemic evils’ (2006: 204).

¹⁵ For the purposes of my argument, there is no need to defend Cohen’s critique of Aristotelian ethics or his interpretation of the Jewish tradition as uniquely correct. I simply need to show that wellrecognized practitioners have identified redressing the type of systemic injustice that Dotson and Fricker describe as a fundamental aim of Christian and Jewish praxis.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

-   

115

In light of McCord Adam’s, Cohen’s, Mouw’s, and Eiesland’s account of what it takes to progress in combating these systemic evils, who should we look to as the relevant experts? I suggest we heed the words of Simone Weil, words anticipating the position generally defended by standpoint theorists: Human beings are so made that the ones doing the crushing feel nothing. It is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand. (Weil as cited in Fricker 2012: 287)

The relevant experts on the nature of the oppression currently riddling our societal institutions are the ones who have or are experiencing it. Therefore, if we expect the directives and teachings of our religious communities to reflect an adequate understanding of the epistemic oppression described by Dotson and Fricker—and I have argued we should—we must cultivate the corrective virtues of epistemic justice at the level of the executive ecclesial self. Individual members and the communal body must practise the empathic, cognitively attentive listening to the voiced suffering of others that Cohen sees as crucial to becoming a more mature ethical and religious self. To follow Weil’s advice means that traditional religious authority cannot have the weight or scope that Zagzebski and Swinburne accord it. For, there is little reason to think that those authorized with amassing, overseeing, and transmitting the community’s hermeneutical resources were crushed by the same oppression that is crushing folks today. So, regardless of the immediate psychic pay-off that may come from deferring to this authority, once one suspects that this deference comes at the cost of misunderstanding or ignoring what a historically marginalized person is trying say, the result is unlikely to survive the future self-reflections of a properly maturing We with ancestral roots in Abrahamic monotheism. Finally, cultivating the virtues of epistemic justice, even at cost of rapid and radical change to the dominant hermeneutical pool of Christian resources, need not be viewed as a faithless departure from the historic aims of the community but a progressive step in pursuit of at least one of them.

4. Conclusion I began with Zagzebski’s and Cottingham’s claim that failing to defer to the authority of one’s religious community smacks of epistemic arrogance, noting that they neglect to specify any legitimate constraints on this deference. I argued that detecting epistemic oppression in the production or use of a community’s authorized pool of hermeneutical resources qualifies as a good reason not to defer. I further argued that a concern to encourage the cultivation of the

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

116

 

corrective virtues of epistemic injustice at the communal level and address hermeneutic ignorance warrants an individual member’s decision not to defer to the authoritative testimony of their religious tradition. For, exercising the virtues of hermeneutical and testimonial justice will almost certainly manifest itself as non-deference in such cases. In an effort to show when the conditions for virtuous non-deference had been met, I cited the example of the traditionally held We-belief affirming the sex and gender binary, which has been recently reaffirmed by a Christian institution not unlike my own. Finally, I tried to show that non-deference in these cases can be justified based on Zagzebski’s thesis about conscientious epistemic agency by individual and communal selves, once her argument for this thesis is appropriately modified. Let me end by mentioning at least one thing that I have not done in this chapter. We saw that McCord Adams conceives of the Christian church’s task to combat evil an as ongoing game of whack-a-mole; different evils are bound to pop up and the church continually needs to restock and revise its mallets in order to keep knocking them down. Cohen agrees that this is the nature of the task bequeathed to all Abrahamic monotheistic traditions. Given what I have said about the persistent and multifarious character of epistemic oppression, I too would have to agree. I am also committed to the claim that addressing secondorder oppression will likely require a Dotsonian or Kuhnian revolution aimed at shared pool of resources inherited by the practitioners of these traditions. Endorsing the idea that Abrahamic traditions can and should undergo conceptual revolutions analogous to those periodically occurring with scientific traditions raises numerous questions. For instance, given that I am rejecting Swinburne’s criterion for continuous identity of religious communities, what replaces it? I have not answered this question. In other words, I still owe my reader an explanation of how my religious community, or any religious community for that matter, can undergo a paradigm shift and still claim its right as a legitimate successor of its pre-revolutionary predecessor. Elsewhere I have argued that closely examining debates occurring during a trans-paradigm period in the history of science—e.g. the nineteenth century debate between Hermann Helmholtz, Gottlob Frege, and Cohen over inclusion of non-Euclidean notions within geometry proper— supplies maxims for addressing the continuity problem and wisely navigating trans-paradigm periods in religious traditions. Convincing my reader the argument makes good on this promissory note is a task left for another day.¹⁶

¹⁶ I am indebted to the research fellows of the Center of Christian Thought for their tremendously helpful comments on the first draft of this chapter and to the Templeton Religion Trust. I am especially grateful to Kent Dunnington for helping me to articulate my thesis more clearly and to Adam Green, Kay Higuera Smith, Gregg Ten Elshof, and Rico Vitz, who reviewed subsequent drafts and urged me to sharpen my argument. Finally, I am thankful to Dawne Moon, Thomas Senor, and the other participants of 2018 Logos Workshop for their insightful questions and encouragement concerning the penultimate draft.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

-   

117

References Arboleda, Valerie, and Eric Vilain. 2014. ‘Disorders of Sex Development.’ In Yen & Jaffe’s Reproductive Endocrinology: Physiology, Pathophysiology and Clinical Management, edited by J. F. Strauss and R. Barbieri, 351–76. Philadelphia: Saunders. Alcoff, Linda. 2010. ‘Epistemic Identities.’ Episteme 7 (2): 128–37. Anderson, Elizabeth. 2012. ‘Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions.’ Social Epistemology 26 (2): 163–73. Bennet, Jana. 2012. ‘Women, Disabled.’ In Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, edited by B. Brock and J. Swinton, 427–41. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Erdmanns. Brock, Brian. 2012. ‘Introduction: Disability and the Quest for the Human.’ In Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, edited by B. Brock and J. Swinton, 1–23. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Erdmanns. Coady, C. A. J.. 2014. ‘Communal and Institutional Trust: Authority in Religion and Politics.’ European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6 (4): 1–23. Cohen, Hermann. 1993. Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen translated and edited by Eva Jospe. Cincinnati, Oh.: Hebrew Union College Press. Cohen, Hermann. 2004 [1908]. Ethics of Maimonides, translated with commentary by Almut Sh. Bruckstein Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press. Cornwall, Susanna. 2013. ‘British Intersex Christians’ Accounts of Intersex Identity, Christian Identity and Church Experience.’ Practical Theology 6: 220–36. Cottingham, John. 2014. ‘Authority and Trust: Reflections on Linda Zagzebski’s Epistemic Authority.’ European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6 (4): 25–38. Dotson, Kristie. 2012. ‘A Cautionary Tale: On Limiting Epistemic Oppression.’ Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 33 (1): 24–47. Dotson, Kristie. 2014. ‘Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression.’ Social Epistemology 28 (2): 115–38. Eiesland, Nancy. 1994. The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Frege, Gottlob. 1971. On the Foundations of Geometry, translated with an introduction by Eike-Henner W. Kluge. New Haven: Yale University Press. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power & the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fricker, Miranda. 2012. ‘Silence and Institutional Prejudice.’ In Out from the Shadows, edited by S. Crasnow and A. Superson, 287–306. New York: Oxford University Press. Fricker, Miranda. 2013. ‘Epistemic justice as a condition of political freedom?’ Synthese 190: 1317–32. Galileo. 2012. Selected Writings, translated by W. R. Shea and M.Davie. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

118

 

Green, Adam, and Keith A. Quan. 2012. ‘More Than Inspired Propositions: Shared Attention and the Religious Text.’ Faith and Philosophy 29 (4): 416–30. McCord Adams, Marilyn. 2006. Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology. New York: Cambridge University Press. McCord Adams, Marilyn. 2011. ‘Arguments from Tradition.’ In Christian Holiness & Human Sexuality: A Study Guide for Episcopalians, edited by G. Hall and R. Myers, 21–8. New York: Church Publishing. Merrick, Teri. 2011. ‘Can Augustine Welcome Intersexed Bodies into Heaven?’ In Gift and Economy: Ethics, Hospitality and the Market, edited by E. Severson. Newcastleupon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press. Merrick, Teri. 2016. ‘Listening to the Silence Surrounding Nonconventional Bodies.’ In This is my Body: Reflections on Embodiment in the Wesleyan Spirit, edited by C. Smerick and J. Brittingham. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications. Merrick, Teri. 2019. “From ‘Intersex’ to ‘DSD’: A case epistemic injustice” Synthese 196 (11): 4429–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1327-x, accessed 24 January 2020. Mouw, Richard. 1981. ‘Jesus and the Poor: Unity in Christ in an Unjust World.’ MidStream 20 (4): 409–19. Pohlhaus, Gaile, Jr 2012. ‘Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice: Toward a Theory of Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance.’ Hypatia 27 (4): 715–35. Sanders, Caroline, Bernie Carter, and Lynn Goodacre. 2011. ‘Searching for harmony: parents’ narratives about their child’s genital ambiguity and reconstructive genital surgeries in childhood.’ Journal of Advanced Nursing 67 (10): 2220–30. Sobel, Dava. 2000. Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love. New York: Penguin House. Stenmark, Mikael. 2010. ‘Ways of Relating Science and Religion.’ In Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion, edited by P. Harrison, 278–95. New York: Cambridge University Press. Swinburne, Richard 2007. Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van Fraassen, Bas. 2002. The Empirical Stance. New Haven: Yale University Press. UK Intersex Association. n.d. ‘UKIA Guide to Intersex.’ http://www.ukia.co.uk/ ukia/ukia-guide/index.html, accessed 23 May 2016. World Health Organization. n.d. ‘Gender and Genetics.’ http://www.who.int/genom ics/gender/en/index1.html, accessed 7 November 2015. Zagzebski, Linda. 2012. Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

5 Shattered Faith The Social Epistemology of Deconversion by Spiritually Violent Religious Trauma Joshua Cockayne, David Efird,¹ and Jack Warman

Many people lose their faith in God, not because of some knock-down argument against it, but rather because they were knocked down themselves, whether literally or figuratively, by the seemingly faithful. Many such people, those knocked-down by the faithful, are survivors of religious trauma and, in some cases, spiritual violence. Adding insult to injury, there’s a popular church meme which says: ‘If being hurt by the church causes you to lose faith in God, then your faith was in people, not God.’ Memes such as this would have us believe that such survivors never really had faith in God in the first place; it just seemed to them that they did. We believe that the meme is wrong. In particular, we think that it’s possible for some to have faith in God, and then lose that faith due to the actions of others, particularly church people, who shame the former with religious texts and rituals. Church hurt really can cause deconversion. That’s what we aim to argue for in this essay. Before doing so, we should describe what we take to be the motivation behind the church meme and where we think it goes wrong. The meme seems to assume, rightly in our view, that faith in God is a relational attitude. But, at least on what seems to be the motivation behind the church meme, this relational attitude is different from other relational attitudes we might have. The relational attitudes we might have to our friends, colleagues, loved ones, and others all occur in a social context. That is, what third parties say and do influences the relational attitudes we have to other people. For instance, a third party might convince you that someone you were previously not well disposed to is a kind and loving person, with the effect that you think better of them and so seek to become closer to them; alternatively, a third party might convince you that someone you previously regarded as a friend is cruel and

¹ David Efird (1974–2020) passed away before the publication of this book; he was very proud that this essay was to be included. We dedicate this essay to his memory. Joshua Cockayne, David Efird, and Jack Warman, Shattered Faith: The Social Epistemology of Deconversion by Spiritually Violent Religious Trauma In: Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology. Edited by: Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848844.003.0006

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

120

 ,  ,   

untrustworthy, with the effect that you think less of them and so seek to distance yourself from them. So much is common in our relational attitudes to other people. But, on the motivation behind the church meme, faith in God isn’t like this. For, on the view described in the meme, no one can influence a person’s faith in God: whether you seek to grow closer to, or distance yourself from, God is all to do with you and nothing to do with anyone else. And that’s where we think the meme goes wrong. Faith in God, we think, is a relational attitude similar to other relational attitudes we have to other people, in that faith in God occurs just as much in a social context as do our other relational attitudes. That is, what third parties say and do can influence a person’s faith in God, just as they can with our relational attitudes to other people. Think again about how third parties can influence our relational attitudes to our friends, colleagues, loved ones, and others. The examples we gave above were about how what third parties say and do can influence our relational attitudes to other people by changing our minds about these other people. But that’s not the only way third parties can influence our relational attitudes. Say that a third party convinced you that you were somehow unworthy of another’s friendship.² You might then withdraw from that friendship, seeking to distance yourself from them. Over time, and if you continued to think of yourself as unworthy of this friendship, you might then lose the friendship completely. All because someone else convinced you that you weren’t worthy of it. We think that something like this could happen to a person in their relationship with God. That is, other people can cause a person to lose their faith in God by shaming them with religious texts and rituals such that they come to think of themselves as unworthy of God’s love. Upon thinking of themselves in this way, they’ll likely stop doing the things that maintain and promote their relationship with God, such as engaging with him, revealing things about themselves, and accurately perceiving what God is revealing of himself to them. If this continues, at some point, they’ll lose faith in God because they won’t have a relationship with him anymore. This is the experience of many lesbian and gay Christians in church,³ and it’s a form of spiritual violence, which sometimes rises to the level of religious trauma, where their religious self or worldview is shattered, and they experience

² For instance, those suffering from abusive spouses might be convinced that they are unworthy of friendship and love from others. ³ To be sure, not all lesbian and gay Christians who experience the kind of spiritual violence and religious trauma we discuss in this essay lose their faith in God. As Andrew Marin (2016) has shown, through an important survey of lesbian and gay Christians in America, while LGBT Christians are twice as likely as those in the general American population to leave their faith community after the age of eighteen, 36 per cent don’t leave their faith community, and so, we assume, don’t lose their faith in God. But what may be most interesting, and hopeful, from this survey is that, of those who do leave their faith community, 76 per cent are open to returning.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

121

deconversion.⁴ To give a philosophical explanation of this experience,⁵ we begin by outlining the phenomena of religious trauma and spiritual violence, making use of Michelle Panchuk’s and Teresa Tobin’s work.

1. Spiritually Violent Religious Trauma How long could you live with being called ‘an abomination’?⁶ This is a question many who were brought up Christian and found themselves to be lesbian or gay have asked themselves, in one way or another. The first section of Mitchell Gold’s collection of stories, Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America, details experience after experience of this kind of traumatic spiritual violence. For example, Bruce Bastian writes, My real torment went on inside my head. In high school, we started hearing things in church that made it clear sex between two boys was an abomination. I got the message that if anyone learned the truth about my sexual attractions, I would lose my family and most, if not all, of my friends. I felt more and more like there was something wrong with me. I believed I was a disappointment to my god and would certainly be a disappointment to my church if anyone found out about the feelings I kept hidden deep inside. I became introverted because it was easier, and, of course, safer. I was convinced that if anyone discovered my secret, my life would be over . . . There were times when I thought seriously about suicide. But I couldn’t decide which would be the bigger sin: being homosexual or taking my own life. I think if anyone had found out I was gay then, I would ⁴ By ‘deconversion’, we mean a loss of faith in God, and, for reasons of space, we don’t give any further analysis of faith beyond that given below, where we argue that having faith in God means having an attitude of worship to him, which in turn means loving him. Faith may carry with it all sorts of other things, but spelling those out is beyond the scope of this essay. ⁵ Our use of the term ‘philosophical explanation’, following Robert Nozick (1981), signals the kind of project we have in mind here, namely, a philosophical, rather than a descriptive or normative, project. The problem we address is a philosophical one having the form: How could P be, given Q?, where it seems that Q excludes P. Other examples of this form include: • How could God exist if evil exists? • How could we be free if determinism is true? • How could we have knowledge of the external world if we could be brains in a vat? The church meme we quoted takes it to be that a faith lost because of the actions of other people excludes that faith having been in God. In this essay, we try to show that that’s not the case. Moreover, just as when a philosopher gives an answer to one of the above questions, they don’t typically claim that it’s the only possible answer, we don’t claim that the answer we give here is the only answer to how faith could have been in God yet caused to be lost by the actions of other people. We claim only that the answer we give is one such answer. Thanks to Jonathan Jacobs for his helpful questions prompting this clarification of the essay’s project. ⁶ This question is adapted from Gold with Drucker (eds) (2008: xxiv).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

122

 ,  ,   

have considered suicide more seriously. But I was able to keep my ugly, dark secret hidden. I even started denying it to myself. I tried to believe I could change and be ‘normal’ if I followed church teachings more closely. (Bastian 2008: 33)

Many try, as Bastian did, to follow church teachings, but most fail and punish themselves for their failure. A particularly graphic example comes from Jared Horsford: ‘FAG’ ran across my chest in letters eight inches high, their dimensions blurring and elongating as the blood dripped down. I stared at the mirror, bitter irony rolling through my mind about how illegible it was, bloody and backwards, in the bathroom mirror. I wouldn’t make the same mistake a few months later when I carved ‘I HATE YOU’—backwards this time—across the same skin, both relieved and disappointed that my previous message left me unscarred. (Horsford 2008: 76)

Both Bastian and Horsford are survivors of spiritual violence, spiritual violence that has risen to the level of religious trauma. To explain this kind of experience more generally, we can distinguish religious trauma from other kinds of trauma by its causes and its effects. According to Michelle Panchuk, occasions of religious trauma typically have the following types of causes:⁷ 1. They are justified (by some relevant authority) on religious grounds. A child is told by her parents that she must be beaten because it is the command of their God. They subsequently beat her. (This constitutes religious trauma justified on religious grounds regardless of whether the religious authority cited commands the violence to be inflicted.) 2. They are inflicted for religious reasons. A traumatic incident is inflicted for religious reasons, when, for instance, it is purported to be a necessary part of a religious ritual or rite. 3. They are the results of actions performed by (someone claiming) religious authority. A priest exploits his position as an authority figure to abuse a young member of his church. 4. They are in response to [putative] actions of the divine itself. An earthquake destroys a community. A victim of the earthquake is told by (someone she

⁷ It’s notable that religious practices, persons, or reasons are central to all the typical causes of religious trauma. If someone, a Christian, for instance, is bullied at work and finds out later that the person who bullies them is also a Christian, their experience, though it may indeed be a case of trauma, isn’t religious trauma.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

123

takes to be) a religious authority that the earthquake is an act of God as punishment for some transgression. (2018: 512) Typically, occasions of religious trauma have the following kinds of effects: 1. A shattered religious self may cause, for instance, depression, anxiety or hypervigilance, sometimes (but not necessarily) triggered in religious contexts. 2. A shattered religious worldview may lead the victim to believe that (all or a specific) religion is mistaken or misguided, that religious communities or people are dangerous, cruel, or uncaring, or that the divine itself is dangerous, cruel, or uncaring. (2018: 509) In light of these considerations, Panchuk defines religious trauma in the following way: [W]e can roughly characterize religious trauma as a traumatic experience perceived by the subject to be caused by the divine being, religious community, religious teaching, religious symbols, or religious practices that transforms the individual, either epistemically or not-merely-cognitively, in such a way that their capacity to participate in religious life is significantly diminished. (2018, 517)

She admits that this definition shouldn’t be seen as a strictly philosophical definition; rather, she thinks of it as a Ballung concept, one that things fall under “in virtue of family resemblances, rather than a uniquely shared property or set of properties.” (2018, 517).⁸ We turn now to introduce the concept of spiritual violence.

⁸ Panchuk gives the following two admittedly severe case studies as the strongest candidates for providing ‘an all-things-considered reason for deconversion’ (2018: 514): Case 1: A young child is repeatedly and brutally beaten by her religious parents. She is told that since God commanded the Israelites to stone their rebellious children, anything they do to her short of that is divinely approved and morally deserved. And she believes them. One night, they lock her out of the house as punishment for some misdeed. Sitting alone, bruised and bleeding, gazing at the stars, the girl has an overwhelming sense of the presence of God—a presence utterly terrifying because she perceives it to be of a being who delights in her suffering. (2018: 514) Case 2: A young boy is repeatedly molested by a rabbi at his religious school and sworn to secrecy in the divine name. When he discloses the abuse to a frum [observant Jewish] therapist, the therapist refuses to believe him, saying both that “rabbis don’t act that way” and that if such claims become known, they might cause ‘Chillul Hashem’ [casting shame or bringing disrepute to belief in God]. (2018: 514)

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

124

 ,  ,   

As Teresa W. Tobin defines it, spiritual violence does not name the use of physical force to inflict material harm in the name of God, or for religious purposes, as, for example, in a religiously motivated way. Rather, in spiritual violence sacred symbols, texts, and religious teachings themselves become weapons that harm a person in her spiritual formation and relationship with God. (2016, 134)

Tobin’s concept of spiritual violence is, thus, both a wider and a narrower concept than Panchuk’s concept of religious trauma. For spiritual violence need not rise to the level of trauma (thereby making it a wider category), but it does require the survivor to have internalized the teaching that so harms them (thereby making it a narrower category).⁹ Moreover, we assume that the harms caused by spiritual violence cannot be justified by reference to some future good or future prevention of harm, such as in the case of medical intervention to remove a tumour, or plastic surgery to improve one’s appearance.¹⁰ In this essay, we deal with cases where spiritual violence does rise to the level of trauma, and so are cases of both spiritual violence and religious trauma, or spiritually violent religious trauma, one might say. How is it that such cases, of spiritually violent religious trauma, that is, can result in deconversion? This is the question that will occupy us for the remainder of this essay. The first step in doing is to think about the nature of faith, particularly as an interpersonal relationship.

2. Faith and Love If we aim to give a philosophical explanation for how the actions of other people can cause a person to lose their faith in God, we need to specify what we take faith in God to be. This is the task to which we now turn. To do this, we observe that Christians are called to two things (among others): to have faith in God and to worship him. We think that there is an intimate connection between the two, and that this relationship will help explain how it could be that the actions of other people can cause a person to lose their faith in God. To begin, we take faith in God to be an attitude of allegiance to God, that is, an attitude of loyal commitment to God in recognition of his unsurpassable

⁹ We are indebted to Panchuk’s (Forthcoming: 5) helpful discussion of the relationship between religious trauma and spiritual violence here. ¹⁰ That is, we are not assuming that the Christian life must be devoid of harm—C.S. Lewis’s description of Aslan is an apt summary of how God is often presented in Scripture: ‘he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you’ (1970: 75–6). However, we assume that the harm suffered by victims of spiritual violence cannot be justified by appealing to the ongoing work of sanctification.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

125

greatness.¹¹ Such an attitude is typically expressed in worship, where we acknowledge this commitment by praising God for his greatness, confessing that we have fallen short of our commitment to him, thanking him for all that he has given us, offering gifts to him in grateful response, and praying to him that we might draw closer to him. In so doing, we cultivate an attitude of worship, an attitude that is intended to carry over from participating in acts of worship to our everyday lives. To explain this attitude more clearly, such an attitude of worship is an attitude toward God that, in Nicholas Wolterstorff ’s words, is ‘awed, reverence, and grateful adoration’ (2015: 26). We can see it expressed in the first stanza of the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, something said or sung in many worship services: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will. We praise You, we bless You, we adore You, we glorify You, we give You thanks for Your great glory.

If this stanza expresses, more or less, what it is to have an attitude of worship to God, then having an attitude of worship to God involves love for him, since adoration is a mode of love. In Wolterstorff ’s words, adoration is ‘a mode of love, specifically love as attraction. To adore something is to be drawn to it on account of its worth, to be gripped by it; we speak of adoring some person, some work of art, some scene in nature’ (2015: 25). Thus, if having faith in God is intimately connected to having an attitude of worship toward him, which is a mode of love for him, then having faith in God is intimately connected to loving him: to being drawn to him and gripped by him on account of his worth.

3. Love and Union Having come to the view that having faith in God (at least the kind of faith in God at issue in this paper) involves loving him, we now need to think about what it is to love someone, for this will help us see how it is that others can cause a person to lose their faith in God through shaming them with religious texts and rituals. Thankfully, Eleonore Stump has given an account of love that makes this possible, where to love another person requires both personal revelation and personal engagement, both of which can be undermined by spiritually violent religious trauma.

¹¹ For a detailed exploration of faith as allegiance grounded in the theology of Paul and the Gospels, see Bates 2017. For Bates, faith as allegiance comes to: ‘mental affirmation that the gospel is true, professed fealty to Jesus alone as the cosmic Lord, and enacted loyalty through obedience to Jesus as the king’ (2017: 92; emphasis in the original). For the purposes of this paper, we take no stand on this particular account of faith as allegiance, as working out the consistency of Bates’s account of faith as allegiance and the one proposed above is beyond the scope of this paper.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

126

 ,  ,   

Drawing from Aquinas, Stump argues that to love another person is to have two interrelated desires, namely, the desire for the good of the beloved, and the desire for union with the beloved (2010: 91).¹² For our purposes, the desire for union is the most crucial of these desires, and so we’ll go into some detail about what union with another person consists in. On Stump’s account, union with another person requires mutual closeness and significant personal presence. We consider each in turn. To be close to another person, you have to reveal yourself to them, that is, share important thoughts and emotions with them. Call this ‘personal revelation’. Now, in order to reveal such important things about yourself, you have to be wholehearted in your desire for them, that is, you can’t be conflicted in your desire for the other person, for that would mean that you would hold back things that are important to you, and thereby limit your personal revelation. Stump explains: If Jerome wants to reveal his thoughts and feelings to Paula and if Jerome desires Paula in the sense just described, but if Jerome is alienated from his own desires as regards Paula—if he desires to have different desires from those he has regarding Paula because he thinks that his relationship to Paula is detrimental to his flourishing, for example—then Paula is not close to Jerome. . . . The relation that results from such an internal conflict on the lover’s part undermines the lover’s closeness to the beloved. For one person Paula to be close to another person Jerome, it is therefore necessary that Jerome have psychic integration of desires, or whole-heartedness. (2010: 125)

For example, if Jerome is to be united with Paula, he can’t on the one hand, desire union with her, but on the other, desire to be separated from her (a first-order desire) or desire to desire to be separated from her (a second-order desire). This is what it is to be wholehearted in his desire for union with her. And this is (part of ) what personal revelation requires, and so, in turn, (part of) what union with another person requires. Having given an analysis of the mutual closeness required for personal union, let’s now look at the significant personal presence also required for union. What is it to be present in this way to another person? Say that you sit next to someone on the bus. You’re aware of them, and you interact with them directly and immediately, and the person is conscious (it’s not a late-night bus), and so you’re having a second-personal experience of them, but you don’t know them because, even though you’re both present, you’re not present to one another (as in, ‘We had dinner together, but she was not present to me, as she was on her phone all

¹² Importantly, this desire for union is a conditional desire on Stump’s account. For example, a person can still love another, and so desire union with them, but only conditional on certain obstacles to that union being removed, such as behaviour on the beloved’s part that makes the lover feel unsafe.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

127

evening’). Such experiences fall short of significant-personal presence, which, for Stump, is necessary for union. As she explains, significant personal presence requires a kind of secondpersonal experience in which each person is aware of the other in a direct and immediate way, and they attend to one another, just what is missing in the bus example above—though you may share a second-person experience with the other person, neither of you is attending to the other, only to, for example, how long the bus is taking to get you where you want to go. This kind of mutual attending psychologists call ‘joint attention’.¹³ Thus, Paula’s significant personal presence to Jerome requires her to have second-personal experiences and to share attention with Jerome, the conjunction of which we’ll term ‘personal engagement’. So, to sum up: to love another person requires personal revelation and a wholehearted desire for union with them, and, achieving this union, in turn, requires personal engagement.

4. In Order to Form a More Perfect Union¹⁴ It’s important to note at this point that union between persons comes in degrees— the degree of union you have with a friend or colleague is typically less than the degree of union you have with a family member or a partner. Part of the reason for this is that you know your family member or partner better than you know your friend or colleague. Indeed, you might even say that you know a family member, or your partner, well. But what is it to know someone well? Answering this question will help us see what lesbian and gay people lose when they suffer from spiritually violent religious trauma. According to Bonnie M. Talbert, knowing someone well ‘is normally the product of a sequence of interactions’ that have, minimally, the following features:

¹³ To describe it simply, joint attention is a form of social engagement in which we are aware that another person is ‘in engagement with an object or potential object as a process over time’ (Reddy 2012: 137). As Axel Seemann notes in his volume on joint attention, although ‘the discussion of joint attention is anything but unified’ (2012: 1), there’s a common position which all discussions of jointattention share, namely ‘that an adequate understanding of the life of the mind has to pay particular attention to its social dimension’ (2012: 2). This is often filled out by thinking about the social development of infants. An infant’s awareness and engagement with other persons develops over time, and begins with a kind of dyadic joint-attention, that is, attention which requires only awareness of another person through a kind of mutual gazing. The ability to jointly attend then develops into a kind of triadic joint-attention, that is, joint-attention in which an infant gains the ability to focus on some independent object whilst remaining aware of the other person (Reddy 2005: 85–7). To clarify with an example: when a child looks her mother in the eye, then points toward an object, and then looks back to the eyes of the mother, if the mother follows the direction of her child’s gaze, then they had a dyadic joint-attention to begin with, followed by a triadic joint-attention focusing on the object (Reddy 2012: 145). ¹⁴ Taken, of course, from the preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

128

 ,  ,   

1. We have had a significant number of second-person face-to-face interactions with A, at least some of which have been relatively recent. 2. The contexts of those interactions were such as to permit A to reveal important aspects of her/himself, and A has done so. 3. A has not deceived us about him/herself in important respects. 4. We have succeeded in accurately perceiving what A has revealed—i.e. [our judgement is not impaired] by [our] own biases. (2015: 194) In addition to these conditions, which constitute a ‘breadth requirement’ for knowing a person well, that is, having a certain quantity of shared interactions that meet certain conditions, Talbert proposes that there is a ‘depth requirement’ as well: The history of their shared interactions contains ‘at least a “critical mass” of shared experiences that were deeper in cognitive and/or emotive content than we typically have with mere acquaintances—i.e., contexts in which thoughts and feelings we take to be meaningful and important were shared. (Talbert 2015: 200)

Meeting this depth requirement means that the two people then come to share a world together. And the more they meet both the breadth requirement and the depth requirement, the more of a world they share and so the more they know one another, which then allows for a greater union between them. Now, to share more of a world with another person requires a kind of knowhow, a knowing how to engage that person. As Talbert writes, [T]o know another is to know how to successfully interact with him/her over time. Knowing how to interact with a particular person starts with the largely ineffable ability to recognize him/her, which recognition comes to be associated with a more complex mental representation of that individual . . . Our interactive skills are largely intuitive and difficult to express in propositional terms. For example, when I am talking to Shannon, I find that I pace my remarks differently than I do when I am talking to Deme. Without thinking about it I seem to adjust the pace of my conversation to what I somehow perceive is most suitable to the interaction. (2015: 196–7)

What Talbert draws attention to here is that a part of what it is to come to know a person well over time is to develop a certain kind of skill. This will be important when we come to consider the role of worship in coming to know God, to which we now turn. But before doing so, to sum up: the greater union you have with a person, the more you know them, and the more you know them, the better you are at engaging with them.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

129

5. The Practice of Worship and Knowing How to Engage God So far, our concern has been with thinking about faith and the attitude of worship and how these relate to one another in a desire for a union of love. Now, we are in place to think more carefully about the practices of worship and how they relate to faith and developing this desire for a union of love. So, in this section, we address the relationship between the practice of worship and knowing how to engage God. We argue that the practice of worship is a good way for a person to acquire knowledge of how to engage God, and the greater frequency and variety of practices of worship a person engages in, the greater their knowledge of how to engage God. As Wolterstorff notes, the practices of worship, specifically liturgy, provide us with actions which express this orientation of love towards God. The actions involved in liturgy, he notes, are not one way, but rather, they are mutual acts (2015: 66–7). That is, not only do we express our adoration to God through the central pattern of thanking, blessing, and petitioning, but also, we make space for God to respond by listening and speaking to us (2015: 71). Thus, as Wolterstorff writes, the ‘reciprocity of orientation brings into existence an I-thou relationship between God and us. God is a thou for us.’ (2015: 61). In other words, for Wolterstorff, through the engagement with the practices of the church, a person is able to orientate herself towards God in a mutual relationship which involves mutual address and adoration. We’ve suggested that an important part of loving and desiring union with another a person is that we seek opportunities to engage with that person. The degree of union we have with another is partly dependent on our knowledge of how to engage that person. We’ll argue here that one of the crucial roles of the practice of worship is to provide us with this kind of personal know-how in relation to God. And thus, there are important implications for those that are excluded from the practices worship (whether this be through a kind of selfexclusion or because of the community’s exclusion).¹⁵ ¹⁵ Moreover, this also appears to fit an account of faith as an orientation towards union or relationship with God. Paulina Sliwa (2018) gives a similar account of faith in which faith requires certain dispositions to perform certain ‘acts of faith’ (2018: 247). The result of which, Sliwa goes on to argue, is that [h]aving faith, is in part, a matter of being disposed to perform acts of faith. In fact, we can say something stronger: to the extent that I have faith . . . I have the ability to perform acts of faith . . . . Faith is, in part, a matter of having the ability to perform acts of faith. Acts of faith require the right kinds of desires along with the relevant know how. And so, this suggests that having faith is, in part, a matter of having the right kinds of desires along with the right kind of know how. It’s partly constituted by these desires and the know how in question. (2018: 254) If Sliwa is right, then faith involves or requires a certain kind of know-how. Sliwa suggests that the practices of worship are a good example of acts which might count as acts of faith and thereby give us the kind of know-how required for her account of faith (2018: 260).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

130

 ,  ,   

As Terence Cuneo has argued, the practices involved in liturgical worship can contribute to a person’s personal knowledge of God. Indeed, Cuneo seems to have in mind a concern very similar to Talbert’s when he talks of ‘building a rapport’ with a person by gaining a kind of personal know-how (2016: 148). On Cuneo’s account, [L]iturgy makes available act-types of a certain range such as chanting, kissing, prostrating, and eating that count in the context of a liturgical performance as cases of blessing, petitioning, and thanking God . . . If this is correct, the liturgy provides the materials for not only engaging but also knowing how to engage God. Or more, precisely: the liturgy provides the materials by which a person can acquire such knowledge and a context in which she can exercise or enact it . . . . to the extent that one grasps and sufficiently understands these ways of acting, one knows how to bless, petition, and thank God in their ritualized forms. One has ritual knowledge. (2016: 163)

Thus, it seems that the practice of worship is a good way for a person to acquire knowledge of how to engage God.¹⁶ What’s more, not only can the practices of worship allow a person to acquire knowledge of how to engage God, but also, we think, they can allow a person to gain deeper and broader personal know-how in relation to God, too. As we’ve argued elsewhere (Cockayne and Efird 2018), corporate worship, in particular, can provide a variety of contexts in which to personally engage with God, and thereby, to root out the biases is one’s own knowledge and experience of God. We suggest that corporate worship can play the kind of broadening and deepening role in our experience of God, something that will be important at the conclusion of this essay when we come to discuss how lesbian and gay people who have lost their faith might be nurtured back into it. For at least a part of what it is to engage with another in a variety of contexts depends on our wider social relationships. Not only is our personal knowledge dependent on our shared experiences and shared knowledge, but also, we might think, it depends on our wider relationships. Personal relationships are rarely one-to-one. In knowing a person, we have experienced them in interaction with many other people, in different family

¹⁶ In ‘Common Ritual Knowledge’ (2019), Joshua Cockayne argues that these practices of engaging God through liturgy appear to be importantly corporate in nature. He suggests that it’s not the individual who engages God, but the community, and, consequently, it’s not the individuals who know how to engage God, but the community. Just as a violin player knows how to play her part in an orchestral symphony, rather than knowing how to perform the symphony, it seems that what an individual comes to know is importantly embedded in a community in certain respects. As we’ll return to it shortly, this has important consequences for considering cases in which individuals are isolated from the community of the church.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

131

situations, in different friendship groups and social environments. All these different environments for experiencing a person make a difference to our knowledge of how to engage that person. C.S. Lewis makes this point in his discussion of friendship in the The Four Loves: [I]f, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but ‘A’s part in C’, while C loses not only A but ‘A’s part in B’. In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him ‘to myself ’ now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. (1960: 73–4)

Just as your knowledge of how to engage a friend is partly informed by your experience of that friend in interaction with other friends, so our knowledge of how to engage God is informed by our experience of God in interaction with others. Indeed, the presence of other people can not only colour our own experience and engagement with God, but also shape our perception of God by pointing out aspects of God which we wouldn’t or couldn’t notice alone. By sharing attention with other members of a congregation, even in a relatively minimal way, we can be drawn to aspects of God’s character that we wouldn’t have noticed alone. Consider the following examples: [You are] participating in corporate worship alongside a friend whom you know has been suffering with chronic pain. Suppose you are aware of God’s presence and are sharing attention with him throughout the liturgy, whilst also being aware of your friend. After receiving communion, you notice that something has changed in your friend—his shoulders are lifted, his eyes are brighter, and he manages a contented smile to you across the pew. As you become aware of this, you suddenly come to the realisation that God has brought some kind of healing to your friend. In seeing God’s interaction with your friend (albeit in an indirect way), corporate worship has allowed you not only to see your friend’s perception of God, but in some way, you see more of God as an object. Your knowledge of God as a person has been deepened and broadened by such an experience. (Cockayne and Efird 2018: 315, fn. 46) When alone, we might have the tendency to focus on certain aspects of God’s character, and thereby build up a biased picture of God, in worship, it is possible to be guided by the focus of another’s attention. This change in our focus might simply be by means of the emphasis another person places on certain words, the shape and posture of their body, or even the focus of their gaze (on, say, the altar, or the cross, for example). All these ways might serve as pointers to redirect our

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

132

 ,  ,   

own attention and thereby to experience some different aspect of God, thereby removing our biases in important ways. (Cockayne and Efird 2018: 320)

In these examples, our fellow congregants can play the role of deepening and broadening our knowledge of how to engage God in ways which we couldn’t achieve alone. Unlike what is described in Lewis’s discussion of friendship, a person’s relationship to God in this life is imperfect and patchy. This is where one’s dependence on the experience of the community of faith is all the more important—whilst one can’t know and experience God entirely, one can draw on the other members of the spiritual community for support. Not only this, but if our experience and knowledge of a person changes depending on the company one keeps, then this has implications for our understanding of worship. Engaging with God alone and engaging with God in community allow for different experiences of what God is like and require different kinds of practical knowledge of how to engage God. And thus, they can play a role in providing a person with a greater frequency and variety of practices of worship, and thereby provide a person with greater knowledge of how to engage God. So, to sum up all that has gone before, a person who has faith in God desires union with God, and the degree of that union depends on the person’s selfrevelation to God, their wholeheartedness in their desire for union with God, the extent of their personal engagement with God, and their knowledge of how to engage God, knowledge which is often acquired in corporate worship.

6. Shame, Spiritual Violence, and Personal Union with God We’re now in a position to connect the account of faith in God and union with him outlined above with the question of how lesbian and gay Christians who undergo spiritually violent religious trauma can lose their faith in God. When lesbian and gay Christians are taught that their desire for same-sex relationships is sinful, they often experience a kind of psychic fragmentation whereby, though they desire such relationships, they desire not to desire them. This is a conflict in their first- and second-order desires, and a conflict that goes right to the heart of their identity. In this regard, the attitude taken towards sexual desires of lesbian and gay individuals is importantly different to the attitude that might be taken to other sexual desires, such as desires for adultery or polygamy. The disapprobation of sexual desire in general is not spiritual violence. It’s that the kind of disapprobation directed at homosexual desire, given the way in which that desire is constitutive of one’s identity, elevates mere disapproval to the status of violence. However, to say that sexual desires are at the heart of one’s identity is not to undermine the importance of living out one’s identity in Christ. Of course, any

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

133

individual, regardless of sexual orientation, can define themselves primarily in reference to their sexual desires, rather than primarily in relation to Christ. We assume that there are lesbian and gay individuals who identify themselves primarily in relation to Christ who pursue same-sex relationships in faithful response to who they are in Christ. For such individuals, experiences of spiritually violent religious trauma often cause the kind of conflict of desires we identify here. As Jimmy Creech, a former Methodist minister, whose credentials were taken away for conducting a marriage ceremony for two men, writes, Sin is among the most powerful words in the English language. While its biblical meaning is ‘separation from God,’ it is commonly used to refer to behaviour considered objectionable, even hated, by God. No self-respecting person of moral character wants to sin or be known as a sinner. To be labelled a sinner is to be rejected by God and society . . . To label as sin a person’s sexual orientation is an act of spiritual violence. It defines the personal core, the very essence of a young person’s identity, as sinful. Believing you’re a sinner because you’re lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender creates severe emotional and mental anguish, especially for young people. Not knowing whom to trust or talk with about it, and feeling alone with the struggle to be who you are, creates a deeply personal crisis. Low self-esteem, self-hatred, and fear of exposure often result in ruined lives, broken families, depression, and, much too often, suicide. (2008: 322)

This psychic fragmentation can then cause a person to reveal less of themselves to God. For they then become ashamed of themselves, becoming conflicted in their desire for union with God and for personal engagement with God. According to Stump (2010: 145, 116, 113), a person feels shame when they believe that it would be appropriate that they be rejected. She writes, [A] shamed person anticipates warranted rejection and abandonment on the part of real or imagined others, and consequently he is anxious about marginalization or isolation. His anxiety is directed towards a distance, an absence of union, forced on him by others with whom he himself desires some kind of closeness. His worry is therefore that real or imagined others will be warranted in lacking for him the second desire of love, the desire for union with him. (2016: 113)

As she goes on to explain (2016: 113–16), whilst the feeling of shame is often associated with a person who has committed some kind of wrongdoing, there are also other cases of shame, for example, when a person feels shame because of the wrongdoing of others, such as survivors of sexual assault, when a person has a disability, such as Joseph Merrick, the so-called Elephant Man, or when a person feels shame because they belong to a certain group, such as children of highranking Nazis. The primary effect of this feeling of shame is that it diminishes a

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

134

 ,  ,   

person’s capacity for union with the person who is the focus of their shame, as in the case of the wrongdoer, or even anyone at all, as in the other three cases of shame. This analysis of shame, we think, is helpful in explaining why individuals might desire not to engage personally with God after experiencing spiritually violent religious trauma. Rembert Truluck highlights the following case: ‘A preacher, his face distorted with rage, shouts anti-gay slogans from his pulpit into a television camera’, he writes, A mother quietly tells her son that he is no longer her son because he has just revealed that he is gay. She adds, ‘God doesn’t love you, and neither do I.’ A politician declares to a group of GLBT people, ‘God will destroy you!’ A newspaper prints a series of letters to the editor that allows religious fundamentalists to vent their homophobic anger in irresponsible abusive distortions of the Bible. All of this is spiritual violence, and it is wounding and destroying far more lives than most people realize. Spiritual abuse hurts both the abuser and the abused. Hate is a bitter emotional diet. Being hated takes a heavy emotional toll on every victim of spiritual violence. Physical violence against homosexuals is unnecessary. Teach them to hate themselves enough, and they will destroy themselves and each other. (Truluck, 2001)

In recounting the impact of spiritual violence, Truluck maintains, ‘Spiritual violence can hide the face of God’ (Truluck, 2001). Equally importantly, on the analysis we offer, spiritual violence can cause victims to hide their faces from God. This hiding from God is a result of the effects of shame, or so we argue. The kind of shame that resonates most with the topic of this essay, that of the spiritually violent religious trauma lesbian and gay Christians have often been subject to, is the shame associated with disabilities, as in Joseph Merrick, the socalled Elephant Man. Stump writes, The dreadful distortions of his frame by his disease left him looking revulsive and fearful to others, who generally turned away from him. On traditional Christian doctrine, the depredations of nature are a consequence, even if an indirect one, of human sinfulness. On this view, there was no natural evil, and consequently no shame over defects of nature, before the sin resulting in the Fall. So, insofar as defects in nature are somehow thought to be a function of the post-Fall condition of the world, which is itself a function of human sin, then this kind of shame is also a consequence of human sin, not of course on the part of sufferers such as Merrick, but on the part of the human race in its origins. (2016: 115)

This is just the sort of shame many lesbian and gay Christians are made to feel, as if their natures were ‘defective’, not outwardly, as in Joseph Merrick, but inwardly,

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

135

that is, as if, inwardly, they are the Elephant Man. There could be no better characterization of the shame that some lesbian and gay people have been made to feel in some churches, labelled as sinners, and so labelled as those rejected, even hated, by God. This then means that they become conflicted in their desire for union with God. In response to believing themselves to be hated by God, they desire separation from him, even, if, at the same time, some part of them still desires union with him.¹⁷ Dan Karslake tells a story of an email he received from a gay teenager following a national TV programme he produced on a well-known theologian, who was also a lesbian: Last week I bought the gun. Yesterday I wrote the note. Last night I happened to see your show on PBS. And just knowing that someday, somewhere, I might be able to go back into a church with my head held high, I dropped the gun in the river. My mom never has to know. That’s the email I received from a gay kid in Iowa in 1998, the morning after a segment I produced about Rev. Irene Monroe aired nationally on PBS’s gay news magazine In the Life . . . In subsequent emails with that boy from Iowa, I learned that he had felt completely overwhelmed because not only could he lose his biological family by coming out but also his church family, and indeed, God. Until he saw the story, he felt suicide was his only option. Yet there on television was a woman of deep faith who was also openly gay. I remember him asking, ‘Do you mean that I can be gay and still believe in God?’ My answer was, ‘Absolutely.’ ‘Doesn’t God hate me?’ ‘Absolutely not.’ (2008: 4)

Thankfully, this gay teenager had seen Karslake’s TV segment, and Karslake was able to help him see that God doesn’t hate him. But many lesbian and gay ¹⁷ See also Dawne Moon and Theresa W. Tobin’s discussion of ‘sacramental shame’ which results from conservative Christianity’s allegiance to the doctrine of gender complementarity, which elevates heteronormativity to the level of the sacred and renders those who violate it as not persons, but monsters. In dispensing shame as a sacrament, nonaffirming Christians require constant displays of shame as proof that LGBTI church members love God and belong in the community. Part of what makes this shame so harmful is that parents and pastors often dispense it with sincere expressions of care and affection, compounding the sense that one’s capacity to give and receive love is damaged. (2018: 451)

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

136

 ,  ,   

teenagers raised in church wouldn’t have been so lucky to have someone like Karslake. They would go on thinking that God hates them. This can then result in a person stopping engaging with God, and, in particular, in practices of worship. Jarrod Parker tells of his experience in his church, after trying and failing to change his sexual orientation: I soon found myself even more depressed because I wasn’t changing—and even more isolated. My church treated me like I had a disease. People who had been friends stopped speaking to me. I once sat in the second row at church, but I began to feel I had to sit in the very back. (2008: 87)

Needing to sit in the back of church is a symptom of shame, shame because of an apparent ‘defect’ of their nature, being treated as diseased. As Stump writes, [A] person who feels shame believes that others would be warranted if they were to ‘nil’ him—that is, to repudiate a desire for him, rather than to desire union with him. That is surely at least part of the reason why a person suffering from shame wants not to be seen. He supposes that, if he were seen, others would be justified in rejecting him. That is why shame is characterized by a desire to avoid the gaze of others, to be invisible. (2010: 145)

For many, this process doesn’t stop in the back of church, but leads right out of it, as the person wants to avoid the gaze of other church members, and, at the end of the process, even God himself.¹⁸ Thus, to explain why God may seem hidden from those who experience such trauma, we can appeal to this account of shame. A person who feels that it would be appropriate for others to reject them will often withdraw from God, be reticent to share attention with him, and so will cease desiring personal engagement with God. This might not happen immediately; the way in which shame leads to disengagement with God will be emotionally complex in ways which there is not space to address here. Indeed, it might be that a shamed individual can recover their relationship with God after such an experience. But for many, such recovery of relationship is not possible, and their experience of shame means that they are no longer capable of desiring union with God. The result of this, is that the degree of union they have with God will also

¹⁸ It’s important to note that the shift of a person’s perspective that occurs in the experience of shame isn’t necessarily directed toward God, but, rather, at themselves. As Panchuk puts this point, One cannot appropriately engage in a loving relationship with God when one believes that God sees oneself as fundamentally flawed—flawed in a way that is somehow deeper or more fundamental than the normal proclivity to sin. (Panchuk n.d.: 5) Thus, spiritually violent religious trauma doesn’t give a person a reason (an epistemic reason, that is) to reject their faith; rather, it gives them a practical reason to stop doing the things that maintain their faith, that is, sharing attention with God in activities such as worship.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

137

decrease the less they desire engagement with God. And it can decrease to the extent that a person loses their faith entirely. For they no longer reveal anything important about themselves to God, they no longer desire union with him, and they no longer engage with him. Because they were made to feel ashamed of themselves. Church hurt really can cause deconversion.¹⁹

7. Conclusion Many take community to be essential to faith—that it’s important to nurture the faith of others. But if what we’ve argued in this essay is right, then the actions of others can have not only a positive effect on a person’s faith, but also, a negative effect as well. For there’s a dark side of corporate engagement with God which is rarely discussed by philosophers and theologians. And that’s what we’ve aimed to bring to light in this essay. Specifically, using religious texts and rituals, church members can shame one of their own, particularly a lesbian or gay Christian, to the extent that they come to lose their faith in God. Feeling ashamed, they no longer want the things that make up having faith in God—spending time with him, sharing their thoughts and feelings about important things with him, and wanting to have a relationship with him. They don’t want these things because they feel it’s not right, or it makes them feel bad about themselves, or they just can’t do it anymore. And so church hurt really can cause a person’s deconversion. Or so we’ve argued. To conclude, and to give a survivor the last word, what we’ve aimed to show in this essay is summed up well by Marie Bacon, blogger and religious trauma survivor: When someone is hurt by the actions of others there are quips of ‘That wasn’t real Christianity,’ or, ‘This just proves that we all fall short and need Jesus.’ . . . I guess what I’m trying to get at is, if I say part of why I lost my faith is because of the actions of others that hurt/angered/saddened/betrayed me, that‘s seen as an invalid reason, since it doesn’t deal with the truth claims of the religion. But it doesn’t feel invalid, it feels very natural and necessary. The painful or abusive actions of others wound and cause people not to want to be part of a group, and while that doesn‘t disprove the claims of the religion itself, it does cast a dark light on it. If the actions of others didn’t influence our ability to find or lose faith, then there’d be no point in our faith communities. Religion is not an entirely intellectual exercise, thank God, but it seems that the only legitimate reasons to lose religion are intellectual only. I can convert because I felt a warm stirring in my soul, but if my soul feels arid and parched and ¹⁹ Deconversion, as we characterize it here, is a process which, unless significant intervention occurs, culminates in the complete loss of desire for union with God and faithful trust in God.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

138

 ,  ,   

wounded, that’s not a reason to leave . . . It’s like the religion—its traditions, doctrines, holy books, leaders—has a knife in your back. And with each word or action they twist it more and more. The reality of the knife doesn’t prove or disprove the claims of the religion, but damn it’s extremely difficult to keep holding your back against the blade. The pain causes you to doubt why you’re part of this group in the first place. I think Christians need to own the fact that their own behavior can be the gust of wind that blows out smoldering wicks and finally snaps the bruised reed in half. People can’t be expected to stay in the midst of that. We like to talk about faith as something that should exist in a vacuum and shouldn’t be impacted by the behavior of others, but we also say our faith communities are important in the development of someone’s spiritual journey. We can’t have it both ways. We can’t put the hurting and wounded through the bait and switch of, ‘You need us to have faith, but we aren’t to blame when we hurt you so much that you want walk away from it.’ (Bacon 2015)²⁰

References Bacon, Marie. 2015. ‘Losing Faith when Others Hurt You’, Her Waves Over Me, 28 June 2015, http://herwavesoverme.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/losing-faith-whenothers-hurt-you.html, accessed 23 January 2020. Bastian, Bruce. 2008. ‘Bruce Bastian.’ In Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America, edited by Mitchell Gold, with Mindy Drucker, 31–6. Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book Group Press. Bates, Matthew W. 2017. Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Cockayne, Joshua. 2019. ‘Common Ritual Knowledge.’ Faith and Philosophy 36: 33–55. Cockayne, Joshua, and David Efird. 2018. ‘Common Worship.’ Faith and Philosophy 35: 299–325. Cuneo, Terence. 2016. Ritualized Faith. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gold, Mitchell, with Mindy Drucker, eds. 2008. Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America. Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book Group Press.

²⁰ We would like to thank colleagues at the University of York and the University of St Andrews for feedback on earlier drafts of the essay. Specific thanks are due to Michelle Panchuk, Michael Rea, Jonathan Rutledge, Taylor Telford, Alan Torrance, and David Worsley for helpful conversations and feedback during the writing of this essay, to Jonathan Jacobs for his critical and constructive response to this essay when it was delivered at the Logos Workshop at the University of Notre Dame in May 2018, and to the audience at that event for their searching questions and comments.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

139

Horsford, Jared. 2008. ‘Jared Horsford.’ In Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America, edited by Mitchell Gold, with Mindy Drucker, 75–82. Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book Group Press. Lewis, C.S. 1970. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. New York: Collier Books. Lewis, C.S. 1960. The Four Loves. London: Gregory Bles. Marin, Andrew. 2016. Us Versus Us. Carol Stream, IL: NavPress. Moon, Dawne, and Theresa W. Tobin. 2018. ‘Sunsets and Solidarity: Overcoming Sacramental Shame in Conservative Christian Churches to Forge a Queer Vision of Love and Justice.’ Hypatia 33: 451–68. Nozick, Robert. 1981. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Panchuk, Michelle. 2018. ‘The Shattered Spiritual Self: A Philosophical Exploration of Religious Trauma.’ Res Philosophica 95 (3): 505–30. Panchuk, Michelle. Forthcoming. ‘Distorting Concepts, Obscured Experiences: On the Role of Hermeneutical Injustice in Religious Trauma and Spiritual Violence’, http://michellepanchuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Twisted-ConceptsMisunderstood-Experiences.pdf, accessed 7 January 2020. Reddy, Vasudevi. 2005. ‘Before the “Third Element”: Understanding Attention to Self.’ In Joint Attention: Communication and Other Minds, edited by Naomi Elian, Christoph Hoerl, Teresa McCormack, and Johannes Roessler, 85–109. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reddy, Vasudevi. 2012. ‘A Gaze that Grips with Me.’ In Joint Attention: New Developments in Psychology, Philosophy of Mind, and Social Neuroscience, edited by Axel Seemann, 137–58. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sliwa, Paulina. 2018. ‘Faith and Know How.’ In Knowledge, Belief, and God: New Insights in Religious Epistemology, edited by Matthew Benton, John Hawthorne, and Dani Rabinowitz, 246–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seemann, Axel. 2012. ‘Joint Attention: Toward a Relational Account.’ In Joint Attention: New Developments in Psychology, Philosophy of Mind, and Social Neuroscience, edited by Axel Seemann, 183–202. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Stump, Eleonore. 2010. Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stump, Eleonore. 2016. ‘The Atonement and the Problem of Shame.’ Journal of Philosophical Research 41: 111–29. Talbert, Bonnie. 2015. ‘Knowing Other People: A Second-person Framework.’ Ratio 28: 190–206. Tobin, Theresa W. 2016. ‘Spiritual Violence, Gender, and Sexuality: Implications for Seeking and Dwelling among Some Catholic Women and LGBT Catholics.’ In Seekers and Dwellers: Plurality and Wholeness in a Time of Secularity, edited by

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

140

 ,  ,   

Philip J. Rossi, 133–66. Washington, DC: The Council of Research in Values and Philosophy. Truluck, Rembert. 2001. ‘Spiritual Violence’, 1 May 2001, http://www.whosoever.org/ v5i6/violence.html, accessed 7 January 2020. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 2015. The God We Worship. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

6 Sacramental Shame in Black Churches How Racism and Respectability Politics Shape the Experiences of Black LGBTQ and Same-GenderLoving Christians Theresa W. Tobin and Dawne Moon

Spiritual violence occurs when churches and their agents use religion to make people think God hates them or wants them to suffer, or to diminish their capacity to participate in religious life (Tobin 2016).¹ Historically in the US, Christianity’s spiritual violence against African Americans dates back to Anglo-Europeans’ use of the Bible to ‘justify’ slavery and portray Black people as inferior to whites on the basis of alleged sexual difference. Any theology that actively perpetuates or ignores Christianity’s collusion with white supremacy is spiritually violent toward people of colour. Today this spiritual violence is still sometimes overt, but more commonly manifests through white Christianity’s silence about racism in the US (Cone 2004). In many cases, responses in predominantly Black churches emphasize what Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (1993) calls the politics of respectability, which aims to counter racist sexual stigma by calling on Black people to demonstrate conformity to dominant gender and sexual ideals. In our qualitative study of the conservative Christian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) movement for affirmation, sacramental shame is what we call a different form of spiritual violence, in which conservative Christian churches, which are predominantly white, effectively treat shame as a special, unspoken sacrament just for LGBTQ² people. Anchored in the ¹ Spiritual violence is violence in the sense of violation, which can mean to transgress a rule or law, but it can also mean to debase or fail to respect a person, or to treat something sacred with irreverence.. Spiritual violence violates persons and so carries the latter of these meanings (Garver 2007; Holmes 2007). It is distinctively spiritual in terms of both its means—religiously significant texts, objects, or rituals, for instance—and its targets—a person’s spiritual self, experience of God, and relationship with the church. ² The dynamics for intersex people (those born with physical characteristics typically characterized as both males and female) seem often to differ from those of LGBTQ people, unless they are perceived as LGBTQ. The question of whether intersex people should routinely be grouped into the LGBTQ movement is far from settled. We do not use one consistent abbreviation here because intersex people Theresa W. Tobin and Dawne Moon, Sacramental Shame in Black Churches: How Racism and Respectability Politics Shape the Experiences of Black LGBTQ and Same-Gender-Loving Christians In: Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology. Edited by: Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848844.003.0007

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

142

 .    

doctrine of gender complementarianism—which sacralizes social constructions of gender as dichotomous, incomplete halves to be completed in heterosexual marriage—sacramental shame is a form of stigmatizing shame that impacts the lives of LGBTQ Christians of many races, but the same logic also sexually stigmatizes all people of colour as ‘deviating’ from white sexual norms (Crenshaw 1991; Douglas 1999, 2004; Schneider 2012). Thus, sacramental shame takes on distinctive dimensions for Black LGBTQ and same-gender-loving (SGL) Christians.³ Here, we begin to analyse how racism and responses to it influence the ways Black LGBTQ and SGL Christians experience sacramental shame, and their routes to resistance and healing. Homophobia and transphobia are no worse among African Americans than among whites. But if LGBTQ people of colour are to resist and heal from sacramental shame, it helps to recognize the specific forms it takes. Drawing from our qualitative data and building on Higginbotham (1993), Douglas (1999), Snorton (2014), Collins (2005) and others, we argue that AfricanAmerican churches have long resisted the spiritual violence of white supremacy; however, with the goal of protecting an image of Blackness that defies the sexual stereotypes at the root of white supremacy, they often unwittingly instil in LGBTQ members distinct forms of sacramental shame. At the same time, many in these churches cultivate personal relationships with a liberator God who sides with the oppressed, avenges those who endure injustice, and inspires communal work for justice, promoting a life-enhancing ethos of love that can promote thriving. We draw from our hybrid sociological and philosophical study based on participant observation, document analysis, and semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of conservative Christians who are engaging in conversations about their churches’ spiritual violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) people and their routes to reconciliation. We’ve conducted 500 hours of participant observation and seventy-three semi-structured, qualitative interviews with sixty-two conservative Christians in this movement, which is intentionally multi-ethnic but predominantly white. Both being white ourselves, we hired Alicia T. Crosby, a queer Black woman involved in this movement, to conduct forty supplemental interviews with

are part of the broader movement we are studying, and so when we reference this movement we include ‘I’, but we are not primarily talking about the experiences of intersexed people of colour in this paper. Similarly, if a church only advocated for or against LGBT people, we do not impute any understandings of queer-identified people to them, and use an abbreviation consistent with their own. ³ In light of broader gay rights movements ignoring the intersectional needs and experiences of LGBTQ people of colour, Cleo Manago coined the term same-gender-loving in the 1990s as a more culturally affirming term for African Americans than gay, bisexual, or lesbian. Respondents used different terms and we follow people’s own usage when referencing their experiences.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

143

LGBTQ Christians of colour to supplement our dozen or so, bringing the total to 113. Given the political variation across Black denominations and independent churches that Shelton and Cobb (2017) highlight in their statistical work, Lincoln and Mamiya’s (1990) now-classic language of ‘the Black Church’ seems to portray a monolith, but captures important commonalities. We use the term ‘the Black Church’ in the looser sense Lincoln and Mamiya describe, referring to a shared culture of Black Christians who belong either to the many denominations of churches populated predominantly by Black people that have emerged in response to institutional and cultural racism in the United States, what Flunder (2014) refers to as the ‘Metho-Bapti-Costal’ tradition of Black America, and to predominantly Black congregations in predominantly white denominations, particularly the officially LGBT-affirming United Church of Christ, of which several respondents were or had been members. We begin by describing sacramental shame and its roots in gender complementarianism. We then discuss the confluence of several social and religious factors that set the stage for sacramental shame experiences of Black LGBTQ Christians situating complementarianism historically as a major force in white supremacy’s dehumanization of Black people, and discussing how the politics of respectability arose to counteract racist sexual stigma. Next, we examine the forms of sacramental shame Black LGBTQ respondents report, showing how these forms are shaped by racism and Black churches’ responses to it. Concluding sections show how respondents also found sources for resistance and healing in predominantly Black churches, and foreground a sub-movement of predominantly Black churches led by Black LGBTQ Christians who are paving the way for the radically inclusive love that Christians believe God commands of all people.

1. Sacramental Shame Shame is an emotion in which one feels exposed as defective to important others—in this case to God and the church—in ways that threaten belonging and worthiness (Thomason 2015; Velleman 2001; Calhoun 2004; Scheff 2000; Lynd 1958; H. Lewis 1971; M. Lewis 1992). Whereas guilt says I did something bad, shame says I am bad in ways that make me unworthy of relationship. Shame feelings indicate both a desire to turn away or hide the defective self from others and a longing to re-establish connection and belonging (Sedgwick 2003; Burrus 2007, Ahmed 2015; Shotwell 2011). Shame’s ambivalence has led some to consider it an important moral emotion, an affective cue that one’s behaviour or character harm or threaten to damage important relationships (Manion 2002; Shotwell 2011; Flanagan 2013). This cueing can make shame a potentially fitting

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

144

 .    

emotional response to sinfulness, which breaks relationship, but there are many types of shame and not all of them are restorative.⁴ Reintegrating shame aims to protect relationship and belonging and is dispensed with love and respect, assuring the person that connection is not permanently severed (Braithwaite 1989). In contrast, stigmatizing shame, such as the shame enacted by racism, aims to shun people by defining them as unworthy of relationship (Harris-Perry 2011). Many heterosexual, cisgender members of conventionally conservative churches find that shame about their own sinful desires, such as lust or greed, can motivate repentance and help them become better people; they thus believe that shame will have similar reintegrative effects for people ‘struggling’ with samesex attraction or being ‘confused’ about their gender identity. But shame does not operate redemptively in the case of being LGBTQ for two main reasons: that being LGBTQ does not generally respond to acts of will, which makes the shame perpetual, and that these characteristics do not in themselves break relationship as sins do, but constitute a person’s capacity to relate to others. Thus the shaming in these cases perpetually attacks not a person’s ability to break relationships, but their ability to form them. It is jarring to think of shame as a sacrament. Defined broadly, sacraments are religious ceremonies or acts of the church that are considered visible, tangible signs of God’s grace. In the sacramental shame dynamic, churches require LGBTQ people constantly to feel and display shame about their same-sex attractions and/ or gender difference as the sign that they want to be worthy of God’s love and dwell in God’s presence. People often dispense this shame believing it will help their loved ones to conform to God’s will.⁵ In effect, the sacramental shame dynamic makes perpetual shame about one’s capacity for relationship the visible sign to the community that a person has not rejected God, and paradoxically makes constant awareness of unworthiness of relationship the condition for relationship with God and other people (Moon and Tobin 2018). Even LGBTQ people who commit to celibacy and do everything their churches require of them often remain under constant suspicion and scrutiny and are deemed unfit to serve. A Black, gay male respondent in his mid-thirties we call Jamal shared that when he was committed to celibacy, he was questioned by the

⁴ Shame experiences may be episodic or chronic, in which case people can develop a disposition of shame (Bartky 1990; Lehtinen 1998; Woodward 2000). They may target part of the self or the whole self, although acute shame episodes tend to feel totalizing even if they are about an aspect of the self (Karlsson and Sjoberg 2009). And, shame can be experienced traumatically or non-traumatically (Clare 2017; Woodward 2000). ⁵ Claiming to ‘love the sinner but hate the sin’, church members, family, and friends often dispense sacramental shame ‘compassionately’ with sincere albeit misguided attempts to love. We have observed that ‘compassionate’ sacramental shaming can increase its toxic effects by making a person believe that their capacity for love must really be damaged, since what is supposed to be loving and comes from people who claim to love them feels like abuse.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

145

pastor at his multi-ethnic, ‘welcoming but not affirming’ church because he had been seen by other church members at a restaurant with another man. He had to ask whether he was allowed to leave the house and have a nice time with a friend. In the sacramental shame dynamic church members break relationship with LGBTQ people when they disclose their difference or are outed, blame and shame them for the break, and leave them with nothing they can do to reestablish full belonging. Living in fear of being unworthy to love and belong becomes the condition for receiving ‘love’ and belonging.⁶ Sacramental shame is chronic, stigmatizing shame that poses as reintegrative. Where does sacramental shame come from? Given that many Protestant churches have few or no sacraments, the existence of this informal, unspoken one just for LGBTQ people teems with ironies and makes it difficult to detect.⁷ Nonetheless, respondents repeatedly indicate with a resounding ‘Yes!’ that the term captures their experience of a toxic shaming dynamic that disguises itself as sacred. Conventionally conservative Christian churches⁸ define same-sex attractions and variant experiences of gender as sinful (and shameful) because they adhere to the doctrine of gender complementarianism. This doctrine takes different forms, but all posit that God created two opposite sexes, male and female, for the purpose of completing each other in marriage.⁹ In effect, conventional conservative Protestant teachings treat binary gender and heterosexuality as a commandment, preceding the Ten Commandments in time and importance, so any challenge to this doctrine appears as a sinful rebellion against God. Within this logic, an individual’s ability to be recognized as a person, worthy of belonging, depends on being recognized as heterosexual and cisgender, making LGBTQ and intersex difference appear monstrous (Moon and Tobin 2018). Gender complementarianism rests on theologies that rebuff the idea that LGBTQ identities could

⁶ The sacramental shame dynamic often instils shame in LGBTIQ church members as a disposition, the affective background that frames one’s experience of self, others and often of God. Cultivating a disposition to feel shame has toxic effects in the lives of many of the people we have heard from, including suicidality, addictions, depression, and even somatic symptoms including uncontrollable asthma attacks, a case of heart failure in a healthy person in their early twenties, and in the case of a Christian music star, a severe autoimmune disorder Tobin and Moon 2019). ⁷ Contrast this with sacramental traditions, for instance, the formal exclusion of women from the sacrament of Holy Orders in the Roman Catholic Church, where debates about the legitimacy or spiritual violence of this exclusion can point to a formal sacrament with a history and competing theological justifications. ⁸ By conservative, we mean that most participants experience a personal relationship with Jesus, hold a ‘high view’ of scripture, adhere to the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, and other characteristics of evangelicalism (Bebbington 1989). Given predominantly Black churches’ commonalities with both conservative and liberal white churches, it seems more likely for Black Protestants who affirm LGBTQI identities, same-sex marriage, and gender transitions to find a home in conventionally ‘liberal’ churches, particularly UCC congregations, or in explicitly affirming churches. The challenge, however, is to find affirming congregations that affirm traditionally Black theologies and ways of worship and do not stigmatize Blackness. ⁹ Brownson (2013) identifies arguments citing anatomical, hierarchical, and personality trait complementarity, but argues that the Bible actually says none of these things.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

146

 .    

be expressions of personhood, and instead describe these individuals as ‘struggling’ with same-sex attraction or ‘being confused’ about who they ‘really are’. The sacramental shame dynamic is complicated for Black LGBTQ and samegender-loving Christians because gender complementarianism—which anchors sacramental shame—is expressed in race-neutral terms, but it is actually a whitecentred doctrine that allows white cisgender/heterosexual marital sex alone to escape sexual shame. Complementarianism emerged historically as a major force in the sexual shaming of Black people that fuels white supremacy (Douglas 1999, 2010; Copeland 2002; Donaldson and Kwok 2002; Ferguson 2004; Schneider 2012). A version of complementarianism was at the root of European colonial conquest, where not conforming to European Christians’ gendered and sexual norms was seen as evidence of non-Europeans being subhuman (Schneider 2012; see also Goldberg 1992; Nagel 2003; Brayboy 2017). The gendered and sexual norms that underwrite complementarianism are racialized norms, defined historically in terms of and against nonwhite people as the ‘sexual other’ (Griffin 2004: 134; Monroe 2004; Schneider 2012). White Christian enslavers invoked these norms to bolster their ‘justification’ of slavery, to ‘legitimize’ their sexual control of and violence against enslaved peoples, and to cement in the white social imagination racist stereotypes portraying Black people as sexually deviant (Griffin 2004; Monroe 2004; Harris-Perry 2011). To this day, racist stereotypes that fuel white supremacy define Black people as inferior to whites on the basis of supposed sexual difference, associating blackness with unrestrained sexuality, and specifically linking Black men with sexual violence and Black women with promiscuity (Collins 1990, 2005; Douglas 1999). Sacramental shame attacks a person’s sexuality and/or gender identity (which complementarians treat as the same thing). Whether one is LGBQ or transgender, sexuality is the capacity that sacramental shame most directly diminishes. Sexuality is about much more than sex. We follow scholars who define sexuality broadly as the human capacity that urges relationship with others, including with partners and spouses, children, and friends (Nelson 1979; Lorde 1984; Douglas 1999). Sexuality in this broad sense refers not only to things conventionally thought of as ‘sexual attraction and behaviour’ but is the capacity that fuels intimacy and connection, including the care and affection we feel and express when bonding with a close friend, for instance, or expressions of appropriate affection toward one’s children.¹⁰ Sexuality is not the whole of love, but as Douglas argues, it is ‘a gift from God that, if properly appreciated, helps [people] to become

¹⁰ Conservative Christians who adhere to complementarianism might disagree with this broad definition of sexuality, but they implicitly accept the idea that (hetero)sexuality and (cis)gender experience are foundational to the human capacity for relationship; the complementarian interpretation of the Genesis creation stories is premised on this relational capacity.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

147

more fully human by entering into loving relationships’ (Douglas 1999: 115).¹¹ Douglas draws an explicit link between this broad understanding of sexuality and the ability to cultivate agapic love rooted in compassion that extends even to people we do not know personally, and that Christians believe is central to loving and serving God and our neighbour (1999: 115). Chronically shaming people about their capacity for relational connection can diminish their capacity for loving relationship with self, others, and God. Internalizing sacramental shame often leads LGBTQ people to see their capacity to form relationships and love others as damaged and potentially harmful to others. In many instances, they shut down this capacity, cutting themselves off not just from romantic or sexual relationships, but from relationships of any kind. Before finding a ‘welcoming’ church, Jamal had been ministering in a Pentecostal church and campus group. He shared that once his pastor had shamed him for being gay: As far as friends, there were a lot of people that I cut off. And I thought I was endangering them. I thought that I was going to poison them, I thought that my struggles were going to disillusion them, because I was ministering, and some people have ministers on some kind of pedestal. So I felt that all the stuff that was going on, would be so harmful, and so from my perspective I felt that I was doing good [ . . . ] by pushing them [away].

LGBTQ Christian respondents of many races share similar experiences of rigidly policing their emotional attachments to others, of remaining aloof and not letting themselves get too close to anyone even in friendships, for fear that they were unfit for relationship and their love would harm those they loved.¹² Sacramental shame harms a person’s capacity for relationship not only by making them think their love will harm others, but also by making them feel shame about their own longing and need for relationship. Jamal shared a painfully powerful experience of this: I remember in my own experience I was running towards [ . . . ] sex with addictive behaviors because I wanted intimacy, just to be known. I wanted somebody to really get me and to really understand me. But the only thing I could think about was the shame of wanting to be known, the shame of wanting to be close, the

¹¹ This broader understanding of sexuality encompasses a variety of ways humans may experience sexual attraction in the narrower sense. Asexual persons, for instance, are not excluded from this broad understanding of sexuality as capacity for intimacy and connection. ¹² As white, gay, celibate movement participant Ron Belgau wrote in his 2003 statement advocating celibacy for all gay Christians: ‘This is not to single homosexual acts out from all other acts which bring condemnation. But [ . . . ] Paul argues that homosexual acts can 1) keep us from the kingdom of Heaven; 2) defile the temple of the Holy Spirit within us; and 3) place us back under the judgment of the law. Given the stakes involved, it is not a risk I am willing to take. Even more so, I would never risk inflicting consequences that serious on another man whom I loved.’

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

148

 .    

shame of wanting to be touched even, because we’re embodied creatures. If the only thing I could deal with was that being shameful, then I could never find out, ‘Oh, there is some authentic need in here. There are some healthy ways that I could have my needs met.’ [Emphasis added]

By making people believe and fear that their capacity for relationship is fundamentally corrupt—which is not the same as acknowledging that one might misuse that capacity—sacramental shame inhibits people from responding appropriately, or at all, to the Gospel command to love. And the church erects this barrier in God’s name, leading people to believe that they are unfit or unworthy to follow Christ’s example of love and service to others.

2. Racist Spiritual Violence and Respectability Politics In the US, historically and continuing to this day, a version of white Christianity itself bolsters the sexual stigma of Black people through what Kelly Brown Douglas (2004: 353-355) calls a Platonized interpretation of the New Testament that vilifies the body, and sexuality in particular, as the source of all sinfulness. Platonized Christianity colludes with white supremacy to perpetuate racist spiritual violence toward African-American Christians by in effect characterizing Black people as at the bottom of the hierarchical dualism of spirit/body, more ‘embodied’ and thus more sexual and more sinful than whites. This version of white Christianity says sexuality is the source of evil and disrupts connection with God, and in its collusion with white supremacy sexually stigmatizes Black people, making them seem farther than whites from God. Because Blackness is ‘read off ’ of a racialized body, this form of stigmatization generates an experience of perpetual exposure and constant white surveillance and judgement (Harris-Perry 2011: 111; see also Fanon 1967; Goffman 1963; Collins 1990, 2005). Through the white gaze, Black sexuality is inescapably ‘on display’ as perpetually failed virtue, making Black people vulnerable to chronic sexual shame (Snorton 2014). In order to survive psychically against relentless racist shaming, historians have noted that Black people (and especially Black women) practiced dissemblance by ‘creating the appearance of disclosure, or openness . . . while actually remaining an enigma . . . thus achieving a self-imposed invisibility’ (Hine, quoted in Harris-Perry 2011: 59-60). Dissemblance ‘took on a specific, class-defined form for middle-class African American women’ in the politics of respectability, which was heavily influenced by the Black Church (Harris-Perry 2011: 60). Respectability politics implied especially that women’s ability to represent the Black community and to demand just treatment from society ‘rested on their sterling moral character’ and their ability to present an ‘untarnished self to the public at all times’ (Harris-Perry 2011: 62).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

149

Recognizing that stereotypes of Black sexual deviancy drive racism, the Black Church historically preached respectability, especially around marriage and sexuality (Collins 2005: 106–8). Higginbotham explains: The church played the single most important role in influencing normative values and distinguishing respectable from non-respectable behavior among working-class Blacks . . . [T]he competing images of the church and the street symbolized cultural divisions within the mass of the Black working poor . . . [T]he street signified male turf, a public place of worldly dangers and forbidden pleasures. Churches and households, both rejecting the worldly attractions of male social space, signified fame and also sacred space. Women who strolled the streets or attended dance halls and cheap theaters promiscuously blurred the boundaries of gender. (Higginbotham 1993: 204)

Respectability politics holds Black people accountable for living up to white Christian sexual norms and proving racist stereotypes incorrect when applied to respectable Black people. Although intended to procure dignity for working-class African-American women in particular, ‘the politics of respectability basically aimed for White approval’ by demonstrating that Black people were capable of living up to the complementarian ideal that whites were presumed to embody (Collins 2005: 72). Because respectability politics emphasizes appearances, its enactment works to conceal from the white gaze anyone who might be perceived as confirming racist stereotypes about Black sexual deviancy, including people with HIV/ AIDS, gay, lesbian, or bisexual people, single mothers, and transgender people (Cohen 1999; Collins 1990, 2005; Harris-Perry 2011; Higginbotham 1993; Morrison 1992). Respondents who had experienced both predominantly white and Black or multi-ethnic church settings could make explicit comparisons. Aurora, a Black, twenty-six-year-old trans woman, spoke of having grown up in predominantly Black or multiracial churches and schools until her mother died when she was sixteen, at which point she moved and began attending her stepmother’s predominantly white, Assemblies of God church. As conservative as the white church was, her experience captures the focus on an outward presentation of respectability in predominantly Black churches and multiracial Christian schools she attended. Reflecting on her youth, when others saw her as a feminine boy, she said: I felt more accepted [at the predominantly white church] because [ . . . ] it seemed as though gender was the currency in the Black spaces. In the white spaces the gender expression wasn’t as big of a deal as the sexuality. What I mean by that is, they didn’t necessarily care that I was more flamboyant in say, my hand gestures

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

150

 .    

or more eclectic in my style of dress, as long as they knew privately that I was not sexually engaging in anything that would be considered deviant. [ . . . ] Whereas, you know, in Black spaces it seemed to be [ . . . ] opposite, [ . . . ] where you needed to have an outward gender expression that was cis[gender], while what you did privately wasn’t as much of a concern. I still didn’t feel liberated because I knew I couldn’t be who I really was. Definitely not openly without being rejected.

3. Black LGBTQ and Same-Gender-Loving Christians’ Experiences of Sacramental Shame Through respectability politics, Black churches coming out of Platonized Protestant traditions aim to discredit racist stereotypes of Black sexual deviancy by projecting an image of Blackness that defies these stereotypes. However, because respectability answers to complementarian ideals, a distinct sacramental shame dynamic emerges in these churches for their LGBTQ and same-genderloving members. Under the weight of respectability, Black LGBTQ and SGL Christians need to experience a sacramental shame that is both detectable enough within the community to give assurance that they do not repudiate God or the Black community, and simultaneously hidden from the white gaze in order to maintain the image of Black respectability. Respondents name a range of spiritual harms that result from prolonged exposure to the sacramental shame dynamic. Here we discuss five overlapping dimensions of sacramental shame experiences that Black LGBTQ and SGL Christians report, which reflect the distinctive shape this shame takes under the mantle of respectability.

3.1 Alienation from God and Church One is distance from God. For example, a twenty-nine-year-old Black, bisexual pastor we call Imani shared that as a child she felt very close to God, and prayed all the time about everything. When her feelings of sexual difference emerged, she felt she couldn’t bring them to God, which left her feeling alienated from God and her faith for years, an experience she recounts as a devastating waste of time. A thirty-two-year-old gay, Black man we call Lucas said that no matter how much evidence he acquired to the contrary, he could not shake his fear that God just might despise gay people. He shared: I have all the information that I would need to know that, like, same-sex unions would not be a problem. I can tell you right now I’d probably accept a proposal. I’d have the party, [ . . . ] I’d invite all the people, and I’d get to that church, and I’d

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

151

probably faint. [ . . . ] I have all the social references, I have all the relationship models, I have all the ministry models, I have all the organizational models, and I even, like, can sit down and exegete scripture [ . . . ]. So, I mean, I know these things but, like, it’s not satiated. The fear just still hasn’t gone away. [ . . . ] I guess that’s the fear [ . . . ]—not that we get there and there’s no God, but that we get there, there is a God, and this God is this hateful person with this trident and this long beard and this dress and is, you know, crazy homophobic.

Even respondents who have found a church community they feel ‘pretty comfortable’ in, still spoke of a latent, underlying fear of pushing too far that leads them to feel like second-class citizens. An African-American, SGL woman respondent in her mid-forties spoke about the storefront, Holiness church her family has led for forty-two years. Her uncle is now pastor and remains silent about gay people, neither condemning nor speaking in support of them, but preaching a lot about love, which she said made her feel: . . . not extremely, but pretty comfortable going to church. [They’re very nice and loving and ask ‘How’s your wife?’ . . . ] But there’s still times when I would like— my children haven’t been christened and I would like to have them christened, but I’m afraid to ask people at my church to do it, because I don’t want them to say no and then I’m gonna feel bad. [ . . . ] I’m always afraid of pushing them too far or my family might say something that I’m gonna feel is rejecting. I already feel like a second-class citizen with them. I do.

Feeling alienated from God, fearing that God might be ‘crazy homophobic’, and feeling like a second-class church member who fears asking the church to christen their children, something available to full members of the community, are spiritual harms that can result from sacramental shame.

3.2 Exiled Within, Quietly Ostracized Sacramental shame is not ritualized the way sacraments typically are; it is constant rather than in special moments, and typically it involves some kind of exile or separation while the person works to ‘fix’ themselves (Moon and Tobin 2018). Jamal’s experience—while extreme—reveals the contours of exile sacramental shame produces under the weight of respectability. Having grown up in a ‘nottoo-churchy’ Catholic family with parents who supported him, Jamal joined a Pentecostal ministry while attending a Catholic university. He had come out as gay in his first year of college, and then found deliverance in his second year— which, since he was well known on campus, caused a lot of debate over whether he could simply not be gay anymore. Right before he was about to be ordained that

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

152

 .    

year, his pastor heard that he had been talking about his gay past, pulled him aside, and: told me I should never talk about it again, and I should be ashamed that it was ever part of my life, that I should forget it ever happened, and that people would not be able to receive me if they knew that that was part of my story. And that was the first time I ever had—shame.

Not knowing how to process this shame, and being told to never speak of it again, he says that was: the beginning of me struggling with sexual addiction, because what ends up happening, you know, I’ve got this guilt, I’ve got this secret now. [ . . . ] And so I spent years struggling, continuing in silence and isolation, putting myself in really dangerous situations, anonymous sexual hookups, that kind of thing, all the while becoming more and more active in serving the church and leading the church, and [ . . . ] maybe around 2003, I was held up at gunpoint, pursuing one of those hookups, and I came back shaken and asking for help from my church.

Eight months to a year later, his pastor responded: ‘Well you just need to stay in the church. Don’t do anything. [ . . . ] If you really want to be saved, if you really want to be Christian . . . ’ Yeah. So that starts about a three and a half, almost four-year process of me living in the church, cutting myself off from family and friends, shutting down my business, quitting school. Two of those years, I moved to Indiana, to live in the church there.

Jamal’s church saw no difference between a gay orientation and sexual addiction, and saw both as possible only in someone who was not really Christian already. For roughly four years, his pastor had him live in the church, fasting two days per week, sleeping on the altar, and praying morning and night for God to help rid him of his demon. When the pastor told Jamal that God wanted him to paint the church, Jamal decided it was time to move back home, stop hiding from life, and focus on his relationship with God rather than his pastor. At first his pastor offered to keep Jamal locked up in his basement, but that was not what Jamal thought he needed. Jamal’s return home inspired the pastor to keep him invisible in another way: And so the day I moved back, he had someone call and tell me, ‘Don’t touch the microphone.’ Because I had been serving, I had been leading the dance team, I had been teaching, I had been doing all kinds of things. ‘Don’t touch the mic, you just need to seek God right now.’ And to this day, that’s the last time

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

153

I directly heard from any of them. And you know, no fanfare. It was never a public scandal in the church, it was never anything that became like public knowledge and was a disgrace to the church. [ . . . ] I’d cut off all ties, all this other stuff, so that church, that communion was my everything, and to be kind of ostracized from that, and privately ostracized, because they never publicly said, ‘You can’t be friends with Jamal,’ but they stopped talking to me, and it just left me in this weird place.

In white churches sacramental shame also produces isolation, but in these churches there is often a degree of collectivity to it. On their website, Rob and Linda Robertson (c.2011) write of having entire prayer teams praying for their son and arranging mentor relationships with ‘straight, manly men’ in order to help him heal his ‘broken’ (gay) masculinity. Some white, LGBT Christians have been sent to ‘ex-gay’ residential programmes or support groups with others, so that even the sending away in predominantly white churches has a collective dimension (Lee 2012; Conley 2016). By contrast, Jamal was sent to live alone in the church building, separated from his family, school, job, and community until he could be made rid of his gay demon and worthy of their vision of God. He demonstrated his commitment while shut away. When he moved back home, there was no fanfare or scandal; he was just quietly banned from leadership until he went away.¹³ For Black respondents, sacramental shame experiences involve separation; in keeping with a politics of respectability their LGBTQ and SGL members are exiled within or quietly shunned if they threaten to ‘expose’ the community.

3.3 Invisibility and Silencing Even in cases less extreme than Jamal’s experience, the focus on outward display could have the effect of silencing Black LGBTQ Christians or making them invisible, which could generate confusion and anxiety.¹⁴ Imani, the bisexual UCC pastor, grew up in a predominately Black UCC congregation with an affirming pastor who said supportive things about LGBT people from the pulpit, which she would eventually recall and find helpful. However, she described growing up in a Black Church culture that enforced silence about and invisibility

¹³ Black transgender pastor Carmarion Anderson’s (2015) story is different. She was dragged up to the altar repeatedly to have the demon of femininity purged from her by the church. She was not physically isolated, but physically assaulted by the people who were supposed to love her, a different form of spiritual violence. ¹⁴ White respondents also report feeling silenced about their sexual or gender difference, but largely because of the vocal and explicit messaging from their faith communities about what this difference would mean for them, rather than from communal silencing that produced confusion.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

154

 .    

of LGBTQ people, which overshadowed her pastor’s affirming messages at the time. She recalled: I got all that information filtered through [older relatives]; it was still very hushed and [there were certain] words people wouldn’t use. And people’s partners were their ‘friend’ and, [ . . . ] no matter how clear the people were about who they were and who they loved, everybody else talked about it as if they could create a secret out of something that wasn’t a secret. And then [my cousin] who was in the same congregation, came out. Her mama had a fit, and their relationship was so strained I didn’t even see her for a while.

Under the weight of respectability, their shame is kept within them, preferably, or failing that, within the family, or failing that, within the church, and people who fail to keep it within quietly disappear. Imani experienced that silence as a child and teenager, trying to make sense of her difference, which resulted in her trying to figure out whether she could even exist. She recalled: You end up thinking for a long time that it’s not real or it’s not there, and [ . . . ] these ways of being these people literally, like, whole people don’t exist. And then you’re like, ‘But I literally see them every day. What are you trying to tell me about these people? And what are you trying to tell me about God? I don’t understand.’ [ . . . ] I didn’t know how to see and understand the reality of people in the world, and [ . . . ] I was scared to ask questions [ . . . ] because I didn’t want to offend anyone, and I didn’t want to hurt anybody [ . . . ]—I didn’t want to disappear too. You know what I’m saying? Like, ‘You all are literally telling me whole groups of people don’t exist. Like, am I going to stop existing if I ask you these questions?’

Adherence to complementarianism ties recognition of full personhood to being recognized as heterosexual and cisgender (Moon and Tobin 2018), and ultimately as white (Douglas 1999, Schneider 2012). Respectability politics pressures communities to demonstrate that their members live up to complementarian ideals in order to prove racist stereotypes wrong and show that they are persons deserving of equal moral consideration and respect. Imani’s experience reflects the particular manner in which under the mantle of respectability her church’s members, including her family, dispensed sacramental shame through concealment and silence. Her experience also reflects the core spiritual violence of sacramental shame, which in God’s name stigmatizes a person’s capacity for relationship. She remarked that her church’s silencing around sexual differences and imposed invisibility of LGBTQ people, in her case compounded by the large-scale societal

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

155

erasure of bisexuality (Yoshino 2000; Eisner 2013), led her to experience her sexuality as something abject happening to her and to think that her difference could only be explained by some unremembered tragedy. She shared: People literally would say verbatim like, ‘Bisexuality—that’s not a thing.’ [ . . . ] People literally would say that over and over again, and it would just be like, amplified in those spaces. And so, I didn’t think that what was happening was a thing, so I had to find another way to label it, to define it, and that was the first thing. Like it was something that was happening to me. Like, this is not who I am, this is not a sense of being. This is something happening to me, and I had to figure out what was happening to me. [ . . . ] Something must be wrong with me, something tragic must have happened to me. I’m sorting through my childhood, trying to figure out what ruined me, and locating stories that I let people define in that way for me.

Imani’s experiences within a predominantly Black UCC congregation resonate with other respondents who searched for the aberrance in their life that made them LGBTQ. For instance, a twenty-two-year-old respondent we call Derek, who grew up in a predominantly white Nazarene church, entertained the possibility that he was gay because he was mixed race. Most of the Black respondents we heard from spoke of the invisibility of Black LGBTQ people not only in the church but also in the broader culture, including in gay rights movements and in the civil rights movement (D’Emilio 2003). A respondent we call Simone shared that even once she felt comfortable naming the truth of her sexual difference, the invisibility of Black LGBTQ people in broader culture left her to believe that Black people were not gay in the sense that they did not outwardly claim this identity or truth about themselves regardless of how they related to others in their personal lives. This dearth of representation reinforces narratives within the Black Church that gayness is a ‘white thing’, again complicating the dynamic for Black respondents because of the threat that in naming their sexuality they might be perceived not just as sexual deviants, but as race traitors (Collins 2005; Douglas 1999).

3.4 Compartmentalizing Conservative churches that abide by complementarianism frame identifying as an LGBTQ person as wilfully embracing sinfulness and rejecting God. Within this worldview it is not possible to be both Christian and gay or Christian and transgender, for example. Many white respondents shared that when they tried to come out, the first response of their pastors, parents, or friends was an attempt to take control over their identity, saying things like ‘You are not gay; you are a

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

156

 .    

beloved daughter of the King who struggles with same-sex-attraction’ (Rodgers 2016) or, as a white trans man’s Christian college friends told him, ‘You are not transgender; you are a beautiful woman of God.’¹⁵ Parents and churches then frantically mobilize to tell the person who they ‘really’ are and to affirm the person’s identity as a child of God by ‘fixing’ their ‘broken’ gender and sexuality. Control is prioritized over relationship (Moon & Tobin 2018). Black respondents also report experiences of a sacramental shame dynamic that attempts to control peoples’ identity, as when Imani recounts that people’s partners were called their ‘friend’, and that people ‘created a secret out of something that wasn’t a secret’. However, consistent with differences between predominantly white and Black churches in general, we found that Black respondents faced a more complex convergence of controlling pressures when their community fears that the ‘blight’ of an individual will tarnish the image of collective respectability. Because respectability politics frames gayness as a ‘white disease’, a white assault on the Black community, a Black person’s claim to be gay, for example, appears not only as a violation of sacred gender complementarianism and an affront to God but also as wilful embrace of the temptation to repudiate the Black community, leaving many to work to partition their spirituality and/or sexuality from the rest of life (Collins 2005). Sociologist Richard Pitt’s Black, gay, Christian male respondents spoke to him of the difficulty of reconciling their sexual and religious identities. Some tried rejecting their religious identity, but ‘a number of them suggested that doing so would be as difficult for them as no longer affiliating with the Black community.’ Others tried more affirming churches, but miss consistent championing of moral standards from the pulpit; another of Pitt’s respondents said ‘I come out of a holiness church and probably shouldn’t say this, but I wanted a little hellfire and damnation every now and then’ (Pitt 2010: 46). But most needed to compartmentalize, ‘being’ Christian in some places and gay in others. Jamal also spoke of a pattern of compartmentalizing among his gay Black Christian friends: There’s about four churches that are pretty much known as where all the [Black] gays go in Chicago and they’ve all been very publicly, actively, politically anti-gay. On any given Sunday somebody might be praying against the spirit of homosexuality or encouraging some hyper-masculine behavior and response to a more effeminate or a less manly expression. [ . . . I]n those churches I have lots of friends and when I talk to them about [ . . . ] the culture of their church the response I get over and over again is that, ‘Well, I know they’re going to be that way. I know they’re going to act that way, but I like the music, or I like the

¹⁵ This attempt to control others reflects a form of epistemic violence that Kristie Dotson calls testimonial quieting, in which an audience (inaccurately and unjustly) fails to identify a speaker as a knower, in this case to know who they are (2011: 242; see also Fricker 2007).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

157

sermons, and so when they do that I just tune out.’ What I’m hearing them say is that they’re effectively leaving entire parts of themselves and their experience at the door, bottling that up, compartmentalizing it.

White respondents could often find affirming white churches where they could bring the fullness of who they are to communal worship. In contrast, some Black respondents found predominantly white, liberal congregations ignorant of Black traditions, interpretations, and styles of worship, leaving them feeling like they had to compartmentalize in any faith community. Pastor Eronica King (2016) described this experience as ‘spiritual homelessness’.

3.5 Controlling Perfectionism The logic of respectability connects membership in the Black family (literal and figurative) to control and promises of retribution for sin—particularly the sins of racism—but also anything thought to fall short of perfection. White LGBTQ participants also reported feeling like they had to be ‘perfect Christians’ in order to be acceptable to the church and even then often achieving only second-class standing. But as a response to the sexual stigma of white supremacy, respectability in Platonized Protestant Black churches generates a hyper-controlling culture of perfectionism around Black sexuality, which Simone described as ‘anti-everything’ and Imani learned about as ‘beating back the flesh’, and which many respondents described as demanding unreasonable moral perfection. Jamal describes respectability as: a perspective that’s built on these very high, unreasonable, ideals. And it comes from leaders that project themselves as perfect. They only preach about what’s wrong with you guys. They only preach about how you need to get your family together, even though their kids can’t stand them. They preach about all these external things to keep the focus on you and what’s wrong with you.

Jamal remarked that he and friends from other churches had similar experiences of God and church. He remarked: It was very control centered. And if you keep people dependent, then you can make that theology make sense. You can be like, ‘Oh yeah, because God is perfect, therefore, he’s just waiting to judge.’ I have a friend who’s been through some horrible church experiences, not in my church, but in his own world, where he can only resonate with the scriptures of judgment. With the scriptures of punishment. There can literally be love and judgment in the same verse, and he will only see the judgment part. [ . . . ] It teaches you that [ . . . ] people who

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

158

 .    

teach too much about grace, ‘They’re just sinnin’’, and ‘They’re not really saved, they’re not saved-saved.’ You know, it teaches people to discredit the grace of God. [ . . . ] And then another part is, there are so many churches, and again I can mainly speak to Black Church culture, there are so many churches where you’re hearing them preach the same thing. So if all the church people you know are saying the same thing, then why would you think otherwise?

Jamal linked this emphasis on moral perfection to a vision of God as one who judges racists harshly and must therefore judge everyone. Referencing his first church, which downplayed forgiveness because, at least in part, of the insurmountable evil so many endured, he continued: Now we did say, ‘Oh that’s white people. White people always think, “Oh, it’s just love and peace and grace”, but we got the righteousness of God. We know the things of God. We know the Truth of God.’ And so it became a racialized kind of issue too. Where again, you’re a minority group, you’re disadvantaged in society, your safe place becomes church, it becomes a hub, and the center of your family and your social connections and your world, and so you become ever more fearful of things outside. And so this peaceful, passive, grace of God, which you might hear in another denomination, it becomes scary. Because you think, if I’m not afraid then I won’t see God. If I’m not scared of losing my salvation, then I’ll just do any old thing, and then you start thinking like the slippery slope, doomsday prophets.

Having worked to communicate these experiences to white churchmates later, Jamal articulated the difference in an interview, saying: So [a white person looks] at somebody who has faith like mine, and you’re like, ‘Why would you think that?’ But then it does match up with [Black people’s] spirits. You do need God to be a provider. You do need God to avenge you of the wrongs of the police department, to avenge you the wrongs of what whatever government agency has done. Whatever it is. And so it makes sense in a lot of ways that God would be this more vengeful, more judging God, to everybody, because he’s ‘not a respecter of persons’.

Conditions of racism breed shame, and when church leaders to some extent internalize white supremacy, they hold individuals accountable for their failures both to match the white-defined ideal and to uplift the community as a whole. Looking respectable can become prioritized over relationship with God and others, because looking respectable seems more closely related to proving white supremacy wrong. And the fierce, liberator God who smites evildoers who

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

159

perpetuate white supremacy, might just smite the Black person with same-gender attractions or feelings of gender difference for their betrayal of respectability.

4. Resources for Healing and Resistance African-American LGBTQ Christians’ intersecting modes of oppression create distinctive experiences of sacramental shame including alienation from God, feelings of invisibility and exile, and compartmentalization. However, Black churches also provide unique resources for liberation, which facilitate particular modes of healing and resistance to homonegative messages as well (Moore 2011). Respondents point to the experience of God as a liberator and someone who loves them and speaks to them personally about their struggles, and of a clear distinction between God’s voice and people’s. Douglas (1999, 2004) explains Black Christians’ generations of knowledge that white pastors could distort scripture to further unjust and ungodly ends, a history that is well known today within Black churches. Speaking at the Gay Christian Network conference, Black, gay, Episcopal pastor Broderick Greer (2016) remarked: I descend from enslaved people. From lynched people. From racialized people. From people who took the Jesus their white enslavers introduced them to—a white Jesus happy to watch them suffer in order to maintain the proper social and economic order—and understood him not as enslaver, but as emancipator. [ . . . ] These were people [who] just had each other: families and communities forged during the evil institution of African enslavement. And that’s what ‘powerless’ people have to do: theology on the go, without books, seminary, theology on the streets, in the face of people wearing white sheets. Theology after we’ve been kicked to the corner for a perfectly holy and wholesome sexual orientation and gender expression, from the text of our very lives.

Similarly, reflecting on feeling blindsided and ‘cut’ when his parents’ pastor started preaching on the story of Sodom two days after Christmas, Lucas understood that the pastor’s point was to invoke Lot’s wife (who was punished for looking back at her city in flames) to say ‘don’t look back’. But Lucas’s immediate response was, ‘Which, by the way, I don’t agree with because we are Black people and we believe in Sankofa: you have to look back to move forward.’ A message of Black resistance helped him resist the pastor’s homophobic message. The Black Church culture of liberation helped Greer and Lucas to overcome dehumanizing Christian messages about LGBTQ people. As a child, Imani could have benefited from someone to make such connections. Her experience reflects

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

160

 .    

the support she got as a Black child and young woman, even though she expresses it as regret that she lacked the same ‘fierce’ support for her queerness. She reflects: I wish that my community stood up just as hard for me in that particular part of my being as they did my Blackness. I wish they had celebrated it as much as they did my Blackness. [ . . . ] I think that I wish that there was a fierceness, the same fierce dedication to that [sexual] part of people as fiercely as we were for Blackness [ . . . ]

Given the ‘queerness’ of all Black sexuality as stigmatized by white culture (Snorton 2014), fully defending her Blackness would include fiercely defending her queerness against racist sexual stigma. As an adult, Imani names that fierceness, and works to provide it for people in her life. The personal relationship with God cultivated in many, especially charismatic churches, gave some respondents resources for distinguishing between people’s teachings and God’s will. A same-gender-loving Pentecostal respondent in her forties was able from a young age to distinguish between human rules and God’s, comparing her church’s teaching about gender and sexuality to the church mother who made her wear a girdle under her usher’s uniform when she was fifteen. She remarked: I didn’t think that the church would be approving, but I always felt that God always loved me. Every time I would talk to God, he was never mad at me. He never made me feel like he didn’t love me, or that I was a bad person. So I was able to separate my relationship with God [from] the teachings of the church.

Similarly, when Jamal’s pastor told him God wanted him to paint the church and stay locked up, Jamal was able to think, ‘God’s not saying this to me. [Laughs] You may be saying this, but God’s not saying this to me.’ The ability to talk to God and hear God’s voice was given to them by their churches. And Aurora could distinguish people’s hostility from God. She remarked: I know there are some people that have come out either as trans or gay or anything else and they not only have an anger towards the people of God but they have anger towards God as well. Because they feel like God has this same perception [as people] and, luckily for me, I do not hold that view. I feel that God has always embraced me, always accepted me, and the people just were not able to do that. [ . . . ] I talk to God regularly, which is very empowering for me, especially where I am at in my life today.

Coming from the Black Church tradition, this cultivation may be more explicitly linked to resisting the temptation to internalize oppression.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

161

5. Moving Forward The liberatory language of the Black Church can help some LGBTQ and SGL members resist harmful messages and create sustaining relationships, but a lifetime spent navigating these complicated dynamics can be hard to set aside. Some found a home in predominantly white churches that affirmed LGBTQ identities, same-sex marriages, and gender transitions, but others report that predominantly white liberal churches gave them experiences of racialized stigmatization and silencing. Others worked within their churches to try to be present as openly LGBTQ people, available for people to ask questions and see beyond stereotypes. Finally, others—like Jamal and Imani, Bishop Yvette Flunder of City of Hope Church, or Pastor Jamie Frazier of Lighthouse Church of Chicago—work to create inclusive spaces with no need for compartmentalizing or code-switching. In different ways, African-American LGBTQ Christians are drawing from the liberatory traditions of the Black Church to undo the particular spiritual violence done when sacramental shame is added to the crucible of white supremacist culture (Lewin 2018). They work to create spaces—and a world—where LGBTQ people of colour and others can express what some call ‘the fullness of who they are’, confident that no one falls outside of God’s love.

References Ahmed, Sara. 2015. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York, NY: Routledge. Anderson, Carmarion D. 2015. Keynote Address. The Reformation Project, Atlanta GA, 13 June 2015. Bartky, Sandra. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York, NY: Routledge Press. Bebbington, D. W. 1989. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A history from the 1730s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge. Belgau, Ron. 2003. ‘The great debate’, https://ronbelgau.com/great-debate/, accessed March 2017. Braithwaite, John. 1989. Crime, Shame, and Reintegration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brayboy, Duane. 2017. ‘Two spirits, one heart, five genders.’ Indian Country Today, 7 September 2017. Brownson, James V. 2013. Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the church’s debate on same-sex relationships. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Burrus, Virginia. 2007. Saving Shame: Martyrs, saints, and other abject subjects. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

162

 .    

Calhoun, Cheshire. 2004. ‘An Apology for Moral Shame.’ Journal of Political Philosophy 12 (2): 127–46. Clare, Eli. 2017. Brilliant Imperfection. Durham, SC: Duke University Press. Cohen, Cathy. 1999. The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the breakdown of black politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2005. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. New York: Routledge. Cone, James. 2004. ‘Theology’s Great Sin: Silence in the face of white supremacy.’ Black Theology 2 (2): 139–52. Conley, Garrard. 2016. Boy Erased: A memoir. New York: Penguin Books. Copeland, Shawn. 2002. ‘Body, Representation, and Black Religious Discourse.’ In Postcolonialism, Feminism, and Religious Discourse, edited by Laura E. Donaldson and Pui-lan Kwok, 180–97. New York: Routledge. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color.’ Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–99. D’Emilio, John. 2003. Lost Prophet: The life and times of Bayard Rustin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Donaldson, Laura E. and Pui-lan Kwok. 2002. ‘God, Gold and Gender.’ In the Introduction to Postcolonialism, Feminism, and Religious Discourse, edited by Laura E. Donaldson and Pui-lan Kwok, 5–14. New York: Routledge. Dotson, Kristie. 2011. ‘Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing.’ Hypatia 26 (2): 236–57. Douglas, Kelly Brown. 1999. Sexuality and the Black Church: A womanist perspective. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Douglas, Kelly Brown. 2004. ‘The Black Church and the Politics of Sexuality.’ In Loving the Body: Black religious studies and the erotic, edited by A. B. Pinn and D. N. Hopkins, 347–62. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Douglas, Kelly Brown. 2010. ‘Black and Blues: God-Talk/Body-Talk for the Black Church.’ In Sexuality and the Sacred. Second edition, edited by Marvin Ellison and Kelly Brown Douglas, 48–66. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. Eisner, Shiri. 2013. Bi: Notes for a bisexual revolution. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press. Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks, translated by C. L. Markmann. New York: Grove Press. Ferguson, Roderick. 2004. Aberrations in Black: Toward a queer of color critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Flanagan, Owen. 2013. ‘The Shame of Addiction.’ Frontiers in Psychiatry 4 (120): 1–11. Flunder, Yvette. 2014. Healing oppression sickness. In Queer Christianities: Lived Religion in Transgressive Forms, edited by K. T. Talvacchia, M. F. Pettinger, et al., 115–24. New York: New York University Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

163

Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Garver, Newton. 2007. ‘What Violence Is.’ In Violence: A Philosophical Anthology, edited by V. Bufacci, 170–82. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Greer, Broderick. 2016. ‘Theology as Survival.’ Keynote Address, Gay Christian Network, Houston TX, 7 January 2016. Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. New York: Simon and Schuster. Goldberg, Jonathan. 1992. Sodometries: Renaissance texts, modern sexualities. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Griffin, Horace. 2004. ‘Toward a True Black Liberation Theology: Affirming homoeroticism, black gay Christians, and their love relationships.’ In Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and The Erotic, edited by A. B. Pinn and D. N. Hopkins, 133–56. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Harris-Perry, Melissa. 2011. Sister Citizen: Shame, stereotypes, and black women in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. 1993. Righteous Discontent: The women’s movement in the black Baptist church, 1880–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Holmes, Robert. 2007. ‘Violence and the Perspective of Morality.’ In Violence: A Philosophical Anthology, edited by V. Bufacci, 267–93. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Karlsson, G., and L. G. Sjoberg. 2009. ‘The Experiences of Guilt and Shame: A phenomenological-psychological study.’ Humanistic Studies 32: 335–55. King, Eronica. 2016. ‘And Their Home Receives Them Not: Exploring the double consciousness of being Black and gay in the Black church experience.’ The Reformation Project, Long Beach CA. Lee, Justin. 2012. Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the gays-vs.-Christians debate. New York: Jericho Books. Lehtinen, Ullaliina. 1998. ‘How does one know what shame is? Epistemology, emotions, and forms of life in juxtaposition.’ Hypatia 13 (1): 56–77. Lewin, Ellen. 2018. Filled with the Spirit: Sexuality, gender and radical inclusivity in a black Pentecostal church coalition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lewis, Helen. 1971. Shame and Guilt in Neurosis. New York: International Universities Press. Lewis, Michael. 1992. Shame: The exposed self. New York: The Free Press. Lincoln, C. Eric, and Lawrence H. Mamiya. 1990. The Black Church in the African American Experience. Durham: Duke University Press. Lorde, Audre. 1984. ‘Uses of the Erotic: The erotic as power.’ In Sister/Outsider, 53–9. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press. Lynd, Helen. 1958. On Shame and the Search for Identity. New York: Science Editions.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

164

 .    

Manion, J. C. 2002. ‘The Moral Relevance of Shame.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 39 (1): 73–90. Monroe, Irene. 2004. ‘When and Where I Enter, Then the Whole Race Enters with Me: Que(e)rying Exodus.’ In Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and The Erotic, edited by A. B. Pinn and D N. Hopkins, 121–32. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Moon, Dawne, and Theresa W. Tobin. 2018. ‘Sunsets and Solidarity: Overcoming sacramental shame in conservative Christian churches to forge a queer vision of love and justice.’ Hypatia 33 (3): 451–68. Moore, Mignon. 2011. Invisible Families: Gay identities, relationships, and motherhood among black women. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morrison, Toni, ed. 1992. Race-ing Justice, En-gender-ing Power: Essays on Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and the construction of social reality. New York: Pantheon. Nagel, Joane. 2003. Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate intersections, forbidden frontiers. New York: Oxford University Press. Nelson, James. 1979. Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christianity. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House. Pitt, Richard N. 2010. ‘ “Still looking for my Jonathan”: Gay Black men’s management of religious and sexual identity conflicts.’ Journal of Homosexuality 57: 39–53. Rodgers, Julie. 2016. Keynote Address (Untitled). The Reformation Project, Long Beach CA, 22 October 2016. Scheff, Thomas J. 2000. ‘Shame and the Social Bond: A sociological theory.’ Sociological Theory 18 (1): 84–99. Schneider, Laurel. 2012. ‘What Race Is Your Sex?’ In Queer Religion: LGBT Movements and Queering Religion. Volume II, edited by Donald Boisvert and Jay Emerson Johnson, 125–41. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2003. Touching Feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Shelton, Jason E., and Ryon J. Cobb. 2017. ‘Black reltrad: Measuring religious diversity and commonality among African Americans.’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 56 (4): 737–64. Shotwell, Alexis. 2011. Knowing Otherwise: Race, gender, and implicit understanding. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University. Snorton, C. Riley. 2014. Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black sexuality on the down low. Minneapolis: U. Minnesota Press. Thomason, K. 2015. ‘Shame, Violence, and Morality.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (1): 1–24. Tobin, Theresa. 2016. ‘Spiritual Violence, Gender, and Sexuality: Implications for seeking and dwelling among some Catholic women and LGBT Catholics.’ In Seekers and Dwellers: Plurality and Wholeness in a Time of Secularity, edited by P. J. Rossi. The Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series VIII, Christian Philosophical Studies 20: 133–67.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

    

165

Tobin, Theresa W., and Dawne Moon. 2019. ‘The Politics of Shame in the Motivation to Virtue: Lessons from the shame, pride, and humility experiences of LGBT conservative Christians and their allies.’ Journal of Moral Education 48 (1): 109–25. Velleman, David. 2001. ‘On the Genesis of Shame.’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 30 (1): 27–52. Woodward, Kathleen. 2000. ‘Traumatic Shame: Toni Morrison, televisual culture, and the cultural politics of the emotions.’ Cultural Critique 46: 210–40. Yoshino, Kenji. 2000. ‘The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure.’ Stanford Law Review 52 (2): 353–461.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

7 Conceptualizing the Atonement Kathryn Pogin

How cruel and wicked it seems that anyone should demand the blood of an innocent person as the price for anything, or that it should in any way please him that an innocent man should be slain—still less that God should consider the death of His Son so agreeable that by it he should be reconciled to the whole world!¹ If belief in the redemptive nature of the life and death of Christ is to be intellectually defensible, Christian philosophers must have an account of it that is not only philosophically coherent, but also morally unobjectionable. In the philosophical literature, there is a significant body of work dedicated to making theoretical sense of the atonement (e.g., whether the debt of sin owed to God may be satisfied by another), but thus far, contemporary philosophers of religion have given little treatment to the atonement by way of social epistemology or feminist philosophy, despite extensive attention to the issue within feminist theology. In order to bring these conversations together, here, I explore some of the epistemological and gendered implications of traditional approaches to the atonement—namely, the normalization of submission to violence and the idealization of suffering. In the first section of what follows, I describe three major categories of atonement theories in the philosophical tradition. The second section surveys some of the feminist criticisms of the atonement tradition that have been put forward in the theological literature, as well as the theological context which motivates those criticisms. In the third section, I examine the implications of such feminist theology for particular theories of the atonement. In the fourth section, I argue that conceiving of redemption as arising out of sacrificial submission to violence— the suffering servant who willingly, though undeservedly, self-sacrifices for the sake of another—has corrupted the shared hermeneutical resources through which we conceptualize ethical conduct, love, and virtue. I argue that the epistemic repercussions of leading models of the atonement are sufficiently harmful to merit their reconsideration. Finally, in the last section, I consider what I take to be the most promising alternative understanding of the atonement. Borrowing in

¹ Abelard 1956: 283. Kathryn Pogin, Conceptualizing the Atonement In: Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology. Edited by: Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848844.003.0008

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

167

part from those who have suggested a moral influence view, like Abelard, I argue that Christian philosophers should pursue a new kind of exemplarist model. That is, perhaps death has no central role in what redeems us, nor sacrificial love, but rather a refusal to cooperate with injustice, even when the risks of doing so may be fatal.

1. Traditional Theories of Atonement Though there is no ecumenically orthodox theory of the atonement (perhaps, all the more reason to think reinterpretation possible), traditional theories of how the atonement works tend to fall under three main categories: Christus Victor theories (of which ‘ransom theory’ is widely considered to be a paradigm example), satisfaction theories (of which penal substitution theory is usually treated as a species), and moral influence theories. In some respects, these categories are widely divergent from one another. For example, according to Christus Victor theories, the suffering of Christ is a prelude to victory over darkness, where that victory is the heart of atonement. Humankind, through the fall, is under the dominion of the devil. Salvation is attained in the atonement because the death of Christ pays the ransom for our sin; his perfect goodness banishes the evil which was meant for us. God thus conquers evil, and protects us from being consumed by the devil. In contrast, according to satisfaction theories, atonement is not made to release humankind from the hold of evil, but rather to satisfy the debt of sin owed to God. We owe God restitution for our sins, yet are incapable of making appropriate reparations ourselves. God sacrifices his own life in our stead so that we need not be eternally condemned. Moral influence theories tend to question whether the death of Christ was necessary for the precise purpose of satisfying a debt to God. Instead, they tend to hold that the death of Christ was intended to demonstrate God’s great love for us so that we might be moved to be better ourselves; on this view, it is not that God requires sacrifice, but rather we do. When confronted by Christ’s loving sacrifice we are meant to be inspired to turn away from sin. Divergent as these theories may be, there is one respect in which they are the same: The suffering of Christ is understood as integral to our redemption. Either it pays our ransom, satisfies our debt, or inspires us to commit ourselves to God.

2. Criticisms and Context In the theological literature, these traditional understandings of the atonement have faced serious criticism from feminist theologians who raise a number of questions about the pastoral efficacy, and cultural influence, of the doctrine so

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

168

 

modelled. What does it mean to find redemption in the suffering of another? For divine love and mercy to find penultimate expression in torturous death? To be called to suffer as Christ suffered? We are told, ‘for the wages of sin is death’, and yet by the grace of God, we may find everlasting life ‘in Christ’. However, if ‘in Christ’ is to mean that God has accepted innocent blood (even his own) as substitution for, or satisfaction of, some human debt—payment of which is a prerequisite of restored relationship—then it begins to seem as if God’s purported perfect goodness is something of a cruel joke. Relationships in which restoration is sought through bloodshed, are the sort, I should think, one would generally want to avoid. Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker reject entirely that the death of Christ was atoning on account of considerations like these. On their view, in traditional atonement theories, ‘[d]ivine child abuse is paraded as salvific and the child who suffers “without even raising a voice” is lauded as the hope of the world’ (Brown and Parker 1989: 2). While satisfaction theories have been criticized by many in the contemporary literature for painting God as violent,² Brown and Parker are equally forceful in their criticisms of Christus Victor and moral influence theories as well. On their view, Christus Victor theories trivialize suffering. Even the most heinous instances of cruelty and abuse become, not primarily objects of moral concern and mourning in their own right, but stage elements, from which Christ will eventually emerge victorious. The death of Jesus is merely a ploy, a sleight of hand, an illusion . . . . When suffering comes it may be looked upon as a gift, and the believer will ask, Where is God leading me? What does God have in store for me? In this tradition, God is the all-powerful determiner of every event in life, and every event is part of a bigger picture—a plan that will end with triumph. When people say things such as God had a purpose in the death of the six million Jews, the travesty of this theology is revealed. (Brown and Parker 1989: 6–8)

Likewise, Brown and Parker argue that moral influence views have devastating consequences. Here, though, their claim is not that moral influence theories trivialize suffering, but rather that they encourage it. It is being confronted with the suffering of an innocent victim that is supposed to encourage us to face our guilty consciences and inspire us to moral reformation. Victimization provides for the redemption of others, and victimizing, while otherwise regrettable, enables opportunity for redemptive reformation. This is a framework that lends itself too easily to placing inappropriate, unjust responsibility on those who are already victimized to endure and embrace their suffering so that their oppressors might be redeemed. ² See., e.g., Weaver 2006, Ray 1998.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

169

Perhaps these seem like unfair characterizations. After all, even according to satisfaction theories, as the story goes, the atonement event came about precisely because of God’s great love for us despite our abject failures—out of a desire for union, not a need to sate some gratuitous violent impulse. As Richard Swinburne puts it, ‘Since what needs atonement to God is human sin, men living second-rate lives when they have been given such great opportunities by their creator, appropriate reparation and penance would be made by a perfect human life, given away through being lived perfectly’ (Swinburne 1989: 157). Thus, as humans are incapable of offering appropriate reparation to God on their own, God voluntarily became human and lived a perfect life to be given away—in death, and to us—in an act of merciful love, so that we may use God’s sacrifice as our own. What greater act of love could there be? Here, in assessing the merit of feminist objections to atonement theories, it is useful to remember the context in which this debate is occurring—both theological and sociological. We can only superficially divide atonement theories from their contexts of discovery and practice for the purposes of philosophizing about them in the abstract. To understand the epistemological and ethical implications of our theories, though, that context is of the utmost importance. Just as the meaning of language—what it pragmatically signifies—depends, in part, on context, so too the meaning of our ideas may be shaped by the surrounding epistemic context. What feminist theologians are objecting to, then, are not just particular ways of modelling the atonement, but particular ways of modelling the atonement against the backdrop of a sexist tradition that has victimized women (among others). Women in the Christian Scriptures are often the subjects of abuse. Think, for example, of Jezebel, who is thrown from a window, trampled by horses, devoured by dogs, and scorned by the tradition for sins that were no worse than those of Kings David and Solomon themselves.³ Esther—arguably the most empowered woman represented in the Christian Scriptures—is treated horrifically, courageously endures, and in so doing, is able to secure the salvation of her people. While Esther is certainly treated as something of a heroine by the tradition, her ability to ³ Jezebel’s most notable offences include, first, establishing worship of Baal (her native culture’s deity), to the exclusion of the God of Israel, in the region through her marriage to King Ahab (see, e.g., 1 Kings 16:29–33), and second, her conspiring to have a man, who refused to sell his vineyard to her husband, killed under false pretences in order to obtain said land (1 Kings 21:1–16). King Solomon, though, is described in Scripture as having 700 wives, and 300 concubines, each with their own gods; as worshipping their native deities alongside them; and building temples for them within Israel (1 Kings 11:1–7). While Solomon has been revered for his wisdom, Jezebel has been despised for her corrupting influence. The story of Jezebel and the vineyard, too, bears a striking resemblance to that of King David and Bathsheba; where Jezebel conspired to take land for the benefit of her husband, King David conspired to take a person for the benefit of concealing his own selfish actions. As the story goes, King David witnessed Bathsheba’s beauty from his roof as she was bathing, and though he knew she was married to one of his soldiers who was away at war, he sent messengers to bring her to his room. Scripture doesn’t say if Bathsheba consented to what followed. As a result, though, Bathsheba became pregnant. When King David heard, he arranged for her husband to be sent to the frontlines of battle, and when he died, David took Bathsheba as his own wife (2 Sam 11:1–27).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

170

 

become one in the first place is predicated on her abuse. In the story of Esther, by proclamation, she and the other virgins were gathered. They were taken to the palace. They were put in the custody of eunuchs.⁴ Then in turn, they were taken to the king.⁵ This is not the language of voluntary behaviour, and these were not women who, upon hearing of the former Queen Vashti’s fate, lined up outside the palace hoping for an interlude with the king. They were taken from their homes, their families, subjected to months of conditioning, with no hope of a life other than that which was decided for them. The power differential alone, between the women and the king, renders the notion of consent in their situation virtually meaningless; how do you say no to the man who banished from the kingdom, forever, the last woman who did? As opposed to the Jews under the threat of Haman, these women had no Esther and Mordecai of their own to stand up for them—it is not this injustice that Esther confronts. Rather, it is this injustice that places Esther in a position to intercede on behalf of the Babylonian Jews, ultimately securing their salvation. Indeed, it is precisely Esther’s general tendency towards submission that (along with her beauty) specially distinguishes her as exemplary. Before her night with the king, ‘[i]n contrast with all the virgins who preceded her, Esther asks for no special aids, and accepts only what Hegai [the eunuch] suggests. It is this expression of Esther’s yielding and conformity that immediately precedes the phrase in 2:15, “and Esther won the admiration of all who saw her” ’ (Berman 2001: 649). Rather than express her own desires, Esther submits to the authority of even the castrated male figurehead. She is rewarded with queenship, and thus, the ability to save her people. That Esther is excluded entirely from the last chapter of her scriptural namesake—which never mentions her, but instead lauds the greatness and courage of Mordecai, naming him as second in rank to the king—is a suggestive and powerful metaphor.⁶ The examples of Jezebel and Esther are significant to contextualizing atonement theories for two reasons in particular. First, they are illustrative rather than exceptional in regards to the representation of women in the Christian tradition. Women have all too often been held to a higher standard than men in regards to sin, and their abuse and submission are all too often framed as standing in positive relation to salvation, covenant, and redemption. Second, these representations (and others like them) have held significant sway in the Christian tradition regarding conceptions of womanhood.

3. Traditional Models and Their Implications Certainly, there are a variety of ways one can frame the atonement, and some are more palatable than others. Nonetheless, with this background in mind, questions ⁴ Esth 2:8.

⁵ Esth 2:12.

⁶ Esth 10.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

171

regarding implications of violence and victimization become especially acute. It seems that traditional models of the atonement tend to share in these troubling implications (though they may vary in degree). Take, for instance, Swinburne’s model mentioned above. First, note what work the passive voice does when Swinburne writes, ‘[s]ince what needs atonement to God is human sin, men living second-rate lives when they have been given such great opportunities by their creator, appropriate reparation and penance would be made by a perfect human life, given away through being lived perfectly’ (Swinburne 1989: 157). That reparation could be made through the sacrifice of an innocent other is easier to imagine when we need to atone is rather articulated as atonement needs to be made. But second, why should the sacrifice of an innocent life be taken as pleasing to God at all? Why is it that submission to undeserved violence should constitute part of having lived perfectly? It is not clear that there are morally unobjectionable answers to these questions—particularly within the larger cultural context. While it seems straightforwardly unproblematic to hold the characteristic of nonviolence up as a moral ideal, non-violence is something quite different from allowing others to do violence to oneself.⁷ One might respond by noting John 15:13, ‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’, and yet we should be unconvinced. Surely there are circumstances in which laying down one’s life would be a decidedly bad thing to do. Suppose a friend and I go out for dinner together and, having excellent judgement, my friend orders herself a dessert, whereas being indecisive, I do not. When it arrives, her dessert looks delicious. I would like to have it. She realizes that I would like to have it, but she would as well (and, after all, she ordered it). Knowing that my friend has a tendency towards acting generously even when she would rather not, I quickly kill myself to spare her the trouble of deciding whether or not to share with me. This would be wrongheaded, and obviously so. Still, in more serious circumstances, laying down one’s life may be wrong, and ultimately, unloving. Even supposing we have no moral duties to respect and preserve our own lives, insofar as we are capable of providing comfort, support, friendship, and other goods to those around us while we live, literal self-sacrifice generally ought to be avoided. There are very few circumstances in which we can do more good in death than in life. Sacrificing one’s life ought to be a last resort—not a paradigm indication of moral goodness. Of course, being a last resort is not in itself mutually ⁷ Here, it would be natural to object that while non-violence is certainly distinct from simply allowing others to do violence to oneself, non-violence might involve allowing others to do violence to oneself. Then, whatever it is that distinguishes non-violence from submission to violence might all be present in the case of Christ. I agree that non-violence may involve allowing others to do violence to oneself, and I agree that this may be present in the case of Christ, but my concern is that there are significant differences in how this can be helpfully framed—the particulars may distinguish between what is morally or metaphysically necessary on the one hand, from what is derivative on the other; what is motivating from what is secondary. Those differences will be discussed in more detail in the last section.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

172

 

exclusive with being a paradigm indication of moral goodness, but (if the Christian Scriptures are to be believed) we are called to suffer ‘as Christ suffered’ not ‘as Christ suffered, supposing there are no other options available’.⁸ To take another example of a particular atonement theory with troubling implications, Richard Cross argues against Swinburne’s satisfaction theory of the atonement and proposes a merit theory instead. However, in rejecting Swinburne’s view, Cross does not reject the notion that Christ’s death could, in principle, provide payment to God for whatever it is that humans owe. He is explicit that he thinks it could. Rather, Cross argues that all that is required for reparation to God is repentance and apology, but nevertheless, without Christ’s interceding death, God would not be obligated to forgive even when appropriate reparation is made. For Cross, Christ’s death is a supererogatory act that merits some reward from God to do as Christ asks—that is, to offer redemption to those who seek it, thus placing God under an obligation to offer humankind redemption. While Cross’s view does away with the prima facie problematic notion that the most appropriate reparation one could make to God involves the death of an innocent person, his view actually makes the problem of self-sacrifice even more acute. Where Christ’s death is not necessary, and where God could forgive us our sins without any affront to justice so long as we made reparation through apology, why should his blood be shed at all? Shouldn’t we be troubled to think of submission to needless violence as a supererogatory act? Here, Christ’s death is not a last resort but something more like an insurance policy—an especially odd insurance policy, as God is both the insured and the insurer. Cross himself notes that even if God wanted to be obligated to forgive us of our sins, Christ’s death wasn’t the only means of imposing such an obligation: God could simply promise redemption, and so directly generate an obligation, without Christ’s ‘meritorious’ death (409). Cross further notes that Christ’s self-sacrifice would not guarantee redemption. God might have chosen to reward Christ with something else (409). On this view, then, the Father might seem even more abusive, and Christ’s suffering even more gratuitous, than we would otherwise think. Swinburne’s and Cross’s models of the atonement are not alone in their troubling implications. Indeed, these models have significantly fewer such implications than many. I offer them as examples for precisely that reason. They are clever and complicated pieces of philosophical work that avoid some of the more disturbing aspects of other models, e.g., that God requires blood payment for human sin, etc., while still providing an otherwise theoretically coherent account of how the atonement works. Nonetheless, neither leaves us with a model of how the atonement functions that is morally unobjectionable. ⁸ I take it that, being omnipotent, options other than the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ would be available to God for achieving atonement.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

173

Eleonore Stump’s Atonement sets out a novel and sophisticated model, drawing on the tradition, yet emphasizing relationality, empathy, and the ethical complexities of justifying suffering. Stump rejects an Anselmian approach to the atonement, like Swinburne’s, for reasons similar to those I mentioned above. [O]ne insuperable problem for the Anselmian approach to Christ’s sacrifice for the Anselmian kind of interpretation in general is to explain why God’s giving to himself a present makes up for the offense done to God’s honor or in some other way enables God to pardon sinners. But another, and worse, insuperable problem is to explain why having an innocent person (or God’s own incarnate self) suffer torment and death is pleasing enough in God’s eyes to count as the needed present. (Stump 2018: 396)

Rather, for Stump, the passion of Christ serves ‘to provide for human beings a metaphysical analogue of the union of the persons of the trinity, in which each person is within the other’ (2018: 167). In the incarnation, Christ takes on a human mind. With both his divine and human natures, Christ is able to experience an openness—a mind-reading of sorts—to all human psyches and our associated sinfulness. Much as we might empathetically experience a simulation of pain when we witness someone being hurt, Christ takes on a simulacrum of the stain of all evil committed or desired while on the cross (2018: 164). In taking on the stain of sin without culpability, Christ traverses the barrier between God’s perfect goodness, and the fallenness of humankind, allowing us to indwell in God. The passion of Christ, in turn, communicates God’s love, allowing us to surrender to God, and so allows, too, for the indwelling of God in us. But Stump’s view still raises worries in light of concerns raised by feminist theology mentioned above, as it is the sacrifice of Christ’s suffering and death that centrally enables union. To ‘contemplate Christ on the cross is to see him as broken and suffering in love for broken human beings’ (2018: 282). Stump argues, ‘that view of Christ is the most promising way to melt the resistance that keeps a person hardened against love’ (282). But, what does this imply for our love of one another?

4. The Atonement and Epistemic Injustice There is more at stake in how the atonement is understood than whether there is inconsistency between God’s purported perfect goodness and theories of atonement offered to date. The ways in which various religions conceptualize their doctrines has a significant impact on our broader understanding of the world. With respect to the atonement in particular, as the most salient example of divine love for Christians, how the atonement is conceptualized has significant

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

174

 

consequences for how, in religiously or culturally Christian communities, rightrelationship is understood, and thus, ethical conduct and love more generally. Consider this: [My husband] beats me sometimes. Mostly he is a good man. But sometimes he becomes very angry and he hits me. He knocks me down. One time he broke my arm and I had to go to the hospital. But I didn’t tell them how my arm got broken . . . I went to my priest twenty years ago. I’ve been trying to follow his advice. The priest said I should rejoice in my sufferings because they bring me closer to Jesus. He said, ‘Jesus suffered because he loved us.’ He said, ‘If you love Jesus, accept the beatings and bear them gladly, as Jesus bore the cross.’ I’ve tried, but I’m not sure anymore. My husband is turning on the kids now. Tell me, is what the priest told me true? (Brock and Parker 2002: 20–1)

This is not a fiction, and instances like it are not uncommon.⁹ While the story may be morally shocking, it should not be surprising. When one takes redemption to be the result of a moral exemplar obediently and willingly submitting to unjust violence so that others might be saved—when one takes Christ’s suffering to be the act of love—it is natural to see suffering as something that we should take on cheerfully if we are to be godly. Indeed, sociological data indicates that while domestic abuse might not be any more common within the Christian community than it is within the broader cultural context, religious Christian women are more vulnerable when abused. They are less likely to leave, are more likely to believe the abuser’s promise to change his violent ways, frequently espouse reservations about seeking community-based resources or shelters for battered women, and commonly express guilt—that they have failed their families and God in not being able to make the marriage work. (Nason-Clark 2004: 304)

This difference is not reducible to belief in Christian theologies of divorce. Recent research suggests that conservative Protestants have higher than average divorce rates and Evangelical Americans have higher divorce rates than atheists and agnostics (Park, Tom, and Andercheck 2014). However theologies of divorce impact the marital lives of Christian women, they cannot fully account for a ⁹ Relatedly, in 2018, Paige Patterson was removed from his post as head of the Southwestern Theological Seminary, after he ‘was accused of telling a victim of domestic abuse to stay with and forgive her husband, encouraging a rape victim not to come forward, and telling jokes in sermons that sexualized teenaged girls. Initially, Patterson apologized for his tone but argued, “I do not apologize for my stand for the family and for seeking to mend a marriage through forgiveness rather than divorce” ’ (Burton 2018). Similarly, multiple former students of Bob Jones University have publicly alleged that when seeking counsel regarding sexual abuse and assault, they were discouraged from reporting their experiences by university officials who cited that they should defer to an authority, like a father, or that in reporting they would ‘hurt the body of Christ’ (Pérez-Peña 2014).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

175

special vulnerability to abuse while simultaneously failing to prevent divorce in any remarkable way. Certainly, we may think that suffering through domestic violence is so dissimilar to the suffering of Christ in what it can achieve that this clearly would be a simple, though devastating, misapplication of the theory. However, in the context of a tradition that has highly valued submissiveness and nurturing behaviour in women, intact families, male authority, patience through tribulation, and forgiveness, even if it is simply a misapplication of the theory, it is a misapplication that would be natural. Further, unfortunately, it seems a fair number of pastors agree: in a submission to the Royal Commission on Family Violence in Australia, one woman reported having been encouraged by five different ministers to stay with her abusive husband (Anonymous 2015).¹⁰ After he violently attacked her, one minister said her survival was evidence of God’s continuing protection, and indicated she ought to return to her marriage (Anonymous 2015). In 2014, a twenty-five-year-old woman was told by her church that she should return to her abusive husband. She did. He stabbed her to death shortly thereafter (Baird and Gleeson 2017). In response to a 1989 survey, 26 percent of pastors ‘agreed that a wife should submit to her [abusive] husband and trust God would honor her action by either stopping the abuse or giving her the strength to endure’ (Johnson and Bondurant 1995: 425). Whatever nuances the various traditional atonement models might have, they all seem to lend themselves too easily to an interpretation with potentially horrific consequences for human relationships: the idealization of the suffering servant, understanding self-sacrifice as the ultimate expression of love, toleration of violence insofar as submission to it is how Christ redeemed us, or the glorification of obedience, even until death, to those with authority (real, purported, or imagined) over us. While in some contexts a willingness to take on suffering for the sake of others can be good, in many contexts it is not. For those who are oppressed, abused, subjected to systematic injustice and interpersonal violence, what is needed is not a model of how to serve through suffering, but rather how to respect oneself and love through resistance.¹¹ It could be of some comfort to the marginalized that Christ could identify with their pain, but it would be of more comfort to think that the suffering is going somewhere—that one need not continue to suffer unjustly. ¹⁰ The letter is not dated, but the closing date for submissions was in May 2015, so I have set 2015 as the date for the letter. ¹¹ In situations of injustice, self-sacrifice may be both valuable and inevitable (with thanks to Faith Glavey Pawl for this point). For instance, a victim of domestic violence may deeply value their relationship with an abuser, despite the destructive nature of the relationship. Indeed, many victims have described such relationships in cyclical terms—alternating between incidents of violence and loving reconciliation. Precisely because domestic violence often constitutively involves the cultivation of social isolation, a victim’s relationship to an abuser may be of central social significance to her. To the extent that a victim is divided against herself about whether to leave, choosing self-love will risk sacrificing fulfilment of any desire for union with the abuser (Herman 1997: 79–80). Self-sacrifice, then, cannot and should not be set aside entirely—but it must be balanced with self-love.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

176

 

Applying one of the traditional understandings of the atonement as a model of ideally loving action to one’s own life is likely to, through the subversion of self, damage one’s ability to wholly engage in authentic relationship, particularly for those who are already oppressed.¹² When we valorize self-sacrifice and suffering to the exclusion of self-love, we normalize those factors which make self-sacrifice and suffering possible in the first place. Like the woman who believes it is her duty to accept domestic violence, limits have been imposed on our moral imagination. Miranda Fricker argues that our conceptual resources can be distorted by hermeneutical injustice, which she defines as the ‘injustice of having some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to hermeneutical marginalization’ (Fricker 2007: 155). Roughly, the idea is that what we can know and think about depends on our conceptual resources; our conceptual resources, in turn, depend crucially on society. For example, ‘[a]n ancient Greek could not know she had contracted a virus, she could not even think about viruses, because the concept of a virus was not yet socially available’ (Pogin 2019: 304). Concepts that reflect the needs and experiences of marginalized social groups might not get a foothold in our shared hermeneutical resources if our theories, language, cultural narratives, and so on, are developed primarily by, or revolve around, those social groups which are dominant. Where hermeneutical injustice occurs, the resultant conceptual landscape will be ideological in Charles Mills’s sense; that is, ‘in the pejorative sense of [being] a set of group ideas that reflect, and contribute to perpetuating, illicit group privilege’ (Mills 2005: 166). Fricker gives several examples illustrating hermeneutical injustice, some of which are drawn from Susan Brownmiller’s memoir of the women’s liberation movement in the US. For instance: Wendy Sanford, born into an upper-class Republican family, was battling depression after the birth of her son. Her friend Esther Rome, a follower of Jewish Orthodox traditions, dragged her to the second MIT session. Wendy had kept her distance from political groups. ‘I walked into the lounge’, she recalls, ‘and they were talking about masturbation. I didn’t say a word. I was shocked, I was fascinated. At a later session someone gave a breast-feeding demonstration. That didn’t shock me, but then we broke down into small groups . . . In my group people started talking about postpartum depression. In that one forty-fiveminute period I realized that what I’d been blaming myself for, and what my

¹² Social cooperation with those who actively or consistently harm you can effect a kind of violence to the self. Incidentally, high sociability tends to correlate with resilience in the face of certain kinds of trauma such as on the battlefield, or in the aftermath of a natural disaster, while it can exacerbate traumas like that of rape or domestic violence—attempts to empathize with one’s assailant can be psychologically damaging, whereas teamwork is valuable in the face of shared danger (Herman 1997: 58–89).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

177

husband had blamed me for, wasn’t my personal deficiency. It was a combination of physiological things and a real societal thing, isolation. (Brownmiller 1999: 182)

Without the requisite language, access to a shared narrative, or a common understanding, Sanford was suffering not only from postpartum depression, but also an inability to adequately articulate her own experience—even to herself. The experience of Carmita Wood was similar; Wood left a staff position in Cornell’s Nuclear Physics Department in the 1970s in order to escape a pattern of unwanted physical and verbal advances from a professor in the department. She was subsequently denied unemployment benefits when, on the unemployment form, not knowing what else to say, she described her reasons for leaving as ‘personal’. Wood, and other women involved in the feminist movement, eventually came to recognize the behaviours they had been subject to as particular kind of behaviour, and together coined the term ‘sexual harassment’ to name it (Brownmiller 1999: 150). There are other examples, as well. Veterans returning home from war, suffering invisible wounds of battle, faced especially brutal challenges prior to the development of the conceptual resources that were necessary to make trauma culturally legible (e.g., recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD). For example, being labelled as morally deficient, lacking in courage, pushed out of social life, or back onto the battlefield—alienated from both their communities and their own experiences.¹³ When certain experiences tend to be distinctive of particular social groups (like postpartum depression, sexual harassment, or PTSD), and those groups lack significant power to influence the conceptual landscape, it can create hermeneutical lacunas.¹⁴ There is a distinct but related way in which a hermeneutical injustice might be generated: when a normative ideal is corrupted by the socio-epistemic context in which it is born or put to use. Here, there is not a conceptual lacuna, but rather conceptual resources that ‘have been shaped in such a way that they create a certain reality rather than merely reflect it’.¹⁵ Dominant concepts of the atonement in Christian communities—of what it is to be morally ideal and perfectly loving—they have been shaped without proper regard for the experiences of the oppressed, the ubiquity of violence, and the destructive nature of injustice. This, in turn, has implications for how ethical conduct proper to right relationship, especially regarding suffering as a result of unjust treatment, is understood more

¹³ Herman 1997: 20–8. ¹⁴ Fricker 2007: 149–51. ¹⁵ Pogin 2019: 305. Also, Charles Mills argues in ‘White Ignorance’ that concepts like ‘savage’, ‘civilization’, and ‘discovery’ as they functioned in the history of American epistemic communities failed to reflect empirical reality but rather justified imperialism. Likewise, Mills notes that ‘colorblindness’ functionally erases the systematic effects of history, disparities in resources, and socioeconomic opportunities (Mills 2008: 238–40).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

178

 

generally. By implying that Christ’s sacrifice in death was the ultimate expression of love and that we are called to suffer as Christ suffered, where Christ’s suffering was taken on in order to redeem us (rather than taken on as a necessary consequence of some other redeeming action), we obscure the power and permissibility of resistance to injustice. We prioritize the perceived well-being of others at the expense of our own.¹⁶ We justify submission to violence. This problem of conceptualization is distinct from Fricker’s notion of hermeneutical injustice insofar as this distortion comes about through the social generation of corrupted ideals rather than through being socially cut off from conceptualizing a particular kind of experience. It is relevantly similar to Fricker’s notion, though, in that our collective resources for understanding the world are distorted by a failure to take appropriate account of the social experiences of the marginalized and oppressed. One might well question what difference any of this makes to the epistemic status of a model of the atonement. Some Christians might think that if an atonement theory is otherwise philosophically compelling and consistent with Scripture, it is our moral understanding that should be questioned rather than our theory. However, to the extent that implications of a model of the atonement serve to perpetuate injustice and suffering, whatever it is that God is owed on account of human sin, it is well-nigh impossible to see how understanding the atonement should prove useful in the lives of religious believers.¹⁷ I take it that usefulness is a practical constraint on philosophy of the atonement; that is, if your theory is of the sort that it cannot helpfully be preached, then there is some sense in which the theory has failed. Thus, atonement theory ought to be held accountable to the surrounding context of its religious tradition and practices. If the atonement provides an exemplar of loving action, applying our theory of it should not frequently result in a distorted understanding of love and relationship. Applying a proper understanding of the atonement should be useful in promoting justice, particularly just relationship; if it is not, then either justification for belief in the Christian conception of God is seriously undermined, or the justification for belief in one’s atonement theory is seriously undermined.

5. An Alternative Way Forward I am not certain these problems can be solved in a way that maintains that the life and death of Christ is redemptive in nature—however, it does seem that there is an ¹⁶ I say perceived, because while it is common, e.g., for victims of abuse to believe that it is in their abuser’s best interest that they endure the abuse without protest and maintain relationship with their abuser, I doubt that is actually the case. ¹⁷ Or, for that matter, how the death of Christ, in itself, could do anything to mitigate the evil in the world.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

179

alternative way forward which is at least far more promising than models of the atonement that have been offered to date. That is, borrowing from Abelard, a new kind of exemplarist model. Abelard writes, Now it seems to us that we have been justified by the blood of Christ and reconciled to God in this way: through this unique act of grace manifested to us—in that his Son has taken upon himself our nature and persevered therein in teaching us by word and example even unto death—he has more fully bound himself by love; with the result that our hearts should be enkindled by such a gift of divine grace, and true charity should not now shrink from enduring anything for him. (1956: 283)

On the view expressed in this passage, at least part of our redemption is to be found in that Christ offers an inspiring example of a life and death of love and charity. Swinburne and Thomas Williams both object to an exclusivelyexemplarist¹⁸ theory of the atonement on account of the fact that there is no ‘transaction’ within the atonement itself that offers payment to God for human sin. Williams describes exemplarism as follows: On an exemplarist theory, the Passion works for our redemption only by presenting an extraordinary example of love that inspires an answering love in our hearts. But the Passion is not an example of love at all if Christ was not in some way acting for our benefit by allowing himself to be delivered up unto death. So exemplarism turns out to be incoherent. Only if there is an objective transaction can there be the subjective transformation. (Williams 2004: 262)

Here, among other possibilities, one could borrow nicely from Cross and reject the notion that the atonement must include some such transaction. To the extent that any such transaction is necessary, we need not find it in the atonement itself; humans can make reparation (to God) for sin through apology and penitence (reparation to others whom our sin harms may require much more).¹⁹ However, the question of transaction aside, Abelard’s exemplarism falls prey to the same sorts of worries I raised above regarding other theories of the ¹⁸ There are competing interpretations of Abelard on this point. Philip L. Quinn takes Abelard to offer a model of the atonement that includes both exemplarism and penal substitution. Cf. Quinn 1993 (reprinted in Rea 2009). ¹⁹ For my own part, I’m not inclined to think that transaction is necessary for reparation (though a transaction may be a means of reparation), nor that apologies are inherently transactional (what exactly is transacted? Embarrassment? Words? It seems to me that apologies matter more because they signify care and mutual understanding of shared norms, thus enabling the re-establishment of trust, and less because something is traded), but I’m happy to concede the point for the sake of argument (especially because, to my mind, death doesn’t seem particularly well suited to transaction either).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

180

 

atonement.²⁰ On this sort of view, sacrificing oneself in death for the sake of others is understood to offer an exemplar of loving action, but those who are already unjustly subjected to suffering at the hands of others are in need of the means by which they can maintain an integrated sense of self, respect for their own person, and develop the tools required for resistance where possible.²¹ What they do not need is an understanding of love and moral duty which effectively promotes the status quo by encouraging those who are oppressed to see self-sacrifice into suffering as the ideal expression of love. To account for the redemptive nature of the atonement, consider why Rosemary Radford Ruether rejects the notion wholesale: Suffering is a factor in the liberation process, not as a means of redemption, but as the risk one takes when one struggles to overcome unjust systems whose beneficiaries resist change. The means of redemption is conversion, opening up to one another, changing systems of distorted relations, creating loving and life-giving communities of people here and now, not getting oneself tortured to death. (Ruether 1998: 279)

What Ruether believes is grounds for rejecting the notion of atonement provides fertile ground for constructing a new, less problematic, exemplarist model. Christ’s life and death can provide an example of a life dedicated to the struggle to overcome injustice and a refusal to give up that struggle even under threat of death. Christ refused to cooperate with injustice and was crucified, at least in part, for precisely that reason. Submission to violence need not represent a general ideal nor an inconsistency. Allowing himself to be crucified was itself an act of resistance. This is what distinguishes Christ’s non-violence from submission to violence. In allowing violence to be done to himself, Christ subverted the intentions of his oppressors rather than allowed them to achieve their aim. The purpose of crucifixion was not simply to kill those who were so sentenced by the state, but rather to silence those who would fear such a fate. Christ was certainly not silenced. Importantly, the suffering of Christ was not unqualified suffering—it was the result of his unwavering pursuit for justice in an unjust world. Rather than being called, then, to suffer in submission to violence, perhaps we are called to unreserved resistance of injustice, even though suffering is surely an inevitable result of doing so.²² ²⁰ Stump likewise rejects Abelard’s exemplarism for reasons related to ethical concerns regarding suffering. ²¹ For those who are particularly vulnerable and oppressed, in some circumstances, merely ensuring one’s own survival may itself function as a form of resistance. ²² Thanks to Michael Rea, Jason Stanley, Jennifer Lackey, Baron Reed, Amber Carlson, Meghan Page, Faith Glavey Pawl, Michelle Panchuk, Michael DePaul, participants in an Analytic Theology Workshop at Southern Methodist University, and participants in a Baylor Georgetown Notre Dame Philosophy of Religion Conference for discussion and/or comments on earlier versions of this paper.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

  

181

References Abelard, Peter. 1956. ‘Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (Excerpt from the Second Book).’ In A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, edited by Eugene Rathbone Fairweather, translated by Gerald Moffatt, 276–87. Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press. Anonymous. 2015. ‘Anonymous 230—Redacted Letter To The Royal Commission on Family Violence’, http://www.rcfv.com.au/getattachment/B111BAA7-B974-4BAEACA8-JanyaAC8B2698FE8E/Anonymous-230, accessed 7 January 2020. Baird, Julia, and Hayley Gleeson. 2017. ‘ “Submit to Your Husbands”: Women Told to Endure Domestic Violence in the Name of God.’ ABC News, 21 October 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/domestic-violence-church-submit-tohusbands/8652028, accessed 7 January 2020. Berman, Joshua A. 2001. ‘Hadassah Bat Abihail: The Evolution from Object to Subject in the Character of Esther.’ Journal of Biblical LIterature 120: 647–69. Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Rebecca Ann Parker. 2002. Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us. New Edition. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. Brown, Joanne Carlson, and Rebecca Parker. 1989. ‘For God So Loved the World?’ In Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse, edited by Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn, 1–30. New York: Pilgrim Press. Brownmiller, Susan. 1999. In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. New York: The Dial Press. Burton, Tara Isabella. 2018. ‘A Disgraced Evangelical Leader Returns to Ministry After #MeToo. He Won’t Be the Last.’ Vox, 19 September 2018, https://www.vox.com/ 2018/9/19/17875346/paige-patterson-me-too-evangelical-southern-baptist-sermon, accessed 7 January 2020. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Herman, Judith L. 1997. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books. Johnson, John M., and Denise M. Bondurant. 1995. ‘Revisiting the 1982 Church Response Survey.’ In Violence Against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook, edited by Carol J. Adams and Marie Fortune, 422–7. New York: Continuum. Mills, Charles W. 2005. ‘ “Ideal Theory” as Ideology.’ Hypatia 20: 165–84. Mills, Charles W. 2008. ‘White Ignorance.’ In Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, edited by Robert Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, 230–49. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. Nason-Clark, Nancy. 2004. ‘When Terror Strikes at Home: The Interface Between Religion and Domestic Violence.’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43: 303–10

OUP CORRECTED AUTOAPGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

182

 

Park, Jerry Z., Joshua Tom, and Brita Andercheck. 2014. ‘CCF Civil Rights Symposium: Fifty Years of Religious Change: 1964–2014’, 4 February 2014, https:// contemporaryfamilies.org/50-years-of-religious-change/, accessed 7 January 2020. Pérez-Peña, Richard. 2014. ‘Christian School Faulted for Halting Abuse Study’, The New York Times, sec. Education, 11 February 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/ 02/12/education/christian-school-faulted-for-halting-abuse-study.html, accessed 7 January 2020. Pogin, Kathryn. 2019. ‘God Is Not Male.’ In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Raymond Vanarragon, 2nd edition, 302–10. London: Wiley. Quinn, Philip. 1993. ‘Abelard on Atonement: Nothing Unintelligible, Arbitrary, Illogical, or Immoral About It.’ In Reasoned Faith, edited by E. Stump, 281–300. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Ray, Darby Kathleen. 1998. Deceiving the Devil: Atonement, Abuse, and Ransom. Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press. Rea, Michael C., ed. 2009. Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology, Volume 1: Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1998. Women and Redemption: A Theological History. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Stump, Eleonore. 2018. Atonement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swinburne, Richard. 1989. Responsibility and Atonement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Weaver, J. Denny. 2006. ‘Narrative Christus Victor: The Answer to Anselmian Atonement Violence.’ In Atonement and Violence: A Theological Conversation, edited by John Sanders, 1–32. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Williams, Thomas. 2004. ‘Sin, Grace, and Redemption.’ In The Cambridge Companion to Abelard, edited by Jeffrey E. Brower and Kevin Guilfoy, 258–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

III

SOCIAL BODIES AND THE ESCHATON

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

8 The Shape of Trans Afterlife Justice Blake Hereth

Life has been bad for many trans folks. One hopes the afterlife won’t also be bad for us. My plan is to embark on a limited exploration of what a just and good afterlife would look like for trans folks who desire to transition due to gender dysphoria (see further, Yancey 2019). I concede that even if theism is true, there might not be an afterlife. But this possibility hasn’t stopped other philosophers and theologians from speculating about the afterlife, and their views have often failed to mention trans persons. It seems to me, therefore, that if we’re going to speculate about the afterlife, it’s worthwhile to have a trans-friendly view on file. I’ll defend four primary claims in this paper. First, I argue that gender dysphoria is a harm to trans persons who experience it, and that this harm (if permitted by Gaia¹) is unjust. Second, I consider issues surrounding gender identity and the afterlife. In particular, I’ll address the right of trans persons to transition in the afterlife, if they so desire, as a means of rectifying their gender dysphoria. Third, I’ll argue that those responsible for their gender dysphoria, such as explicit transphobes but also those responsible for the adverse effects of cisnormativity,² bear primary responsibility to provide resources and even labour to make it happen. While this shouldn’t happen without the consent of the transitioning person, transphobes and the like are still ‘on the hook’, as it were, to offer their services. Fourth, I’ll defend the view that trans persons, once they transition, will be afforded opportunities they were unjustly denied in life and will be given the desires of their hearts. In some cases, the provision of these opportunities and satisfaction of these desires will mean reproduction, the chance to enter into romantic unions that were previously unattainable due to transphobia or fears of transphobia, and the chance to reunite with ex-partners for whom trans identities were the cause of an ended partnership. Whereas some assume that heaven is a perfect place, or at least a place unfettered by bad things and impermissible actions, I won’t assume that. That

¹ I use ‘Gaia’ as a more neutral substitute for the heavily masculinized ‘God’. However, Gaia remains the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and morally impeccable divinity of Anselmian theism. ² The existing data support the possibility that one’s gender dysphoria can be caused or exacerbated by bullying. See, for example (Littman 2018). Of course, even if gender dysphoria lacks social causes, suicidal ideation is clearly linked to bullying, which is sufficient for my purposes. Blake Hereth, The Shape of Trans Afterlife Justice In: Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology. Edited by: Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848844.003.0009

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

186

 

assumption has been challenged in recent years,³ and I prefer to avoid assuming that transphobic bullies are fully reformed by the time they arrive in heaven. Perhaps, as I argue below, there’s something redemptive about working out their salvation with queer assembling.⁴ Instead, I’ll help myself to the more modest assumption that heaven is a place in which all bad and impermissible things are eventually (and, in all likelihood, swiftly) overcome. The afterlife is the place where all wrongs are eventually righted and justice is done.

1. Gender Dysphoria, Transitioning, and Justice Some of us are trans. By this, I mean that some of us are not cisgender. What it means to be cisgender is disputed, but here’s what I mean by it: S is cisgender = df S identifies with S’s natal (pre-transitional) physical sexual properties, but no other sexual properties What are these properties? And what does it mean to identify with them? There’s some scepticism that there even are sexual properties, but let’s suppose that there are. The common list includes testes, penises, vaginas, ovaries, breasts, and the like. Identifying with these properties is a matter of not viewing these properties as somehow alien, ‘mismatched’, or misleading relative to their internal sense of identity. Lastly, to say that these properties are ‘natal’ or ‘pre-transitional’ is to say that one comes by them naturally.⁵ What will be the state of trans persons in heaven? By ‘trans persons’, I mean persons who don’t identify with one or more features of their sexual body but typically do identify with one or more features of some other sexual body.⁶ To understand more clearly my question about trans persons, consider the following example: Kai is born to her parents, Shannon and Joan, who are delighted to meet Kai. Because Kai has a penis, testicles, and XY chromosomes (in brief, her sexual parts), the medical staff fills in her birth certificate as ‘Male’. Once she’s old enough to be aware of her body, however, Kai sees her sexual parts as alien, strange, and upsetting. She wants them removed and replaced with other parts.

³ See (Pelser 2016). ⁴ A more general exhortation of this kind is issued in the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Philippians, chapter 2, verse 12. ⁵ I say ‘naturally’ instead of ‘from birth’ because some physical sexual properties, like enlarged breasts, aren’t present at birth but are the result of natural processes (in this case, adolescence). ⁶ By this, I don’t mean to assume the stronger claim that someone’s sex is determined by their sexual parts, or by a cluster of those sexual parts. For a defence of that view, see (Stone 2007: Ch. 1).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

187

‘Where are my vagina and breasts?’ she wonders during puberty. These issues are compounded by transphobic bullying. Shannon and Joan are supportive but lack the financial resources to help Kai transition. As a result, Kai spends years feeling deeply dysphoric about her body, battling depression, and eventually dies by suicide because of the intense bullying she faces for her gender identity.

Kai’s story is fictional, but it isn’t uncommon.⁷ While not all trans persons experience gender dysphoria about sexual features of their bodies, many do.⁸ When I say ‘gender dysphoria’, I mean it in the clinical sense found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Gender dysphoria as a general descriptive term refers to an individual’s affective/cognitive discontent with the assigned gender but is more specifically defined when used as a diagnostic category . . . . Gender dysphoria refers to the distress that may accompany the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender. (American Psychiatric Association 2013: 451) Insofar as it constitutively involves distress, gender dysphoria is obviously bad for those who suffer from it. As Kai’s case shows, furthermore, it can be severely bad. While not all bad things that happen to persons are injustices, they are pro tanto injustices.⁹ By this, I simply mean that if a bad thing happens to a person, that bad thing happening to that person is an injustice, other things being equal. It is, in other words, something that shouldn’t happen to that person, something that should be prevented, something the person should have a say over, other things being equal. In the case of gender dysphoria, I will assume the relatively uncontroversial claim that is always an injustice that anyone suffers from it. It’s true that Gaia doesn’t cause or perhaps even intend for these unjust harms to befall Kai. Nevertheless, it’s still an injustice for which Gaia is ‘on the hook’ even if we assume that Gaia didn’t commit any injustice in permitting Kai to be dysphoria. To see why, consider the following example:

⁷ Kai’s case is designed to fit the diagnostic features of gender dysphoria. See (American Psychiatric Association 2013: 453–4). ⁸ The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is clear that ‘not all [trans] individuals will experience distress as a result’ of their trans identity. See (American Psychiatric Association 2013: 451). It’s also clear that not all trans persons wish to transition. See (American Psychiatric Association 2013: 454). ⁹ Punishment, for example, might involve the infliction of certain harms, and harms are bad for those who suffer them. Where punishment is deserved, it’s morally permissible to inflict those harms. But that’s consistent with saying that those harms are a pro tanto injustice: that is, absent justification (e.g., the justification of punishing the guilty), it would be unjust to inflict them on a person.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

188

 

Shannon, Joan, and Jon are performing at a concert when Jon and Joan slip and fall. Shannon can catch only one of them, and she chooses her partner, Joan. As a result, Jon falls and, when he falls, he breaks his leg. He cries out for assistance.

That Shannon rescued one person instead of another is morally permitted. That she chose her partner Joan over her friend Jon is also permitted.¹⁰ Still, there are two other moral facts. First, what happened to Jon is unjust. Second, Jon has a claim on Shannon (and others) to assistance after breaking his leg. In a similar way, Kai has a claim on Gaia to assist her with dysphoria. We might even suppose that Kai has more of a claim on Gaia than anyone else since Gaia was in the best, if not the only, position to help her.¹¹ But suppose you don’t accept the view that there can be natural injustices. You should at the very least believe that some harms resulting from natural causes can become injustices. For example, suppose a tree collapses on me and will kill me unless someone intervenes. Suppose also that someone is wandering through the forest when they see me trapped under a tree. Realizing I am queer, they refuse to help, thinking it’s better if there are fewer queer people in the world. In that case, the queerphobic persons fails to discharge her duty of assistance. While the initial harm to me from the tree is a natural injustice for which no one is responsible, the later harm (i.e., my death) is one for which the passer-by is morally responsible. That’s unjust. On the plausible assumption that Gaia has the knowledge and power to intervene in the lives of trans persons and prevent them from being bullied, or prevent their dysphoria, or help them transition to alleviate their dysphoria, Gaia is morally responsible for failing to do so. Thus, the presence of trans persons in the afterlife who needed to transition to alleviate their gender dysphoria but never had the chance to transition is something Gaia is morally responsible for. This is a pro tanto injustice in need of fixing. Back to the original question: After Kai’s death, what happens? According to theistic materialists like Trenton Merricks, Kai is identical with her body, and thus Kai remains where her body is until the Resurrection. At the Resurrection, Kai’s body will be assumed into heaven where it will remain forever. Others, like many theistic dualists, maintain that Kai is identical with her soul, and her soul will depart her body upon biological death and will enter heaven where it will remain forever. Merricks objects to dualism on the grounds that the doctrine of the Resurrection is puzzling, or even pointless, if materialism is false. From one angle, it’s easy to see why that might be true. As Merricks himself says,

¹⁰ In fact, its permissibility is overdetermined. Shannon is permitted to save Joan over Jon, first, because Joan is her partner and Jon isn’t. Second, because she can’t save them both but she’s nevertheless permitted to save someone, she’s permitted to save either Joan over Jon (which she in fact does) or Jon over Joan (which she doesn’t). ¹¹ For a further defence of this claim, see below, including footnote 13.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

189

[T]he Bible treats resurrection as very important. But if dualism were true, it is hard to see why our resurrection would be a big deal. Now the dualist might object that a soul in Heaven without a body is somehow mutilated or incomplete, and so the dualist might insist that resurrection is a blessing. But it is hard to know just how much stress on what we gain in resurrection is, by its very nature, stress on what we lack before resurrection. Preresurrection existence united with God in Heaven is not supposed to be too bad; indeed, it is supposed to be very good. (Merricks 1999: 280–1)¹²

If persons leave their bodies and enter the exquisite joy of heaven, of what use are their bodies anymore? More to the point: Of what use is embodiment anymore? I don’t mean to suggest that Merricks is right about any of this. What I am suggesting is that embodiment is important in the afterlife. The case of Kai shows, I think, is that there’s strong reason for thinking afterlife embodiment is important, a reason related to the requirements of justice. Moreover, as we’ve seen, there’s some reason to think that Kai’s claim is a claim primarily against Gaia, since it was Gaia who permitted Kai to be dysphoric in the first place and, better than Kai’s parents or anyone else, was in the best position to help Kai transition.¹³ Now that Kai has died and exists in heaven, it’s even more surely true that Gaia is in the best (or perhaps the only) position to help Kai. And since Gaia bears primary responsibility for the economy of the afterlife (if not the pre-afterlife), this is further reason to believe that Gaia bears primary responsibility to alleviate Kai’s predicament.

2. Three Proposals for Satisfying Trans Justice A seemingly straightforward way of helping trans persons avoid the dysphoria related to the way their body is currently sexed is to change the way they conceive of their own gender. In Kai’s case, for example, this means making her think of herself as a man. This ‘solution’ reflects a particular way of thinking about the problem. Kai doesn’t like her body, so we must either change what Kai likes or change Kai’s

¹² Cf. (Merricks 2011: 484). ¹³ This seems even more plausible if Gaia infallibly foreknew that Kai would be dysphoric. Consider the earlier example with Shannon, Joan, and Jon, but this time suppose that Shannon foresaw the event a decade before it happened. Plausibly, Jon still has a claim of assistance against Shannon and Joan, and thus Shannon and Joan are both responsible for helping Jon. But isn’t Shannon more responsible than Joan, given that she foresaw the events and could have prevented them? It seems to me that she is, since more opportunity to prevent bad things implies more responsibility to do so. The same is true, of course, with power, and no one is more powerful than Gaia. So it seems to me that these are two reasons to believe that Gaia bears primary responsibility for helping Kai.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

190

 

body. The ‘solution’ under consideration here advocates changing what Kai likes, and in particular how Kai identifies. But this ‘solution’ is problematic on at least two levels. First, it’s problematic on a metaphysical level. An individual’s gender identity tends to be stable over time, much like sexual orientation, and it’s unclear whether it’s possible to change it.¹⁴ The most pressing problems, however, are ethical ones. Consider the following example of a standard emergency medical procedure: Elena is accidentally caught in a recently demolished building. A famous and successful lawyer, Elena prides herself on her intellectual accomplishments and dreads the day when her mind begins to fade. Emergency medical professionals rush to the scene and offer assistance. Elena is trapped on both ends: her head and her legs are pinned beneath the rubble. In order to remove her, the emergency responders will need either to drill through parts of her leg or through parts of her head. Either procedure will result in her release, but both procedures could possibly do serious damage. Elena is unconscious, but the emergency responders know how much Elena identifies with her intelligence and how she doesn’t identify with her legs.

In this case, it seems apparent that the emergency responders should prioritize the protection of Elena’s intelligence over the protection of her legs. The reason this seems true is because Elena’s intelligence is a feature of her identity that’s endorsed by her, whereas her legs don’t enjoy that status. Consider one further example: Diane is a breast cancer survivor who strongly identifies with her identity as a cisgender woman. More than that, she identifies with what she believes are her womanly features, particularly her one remaining breast. However, the fact that she identifies so strongly with her one remaining breast has caused her considerable stress about breast cancer recurrence. The stress is so great, in fact, that she’s undergoing psychiatric care to help her cope. The medical professionals determine that if they simply removed Diane’s only breast, she’d be devastated by the loss but she’d no longer worry about recurrence. Either option appears equally medically costly to Diane, and her medical team is forced to come up with a recommendation, since Diane is under psychiatric care and isn’t able to make an informed medical decision in her current state.

In Diane’s case, the options of a second mastectomy and continued psychiatric care appear equally medically costly. Thus, it might appear that the decision could ¹⁴ Recent psychological research suggests gender identity is part of an individual’s deep cognition quite early on. See, for example, (Olson, Key, and Eaton 2015).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

191

be permissibly made arbitrarily. But that’s false, since Diane identifies with her breast; the loss of it is why she’s so distressed in the first place. As in Elena’s case, medical professionals should prioritize salvaging features of agents that are parts of an agent’s identity and are endorsed by the agent, rather than sacrificing those features and salvaging features that are neither. Moreover, if an agent endorses an identity feature and rejects a non-identity feature, that’s all the more reason to prioritize salvaging the identity feature. In both Elena’s and Diane’s cases, they surely don’t reject the features that receive less priority: Elena no doubt would prefer that her legs not be damaged, and Diane no doubt prefers that she not require psychiatric care. But if they did, that makes the decision even easier; it makes it even clearer that the features of their identity should be preserved over other features. Kai’s case is like this latter sort of case, since Kai not only doesn’t identify with her current sexed body, but also rejects it. Thus, Kai’s case is a more straightforward case in which the right decision seems manifestly clear. Call the underlying principle at work in these cases the Agency Prioritization Principle (APP): (APP) If the conjunction of features G and B is medically problematic, medical professionals should prioritize (and encourage the prioritization of) the preservation of G over B if: i. ii. iii.

G is a feature of the patient’s identity and B isn’t, and either: G is endorsed by the patient’s agency and B isn’t, or G isn’t rejected by the patient’s agency but B is.

Furthermore, the presumption of altering who a person is rather than altering a person’s body suggests a negative presumption against that person’s identity. In this case, the presumption is against Kai’s gender identity. But that’s wrongly discriminatory. Call this the Innocent Identity Principle. It might be objected that the presumption isn’t against Kai’s gender identity per se, but to Kai’s gender identity given the dysphoria. The objection fails, however, since even then there’s a choice about where the presumptive badness lies, and the gender identity (rather than the body, or certain bodily features) is the chosen culprit. For example, suppose a cancer patient, Abdul, desires to treat his cancer with extremely successful gene therapy instead of chemotherapy because he feels very strongly about keeping his long hair.¹⁵ As a child, Abdul lost his hair to chemotherapy to treat childhood leukaemia, and he vowed never to cut (or lose) his hair again, which connects him with his past and symbolizes his survivor status. These facts make clear that Abdul’s hair is a feature of his identity. If medical professionals see the two options—chemotherapy and gene therapy—as ¹⁵ Suppose also that the gene therapy is at least as effective a treatment as chemotherapy.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

192

 

morally equal methods of treating Abdul, they thereby fail to take Abdul’s identity sufficiently seriously. And if they try to convince Abdul to stop valuing his hair or the history that accompanies it, they thereby target Abdul’s identity and the cancer instead of just the cancer. By targeting both, they implicate Abdul’s identity—his ‘obsession’ with his hair—as part of the problem, and pursue a course of action that damages both his identity and the cancer. Matters would be different if Abdul’s identity were predicated on a false belief. For example, if Abdul preferred chemotherapy only because he (falsely) believed his loved ones would be harmed by the loss of his hair, then it seems permissible for Abdul’s family or even his medical team to intervene and tell him that his family is indifferent. Similarly, if chemotherapy would be more effective than gene therapy, then it might be permissible for Abdul’s family or medical team to talk him into chemotherapy (causing the loss of his hair) over gene therapy. In cases where one’s identity itself is unproblematic, as with trans persons, zeroing in on one’s identity as the culprit is either arbitrary or pernicious. Here’s a similar (and final) moral consideration: Kai will be burdened one way or another: Either she will undergo a change of gender identity, in which case she will lose something of great importance to her; or she will undergo radical bodily changes, which is also a significant burden.¹⁶ If Gaia chooses to alter Kai’s gender identity instead of her body, Gaia will be placing the burden on Kai’s identity rather than Kai’s body. This way of placing the burden seems unjust, however, given how underprivileged Kai’s identity has been in the past—for example, at the hands of her bullies. Thus, there is a reason of justice to privilege her identity over her body, and thus to prefer altering her body over her gender identity. Call this the Burden Allocation Principle. What of individuals who, unlike Kai, don’t have a history of being mistreated because of their gender identity? Is it still unjust to privilege their bodies over their identities? Having a history of being bullied can’t reasonably be the price of admission for a presumption in favour of one’s gender identity over one’s current sexed body. Thus, while a history of unjust discrimination against one’s gender identity does ground a claim of justice for altering one’s body instead of one’s gender identity, there remains a deeper, underlying consideration of justice that dictates why the burden should be placed on one’s body rather than on one’s identity. Perhaps it’s the Agency Prioritization Principle or some other principle. What seems clear, at the very least, is that there is some underlying principle that grounds the claim to a just allocation of burdens—one that implicates the presumption of body over identity as morally misguided.

¹⁶ This is perhaps less worrisome in the case of treatment by a divine agent, since the burdens of medical recovery would presumably be minimal, if they occurred at all. Moreover, it’s worth noting that transitioning would also be a relief to Kai, given her dysphoria, which would offset some (if not all) of the burdens of undergoing serious bodily changes.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

193

A second possibility is that Gaia will treat a dysphoric trans person’s dysphoria directly—for example, by bringing it about that they don’t feel dysphoric about their bodies, releasing them from the urge to transition. In other words, Gaia makes them feel satisfied with their current state: stuck in the ‘wrong body’, but fine with it. A similar possibility is that Gaia will remove dysphoric trans persons from the ‘wrong bodies’ and permit them to ‘float free’ as disembodied souls. This is yet another way of treating their dysphoria by removing the cause of the dysphoria. This possibility, like the one before it, is problematic for reasons related to autonomy. What plagues dysphoric trans persons is not simply that they are in the wrong body, but that they aren’t in the right body. Thus, their desire is not simply to be removed from the body they have, but to have it replaced by another body— a body that suits their identity (or identities).¹⁷ These individuals want not only to avoid disliking and failing to identify with their sexed bodies; rather, they want to be in a position where they like and identify with their new sexed bodies.¹⁸ What follows from all of this? One thing that seems to follow is that merely removing dysphoric feelings will be a violation of the Agency Prioritization Principle. The reason is simple: The feature endorsed by dysphoric trans persons is their gender identity, and the rejected feature is their current sexed body. According to the Agency Prioritization Principle, we should prioritize the former over the latter. Merely removing dysphoric feelings prioritizes gender identity and sexed body at best equally, and at worst is a de facto prioritization of the sexed body over the gender identity. The agent’s rejection of certain features of their sexed bodies is seemingly ignored, or at least has no obvious importance in the result. Thus, merely curing the dysphoria won’t do, because it’s not the right sort of treatment, and neither is any treatment that’s shy on respecting the agent’s autonomy. One earlier framing of the problem of gender dysphoria is this: Because the problem is the conjunction of Kai’s gender identity and her body, what’s needed (assuming the dysphoria isn’t treated directly) is either an identity change or a ¹⁷ This isn’t to endorse the Wrong Body Account of trans identities. At most, I assume that some trans persons with an interest in transitioning desire bodies with which they identify. As far as assumptions go, that’s pretty minimal. However, it’s my view that the Wrong Body Account of trans identities should be rejected. For defences of this claim, see (Bettcher 2014; Dembroff 2019). ¹⁸ The underlying assumption here is that dysphoric trans persons have dysphoric feelings not simply because they don’t identify with the bodies they’re in, but also because they identify with some other form(s) of embodiment. This seems plausible in one sense, namely, it seems that dysphoric trans persons are dissatisfied with their current embodied state because it isn’t the embodied state they want. Their dysphoria, in other words, doesn’t arise from nothing; it depends essentially on identifying with another sexed body. But suppose this assumption turns out to be false, or at least true relative only to a limited number of dysphoric trans persons. Assume, then, that some dysphoric trans persons are dysphoric merely because they don’t identify with the bodies they’re in. What follows from this? Not much. Insofar as the persons are trans, they already fail to identify with their current bodies. Thus, there remains a feature of their agency that ought to be prioritized over their bodily state, as the Agency Prioritization Principle claims.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

194

 

bodily change. As we’ve seen, there are strong ethical reasons to favour a bodily change. The Agency Prioritization Principle directs us to prioritize features of an agent’s identity over features not as strictly related to their agency, which in Kai’s case entails prioritizing her gender identity over preserving her current form of sexed embodiment. This principle gains even more plausibility when the agent endorses the former feature and rejects the latter. Other principles, too, like the Innocent Identity Principle and the Burden Allocation Principle, point strongly towards favouring a bodily change. The bodily change in question is, of course, gender confirmation surgery, or transitioning: Kai’s penis and testes will be removed and replaced with a vagina and ovaries, and so on.¹⁹ Gaia might accomplish this in any number of ways, and presumably (given Gaia’s power and knowledge) without the surgical difficulties that might typically be associated with transitioning. First, Gaia might provide Kai with the option of selecting an entirely new body— perhaps a conveyer belt filled with endless bodies waiting to be filled.²⁰ Second, Gaia might miraculously alter Kai’s physiology, either instantly or over time. In any case, Gaia will have ethical reasons to select a body for Kai that will result not only in a successful transition for Kai, but as unproblematic a transition as feasible.²¹

3. Conscripting Transphobes Having now explained why trans persons should be given the opportunity to transition in the afterlife, I’ll now explain who should help with the transitioning. I’ll argue that because transphobic persons are principally responsible for feelings of dysphoria, they are morally responsible for reparations to trans persons. This could take a variety of forms, but here I’ll focus on how transphobes can assist trans persons with transitioning. If the arguments in section 2 are right, then trans persons have a moral claim to transition in the afterlife. Their claim is grounded in the dysphoria they feel, which is bad for them. While there are many causes of gender dysphoria, a dominant cause is transphobia. These behaviours are sometimes explicitly transphobic, such

¹⁹ For persons like Kai, it may also be a matter of justice that their reproductive organs be functional, not just in the sensory sense but also in the reproductive sense. Suppose, for example, that Kai wanted to bear children but couldn’t because of her misfortune of being born in the wrong body. In such a case, it’s far from obvious that an afterlife in which there’s no reproduction (or worse: no possibility of reproduction) is one that meets the requirements of justice. This finding appears to run against a traditional theistic (and particularly Christian) view that no one will be born in the afterlife. ²⁰ This assumes the falsity of (some) forms of materialism. However, I mention it here merely as an epistemic possibility, not as a metaphysical commitment to non-materialism. ²¹ If Gaia can’t accomplish this much for Kai, then (it seems to me) that Gaia acted wrongly in creating Kai (or, alternately, allowing Kai to come into existence).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

195

as bullying or physical assault, but they are sometimes less explicit, as in clinical settings or familial rejection (Bauer et al. 2009; Erbenius and Payne 2018). What’s clear is that transphobic behaviours are dangerous.²² According to one study, roughly ‘41% of transgender people attempt suicide at least once in their lives compared to the rate of 5% in the general population’ (Williams 2017: S894). Risk factors include, among other things, ‘lack of family and social supports, genderbased discrimination, transgender-based abuse and violence’ as well as ‘gender dysphoria and body-related shame’ and ‘difficulty while undergoing gender reassignment’ (Williams 2017: S894). And various studies support the conclusion, widely endorsed among mental health professionals, that the best means of mitigating risk to trans persons is by enacting and enforcing anti-discrimination laws (Marshall et al. 2016). Legal scholars, too, have observed that contemporary legal precedents, such as those in the United Kingdom, effectively criminalize trans persons seeking romantic partners without first disclosing their trans identities (Douglas 2017). Since such laws allow violent, discriminatory practices towards trans persons, these laws enable transphobia. In short: Transphobes are a significant culprit in risks to trans persons. There’s an argument to be made that the circle of people who are morally responsible for gender dysphoria is wider than these studies suggest. In many ways, cisnormativity—that is, the practice, implicit or otherwise, that being cis is normative and that trans persons transgress this norm—is to blame, and cisnormativity is reinforced in ways far broader than simple transphobia. For example, many trans women are turned away from shelters because they don’t wear feminine dress, or because they have facial hair, or refuse to shower separately from cis women. Jake Pyne, a social worker, makes this observation about such mistreatment: While this treatment can be described as transphobic, looking at it through the lens of cisnormativity, which renders the dominant experience of gender invisible, helps to explain how such discrimination is possible. Under the assumption of the universality of cis experience, no information is collected or imparted about trans communities. Through the process described by Bauer et al. (2009) as institutional erasure, services such as shelters can then be created exclusively in the image of a cis norm. Cis women’s bodies, those expected in women’s shelters, disappear from view as normal and unremarkable while trans women’s bodies are produced as anomalies, drawing relentless scrutiny from service providers. (Pyne 2011: 133)

²² This also holds across more specific populations, such as US veterans, where the suicide rate is higher even among veterans, who have a suicide rate higher than the average adult population in the US. See (Blosnich et al. 2013).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

196

 

Cisnormativity is also implicitly taught to children. Parents invariably discuss relationships with their children at some point, and both bodily language and verbal cues can be used to instil or reinforce cis norms (Ericsson 2018). Cisnormativity is pervasive, including in significant or subtle ways trans people view and practise religion (Sumerau, Methers, and Cragun 2018). In my own experience at Christian weddings for cis-hetero partners, there’s considerable talk about how ‘men’ are ‘meant’ for ‘women’, usually followed with the citation of a biblical passage (long used as a force for strong cis norms) and a description of what makes someone a ‘wonderful man’ or a ‘beautiful woman’. These descriptions serve as uplifting identifiers for members of the cis in-group, but they severely ostracize those of us who, despite identifying as men, women, or nonbinary, are painfully aware of the unspoken essentialist assumptions made at weddings. Since cisnormative practices tend overwhelmingly to adversely affect trans persons, those responsible for maintaining cisnormativity bear some responsibility for the resulting harms to trans persons. This can include anything from kicking out a trans woman from a women’s shelter because she has facial hair to reciting gender essentialist vows at a wedding. The fact that cisnormativity is typically invisible to cis persons doesn’t altogether eliminate their duty to express remorse for, and mitigate the damage of, their complicity in cisnormative practices. I might not intend to knock you over and bruise your arm, but I owe you an apology—and a ride to the hospital—if I do so. Where cisnormative practices abrogate very basic moral requirements, such as the duty not to bully or murder trans persons because of their identities, far more is owed to trans persons. But even when the violations are not as bad as they could be, there’s a residual obligation to make things right. If, as many have claimed, heaven is a place of perfect justice and total reconciliation, much will be owed to trans persons, and uncountably many will owe it. There are justice-based reasons to prefer, at least presumptively, that the wrongdoers directly rectify their injustices. In many criminal law cases, criminals are forced to pay the state, which is often considered a way of settling moral debts. While the requirements of justice can be satisfied in this way, that isn’t always the case. For example, if I steal your money, this wrongs society as a whole (whose lawful and tranquil existence is threatened by criminality), but it also wrongs you—and, indeed, it wrongs you more precisely because the money taken is your money. That is, interpersonal justice trumps collective justice in cases where a particular individual has been harmed more than the collective. Of course, there’s reason to prefer a solution that makes both society and the individual whole. But in cases where the choice is between rectifying the particular wrong to the particular wronged individual, or not doing both of those, justice prefers the former to the latter.²³ Thus, justice prefers, at least presumptively, that ²³ If the particular wrong isn’t redressed, there’s a remaining duty to redress that wrong. And if the particular victim isn’t made whole, then justice isn’t done for that person.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

197

transphobes directly rectify their injustices to trans persons. Of course, there may be reasons, and even justice-based reasons, against transphobes directly rectifying their injustices to trans persons. For example, trans persons might prefer to forego further interaction with their transphobic tormentors. However, this is why I claim only that there are presumptive justice-based reasons to prefer direct rectification by transphobes. This is something they owe to trans persons, but trans persons can cancel the moral debt or, within certain limits, change how the moral debt is paid. The afterlife, fortunately, is a place where Gaia executes perfect justice. It’s not a place run by transphobes or their sympathizers. Thus, transphobes will not escape justice in the afterlife, but will face it. This is true not only of transphobes, but also of those who bear any responsibility for the predicament of trans persons. So far, I’ve been discussing trans persons who have experienced transphobia and who find transitioning as an appropriate and desirable means of addressing their dysphoria.²⁴ Since that’s what’s best for them, and best as a solution to the dysphoria caused by transphobia, then transitioning is the means of repairing the harm done to them. Because transphobes are responsible for repairing the harm done, and because transitioning is the means of doing that, transphobes are responsible for assisting with transitioning. This might violate their conception of the good, but their conception is false. More to the point, the point of their participation in the transitioning process is not (merely) to correct their faulty views, but rather to hold them responsible for their unjust participation in transphobic bullying and reinforcement of cisnormativity. If heaven is a perfect place where people arrive morally transformed, then transphobes will have a fully gender egalitarian outlook and will support transitioning. But under the assumption that transphobes maintain their false, transphobic beliefs, it’s plausible to think they would (at least initially) refuse to assist with transitioning. In such a case, Gaia, as the orchestrator of perfect justice, would compel them to assist. I have no speculative view about how Gaia might do this, but it’s a plausible assumption that Gaia could do this if it were morally required (and it is). By conscripting their services, Gaia doesn’t wrong them, since Gaia merely forces them to meet the requirements of justice. And since Gaia is themself partially responsible for the actions of transphobes, it’s incumbent on Gaia to ensure their full participation. This is further reason to believe that Gaia can do so: If Gaia couldn’t, then Gaia would have created a world in which justice for trans persons was foreseeably impossible, and that’s incompatible with Gaia’s perfectly just nature. Here’s one way this might go: Kai, upon arriving in heaven, is greeted by Gaia. Once Kai is comfortable and ready, Gaia reintroduces Kai to those who mistreated her during her earthly life.

²⁴ This isn’t true of all trans persons. As a result, compensating them with transitioning is inappropriate or undesirable (or both), and thus a fuller account of queer afterlife justice is required. I motivate such an account below.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

198

 

Some of Kai’s bullies have changed and eagerly await Kai’s instructions. Others are reluctant or unwilling to help, but Gaia has a plan: Each time a recalcitrant transphobe wills something—anything—one of Kai’s transitioning wishes will be granted. (‘I refuse to help Kai develop ovaries’, one of them decides. Bam! Ovaries are created using their very willpower.) Since they can’t avoid willing something, they realize their inescapable, substantive role in the transitioning process and surrender their ill will. As the process moves along, each of Kai’s former perpetrators learns more about who she is, how they’ve harmed her, and how their current efforts are helping to right their wrongs. ‘Behold your sister’, Gaia tells them.

This picture is one of restorative justice. It grants moral renewal to the former perpetrators and psychological wholeness to the former victim. It’s not simply retributive (or punitive). Transphobes aren’t sent to hell to be tortured forever, or annihilated, or instantly transformed into moral saints without a need to become, through their own agency, gender egalitarians: people who love trans persons for who they are, freely accepting their identities and exhibiting a conscious recognition of their part in the drama of redemption. That Gaia plays a central role in this is buttressed by the view that we don’t fully redeem ourselves, but that we are yanked to the pinnacle of moral life by divine grace.²⁵ Of course, this would hardly be an act of grace if trans persons rejected the help of their oppressors. The desire never to see one’s bullies again is more than reasonable, and it should be respected by Gaia. To do otherwise would also fail to be restorative: It would tear at the existing wounds of a trans person, forcing them to confront their bullies and have their bodies causally shaped by them. Thus, a trans person’s preferences should take priority over conscripting the services of transphobes to relieve the harm they have done. In cases where a trans person prefers merely not to interact face to face with their bullies, the bullies can still take part in the transitioning process. They can, for example, be empowered by Gaia to make the desired changes to Kai from a distance. The final thing to consider in this section is the shape of justice for trans persons who experience dysphoria but for whom transitioning is undesirable. I am one such trans person. Despite never identifying with my body, I have no interest in transitioning. Nor has the transphobia I have experienced, as a nonbinary trans person, prompted me to feel differently about transitioning. While Gaia could cause me to desire transitioning, this wouldn’t be my reaction to the transphobia I have experienced. This would not only fail to satisfy my restorative justice-related preferences. It would also be a case of someone responsible for the

²⁵ On this view, the fact that Gaia is duty-bound to transform transphobes is a matter of grace because Gaia doesn’t owe this transformation to transphobes, but rather to trans persons. Thus, transphobes are ‘saved’ despite being undeserving.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

199

transphobia I have experienced (Gaia) changing the terms of restorative justice, which is morally inappropriate—perhaps even unjust.²⁶ Thus, unless I come to view transitioning as an acceptable form of moral restitution, some other form of restitution is morally required. In some cases, this might take the form of a sincere apology. Some are quick to forgive those who seem genuinely repentant. But for many trans persons who lack a desire to transition despite being wounded and wronged by transphobia, this would fall dramatically short of fully just restitution. That some trans persons might turn down an offer to transition from Gaia or other parties responsible for transphobia doesn’t entail that they waive their right to restitution altogether. They might do both, but they needn’t do both. And if they maintain their right to restitution, justice permits them to set the terms (within certain limits) and requires others to follow them.

4. Trans (After)Life What will transitioning enable trans persons to do in the afterlife? Transitioning doesn’t always result in proper recognition of someone’s gender identity. Indeed, many trans persons face worse discrimination as a result of transitioning. But we can safely dismiss these concerns about trans persons in heaven, since heaven is a place where further injustices don’t occur. Since transphobic treatment of, and transphobic reactions to, trans persons are unjust, they won’t occur in heaven. This implies that trans persons will receive their due gender recognition. There are, however, more fundamental questions that need answering. Some trans persons, due to their pre-transitional embodiment, were unable to do various things they may have desired to do. For example, some trans women desire to carry children but are unable to do so. Others desire to pursue romantic relationships with persons in the body of their choice but were not afforded a reasonable opportunity to transition. Still other trans persons were in romantic relationships during their earthly lives, but their partnerships ended as a result of their trans identities being revealed. These are harms. Because Gaia permits them, they are pro tanto injustices. How will Gaia rectify these injustices in the afterlife? On the one hand, Gaia might take what Eleonore Stump calls a ‘stern-minded attitude’: Ordinarily, a parent’s goodness is not impugned if the parent refuses to provide for the child anything whatever that the child sets his heart on. A child could set ²⁶ Consider an example. Suppose I wrong you and owe you some financial compensation between $50 and $100, that the exact amount is your discretion, and that you ask me for $75. Suppose also that if I changed your desires such that you altogether waive your right to repayment, I wouldn’t be obligated to pay you $75 (or anything, for that matter). Suppose that, knowing all of this, I change your desires in a way that bypasses your agency for the sole purpose of benefiting myself. That strikes me as plainly impermissible.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

200

 

his heart on things very destructive for him, for example, or even on evil things. He could set his heart in random ways on continually changing things or on mutually incompossible things. And no doubt, this is not the end of the list of such very problematic instances of heart’s desires. In such cases, even if it were possible to do so, a good parent would not give the child what the child desires just because the parent loves the child and wants what is best for the child; she is at cross-purposes with the child just because she cares as much as she does that the child flourish. An analogous point holds with regard to God and the suffering of adult human beings. In cases where the desires of a person’s heart are seriously inimical to his flourishing, reasonable people are unlikely to suppose that some explanation for a good God’s failure to give that person the desires of his heart. If we exclude such cases, however, there still remain many instances in which a person is heartbroken in consequence of having set his heart, in humanly understandably and appropriate ways, on something whose value for him is derivative of his love for it. Even with regard to this restricted class of cases, stern-minded thinkers suppose that, as long as flourishing is preserved, the desires of the heart should be abandoned if cleaving to them leads to suffering. (2010: 422)

The stern-minded attitude, fortunately, is inappropriate for the case of trans persons. For starters, it’s inappropriate because the relevant trans persons wouldn’t flourish without having these desires satisfied. Nor are their desires destructive or evil, as I have argued. And there is nothing logically impossible with trans persons bearing children in the afterlife, or pursuing romantic unions in the afterlife, or restoring their prior partnerships in the afterlife. Moreover, since Gaia is on the hook for the harms that befell them as trans persons, it’s doubtful that Gaia is positioned to deny trans persons their desires, for it is Gaia who permitted those desires to be frustrated in the first place. Thus, I think we can safely dismiss the stern-minded attitude. Stump, too, rejects the stern-minded attitude. What’s valuable about Stump’s rejection of stern-mindedness is the way in which Stump rejects it. For Stump, satisfying the desires of the heart is motivated even if those desires are not directly tied to flourishing or, more generally, to one’s welfare. This is useful for theists who don’t already accept the identities or desires of trans persons, and who find those desires childish in the ways Stump describes above. She argues, It is an unpalatable position, even from the point of view of an ascetically minded Christianity. It underlies [a] repellent and lamentable mindset . . . . It is also incompatible with the love of one’s neighbour and consequently with love of God as well. Contrary to the stern-minded attitude, there are things worth desiring other than the intrinsically valuable things necessary for human flourishing, and the desires for these things should not be suppressed or stamped out. (431)

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

201

Stump goes on to say that suppressing or stamping out many of these desires ‘leads not to human excellence . . . but to a kind of inhumanity’ (431). In cases where what trans persons desire is unity with their reproductive selves and the children that result, or with yet-unknown romantic partners, or even reunification with past romantic partners, their desires are fundamentally for other persons. On Stump’s view, desiring union with persons in this way is one of the most commendable desires of the heart, and should be both preserved and cherished by Gaia (439). For the reasons Stump provides and the reasons I have separately defended, the most plausible view is that the desires of trans persons, both romantically and reproductively, will be satisfied in the afterlife. The shape of queer justice in the afterlife, therefore, is one in which trans persons receive what they were previously (and unjustly) denied either by Gaia or their fellow humans. Two objections to this view immediately come to mind. The first is that the children of trans persons would have little freedom in their heavenly lives, having had no freedom prior to their time in heaven (since they had no existence prior to heaven). The second is that trans persons can’t have a claim of justice to particular romantic unions, especially ones in which they have been rejected (as in the case of ex-partners). I shall address both objections. My response to the first objection is to note that this is not a unique problem for my view, but is instead a problem for any view on which freedom is curtailed in heaven (Tamburro 2017). My response to the second objection is to distinguish between having a claim of justice against someone else to join you in romantic union on the one hand, and having a claim of justice against others to have the opportunity to join them in a romantic union on the other hand. I don’t claim trans persons have a claim of justice to join people in romantic unions. Surely that requires their consent. But I do claim that where trans persons have been unable to pursue romantic unions because of their pre-transitional embodiment, they are entitled to an opportunity to ‘try again’, as it were, in their post-transitional bodies.²⁷ This is relevant if, for example, there’s an otherwise ‘no dating’ policy in heaven, and trans persons were reluctant to date certain people in their earthly lives because they feared trans-rejection or because they felt uncomfortable dating in a body that felt foreign to them. For these trans persons, a ‘no dating’ policy denies them opportunities that were previously unreasonably difficult for them to pursue, given the realities of trans oppression. A third and final objection is worth exploring at some length. Some philosophers defend the view that a fully just society will necessarily lack the genders ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as we currently understand them. For example, Sally Haslanger defends this view (2000: 39; 2012: Chs. 7–8). The general concern is that because the two dominant genders are a means of oppressing individuals, ²⁷ That is, they are entitled to a society in which romantic or sexual unions are possible (i.e., not disallowed or prevented by Gaia), though not entitled to romantic or sexual unions themselves.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

202

 

their presence is unjust. Along with others, I dispute Haslanger’s view in the present context (see Yancey 2019). The entirety of what I have argued in this chapter is that justice requires the persistence of gender in the afterlife, at least for trans persons.²⁸ Without gender, trans persons wouldn’t be able to transition or appreciate the benefits of their transitioning. Nor could their oppressors treat them as equals as the persons they are. For example, trans men who were bullied for dressing as women can’t have this wrong righted by avoiding gendered appearance altogether. But nothing I have argued in this chapter requires that trans persons enjoy gendered embodiment forever. That is, my arguments entail that gender persists in the afterlife, but not that it persists indefinitely. There may, in fact, come a day when justice is fully satisfied and trans persons no longer desire any kind of gendered embodiment. On that day, perhaps gender as a marker will end and gendered inequality will die with it. But until then, gender must persist if justice is to be done.

5. Conclusion This chapter began with a lamentable fact: Life is bad for trans persons. It is, bluntly, a hellhole for us. One hopes the afterlife is more heavenly. I then turned to grounds for hope. If there is an afterlife and a just Gaia managing it, matters will improve dramatically for trans persons. While my defences are speculative, so is much of philosophical theology. Trans people need theologically grounded hope as much as anyone, and there is presently so precious little of it to go around. This chapter aimed to mitigate that scarcity. First, I argued that embodiment is important, even crucial, to justice in the afterlife. One clear example of this is the case of trans persons such as Kai, who lacked reasonable access to opportunities to transition before their deaths. Because these persons were dysphoric, they were (and are) entitled to an opportunity to transition, and particularly because Gaia is primarily responsible for providing such opportunities, Gaia will do so in the afterlife. Moreover, Gaia’s doing so is a matter of justice. There are two possible ways of correcting the dysphoria. First, Gaia might alter a dysphoric person’s thinking so that they come to identify with the physical body they have (i.e., make them cisgender). This is problematic for metaphysical and ethical reasons. First, it’s doubtfully possible to alter a person’s gender identity. Second, doing so would effectively make everyone cisgender, thereby erasing trans persons altogether, which is itself wrong. Third, we should privilege features of a person’s agency over features of their physicality, particularly when those features are endorsed by their agency and others aren’t (or, ²⁸ Trivially, if trans persons are gendered in the afterlife, then gender is not entirely eliminated in the afterlife.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

203

worse, are rejected by the agent), implying that Gaia ought to alter a dysphoric trans person’s physical body. Second, I defended the view that those responsible for the unjust plight of trans persons with gender dysphoria ought to make things right in the afterlife. Since I focus specifically (but not exclusively) on trans persons for whom transitioning is the best solution to their dysphoria, I argued that trans persons should be given an opportunity to transition and that Gaia should ensure that transphobes and those reinforcing cisnormativity assist with the transitioning process, provided trans persons don’t object. There are justice-based reasons to prefer that transphobes repay their trans victims directly, and transitioning is a direct means of repayment—and, when accepted by trans persons, the direct means of repayment. The afterlife, fortunately, is a place where Gaia executes perfect justice. It’s not a place run by transphobes or their sympathizers. Thus, transphobes will not escape justice in the afterlife, but will face it. By conscripting their services, Gaia doesn’t wrong them, since Gaia merely forces them to meet the requirements of justice. And since Gaia is themself partially responsible for the actions of transphobes, it’s incumbent on Gaia to ensure their full participation. This is further reason to believe that Gaia can do so: If Gaia couldn’t, then Gaia would have created a world in which justice for trans persons was foreseeably impossible, and that’s incompatible with Gaia’s perfectly just nature. Thirdly, and finally, I claimed that trans persons, upon transitioning, would be provided by Gaia and heavenly society with further opportunities to pursue activities and experiences denied to them during their earthly lives. Among these are opportunities to procreate in the bodies they identify with, to pursue new love as fully transitioned individuals, and to pursue again the partners they lost (directly or indirectly) because of their trans identities. Contrary to what some might expect, this means that heaven will be far from genderless. It will be a society in which people celebrate and explore the kinds of gendered embodiment they were unjustly denied during their earthly lives. Heaven, therefore, is a place for trans persons. It is a place they are enabled to be their true selves ‘from the inside out’, as it were: with bodies that cohere with their identities. The transphobic swords they long suffered under shall be beaten into transphilic plowshares, and they shall never know oppression again.²⁹ They will be loved, and free to love, forever, in the ways they always desired. Their hearts will be full.³⁰

²⁹ I draw this from the book of Isaiah, chapter 2, verses 3 and 4. ³⁰ This paper was first presented at the 2018 Logos Workshop on ‘Race, Gender, Ability, and Class: Expanding Conversations in Analytic Theology’ at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion. My thanks to Craig Bacon, Michelle Panchuk, Michael Rea, Thomas Senor, Teri Merrick, Robin Dembroff, Tim Pawl, Lindsay Whittaker, and others present at the workshop for their insightful comments.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

204

 

References American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition). Washington, DC. Bauer, Greta R., Rebecca Hammond, Robb Travers, Matthias Kaay, Karin M. Hohenadel, and Michelle Boyce. 2009. ‘ “I Don’t Think This Is Theoretical; This Is Our Lives”: How Erasure Impacts Health Care for Transgender People.’ Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care 20 (5): 348–61. Bettcher, Talia Mae. 2014. ‘Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans Oppression and Resistance.’ Signs 39 (2): 383–406. Blosnich, John R., George R. Brown, Jillian C. Shipherd, Michael Kauth, Rebecca I. Piegari, and Robert M. Bossarte. 2013. ‘Prevalence of Gender Identity Disorder and Suicide Risk Among Transgender Veterans Utilizing Veterans Health Administration Care.’ American Journal of Public Health 103 (10): 27–32. Dembroff, Robin. 2019. ‘Moving Beyond Mismatch.’ The American Journal of Bioethics 19 (2): 60–3. Douglas, Laura-Anne. 2017. ‘The Criminalization of Transgender-Cisgender Sexual Relations: “Gender Fraud” or Compulsory Cisnormativity? Assessing the Meaning of Consent in Sexual Offenses for Transgender Defendants.’ Juridicial Review 3: 139–68. Erbenius, Theo, and Jenny Gunnarsson Payne. 2018. “Unlearning Cisnormativity in the Clinic: Enacting Transgender Reproductive Rights in Everyday Patient Encounters.’ Journal of International Women’s Studies 20 (1): 27–39. Ericsson, Stina. 2018. ‘The Language of Cisnormativity: Children and Parents in Interaction with a Multimodal App.’ Gender and Language 12 (2): 139–67. Haslanger, Sally. 2012. Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. New York: Oxford University Press. Haslanger, Sally. 2000. ‘Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?’ Noûs 34 (1): 31–55. Littman, Lisa. 2018. ‘Peer Group and Social Media Influences in Adolescent and Young-Adult Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria.’ Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 57 (10): S73–S74. Marshall, Brandon D.L., Maria Eugenia Socias, Thomas Kerr, Virginia Zalazar, Omar Sued, and Ines Aristegui. 2016. ‘Prevalence and Corrlates of Lifetime Suicide Attempts Among Transgender Persons in Argentina.’ Journal of Homosexuality 19: 1–13. Merricks, Trenton. 2011. ‘The Resurrection of the Body.’ In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, edited by Thomas P. Flint, 476–90. New York: Oxford University Press. Merricks, Trenton. 1999. ‘The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting.’ In Reason for the Hope Within, edited by Michael J. Murray, 261–86. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

     

205

Olson, Kristina R., and Aidan C. Key, and Nicholas R. Eaton. 2015. ‘Gender Cognition in Transgender Children.’ Psychological Science 26 (4): 467–74. Pelser, Adam C. 2016. ‘Heavenly Sadness: On the Value of Negative Emotions in Paradise.’ In Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays About Heaven, edited by T. Ryan Byerly and Eric. J Silverman, 113–35. New York: Oxford University Press. Pyne, Jake. 2011. ‘Unsuitable Bodies: Trans People and Cisnormativity in Shelter Services.’ Canadian Social Work Review 28 (1): 129–37. Stone, Alison. 2007. An Introduction to Feminist Philosophy. Malden, MA: Polity. Stump, Eleonore. 2010. Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. New York: Oxford University Press. Sumerau, J.E., Lain A.B. Mathers, and Ryan T. Cragun. 2018. ‘Incorporating Transgender Experience Toward a More Inclusive Gender Lens in the Sociology of Religion.’ Sociology of Religion 79 (4): 425–48. Tamburro, Richard. 2017. ‘The Possibility and Scope of Significant Heavenly Freedom.’ In Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays About Heaven, edited by T. Ryan Byerly and Eric J. Silverman, 308–28. New York: Oxford University Press. Williams, A. 2017. ‘Risk Factors for Suicide in the Transgender Community.’ European Psychiatry 41: S894–S894. Yancey, Hilary. 2019. ‘Heavenly Gendered Persons?’ In The Lost Sheep in Philosophy of Religion: New Perspectives on Disability, Race, Gender, and Animals, edited by Blake Hereth and Kevin Timpe, 328–46. New York: Routledge.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

9 Defiant Afterlife Disability and Uniting Ourselves to God Kevin Timpe

Historically, the treatment of people with disabilities¹ by the Church has been mixed. Many Christians have evidenced a profound care of and concern for people with disabilities throughout much of the Church’s history; and there are certainly pockets of its history wherein aspects of the Church have evidenced not just personal but communal care and inclusion of those with disabilities. However, as with other kinds of social exclusions and problematic treatment of subpopulations (e.g., racism and sexism), large parts of the Church’s history with respect to individuals with disabilities call for lament and repentance rather than celebration. In particular, many Christian theologians have struggled with how people with disabilities could be perfectly united to God in the afterlife. For some, disabilities are assimilated into the category of disease. Given the idea that there can be no suffering or disease in heaven, this leads to the idea that union with God requires that those with disabilities have their disabilities removed prior to heavenly union with God. Others have suggested that certain profound disabilities preclude an individual’s ability to have such union, thus suggesting that such individuals have no eschatological place in the Body of Christ. In the present paper, I develop and consider an argument for the possibility of individuals retaining their disabilities in the eschaton and nevertheless enjoying complete union with God (and through God to others). I don’t think that the argument I develop is decisive, as it requires a number controversial claims that I here cannot adequately argue for in the present paper. Nor is this argument intended to necessarily apply equally well to all disabilities, in part because, as I suggest in section 3 below, I don’t think that the term ‘disability’ refers to exactly the same thing in all contexts, neatly demarcatingthose individuals who do have disabilities from those who don’t. Nevertheless, I think that the argument developed here gives us reason to be open to the possibility of heavenly disability as a plausible part of speculative theology.

¹ Below in section 3, I indicate that I think there is no single concept which rightly captures the nature of a disability. It should not be surprising, then, that I cannot define what I mean by ‘disability’ here at the beginning of the paper. Kevin Timpe, Defiant Afterlife: Disability and Uniting Ourselves to God In: Voices from the Edge: Centring Marginalized Perspectives in Analytic Theology. Edited by: Michelle Panchuk and Michael Rea, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198848844.003.0010

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

207

The present paper proceeds as follows. In section 1 I briefly survey some of the problematic history of with respect to Christian theological reflection on disability, drawing out objectionable assumptions about the value of individuals with disabilities, assumptions that have eschatological implications for those individuals. In section 2, I consider a number of recent treatments of the relationship between disability and eschatology by Terrence Ehrman, Amos Yong, R. T. Mullins, and Richard Cross. Finally, in section 3 I argue for the conclusion that at least some disabilities can be retained in the afterlife in a way that doesn’t detract from the beatific vision of the redeemed. This argument will depend on a number of controversial assumptions about both disabilities and ancillary principles. Nevertheless, I think these assumptions are defensible, even if I can’t undertake their defence here. I then conclude that to the degree that we find these assumptions plausible, we have reason to consider heavenly disability as part of a plausible speculative theology. A brief word on the paper’s title. ‘Defiant Afterlife’ is a riff on Defiant Birth, the title of a collection of stories from women who avoided the cultural pressure to abort their children with disabilities. Melinda Tankard Reist, the volume’s editor, describes the collection this way: Defiant Birth is a book about women who have resisted the present day practice of medical eugenics. It is about women who were told they should not have babies because of perceived disabilities . . . . They have confronted a society deeply fearful of disability and all its stigma. Facing silent disapproval and even open hostility, they have had their babies anyway, believing their children are just as worthy to partake of life as are others. This is a book about women who have resisted the ideology of quality control and the paradigm of perfection. They have dared to challenge the prevailing medical and social mindset. This book’s contributors have refused to take part in a system of disability deselection.²

Just as that collection seeks to defiantly resist the claim that some humans shouldn’t be born because of their disabilities, the present paper seeks to resist the claim that having a disability is sufficient to preclude complete union with God in the afterlife.³ It seeks to push back against those strands of thought, often found within the Church, that individuals with various disabilities either cannot achieve union with God or can do so only after their disabilities are ‘cured’ or ‘healed’. That is, I argue that an individual’s having a disability does not necessarily ² Reist 2006: 1. For testimony by individuals who hope for ‘defiant resurrection’, see Yong 2007: 268ff. ³ It has been suggested to me that the connection here to Defiant Birth, and abortion in particular, would turn off some readers. In the context of the present paper the connection to eugenic practice of selection abortion on the basis of disability is a connection I prefer to embrace rather than distance myself from.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

208

 

preclude them from being full members of the heavenly banquet, and that God’s consummate feast need not involve disability deselection. However, even if the present argument is successful, it neither shows that all disabilities are compatible with perfect union with God in the afterlife nor that there are no disabilities that will be cured. Given that I think there is no single thing that is disability, this limitation should not be surprising. If there is no single thing that is disability, we should expect that different disabilities might relate to union with God in different ways.

1. Historical Views on the Exclusion of Disability from the Afterlife This section gives a quick overview of some of the Christian tradition’s problematic history with respect to disability. In particular, I aim to highlight theological claims which suggest that disabilities must be healed for individuals to experience perfect union with God in heaven.

1.1 Disability in Scripture Consider first the Christian canon. Even though it’s not a central theme, many of the Christian Scriptures contain a close connection between disability, on the one hand, and sin, impurity, or disobedience on the other.⁴ ‘Disability’, like ‘disease’, is often used to mark off individuals as ‘impure’. What it means to be whole or properly oriented to God frequently uses able-bodied imagery. In Leviticus, for instance, individuals with physical disabilities are prohibited from being priests due to being ‘defective.’⁵ Elisha punished the servant Gehazi with leprosy for his lack of faithfulness. Zechariah’s doubts about Gabriel’s promise of a child result in the angel disabling Zechariah by striking him mute. Spiritual failure and deceit are regularly associated with blindness, as is mental illness with demonic possession. The cultural connection between disability and impurity or sin is so strong that on being presented with a disabled individual, Jesus’ disciples asked ‘who sinned? ⁴ For relevant work, see, for instance, Melcher, Parsons, and Yong 2017; Olyan 2008; Raphael 2008; Schipper 2006; Mark 2002; and Dewey and Miller 2017 for a discussion of this issue. ⁵ Leviticus 21:16–24. Yong argues that Leviticus 21 and Deuteronomy 28 are ‘fundamental for the historic views regarding disability and the Western tradition’ (Yong 2011: 17; see also Betenbaugh 1996). While it’s true that in Leviticus disability is only one of the exclusionary mechanisms that prevents participation in the sacrificial cultic practices, the end of Deuteronomy repeatedly equates illness or disease with divine curses. Yong notes in this context that ‘it may not be possible to maintain the distinction between disease and disability . . . [as] many of these physical conditions are in fact disabling’ (Yong 2011: 22). While I think that disease and disability sometimes overlap, it’s important to not conflate the two.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

209

This man or his parents?’⁶ And while Jesus attempted to alleviate the connection in this particular encounter, later parts of the New Testament continue to reinforce that very connection. Certainly the Scripture’s approach to disability, like some of Scripture’s approach to the value of women vis-a-viz men,⁷ is culturally conditioned. Nevertheless, much of the biblical witness fails to take a critical stance on the ableist assumptions and patterns inherited from its contexts, and those parts that do are often ignored in favour of the dominant able-bodied interpretation. The Synoptics reinforce the ‘normate hermeneutic’ that connects disabilities with sin.⁸ Biblical scholar Sarah Melcher summarizes much of the New Testament’s approach as holding that ‘people with disability are implicitly or explicitly cast out of the kingdom of God’.⁹ Significant swathes of Church history have followed suit in making the same associations regarding disability.¹⁰ In her introduction to Nancy Eiesland’s wellknown The Disabled God, Rebecca Chopp argues that ‘most Christian traditions have equated disability with sin.’¹¹ During medieval times in Europe, mental illnesses or disabilities were regularly attributed to demon possession or sin. Individuals were sometimes imprisoned, tortured, or even executed as a result. Even if they were tolerated within a community, individuals with disabilities were seen as ‘lesser’ and often treated improperly.¹² This isn’t to say that negative attitudes were ubiquitous. While many disabilities were seen as caused by sin, not all were. Reflecting on the medieval period, H. C. Erik Midelfort writes that ‘medieval and early modern thinkers regularly distinguished mental disorders [and disabilities] of organic origin from those based on moral, spiritual, or demonic influence.’¹³ Furthermore, during this same period, Christian monasteries and nunneries across Europe ran hospices for the disabled and mentally ill, finding ways for them to be productive members of their local communities (even if the conditions those individuals often lived and were cared for in would strike us as problematic). Despite the positive instances of care, the Church has failed to love, value, and care for individuals as it ought because of the presence of disabilities.

⁶ John 9:2. ⁷ It’s worth noting here in the passing that disability is also associated with women and other marginalized groups in parts of the Bible; see Olyan 2008. ⁸ See the discussion in Yong 2011: Chs. 2 and 3. ⁹ Melcher 2017: 21. ¹⁰ Two useful texts here are Brock and Swinton 2012 and Yong 2007, especially chapter 9. ¹¹ Eiesland 1994: 11. Though disability and mental illness are at times distinct, I think that there are some mental illnesses that are disabling. Anastasia Scrutton has done related work regarding the way that mental illness has also been moralized during much of Church history. See Scrutton 2015. ¹² Pope Leo X, for instance, used individuals with disabilities as part of his dinner entertainment; see the discussion in Scheerenberger 1983: 33f. ¹³ Midelfort 1999: 19; see also Conner 2018. I discuss the varied ways disability was treated by medieval theologians in Timpe (2020).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

210

 

1.2 Luther I turn now to a brief discussion of two theologians whose writings on disability reflect the problematic assumptions and associations represented in the previous section. A difficulty encountered here is that these theologians didn’t address disability systematically; what they thought often has to be gleaned from passing comments or treatments focused on other topics. Furthermore, these two examples aren’t intended to be exhaustive.¹⁴ Nevertheless, these two examples should give sufficient context for thinking that there is a robust history of problematic theological reflection on disability. The Reformer Martin Luther stands as a notable theologian whose views about disability are ableist. Here I have in mind especially his claim in the Tischreden (usually translated as Table Talk) where Luther suggests that a twelve-year-old boy from Dessau, who scholars think likely suffered from Prader-Willi Syndrome, ought to be drowned. Interpreting the relevant passage is difficult, in part because there are three different versions of the Tischreden and it records notes of a conversation with Luther over dinner, rather than being written by Luther himself.¹⁵ However, all three versions contain the claim that ‘monstrosities’ are not human but merely animal.¹⁶ One version of the Tischreden suggests that Luther endorsed the view that rather than being human, the child was an offspring of the devil—i.e., a ‘changeling’.¹⁷ In what Stefan Heuser refers to as ‘the most trustworthy’ of the three versions of Table Talk, Luther writes: I simply think he’s a mass of flesh without a soul. Couldn’t the devil have done this, inasmuch as he gives such shape to the body and the mind even of those who have reason that in their obsession they hear, see, and feel nothing?¹⁸

In another version of the same incident, Luther apparently denies that the boy should be baptized because he’s ‘only animal life’.¹⁹ Some scholars take this to indicate that Luther, like others in the Christian tradition, have equated disability with demon possession or connection with Satan, literally demonizing some people with disabilities. Many in the disability ¹⁴ Augustine, for instance, used cognitive impairment as part of an argument for the existence of original sin. ¹⁵ See, for instance, Goodey and Stainton 2001: 230. ¹⁶ Miles 2001: 23. ¹⁷ Dating to the early eleventh century, changelings were seen as ‘substituted for human children by fairies, trolls, witches, demons, or devils, [and] appeared frequently in the compilations of world folklore that have been a widespread genre’ (Goodey and Stainton 2001: 223). The term ‘changeling’ was also used to refer to individuals with intellectual disabilities at least as far back as the middle of the sixteenth century. The degree to which these two uses were intertwined is the subject of scholarly disagreement; both uses seem to have anti-Semitic implicatures. See Goodey and Stainton 2001: 226f and Miles 2001: 16ff. ¹⁸ As quoted in Heuser 2012: 186f. ¹⁹ LW 54:44–5, reprinted in Brock and Swinton 2012: 211.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

211

rights community have latched onto this issue in particular as evidence for just how deep ableist assumptions and stereotypes are in the Christian tradition. Stefan Heuser writes that ‘Luther’s suggestion that the disabled boy be killed appears symptomatic not only of a medieval superstition but of beliefs that are very much alive in contemporary responses to disability . . . . Such a conclusion [regarding the boy] is paradigmatic of any discourse that rests on the separation of “the disabled” from “the normal”.’²⁰ Other scholars push back on the connection here. C. F. Goodey and Tim Stainton argue that Luther’s comment ‘has been grossly overinterpreted.’²¹ And even Heuser himself admits that ‘Luther’s comments on changelings operate within a discourse seeking to distinguish between human beings and devil’s children, not between “normal” and “disabled” human beings . . . as in the modern disability discourse.’²² It must also be admitted that there are conflicting strands within Luther’s thought on disability. Elsewhere he’s clear that other kinds of disabling conditions are a natural part of human earthly life, writing that ‘even if one member of the body has a defect, the entire person, still endowed with body and soul, shows forth nothing but God’s goodness.’²³ He also explicitly states that ‘the deaf and the dumb [so long as they are rational] . . . deserve the same things that we do’²⁴ and thus should be given the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist. He holds that deaf or blind individuals should be allowed to marry and that they may have more faith than many able-bodied individuals. And there is historical reason to think that Luther had a long-term personal relationship with an individual with a disability who served as his personal assistant for over twenty-five years.²⁵ So the kind of sentiment that the Tischreden evidences isn’t a main thrust of Luther’s moral theology. While this may be the case, that doesn’t mean that Luther’s reaction, if accurately recorded in this text, is innocuous. In fact, even if Luther thought that the child wasn’t a changeling but merely a non-human animal,²⁶ this still indicates a dehumanization and devaluing that we ought to object to. Luther’s insistence elsewhere in his theology that the devil is one of ‘God’s [providential] decree and punishment’ further problematizes the connection here.²⁷ And Luther’s thoughts on the boy from Dessau aren’t the only problematic ideas about disability that Luther had. He suggests a number of

²⁰ Heuser 2012: 186f. ²¹ Goodey and Stainton 2001: 225; see also Miles 2001: 30ff. ²² Heuser 2012: 187. ²³ LW 24:73–4, reprinted in Brock and Swinton 2012: 214. Luther elsewhere reinforces the New Testament’s use of blindness and other disabilities as indicative of spiritual malady; see LW 35:110–11, reprinted in Brock and Swinton 2012: 206f. ²⁴ See Miles 2001: 26. ²⁵ See Miles 2001: 26f. ²⁶ There are, however, other places where Luther seems to endorse changeling mythology. See for instance his second commentary on Galatians; LW 16: 190. ²⁷ LW 43: 124–7, reprinted in Brock and Swinton 2012, 209f; see also Heuser 2012: 188.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

212

 

times, for instance, that pregnant women can cause their children to be born with disabilities or deformities by becoming too scared.²⁸

1.3 Calvin The Reformer John Calvin is another influential theologian who problematically understands disability within his theology. Given Calvin’s approach to biblical theology, he accepts—apparently consistently and uncritically—the connection between sin and disability mentioned earlier. And there are further problems as well. We shouldn’t be surprised that Calvin doesn’t provide a specific theological discussion of disability and the eschaton given his general opposition to theological speculation,²⁹ which he rejected in favour of biblical theology. He explicitly warns of the dangers of speculative theology regarding matters eschatological in the Institutes: Here, indeed, if anywhere in the secret mysteries of scripture, we ought to play the philosopher soberly and with great moderation; let us use great caution that neither our thoughts nor our speech go beyond the limits to which the Word of God itself extends.³⁰

And elsewhere: We also feel how we are titillated by an immoderate desire to know more than is lawful. From this, trifling and harmful questions repeatedly flow forth–trifling, I say, for from them no profit can be derived. But this second kind is worse because those who indulge in them entangle themselves in dangerous speculations; accordingly, I call these questions ‘harmful.’³¹

In fact, Calvin specifically mentions the nature of the resurrected body as one of the theological topics about which we ought not speculate³² even though he was clear that the resurrection requires numerical identity between the present and resurrected bodies.³³ A particularly problematic part of Calvin’s theology with respect to disability is his view that the sacrament of the Eucharist ought to be restricted to those who were sufficiently ‘well enough instructed’ and could recite the catechism, thereby ²⁸ See Miles 2001: 29 and Epstein 1995 for a discussion of ‘maternal imagination’. ²⁹ And to philosophy as well. ³⁰ Institutes, 1.13.21. ³¹ Institutes, I.4. ³² See Institutes 3.25.7. ³³ Calvin himself suffered from chronic health problems, which he looked forward to being removed from body in the resurrection; Select Works of John Calvin, vol 7, Letters 4, 333.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

213

excluding individuals with intellectual disabilities.³⁴ For Calvin, one of the defining characteristics of human nature is rationality; it’s largely human rationality that distinguishes us from ‘mere beasts’ and is part of what the imago dei consists in.³⁵ Calvin is clear that all, especially fallen, humans have intellectual and cognitive limitations, limitations which are furthered impacted by the noetic effects of sin.³⁶ However, he [Calvin] fails to reflect on the genuine diversity of human intellect, seeming instead to assume that we all share similar degrees of pride, vanity, and cognitive capacity. This is an example of a recurring and problematic theme throughout Calvin’s work, where he simultaneously appears to value and equalize all people (we have all fallen and yet all have sacred worth) and yet (intentionally or not) does not truly include all people in this vision, particularly those who differ from his expectation of normal rationality or intellectual capacity.³⁷

The fact that individuals with intellectual impairment ought to be denied the Eucharist is especially problematic given Calvin’s view of the centrality of that sacrament to the Christian life. For Calvin, the Christian life (whether individual or communal) ‘cannot be said to be well ordered and regulated unless in it the Holy Supper of our Lord is always being celebrated and frequented’.³⁸ The Eucharist is a way—perhaps even the paradigmatic way—of binding us to Christ and, through Him, to other members of the Church in ecclesial unity.³⁹ According to J. Todd Billings, Calvin’s ‘strongest of language of participation [of humanity in the goodness of God] relates to the sacraments . . . . Through the sacraments believers truly participate in Christ; they do not simply imitate Christ or partake of his benefits.’⁴⁰ And Calvin speaks of the grace that is imparted in the sacrament of the Eucharist as ‘knowledge’.⁴¹ In this context, theologian John Hull worries that the required participation in the Eucharist and the high demand on ³⁴ Whether those who are unable to speak should also be denied the Eucharist is unclear. It’s plausible, however, that Calvin, like others in the sixteenth century, would have interpreted individuals unable to speak as having cognitive impairment, even if they had none. Given his endorsement of infant baptism, Calvin likely would have been fine with baptizing those individuals, whether infant or not, who had cognitive impairments. The bias against intellectual disability is often more theologically intractable than bias against physical disability; see Haslam 2013. ³⁵ It’s not clear to me that Calvin would explicitly say that individuals with severe cognitive disabilities fail to be human or fail to be created in the imago dei. One option, which one finds in Aquinas, is to say that all humans have the requisite reasoning abilities, but those with disabilities are prevented from exercising them by some bodily condition. See Cross 2012. ³⁶ See Institutes I.233 and I.234. ³⁷ Creamer 2012: 221. ³⁸ Calvin, ‘Articles concerning the Organization of the Church and of Worship at Geneva proposed by the Ministers at the Council, January 16, 1537’, in Calvin: Theological Treatises, 48. ³⁹ For careful treatments of the role of God’s activity in and the centrality for the Christian life in Calvin’s thought, see Patton Baker 2015, Gerrish 1993, and McDonnell 1967. ⁴⁰ Billings 2005, 323f. As Eiesland writes, Eucharistic practice ‘that excludes or segregates people with disabilities is not a celebration of the real body of Christ’ (Eiesland 1994: 114). ⁴¹ See Gerrish 1993: 118f.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

214

 

human rationality that it requires suggests an ableist limitation on participation in the life of Christ: ‘It has often been thought that the image of God is to be found in human reason, but this is not acceptable to a disability theology since people with severe intellectual disabilities would be excluded from being in the divine image.’⁴² Furthermore, if the kind of union required for the beatific vision comes through the Eucharist, then Calvin may have thought that those with such disabilities are not capable of such union. Since, on his view, the Eucharist is a gift, it looks like it’s a gift not given to those with disabilities.⁴³ These two parts of Calvin’s theology suggests that he valued at least some intellectually disabled humans less than non-disabled humans. Though he has medieval theologians in mind here and not Calvin, Richard Cross’s claim that those views which ‘[seem] to put those who lack reason in the place of secondclass citizens in the community of the church’⁴⁴ appears to apply to Calvin’s view as well.

1.4 Historical Implications While the above discussion has been cursory, both in terms of its examination of Scripture and engaging the breadth of historical theology, the problematic nature of at least some Christian theology regarding disability should be sufficiently clear. Summarizing the biblical witness, Jamie Clark-Soles writes that ‘linking sin with impairment can be a dangerous, destructive habit. A connection may be possible in particular cases, but such is not inevitable. Similarly, tying salvation and forgiveness of sins to a “cure” is also problematic.’⁴⁵ It is this connection which has lead so much of the Christian tradition to believe that those with disabilities need to be healed to enjoy perfect union with God in the afterlife. Theologian Amos Yong, who’s written extensively on how disability ought to shape our theological vision, notes the connection between how we construe disability in the eschaton and our present ableist (and often eugenic) practices: If there are no disabilities in the life to come, then that implicitly suggests that our present task is to rid the world of such unfortunate and unwarranted realities . . . . If disability is a reflection of the present, fallen, and broken order of things, the redemption of this world and its transformation into the coming eon will involve the removal of all symptoms related to the tragic character of life dominated by sin.⁴⁶

⁴² Hull 2014: 82. ⁴³ Gerrish 1993: 135–8. ⁴⁵ Clark-Soles 2017: 344. ⁴⁶ Yong 2011: 118ff.

⁴⁴ Cross 2012: 427.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

215

Similarly, in her influential book The Disabled God, Nancy Eiesland claims that this history shapes how individuals with disabilities continue to be excluded by the Christian community: Three themes—sin and disability conflation, virtuous suffering, and segregationist charity—illustrate the theological obstacles encountered by people with disabilities who seek inclusion and justice within the Christian community. It cannot be denied that the biblical record and Christian theology have often been dangerous for persons with disabilities.⁴⁷

I think that the Church can, and should, do better.

2. Contemporary Arguments While much Christian reflection on disability reflects these problematic assumptions, a number of contemporary theologians and philosophers have recently explored other options on the nature of disability and its relationship to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. This section does not seek to be exhaustive, but rather aims to show the range of views. In the final section of the paper, I develop an argument for the existence of at least some disabilities in the eschaton, offered as a mediating position between those I canvas here.

2.1 Ehrman I begin with a recent argument by Terrence Ehrman for the claim that disabilities may be healed eschatologically. Given its own assumptions, I think the argument is largely successful: Ehrman shows how it can be that some disabilities are healed in the resurrection.⁴⁸ But as I’ll argue, it’s one thing to argue that disabilities can be healed eschatologically and quite another to argue that disabilities will be healed eschatologically. It’s an even further claim to argue that a disability must be healed eschatologically for there to be perfect union with God. And even if that could be established, it’s yet an even stronger claim that all disabilities must be healed eschatologically. I think that Ehrman fails to establish the claim that

⁴⁷ Eiesland 1994: 74. ⁴⁸ Ehrman clearly offers this argument as tentative, not settled: ‘theological humility should characterized discussion about the resurrection body’ since such speculative theology involves ‘learned ignorance’ (Ehrman 2015: 733). I grant him the need for theological humility, but I don’t think the need for such humility rules out an appropriate role for speculative theology. For instance, in Timpe 2015 I argue that a particular account of limbo is worth considering as part of speculative theology, motivated in part by considerations related to disability.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

216

 

disability must be healed eschatologically, and thus fails also with regard to the strongest of these claims that all disabilities must be healed eschatologically. Given this, and given the kind of ableist devaluing of individuals with disabilities that mark earlier views that seem to share Ehrman’s conclusion, we have a motivation to explore arguments for the possibility of individuals retaining their disabilities in the eschaton. Ehrman claims to show ‘that Thomistic hylomorphic anthropology provides the best context to understand the human person such that disability is not essential to identity’.⁴⁹ But if this is what he aims to show, his argument fails. Ehrman thinks that Thomistic hylomorphic anthropology is better than a number of emergentism materialistic views of human nature. But I don’t think he successfully shows hylomorphic dualism with regard to human nature to be better than these other views, in part because proponents of these views have responses to his criticisms that he doesn’t consider. Furthermore, there are competitor views that he doesn’t engage at all. So, as an attempt to show his preferred anthropology is best, his efforts come up short. Fortunately, for present purposes we can sidestep this part of his article, since I don’t think any of what will follow about disability in the eschaton depends on settling the question of human nature.⁵⁰ For Ehrman, the Christian doctrines of resurrection and the subsequent union with God in beatitude require numerical identity between the resurrected person and the earthly person with disabilities. I agree.⁵¹ But so far as I can tell, no one in the relevant literature disputes this. Rather, the question is about the relationship between an individual’s disability and numerical identity. Ehrman is arguing against a number of theologians of disability who suggest that disability is part of an individual’s identity.⁵² It’s sometimes not clear how to take these theological claims, in part because some theologians don’t clearly differentiate between numerical and the relevant sort of qualitative identity.⁵³ Ehrman takes them to be making a claim about numerical identity: The authors presume disability is integral to identity because it is divinely bestowed. A person with a disability cannot be the same person, and thus numerically identity [sic] is absent, ‘if the primary theological story we tell

⁴⁹ Ehrman 2015: 723. ⁵⁰ I’m willing to grant that Ehrman, on the assumption that his preferred anthropology is correct, has an account of resurrection identity in which a person’s earthly disability wouldn’t be essential to their identity. However, as I argue below, this claim doesn’t settle the question regarding if there will be disabilities in heaven. ⁵¹ See Baker 2009, especially 453. ⁵² For instance, Yong 2007. More on Yong’s view in section 2.2 below. ⁵³ This problem can be found in Yong 2009; Swinton 2012; and Swinton, Mowat, and Baines 2011, despite other virtues of these works.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

217

about him requires that he be changed into something different when he dies . . . .’ Healing of a disability for these authors eliminates identity.⁵⁴

Ehrman thinks that the requirement for numerical identity in the resurrection doesn’t require qualitative identity: ‘The numerically identical person who lived and died is also raised by God’s power and love. This does not entail that qualitative identity remains the same . . . . Could we not imagine the divine resurrected healing of a sibling with Down syndrome that does not destroy her identity?’⁵⁵ Whether we can imagine such a situation depends on the relationship between imaginability (or conceivability) and possibility, whether such a healing is in fact possible, and the robustness of our imaginations when it comes to disability. That a person with Down syndrome is ‘cured’ of this condition in the afterlife is assumed rather than established by Ehrman’s rhetorical question. Earlier in the article, Ehrman claims that because disability is merely permitted by God and not caused by Him directly, a disability is an accidental feature of the individual who has it. And as an accidental feature, it doesn’t impact the person’s humanity or value.⁵⁶ Given that healings from some disabilities happen in the present life without undermining personal identity, I take Scripture to establish that sometimes disability can be healed. Here, I agree with Ehrman: ‘Divine healing on earth does not eliminate identity, and numerical identity is not challenged by divine healing in the resurrection. But the question now centers on whether healing of impairments and disabilities will take place in the resurrection.’⁵⁷ More specifically, the question now centres on whether heavenly ‘cure’ or ‘healing’ should be hoped for in all cases. And here Ehrman’s argument is lacking.⁵⁸ Granting Ehrman all his (broadly Thomistic) assumptions for present purposes, he may have shown how disabilities can be healed in the resurrection prior to the eschaton ‘because they are not inherent to our identity’.⁵⁹ But to show that the eschaton can involve the actualization of a certain possibility doesn’t establish that it must for the beatific vision to be achieved. It’s possible that I’ll have long flowing locks in the eschaton and that my face will shine with the glory of a Tim Pawl-esque beard. But of course it doesn’t follow from this possibility that I will ⁵⁴ Ehrman 2015: 725; quoting Swinton, Mowat, and Baines 2011: 9. Ehrman makes the same claim about Nancy Eiesland’s statement: ‘having been disabled from birth, I came to believe that in heaven I would be absolutely unknown to myself and perhaps to God’ (Eiesland 1994: 2). But notice that that quotation says nothing about numerical identity. ⁵⁵ Ehrman 2015: 734. ⁵⁶ ‘Those who have physical and/or mental impairments and disabilities are no less human persons, rather the impairments and disabilities are frustrated capacities and not indicative of a qualitatively different nature’ (Ehrman 2015: 732). ⁵⁷ Ehrman 2015: 736. For a related discussion, see Hull 2014: 87ff. ⁵⁸ Concerns over ‘curing’ disability, particularly autism, given the impact on a person’s identity can also be found in non-theology writing as well; see for instance Anderson 2013. ⁵⁹ Ehrman 2015: 737.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

218

 

have such follicled glory, much less that I must have such for beatitude and perfect union with God.⁶⁰

2.2 Yong and Mullins A recent exchange between Amos Yong and R.T. Mullins picks up on the issue of identity and disability in the eschaton. At the heart of their at times acerbic exchange is what Mullins refers to as ‘Stanley Hauerwas’s dictum’: ‘To eliminate the disability means to eliminate the subject.’⁶¹ Mullins notes that Hauerwas himself doesn’t argue for this claim, but ‘simply asserts this, without justification, as a passing comment. In plays no role in the argument of his paper.’⁶² If this dictum is correct, then union with God in the afterlife would require that disabilities remain, given that it will be the very same person who has a disability in this life that is united with God in the next. Mullins raises a number of problematic consequences from accepting Hauerwas’s dictum.⁶³ Most importantly for present purposes, Mullins thinks that Yong ought to reject the claim that ‘disabilities must be retained in the resurrection in order to preserve identity and continuity.’⁶⁴ According to Mullins, ‘Yong has a case of mistaken identity. By this I mean that he has confused metaphysical identity with a sense of self. Further, he has confused the “is” of predication with the “is of identity.” ’⁶⁵ Mullins thinks that a person having a particular disability is a contingent state of affairs, and thus any disability is merely an accidental property rather than an essential property. Some surely are. But it’s odd to claim that Yong holds all disabilities are part of one’s personal identity, given that Yong is clear about the existence of acquired disabilities (for example, losing a leg in war), as well as the possibility that some disabilities are healed. In a reply to Mullins’ criticism, Yong claims that Mullins’ article is ‘misleading’⁶⁶ on a number of points regarding Yong’s view, including taking Yong’s view to require commitment to Haeurwas’s dictum as a necessary truth.⁶⁷ Consider Yong’s 2009 article that Mullins is primarily responding to:

⁶⁰ There’s a potential parallel with gender that is worth exploring at another time. If an individual’s gender is taken to be an accidental feature of a person’s identity, then it may be that a person could have a different gender in the eschaton. See Blake Hereth’s ‘The Shape of Trans Afterlife Justice’ elsewhere in this volume. ⁶¹ Mullins 2011: 26, quoting Hauerwas 1984: 69. ⁶² Mullins 2011: 26, fn. 8. ⁶³ See Mullins 2011: section 3. The view that at least some disabilities are essential to those who have them is also embraced by Campbell and Stramondo 2017: 161. ⁶⁴ Mullins 2011: 31. ⁶⁵ Mullins 2011: 27. ⁶⁶ Yong 2012: 4, n. 2. ⁶⁷ So far as I can tell, there’s no reason at all to think that Yong is committed to Haeurwas’s dictum as a necessary truth. Yong 2011: 9 might suggest that he endorses Hauerwas’s dictum, but other places in this book are clearly about the self-understanding sense of identity (e.g., 13 and 121).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

219

The answer [regarding disability and the problem of evil] cannot be simply saying that God will in the end ‘heal’ such individuals of their genetic variation, as it is difficult to imagine how someone with trisomy-21 (for example) can be the same person without that chromosomal configuration. In these cases, for God not to allow the trisomic mutation may be for God not to allow the appearance of precisely that person. There may be no way, in this case, to eradicate the disability without eliminating the person.⁶⁸

Here, Yong is talking about the healing of disabilities in the eschaton. But notice the tentativeness of his discussion. Yong is making claims about what may be the case. In this article, Yong doesn’t argue for the truth of Hauerwas’s dictum. He just highlights dangers of taking all instances of disability to involve healing, dangers related to the discussion in section 1 above. ‘If we think that the afterlife is a “magical” fix to all the challenges imposed by disability, then we may be more inclined to simply encourage people with disabilities (as has long been done) to bear up under their lot and await God’s eschatological healing for their lives.’⁶⁹ Even in his earlier book on the subject, Theology and Down Syndrome, Yong doesn’t argue for the claim that disability is always integral to personal identity in the way suggested by Haeurwas’s dictum. Rather, he seeks to take the testimony of those who say it is seriously, and see if it can be accommodated. ‘My point is simply to show that disability perspectives raise probing questions about traditional eschatological articulations concerning the heavenly hope and the resurrection of the body If they are to survive the interrogations informed by the experience of disability, our eschatological and theological visions may need reformulated.’⁷⁰ Continuing along these lines: I further speculate that people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, such as, those with Down Syndrome or triplicate chromosome 21—will also retain their phenotypical features in their resurrection bodies. There will be sufficient continuity to ensure recognizability as well as self-identity.⁷¹

The first claim here is primarily about the phenotypical features of bodies and their role in the beatific vision. And the second claim is about self-understanding ⁶⁸ Yong 2009: 61. ⁶⁹ Yong 2009: 70. ⁷⁰ Yong 2007: 270f, emphasis added. Paying careful attention to the testimony of individuals with disabilities, Yong writes: ‘The hope of people with disabilities in general, then, is dominated by visions of an afterlife in which the challenges associated with their conditions will be no more’ (Yong 2009: 67). But there are at least two ways this could be accomplished: ‘healing’ or change to one’s community. Yong clearly endorses the latter through a ‘a robust theology of social reconciliation’, including the perfection of human relationships with each other and ending of all oppressive, discriminatory, or unjust social relations. Given my focus in the present paper, I won’t focus on this latter element but want to register my endorsement of it. Finally, it also needs to be made explicit that taking the relevant sort of testimony seriously doesn’t mean that it is always veridical. ⁷¹ Yong 2007: 282. See also Yong 2012: 5.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

220

 

or self-identity. Yong continues that for all persons, not just those with disabilities, ‘so also will the resurrected body be the site through which the meaning of our narratives are transformed (and thus eternally).’⁷² So it’s just not the case that Yong is committed to the truth of Hauerwas’s dictum in the way that Mullins suggests.⁷³ If he’s not committed to its truth, then it follows that he’s not committed to it being necessarily true. I agree that there is reason to think that Hauerwas’s dictum is false, since it can’t be true if there is any person such that they have a disability at one time and lack that disability at another. As already indicated, there are such people, namely those with acquired or temporary disabilities. Furthermore, what’s important for this paper’s purpose is that rejecting Hauerwas’s dictum doesn’t entail that there won’t be any disabilities in heaven. If having a particular disability is an accidental rather than essential property of the person who has that disability, then it is possible that the person be resurrected without having that property and yet not have their personal identity endangered. Mullins is right about this conditional. But note that not all accidental properties must be lost in the resurrection. For instance, consider the following properties: the property of being a parent or the property of being the co-author that Tim Pawl attributes his errors to.⁷⁴ I have both of these properties. But nothing in the resurrection requires that I cease to be my children’s parent or the locus of Pawl’s diverting blame simply because those properties aren’t essential to my personal identity. We strongly identify with lots of our non-essential properties; but our resurrection doesn’t require that they’re not present in the eschaton.

2.3 Cross Whereas Ehrman tries to argue that there will be no disabilities in heaven because they will all be cured, Richard Cross explores the possibility that part of what it means to be human is to be disabled. Much of Cross’s discussion focuses on ⁷² Yong 2007: 283. Yong cites positively Jerry Walls’s claim that resurrected bodies will be ‘healed’, even of disability. Here is Walls: ‘Given that heaven is a place of perfect wholeness and happiness, it is surely reasonable to believe that defects of mind and body will be repaired. Physical deformities, diseases, maiming, crippling, mental deficiencies, and the like obviously represent obstacles to human satisfaction in the fullest sense of the word. . . . This is not to deny that such defects will continue as a part of human identity in heaven. Those who negotiated this life with the additional struggles of mental or physical deformities will retain the memories of doing so as well as the positive character traits they formed as a result.’ (Walls 2002: 112) Note that what Walls is here claiming, and what Yong indicates agreement with, is the following: (a) that the resurrection body will be numerically identical with the present body; (b) that the memories, experiences, and character traits that shape an individual’s selfunderstanding will be retained; and (c) that at least some disabilities will be healed. And Yong claims that Walls is correct about (c). ⁷³ Mullins admits that there is an ambiguity in Yong’s work his endorsement of Hauerwas’s dictum; Mullins 2011: 26, fn. 9. ⁷⁴ Pawl 2019: viii.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

221

medieval accounts of the Incarnation (particularly those by Thomas Aquinas, Hervaeus Natalis, and John Duns Scotus), according to which the second person of the Trinity assumes a full human nature. This one person is both fully divine and fully human. Many of the details, especially the historical interpretive details, of Cross’s argument can be set aside for present purposes. Drawing on Scotus, Cross suggests that the instrumentality relation can sometimes provide for a union between a person and an instrument, such as a prosthetic limb: I shall assume that this kind of unity—satisfied merely by relations of efficient causation—obtains between a person and an external tool or (in effect) a prosthetic limb. But I shall assume too that this unity is just as strong as obtains between a substance and an intrinsic part (e.g. a limb united to its whole by some kind of relation of formal causality). The only significant different is that external tools and prostheses are in principle easier to detach and attach than intrinsic parts are (compare a knife with an arm-blade).⁷⁵

If this kind of unity is possible, then Cross suggests that in the Incarnation the assumed human nature becomes a ‘total prosthesis’⁷⁶ of the Incarnate second person of the Trinity, where a total prosthesis performs ‘all human vital functions for a person, and [is] the instrument of that person in all human causal activity in the world’.⁷⁷ While the Incarnational theology here is provocative, that’s not the aspect of Cross’s view that is relevant for present purposes. Rather, what I want to focus on here is if Cross’s suggestion for understanding the Incarnation is correct, what follows for how we might understand disability in the eschaton. For Cross, the implications here aren’t hard to see: On this view, the model or archetype of human personhood is something that is dependent in various ways on some kind of prosthesis . . . . Given that the incarnate divine person is the normative case of what it is to be a human person, the incarnation shows that persons, normatively, are substances that include and depend on prostheses. Putting it another way, we might say that, normatively, human persons are intrinsically disabled or impaired.⁷⁸ ⁷⁵ Cross 2011: 645. ⁷⁶ Cross 2011: 646. ⁷⁷ Cross 2011: 650. ⁷⁸ Cross 2011: 647f. In personal correspondence, Cross admits that ‘prosthesis-dependence comes in degrees. [But] given both (a) that it is hard to imagine a greater degree of it than Christ has, and (b) that such dependence is something available to all humans too, Christ’s prosthetic nature looks like a good candidate for something paradigmatic for humanity—an ideal case that we cannot attain but that tells us something about what it is to be human.’ There are other properties that the Incarnate Christ has that are not normative in the same way: ‘Being Jewish, being born of Mary, and (for that matter) being male do not fit that bill, since necessarily some people lack those features.’ It may also be, as Mike Rea has suggested, that not all prostheses function in the same way. Rea gives the example of soldiers who

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

222

 

In a footnote later in the paper, Cross clarifies: I distinguish impairment and disability below . . . . As I make clear there, in line with suggestions made in my introduction, above, impairment is dependence; disability is the failure of the environment—be it the physical environment or the activities of other human agents—to provide the conditions for provide [sic] for opportunities for dependence necessary for flourishing. So, strictly speaking, human persons are intrinsically impaired, but not disabled.⁷⁹

What I refer to in this paper with the term ‘disability’ aligns, at least in many cases, more closely with Cross’s use of ‘impairment’ than with what he refers to as ‘disability’. It will be important to keep the terminology straight. Here, Cross suggests that given that the assumption of a ‘human nature prosthesis’ by the second person of the Trinity in the Incarnation gives us reason to think that all humans are intrinsically impaired, it follows from the goodness of God that impairment (again on Cross’s use of that term) is a good thing, thus undercutting the kinds of negative assessments we saw above in section 1. More specifically, the goodness here is related to our mutual interdependence and the kind of community intended for humans.⁸⁰ Whether or not this view of view of human nature and its relationship to impairment ultimately holds up will depend on other philosophical commitments regarding human nature, substantial unity, etc. I won’t take a stand on these issues here, primarily because I don’t need to. Cross’s view needs further development if it’s to give us an account of what properties are normative for human nature and which ones aren’t. But suppose that he’s able to do this. That is, suppose, as Cross argues, that part of what it means to be human is to be impaired. If that were the case, then insofar as we remain humans in our eschatological union with God in the afterlife, we’ll be impaired there. We’d then have an account of beatified impairment. It’s just that heaven will be such that it will ‘provide an environment suitable for people with impairments to satisfy their needs or achieve their goals’.⁸¹

might depend on night-vision goggles or combat exoskeletons; but the need for these prostheses to perform some functions doesn’t seem to entail that the soldiers are intrinsically disabled. Neil Harbisson, an artist who was born completely blind, designed a wearable camera that translates colour frequencies into sound, allowing him to ‘hear colour’. One version of this device allows him to hear ultraviolet light, not just the usual visual spectrum. Even though a non-colour-blind individual could also use this device, it’s not obvious that that possibility means that all humans are intrinsically impaired in Cross’s sense of the term. Furthermore, Cross is trying to give an account of human nature, not an account of how to move ‘beyond’ human nature. For more on disability and transhumanism, see Hall 2016. ⁷⁹ Cross 2011: 657, n. 28; see also 650. ⁸⁰ See Cross 2011: 653 and 648, where he explicitly connects his view with Alasdair MacIntyre’s work on human dependence. ⁸¹ Cross 2011: 650f.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

223

3. Heavenly Disabilities In this section, I begin to develop a view on which disability can be present in the eschaton without commitment to Haeurwas’s dictum. On this view, however, it’s not the case that human nature entails impairment (and thus isn’t as radical as Cross’s). The view developed here is consistent with the claim that some disabilities can and even will be absent in resurrection bodies. I begin by pointing out that I don’t think that disability is a single, unified thing. Rather, as I argued elsewhere, our concept of ‘disability’ is a socially constructed Ballung or cluster concept.⁸² Rather than being constituted by a set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions which are met for all disabilities and which must be met for a thing to properly fall under the concept of disability, we should think about disability as a cluster concept with ill-defined edges. This realization gives us reason to justifiably treat different disabilities in different ways, including thinking that some can be present in heaven even if others won’t be. Following Elizabeth Barnes, I think that what we say about particular disabilities depends on details of that disability. We can’t assume from the beginning that there will be a usefully unified category that can capture the full range of disabilities—physical, psychological, cognitive, emotional, and developmental. We need to instead see what can be said about individual cases and explore from the ‘ground up’ what can be said about the presence of disabilities in the afterlife.⁸³ It should be clear from the previous discussion that not all disabilities are essential to the personal identity of the individuals who have those disabilities. Just as there are people who come to have disabilities in a way that doesn’t threaten their identity, so too it is possible for some individuals to lose their disability, whether through healing or curing or some other manner, in a way that doesn’t threaten their identity. And as I’ve pointed out in section 2 when discussing Ehrman’s, Yong’s, and Mullins’ views, the fact that something is accidental to one’s identity doesn’t require that it be removed for the beatific vision. But it also doesn’t prohibit it. So are all disabilities removed in the resurrection? Or will there be individuals who will, in the language of Augustine, ‘rise again in their deformity’?⁸⁴ It will be helpful to have in mind some terminology from the contemporary philosophical literature on disability in order to begin answering this question. The core question of Barnes’ influential The Minority Body ‘involves the connection between disability and well-being’.⁸⁵ She differentiates between ‘bad-difference’ ⁸² Timpe, n.d. ⁸³ See Barnes 2016: 2f. ⁸⁴ ‘We are not justified in affirming even of monstrosities, which are born and die, however quickly they may die, that they shall not rise again, nor that they shall rise again in their deformity, and not rather with an amended and perfected body.’ Augustine, Enchiridion, Chapter 87: “The Case of Monstrous Births”. ⁸⁵ Barnes 2016: 54.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

224

 

and ‘mere-difference’ views of disability as follows. Those views which hold that ‘disability is by itself something that makes you worse off [are] “bad-difference” views of disability’⁸⁶ while mere-difference views are those according to which having a disability doesn’t by itself or automatically make you worse off. This way of drawing the contrast, she notes, is ‘rough-and-ready’,⁸⁷ but it should be sufficient for present purposes. Furthermore, the connection between the disability and the difference in well-being is important for differentiating bad-difference from mere-difference disabilities. It is consistent with a rejection of a baddifference view that individuals with disabilities are in fact worse off than nondisabled individuals, insofar as that difference is caused by social structures or ableism (where ableism is understood as the systemic and structural undervaluing of disabled lives, analogous to other forms of systemic bias such as racism, sexism, or classism).⁸⁸ There might also be bad effects of disabilities that would still exist in the absence of ableism. But those same disabilities might allow for other goods that are perhaps unique to or even just more common for those with the disability. So the question is whether the effects caused by disability are net-negative in that they are ‘counterfactually stable’; that is, ‘would [they] have such effect even in the absence of ableism’?⁸⁹ Barnes doesn’t think that any physical disabilities are bad-difference disabilities, though her book leaves it open that perhaps other kinds of disabilities are.⁹⁰ But suppose for the moment that there are some disabilities that involve baddifference. Suppose, that is, that there are disabilities that involve bad-difference such that those who have them are objectively worse off in some way that isn’t just caused by ableism or problematic social structures.⁹¹ Heaven is essentially a place of ultimate happiness, and no state is a state of ultimate happiness if one could be in a different state and be happier. Now, consider two individuals plausibly in the beatific vision. One experiences the joys of heaven and their well-being is decreased due to the presence of a baddifference disability. The other individual experiences those same joys as the first but does not have a disability that intrinsically involves a decrease to their wellbeing. If we ask ourselves which of these two individuals is happier, I think it’s clear that (all else being equal) the latter life involves more happiness since it involves more well-being. So if heaven is to be the state of human existence than which none better can be conceived, I don’t see how it can involve the presence of anything which causes a decrease to our well-being.⁹² So if heaven were to involve

⁸⁶ Barnes 2016: 55. ⁸⁷ Barnes 2016: 55. ⁸⁸ For useful discussions of ableism, see Scuro 2018 and Nario-Redmond 2019. ⁸⁹ Barnes 2016: 60. ⁹⁰ See Barnes 2016: 2ff; see also Campbell and Stramondo 2017: 163. ⁹¹ Campbell and Stramondo suggest that Tay-Sachs might be an instance of a bad-difference disability; see Campbell and Stramondo 2017: 165. ⁹² Note that this claim rules out all sorts of states of affairs, and not just the presence of baddifference disabilities.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

225

bad-difference disabilities then it wouldn’t be a place of ultimate happiness, and hence wouldn’t be worthy of the name.⁹³ Or consider the possibility of disabilities that intrinsically prevent a person’s ability to worship God, or to engage in such action collectively with the other saints. If there were to be disabilities that inhibited human–divine union in this way, given the kind of perfect uniting with God that marks the beatific vision, those disabilities may no longer be present. Any state of affairs that prevents perfect union with or worship of God will be absent. But the possibility that some disabilities might have such an effect certainly doesn’t entail that all disabilities are like that, and I think we have reasons (both testimonial and theological) to believe that not all disabilities would have this negative effect. So there may be some disabilities that are healed in the eschaton. But note that the reasoning here is not just because a disability is present, but rather because the disability prevents perfection of the union with God characteristic of the beatific vision. For any disability that does not involve bad-difference or which does not intrinsically interfere with union with and worship of God, then the reason why it must not be present in heaven is absent.⁹⁴ As mentioned above, there are many accidental features of our identities that will still be present in the eschaton. And so unless a disability needs to be removed for perfect union with God (and through God with others), then perhaps we should admit it into our heavenly vision. Are there disabilities whose presence doesn’t interfere with such union? I believe that there are. Consider, for instance, blindness. Certainly blindness can cause, and has caused, harms to individuals; that is, it has decreased their wellbeing. But the burden is on anyone who thinks that that decrease in well-being is primarily about one’s union with God to explain why vision is needed for union with God. Are all blind individuals objectively worse off in terms of their union with God in this life because of intrinsic features of the lack of vision? Certainly, individuals with vision impairments encounter harm from non-accessible physical environments. And much harm also comes from non-accessible social environments. But surely the Christian hope for the new heaven and the new earth could be make accessible. Since all the heavenly residents will also be perfected, there’s no reason to think this aspect of vision loss will defer one’s heavenly joy. But what, one might ask, about the inherent goods of visual enjoyment? Wouldn’t one’s heavenly enjoyment be decreased by lack of visual goods, such as being able to enjoy heavenly visual arts that will surpass the glory of even the finest work by Bernini, Rubens, Carivaggio, Grunewald, Fra Angelico, Gaudi, and Terrence Malick. And wouldn’t one’s heavenly enjoyment also be decreased by

⁹³ The argument in this paragraph is parallel to an argument in Pawl and Timpe 2009: 401. ⁹⁴ If there are disabilities that need to be removed, then there’s a question about how they would be removed. I take no stand on that issue here.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

226

 

not being able to gaze upon the marred, resurrected, and glorified Body of the Incarnate Christ? As tempting as those questions might be, I think they’re mistaken. First, we need to take seriously the testimony offered by those with vision impairments. In addition to the general testimony by individuals with disabilities that suggests that disability doesn’t impact well-being as much as we might think, there is also literature which suggests that the dominant impact on well-being from vision loss is caused not by the lack of vision itself but rather by lack of social support or receiving only negative support.⁹⁵ Second, human sight even without vision impairment is inherently limited. The typical human eye can only recognize electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths from approximately 390 to 700 nm, and there are unsaturated combinations of multiple wavelengths that we also cannot recognize. Will a resurrected human with ‘normal’ vision have their otherwise perfect union with God lessoned because their retinas fail to respond to light with wavelengths of 367 or 731 nm? If the answer is ‘no’, then we need a reason to think that certain wavelengths are essential to human flourishing in heaven while others are not. Third, imagine an individual with vision impairment who is aware that they are missing out on some human goods despite being in heaven. Would that awareness be sufficient to detract from the beatific vision? It’s not clear to me that it would be. If the fullness of the beatific vision is compatible with awareness of the atrocities of human history and, at least on traditional Christian views about hell, the eternal lack of the beatific vision that those in hell suffer, I think the beatific vision would also be compatible with the absence of certain created goods. To think that perfect union with God will be lessened by the lack of visual access to certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation may be to misunderstand the nature of our heavenly goodness.⁹⁶ Finite human beings may not be able to co-realize all human goods. Or consider individuals with cognitive disabilities. The range of human cognitive capacities is broad, even apart from issues related to disability. What range of cognitive abilities are needed for perfect human with God? The higher we set the relevant cognitive bar, the fewer humans will surpass that limit.⁹⁷ And as with vision, I think there’s no reason to think that all individuals who have some degree of cognitive disability fall below the relevant limit such that simply in virtue of

⁹⁵ See for instance Cimarolli and Boerner 2005. ⁹⁶ In a recent paper, Scott Williams argues that all humans have some degree of impairment of human functioning; Williams 2018: 1. ⁹⁷ The practice of infant baptism suggests that the community’s act of faith can function as an occurrent act of faith when the individual being baptized isn’t able to will to accept God’s grace for themself. As Cross puts it, ‘in this case [of infant baptism] actual faith is necessary for salvation; someone who lacks it has to have her faith somehow completed by the actual faith of another’ (Cross 2012: 437). It may be that a corporate virtue of charity might be able to function similarly in the eschaton to the way that a corporate virtue of faith can in infant baptism, in a way that makes even the most severe cognitive impairment compatible with perfect charity.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

227

having that disability their union with God is impaired. While these two suggestions have been quick and need further development, they give us a picture of how disabilities that the Christian tradition has historically thought have no place in heaven might nevertheless be compatible with perfect union with God in the eschaton.⁹⁸

4. Conclusion I’ve argued that there may be some disabilities that can be retained in the afterlife in a way that doesn’t impair the beatific vision. We need not think, like Augustine in the opening epigraph, that having any disability is incompatible with perfect union with God. Not all individuals with disabilities need to be ‘cured’ in order for them to be ‘made whole’. Where do we draw the line between these two types of disability? That’s an admittedly hard question. Above I’ve suggested that we need to approach this question ‘from the ground up’, and so a fully developed account of heavenly disability will need to engage with the complete range disabilities can take.⁹⁹ It bears mentioning that the view I’ve developed here is admittedly speculative and tentative. Nevertheless, it has its merits. I think it not only allows but encourages us to take seriously the testimony of individuals with disabilities, even if that testimony is ultimately defeasible. Furthermore, it can help us avoid some of the negative assumptions that have pervaded much of Church history (e.g., the conflation of disability and sin, tropes of virtuous suffering, segregationist and exclusionary models of ‘charity’), even if the acceptance of heavenly disability isn’t strictly necessary for avoiding those negatives. Given that our eschatology shapes our Christian practices,¹⁰⁰ viewing disability as something that always requires ‘curing’ makes it it easier to devalue the lives of those with disabilities. Speaking of eschatological reflection on disability as a kind of ‘frontier theology’, theologian John Hull writes that ‘we discover that disability itself is not a problem. What faith does is to grasp people with disabilities and pull them into the body of Christ, where, as Paul says, the parts that were sometimes looked down on are now given the highest honours.’¹⁰¹ Many women have refused to abort children diagnosed as having disabilities, thereby giving us stories of ‘defiant births’ that can teach us about radical parental ⁹⁸ In Timpe 2019, I consider positive reasons to think that some disabilities will in fact be in heaven. ⁹⁹ It may be, as Scott Williams suggested in personal correspondence, that God allows some people to make this decision for themselves. So far as both options are compatible with perfect union with God, I see no reason to rule out this possibility. ¹⁰⁰ Despite their other disagreements, Yong and Mullins both make explicit note of this point. See Yong 2007: 291 and Mullins 2011: 25. ¹⁰¹ Hull 2014: 96. By ‘frontier theology’, Hull means theology ‘seeks to interpret some area of human life which lies outside Christian faith, or which seems at first sight to lie outside’ (54).

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

228

 

love. So too perhaps an account of ‘defiant afterlives’ that seeks to embrace rather than eschew disability can teach us something about the even more radical love of God for his creation.¹⁰²

References Anderson, Jami L. 2013. ‘A Dash of Autism.’ In The Philosophy of Autism, edited by Jami L. Anderson and Simon Cushing, 109–42. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Baker, Lynne Rudder. 2009. ‘Persons and the Metaphysics of Resurrection.’ In Arguing About Religion, edited by Kevin Timpe, 448–60. New York: Routledge. Barnes, Elizabeth. 2016. The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Betenbaugh, Helen R. 1996. ‘ADA and the Religious Community: The Moral Case.’ In A Look Back: The Birth of the Americans with Disabilities Act, edited by Robert C. Anderson, 47–69. New York: Routledge. Billings, J. Todd. 2005. ‘United to God Through Christ: Assessing Calvin on the Question of Deification.’ Harvard Theological Review 98 (3):315–34. Brock, Brian, and John Swinton, eds. 2012. Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Campbell, Stephen M., and Joseph A. Stramondo. 2017. ‘The Complicated Relationship of Disability and Well-Being.’ Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 27 (2): 151–84. Cimarolli, Verena R., and Kathrin Boerner. 2005. ‘Social Support and Well-Being in Adults Who Are Visually Impaired.’ Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness 99 (9): 521–34. Clark-Soles, Jamie. 2017. ‘John, First—Third John, and Revelation.’ In The Bible and Disability: A Commentary, edited by Sarah J. Melcher, Mikeal C. Parsons, and Amos Yong, 333–78. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Conner, Benjamin T. 2018. Disabling Mission, Enabling Witness. Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP Academic. Creamer, Deborah Beth. 2012. ‘John Calvin and Disability.’ In Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, edited by Brian Brock and John Swinton, 216–27. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

¹⁰² A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2018 Logos conference at Notre Dame. I’m grateful for challenging feedback from people at the conference including Mike Rea, Robin Dembroff, Katherine Dormandy, Oliver Crisp, Ryan Mullins, Amber Leigh Griffioen, Scott Williams, Amy Seymour, Hud Huson, Alicia Finch, Liz Jackson, and Rebecca Chan; I am especially grateful to Hilary Yancey, my commentator at the conference, for excellent and penetrating comments. In addition, I have also benefited from conversations about this project with Brian Cross and Amos Yong.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

229

Cross, Richard. 2011. ‘Disability, Impairment, and Some Medieval Accounts of the Incarnation: Suggestions for a Theology of Personhood.’ Modern Theology 27 (4): 639–58. Cross, Richard. 2012. ‘Baptism, Faith and Severe Cognitive Impairment in Some Medieval Theologies.’ International Journal of Systematic Theology 14 (4): 420–38. Dewey, Arthur J., and Anna C. Miller. 2017. ‘Paul.’ In The Bible and Disability: A Commentary, edited by Sarah J. Melcher, Mikeal C. Parsons, and Amos Yong, 379–425. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Ehrman, Terrence. 2015. ‘Disability and Resurrection Identity.’ New Blackfriars 96 (1066): 723–38. Eiesland, Nancy L. 1994. The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Epstein, Julia. 1995. ‘The Pregnant Imagination, Fetal Rights, and Women’s Bodies: A Historical Inquiry.’ Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 7 (1): 139–62. Gerrish, B.A. 1993. Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Goodey, C. F., and Tim Stainton. 2001. ‘Intellectual Disability and the Myth of the Changeling Myth.’ Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 37 (3): 223–40. Hall, Melinda. 2016. The Bioethics of Enhancement: Transhumanism, Disability, and Biopolitics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books Haslam, Molly C. 2013. A Constructive Theology of Intellectual Disability: Human Being as Mutuality and Response. New York: Fordham University Press. Hauerwas, Stanley. 1984. ‘Marginalizing the “Retarded”.’ In The Deprived, the Disabled, and the Fullness of Life, edited by Flavian Dougherty, 67–105. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, Inc. Heuser, Stefan. 2012. ‘The Human Condition as Seen from the Cross: Luther and Disability.’ In Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, edited by Brian Brock and John Swinton, 184–99. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Hull, John M. 2014. Disability: The Inclusive Church Resource. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd. Mark, Tzvi C. 2002. Disability in Jewish Law. New York: Routledge. McDonnell, Kilian. 1967. John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Melcher, Sarah J. 2017. ‘Introduction.’ In The Bible and Disability: A Commentary, edited by Sarah J. Melcher, Mikeal C. Parsons, and Amos Yong, 1–27. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Melcher, Sarah J., Mikeal C. Parsons, and Amos Yong, eds. 2017. The Bible and Disability: A Commentary. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Midelfort, H.C. Erik. 1999. A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

230

 

Miles, M. 2001. ‘Martin Luther and Childhood Disability in 16th Century Germany: What Did He Write? What Did He Say?’ Journal of Religion, Disability and Health 5 (4): 5–36. Mullins, R.T. 2011. ‘Some Difficulties for Amos Young’s Disability Theology of the Resurrection.’ Ars Disputandi 11: 24–32. Nario-Redmond, Michelle R. 2019. Ableism: The Causes and Consequences of Disability Prejudice. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Olyan, Saul M. 2008. Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Patton Baker, Mary. 2015. Participation in Christ and Eucharistic Formation. Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster. Pawl, Timothy. 2019. In Defense of Extended Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pawl, Timothy, and Kevin Timpe. 2009. ‘Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven.’ Faith and Philosophy 26 (4): 396–417. Raphael, Rebecca. 2008. Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature. New York: T&T Clark Ltd Reist, Melinda Tankard. 2006. Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics. Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex. Scheerenberger, R. C. 1983. A History of Mental Retardation. Baltimore: Brookes Publishing Co. Schipper, Jeremy. 2006. Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible: Figuring Mephibosheth in the David Story. New York: T&T Clark Ltd. Scrutton, Anastasia Philippa. 2015. ‘Is Depression a Sin or a Disease? A Critique of Moralizing and Medicalizing Models of Mental Illness.’ Journal of Disability & Religion 19 (4): 285–311. Scuro, Jennifer. 2018. Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Questions via Disability Studies. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Swinton, John. 2012. Dementia: Living in the Memories of God. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Swinton, John, Harriet Mowat, and Susannah Baines. 2011. ‘Whose Story Am I? Redescribing Profound Intellectual Disability in the Kingdom of God.’ Journal of Religion, Disability and Health 15: 5–19. Timpe, Kevin. 2015. ‘An Argument for Limbo.’ Journal of Ethics 19: 277–92. Timpe, Kevin. n.d. ‘Denying a Unified Concept of Disability.’ Timpe, Kevin. 2019. ‘Disabled Beatitude.’ In Philosophy of Religion for All: Essays on Disability, Gender, Race, and Animals, edited by Kevin Timpe and Blake Hereth. New York: Routledge. Timpe, Kevin. 2020. ‘Medieval Concepts of Disability.’ In Disability in Medieval Christian Philosophy and Theology, edited by Scott Williams. New York: Routledge.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

 

231

Walls, Jerry. 2002. Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, Scott. 2018. ‘Horrendous-Difference Disabilities, Resurrected Saints, and the Beatific Vision: A Theodicy.’ Religions 9 (2): 1–13. Yong, Amos. 2007. Theology and down Syndrome: Reimaging Disability in Late Modernity. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Yong, Amos. 2009. ‘Disability and the Love of Wisdom: De-Forming, Re-Forming, Per-Forming Philosophy of Religion.’ Ars Disputandi 9: 54–71. Yong, Amos. 2011. The Bible, Disability, and the Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. Yong, Amos. 2012. ‘Disability Theology of the Resurrection: Persisting Questions and Additional Considerations–a Reponse to Ryan Mullins.’ Ars Disputandi 12: 4–10.

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. ableism 209–11, 213–16, 223–4 Adams, Marilyn McCord 98, 103, 113–16 African American Church, see Black church afterlife 16–17, 185–6, 189, 194–5, 197, 199–202, 206–28 Agency Prioritization Principle 191–4 alienation from God 150–1 from church 150–1 Al Ghazali 12–13, 25–6, 37–8 Alcoff, Linda M. 71n.43, 106–7 analytic theology as committed to realism, see realism as focused abstract 6–9 as liberation theology 70–1 misconceptions 3–11 nature of 2–4, 47–54 as objectifying, see objectification Anderson, Carmarion 153n.13 Anderson, Elizabeth 106 Anderson, Pamela Sue 5–6 Aquinas, St. Thomas 37–8 Aquinas, Thomas 126 arbitrariness, religious 23–4 Arpaly, Nomy 37–8 atonement 16, 166–80 feminist objections to 167–70 theories of 167 attraction Same–sex 144–6, 155–6 Sexual 146–7 Augustine, of Hippo 223–4, 227 authority, deference to 97–9, 106–15 Bacon, Marie 137–8 Ballantyne, Nathan 32 Barnes, Elizabeth 40, 223–4 Bastian, Bruce 121–2 Bates, Matthew W. 124n.10 beatific vision 207, 213–14, 219–20, 223–6 Billings, J. Todd 213–14 blindness 225–6

Boss, Sarah Jane 82n.18 Bourdieu, Pierre 60–1 Brinkerhoff, Anna 37–8 Brock, Brian 103 Brown, Joanne Carlson 168 Brownmiller, Susan 176–7 Burden Allocation Principle 192–4 Calvin, John 212–14 Carter, J. Kameron 60–1 celibacy 144–5, 147n.12 Chopp, Rebecca 209 Chrysostom, John 80 church church hurt 119, 137 Black Church 141, 143, 145n.8, 148–61 cisgender 186 cisnormativity 195–7 Clark–Soles, Jamie 214 Coady, C.A.J 98n.4 Coakley, Sarah 41, 48n.4 Cockayne, Joshua 129n.15 Cockayne, Joshua 15 Cohen, Hermann 111–12, 115–16 complementarianism, see gender complementarianism conciliationism, see religious disagreement Cone, James 50–1, 67–70 Copeland, M. Shawn 70 Cottingham, John 98, 115–16 Creech, Jimmy 133 Crisp, Oliver 47 Cross, Richard 172, 179, 207, 214, 220–3 Cuneo, Terence 130 deconversion 120n.3, 136–7 DeCruz 32–3 DeCruz 41 DeCruz, H. 12–13 Descartes, René 12–13, 25–6 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–V) 187

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

234



disability 17, 39–40, 103–4, 108, 133–5, 206–28 and impairment 222–3 and personal identity 216–20, 223 and selective abortion 207, 227–8 and sin 208–9 cognitive 226–7 in the Christian tradition 208–15 Martin Luther’s theology of 210–12 John Calvin’s theology of 212–14 metaphysics of 223 disagreement, see religious disagreement Dormandy, K. 36 Dotson, K. 14–15, 99–104, 115–16 double consciousness 32–3 Douglas, Kelly Brown 146–8, 159 dualism, soul/body 188–9 DuBois, W.E.B. 32–3 Dyson, Michael Eric 60–1 dysphoria, see gender dysphoria echo chamber 35–6 Efird, D. 15 Ehrman, Terrance 207, 215–18 Eiesland, Nancy 108, 115, 209, 213n.40, 215 Elephant Man, See Merrick, Joseph encroachment, normative 57–8 epistemic bubbles 35–6 epistemic friction 12–13, 24–5, 36–43 as possibly facilitating oppression 39–40 epistemic heroes, see list of contributors epistemic injustice 173–8 epistemic oppression 98–102, 109–10 detection and correction of 102–9 epistemic partiality 37–8 eschaton 206, 212, 215 Esther 169–70 eudaemonia 59–69 eugenics 207, 214 experimental philosophy 12–13, 26 faith 119–20, 124–5, 129, 137 loss of 124, 136–7 Feldman, Richard 23–4 feminist philosophy 166–7 feminist theology 166–7, 173 Ford, J. Massyngberde 82n.20 Fricker, Miranda 14–16, 66–8, 70, 99–102, 104, 106–8, 115, 176 Furman, Katherine 31–2 Gaia 185n.1 Galileo 111, 113 Gaventa, Beverly 85n.23

Gender 105, 145–6, 201–2 binary 103, 105, 116, 145–6 complementarianism 141–3, 145–7, 149–50, 154–6 confirmation surgery 194 dysphoria 16–17, 185–9, 191–5, 197 identity 144, 146–7, 185, 190–4 social Construction of 141–2 transition 16–17, 145n.8, 186–9, 194–5, 197, 199 Gendler, Tamar 38 Gold, Mitchell 121 Goldberg, Sanford 35–6 Goodey, C. F. 211 Gould, Stephen Jay 111–12 Green, Adam 109 Greer, Broderick 159 Hadewijch of Brabant 41–2 Hagner, Daniel 84n.22 Harbisson, Neil 221n.78 Harding, Sandra 5–6, 67 Haslanger, Sally 5, 9–11, 58–60, 60n.25, 67n.35, 75–6, 201–2 Hauerwas, Stanley 218 Hauerwas’s dictum 218–20, 223 heaven 185–6, 199, 201, 224–5 Hegel, G. 8–9 Hereth, Blake 16 hermeneutical injustice 100–4, 106–7, 176–8 Heuser, Stefan 210–11 Hick, John 38 Hicks, Daniel 40 Higgenbotham, Evelyn Brooks 149 homophobia 142, 150–1 Horsford, Jared 122 Hull, John 213–14, 227 humility, intellectual 97–9 Ibn Tufayl, M. 42 ideology 176 imaginative resistance 38–9 incarnation 220–2 injustice 142, 196–7, 199 Innocent Identity Principle 191, 193–4 intersex 103–5, 108–9, 141n.2, 145–6 invisibility 153–5 Irenaeus 80 James, William 24, 37 Jennings, Willie 60–1 Jezebel 144–6 Johnson, Elizabeth 89

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

 joint attention 127 justice 142, 180, 185–94, 196–9 restorative vs. retributive 198 Kamitsuka, Margaret 51n.16 Kant 7–8, 25, 48n.3, 111–12 Karslake, Dan 135–6 King, Eronica 157 Langton, Rae 9–11 Lebens, Samuel 37 Lewis, C.S 124n.9, 130–2 Lewis, David 9 LGBTQI 121–2, 144–7 LGBT Christians 120n.2, 121–2, 130n.16, 132–7, 141–3, 146–7, 153–4 LGBTQ people of colour 142–3, 146, 150–9 liberation 142, 159–61 liberation theology 13 and analytic theology 12–13; see also analytic theology, as liberation theology and eudaemonism, see eudaemonia and explanation 57–63, 68, 70–1 as normative and methodological constraint on theology 65–6 nature of 48–53 Longino, Helen 24, 40 Lorraine, Cristina of 111 love 124–7 Lukács, Georg 66 Luther, Martin 210–12 marginalization, epistemic advantages of 30–1 Marin, Andrew 120n.2 Mary, St 13–14 and sacramental ministry of women 87–9 as exemplar 89–91 as Mediatrix 76–7 immaculate conception of 88–9 perpetual virginity of 85–6 sinlessness of 78–84 social identities of 75–6 McCall, Thomas 51–2 McKnight, Scot 88n.27 Medina, José 24, 32–3, 69 Melcher, Sarah 209 Merrick, Joseph 133–5 Merrick, Teri 14–15 Merricks, Trenton 188–9 Middleton, Deborah F. 89n.29 Midelfort, H. C. Erik 209 Mills, Charles 5–6, 67–8, 176

235

Moberly, Robert 76n.1 Moon, Dawne 130n.16 Moone, Dawne 15–16 Moore, G. E. 7–8 Mouw, Richard 113–15 Mullins, R. T. 207, 218–20 Nguyen, C. Thi 35–6 norms, epistemic (see values, epistemic) normative encroachment (see encroachment, normative) Nozick, Robert. 121n.4 objectification 9–10 Oliver, Simon 6–7 oppression 159 internalized 160 liberation from 142 Panchuk, Michelle 1–2, 15, 26, 75–6, 122–3, 135n.17 Parker, Jarrod 136 Parker, Rebecca 168 Pawl, Tim 217–18, 220 Peeler, Amy 13–14 peer disagreement, see religious disagreement permissivism 23–4 Perry, Tim 80n.9 Persecution Complex, see silencing of white men personal Identity 190–2, 216–19 philosophy of religion and educational background and philosophy of religion 26–30 and home background 26–30 demographics 34–6 Pitt, Richard 156 Plantinga, Alvin 63 Pogin, Kathryn 16 Polhaus Jr., Gaile 104–5 politics of respectability, see respectability politics preferential option for the poor 89–90 properties, sexual 186 prosthetics 221–2 Pyne, Jake 195 Quan, K.A. 109 race 1, 4–5, 7–8, 11, 26, 68 racism 68–9, 141, 143–4, 146, 148–9, 157–9 Rauser, Randal 47n.1 Rea, Michael 4, 7, 47, 47n.2, 49–50, 53–4, 70–1, 221n.78 realism 3–6

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

236



reconciliation 142–3, 196–7 reist, Melinda Tankard 207 religious disagreement 23–5, 28–35 and conciliationism 23–4 and steadfastness 23–4 and uniqueness 23–4 sources of 28–30 religious trauma 15, 121–4, 127, 134, 136–7 reparations 167, 194 resistance 159–61, 175–6, 179–80 respectability politics 141, 143, 148–50, 154, 156–7 resurrection 188–9, 215–16 Robertson, Rob and Linda 153 Ruether, Rosemary Radford 180 Russell, Bertrand 6–8, 10 sacrament 144–6, 151–2 same–gender–loving Christians 141–2, 142n.3, 146, 150–9 Schellenberg, J. L. 32 Schoenfeld, Miriam 23–4 Seemann, Axel 126n.12 sexual desire 132–3 sexual Orientation 26, 32–3, 132–3, 136, 152, 190 sexuality 146–8, 157, 160 shame 15–16, 120–1, 132–8, 143–4 chronic 144–5, 144n.4 episodic 144n.4 reintegrating 143–5 sacramental 15–16, 130n.16, 141–8, 150–9 stigmatizing 143–5 Sher, Gila 24 silencing 153–5 of white men, see persecution complex Silwa, Paulina 127n.14 Singer 40 Singh, Devin 48n.3 Sobrino, Jon 48n.3 Sosa 58–60 spiritual violence 15–16, 121–4, 127, 132–7, 141–3, 145n.7, 148–50, 154–5 Stainton, Tim 211 standpoint epistemology 5–6, 30–1 steadfastness, see religious disagreement Stroud, Sarah 37 Stump, Eleonore 15, 125–7, 133–4, 136, 173, 199–201 Swinburne, Richard 113–15, 169–72, 179

Talbert, Bonnie 127–8 Teresa of Ávila, St. 37–8, 41 testimonial injustice 100–2 testimony 26 theism, arguments for 28–30 Timpe, Kevin 17 Tobin, Theresa 15–16, 124, 130n.16 transgender 185–203 transition, see gender transition transphobia 142, 185–6, 194–9 trauma 14 see also religious trauma Truluck, Rembert 134 union 125–9, 201 romantic 201 with God 125–9, 132–7, 206–28 values, epistemic 54–60 Van Dyke, Christina 41–2 van Inwagen, Peter 9, 23–4 vanFraassen, Bas 7 violence domestic 173–8 submission to 166–7, 180 Warman, Jack 15 Weil, Simone 115 Westerholm, Martin 6–9 white supremacy 158–9 as connected to sexual shaming 15–16, 143, 146, 148 as spiritually violent 141–2, 148 internalized 158–9 White, Roger 23–4 Williams, Ritva 81n.16 Williams, Thomas 179 Witt, Charlotte 5, 76 Wolterstorff, Nicholas 8, 125, 129 women’s ministry 78, 84–9; see also Mary, and sacramental ministry of women Wood, William 37–8, 47–8, 47n.1, 51–2 worship 124–5, 129–32, 135n.17, 136, 225 Yadav, Sameer 13 Yong, Amos 207, 208n.5, 214, 218–20 Zagzebski, Linda 14–15, 97–9, 102–3, 106–10, 115–16 Zhuangzi 42

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2020, SPi