Eros & Embodiment, Sex & Gender: Offering a Theo-Anthropo Heuristic & Proper Conception of Magisterial Hierarchy

From General Revelation, using a Lonerganian heuristic, we can intelligently, but fallibly, attend to the historically concrete, reasonably evaluate its meanings & inchoately grasp how to responsibly & lovingly express them. cf Heaps & Ormerod, Statistically Ordered: Gender, Sexual Identity, and the Metaphysics of “Normal” in Theological Studies, Volume 80, Issue 2, June 2019


Beyond mere physicalist, biological & rationalist a priori modeling, this requires a more robustly personalist inquiry, a posteriori, using a social – relational responsibility model.


From Special Revelation, we can, then, deepen our understanding, further exploring our anthropological accounts of the historically concrete, in the context of what we believe to be both protologically intended &
eschatologically real.

A more robustly theological anthropology would, therefore, also inquire into liturgical, exegetical, patristic, conciliar & hagiographical resources.

Regarding sex, gender, eros & embodiment, for example, one could very profitably turn to Nyssen, Maximus, Eriugena &
Byzantine hagiography. Competing interpretations of these saintly thinkers are fascinating.

My own cosmotheandric approach doesn’t interpret the protological, historical & eschatological as a chronological theophanic sequence. I know there are takes on double creation, pre- & post-lapsarian accounts, concepts like provisional necessities & dispensations; I find many of their insights right-headed & good-hearted.

I prefer, however, to explore protological, historical & eschatological questions as if they refer, rather, to how it is that we can authentically encounter all persons in ways that are, simultaneously, both eternal & temporal. That’s to say that I believe that we can interpret our encounters in a way that sees each & every other person as a particular revelation, because we are multiply-incarnate manifestations of the universal Totus Christus via logoi & tropoi.

I approach the logoi – tropoi as consistent with Scotus’ formal distinction, logoi referring to what we are, essentially, as imagoes Dei, tropoi referring, modally & theotically, to how we become more like God.

As such, we’re all mutually constituted with Jesus, the particular Logos, per His Christogonic self-determination, which also includes each person’s own theotic, autopoietic, co-self-determination. Hence, again, the need for an empirical, a posteriori, personalist, social – relational responsibility model to discern, also inductively, how we can best respond, tropically, in concrete ways that are responsible & loving, to become more Christ-like, more human. Yes, even beyond what we are as Christ-images! To best discern the Christ-like, we need to encounter other people, listen to their stories and discern how the Spirit has fostered their ongoing transformation. We need to “see how they love one another!”

This requires doing a theology that’s open-sourced and peer to peer (P2P), even non-hierarchical.

When Reuther uses the phrase ―intrinsic aspect of the mission of the church, one might sense in that a subversion of some of the logic employed by many in her church‘s teaching office?

There is an old, sterile scholasticism that employs a substance metaphysic as an ontology from which a deontology then issues forth with all manner of descriptions that specify the intrinsic nature of this reality or that. Where sex, gender, eros & embodiment realities are involved, such an approach, alone, is sterile. That’s because it is too rationalistic, a prioristic, biologistic and physicalistic, so, therefore divorced from the concrete lived experience of the faithful. It traffics only in abstractions, which leave us scratching our heads and asking: Say what?

Put differently, such an approach takes too narrow a view of the way things are (ontology) and then reasons to how things ought to be (deontology) from their
very nature (intrinsically). A male is created like this and a female like that, therefore a male must do this and a female must do that and neither must do otherwise because that would go against one‘s intrinsic nature. This, then, pervades one‘s views of church polity, moral doctrine, sacramental theology and church disciplines.

Now, we’re all for deontology- is it right? as complemented by consequentialist- is
it helpful? contractarian- is it fair? and aretaic – is it virtuous? approaches, but it is premised on starting with a good ontology, which, when we‘re talking about
people, means a good anthropology.

We best ask the question, then, what if we as created co-creators, rather than being passive observers and characters playing out an author‘s script, have been gifted with a participatory role in creation such that we have something to contribute to HOW things are supposed to unfold, teleologically? What if this whole notion of original sin as some ontological rupture rooted in the past is bass-ackwards and our experience of a most radical finitude is due, instead, to

Somebody‘s unfinished business, which we experience as a teleological striving oriented toward the future? cf. Jack Haught‘s aesthetic teleology

In that case, we, as created co-creators, while still adequately determined and partially bounded (by our genetic inheritance & environmental parameters), would also be autopoietic (self-organizing) and sufficiently free (quasi-autonomous in the divine matrix). cf. Phil Hefner‘s theological anthropology and Joe Bracken‘s Divine Matrix

From an axiological (value-oriented) perspective, as semiotic (meaning-making) animals, we would not just discover meaning and values, but, without in any way disvaluing those we have discovered, or violating them, we would create new meanings and new values, which is to say that they would be novel, emergent realities. cf. Robert C. Neville‘s axiology and Charles Sanders Peirce‘s triadic semeiotic

If we thus change our perspective on the nature of our finitude, then we must change our understanding of the nature of atonement. This is to say that, if we change our assessment on what we think is wrong with reality (original sin and the Fall), this changes our view of how reality is to be fixed (soteriologically), which changes our view of the Incarnation, itself (why God became man and why the Spirit so profusely permeates our reality, panentheistically). This would suggest that the Incarnation, rather than being some grand cosmic repair job of some ontological rupture located in the past (― the Fall), was a grand telic design built into the plan from the cosmic get-go, teleologically. cf. Teilhard, Maximus, Scotus & Jack Haught‘s Cosmic Adventure

This would all then change our perspective on
1) where things might be headed in the future, eschatologically;
2) Who the Cosmic Christ is, Christologically; and
3) how the Spirit empowers us, pneumatologically; all which then bear directly on
4) how we will experience one another in community, ecclesiologically.

And we think the answers to these questions will have to take into account a radically incarnational and profusely pneumatological reality, which is then ― intrinsically participatory, profoundly inclusive and wonderfully universalist in its indelible catholicity.

This need not, in the least, call into question the salvific efficacy of the Incarnation and its indispensable role in effecting our at-One-ment. Rather, it broadens our conception of how deep is the love of the Trinity for creation and how we are called to a relationship of unspeakable intimacy in response to this divine eros, which then impels our agape‘ toward self, toward other, toward our cosmos and toward our God, all in right relationship, shall we say, intrinsically. cf. Thomas Merton re: these 4 vectors of love

A servant-leader‘s role becomes that of a host, patterned after this grand cosmic hospitality that we just described. As such, this role more so resembles that of a scribe or note-taker, asking each participant where they‘ve been, what they‘ve been up to, where they‘ve witnessed the Spirit at work and inviting each to give voice in hymn, psalm, story-telling, ritual-sharing and fellowship-enjoying community, as they say, lex orandi lex credendi, our worship birthing our creeds!

There is nothing exclusively top-down about this. It‘s all peer to peer (p2p), in essence.

Do we institutionalize sacrament? Sure we do, as the radically social animals we are.

Is there a clerical role? Sure there is, but we needn‘t be clericalistic.

Neither do we need to be institutionalistic, over-identifying the Mystical Body with one aspect of an institution or another, denying the salvific efficacies of other traditions, institutions or even what are, ostensibly, noninstitutional vehicles.

We might ask what the role of a hierarchy is in a p2p environment and whether that need be an intrinsic feature of its architecture?

Emergence, itself, is intrinsically hierarchical, which is to recognize that a system‘s novel emergent properties can indeed effect a top-down causation. But we must also recognize that it is also in the nature of this causation to not violate the structures and properties from which it emerged. Complex emergence is a rich reality with both bottom-up and top-down causations. The essential element of the systems approach is that the value added to the system comes from the relationships between the parts and not from the parts per se, which is to suggest that the hierarchy doesn‘t impart value per se but that the value derives from the feedback loop as the hierarchy, ideally, would channel the information it has received from other system structures and processes, all for the good of the system as a whole. Anything else devolves into a degenerate hierarchicalism.

In robustly semiotic systems, we must also pay heed to Walker Percy‘s distinction between information and news, or what Benedict XVI calls the informative and performative, the latter which can be of profound existential import and eminently actionable. We might call such: Good News.

What the hierarchy is to pass along, then, for example, is only that information first heralded by a shepherd who asked:

Do you see what I see?

Do you hear what I hear?

Do you know what I know?

It is only then that the king has any authority to say:

Listen to what I say!

Further Advancing the Conversation

I parse Maximian logoi & tropoi using Peirce’s modal phenomenology coupled with Aristotelian – Scotist principles for the reduction of potencies by acts.

The phenomenology roughly maps to past possibilities, present actualities & future probabilities and/or necessities.

Existential acts of thatness reduce essential potencies of whatness per divine protological intentions.

Efficient acts of whoness reduce material potencies of the when-ness & where-ness of embodied beings, whether corporeal or angelic, consistent with divine historical intentions.

Efficient acts of whoness reduce material potencies of the when-ness & where-ness of embodied beings, whether corporeal or angelic, consistent with divine historical intentions.

Formal acts of howness reduce final potencies of whyness, consistent with divine eschatological intentions.

The potencies of creatures refer to logoi of the Logos in a creatio ex Deo. They are reduced by personal tropic acts that are irreducibly triadic. The logoi & tropoi are formally distinct.

Our existential acts reduce essential potencies and are, primarily, divinely determined. Via creatio ex continua, God thus gifts creatures the logoi of their primary (original) natures, as constituted by the divine relative perfections of being.

Our efficient acts reduce material potencies, as constituted by divine relative perfections or logoi of well being. Those volitional (plus intellectual) acts are, ordinarily, either self-determined or synergistic & co-self-determined, but, extraordinarily, can be monergistic & divinely determined.

Our formal acts reduce final potencies, which refer to the logoi of creatures’ secondary natures, which are constituted by the divine relative perfections of eternal well being. These intellectual (plus volitional) acts are, ordinarily, synergistic & co-self-determined, but, extraordinarily, can be monergistic & divinely determined, so contribute to the growth of our virtuous natures.

Wholly self-determined acts disregard the intellect, deformatively, so are formal only in the sense that they can contribute to vicious secondary natures.

Our tropic instantiations of the logoi of divine relative perfections gift us being, well being & eternal well being, only when our acts are co-creative, so ensue from divine determinations & co-self-determinations, monergistically or synergistically.

As with our individual growth in virtue, our socially constructed identities & institutions can promote both our historical well being & our eschatological well being, which can continue to grow, epectatically, the scope of our secondary beatitudes.

As with any individual deformative increase of a vicious secondary nature, our socially constructed identities & institutions can also threaten our historical well being, even as Providence preserves our eschatological well being via purgative graces.

In a consideration of eros, embodiment, gender & sex, we needn’t parse, precisely, where to locate every aspect of those realities vis a vis which might belong to our divinely-determined protological original natures & which will have historically emerged in our virtuous secondary natures pursuant to our synergistic, co-creative triadic tropic acts.

All such elements of our original & secondary natures can, at least, be discerned as consistent or not with the divine logoi of being, well being & eternal well being in order to authenticate such acts as virtuous or vicious. In other words, we can inquire into whether this or that practice fosters or frustrates intellectual, affective, moral, social & religious conversion.

We can discern the fruits of the Spirit in the lives of individuals, families & communities. We can see how they love one another.

By giving primacy to the unitive and more broadly conceiving the procreative in spiritual, theotic terms, based on my own interpersonal encounters with my LGBTQ sisters & brothers, I believe it’s long past the time for the church to quit condescending with mere pastoral accommodations.

It’s time for us all to recognize that they – not only fully belong in our communities, but – have lifestyles that can, indeed, help them to faithfully reflect Christ’s image, authentically grow in Christ’s likeness and minister in every conceivable way to advance the Kingdom of God.

Discerning the Eutropic & Dystropic

Anthropologically, even if we bracket the scientific nature – nuture complexities and metaphysical problems of universals, we can still meaningfully refer to complex human behaviors in terms of logoi & tropoi. As such, we can observe  lifestyles, for example, to discern any manifestations of the fruits of the Spirit.

We can probe for any transformative efficacies of same as we look for evidence of secular & religious conversions, both personally & sociopolitically.

We can, thereby, authenticate —-which pratices are orthopraxic, which desires are orthopathic, which interrelations are orthocommunal, which unitive aspirations are orthotheotic and which beliefs are orthodoxic.

Of course, not every type of behaving, desiring, belonging, becoming & believing thus fosters human well being.

That’s all to suggest, then, that only our co-creative tropic instantiations of divine logoi, as synergistically co-self-determined, as truly eu-tropic cooperations with grace, will grow our virtuous secondary natures, individually & communally.

That’s to recognize, therefore, that wholly self-determined acts, which parasitize divine potencies, as empirically dys-tropic refusals of grace, can only grow vicious secondary natures.

Which human behaviors, individually & socially, will be eu-tropic or dys-tropic can’t be known speculatively from mere abductive & deductive inferences. Such rationalistic & a prioristic approaches are intellectually sterile and lead to moral incoherence. Discerning the eu-tropic or dys-tropic character of our behaviors, then, requires inductive probing using time-honored discernment processes & anthropological sciences.