Desiderata for a Protestant Theology of the Body

first things first.

Haley Baumeister did the world a service when she ventured into the conversation around permanent contraception and wrote a provocative piece about vasectomies. Her piece comes on the heels of several years of musings about these topics, from the Josh Butler debacle at the low end to Aristotelian and Catholic reflections on the ordered ends of the human person at the high end.

What is missing has been a distinctively Protestant voice about reproduction and sexuality. Matthew Lee Anderson, a Protestant, writes regularly, and also provocatively, about these topics- but without picking a fight, I’m not sure there is anything distinctively *Protestant* about his writing on these matters.¹

I would not propose myself for this constructive project, both because I have other things ahead in line and because it is outside of my own expertise- but also because I try to speak of sex in accordance with Scripture, which is to say not very often and with little clarity.

But I think there are, in fact, distinctively Protestant ways to approach the question of sexuality and reproduction- and I suspect some of the dearth of conversation about these topics reflects a certain Protestant sensibility. It also reflects the boundaries of what might be possible with a Protestant view. So here are a few “desiderata”- a fancy way of saying “things we ought to consider”, in order to build a Protestant theology of the body.

1. Protestants do not have a magisterium. We should not envy one.

The question of who speaks for Protestantism is a perennial one, because of course the answer is no one, and everyone. What results is often more like the “clambering cymbal” of the loveless life, than it is a prudent, well-lived conversation.

It is true that a teaching office centralizes, and standardizes, theological reflection on a topic. For many Catholics (and especially for Protestant converts to Catholicism), such standardization is highly welcome- in fact, it can be difficult for some Roman Catholics to conceive of “theology” without centralization and standardization.

Welcome, ye hearty ones, to the wild west of Protestantism. I love it here.

Of course, some denominations may have a teaching-office-lite (TM), but they are as likely to rely on other denominational resources to craft an amalgam, as they are to vest a theological statement with one person, in one voice.

Because of my own opinions about what theology is and what it is for, I think this is a benefit of Protestantism. But minimally, you ought to recognize that Protestants simply cannot have doctrinal statements in the same form that Catholics receive them.

2. For this reason, you need a high view of discernment. “Discernment” is another word for what the Old Testament calls “wisdom”. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom is the shape of life that avoids wickedness- but also temptation. Wisdom does not just narrowly miss the trainwreck- it crosses the street long before that dangerous intersection. Wisdom shapes a life that sets it up to have a certain kind of character. It does not set up its chair among the wicked. Rather, it chooses good company in order to better its chances to live a good kind of life. This is not all that discernment is. But minimally, it is a skill that requires attention and care. It is much, much more important than decision-making, because it encompasses your whole life . To have an orderly view of reproduction and sexuality, you need this kind of whole-life crafting well before the questions of family planning arise.

3. Discernment must take seriously both the tragic and the irreducibly particular nature of our lives.

   Too often the question of children and family is rose colored. Children are adorable, for the most part, and making family life beautiful has become a major- I’d say the major- occupation of women in my own demographic. Here we might indulge a rabbit trail about “beauty”- what it is, and what it is for- but for now I’d simply say that beauty and attractiveness are not identical. Beauty, indeed, can contain the tragic. And thats what it has to do with family life.

   In order to discern what shape family takes in our own lives, we have to consider the particular lives we have- both the constraints and particular aptitudes, gifts, or temperaments at hand. This gets in to tricky territory- is a bad temper a reason not to have more children, or is it a place where grace might over time have its way? Is financial precarity a reason? Much ink has been spilled on such things. The point of discernment is that no one can tell you how this maps onto your own life. You must live it for yourself. Discernment is sisters to accountability- it is your life that you are taking account of, and not someone else’s. Your life might have veins of the tragic all throughout it. Your bringing children into the world might invite the tragic to your doorstep. This is why its doubly important to live among the wise.

4. Privacy and prudence should be closer friends. I would be fine to never hear about someone’s religious feelings in regard to their lovemaking, ever again. The same goes for cervical fluid. Being a person means owning your own choices, not talking about them on the internet.

5. We need to think better about what it means to “act”, or refrain from acting. I see rhetoric around “choice” being interrogated by those who embrace Catholic teaching on reproduction. But choice functions quite curiously, in these circles. It is often heard that those who practice NFP or Catholic family planning are “letting God choose the size of their family”. But no one would say they are “letting God fertilize their tomatoes”, or “letting God decide if I get in shape.” In all three of these cases, the point is to order your actions such that a desired end results. If you desire children, you might engage in certain activities. If you don’t, you might not. It is not that God has nothing to do with it, of course. In all cases, God brings the yield in season. God has designed bodies such that certain activities yield certain results, intermittently and irregularly but with enough regularity that we can say “x leads to y”. But deferring our agency to some “divine plan” is a very, very odd way to speak about being a human.

6. Sexuality need not be sacramental to be meaningful. Making things a “sacrament” is one way we misunderstand what it means to be created. This, of course, deserves its own book. But the idea that the created world is a dim veil through which we view the sacred is a very unChristian way of viewing creation, I think. Sex is part of the natural order, but whether it is more precious than, say, gardening or cooking likely results from our experience of it. I suspect that speaking of “sacred romance” and the like results from an attempt to find a theological category for something that feels so meaningful, and something that our culture idolizes. We in fact have such a category- it’s called a gift. It seems to me that this is adequate. Otherwise, we end up almost inevitably speaking in terms of both Humane Vitae and Josh Butler- the two share much in common- that tend toward making the human divine (a heresy). Maybe Math is erotic, maybe it is not- but what does “erotic” contribute, semantically, that gift would lack?

What else would you add?

1. I’d love to argue in the comments, Matt.