[T&S 11.

1 (2004) 52-63]
ISSN 1355-8358

Proleptic Sexual Love: God's Promiscuity

Reflected in Christian Polyamory

Robert E. Goss
[email protected]

Abstract
Goss acknowledges the value of pair-bonded relationships to the Christian
community but wants to explore the ethical and theological space for envision-
ing Christians whose erotic lives fall outside monogamous relationships.
He takes seriously Elizabeth Stuart's suggestion that the restoration of an
eschatological paradigm for rethinking queer sexual relationships. Goss
claims that Christ becomes the paradigm for multi-partnered relationships
in spiritual encounters within religious communities and perhaps a means
for rethinking non-monogamous relationships.

One of the most tenacious ideas about sex is that there is one best way to
do it, and that everyone else should do it that way. Most people find it
difficult to grasp that whatever they like to do sexually will be thoroughly
repulsive to someone else, and that whatever repels them will be the most
treasured delight of someone somewhere...

While I recognize pair-bonded couples as gifts to the Christian commu-

nity, I want to explore the ethical space for those queer Christians who
fall outside of the defined boundaries of a committed relationship. Most
explorations within the queer community in the last decade have been
either in the right to marry movement or the opposition to import
heterosexist models of marriage within the queer community. While
anti-marriage critics and the right to marry movements would both
agree that sex is a community-building function, the right to marry
proponents would limit that function to the coupled individuals whereas

1. Gayle Rubin, 'Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of
Sexuality', in Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale and David M. Halperin (eds.). The
Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 15.
The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SEI 7NX and
15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010, USA.
 Goss Prolej'tic Sexual Lo'oe 53

anti-marriage critics would likewise argue that many same-sex commu-

nities are built upon tlie bonds generated from casual or non-monogamous
sex. This essay will not denigrate the value of pair-bonded, same-sex
relationships at the expense of elevating polyamorous relationships, but
it will open space for theological reflection on the value of polyamorous
relationships.
This reflection on polyamory arises out of an event in my transition
from the Jesuits and a theological insight from Elizabeth Stuart. First the
event I want to recall is my exit interview from the Jesuits with a superior
many years ago. As 1 articulated the reason of falling in love as sufficient
reason for my discernment to leave the Jesuits, my superior said directly
to me: 'You can stay in the Jesuits and be promiscuous, but you can't
settle down with one person'. That statement recognized that poly-
amorous relationships do exist within the Jesuits and n:iale religious life.
The second is a theological suggestion in Elizabeth Stuart's essay, 'Sex
in Heaven: The Queering of Theological Discourse on Sexuality'. Stuart
takes another frajectory when she obsei'ves how queer folks have uncon-
sciously connected sexual desire to the afterlife and that non-monogamy
is presumed in heaven. She calis for the restoration of an eschatological
paradigm to rethink contemporary queer sexuality; she concludes:
Communities of resistance and solidarit}' create eschatological visions of
'life after' in order to provide some common content to hope and struggle
for liberatitm. At the same time they seek to subvert this dreaming by
'deliterali/ing [their| own Utopias, retiirning the future possibihty to the
present community... Hschatological reflection does create a safe space to
dream impossible dreams, to discuss in the context of playfulness what is
ultimate and essential to humanity and to divine life. Because it is the
realm of the impossible, only the foolish or the insane would claim to be
able to speak with or of absolute tnith, and so within this discourse it may
he possihie for representatives of various Christianities and sexualities to
engage in genuinely productive debate on sexuality. We have tried with
little success to meet each other in the past and the present. Perhaps the
time has come to focus less on sex in those days and sex in these days and
more on sex in the next days, which is a profoundly Christian methodol-
ogy. Christianitv is as much about dangerous fixtures as it is ahout danger-
ous !"nemories.

Stuart claims that Christians might best examine sexuality at the present
not by looking back at past traditions and formulations but by looking
eschatologically at sex and sexual relationships. Christian eschatologicai

2. Elizabeth Stuart, 'Sex in I leaven: I'he Queering of Theological Discourse on

Sexuality', in Jon Davies and Gerard Loughlin (eds.). Sex these Days: Essays OJI 'rheology,
Scxuahh/, and Sodety (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, t997), p. 204.

i-E^ The Conliniiiim Publishing tiroiip I td 2004

54 77i('o/(.'x'i/1-^ Sexnnliti/

imagination opens up new possible configurations of relationships, and

queer eschatology raises even more possibilifies.
Eschatological visions oi sex in heaven are nof entirely new. With fhe
Reformation and the more positive evaluation of conjugal, marifal
relations, such visionaries as Emmanuel Swedenborg, William Blake,
and other romantic writers understood that human, erofic love would
continue in heaven.-^ Both Swedenborg and Blake believed that the
marital relations would continue in heaven. Earlier a more radical vision
was introduced by the Puritan poet John Milton in Paradise Lust. Milton's
interpretation of heavenly sex is not only polymorphously fluid but also
might earn the label 'queer'. Listen to Milton:
For spirits when they please
Can t'ither sex assume, or both; so soft
And Eincompounded is their essence pure.
Not tied or manacled with joint or iimb,
Mor founded on the brittle strength of bones.
Like cumbrous flesh, but in what shape they choose.
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure.
Can execute their airy purpose.
And works of love or enmity fulr'iil.

For the poet, sexual love in heaven is transformed into redemptive love.
Angelic spirits can achieve a level of unobstructed, free love that human
sexual love can hardly attain or imagine on earth. Heavenly love among
the angels is endless, rapturous and amorous: Milton writes, 'Total they
mix. Union of Pure with Pure'."*
In the queer spirit of Milton, let me proceed with another trajectory of
eschatological exploration. The story of the Sadducee test in Mk 12.18-27,
appearing in Mt. 22.23-33 and Lk. 20.27-40, becomes the matrix for
bringing the two strains of my thoughts together. It is a passage where
the Sadducee critics challenge Jesus on the notion of the afterlife. They
propose to Jesus the example of a woman who has been married seven
times and ask him, 'In fhe resurrecfion, whose wife will she be? For the
seven had married her' (Mk 12.23). Jesus responds, 'For when they rise
from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like
angels in heaven' (Mk 12.25).

3. Colleen M, McDannel! and Bernhard Lang,, Heaven: A UhUmi (New York:

Vintage Books, 1989), pp. lH^-27^.
4. Paradise Liisf, 1.423-431 in Jonathan Goldberg and Stephen Orgel (eds.), Miltoii:
Selected Poeiry (New York; Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 72. Virginia Mollenkott
first introduced me to Milton's notion of angelic sex, Mollenkott, Omnigendered: A
TrLmb-Religious Approach (Cleveland; Pilgrim Press, 2001), pp. 128-29.
5. Paradise Lofit, Vni.h27 in Goldberg and Orgcl, Milton, p. 144.

& T h f C o n l t n u u n ^ l'ui)]ishiii'' C r o u p f.td 2004.

 Goss ProU'pHc Sexual Love 55

In my years in religious life, 1 heard several serinons on this passage.

'Like angels in heaven' justified celibate religious life, 'Like angels' was
understood as 'sexless' by centuries of Christian thought that trans-
formed angels from sexual beings in the intertestamental period to sex-
less, disembodied spirits. Biblical scholar William Countryman writes:
Think...of the Uttie letter of Judy, where it appears tiiat early Christians
were teaching that you needed to have sex with angels in order to gain
tiigh standing in heaven, jude reters io this teaching only in veiled ways,
but thai is what he's attacking. Of course, his readers knew the Hebrew
Bihie (mostly in Greek translation), and they knew tiie stor}- in Genesis 6.1-
4 ahout angels having sex with human women and the offspring being
giants, judc refers to that story and also to the storv of the men of Sodoni
who in the same manner as these angels 'went after strange flesh' (fude 7,
referring to Genesis 18), ^

Even today if you suggest that angels were sexual in a sermon, many
Christians suffer an erotophobic, panic attack, picturing their sacred
icons of angels popularized by such a program as Touched by Angel. The
idea of a 'sexual' Delia Reese as an angel is too much to bear, even for
soniG queer Christian imaginations.
But if you strip away the overlay of more than a millenruum and a half
of Christian readings of sexless angels and ask what is intended by the
phrase 'like the angels', the intent of Jesus' logion is that there is no
marriage and family in God's coming reign. God abolishes the institu-
tion of marriage, which is understood as a property right and ownersliip
of women.'' But traditionally, ecclesial exegetes have understood that this
text not only abolishes marriage but also sexuality because of its narrow
interpretation of marriage for the purpose of procreation. But nothing
merits such a reading of the abolishment of sexualit\', and a queer reading
can restore sexuality to the coming reign of God. Certainly, Jesus attacked
niarriage as the patriarchal possession ot" women in marriage and thc
patriarchal family, on which the Jewish and Roman political order of
domination was based. One can maintain that Jesus was asserting the
abolishment of patriarchal marriage in the'coming reign of God. Virginia
Moiienkott writes:
Milton interpreted Jesus' remark ahout no heavenly marrying or giving in
marriage (Matt, 22,29-30} to mean not that there would be no sex in

6. L, William Countryman and M,K, Riley, Gifted by Ofhcmess: Gay and Lesbian
Christians in thc Church (TTarrisburg: Morehead Puhiishing, 2001), pp. 34-35.
7, TIneodore Jennings, Thc Mau /cs//^ io-vcd (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2003),
pp. f 96-97; L, William Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in fhe Ntiu I'esla-
ir/enl and iheir Applications for 'i'oday (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), pp, 182-83,

(<? i'lx' t'ontiniium I'libLshingt.roup [ !d 2(K''i,

56 'theology S Sexuality

heaven, but rather that sex in resurrection bodies would have none of the
binary possessiveness and constriction of marriage in a fallen world,
histead, as Jesus put it, resurrection bodies would be 'as the angels in
heaven' a vision ot astonishing freedom.

A queer reading might likewise affirm that there is no marriage and

pab-iarchai family, but if also might assert that there is sexuality without
procreation in the coming reign of God. But there is no more marriage.
This is confirmed in the Lukan version of the story when Jesus says,
'Indeed they cannot die anymore because they are angels in heaven' (Lk.
20.36). The Sadducees are traditionalists who reject the Pharisee solution
of resurrection to the afterlife but who, in addition, find transcendence
of death in the lives of their descendants. In God's coming reign, there
is no need for marriage and children when you live forever in resurreeted
bodies. But does that abolish sexuality in the age to come? Or is the reign
of God a giant bathhouse for queer sex and other polymorphous forms
as Milton dares to imagine?
The radical commensality and anti-family tradition of the early Jesus
movement lost its cutting edge towards the end of the post-persecution
period of the Roman Empire. As it developed in the Egyptian desert,
early Christian monasticism was an eschatological, anti-family, ascetical
movement.'' Through their austere, ascetic practices and prayers, the
early anchorites attempted to regain the gifts of paradise that were lost
due to fhe primal sin of Adam and Eve. They attempted to live the fore-
taste of Chrisfian salvation. Monasticism continued the eschatological
orientation of the earlier Jesus movement with a longing to recover the
lost gifts of paradise but continued the anti-family and anti-marriage
elements of the early Jesus movement. Christian monasticism provided
an alternative Christian construction of sexuality to marriage. Anthony
and the desert hermits attempted to live like angels, eschatological exem-
plars who tried to live in close proximity to God but within the world.
Even with the practices of celibacy, Christian monastics struggled with
the temptation of sexuality and erotic fantasies. Monasticism and the
later evolution of religious orders were, thus, sexual communities with
an eschatological vision of sanctification and a vision of loving non-
exclusively. These communities channeled and expressed human sexual-
ity towards the love of God and love towards one another.
Ever since its beginnings, Christian monastic communities have been
predominantly homosocial, monogendered environments, providing an

8. Mollenkott, Ovmigi-ndercd, pp. 129-30.

9. Rosemary Radford Ruether, ClirisUnnity and the Making ofthe Modern
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), pp. 25-35.

ivj'i'hf. C o n t i m u i m l ' l i b l i s h i n j ; Ciriiup l,ld 2U04,

 Goss Proleptic Sexual Love 57

opportunity to establish a religious lifestyle outside of married life.

Many men attracted to the same sex found religious communities to be
a place where they could meet similarly inclined males.^" But I want to
maintain that these were also erotic communities, whether implicitly or
explicitly expressed. The struggle to refrain from sex is a thoroughly
erotic decision; it did not, however, preclude all erotic unions within the
monastic confines.
In such homosocial, Christian communities then as it is the case now,
there were a fair number of people who were attracted to the same sex
and who discovered meaningful relationships with members of their
same sex in their quest for holiness and contemplative union with God.
Some expressed their love or loves to other members of the same sex.
Otherwise, there would be no history of the prohibitions for same-sex
contacts, attachments or particular friendships.
In examining early monastic rules and Christian penitential texts, it is
necessary to apply the principle 'where there is smoke there is fire'. Or
in this particular case, where there are prohibitions against homoerotic
behaviors, there is same-sex activities, erotic friendships, and folks
falling in love with one or more members of their communities. For
example, St Augustine cautioned a group of monastic women to love
one another, but not in a carnal fashion,^^ St Basil warned fellow monks
of the dangers of handsome, young monks.
It is frequently the case with young men that even when rigorous self-
restraint is exercised, the glowing complexion of youth still blossoms forth
and becomes a source of desire to those around them. If, therefore, anyone
is youthful and physically beautiful, let him keep his attractiveness hidden
until his appearance reaches a suitable state,^

Basil warns monks to keep their distance and to avert their eyes from
beautiful monks. Any male monastic or religious, if honest, will narrate
how they wanted to spend time with someone they fell in love with,
attracted to that beautiful person or persons in community, or work at
developing intimate bonds with several members of their community.
Centuries later, Aelred of Rievaulx expresses his internalized fears of
explicitly homoerotic relations within the monasteries when he complains:

10, John Boswell, 'Homosexuality and Religious Life: A Historical Approach', in

James B, Nelson and Sandra Longfellow (eds,). Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for
Theological Reflection (Louisville; Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), pp, 361-73,
11, Augustine, Epistles 211, quoted in John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance,
and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p, 158,
12, Basil, De renuntiatione saeculi 6, quoted in Boswell, Christianity, p, 159,

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58 Theology & Sexuality

To enter the homes of some of our bishopsand still more shameful, or

some of our monksis like entering Sodom and Gomorrah. Effeminate,
coiffeured young men, dressed up like courtesan, strut around their rumps
half-bare. Scripture says about them: "They have put boys in a brothel'.

While Aelred warns of the danger of homoerotic love and attachments

within monasteries, he launches into a discussion of the passionate friend-
ship of Jonathan and David.
St Basil and other monastic writers understood well the attraction to
the same sex as a natural inclination yet an inclination to be restrained.
The second Council of Tours in 567 prohibited monks and priests from
sleeping more than one to a bed while the Benedictine Rule advocated
all monks sleep in the same room with the abbot's bed in the center. St
Benedict also mandated that a light be kept burning at night in the
dormitory.^'* The Benedictine rule, along with later monastic rules and
charters, instituted regulations to prevent sexual relations between
monks. In a more recent time, the custom book of the Jesuit novitiate,
proscribed 'particular friendships', a religious euphemism for emotional
entanglements and not peculiar to Jesuits only. There was a famous
slogan: Numquam duo, semper tres. ('Never two, always three'). This was
not a justification for threesomes but a proscription against dyadic same-
sex relationships. Love between the brothers had to extend to any parti-
cular individual and include the others of the community. I was guilty
of many particular friendships during my Jesuit novitiate and later studies,
but there were many of us falling in love with one another in the Society
of Jesus. Sex activist and teacher Joe Kramer called his experience within
the Jesuits a 'homosexual heaven'; it provided inspiration for his notion
of a beloved corrununity of men who would celebrate open erotic rituals
to celebrate a communal polyamory.^^ This makes sense when you add
the love ethic of Christianity. It was very natural for male religious to fall
in love with one another as they tried to cultivate minds and hearts of
love for Christ and one's neighbor.
These eschatological communities have been erotic communities where
men have fallen in love with God and with one another. If we consider
how Catholic male monastics and religious men have been socialized
over the ages, then it becomes apparent that the bridal mysticism so
engrained in the formation process of monastics and priests has contri-

13. Aelred of Rievaulx, Mirror of Charity (trans. Elizabeth Connor; Kalamazoo:

Cistercian Press, 1990), pp. 264-65. Here Aelred is quoting Joel 3.3.
14. Boswell, Christianity, pp. 187-88.
15. See Robert E. Goss, Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus ACTED UP (Cleveland:
Pilgrim Press, 2002), pp. 88-89.

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 Goss Proleptic Sexual Love 59

buted to a polyamorous atmosphere. Men were taught to pray and live

as the brides of the male Christ. The language of the Song of Songs,
conflated with the intertextual image of Christ as bridegroom from the
Christian testament, is used as the primary text, which already has
strong erotic scenes of penetrative and oral sex between two lovers. The
language of prayer and relationship with Christ is thoroughly erotic.
Bemard of Clairvaux and his Cistercian successors gave voice to a bridal
mysticism that originated with earlier Greek and Latin churches. From
the thirteenth century until our contemporary period, religious women
developed this tradition of bridal mysticism. In his 'Sermon 68', Bemard
asks, 'Who is the Bride and the Bridegroom? He is our God, and she, I
dare to say, is us'.^^ He speaks of Platonist love of Christ, starting with
the carnal love of Christ moving to a loftier spiritual love. Monastic
males engaged Christ in contemplative prayer as his bride, and there is
no question that this passionate love stimulated erotic feelings and carnal
love of Christ. Medievalist scholar Barbara Newman writes, 'If monks
wished to play the starring role in this love story, they had to adopt a
feminine persona as many didto pursue a heterosexual love affair
with God'.^^
Aelred of Rievaulx uses erotic language to speak of his love for God
and his love for fellow monks. He refers to the relationship between
Jesus and the beloved disciple as a 'marriage'.^^ The picture of the beloved
disciple reposing on the breast of Jesus became 'a special sign of love'.^^
Passionate friendship was for the Cistercian abbot a means to embrace
Christ. By embracing a fellow brother as passionate friend, Aelred felt
that one could ascend in contemplation to a passionate embrace of Jesus.
He writes, 'Thus, ascending from that holy love in which we embrace
our friend to that in which we embrace Christ, we will joyfully, with
open mouth pluck the spiritual fruit of friendship'.^" It is Dante's epiphany
of Christ in Beatrice but discovered in the erotic relationships within
community.
Let me interrupt this trajectory momentarily with an excursus into the
contradictions in traditional Christian nuptial theology. The images of

16. Bernard of Clairvaux, quoted in Bemard McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism

(New York; Crossroad Publishing, 1994), p. 177.
17. Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval
Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), p. 138.
See also Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High
Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 161.
18. Boswell, Christianity, p. 225.
19. Mirror of Charity 3.39,109 quoted in McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 321.
20. Spiritual Friendship, 3.134 quoted in McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 312.

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60 Theology & Sexuality

Jesus as bridegroom to the Church in Eph. 5.25-33 provides the founda-

tion and source of the Christian theology and spirituality of marriage. At
its worst, patriarchal Christianity has justified sexuality and women's
submission in marriage to their husbands. Evangelical Christians and the
Promise-keepers use such a text to demand the submission of wives to
their husbands; obedience becomes the hallmark of their theologies of
marriage. Catholic tradition has used this text not only for female sub-
mission but submission of the laity to its episcopal caste. At its least toxic
moments, Christians have used the notion of Christ as the bridegroom
of the church to provide the grammar for a theology of marriage to
express the love and faithfulness of God. Christ is faithful to his church,
justifying monogamous fidelity in marriage. One's earthly marital part-
ner becomes a window to God, reflecting divine love, fidelity and grace.
We see this in Dante's love of Beatrice in his entrance into Paradise, for she
guides him first to the Virgin Mary and then with her assistance to the
living light of the Trinity where 'three spheres, which bare/Three hues
distinct and occupy one space, the first mirroring the next, as though it
were/Rainbow from rainbow, and third seeming flame/Breathed equally
from each of the first pair'.^^ It is only when Dante gazes into Beatrice's
eyes which move him towards the triune God and how Beatrice's light
is transformed into the radiant light of Christ in the midst of the triune
God. It is through the erotic desire for and love of Beatrice that Dante
discovers the polyamorous God.
Nevertheless, there are serious problems with this nuptial metaphor
of Christ as the bridegroom to his church. The very seams can easily be
unraveled with a bit of queer critique. The church is perceived as bride;
the church, however, consists of plurality of males and females as brides.
Christian writers have attempted to singularize the collective entity of
the church to downplay the inherent gender contradictions. There are as
many gender or transgendered anomalies in the notion of the church as
bride as in the male monastic expressions of bridal mysticism. For
example, Virginia Mollenkott observes:
In Ephesians 5...the male Christ is said to have a female bodythe
Church.. .Again and again in early Christian writings gender is played out
and broken open in order to reveal the nature of the redeemed ecclesial
person. Christ, the 'husband' or 'male', is the head and source of the 'wife',
the 'female' body which in turn is instructed to grow up into the 'male'
head (Ephesians 4.15). As members of the church, Christian men are

21. Dante Alighieri, Paradise (trans. Charles Singleton; Princeton: Princeton Univ-
ersity Press, 1975), canto 22,154, p. 255. See Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Heaven:
The Singing Silence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 175-85.

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 Goss Proleptic Sexual Love 61

Christ's 'bride' as much as women are and Christian women, like men, are
embodiment of the 'male' Christ and therefore Christian 'brothers'.^^

Certainly the gender codes are ironically rendered quite fluid in Eph.
5.25-33 despite it traditional usage to maintain rigid, patriarchal gender
codes. But let me point out the obvious that the Christian tradition has
astutely ignored. The model of Christ as bridegroom is limited as long
as we accept the notion of church as bridegroom without comprehend-
ing the collectivity of the church. When the church is understood as a
collective of countless men and women, married and unmarried, with
a variety of sexual orientations and gender expressions, then Christ
becomes the multi-partnered bridegroom to countless Christian men and
women. His faithfulness and love to them may well express the growth
of love, mutual devotion, and faithful commitments in pair-bonded hetero-
sexual and same-sex relationsbips. Yet Christ is polyamorous in countless
couplings and other erotic configurations. Tbis polyamorous Cbrist may
be more faitbful to the reading of tbe sexual abnormalities of the Song
of Songs. Tbe lover is a sexual outlaw, not a bridegroom as the sanitized
Jewish and Christians read tbe text.^
Wbile Christianity often begrudgingly affirmed tbe need for marriage
on eartb, it bas rejected marriage in heaven because of tbe logion of Jesus
tbat tbere is no marriage in tbe kingdom of beaven. In tbe communion
of saints, promiscuous love is a given; tbe exclusivity of earthly, marital
relationsbips are superseded by an inclusive vision of love. Tbus, tbe
Cbristian tradition of tbe asexual or celibate Cbrist bas sbeltered and
even blinded us to tbe erotic and polyamorous reality of Cbrist as bride-
groom; it bas also contributed to tbe split of sexuality from tbe sacred,
contributing to a Cbristian history of erotopbobia and sexual sbame.
Let me redirect our discussion to same-sex, male monastic and religious
communities. In bridal mysticism, Cbrist is also tbe multi-partnered
bridegroom wbose nocturnal visitations open males in religious commu-
nity to a deep spirituality and bigbly erotic encounters. Cbrist becomes
tbe paradigm for multi-partnered relationsbips in spiritual encounters,
and if be is encountered in otber members of tbe community, tben wbat
bappens in prayer becomes translated into tbe practice of erotic love for
fellow bretbren. It is quite natural to understand bow erotic love and
friendsbips bappened witbin monogendered communities.

22. Mollenkott, Omnigender, p. 129.

23. Christopher King, 'A Love as Fierce as Death', in Robert E. Goss and Mona
West (eds.). Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading ofthe Bible (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press,
2000), pp. 126-42.

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62 Theology & Sexuality

What is represented in the multi-partnered Christ? Perhaps as queers

appropriate the image of the polyamorous Christ, what surfaces is a
value more important than the notions of faithfulness, obedience and
submission, and even monogamous love. It is the image of the promis-
cuous Christ. Christ is a promiscuous lover. The promiscuous Christ
speaks in radical terms of the 'unconditional grace of God', an eschatolo-
gical concept so threatening to church leaders, who attempt to control
who has access and does not have access to God's grace. Throughout
history, they have attempted to regulate and restrict sexual relationships.
Likewise, we must also assert that church leaders have failed miserably
in controlling the promiscuous lover, the Christ. The promiscuous Christ
is found erotic love; it is the impulse to love human beings and to love
God simultaneously. God's love is configured in all sorts of erotic relations.
Several years ago, Kathy Rudy explored how the gay male community
models morality in diverse types of sexual relationships, including coupled
as well as multi-partnered relationships. She argues that sex within the
gay communities is not anonymous since partners are chosen because
they belong to that community or because they communicate non-verbal
signs and cruising that they participate in that world. It is relational
because it functions as a way of including members into itself as an
entity larger than themselves. Rudy writes:
The sex that produces unidvity also produces a desire to be open, to include
others. Once we feel the joy that accompanies the breaking down of our
own spiritual and physical boundaries, we are able to feel more open
about the prospect of sharing new life with and in others. Once the bonds
of individualism are broken, we desire to bring others in. We may do so by
conceiving children, or by understanding the new life in the union, itself,
to be the thing that has been created.^'*

Rudy looked to the gay male community to model unitive love for the
church, and she noted in the question and answer period that same-sex
religious communities may model many of the same features of the gay
community. She concluded, 'The Church needs the model of gay sexual
communities because Christians have forgotten to think about social and
sexual life outside the family.^^
Christian ethics has too long spent time in dualistic theological thought
that poses a series of binary oppositions: Celibacy versus marriage,
monogamous marriage versus polyamorous relationships. It has failed

24. Kathy Rudy, 'Where Two or More Gathered', in Robert E. Goss and Amy
Adams Squires Strongheart (eds.). Our Families, Our Values: Snapshots of Queer Kinship
(New York: Haworth Press, 1997), p. 205.
25. Kathy Rudy, Sex and the Church (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), p. 78.

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 Goss Proleptic Sexual Love 63

to account for the transgressive eros, the illicit relationship in the Song
of Songs that the rabbis and early Christian writers intuited as one of the
most sublime metaphors for the reality of the spiritual and erotic com-
munion with God.^^ This illicit relationship between a man and a dark
skin woman in the Song of Songs was transformed into an ecciesial
romance between a bridegroom and a bride, between Christ and the
soul. In the process of this transformation, the radical transgressiveness
of the Song of Songs was lost. The differences between monogamy and
polyamory recede as we understand that Christ is the sexual outlaw, the
multi-partnered groom whose erotic visitations and love-making render
the differences slight. What ethicists might want to focus their attention
on is how sexual desire is grounded in an eschatological vision where
grace perfects human eros into divine love and what constitutes just
good sex.
Now let me return to the beginning of this article. What the Jesuit
superior was saying to me in my exit interview was his explicit recog-
nition that monogamous sexual relations impede the eschatological
mission of the community to love in a polyamorous fashion. It was
perfectly alright with him for me to be in multi-partnered erotic relation-
ships with other members of the community, but it was not alright to
settle down with one person. Catholic religious superiors have often
recognized the psycho-sexual dynamics that are embedded within a
monogendered community, yet they also continued to foster and stimu-
late erotic relations of men with a Christ, who is already in multiple-
partnered relationships, hardly exclusive yet recognizing the human
need for touch, warmth and erotic intimacy. The floodgates of transgres-
sive eros have opened in the last decades monogendered, religious
communities. If Catholic religious communities escape the new Vatican
inquisition waged on homoerotic men in the priesthood and religious
life, maybe they can experinient more openly and acknowledge candidly
that their erotic communities are more closely akin to openly promis-
cuous, gay male communities. They might develop some guiding norms
for representing the eschatological vision of no marriage in heaven and
erotic communion with Christ and others.

26. King, 'A Love as Fierce as Death', p. 141.

The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2004.