Summary
Title: The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology
Author: Mark D. Jordan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226410404
Pro:
• Interesting and focused contribution to the debate about homosexuality and Christianity
Con:
• Complex arguments, probably not for the casual reader
Description:
• Analysis of the origin and development of Christian ideas about sodomy
• Argues that sodomy was a theological category, never a neutral description
• Advocates reconsidering the place of the erotic in Christian ethics
Book Review
Mark D. Jordan, professor in the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame, explores the origins and nature of the Christian notion of sodomy in his book The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology. As Jordan explains, sodomy as such didn’t always exist as a distinct and specific type of sin — it wasn’t invented until the eleventh century by St. Peter Damian as an analogy to the sin of blasphemy: sodomia vs. blasphemia:
- “[F]rom its origin, Sodomy is as much a theological category as trinity, incarnation, sacrament, or papal infallibility. As a category, it is richly invested with specific notions of sin and retribution, responsibility and guilt. The category was never meant to be neutrally descriptive, and it is doubtful whether any operation can purify it of its theological origins.”
Does it matter how, when, and why someone first came up with this particular category? Yes, Jordan argues, because terms are invented for reasons and to serve particular purposes — in this case, particular religious purposes. Because it was never meant to be a simple neutral reference to something like a “house” or a “dog,” it can’t be understood apart from the context in which it was created and later developed:
- “To represent the invention of a term is to show that it was made for specific purposes, that it was made from particular materials, and that it entered into use at certain points in individual conversations. The term is invented: it begins its history with a past. ...Whatever it is, it must be displayed clearly by any account of the term’s invention.”
What was the purpose or the point of creating a new category of sin called sodomia? Jordan argues, like so many others have, that the biblical tales of Sodom are not unambiguously about sexual sins but that is what Sodom has come to represent in Christian theology. The problem isn’t “sodomy” but Christianity itself: lacking any adequate understanding of erotic sexuality outside the context of procreation, such sexual experiences need to be categorized, codified, and effectively distinguished from “acceptable” sexual behavior.
As Jordan is able to show, there is no clear concept of “homosexuality” in the Middle Ages in part because there is no clear concept of “sexuality” in general. Instead there is procreative sex which is permitted, barely, and then there is everything else — with the “everything else” being sinful.
- “The place of the erotic in Christian love is no more settled for other-sex couples than for same-sex couples. In the history of Christian moral teaching, sexual love was permitted for the sake of procreation and on the condition that it be unerotic, that it strive to suppress so far as possible the intensity of passion. That is, at best, a rather restricted license for sexual life among Christians.
- The vehement denunciations of same-sex pleasure are justified explicitly by appeal to the rule that sex must be procreative. But I suspect that the vehemence is also simply a displacement of the negative judgment on all sex that was suspended in the case of procreative marriage. ...The irrational force of the Christian condemnation of Sodomy is the remainder of Christian theology’s failure to think through the problem of the erotic.”
If Christianity were able to develop a better way to deal with “the erotic” than simply condemning it, the entire category of Sodomy as a sin would be undermined — there would be no point to it, and thus it would have to disappear.
Jordan‘s book is short, but not always easy — he engages in very detailed linguist, semantic, and philosophical issues when addressing some of the arguments and ideas of scholastic theologians. This would be a good book for those seriously concerned with homosexuality in Christianity, or even just sexuality in general within Christianity, but probably not for the casual reader.
