Abstract
A notable feature of Christian sexual ethics in recent decades is the celebration of erotic love and the place of sexual pleasure in human life. Jung’s book contributes something new to this conversation. It offers a positive account of human sexual desire by defending the claim that sex is part of life in heaven. J. then explores the implications of such an argument for human sex here on earth.
J. supports her claim that sexual desire and sex may be part of life in heaven by showing that it coheres with other Christian convictions, and by showing that the denial of sex in heaven is inconsistent with the gospel. She reflects on Christian hope in the resurrection of the body and enlists New Testament and early Christian resources on the resurrection, marriage, eunuchs, and celibacy. J. argues that some sort of transfigured experience of sexual desire would belong to the risen life Christ makes possible. She envisions risen life as “boundary blurring . . . Embodied persons will be ever more open and available to one another. There will be a mutually porous quality to relationships, wherein we are each both permeable and penetrating” (114). J. refrains from speculation regarding specific sexual activities or mechanics. She neither claims nor denies that marriage, sexual exclusivity, and gender will characterize risen life. Her point is that “God desires that we be increasingly inclined toward intimacy and drawn into one another’s arms in ways that are genuinely humanizing” (116).
The aim of the book is to consider—through the eyes of Christian hope—the prospect for healing and transformation of our sexual desire in eternal life, and to chart the implications of that vision for sex on earth. Sexual desire consists in biological drives but is also psychologically and socially constructed, and “biographically shaped” (133). Sexual desire is constitutively intersubjective because it includes an interest in exciting the desire of another. Importantly, J. argues that we have real, though limited, agential capacities to shape sexual desire, both in terms of reforming it and in terms of cultivating it. Sexual desire may occur spontaneously, and to some degree our sexual tastes may prove rather fixed, but sexual activity is always volitional. We choose whether or not to welcome and nurture desires or deconstruct them, and we always choose whether we otherwise act on our desire (134).
J. does not explicate norms for sexual decision making, engage Catholic teaching about the procreative and unitive dimensions of human sexuality, or treat the sort of topics usually covered in Christian, particularly Catholic, sexual ethics. That is not to say that the book lacks a normative position. The entire volume manifests a morally significant stance toward sexual pleasure as a premoral human good, while also reckoning with the way human sexual desire is distorted by sin and can express itself in morally wrong behaviors and patterns of relationship. J. does identify the avoidance of harm and—pointing to Margaret Farley’s work by the same name—just love. J. also employs the language of sexual virtue, which she prefers to that of chastity. For J. the latter is too closely linked to repressive sexual attitudes. On her account, sexual virtue not only includes the education and correction of sexual desire, but also the cultivation of it when it is deficient.
Perhaps the most valuable contributions J. makes lie in her discussion of two topics that receive little attention in Christian ethics: low sexual desire and pornography. So much of Christian sexual ethics, particularly in Catholic moral theology, is an ethics of reproduction or focuses on sexual practices that depart from the conjugal act. Consequently, a number of important human experiences are eclipsed. Regarding low sexual desire J. calls for more research and argues that we are called to cultivate and not merely curtail sexual desire. J. correctly notes that “the church has offered little counsel” on this matter (184–85). J.’s treatment of pornography deepens her discussion of human agential capacities to shape sexual desire. For J., this means assessing whether practices we use to stimulate sexual desire, like pornography, foster “both intimacy and respect for human dignity” (182) and schooling our desire through choices we make to entertain, indulge, deconstruct, or deflect those desires.
J.’s volume advances efforts in Christian ethics to affirm sexual pleasure as a human good. The chapters on low sexual drive and pornography meet a need for sustained moral reflection on these topics. The eschatological perspective J. adopts treats human embodiment seriously without limiting Christian sexual ethics to an ethics of responsible reproduction. The book deserves attention from scholars, students, and pastoral leaders.