Sexuality/spirituality: Eroticized violence and the limitations of contemporary eros theology

This dissertation explores contemporary theoretical and theological analyses of sexuality and the erotic, particularly as they pertain to the issue of sexual violence. I specifically examine the method utilized by "eros theologians," one influential school of Christian feminist theologians. Fundamental to this approach is the recuperation and positive reevaluation of eros/sexuality as an inherently good and divine force, in contrast to the historical rendering of lived sexuality as dangerous and disordered. Eros theology as developed by Carter Heyward and Rita Nakashima Brock, whose work I analyze in detail, asserts that sexual violence is predicated upon the dualistic split between body and soul; moreover, this split is motivated by the fear of erotic power itself. Hence, it is argued that if this fear is overcome and body and soul are "brought back together again," sexuality will no longer exhibit violent or dominate/subordinate tendencies. While this understanding of eros has much to offer in its critique of traditional Christian theologies of sexuality and the body, I argue that it is limited by its relative inattention to two significant challenges.;First, it does not adequately attend to contemporary constructivist theories of sexuality which demonstrate how the dynamic of dominance and subordination is constitutive to Western Christian experiences of eros as they are presently constructed. Second, eros theology cannot satisfactorily respond to the evidence offered by medieval women mystics whose apparent linking of eros and the divine did little to mitigate the violent aspects of either their spirituality or their eroticism. Hence, I argue that eros theologians must undertake a more critical understanding of the ideological aspects of sexuality and of the "repressive hypothesis" upon which their own construction of eros lies if they are to significantly challenge the Western cultural dynamic of eroticized violence.;Finally, I argue that the ethic of boundary transgression which eros theology advocates, especially as it has been developed by Heyward, ultimately undermines its own expressed desire to create a sexual ethic of mutuality and intimacy. This is so precisely because eros is defined as that which is always already a mutual and shared power. Hence, if it is experienced or intuited by one party in a relationship, it must theoretically be present for the other. Consequently, if one party denies its existence, then the other is justified in helping her to overcome this denial, even in the face of her explicit desires not to do so. Ultimately, such a theology justifies the violation of a person's expressed erotic desires and boundaries, in the name of mutuality and eros itself.