AI-generated image depicting Genesis 27, emphasizing vv 16-17, inscribed on the skin of a goat.
“Vegetarianism is an act of the imagination. It reflects an ability to imagine alternatives to the texts of meat.” (Adams 2024 [1990], 180).
How Should Vegetarians Use the Bible?
New Testament scholar Stephen Moore draws our attention to a “notable interfacing” of postcolonial, poststructuralist, and biblical readings in Homi Bhabha’s essay, “Signs Taken for Wonders” (2005, 81). This “is one essay in which Bhabha is more than usually emphatic,” Moore observes, “that the colonized are engaged in active subversion of the colonizer’s discourse, in this case, the colonizer’s Scripture” (2005, 90).
Moore explains that in “Signs Taken for Wonders,” Bhabha describes a gathering in May 1817 of “some 500 souls, men, women, and children, seated in the shade of trees [outside Delhi] and engaged in scripture reading and debate” (2005, 86). The souls gathered in the shade are taught by an Indian missionary, who tells them, “These books . . . teach the religion of the European Sahibs. It is THEIR book; and they have printed it in our language, for our use.” Hearing this, someone replies, “Ah! no, that cannot be, for they eat flesh” (2005, 91, italics added).
The 500 agree to be baptized, but they refuse to receive the Eucharist “because the Europeans eat cow’s flesh, and this will never do for us” (Moore 2005, 91). They decline to complete the Catholic initiation process by receiving the vegetarian Meal of meals, the Eucharist, because Europeans eat meat, especially cow’s flesh.
But what do the Indian people, who believe cows are sacred, do with the Bible of the European meat-eaters? A second missionary observes that “[every Indian] would gladly receive a Bible. Why? That he may store it up with curiosity; sell it for a few pice, or use it for waste paper” (Moore 2005, 92)
For “every Indian,” the Bible of the Western meat-eaters is a collector’s item, a cheap commodity, or toilet paper. Moore describes such uses of biblical literature as forms of “resistant reading of the colonial Bible” (Moore 2005, 92, emphasis original)
Such resistant reading practices, “ones that resist by refusing to read,” hover over the surfaces of the Bible. They enable resistance “by remaining at the level of the material signifier, the papery substance itself—wondrously thin, almost transparent, yet wholly tangible . . .” (Moore 2005, 92).
The nearly 175-year-old example of 500 Indian Christian vegetarians, including children, might shock modern Western vegetarian readers of biblical literature into the realization that the Bible can be used in surprising ways, but it isn’t edible. While the contemporary Bible is plant-based, at least in its printed forms, papyrus is not the material condition of the Bible. The Bible is meatier than it first appears, at least to its modern readers.
As we will soon discover, the intuition of the 500 Indian Christian souls—that the Bible’s meatiness is inside-out—is more than confirmed by the texts that make up biblical literature. In fact, biblical literature is structurally wedded to a predator-prey dynamic. This presents a serious problem for the Bible’s Western vegetarian and vegan readers.
In what follows, I attend to the Bible’s material condition, to the reason for its textual survival—namely, dead animals. I then make the predator-prey logic that runs through biblical literature visible. Finally, through a (re)reading of Stéphane Mallarmé’s “Crisis of Verse” and 2 Samuel 6, I propose a queer vegetarian hermeneutics that refuses the “common sense” of (divine) predation and intervenes in it, letting fall through the meaty “sheet” of the Western Book of books queer possibilities for anti-predatory (non)human animal relations.
This essay is seeking a home in an academic journal; so, the rest of it has been omitted while the essay is under consideration for publication elsewhere. I hope you enjoyed this small preview of its theme and argument!
WORKS CITED
Adams, Carol. J. 2024. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegan Critical Theory. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Original work published in 1990.
Bhabha, Homi. 2004. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.
Mallarmé, Stéphane. 2007. “Crisis in Verse.” In Divagations. Translated by Barbara Johnson, 201-211. Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press. Original work published in 1897.
Moore, Stephen. D. 2005. Questions of Biblical Ambivalence and Authority Under A Tree Outside Delhi; Or, The Postcolonial And The Postmodern. In Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections. Edited by Stephen D. Moore and Fernando F. Segovia, 79-96. London and New York: T & T Clark International.
The following is a sermon based on Ephesians 4:15, entitled Speaking of Unity. I offered it at an annual gathering of pastors and other church leaders.
Ephesians 4:14-15:
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Messiah.
Organizing Idea: Forsaking anger, we speak the truth in love, and so draw closer together, preserving God’s will: the unity of the body of Messiah Jesus.
I.
Picture this scene: We fall in love.
I’m a bit proper, and intimate chat—you know, what the young folks these days call “spicy” talk—that makes me uncomfortable.
I don’t know how to handle love-talk, so as we walk through your garden, you whisper “sweet nothings” to the roses.
I laugh as you tell the roses how much you love them.
But there’s one problem: We fall in love during a war.
You leave to fight in the war, leaving me with instructions on how to care for the roses.
I do my best to keep the roses alive until you return.
There’s one more problem: one thing you told me to do I won’t do—and that is talkto the roses.
Why not? Well, that’s ridiculous!
Honestly, I won’t talk to the roses because I miss you.
In the letter I send to you, I share that the roses are surviving—but they are not thriving. The roses are alive, but they are not living because they are not getting the conversation they need.
Why did we fall in love in the middle of a war? What a silly thing for anyone to do.
II. Jak Malone, Operation Mincemeat, and the Rosesof Unifying Speech
What you just pictured is a scene from the new, fabulous Broadway musicalOperation Mincemeat.
Jak Malone won the Tony Award for his performance as Hester Leggatt, who sings about falling in love during World War II and caring for the roses while her lover, Tom, is away fighting the war.
For reasons you’ll need to figure out yourself, the song is called “Dear Bill.”
Roses are, of course, a cliché for love.
Teenagers at prom. Honeymoon suites. Romance novels.
But in Hester’s song, the roses are more than cliché.
They’re a revelation.
The roses in Hester’s song reveal what it means to speak of unity.
Ephesians repeatedly emphasizes that God’s will is to unite everything and everyone (1:10). In fact, God, through the cross of Jesus the Messiah and the ongoing advocacy of the Spirit, has completed that goal.
Unity is not something we create.
Our pastors, leaders, youth, members, or visitors can’t command or create unity.
God gives unity to the body of Messiah, to the church. Unity is grace.
That’s why Ephesians urges us to “accept each other with love, and make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit with the peace that ties you together” (4:2-3).
Preserving unity, the unity that God gives us through the weakness of the Messiah, in the Spirit—that is our work.
Planting, growing, and watering the roses—that’s God’s work.
Our task is tending to them, giving the roses the (indirect) conversation they need to thrive.
But there’s one issue: we are living in wartime.
III.
We are in the middle of a serious culture war. One that too often successfully pulls us out of the garden, almost guaranteeing that the roses won’t get the conversation they need to thrive.
Military helicopters are descending on Chicago, targeting communities of color—and ICE, armed like Roman soldiers, are kicking in the doors of citizens and their children, hauling them into the streets.
Rome’s agents ruthlessly round up our fellow human beings without papers—the vast majority of whom are, like all of us, trying to build a good and decent life.
Across this divided land, killers strike our fellow citizens in their homes, on campuses, and as they walk to lunch—and yet we only recognize some victims as saints.
Today, our government is shut down because we refuse to agree that our neighbors deserve affordable healthcare.
IV.
We are in the middle of a war, so all the chatter I am hearing in my circles, from both sides of the partisan divide—and everything in between—about buying guns is not so surprising.
Even Ephesians encourages believers in the Messiah to arm themselves. We are to put on the belt of truth, take up the shield of faith, wear the helmet of salvation, and wield the sword of the Spirit (6:13-17).
The author of Ephesians encourages us to dress up like Roman soldiers.
That’s no small thing. Fashion moves us.
Remember that time you finally fit into those tight jeans or that expensive dress you never thought you would fit into… and then immediately booked a flight to New York to walk the runway during Fashion Week? Or, remember the time that you got a great haircut, and you seriously thought, “I could be a rockstar with this hair.”
Playing dress up as a Roman soldier is not as innocent as it seems.
And before you think I am overthinking this, consider that the author of Ephesians, just a few verses earlier, explicitly commands us to adopt a Roman lifestyle.
Just before asking us to dress up like Roman soldiers, he commands wives to submit to their husbands, and slaves to obey their masters.
If it’s any consolation, he does request that husbands and masters, masters and husbands, treat their property with kindness (5:21-6:9).
That’s so cringe. I know.
It’s also very, very Roman lifestyle advice.
But like every text written in wartime—Ephesians is all about a clash of cultures—it resists simplicity.
V.
Earlier in the letter, the author of Ephesians declares, “I’m telling you this, and I insist on it in the Lord: you shouldn’t live your life like the [the Romans] anymore. . .” (4:17). [unstated exegetical note: It is because the author moves in this direction that I emphasize the Roman cultural connections rather than the Jewish ones. The author of Ephesians was likely Jewish. See Daniel Boyarin’s excellent study,Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (1999), for an analysis of the overlap between Jewish and Roman cultures, along with its main theme: how Judaism and Christianity eventually became distinguishable religions].
But in the middle of his musical, let’s call it, The Roman Family Musical, the author offers some Roman advice that is actually sound: he tells us to avoid anger. [Underlying source: see Martha Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice(2016) for a sophisticated and careful analysis of the character of anger.]
The Romans, and the Greeks before them, believed that anger was a female thing. They thought males were rational and disciplined, and females were childish and prone to excess.
One thing is certain: when you lack control over your own body, anger does feel empowering.
Even so, avoiding anger is good Roman advice because human anger is always an injustice.
Anger always works against God’s will to bring everything and everyone together.
Please don’t take my word for it, the truth is as close to you as your own family.
The author of Ephesians commands children to obey their parents (6:1-4). But this time, there is good reason to comply with his command:
The commandment to love your parents is the only one that comes with a promise: We should listen to our parents so that everything may go well for us and that we may live a long life.
That’s promising!
And parents, if you want to command your children’s respect and ensure everything goes well for them, avoid provoking them to anger.
That sounds promising, too!
I confess, I am surprised; I never took Ephesians for a letter with much promise.
In fact, I typically feel like this dude is a prude.
No drinking. No cussing. No joking. No rock, pop, or blues music. No good sex (it’s all missionary style for him).
But this time, I thought: maybe the perils of anger explain his social conservatism.
VI.
Nowadays, anger is a respectable thing to feel—especially if you are a male.
The fruits of male anger are predictable—a terrible tale as old as time: males drink, males boast, males covet the spouses of other males.
Outrage follows. Men die. And women and children are the collateral damage of male anger.
Here is a new thing about anger: it’s especially powerful on social media.
Rage-baiting is all the rage. Why? We love it. We like it. We comment on it.
The algorithm gives us more and more of it. Influencers and social media platforms profit from it.
There is a reason we describe getting angry as “going nuclear.” It is the most potent weapon in our culture war arsenal.
Anger always goes viral.
Here’s why: Anger is a feeling that is always—and I say again—always related to the pleasures of retribution, of punishment, of revenge, of domination—of really sticking it to someone who stuck it to you.
The logic of anger is devilishly simple: if I can wound the one who wounded me, I will be made whole again.
Anger is always a form of magical thinking: the thought that revenge will right a wrong.
It won’t.
Anger is always a verb. It is always about getting even.
That’s why we should avoid provoking our children to anger and getting angry ourselves.
“Get angry,” we are told, “but don’t sin” (4:26-27).
In other words, don’t get angry, because anger is always related to sin; it is always opposed to God’s will, to unity and its preservation in the church.
Speaking of unity, I remember visiting family in northern Idaho.
I was in my mid-twenties, sitting with my brother and uncle in a bar called the Six Devils.
After I enjoyed about six devils, I decided it was time to share some angry thoughts. The result was predictable: more anger.
My brother, a huge, muscular guy (the opposite of me), stormed out of the bar—and my uncle did too, after he started to cry.
What I said damaged our relationship; it certainly did not bring us closer together.
That’s why the author of Ephesians urges us to forsake anger and begs us to adopt a different lifestyle, one characterized by speaking the truth.
That’s one word in Greek—it means to speak the truth continuously.
Like anger, speaking the truth is a verb. But it’s not angry speech. It is not permission to say the nastiest things imaginable about people while smiling.
Well, bless your hearts.
Speaking the truth—quite unlike anger—is always a matter of love-talk, and love-talk is always talk that inspires—indeed is—the preservation of unity in the body of Messiah Jesus.
VII.
Now, with that in mind, let’s re-imagine what speaking of unity—what giving the roses the conversation they need–looks like.
Picture this scene: We are back in the garden; the roses are there between us. I start talking to them because I know you don’t like it when I talk too directly about love. Here’s what I say to the roses:
I was asked to preach at the Church of Christ, but I was told there was one topic I could not mention in my sermon.
So, I angrily left the garden to fight on the Western front of the culture war.
Walking to the battlefield, I was reminded of a time I asked a layperson to avoid a topic. I asked them not to disparage members of the church I was serving from the pulpit.
One member was barely back on his feet after being disowned by his entire family. Another member was coming back to church after she had stayed away for years, fearing abuse from the pulpit. Yet another member had just lost his husband.
Please, I asked, preserve the unity of the Spirit in peace.
This layperson had somehow learned to say yes when he meant no, and he offered a condescending and damaging message that drove people—including me—away from one another and that congregation. His comments severed our unity.
As I marched to war, I considered what it meant to be prohibited, in the name of unity, from preaching a message of extravagant welcome.
I also started to feel sad. I learned, again, that Rev. Kay Ray was right when he observed that I was excited about ministry because I hadn’t been doing it.
I thought despairingly: If being the United Church of Christ means that one church can degrade and exclude people like me, my family, and our friends, while another church can boldly fight racism, preserving the grace of unity is surely impossible.
The feeling only worsened when I remembered the times that even our leadership expressed the view that folks like me in the church are a “controversial” issue.
They think it is a sign of faithfulness not to take a position on such a “controversial” issue.
Here is what should be controversial:
Rome’s Supreme Court empowers conservative parents to pull their kids out of public-school lessons that entail “controversial” themes and even to send their “controversial” children to conversion therapy. Yet, it denies caring parents of those same children the power to make their healthcare decisions.
“Controversial” adults in North Carolina now have to hand over their false birth certificates, the ones they received at birth, along with their real ones, whenever they require a passport, other necessary documentation, or for identity verification purposes.
What should be controversial is our historical ignorance.
Did you know that the Greeks thought that males and females were different species? A similar idea, Ibram X. Kendi reminds us, enabled some white folks to justify the institution of slavery.
The Romans got rid of the idea of the sexes. Male and females represented points on a sliding scale—the only difference being that some genitals stuck out while others turned inward . . . .
What sticks out asserts reproductive power; what turns inward submits to reproductive power. Rome privileged and empowered what asserted itself on women and on both male and female slaves and other non-citizens.
There is no such thing as “biological truth.” But too many Christians seem to be sticking with Rome. Some of y’all are too Roman for my liking.
My anger was further enflamed when I remembered times that our leadership couldn’t even celebrate the good that the Southern Conference had done, like our fight in 2015, because they couldn’t bring themselves to name it, to mention it explicitly.
Rome’s Court is—once again—looking for an opportunity to make some of us sit at the back of the bus.
And some of our leaders are uncomfortable even discussing their own desires, fearing they may cause controversy.
Family, unity should not come at the expense of diversity in the church.
We should not be cutting off toes to fit into a Roman sandal.
If unity comes at the cost of the dignity of other parts of the body, it’s just not worth it.
In fact, it’s just not unity.
It’s not a just unity.
It’s hostility.
And it is contrary to God’s will.
Yes, I was feeling some kind of way when I received your letter. Something about it made me drop my weapons and walk away from war.
Honestly, I missed being together with our roses.
As I walked back to our garden, I did feel like a motherless child.
I felt like a kid who had grown up without a good enough mother, tossed to and fro because his caregiver was not reliable—except in their efforts to provoke him to anger.
But something about your letter also made me feel like I no longer had to be an angry soldier out fighting the culture war of rage.
Your letter, your hymn, inspired me to think that speaking of unity—giving the roses the conversation they need to thrive, to really live—is an infinitely more pleasurable use of our time.
Your Psalm reminded me:
It’s good and pleasant when we live together in unity!
Unity feels like precious oil on the head, running down over the collars of robes.
It’s like the smell of morning dew.
It’s like the simple beauty of water droplets gliding across rose petals.
– Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995. Three gelatin silver prints, 148 x 121 cm each –
“But on rising from the table where [Foucault] had inwardly decreed this end [to the writing of History of Sexuality 2 and 3], he knocked over a glass that broke, and just then it seemed to him that the time of satisfaction was ended; it had not lasted but a few seconds.”
The author of Ephesians (most scholars don’t think it’s a Pauline letter) writes, “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up . . . “ (4:15, NRSV).
Riffing on Judith Butler’s analysis of speech in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997), in which Butler continues their engagement with J.L. Austin’s theory of language, I ask, What kind of speech act is “speaking the truth in love”?
Is speaking the truth in love (a) an example of a performative speech act (a type of illocutionary speech act), a form of speech that immediately does what it announces (e.g., “I pronounce you husband and husband”)? Or, is speaking the truth in love (b) an example of a perlocutionary speech act, a type of speech that, as a result of being spoken, sets in motion a chain of consequences (e.g., “Get out, get out before I kill you!”)?
In other words, when we read, “But speaking the truth in love, we grow up . . .” are we to think that (a) we grow up at the very moment we speak the truth in love, that in the act of speaking the truth in love we become a body possessed by the mind of Messiah? Or, are we to think that (b) we grow up into Christ as a consequence of speaking the truth in love, that the future or promise of speaking the truth in love is growing into a body ruled by the mind of Messiah?
Perhaps the answer is (c): none of the above.
The Greek is (for me!) a bit tricky, but it is helpful to have it before our eyes: “[1] Alētheuontes de en agapē [2]auxēsōmen eis auton ta panta, hos estin hē kephalē, Christos.”
What we take Ephesians 4:15 to mean is, I think, determined by the words 1) Alētheuontes and 2) auxēsōmen.
Alētheuontes = speaking the truth, and it is a present active participle. It means that speaking the truth in love is a way of life that is ongoing.
Auxēsōmen = must/should/might grow into, and it is an aorist subjunctive verb, first person plural. It means that growth is a possible outcome of beginning to (I take the aorist here as indicating a “point of entry” into some action) speak the truth in love.
If my analysis is correct, it would seem that “speaking the truth in love” is neither a performative nor a perlocutionary speech act. It does not do what it says in the moment of its saying. Moreover, there is no guarantee that in saying it, that in speaking the truth in love, we will grow into a body ruled by Messiah. The author hopes that growth will follow the act of speaking the truth in love.
There is another possibility, answer (d): speaking the truth in love is neither a performative nor a perlocutionary speech act, but it is intended to become a perlocutionary speech act.
Ephesians 4 begins with the author neither asking nor demanding that their readers “make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Instead, they “beg” their readers to do so (vv 1-3). The author does not have the necessary status to make either a performative or a perlocutionary statement. The outcome of either kind of speech act depends on a convincing citation of law, tradition, context, and so on.
The force of the author’s statement depends entirely on the character of its readers.If they are the subjects of messianic desire, then they will forsake deceitful living and speak the truth in love, growing into the body of the Messiah and thereby maintaining “the unity of the Spirit in the body of peace.”
These observations are essential for understanding what it means to speak the truth in love. For too many Christians, this passage means: You are free to say the nastiest things to others so long as you do it gently and with a smile. Bless their hearts!
Ephesians 4:15 is often read as blessing hubris–this even though the author begs the readers to adopt a position of weakness and humility at the outset (vv 1-3). Weakness and humility are the preconditions for speaking the truth in love.
To understand why weakness and humility are preconditions for speaking the truth . . . in love, let us briefly consider Alain Badiou’s elaboration of the Truth in Conditions. “I propose to call ‘religion,’” Badiou writes, “everything that presupposes that there is a continuity between truths and the circulation of meaning” (24). Furthermore, Badiou contends that “any truth that accepts a position of dependency with regard to narrative and revelation is still gripped by mystery, whereas philosophy [and, in my view, theology] only exists in its desire to tear down mystery’s veil” (36). Moreover, “Philosophy [and, in my view, theology,] commences . . . only with a desacralization: it establishes a regime of discourse that is its own inherent and earthly legitimation . . . the authority of profound utterance [being] interpreted by argumentative secularization” (36, emphasis original).
Why, though, is religion as the “continuity of truths and the circulation of meaning” and mystery (related as it is to veiling meaning) opposed to the Truth, while secularization is amenable to it?
All too briefly, Badiou defines the Truth as an empty or operational category out of which truths are seized. Truth is not the same as presence; it is not present; thus, it cannot be associated with “the circulation of meaning” (23).
The Truth is precisely what is not present in a text, play, film, and so forth. Philosophy—and, in my view, theology—is the practice of seizing truths out of the void of Truth, of trying to say what is impossible to say.
Philosophy—and, in my view, theology—is “subtractive in that it cuts holes in sense, or causes an interruption in the circulation of sense, so that it comes that truths are said all together” (24, emphasis mine). Yet, the truth is not a “mystery,” veiled and unknowable. We can “know” the Truth as truths that cause knowledge to fail (46).
Truth is necessarily fiction. Thus, power cannot make Truth persuasive. Hence the significance for philosophy, and, in my view, theology, of address. “Addressed to all so that all may be in seizing the existence of truths, it is like a political strategy with no stake in power” (23). A disciple is one persuaded by such an address; a disciple is the subject of the address, “one who knows that [they do] not form a public or constitute an audience but support a transmission” (28).
My all too hasty reading of Badiou on Truth in Conditions brings us back to Ephesians 4. Recall that the author begins from a standpoint of weakness and humility. They address the reader with a Truth that is truths. Take note of the one that is seven ones in Ephesians 4: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God (vv 4-5). The Truth exists for all those who are subjects of its truths—hence the author cannot guarantee if their admonition will inspire growth into the one body that is not one—and not whole. If the body were whole, there would be no need for the address.
So, what does all this potentially mean? What truth may we seize from this address and so address to others?
My answer: The Truth is fiction, so it must be shared with a sense of irony (i.e., in agapē — and why I think agapē should be interpreted as an already ironized form of desire is a topic for another day).
Put another way, Truth is just not that serious. Truth is (un)serious. Unity then, or growth in love, or growing into the one body that is not one, involves trying things out, imagining things differently: an open mind. It does not require belief in any doctrine or even belief, a force of will that purports to make the Truth present.
“The modern sophist,” Badiou writes, “attempts to replace the idea of truth with the idea of the rule” (6). I have argued elsewhere that the (modern) cleric attempts to “replace the idea of truth with the idea of the” norm.
“But speaking the truth in love” entails living without such assurances. It is more like sending a postcard: we hope the exposed truths make it to the listed address, to the all to which it is (un)intentionally addressed—”so that all may be in seizing the existence of truths.”
In Luke 16:19-31, commonly known as the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, flexuous, slobbery canine tongues perform the politics of compassion. As Lazarus lay sick and dying at the gate of the rich man who “feasted sumptuously every day,” only “the dogs would come and lick his sores” (vv. 19, 21).
The dogs represent a “fugitive moment of compassion” in a parable that otherwise seems designed to normalize retributive anger and closely related feelings, like disgust and fear.1 The allure of retributive anger is greatly diminished in and through flappy tongues of compassion.
In Political Emotions: Why Love Mattersfor Justice (2013), Martha Nussbaum identifies “the experience of compassion” as a point of connection between humans and animals, focusing her analysis of nonhuman animal compassion on elephants and dogs (142). She defines compassion as “a painful emotion directed at the serious suffering of another creature or creatures” (142).2
We know that dogs (and elephants) are capable of great acts of compassion. Describing the specific character of canine compassion promises to enrich our reading of Luke’s parable, renamed below as the Parable of (Un)Compassionate Tongues, by helping us better understand human compassion’s character.
As we will see, compassion is grounded in formative experiences of love and reciprocity. Initially, it is the stable love of our parents that enables us to transcend our original narcissism. We slowly learn to bring the experiences of others into our thoughts and to care about them. Following Donald Winnicott, Nussbaum argues that arts and culture constitute “potential space” for adults to play with compassion and learn to expand the sphere of their concern.
Original narcissism, or radical evil, is an ongoing challenge to our efforts to hone our attunement to the suffering of others. Nussbaum agrees with Kant: radical evil is an innate tendency. However, it is likely activated by the structure of human development. We are born fearful creatures, prone to feelings like anger at the world and the people in it for not behaving according to our expectations.3
The Greeks understood excessive anger, “obsessive, destructive, existing only to inflict pain and ill,” as a doglike emotion.4 Doglike is how Aeschylus describes the Furies, divine, feminine figures of retribution, in Oresteia.5 Nussbaum observes that “[t]he Greeks were far enough removed from fancy domesticated dog breeds and close enough to raw scenes of canine killing to associate dogs, consistently, with hideous disregard for the victim’s pain.”
Greek dogs would not be out of place in Luke’s parable. The politics of emotion that the Parable of (Un)Compassionate Tongues seems designed to evoke is that of retributive anger.
Defining anger in Aristotelian terms, Nussbaum argues that we experience anger when 1) we believe an object we care about has been meaningfully harmed and 2) we further believe that the harm done to the valued object has been “wrongfully inflicted.”6
Readers of Luke 16:19-31 surely care about Lazarus, and there is no doubt that the rich man’s failure to recognize Lazarus’s dire need for assistance is a form of wrongfully inflicted harm.
Readers of the parable are likely unconcerned about—or even pleased by—how the parable ends: the rich man is tormented in Hades. He is left with no hope of a different eternal outcome for his surviving family members.
Nussbaum persuasively argues that the desire for retribution is a defining characteristic of the experience of anger. She contends that retributive anger is normatively problematic for at least three reasons.7
Retribution is morally questionable because we often get angry over events of little consequence (e.g., someone you’ve met several times forgets your name or someone honks the horn at you in the elementary school carpool lane). Retributive anger is morally dubious because it may be inspired by something that is no one’s fault. Nussbaum points out that the “world is full of accidents.”8 Finally, punishing anger is politically unhelpful because it does not inspire efforts to ensure the wrongful act will not happen again.
Retributive anger is backward-facing, directed at punishing the wrongdoer rather than ensuring a more just outcome in the future (which may entail a future-directed form of punishment). The desire for (eternal) retribution that anger enflames distracts us from bettering our shared earthly existence by fostering emotions that can ground a spirited commitment to the core liberal value of equal dignity.
Readers of Luke 16:19-31 are liable to be led astray by its central theme: retribution. The brief appearance of the parable’s compassionate dogs challenges us to feel differently and to embrace a politics of emotion that celebrates and cherishes equal animal dignity: the politics of compassion. It is to the details of the parable that we now turn.
II. The Parable of (Un)Compassionate Tongues
Luke 16:19-31 begins by contrasting the unnamed rich man’s excessive wealth with Lazarus’s extreme need. The rich man is “dressed in purple and fine linen,” and he feasts “sumptuously every day” (v. 19). He does not seem to notice poor Lazarus dying at his gate, dressed in sores and starving. Lazarus lusts after the food that falls from the rich man’s table (vv. 20-21).
The food falling from the table may explain why dogs are around the rich man’s home. They understand the pain of hunger and illness. Perhaps that is why the dogs notice Lazarus’s suffering and come and lick his sores (v. 21).
In their commentary on the Gospel of Luke, New Testament scholars Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington III write, “Lazarus’s only companions are dogs, whose licking might have provided him both medicinal benefits and emotional comfort.”9
Lazarus dies without the companionship of his own species. We assume his death is due to complications caused by illness and starvation (v. 22).
We are not told if Lazarus is buried. We only know that the angels care for him after his death, carrying him away from the rich man’s gate and delivering him into Abraham’s embrace in Paradise (v. 22).
The rich man also dies. He is buried before appearing alone in Hades (vv. 22-23).
Looking out from Hades, the formerly rich man sees “Abraham far away with Lazarus at his side” (v. 23). “[T]ormented” by the flames of Hades and suffering from horrible thirst, the cursed man asks Abraham to have mercy on him and to send Lazarus to, in effect, lick him—to wet his dry tongue (v. 24).
The destitute man’s calm request for compassion is revealing.10 The formerly rich man recognizes Lazarus and knows him by name. A lack of familiarity with Lazarus cannot explain the poor man’s failure to notice him dying at his gate.
Though he is in Hades, the rich man behaves like a privileged man. He asks for the one he presumes is now Abraham’s servant, Lazarus, to come and serve him and quench his thirst.
In Hades, the rich man is “tormented,” “in agony,” horribly thirsty, “in flames.” Yet, he calmly and eloquently asks Abraham for relief (vv. 23-24). The formerly decadent man’s good-mannered request for Abraham to grant him relief conflicts with the terms of the text that indicate he is suffering extreme agony.
Abraham denies the rich man’s request for assistance. Abraham reasons that the formerly rich man hoarded “good things” in his earthly life and is receiving what he deserves in the afterlife: “evil things” (v. 25).
The fortunes of the rich man and Lazarus are reversed in the afterlife. Lazarus is “comforted,” and the rich man is “in agony” (v. 25).
Even if one wanted to offer compassion to the thirsty man, Abraham points out the impassable chasm between them (v. 26). Levine and Witherington III comment that “[t]here is no shuttle service from Hades to heaven.”11
Realizing his fate is sealed, the cursed man advocates for his surviving brothers. He asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers about eternal torment (vv. 27-30).
Again, Abraham denies the formerly privileged man’s request for relief. His brothers have Moses (i.e., the Torah) and the Prophets. “If they do not listen to [them], neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (v. 31).
III. Compassion Is for The Dogs.
The parable concludes just as it began: with a destitute man seeking relief from his suffering with no hope of receiving it. In the formerly rich man’s case, we exclaim, “Justice prevails!”
The rationale for our uncompassionate response to the previously rich man’s suffering is clarified if we name him Brian Thompson, the recently murdered CEO of UnitedHealthcare. As the CEO of a healthcare company that routinely denied claims, Thompson represents serious harm to the values and people we cherish—and harm inflicted wrongfully.
Compassion must be for the dogs. How else are we to explain the widespread online celebration of and thirsty reaction to Thompson’s murderer? Compassion for Thompson and his family: denied.
I don’t read Abraham’s refusal to offer compassion to the penniless man as a normative statement about either Jewish theology or the afterlife. However, his refusal to help the suffering man does raise a question for us to consider: Do we want a(n after)life wherein some (i.e., “the evil”) suffer without the possibility of even a crumb of relief?
I don’t believe we want such a(n after)life. If I am right, considering a few more questions is worth our time.
What is compassion? What impedes it? What does it promise? The tongues of the parable’s dogs are unexpected guides to understanding human-animal compassion and its political promise.
IV. Human and Canine Compassion
In Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (2013), Nussbaum turns to animal studies to identify the kinds of emotions that can aid nations aspiring to justice in “motivating good policies and rendering them stable” (137). She identifies “the experience of compassion” as a point of connection between humans and animals, focusing her analysis of nonhuman animal compassion on elephants and dogs (142). In my reading of Nussbaum’s work below, I focus on canine compassion.
Nussbaum defines compassion as “a painful emotion directed at the serious suffering of another creature or creatures” (142). For humans, compassion entails four thoughts, the first three of which are included in the philosophical tradition.
First, “there is a thought of seriousness” (142).12 We feel compassion when we judge someone else’s suffering as significant rather than as, for example, a form of discomfort or an inconvenience.
Second, there “is the thought of nonfault” (143). Generally, nonfault means that we feel compassion when we determine that someone is not entirely to blame for their suffering. In more complicated circumstances, we typically feel compassion for someone’s suffering caused by the least blameworthy aspects of their situation.
Third, there “is the thought of similar possibilities” (144). We typically feel compassion for someone like us: someone “who has possibilities in life that are similar” (144). Nussbaum argues that this thought is included in the philosophical tradition of compassion but is not conceptually necessary.
We can feel compassion for others even if we do not see “their predicament as like one that we would experience” (144). Nussbaum emphasizes the significance of this thought for “preventing or undoing denial of our own animal nature; its absence is thus a grave danger” (144).
Finally, Nussbaum adds a fourth thought to the three traditional ones above: “the eudaimonistic thought” (144). We feel compassion for the suffering of someone we consider “among the important parts” of our lives.
Nussbaum is not referring to “egoism.” She means that “the things that occasion a strong emotional response in us are things that correspond to what we have invested with importance in our thoughts, implicit or explicit, about what is important in life, our conception of flourishing” (145).
Lazarus must have mattered to the dogs of Luke’s parable because they respond to his suffering compassionately. It is now well established that animals are aware of suffering, “and they notice it very keenly” (147).
However, animals do not think of suffering in terms of blame. Like young children sometimes do, animals focus “on suffering without asking who is to blame” (147). Animals notice suffering but do not perceive fault—at least not to a significant degree. Thus, Nussbaum focuses her analysis of animal compassion on seriousness, similar possibilities, and eudaimonistic thought.
Animal compassion takes many forms, just as human compassion—some simple and some complex. The most complex form of compassion entails perspective-taking: “behavior that shows concern for what the other creature is suffering” (149). Perspective-taking also takes more or less complex forms.
Dogs do not typically pass the mirror test, so their understanding of another’s suffering is likely muddled. Their perspective-taking is a simple one.
To better define the perspective-taking of dogs, consider the following case:
George Pitcher and Ed Cone are watching TV one night in their Princeton home: a documentary about a little boy in England with a congenital heart ailment. [The boy dies]. Pitcher, sitting on the floor, found his eyes filled with tears. Instantly, their two dogs, Lupa and Remus, rushed to him, almost pushing him over, and licked his eyes and cheeks with plaintive whimpers (150).13
The dogs notice Pitcher’s suffering, which looks serious to them. However, they cannot know whether his suffering is, in fact, severe. Nussbaum observes that if Pitcher’s tears were due to having to pay “a just amount of tax,” the dogs would still comfort him (151).
Pitcher’s dogs do not consider who is to blame for his suffering. In his own book about dogs, “Pitcher . . . suggests that the judgment of fault is usually a defect, and animals are better off morally because they lack it” (152).14
With Nussbaum, we are rightly skeptical of the claim that determining fault is generally a moral defect. Dogs are storied for loving humans who cruelly mistreat them.
Moreover, determining fault can help women and minority groups identify reasons to assert their equal dignity (152-153). Yet, “we can certainly observe that humans often find fault erroneously, hastily, and on the basis of bad social norms. . . . To that extent, looking to animals for guidance would seem the right thing to do” (153).
Lupa and Remus may have some awareness of similar possibilities. Before coming into the care of Pitcher and Cone, Lupa and Remus had been abused. Even the sight of a stick terrorized them. Therefore, they may imagine “such bad events as future possibilities for themselves” (155).
Pitcher’s dogs respond compassionately to his suffering because they understand it, and he matters to them. However, Nussbaum notes that animal eudaimonistic thought is inflexible and narrow.
Animal compassion is directed at members of their own species or familiar group members. Noticing the tears of a stranger, Lupa and Remus will not show them compassion.
Dogs are capable of moving acts of compassion. The character of their dog-specific compassion promises to enrich our interpretation of Luke’s parable and potentially gift us with compassionate tongues.
V. Speaking in Compassionate Tongues
“[T]he dogs would come and lick his sores” (v. 21). They notice Lazarus’s suffering, and while the dogs cannot determine its actual seriousness, Lazarus’s pain seems grave to them.
The dogs know what it is like to experience illness and hunger. Cleaning and soothing Lazarus’s sores with their kind tongues, the dogs demonstrate that they perceive Lazarus’s suffering as a possibility for them.
Like many other animal behaviors, dogs licking a sick man’s sores may inspire disgust in us human animals. Lazarus’s body would likely repel readers if they encountered him outside their front doors.
Disgust is a powerful feeling that often impedes the politics of compassion. That is why, at least for one badass, holy bitch, “licking” sores is an important spiritual exercise.15
In The Spiritual Dialogue (1522), it is reported that Catherine of Genoa is led by the Spirit to ill people “with foul-smelling sores, the stench of which was so great that it was hard to stay close to them” (131).
She is commanded to put the sores in her mouth. “She put them in her mouth, and so many times she was freed from natural repugnance; but since the smell continued to give her nausea she rubbed her nose with the pus until she freed herself of that revulsion” (131).
“Licking” sores and similar practices, such as eating lice, are physical means to a specific spiritual end: Catherine wants to annihilate “Human Frailty,” which is, for her, connected to the “animal body, without reason, power, will, or memory” (125).
Catherine overcomes “Human Frailty” by overcoming its tendency to feel disgust for what is bodily. This is an essential spiritual goal for Catherine because disgust for what is bodily prevents her from becoming an animal body, a non-willing vessel of the Spirit.
The author asserts that Catherine’s actions are “loathesome” and “contrary to human nature” (131). However, “in forcing herself to obey the Spirit, Catherine was heartened in her resolve to help the desperately sick” (131).
Catherine rightly notices that human disdain for the animal body, its secretions, smells, sounds, etc., impedes the politics of compassion. However, Catherine’s spirituality is normatively problematic—and for reasons that go well beyond its underlying metaphysics.
Catherine’s “loathesome” practices are unreasonable because we are rightly concerned about the potentially adverse health outcomes associated with ingesting materials such as pus and feces.
Moreover, compassion does not require us to eat the pus from the sores of the ill or the lice from the heads of the poor. While Catherine’s desire to overcome disgust to help the severely sick and poor is admirable, it is clear that they are merely means to Catherine’s spiritual end: ceasing to exist as a will-full individual.
Finally, we know that animals are not mindless vessels of instinct. Most animals are sentient: they understand themselves, the world around them, and what is good (and bad) for their specific lives.16
Significantly, animals do not have to unlearn disgust for what is animal, namely the body. Only human animals learn to loathe the animal body and participate in the evil politics of projective disgust, defining some humans—such as women, Black men, Jews, and gay men—as wild animals and treating them as such, as what is outside the sphere of equal dignity.17
The parable’s dogs do not have to repent of disgust to lick the sores that cover Lazarus’s body. His sores do not disgust them. By licking his sores, they embody a dog-specific form of compassion that respects Lazarus as an end.
The rich man’s failure to recognize Lazarus’s suffering and offer a compassionate response is also dog-like. As his behavior in Hades amply attests, the rich man does not consider Lazarus a pack member.
Like the dogs, the rich man will not think of offering compassion to someone not in his family group. Unlike the dogs, the rich man can learn to expand his circle of concern to include all animals.
Yet, the rich man is all too human. Abraham expresses a theological view the rich man likely finds agreeable: Lazarus is to blame for his condition.
Illness, poverty, and suffering are associated with “evil things.” As Nussbaum argues, the “capacity to think about fault and choice is . . . a necessary part of moral life. And yet, it can go badly astray. . . . [I]t is very convenient to blame the poor for their poverty and to refuse compassion on that account” (158).18
The dogs cannot consider blame in their response to Lazarus’s suffering. His suffering is serious to them, and his life matters to them. He is one of their own.
The dogs also know what it is like to experience illness and hunger. So, they extend compassion to Lazarus. They speak compassion in flappy, drooly tongues.
VI. The Afterlives of (Un)Compassionate Tongues
During his earthly life, Lazarus is treated like a dog. The dogs recognize him as one of their own and lick his wounds.
I think Lazarus represents their sal(i)v(a)ific compassion in Paradise. However, the fact that he does not use his tongue troubles my reading of Lazarus as a tongue of compassion.
Several years ago, a New Testament scholar noticed I was reading Luke’s Parable of (Un)Compassionate Tongues on a long flight from San Diego. It was the lectionary text for the upcoming Sunday, and I was trying out a sermonic version of this essay.
The Scholar asked me what I thought about the parable. I shared that I had problems with the politics of retributive anger I read in the story. The Scholar expressed surprise. As a gay Black man, he read Abraham as Lazarus’s advocate, as his tongue. The Scholar argued that, in and through Abraham, Lazarus is liberated from his earthly oppressor.
I agree with the Scholar: Lazarus does not require compassion in the afterlife. However, what is the justification for withholding it from the formerly rich man? There is only one morally normative reason for denying him compassion: we do not believe his situation requires it.
As we discovered earlier, the formerly rich man’s composed request for relief undercuts the idea that he is experiencing extreme agony in Hades. However, we are told that he is “being tormented” in Hades (v. 23). We also know that he wishes to warn his family to avoid a similar fate (vv. 27-31).
Even so, the man does not seem to know he is suffering. Nussbaum writes, “If we think . . . that a person is unaware of a predicament that is really bad . . . , then we will have compassion for that person even if the person doesn’t think [their] situation is bad” (143). We have reason to believe that his suffering is bad.
We are not explicitly told why the rich man did not recognize Lazarus’s suffering and offer assistance. Furthermore, we cannot underestimate the power of bad theology and destructive social norms to deform one’s sensitivity to the suffering of others.
There is a degree of moral ambiguity in the parable. I do not conclude that the cursed man is entirely to blame for his suffering.
Like power, wealth is not one thing, nor is it simply a monetary reality, something we can locate neatly, like in a bank account. Generosity is often difficult for anyone who has worked hard to possess anything potentially beneficial to the common good.
The formerly rich man’s suffering is certainly a possibility for us. If it were not, the parable itself would not be necessary.
The formerly rich man, Brian Thompson, does not matter to everyone. He failed during his earthly life to respond compassionately to the suffering of others. He is an object of social disgust.
The horrible irony is that if we fail to offer compassion to the formerly rich man, we become like the earthly rich man and complicit in undermining the basis of any thriving liberal society: commitment to equal dignity.
Advocates of dignity like Gandhi, King, and Mandela understood the threat posed by punishing anger to the value of equal dignity. They rejected the politics of retributive anger.19
Of course, we can reject their examples and deny compassion to the formerly rich man. If we do so, let us admit that rigorous moral reasoning does not support that choice. But what of the fact that neither Lazarus nor Abraham offers the cursed man compassion?
Suffering outside the gates of plenty and blessing, the previously content man asks Abraham to have mercy on him. Abraham argues that he is not a source of salvation.
He did not save the ill and starving Lazarus. He cannot save the formerly rich man from his suffering in Hades. According to Abraham, salvation is found in the Torah and the Prophets.
The parable itself is an interpretation of the Law of Moses and the Prophets. From it, we learn two lessons. The first lesson is that compassion is the morally correct animal response to the legitimate suffering of others. The dogs embody this lesson.
The second lesson we learn is that it is right totrust one’s fellow animals to respond compassionately to legitimate suffering. The Greek of Luke’s parable suggests that Lazarus was placed at the rich man’s gate—he did not just wander there himself.
Lazarus’s friends/neighbors trusted the rich man to recognize Lazarus’s pain and hoped he would use his resources to relieve it. While the dogs gave Lazarus what his friends/neighbors trusted the rich man to, they were nonetheless correct in placing their faith in him to act compassionately.
There is a third lesson for us to recognize. Luke’s Jesus emphasizes it after sharing the parable: people can and do change (17:1-10).
Luke 16:19-31 emphasizes the importance of change but does so in a way that tends to evoke fear and encourage disgust and retributive anger. The parable is for a specific group of readers, like the ungenerous wealthy. They had better change their ways before it’s too late.
Change is not possible in the afterlife. Eternal punishment is a delicious thought—at least when the objects of it are one’s enemies, or “those people,” or the one percent.
The problem: retributive anger does not improve our lives; it worsens our lives by creating the conditions for afterlives of violence. Moreover, fear and disgust do not make people good; they make people tyrants.
Nonetheless, the Parable of (Un)Compassionate Tongues does not entertain offering compassion to the suffering man in Hades. The parable does hint at the possibility of a change in the afterlife’s policy toward those suffering in Hades.
The formerly rich man is likely shocked by Abraham’s refusal to help him or his family. His belief in a theological outlook that privileges the privileged is shaken.
The shock of Abraham’s lack of compassion for his suffering can become a persuasive reason for the poor man to seek compassion elsewhere. This elsewhere is Lazarus.
The formerly rich man can wet his dry tongue by directly addressing Lazarus: “Brother Lazarus, ask our Father Abraham to have mercy on me.” In this way, the destitute man affirms that he, like Lazarus, depends on his fellow animals to recognize his suffering and offer compassion.
Lazarus understands what it is like to suffer alone without hope of relief. His initial silence is likely motivated by an unwillingness to humiliate the man who did not recognize his earthly suffering and whose suffering is not adequately addressed by Abraham.
If that is true, when the formerly rich man asks Lazarus to help him, Lazarus will likely break his silence and offer assistance, asking Abraham to create a way for the man to travel from Hades to Paradise.
Abraham, recognizing the formerly rich man’s change of heart and Lazarus’s willingness to offer the man compassion, will likely extend compassion to the formerly rich man.
Significantly, compassion need not overlook the tormented man’s past behavior or its role in causing his present suffering—but it will neither hold him to that lousy behavior forever nor deny aid due to the thought of fault.
Abraham’s compassion can look like a future-oriented pathway between Hades and Paradise that encourages and fosters education in the value of equal dignity.
Clearly, my interpretation of the afterlife exceeds the limits of the text alone. My argument does not rely on it. The lesson is the same: “The advice to humans is not to wait for external intervention from the heavens: instead, we must arrange to have mercy on, and to love, one another.”20
Licked by the textual tongue of the parable, I have remained stubbornly hopeful and committed to reading Luke 16:19-31 in the spirit of the floppy, comforting tongues of the dogs. However, while trying to hold onto compassion and the value of equal dignity, I have neglected to directly acknowledge a profound loss.
VII. Radical Evil and The Politics of Compassion
We have lost Lazarus. We rightly feel both grief and Transition-Anger at the tragic loss of a friend.
Transition-Anger is Nussbaum’s term for future-oriented anger or “protest without payback.”21 It acknowledges our outrage at injustice and powerlessness to return Lazarus from the dead.
Transition-anger motivates us to do what we can to ensure others do not suffer the same fate as Lazarus. We can peacefully protest public blindness to the suffering of the poor. We can work with our neighbors to foster a spirit of reciprocity in our communities. We can organize to elect and donate to officials committed to creating caring governmental agencies.
The work of mourning is another difficult task we can do together.22 Mourning the loss of Lazarus, we internalize our shared mortality.
Accepting the reality of death, we potentially undo our anthropodenial: the rejection of our animal condition. To flourish, we must trust and rely on others. Our grief can enable a common effort to celebrate and embody respect for equal dignity.
The work of mourning and Transition-Anger are compassionate responses to animal suffering. They are grounded in love and generosity, in the experience of animal vulnerability. However, the experience of vulnerability is also the fertile soil from which radical evil grows.
In Political Emotions, Nussbaum argues that radical evil is rooted in “our bodily helplessness” and “our cognitive sophistication.” It is radical because it is “rooted in the very structure of human development” (190). It is evil because it is the intentional, active thwarting of equal dignity.
Following Kant, Nussbaum concedes that radical evil is likely an innate tendency. Thus, it is independent of social circumstances, like poverty or wealth.
Moreover, although radical evil is supported by some aspects of our “animal heritage,” it is a tendency unique to human animals. It is likely activated by the structure of human development (167).
The infant is a creature of anxiety. “Their helplessness produces an intense anxiety that is not mitigated by trust in the world or its people” (173). They attempt to overcome helplessness through control, “making other people [their slaves]” (173).
The way out of original narcissism is love and reciprocity. Initially, their parents’ love encourages the infant to “trust in an uncertain world and the people in it” (176). The stable, reliable love of parents creates a pathway for the infant’s eros, “its . . . outward-moving curiosity” (176).
In and through play, the infant explores the world and hones its developing concern for others. The infant learns to offer love to others.
I return to play below. For now, we recognize that original narcissism is incurable; it is an intractable feature of our interpersonal and political lives.
Original narcissism is the ground of possibility for retributive anger and the closely related politics of disgust and fear. The ongoing experience of bodily helplessness/vulnerability can cause us to become tyrants again.
Feeling out of control, we are tempted to blame and punish others, project our animal condition onto specific groups of people, like women and minorities, and distrust people who do not obey dominant cultural expectations.
Nussbaum argues that the ongoing experience of loving relationships and playfulness in arts and culture immunizes us against the persistence of viral narcissism.
The arts and culture constitute, to use Donald Winnicott’s term, “potential space,” space outside of our interpersonal relationships to try “roles and options . . . without real-life stress” (181).
Summarizing Winnicott, Nussbaum writes, “In adult life . . . the infant’s experience of trust, reciprocity, and creativity finds a wide range of outlets, in culture and the arts, that deepen and renew the experience of transcending narcissism” (181).
In Luke’s literary tale of the (Un)Compassionate Tongues, the dogs evoke a spirit of loving generosity. The memory of their wiggly tongues potentially helps us remember formative experiences of love and care that can continue to ground our faith in a politics of compassion.
As I write this essay, I remember my childhood friend, Keppa, a Boston Terrier. My grandmother, Lorraine, convinced me to choose Keppa from the litter because she was the runt. Keppa loved me, but she loved my grandmother far more than me or anyone else.
Keppa made us aware of her connection to my grandma in many ways. For example, when she was let out of my house early every morning to relieve herself, she would run next door to my grandparents’ home. Refusing to return to me when I called her, she spent her day with my grandmother, eventually moving in with my grandparents when I moved away to college.
I was home when Keppa died. I remember that my grandfather cried. It was the first and only time I witnessed him express sadness. I was in my early twenties.
I carried Keppa in my arms to her final resting place. My grandmother could not bear to be present for her burial.
Remembering Keppa—and how could I forget the licks I received right after she had eaten a dead fish taken from a nearby irrigation canal—I remember my loving grandparents, especially my grandmother.
Like Keppa, I received a lot of care from my grandmother. I also went to her house almost every morning for breakfast and conversation before school.
I continue to remember Keppa and my grandmother, Lorraine. Every December, I hang ornaments on the Christmas tree in their memories. During this time of year, Lorraine and Keppa are again side by side.
Nussbaum argues that nations aspiring to justice must tap into these formative interpersonal experiences of love and generosity because they ground a spirited concern for others, including serious animal suffering and the associated value of equal dignity, that can stabilize the politics of compassion (177).
Given the constant pull of original narcissism in public life, a resilient collective commitment to compassion would be no small achievement.
There is no guarantee that readers of Luke 16:19-31 will be inspired by the squiggly, compassionate tongues of the dogs to remember formative experiences of love and reciprocity that can ground a stable commitment to a politics of compassion. The parable’s politics of retributive anger is the text’s more evident and satisfying theme.
But if compassionate canine tongues manage to wet our dry tongues, I think we will agree that the politics of compassion is for the dogs. It is for every animal.
The Romans also thought anger was a feminine feeling. See Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness, 44-45. ↩︎
See Nussbaum, The Monarchy of Fear. She discusses anger in chapter 3, “Anger, Child of Fear,” 63-95. See also Anger and Forgiveness, and Justice for Animals, 15-16. ↩︎
See Monarchy of Fear, 80-84. For an extended discussion of anger’s errors, see Anger and Forgiveness, 14-35. ↩︎
See Levine and Witherington III, The Gospel of Luke (Cambridge Bible Commentary [2018]), 453. They also note that “the standard move” is to “see the dogs as adding a note of ‘uncleanness’ . . . ” (453). They argue that this move is “unnecessary and erroneous” (453). ↩︎
See The Gospel of Luke, 455, for the insights I outline below. ↩︎
George Pitcher was a philosopher, and Edward Cone was a composer and Pitcher’s partner. See Politics of Emotion, 418n31. See Justice for Animals, xx-xxi. ↩︎
I am using bitch here in a Lizzoian spirit, but Catherine would likely not mind the less flattering meaning of the term also intentionally echoed here. ↩︎
On animal sentience, see Nussbaum, Justice for Animals, chapter 6, “Sentience and Striving,” 118-153. ↩︎
The parable’s logic is less neat. The idea seems to be that our earthly moral judgments are often very wrong. In this life, good people receive evil things, and wicked people receive good things. However, the afterlife does not overturn the underlying logic; it corrects it. Good people receive good things in the afterlife, and evil people receive evil things. But we are not given any reason to believe that Lazarus is good and the rich man is wicked. Normal people make grave moral mistakes. And if the message is that the poor are always good by virtue of being poor and the rich are always wicked by virtue of being rich, then we cannot account for the ubiquitousness of radical evil. ↩︎
See Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness, 218-237, for a detailed reading of these figures’ rejection of retributive anger. ↩︎
I have taken this quote from Nussbaum, The Tenderness of Silent Minds: Benjamin Britten and his War Requiem (2024), 245-246. She is reading the final moments of War Requiem. The Chorus sings, in part, “May the Choir of Angels receive thee / and with Lazarus, once poor / may thou have eternal rest.” Britten and his partner, Pears, were both dog lovers. ↩︎
For a full account of Nussbaum’s understanding of Transiton-Anger, see Anger and Forgiveness, 35-40. See also Monarchy of Fear, 88-95, Justice for Animals, 16. ↩︎
For grief, see Political Emotions, 201-202, and Anger and Forgiveness, 47-48. ↩︎
Mary breastfeeding Jesus, Basilica di Santa Chiara, Napoli, Italy.
I.
I.1
Kiki and Herb encourage us to crucify Jesus. Let’s sing along:1
I.2
“Banging In The Nails” is a compelling performance of a queer critique of religion. The object of Kiki and Herb’s critique is Catholic piety, represented by “the Nazi pope,” the late Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger). What it means to crucify Jesus, to bang in the nails, to put the crown of thorns on his head, and so forth, becomes more apparent in the context of Ratzinger’s legacy.
[T]he proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase (emphasis mine).
In addition to placing the blame of “violent reactions” on homosexuals for insisting on being treated with dignity and respect, Ratzinger also advises us, homosexuals “who seek to follow the Lord,” to carry our crosses:
What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross. That Cross, for the believer, is a fruitful sacrifice since from that death come life and redemption. While any call to carry the cross or to understand a Christian’s suffering in this way will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ.
Ratzinger wants homosexuals to conspire with Rome and crucify our desires. He believes that murdering same-sex desires is a “fruitful sacrifice.”
Kiki and Herb perform an alternative to Ratzinger’s theology. They crucify Rome’s Jesus instead of same-sex desire.
Crucifying Rome’s Jesus, we free ourselves from the reign of Roman terror on homosexual persons. We free ourselves to take pleasure in our “condition.” We free ourselves to think for ourselves, to think about how it feels like to us to be subjects of same-sex desire. “Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, banging in the nails,” we also potentially free ourselves to think about what we can do with Jesus now, now that we have executed Rome’s Jesus.
1.3
Traditional gay theology is a helpful resource for resurrecting Jesus, for giving Jesus a new, gayer life(style). In “What Is Traditional Gay Theology(, Now)?,” I argue that gay Christian theology is the discipline of recognizing, describing, and unfolding the implications of identifications with devalued femininity (i.e., gay identifications) within the Christianmythos.
The Gospel of Matthew is one source of the Christian mythos. It is in this text that we discover a spirituality of gay identification.
I.4
The reading of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew pursued in this essay is inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 film The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Il vangelo secondo Matteo).2 In the film’s opening scene, Mary’s face confronts us (first image below). She is looking directly at her fiancé, Joseph. For this reading, the significant aspect of this scene is Mary’s simple black head covering.
The black head covering is worn by a group of women witnessing three men entering Jerusalem (second image below). These men have come to search for “the child who has been born the king of the Jews” (Matt 2:1-2).
Jesus, too, is clothed in a simple black head covering. At the end of John’s sermon against the attitudes of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the face of Jesus fills the screen (third image). The style of Jesus’ head covering (fourth image) and the specific presentation of Jesus’ face (see, again, third image), as if he is looking back at Mary, return us to the film’s opening scene, stylistically linking Jesus to Mary and Mary to Jesus.
Pasolini connects Mary and Jesus in the context of Jesus’ baptism, an event in which the Spirit of God is the central figure (3:16-17). Pasolini’s aesthetic inspires curiosity about how Mary, Jesus, and the Spirit are textually intertwined in the Gospel of Matthew.3
I.5
The Greek grammar of Matthew 1 (see below) links Mary and the Spirit to each other and a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival. Ek, ex (ἐχ/ἐξ) mark the spot, if you will.4
Specifically, in Matthew’s gospel, Mary is a figure of the Spiritof God. Matthew defines the Spirit in and through Mary, described in and through a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival.5
Matthew inextricably links Jesus Messiah to the maternal figure, Mary/Spirit (1:16, 18, 20). Jesus Messiah embodies Mary/Spirit, a cunning/rebellious and virtuous/conventional spiritual life within the tradition that privileges the Father in the (his)story of redemption. In Jesus Messiah, gay identification bursts into the world as a messianic practice or politics.
II.
II.1
Matthew is not the obvious choice for those interested in Mary’s significance in Jesus’ life. The Gospel of Luke, far more than Matthew, dwells on Mary’s role in Jesus’ story. Indeed, Luke’s gospel concerns motherhood—and that is the problem.
In The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narrative in the New Testament (2003), the late Theodore Jennings, Jr. observes that, in Luke, there is “an episode particular to itself that undermines the importance of biological motherhood, including, by implication, the role of Mary” (184, emphasis mine). Jennings refers to Luke 11:27-28: “As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that you suckled!’ But [Jesus] said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.’”
Jennings argues that “Luke . . . undermines [Mary’s] role insofar as it is based on biological grounds . . . . Her place in the narrative as one who is honored is not as “mother” but as believer, which corresponds precisely with the intention of Jesus’s saying [elsewhere, namely Luke 8:19-21]” (184-185).
Luke undermines the dignity of (biological) motherhood, recategorizing Mary as a “believer.” Matthew, Jennings argues, undermines the dignity of “human fatherhood,” prohibiting the practice of calling anyone father:
Jesus’ program for his disciples clearly entails the abolition of distinctions among them and thus the abolition of hierarchical relationships. In this connection [Matt 23:8-12], Jesus prohibits calling anyone “father” and thus prohibits the recognition of the claims of paternity and so of authority on the part of any human being, including biological fathers . . . . The saying attributed to Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel clearly undermines human fatherhood . . . (184, emphasis mine).6
Matthew’s critique of (biological) fatherhood is apparent in the gospel’s genealogy (1:1-17). Matthew’s genealogy connects Mary to a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival, a movement within the dominant tradition emphasizing the normative place of the Father in the (his)story of redemption.
II.2
Matthew 1:16 is a significant piece of Matthew’s critique of normative fatherhood/manhood: “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of [ex] whom is Jesus.” The Greek preposition ex in Matthew 1:16 connects Mary to a historic movement of maternal rebellion and survival:
1:3: “Judah the father of Perez and Zerah ek tēs Tamar;
1:5: Salmon the father of Boaz ek tēs Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed ek tēs Ruth;
1:6: “David was the father of Solomon ek tēs tou Uriah.”
The ek of Matthew 1:16 also connects Mary and Jesus, and so links Jesus to a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival. 1:16 begins just like verses 3, 5, and 6, with a male name, in this case, Joseph. However, the typical de egennēsen ton (he begat), followed by the name(s) of his son(s) and then of the mother, does not come after Joseph’s name. Verse 16 does not read like this: Joseph the father of Jesus by Mary. It reads like this: Joseph is the man (or husband) of Mary, of whom is Jesus.
Joseph’s name is followed not by the name of his son(s) but rather by the name of hissocial role relative to Mary. Joseph is Mary’s husband.
The disruption of the typical formula begets unexpected results. Following Mary’s name, the formula proceeds predictably, the main difference being its feminine gendering: Marias ex hēs egennēthē Iēsous (Mary who begat Jesus). Notice that Mary’s name is in the place where we usually find the name of the father. The name of her son, Jesus, follows her name. The feminine hēs makes it clear that Jesus is Mary’s son.
Notice also that the designation Messiah is in the place where we typically find the mother’s name: Marias ex hēs egennēthē Iēsousho legomenos Christos (Mary, who begat Jesus, the one called the Messiah). In this way, Matthew links the messianic role to the maternal role.7
II.3
The maternal role in Matthew 1 is quite scandalous. Matthew 1:18, the first verse of the narrative about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, emphasizes just that point: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from [ek] the Holy Spirit.”
Mary’s pregnancy occurs before she “lived” with Joseph. The genealogy does not shy away from Mary’s erotic rebellion. It amplifies it, literally connecting her to other queer women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah.”
Anna Case-Winters makes several observations in her excellent theological commentary on Matthew that highlight the oddness of the inclusion of women in Matthew’s genealogy:
There is no question that the Gospel of Matthew is written in a patriarchal context and reflects the patriarchal view of the secondary status of women and children . . . . In contrast to the society in which women were largely invisible, in the Gospel of Matthew, women have high visibility both in Jesus’ life and in the ministry of Jesus. . . . The genealogy, though patrilineal, breaks the traditional patriarchal pattern ‘was the father’ with the inclusion of five women in the line. . . . There are other extraordinary things about this genealogy. One of the most striking is the inclusion of the names of women. Luke’s genealogy does not include any women, not even Mary. Including women, as Matthew does, in a genealogy that is traced down through the male line is uncommon.8
In his An Ethic of Queer Sex: Principles and Improvisations (2013), Jennings helpfully situates Mary within a specific queer lineage (esp. 98-101). “In this line of remarkable women (which concludes with Mary),” Jennings observes, “there is a strange priority given to women who are sexually disreputable . . .” (100).
Tamar is one of those “remarkable” and “sexually disreputable” women. She is unwilling to let the men in her life shirk their responsibility to her, even if that means she must play the role of a prostitute (Genesis 38).
Rahab is, like many sex workers, observant and seems to grasp how the upcoming “street skirmish” is going to go. She shrewdly takes sides in the battle, saving her entire family from destruction (Joshua 2:1-22, 6:1-27).
Ruth, furthermore, refuses to abandon another woman for the sake of security in the arms of a man. Moreover, Ruth seduces her kinsman, “brazenly [taking] the sexual initiative in chapter 3” (Ruth 1:16-17; 3).9
Finally, Bathsheba, “Uriah’s wife,” a woman who, like Mary, is erotically tarnished, but, unlike Mary, is punished (by God), nonetheless remains with David and produces another son, Solomon (2 Samuel 11-12). Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder points out that we often forget “Bathsheba’s role in securing the kingdom for her son, Solomon” (see 1 Kings 1:11-31).10
II.4
It is clear why Mary belongs on the same list as a woman like Tamar. She becomes pregnant by untraditional means. However, Tamar, for example, is erotically rebellious, but she is also a conventional woman. She takes bold, untraditional action to safeguard traditionalfamily values.
Mary seems to play no active role in her own story. Her future depends on Joseph’s (good)will. If that is true, then her connection to queer women like Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah” is not entirely justified.
Mary’s story requires a queer(er) analysis. To make sense of the connection between Mary and women like Tamar in Matthew’s genealogy, we may interpret the angel’s speech in Joseph’s dream as an expression of Mary’s defiance of Joseph’s will to dismiss her.
III.
III.1
Before dreaming, Joseph concludes that Mary has been disloyal to him. So, he decides to send her away. His resolve to do so discreetly, rather than publicly, earns him the title of “just man” (1:19). Satisfied with his plan, he falls asleep and begins to dream.11
An angel appears in Joseph’s dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their injustices” (Matthew 1:20-21).
There are at least two ways of reading the angel’s speech in Joseph’s dream. We may read the speech literally, supposing it is a divine message delivered to Joseph. One problem with that interpretation of Joseph’s dream is that it deprives Mary of agency. If Mary is a passive recipient of God’s/Jospeh’s will, why is she linked to women who make bold choices in their stories?
We may also read Joseph’s dream psychoanalytically. Reading the dream in a psychoanalytically informed way clarifies the more obvious details of the text, especially Mary’s relationship to a tradition of maternal rebellion and survival. It also aligns Matthew’s witness with Luke’s by giving Mary a voice.
III.2
In his Interpretation of Dreams, Freud observes that “the dream-work cannot create speeches.” According to Freud, the speeches (and conversations) we hear in our dreams “have really been made or heard.”12
Yet, the dream work does a lot with the speeches and conversations we have actually heard. For example, what appears as a single speech in a dream is often an effect of the dream work. The dream work “drags [fragments of speeches] out of their context . . . incorporating some portions and rejecting others. . . often [abandoning] the meaning the words originally had in the dream-thoughts and give[s] them a fresh one.”13
Speeches may undergo editing and even recontextualization in dreams, but the dream does not create them. I want to use the Freudian idea that “whatever stands out markedly in dreams as a speech can be traced back to real speeches which have been spoken or heard by the dreamer” to make sense of the angel’s speech in Joseph’s dream.14
III.3
The angel in Joseph’s dream gives a speech to Joseph. Freud describes speeches in dreams as having an acoustic and a motor aspect.15 The angel meets those criteria, speaking and (dis)appearing in Joseph’s dream. What is not clear is who actually gave the angel’s speech to Joseph.
One possibility is that Joseph gave the speech to himself. In that case, the speech functions in the dream as a reminder of the disturbing object of his desire, namely Mary. Again, the problem with this interpretation is that it deprives Mary of agency.
It is easy to understand why Mary belongs on a list of erotically suspect women, but they are also fierce women. They manifestly do not wait for men to make choices for them.
It is more plausible that Mary gave Joseph the speech he heard in his dream. We may rigorously speculate that the dream work’s redemption of Mary, transforming her into an angelic figure, enables Joseph to listen to what he finds disturbing: Mary’s defiance of his will to dismiss her, discreetly ruin her future, and sabotage the redemptive will of God.16
Mary insists on Joseph’s fidelity, and he ultimately offers it to her (1:24-25). Although, we should not imagine that it was easy for him to change his mind about Mary (and Jesus). Notice that when the Gentile magi arrive to pay homage to the “child who has been born king of the Jews,” they find “the child with Mary his mother” (2:2, 11). Joseph is textually absent at this critical moment in his son’s life.
Joseph’s redemption is the first miracle associated with Jesus’ birth, and his redemption is consequential. Joseph becomes Jesus’ real dad because of Mary and by adoption (not by biology/nature). Jesus becomes a “son of David,” and so he becomes the real “Messiah, son of David, the son of Abraham,” because of Mary and by adoption (1:20).17
III.4
Matthew explicitly links Mary to a tradition of feminine rebellion and survival. Matthew unambiguously identifies Jesus with her (1:16). Thus, Jesus Messiah is of the Marian tradition of feminine dissidence and conventionality and within the dominant tradition privileging the Father in the (his)story of redemption.
Jesus is also of the Spirit (1:18, 20). What is the character of their relationship? The answer to that question is related to the character of Mary’s relationship to the Spirit.
IV.
IV.1
Matthew describes Mary’s baby as “of [ek] the Holy Spirit” (1:18, 19). Some readers may be inclined to heterosexualize the Spirit’s relationship with Mary and credit the Spirit with somehow inseminating her. However, in New Testament literature, the Spirit is associated with the feminine/maternal role. Consider, for example, Romans 8.
IV.2
Paul believes the Spirit dwells in the Roman Christians (8:9). If the Spirit of God dwells in them, then it follows that the Spirit of Christ dwells in them, too. Paul connects the Spirit and Christ in his theology.
In an earlier letter, Second Corinthians, Paul clearly defines the relationship between the Spirit and Christ: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (3:17). “The Lord” refers to Jesus Messiah, to the one who, Paul claims in 3:14, removes the veil that blocks recognition of him as Messiah. Notice that Paul collapses the distinction between the Spirit and Christ: “The Lord is the Spirit.”
Paul makes a similar argument in Romans 8. For Paul, believers are pregnant with a pregnant Spirit. The spiritual life refers to the Spirit’s pregnancy developing within believers. Believers, now pregnant with Spirit/Messiah, “groan inwardly” as Spirit/Messiah grows within them (8:23).
In the interim, between pregnancy and birth, the Spirit parents believers. The Spirit “bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (8:14). The Spirit “helps us in our weakness” (8:26). The Spirit “intercedes” for believers (8:27).
The eschatological hope is for the Spirit to birth Christ within believers. The birth of Christ within believers finally conforms them “to the image of [Christ] . . . the firstborn in a large family” and thereby fully realizes their adoption as children of God (8:29).
For Paul, the Spirit is like Mary. The Spirit is like a woman unnaturally pregnant with Jesus Messiah and a fierce protector, supporter, and teacher of her children.
IV.3
In Matthew, the Spirit is also like Mary. Just as Matthew 1:16 defines Jesus as Mary’s son, so Matthew 3:16-17 explicitly defines Jesus as the Spirit’s son: “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove (hōsei peristeran) and alighting on him. And a voice (hē phōnē) from (ek) heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.'”
Ek appears in 3:17 but does not function here as in Matthew’s genealogy. More important in this context is the voice’s declaration, “This is my son.”
The fact that the voice’s identity is initially unclear strengthens the temptation to read God the Father into this text as the identity of the voice in 3:17. Matthew’s grammar, style, and theology, in addition to themes in biblical literature more broadly, connect the Spirit of God in 3:16 to the voice of 3:17.
The grammar of the Greek text connects the Spirit and the voice. Matthew describes the Spirit’s behavior as dove-like (hōsei peristeran) in 3:16. Dove is gendered feminine in Greek (hē peristera). The voice, hē phōnē, of 3:17 is also gendered feminine.
There is also a stylistic symmetry between 3:16 and 3:17. The Spirit and the voice are from heaven. The voice, like the dove-like Spirit, descends from or comes down from heaven.
The dove-like Spirit calls attention to biblical themes especially relevant to this reading of Matthew, maternal themes like birth and rebirth. The Spirit flying above the waters of Jesus’ baptism is reminiscent of the avian Spirit hovering over the waters of the formless earth at the birth of creation (Genesis 1:2). The dove-like Spirit also reminds us of the flood’s aftermath when Noah sent out a dove to find dry ground to begin rebuilding the earth (8:8-9).18
The dove-like Spirit recalls the circumstances of Jesus’ birth in Luke. The young Jesus is presented before the Lord in the temple in Jerusalem, and his parents sacrifice two doves there (Luke 2:24). Finally, the dove-like Spirit calls to mind the character of Jesus’ reforming messianic politics in Matthew. Jesus overturns “the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves” (21:12, see section VI for 10:16b).
Up to this point, the emphasis in Matthew’s narrative has been on the presence of the dove-like Spirit in Jesus’ life. Jesus is of the Spirit (Matthew 1:18, 20). John the Baptist testifies, “He [i.e., the Messiah] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (3:11; see also 12:18). The Spirit will soon lead Jesus into the wilderness (4:1). God the Father does not explicitly appear in the Gospel of Matthew until 5:16.
Theologically, Matthew does not give God the Father a voice. The Father observes, listens, judges, wills, and saves—but the Spirit does the talking in Matthew (see also Romans 8:26-27, 1 Corinthians 12:3). Communication is the role of the Spirit.19
As Jesus sends his disciples “like sheep into the midst of wolves,” he advises them not to worry about “how you are to speak or what you are to say” (10:16, 19). They will be given the required words, “for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (19).
For all these reasons, we are justified in identifying the voice of 3:17 with the Spirit of 3:16. At Jesus’ baptism, it is the Spirit of God, and not God the Father, who declares, “[Jesus] is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (3:17).20
The Spirit, like Mary, is Jesus’ mother.
IV.4
Does Matthew’s Jesus have two mothers? No, as Matthew makes it impossible to de-link Mary, Jesus, and the Spirit.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is not the Spirit’s son by adoption; he is internal to the Spirit (1:18, 20). Jesus is also not Mary’s son by adoption; he is internal to Mary (1:16). Jesus is not of two wombs.
Jesus is of the maternal figure. He is of Mary/Spirit. She is his at once erotically rebellious and conventional mother.
IV.5
The radical emphasis on the Mother/Son relationship highlights how thoroughgoing is Matthew’s critique of (biological) fatherhood. It raises the question of God the Father’s relationship to Jesus.
One of Freud’s patients reports that his “Nanya” told him that Joseph was “like” a father to Jesus, and God was his “real father.”21 His Nayna is wrong about Joseph and right about God.
God/Joseph is the real Father of Jesus—not naturally, but through (the advocacy of) the Spirit/Mary.22 We typically describe this kind of parent-child bond in terms of adoption.
V.
V.1
Matthew inextricably links Jesus to a non-standard, feminine or maternal politics. Thus, we should expect Jesus’ messianism, aligned in Matthew 1:16 with the maternal role, to swerve to some degree from the dominant culture’s understanding of legitimate messianism. We should expect, that is, Jesus to incarnate a resistant relationship to the culture of normative masculinity also represented in the genealogy—and of which Jesus is, by the advocacy of the Spirit through Joseph by adoption, connected as a “Son of David.”
V.2
The significance of Jesus’ specific messianism is highlighted by Rosemary Radford Ruether. She asks, “Can a male savior save women?”23
Jennings responds to Ruether’s question, arguing that Jesus Messiah is relevant to women because he enters into solidarity with them. Jesus “becomes the one who shares the attributes traditionally associated with women.”24
For Jennings, Jesus shares “the attributes traditionally associated with women” because he represents a third gender. He is androgynous, in some sense male/masculine and female/feminine.
I argue elsewhere that theories of androgyny tend to collapse the distinction between sex and gender. Theories of androgyny tend, that is, to confuse social realities (gender) with biology/genetics (sex), unintentionally naturalizing the normative sex/gender/race/class regime they are attempting to resist.25 Thus, an androgynous Jesus cannot save women.
V.3
Our answer to Ruether’s question builds on the specific character of Jesus’ non-standard messianism, defined in and through his identification with a devalued feminine or maternal figure, namely his mother, Mary/Spirit. She is a maternal figure who is simultaneously rebellious and conventional. Matthew identifies Jesus with her; thus, his messianism is of her: at once dissident and ordinary.
VI.
VI.1
Jesus describes his spirited messianic politics just as he is sending his disciples back into their traditional religious world “like sheep into the midst of wolves.” Jesus authorizes them to drive out “unclean spirits . . . and to cure every disease and every sickness” (10:1, 5, 16).
The success of their mission depends on embodying the proper spiritual logic. The disciples must be like him, like his mother. They must “be wise (phronimoi) as serpents (hoi opheis) and innocent (akeraioi) as doves (hai peristerai)” (10:16b, 17:5).26
Jesus teaches the disciples to be dove-like, virtuous/conventional/socially valuable.27 He also encourages them to be snake-like, clever minds/rebellious/socially disturbing.
The disciples are not to be like Satan, a poisonous snake, a sickening force in the world (Genesis 3:1; Revelation 12:9; Matthew 7:10). They are to be like Jesus, like his mother, like the bronze snake of Numbers 21: they are to rise up and heal the afflicted.28
The bronze snake of Numbers 21 nicely illustrates the harmony of the terms of Jesus’ messianic politics. So do the hai peristerai of Matthew 10:16b.
VI.2
Hē peristera refers to “a bird of the family Columbidae [frequently] glossed as either a pigeon or dove (but the use of the latter term in preference to the former suggests a difference that cannot precisely be determined from usage in our texts). . . .”29
From a scientific standpoint, there is no difference between a dove and a pigeon. However, the (ancient) social meanings of the dove and the pigeon diverge: pigeons represent what is socially insignificant/disturbing, and doves represent what is socially significant/valued.
However, pigeons are like doves. They are simple, peaceful, and often colorful birds. Their cooing sounds are soothing. They are not aggressive or harmful animals.
Pigeons often live near or with humans. The unhoused sleep in, for example, church porticos, parks, and under bridges—the same spaces pigeons typically occupy and make their homes.
The unhoused often seek food in tourist areas and entertainment districts. Pigeons also frequent these zones of local commerce.
Local governments in the U.S. often treat the two populations in identical ways.30 They control pigeons and the unhoused by making it illegal or difficult to feed them, decreasing support for safe housing, spiking various surfaces, blasting loud music or harsh sounds in, for example, the church portico, and chasing them out of public spaces, like parks and popular tourist destinations.
Pigeons are called “flying rats” and “trash animals” for a reason. Pigeons, like the unhoused and snakes, are socially disturbing. Pigeons disturb us because they shit on our secular and religious values, like piety, law and order, wealth, and so on.
VI.3
Jesus shits on the temple in Matthew 21:12-17. “Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves” (21:12).
Jesus disturbs the status quo and liberates the “doves” from the prison of respectability. The reason for the disturbance is simple and innocent. By shiting on respectability, Jesus empowers the “blind and the lame” to enter the temple and be healed by him (21:14).
Like the bronze snake, the pigeon illustrates the equipoise of the terms of Jesus’ messianism. Like the bronze snake lifted up in the desert, the pigeon hovers in the air, a figure of rebellion and survival, a figure of Jesus’ anti-social messianic politics.
VI.4
Women, in particular, find Jesus’ anti-social spirituality appealing. In Matthew, “[m]any women were there [at Jesus’ crucifixion], looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee” (27:55).
At the end of his life, Jesus only has mothers and sisters. Likewise, at the beginning of his resurrected life, only women are present to greet him. Women are the first to preach the resurrection of the dead (Matthew 28:1-10).
Jesus’ female disciples answer Ruether’s question about the relevance of a male savior for women. Jesus can save women because while he is a male, his messianism is not essentially about males. His messianism is a queer form of masculinity (gendered feminine because it is departs from normative masculinity), rebellious and conventional, and anyone who finds it persuasive may adopt it as their lifestyle.
It was with the birth of the hegemonic Catholic Church . . . that seems finally to have precipitated the consolidation of rabbinic Judaism as Jewish orthodoxy, with all its rivals, including the so-called Jewish Christianities, apparently largely vanquished. It was then that Judaism and Christianity finally emerged from the womb as genuinely independent children of Rebecca. As Rosemary Radford Ruether put it a quarter of a century ago, “the fourth century is the first century for Christianity and Judaism” (6).31
It was not until the fourth century and the rise of the power of “the orthodox Church and the Rabbis to declare people heretics” that the two children of Rebecca, intertwined siblings in her womb, emerged as two distinct religions (15, see Genesis 25:21-34).
Boyarin observes that while there were differences between the two as early as the second-century (Matthew was written written sometime between 70-107 CE), “the border between [them] was so fuzzy that one could hardly say precisely at what point one stopped and the other began” (11, emphasis mine). Differences between “rabbinic and Christian Judaism” begin to emerge and harden in response to the experience of martyrdom, specifically to the question of whether to avoid or seek death for the sake of one’s faith. Tricksters and martyrs are the main characters of this drama.
VII.2
Tricksters represent attempts to escape martyrdom through cunning or wit. They are explicitly gendered feminine. Martyrs represent a spirit of “manfully provoking death” (52). Theirs is considered a virtuous response to martyrdom. Martyrs are explicitly gendered masculine (48ff).
The gendering of tricksters and martyrs potentially expresses a broader cultural dynamic between the victorious Romans and the subjugated Greeks. The gendering of cunning as feminine and virtue as masculine may demonstrate “the Greek tradition of cunning, metis, as a value, versus the Roman supreme value of virtus is at play here” (63-64). In patristic sources, for example, Clement (i.e., Greece) represents the trickster option, while Tertullian (i.e., Rome) represents the martyr option.
Both rabbinic and patristic sources initially keep the options open; they do not, that is, conclude that one response to martyrdom is better than the other. However, as the debate unfolds, “Christian textuality seems bound to answer the question,” baptizing, if you will, the martyr (i.e., Roman) option (66, emphasis mine).
VII.3
At first glance, it would appear that “Christian textuality” means siding with Rome, with Empire/dominant masculinity. However, the ideal martyr, for both Jews and Christians, was defined in and through femininity, specifically through the virgin female.
It is in and through female virginity that the Rabbis and Fathers construct a dissident masculinity. They imagine Rome as a rapacious or lusty male (as feminine because, in the ancient world, women are thought to be susceptible to all sorts of pleasures). In identifying with the female virgin, the Rabbis and Fathers are disidentifying with Roman “masculinity.”
Boyarin observes that male Christian writers are often former, influential Roman “pagans” (79-80). They have power, prestige, and wealth they are willing to give up to become and remain Christians. The female virgin enables male Christians to reframe their defiant femininity as virtuous masculinity. Giving up their life is an assertion of their masculinity, the means by which they preserve their virginity (i.e., faithfulness).
For the Rabbis, Rome has a double meaning. It signifies pagan Romans and Christians. Rome is both a religious heresy and a secular power, two whores tempting Jews to abandon their virginity (i.e., faith). The female virgin enables male Jews to reframe their defiant femininity as virtuous masculinity, just as she did for male Christians. In resisting Romans and Christians, they preserve their virginity (i.e., faithfulness) in the brothel.
VII.4
The Rabbis and Fathers construct their dissident masculinity by using a definition of female as feminine. The virgin martyr is the ideal female (i.e., a dead/voiceless woman).
The male categorization of females as virgins plays out in different ways for Christian women and Jewish women. The virginity of Christian women is flexible; it can be expressed by abstaining from sex or by entering into marriage.
Whereas the Rabbis left the question of how to live faithfully in an ethos hostile to queer faith open, rabbinic textuality decides the question of virginity. Jewish women cannot die virgins. Their virginity is for their husbands.
There is no escape from (Roman-like) male domination for either Jewish or Christian women. Christian women can, however, choose to abstain from family life. There is no such freedom for Jewish women, as the Rabbis were more in agreement with Rome regarding the importance of the biological family.
Identification with female/femininity/virginity enables the Rabbis and Fathers to construct a dissident, anti-Roman male/masculinity. However, the Rabbis and Fathers purchase their valorization at the expense of actual women, leaving women with little to no freedom to decide for themselves how to live faithfully in a world hostile to queer faith and to women (of faith) in particular.
Boyarin’s rigorous textual/historical description/grounding of Reuther’s provocation allows us to retranslate the meaning of Jewish and Christian difference in terms of gender: it is the difference between two, non-standard males/masculinities built upon the ideal female as virgin, both of which subjugate women.
VII.5
Matthew’s gospel is part of this rabbinic and (Jewish) Christian tradition, which defines how to live faithfully in a world hostile to queer faith. Like the Rabbis, Matthew does not take sides on “martyrdom.” Matthew’s Jesus teaches his disciples to avoid persecution: “When they persecute you in one town, flee [pheugō] to the next . . . ” (Matthew 10:23). Matthew’s Jesus also demands that they “take up the cross and follow” him (10:38).
Matthew’s gospel does not take sides in the broader cultural debate. It does not choose between Greek and Roman values, between cunning and virtue. The messianism of Matthew’s Jesus recombines them, describing faithful living in a hostile environment in terms of cunning and virtue, trickster and martyr, snake and dove.
VII.6
Like the Rabbis and Fathers, Matthew builds an anti-phallic, anti-Roman, or counter-masculinity in and through the virgin. However, Matthew’s virgin differs in two significant ways from that of the Rabbis and Fathers.
Unlike the Rabbis and Fathers, Matthew describes a dissident masculinity in and through the virgin maternal figure. Matthew defines the gender-neutral Spirit in and through Mary. Matthew describes Mary in and through a tradition/lifestyle of erotic maternal virginity.
Matthew’s maternal figure, Mary/Spirit, may refer to actual women, but it is not essentially about women. By defining dissident masculinity in and through the virgin maternal figure, Matthew avoids circumscribing bodies and pleasures. Matthew does not tell us in advance what bodies and pleasures are of Jesus, of Mary/Spirit.
Matthew defines Mary/Spirit’s virginity by linking her to women who are manifestly not virgins; they are all mothers by unconventional means. This makes perfect sense of Mary’s virginity if she is a figure of the Spirit. Matthew emphasizes rebellious sexual desire as a characteristic of the Mary/Spirit by making the point that Mary/Spirit’s son is not a product of male agency/power/rule.
Matthew is especially clear that biology/nature cannot save us (Matthew 3:7-10, 19:10-12).32 In the (Jewish) Christian imagination, Jesus Messiah’s birth is the only birth of ultimate significance to us.
Jesus is internal to Mary/Spirit. She is responsible for birthing him in us, fully realizing our adoption as children of God.
The displacement of salvific pregnancy onto the figure of Spirit/Mary frees women and men to decide for themselves what their bodies are for now that they are pregnant with Jesus by the Holy Spirit. It frees spirited women and men for pleasure, including sexual pleasure, because the body is no longer reducible to a temple/economy/piety of biological/natural reproduction.
The freedom to faithfully choose what to do with their bodies may account for why ancient women found Jesus’ messianic masculinity to be lifesaving. It may account for why women continue to follow Jesus today.
Unlike the Rabbis and Fathers, Matthew crucifies Rome’s Jesus instead of desire for a pleasurable faith and faithful pleasures. The Mary/Spirit is Matthew’s hammer. By singing along with Matthew, we potentially rise to new life, reorienting our relationships to one another, male and female, and to the world.
VII.7
In Matthew’s gospel, Mary is a figure of the Spirit, and Jesus Messiah is of her, of a tradition of maternal rebellion and conventionality, snake-like cunning and dove-like virtue, queer reproductivity and virginity. Our description of the Spirit in Matthew avoids the problems related to trinitarian definition/personhood outlined by Linn Marie Tonstad in God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude (2017), and it clarifies what it means for us to believe in Jesus today.33
Matthew prioritizes the Spirit/Son relationship, thereby deprioritizing the overtermined relationship between Father/Son. In prioritizing the Spirit/Son relationship, Matthew does not overpersonalize either the Spirit or the Son, creating a new disciplinary identity of womanhood, motherhood, or humanity. The Spirit is a feminine figure, a proxy identity for dissident or queer masculinity. Jesus Messiah is the embodiment of her in the world of Roman masculinity.
In prioritizing the Spirit/Son relationship, Matthew does not “castrate” the Father/Son relationship, creating a “vagina dentata.” Mary/Spirit is not an anti-male or anti-masculine woman. She is a rebellious and conventional figure of queer masculinity that anyone who finds it persuasive may embody.
Finally, Matthew does not, as Tonstad does, abstract the Spirit. The Spirit is defined in and through a specificsocial struggle for dignity and survival, and so it is defined in the terms of that struggle, in the gendered terms that organize life in the (ancient) world. The Spirit is a figure of resistance to Roman male domination, whether secular or religious.
If we are of Jesus, Mary/Spirit is our mother, too. We are pregnant with her and groan inwardly as she gives birth to Jesus in us. Our hope is to fully realize our adoption as the children of God by being like Jesus, the incarnation of Mary/Spirit in the world, the desecration of Roman orthodoxy.
NOTES:
This essay is a reconceived version of my final dissertation chapter, “Messianic Politics.” I thank David M. Halperin for sharing with me the recording of Kiki and Herb performing “Banging In The Nails.” It was recorded by an unnamed source. ↩︎
Pasolini was a gay man. He was also interested in Saint Paul. See hisSaint Paul: A Screen Play, trans. Elizabeth Castelli (2014 [1977]). ↩︎
I do not pursue Pasolini’s “reading” of Jesus further because I focus on building my own based on Matthew’s text. ↩︎
I do not mean that a person named Matthew wrote the gospel under that name. I have chosen this convention for the sake of clarity and convenience. Citations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted. ↩︎
Jennings qualifies Matthew’s critique of fatherhood. It is, more specifically, a critique of human fatherhood. See note 16 below. ↩︎
Ek/ex is a common preposition in Matthew (e.g., 2:6, 3:9, 3:16, 5:37), yet it functions uniquely in Matthew 1. Here, its usage attunes us to a particular lineage, connecting queer women, to Mary, to the Spirit, to Jesus. Ek/ex in Matthew 1 prepares us to read the Gospel for this scandalous memory. It teaches us to be on the lookout for other kinds of queer feminine connections in Matthew’s gospel. ↩︎
A very different, compressed version of II.4 was originally published in my essay, “‘Saint Hillary.’ On Unserious Activism,” in Taking It to the Streets: Public Theologies of Activism and Resistance, ed. Jennifer Baldwin (New York: Lexington Books, 2019): 101-113. See, esp., 106-107. ↩︎
Sigmund Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953-1974), 418, emphasis is original. All citations of Freud’s work below are from the Standard Edition. ↩︎
In Greek, angel (ho angelos) is gendered masculine. My interpretation fits this detail, as Matthew resituates Mary in the father’s/man’s place. This is a reasonable reading because grammatical conventions do not describe what we more commonly understand as sex and/or gender (comportment). In other words, the fact that the word angel is gendered masculine in Greek does not necessarily mean that the angel character is imagined as male/having a penis. Textual context always determines what is (im)possible for one’s reading of it. ↩︎
This is consistent with the message of John the Baptist (Matthew 3:7-10). Moreover, as one of Freud’s patients understood, an emphasis on motherhood is a critique of fatherhood as such. In From the History of An Infantile Neurosis, Freud observes that his patient’s “sexual researches . . . gained something from what he was told about the sacred story . . . . He now heard that Mary was called the Mother of God . . . . [A]s a result of what he was told, he was bewildered as to who Christ’s father really was. He was inclined to think Joseph. . .but his Nanya said that Joseph was only ‘like’ a father and that his real father was God . . . . He understood this much: if the question was one that could be argued about at all, then the relation between father and son could not be such an intimate one as he had always imagined it to be” (65, emphasis mine). ↩︎
Freud often comments on the connection of water to birth. For example, in the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud observes: “Birth is almost invariably represented [in dreams] by something which has a connection to water: one either falls into water or climbs out of it, one rescues someone from water or is rescued by someone—that is to say, the relation is of mother to child” (153, emphasis original). Freud further argues that the dreamer does not know this because they know that “all terrestrial animals” evolved from “aquatic creatures” or because they know that they started out in “amniotic fluid,” but rather because they have been taught the myth of the stork (160). “He is told in his nursery that the stork brings babies . . . from the water” (160). The stork myth (i.e., an adult lie) is problematic because it “contributes much to making children feel lonely and to developing their independence” (318). In The Future of An Illusion, Freud extends his analysis to the sphere of religion: “The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth. The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that new-born babies are brought by the stork. . . . We have been convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth . . . and not to withhold from [children] a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level” (44-45). Religious doctrine and the stork are weirdly intertwined here because of what is at stake in the so-called innocent lies adults tell their children about sexuality. Soon, the child discovers the role of the father in their birth, traumatically disrupting their seamless relationship with their first love, the mother. They are now dependent on their rival, the father, for protection: “The father himself constitutes a danger for the child, perhaps because of his its earlier relationship with its mother. Thus it fears him no less than it longs for and admires him. . . .The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult’s reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge—a reaction that is precisely the formation of religion” (24, emphasis original). Matthew’s emphasis on the Mother/Son relationship may also turn out to be a critique of religion. The ritual of baptism, for example, may teach us to take the Father/Son relationship less seriously. ↩︎
This is further justification for aligning the angel with the Spirit/Mary. See note 14 above. ↩︎
A voice “from the cloud” repeats this declaration at Jesus’ transfiguration, adding the command, “Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5). See VI.1. ↩︎
Lyrics from Taylor Swift’s song, “Marjorie”, perfectly translate 10:16b: “Never be so kind / You forget to be clever / Never be so clever / You forget to be kind.” ↩︎
In Gustave Flaubert’s tale, A Simple Heart ([1877] 2005), Félicité is self-effacing, long-suffering, dutiful, and so forth (i.e., a simple heart). Her parrot, Loulou, becomes the love of her life. Upon Loulou’s death, she has him stuffed, and she installs him in her room. “When she went to church, she would sit gazing at the picture of the Holy Spirit and it struck her that it looked rather like her parrott. The resemblance was even more striking in an Epinal colour print depicting Our Lord’s baptism. The dove had wings of crimson and a body of emerald-green and it looked for all the world like Loulou” (34-35). ↩︎
See “hē peristera” in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. Fredrick William Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2000), emphasis mine. ↩︎
Matthew 19:10-12 is a unique saying about eunuchs, connected to Isaiah 56:4-7. See Jennings, The Man Jesus Loved, 105-154, for commentary on this unique saying. ↩︎
[5/20/24: Sermon writing is a laborious process, and most clergy spend a lot of time, in the midst of hospital visits, countless meetings and emails, and other obligations, getting it just right. I posted my first draft of this sermon, to be given June 2nd, on May 15th. It has undergone a lot of changes, but I think I am hitting the right notes now. **Guiding statement: I propose to preach that we rest from cruel dominion, from thwarting animal justice and restoration, and to the end of becoming compassionate and merciful sovereigns of the earth.** We all need help with (sermon) writing well. Thomas Long is, in my opinion, the best help for writers of sermons.]
I.
Human animals rule the land. We rule the air. We rule the seas. We have dominion over the earth.
I completely agree with Matthew Scully, a Republican, when we argues in his eloquent and moving book, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy—I entirely agree with his argument that “[t]he term dominion carries no insult to our fellow [,non-human animal] creatures. We are all set forth into the world with different gifts and attributes. Their gifts, the ones their Creator intended for them, are good for many things—governing just isn’t one of them. Someone has to assume dominion, and looking around the earth we seem to be the best candidates. . . ” (12).
That truth doesn’t make us better or more valuable or less animal than, say, pigs, octopuses, cows, elephants or bats. Our dominion merely reflects our difference, our unique—yet completely animal—place in the world.
So the question we face today—and every day—is not whether we have dominion over the earth—we manifestly do—the question we face is a much more difficult one: What kind of sovereigns are we?
Are we merciful, compassionate, filled with wonder at the sheer diversity of life all around us and so are sovereigns committed to respecting and protecting the inherent dignity of all animal life?
Or, Are we cruel sovereigns, rulers who thwart animal access to justice and to restoration.
II.
We are so very often cruel sovereigns of the earth.
Our cruel reign is sometimes expressed through our faith in what Martha Nussbaum identifies, in her powerful and life-changing book, Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility—in what she identifies as our faith in a Romantic view of nature.
We enjoy Romantic thoughts of “Natural” spaces—and of “Natural” people, too. We love to imagine that there are, out there somewhere, pristine, self-regulated, balanced places and self-sufficient, rural people.
The Romantic idea of “Nature” intoxicates us, but when we sober up and actually observe nature, I think we start to agree with the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill: “Nature is cruel and thoughtless.”
When we sober up, when we are truly in nature, I think we begin to learn what ecologists teach us: “balance of nature” is a nice slogan for fruit and veggie supplements, but no such thing exists in nature.
And rural poverty and isolation from needed resources, like quality healthcare, may be, from the Romantic point of view, the “Natural” order of things, but that is just another reason for us to sober up.
Our faith in “Nature” makes us neglectful; it enables us to ignore the suffering of our fellow creatures. But we are not always neglectful, are we? Sensing that our fellow creatures, including members of our own species, can serve the needs of some dominant group, we force them to serve the free market.
Consider the slaughterhouses throughout our county. Who works there? What do they do all day? And what creatures are killed there? How many are killed there? And how are they killed there? And what’s the big deal? For some answers, read a book like Steven Wise’s An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River.
If we open our hearts, we may feel the cries for mercy coming from slaughterhouses all over our country and from those allegedly pristine Natural places. Feeling those cries, we may even be persuaded to rest from our cruel dominion.
III.
God asked us, in the 4th Commandment we read earlier, God asked us to take a break from our cruel dominion. We are asked to rest from cruel dominion on the Sabbath and to remember that God liberated us from the regime of cruelty.
That’s nice—but carefully consider the logic of the Sabbath Commandment: Liberation from slavery in Egypt is the justification for pausing the institution of slavery among those liberated from it. You heard the text: Let your male and female slaves rest on the Sabbath day. I guess you can take the slaves out of Egypt but you can’t take the Egypt out of the liberated slaves—except, maybe, on the Sabbath Day.
But there is a reason the command to let female and male slaves rest on the Sabbath is repeated twice: cruel dominion is all too often the policy of the Sabbath Day.
The story we read from Mark teaches us that cruelty has become a Sabbath Day tradition. Consider this story, another version of the pious cruelty Mark critiques:
All of 17-years-old, I attended a winter church retreat in McCall, Idaho. I managed to get very sick while at the retreat.
I will spare you the details of all the ways my body was trying to expel the sickness.
Anyway, I ended up in hospital, stayed the night on an IV, and returned to the retreat in the morning, in time for breakfast. I walked into the cafeteria and nearly vomited at the sight and smells of sausages and bacon. I consigned myself to hunger.
Later that morning, we gathered for worship and for communion. The chunk of communion bread I ate was so satisfying that, after the service, I went back to the communion table, and I started to chow down on the huge loaf of leftover bread.
It felt so good.
As I was being restored, clergy So-And-So walked over to me and calmly, but with a tone, reminded me that I was eating the body of Christ—and he suggested I stop eating it like a wild animal, by which he meant I should just stop eating it altogether; communion was over.
Being a good teenager, I just completely ignored him. I was not going to be blocked from what I needed to heal.
I hope we have the courage to teach our youth that lesson: sometimes holy trouble will look like totally ignoring religious people. Sometimes, even as your hand is being swatted away by church folks, you just have to keep reaching out your hand and ripping off huge chunks of bread, of justice, of healing. Even on Sundays, in the name of Jesus, you may have to find the courage and tenacity to resist cruel dominion.
Cruel dominion, all the ways, through our inaction and action, we block animals from justice and restoration—cruel dominion is so often a Sunday tradition. But tradition is not destiny. We don’t have to be like clergy So-And-So, blocking people from food, from healing, from justice. We can do something different, if only for one day a week. We can obey the 4th Commandment; we can rest from our cruel dominion.
IV.
Some of you have may noticed a story about the Hurricanes a few weeks ago. I know we have Canes fans in here today. Maybe you saw a story about them entitled, in part, “Hurricanes Use Rest As A Weapon.”
What they did was refuse to practice early in the morning on game day. They went out of their way to get on the ice the day before the game, choosing to rest on the morning of the game. The Canes know what we all know: rest impacts how we perform.
Rest makes us smarter. Rest makes us stronger. Rest makes us patient. Rest makes us merciful and compassionate. Rest makes us woke.
Woke just means that cruel dominion exhausts us. If we’re woke, that just means we want a break from all forms of cruel dominion.
Rested, we may wake up woke, ready to forsake all forms of slavery, all forms of cruel dominion.
Rested, we may even begin to hear that part of the 4th Commandment that asks us to give animals a rest. Rested, we may start to consider animals as something other than property to be used and as something other than food to be eaten. Rested, we may find it in ourselves to liberate animals from slavery to us.
V.
Philosopher Jeremy Bentham was right when he compared our treatment of animals to slavery. Our cruel dominion over animals can even be hidden in practices that are actually good from our fellow creatures. Think about some of the reasons we stop eating meat:
We stop eating meat to save rainforests, as our meat eating habits require more and more land to raise all those cattle. There are 1.7 billion cows on the face of the earth, and all those cows weigh more than all wild land mammals combined.
We stop eating meat because cows produce more greenhouses gases than our entire transportation sector, changing our environment.
We stop eating meat because it is not healthy for us.
We may even stop eating meat because we oppose cruelty to animals, and industrial farming is terribly cruel to animals. We have an intuitive sense that if we are cruel to animals, that if we support such cruelty, we will also be cruel to one another.
But notice: all that concern, it’s all about us.
Rested, we may realize what Aristotle did: animals like pigs, cows, and chickens “are self-maintaining systems who pursue a good and matter to themselves.” Rested, we may grasp that most animals, including all the ones we like to eat, are sentient creatures.
Sentience is about a lot more than feeling pleasure and pain. It also means that you have an opinion of yourself; you see yourself in a certain way, and you see others in your group, and other objects in the world, in a certain way. And you move accordingly, you move in a way that aligns with your sense of yourself and your sense of how the objects in your world conform to your understanding of what is good and what is bad for you.
Rested, we may grasp that the sow is sentient; she was not created to be food for us; she was created to pursue her goods: a long, satisfying life, and friendship, intimacy, family, nutrition, play, secure housing; rested, we may now understand that the sow desires to pursue her projects and to accomplish her goals.
Rested, the smell of sausages and bacon on the Sabbath may make us want to vomit.
Rested, we may come to this table and reach out our hands, not to kill and eat our fellow creatures, but to be restored by the taste of bread and of grapes.
VI.
Now, I understand if you were with me until that last bit about not eating sentient animals, like pigs. I get it.
I became a vegetarian just last November after I read Nussbaum’s book—and by the reactions of many family and friends, you would think being a vegetarian is the most weirdest thing to be in the world!
Yes, of course vegetarianism is weird, especially if the reason you are a vegetarian is rooted in animal studies, in the fact that most animals, including all of the ones we just love to eat, are sentient in the most expansive sense of the word.
Of course vegetarianism is weird; from day one we have been taught that justice is not a thing for non-human animals to enjoy.
Of course vegetarianism is weird; from day one we have been taught that justice is not a thing for non-human animals to enjoy. Humans animals are entitled to justice; cows, pigs, and chickens are entitled to ketchup.
Again, I completely agree with Matthew Scully. He writes, “I am betting that in the Book of Life ‘[They] had mercy on the creatures’ is going to count for more than ‘[They] ate well” (45).
Rested, we may even learn that it’s possible to forsake cruelty and to eat well!
VII.
On the sabbath day, just for one day, let’s rest from our cruel dominion; let’s eat more bread and drink more wine (I mean, grape juice). And if you just can’t, there is good news for you: right now, in Singapore, synthetic meat is on the menu. It’s “real,” and it’s lab grown. And I imagine it will come our way soon.
For today, let’s start simple; let’s embrace the deepest truth of our faith: God liberated us from cruel dominion.
Today, let it be heard and believed that God gave the middle finger to cruel dominion: God delivered the Messiah Jesus, crucified, dead, and buried, from the grave.
So today, let us really rest from cruel dominion; it’s just done day; it’s just one small act—but tomorrow, rested, you may wake up woke, ready to play the game of dominion differently, ready to become the human animals God created us to become: kind and merciful sovereigns of the earth.
In a recent dream, I was surprised by the appearance of the Greek word for S/spirit, πνεῦμα. It was a well-planned move, coming just after what was a disturbing scene.
Another surprise: the ν and εῦ of πνεῦμα reversed places.
A third surprise: the meaning of the new word, πεῦνμα, was explicitly spelled out in the dream. In the lexicon of the dream, πεῦνμα means companionship.
**
In dreams, unconscious thoughts are translated into consciously recognizable/acceptable forms. The goal of the dream is not to disturb consciousness (because the purpose of dreams is to keep us asleep). If consciousness is disturbed, the results are wakefulness and the end of unconscious communication.
Πνεῦμα is a positive, upbeat word, and its appearance in the dream, just after a bloody moment, was an attempt to soothe consciousness. Consciousness was getting ready to hit the wake up(!) button—and at just that moment, it was reminded to breathe. The strategy worked. A win-win. Consciousness was spared catastrophic disturbance and the unconscious received more time to makes its next move.
***
One way to make sense of the moving ν (nu) is to attend to how it sounds. When ν takes a back seat to εῦ, it makes πνεῦμα sound differently. Εῦ is a diphthong in Greek; it sounds like the eu in feud. The sound is subtle, so here is another way to get at it: when ν moves, we no longer hear newma (the pi is silent) but ewnma. The bloody scene prior to this wordplay was, indeed, ew.
We may also understand the moving ν more literally.
****
The dream is clearly emphasizing what is happening internally to, or in the context of, πνεῦμα. So, we are right to focus there, on what is new about πεῦνμα.
I am an academically trained, Christian biblical theologian and ordained minister, so I was naturally curious about what the Greek of the Christian mythos may have to do with the new word, πεῦνμα, and with the dream’s translation of it as companionship.
Interestingly, there are only six words in the relevant Greek that begin with eun (allowing for a variously accented epsilon [for the sake of easy writing, I’ll be omitting accents throughout]; in any case, the unconscious makes meaning via chains of seemingly random associations). They are:
Eunike: a female name
eunoeo: to be well-disposed to make friends
eunoia: a positive attitude in a relationship
eunouchia: a state of being unmarried
eunouchikso: to cause someone to emasculate another
eunouchos: a castrated person
Again, I am surprised: these six words make perfect sense of all the yet undisclosed aspects of my dream. They are:
One figure in my dream was ambiguous, in terms of both sex and gender. It was this ambiguous figure that was being anally penetrated by a more typically masculine figure. This happens as a third person watches the scene unfold.
Each of those elements of the dream are related to the above string of words: a feminine male (combining words 1 and 6) being anally penetrated, roughly in fact, by another male (word 5), in a situation ménage à trois (words 2 and 4 if we allow both to mean something other than monogamy).
Yet, what are we to make of word 3? What is positive about the relationship(s) in the dream, especially between the ambitious [I meant to write ambiguous] bottom and the rough top?
What was disturbing about the sex scene was the aforementioned blood . . . gushing out of the ambiguous figure’s anus as they were being anally penetrated rather roughly (the cock was coming out fully, allowing for blood to gush out, before being thrust back in). It was the presence of blood itself that was disturbing and not all the rest. It was immediately following this scene that S/spirit appeared.
Interestingly, the gushing blood had the quality of gushing water from a fountain of water (rather than out of a traumatic wound). In the Christian mythos, S/spirit is associated with both blood and water (e.g., 1 John 5:6; John 19:34), each in turn is associated with redemption and baptism. The blood/water may have been a way of signifying redemption/baptism. But of what?
It would seem that the ambiguous figure was baptizing the top, or more specifically, the cock, as the blood was gushing from them as if from a baptismal font. The top is the object of baptism.
According to Paul of Tarsus, baptism is associated with a change of style, and one that results in the nullification of significant social distinctions, like male and female (Gal 3:27-28). The Trans* figure may be teaching the cock to be less aggressive, defensive, fearful (perhaps that is also the point of the nu’s detachment or fluidity–along with it’s moving to the “backside”). And herein is the positivity of the relationship: it is a scene of redemption, the nullification of immobile (hardened) masculinity.
*****
Πεῦνμα seems to signify something new, a new kind of relationship with masculinity. The dream, however, makes its own sense out of πεῦνμα: companionship.
There is a word in the Greek of the Christian mythos that gets at what we may think of as companionship: συγκοινωνός (see Phil 1:7; Rev 1:9). Sugkoinonos means “participant, partner.” Significantly, sugkoinonos is also one of three words that shares a similar “core.” The other two are:
sugkoimaomai: to sleep with (also as in to have sex with)
sugkoinoneo: to be associated with someone in an activity
Yet again, the chain of words makes sense of the described elements of the dream—but this time, these words add something that was not explicitly in the dream.
My dream manifestly includes a sex scene (word 1 above, but that mu makes it somewhat less significant at this point than the other two words, both hanging onto a nu as part of their “cores.” Yet, when the nu moves to the “backside,” it does link itself to a mu). It would seem that the dream’s translation of the new word πεῦνμα as companionship is also an invitation to participation.
The dream is calling out to the observer, to the voyeur (and maybe even calling into question the notion of voyeurism as participation) to join in the act . . . to join in as the object of baptism (?) or the subject of it (?) or both (?). This association is only strengthened if we follow the Greek to words beginning with koin.
******
What the dream wants to make common (see koinoo) is what is taken as defiled or impure: a gay masculinity. It is calling one to move, to transform, to become more fluid in one’s masculine comportment.
It is a S/spiritual calling. It is a calling born out of πνεῦμα.
Internal to S/spirit, to newma, is something new, what is often considered or taken as ewnma. The (un)holy work of the (un)conscious is to provoke a recognition of the new in the ew, of the holy in the unholy.
