The Trinity is the Christian teaching which states that God is one being in three co-equal and co-eternal persons; God the begetter or the Father, God the begotten or the Son, and God the procession or the Holy Spirit. It exhibits the radical love because it reveals that God is an internal community of radical love within Godself. The doctrine of the Trinity dissolves numerous categories, including the self and the other, due to the fact that God consists of both the self and the other within God’s very being. The love that exists between the three persons of the Godhead has been described by the term perichoresis or circumincessio, which means an ecstatic dance or the interpenetration of the three persons. Cheng maintains that this relationship is so intimate that it should be thought of in terms of a fluid-bonded polyamorous three-way relationship.
Queer theologians have drawn from Hans von Balthasar who has portrayed each person of the Trinity as pure act and pure receptivity. These contend that each person of the Godhead is at the same time supramasculine and suprafeminine, and thus conclude that transgender and switch (both top and bottom) relationships are at the very heart of the Trinitarian three-way. Cheng mentions that this truth has implications for the role of woman in church leadership, but that is not his primary focus here. He is out to highlight the fact that God’s very being is centered around the radical dance and relationships of the three persons of the Trinity. He also mentions that Christians are drawn into the Trinity right here on earth as a result of our union with the second person.
Cheng believes that the doctrine of the Trinity indicates that Christians are to be promiscuous with our friendship because it is a model for how human beings are supposed to relate to one another. He argues that passionate friendships should be allowed to displace the biological family as the ground of Christian community, and that this would be consistent with the ideals of the early Christians. Ultimately, he not only believes that the doctrine of the Trinity has relevance for queer people today, but he is even so bold as to assert that it should be at the heart of queer theology and ethics, because it breaks down the artificial divide between sexual and non-sexual relationships.
The Trinity has been understood in some extraordinarily radical ways by queer theologians. Some of them postulate that the Trinity should be perceived as a critique of the traditional privileging of heterosexuality and monogamy. They propose that it should be understood as an orgy, and they also suggest that it should not be considered an example of restricted polyfidelity, because each member of the Trinity possesses Her/His own closet of lovers and forbidden desires (i.e. Jesus’ relationships with Mary Magdalene and Lazarus). If these assertions are correct, then the Trinity deconstructs the binary relationships model of marriage and becomes a model for polyamorous individuals.
The Trinity can help LGBTQ people to weave together their often fragmented sexual, racial and spiritual identities as well. LGBTQ people (especially those of color) are regularly forced to compartmentalize these identities due to homophobia, racism and secular biases against religion and spirituality. Cheng argues that the person is only whole when all three of these identities are embraced, and that the perichoresis or circumincessio is a superlative way of describing their interrelatedness. Cheng furthermore points to an important principle in contemporary Trinitarian theory, which states that each of the three persons are present in the external works of God. Consequently, it can be argued that the Trinity is reflected in the life of the LGBT community. Friendships beyond gender limitation, equality in relationships, personal growth and preservation of personal uniqueness are four factors which similarly characterize the Trinity and the LGBT community.
I appreciate the time you are taking in working through this book. And, as radical as this is, it is still the kind of thing one would (in general) hope for in something that calls itself Queer Theology. Here the author shows how the queer experience & identity impinges on the themes of classical Christianity. It begins to show how the experience of being same-gender attracted could give a unique spin to theology.
Nevertheless, this particular “spin” I do not personally welcome. It shows that the real issues here go far, far beyond “gay marriage.” Monogamy itself is being challenged.
I am with you on this Craig. While I am certainly willing to modify my own understanding (to a certain extent) of what constitutes biblical marriage and sexuality, I find Cheng’s apparent acceptance of any and all consensual sexual practices to be unsatisfactory. I would like to see a queer theology that can wrestle with the nature and nurture aspects of sexuality as well as the relationship of each of these to sin.
If homosexual practices can be justified while in converstion with these issues, and also without having to grant approval to every conceivable consensual sexual act in the process, I might be able to consider the viability of the homosexual position. If ignoring these issues altogether is the only way to vindicate the queer position, I am afraid that (as a Christian) it will be hard to convince me that homosexuality is naturally good.