The scriptures begin with the declaration that in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. The Nicene creed states that God is the maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. Patrick Cheng suggests to us that God’s act of creation should be understood as an outpouring of radical love. He insists that this radical love is made manifest in the lives of LGBT people everyday. In the opening chapters of the bible, human beings are described as having been fashioned in the image and likeness of God. LGBT people, as God’s image bearers, engage in works of creation all of the time. Music, dancing, poetry, acting, painting, writing and doing theology are examples of creative action. In fact, the performing arts community would have been greatly impoverished were it not for the contributions of queer people throughout the centuries.
Cheng describes three ways that the doctrine of creation can be understood as radical love. The first is that it dissolves the dualism between flesh and spirit, which is the belief that matter is evil and spirit is good. This dualism arose out of the Platonic concept which states that the abstract world of forms is superior to the world of matter (which includes human bodies and sexualities). Christian theology has discarded this pessimistic view of the flesh in favor of the notion that God created all matter ex nihilo. This means that bodies and sexuality are fundamentally good because they are a part of God’s creation. Still, LGBT people are very often considered less pure by Christians with dualistic tendencies because of their associations with the body and sexuality. Following Teilhard de Chardin, queer theologians have posited that the totality of God’s creation is the body of Christ. Building upon this insight, they have also postulated that creation is like an evolutionary cosmic orgy in which all people are erotically connected; regardless of sexuality or gender identity.
The second way that the doctrine of creation can be perceived as radical love is in the fact that it causes the dualism between humanity and nature to dissolve. It deconstructs the notion that there is a hierarchical relationship between humanity and creation; a common assumption which is at the heart of the ecological crisis. Queer theologians have contended that LGBT people have a unique awareness of the patterns of domination as well as the violence that is inflicted upon nature by humanity due to their own experiences of oppression and exclusion. The doctrine of creation is believed to be exceptionally queer because God created an amazingly diverse and multifaceted universe. This (along with the fact that there are numerous animal species that participate in same-sex and gender variant activities) is judged to be a significant counter-argument to the fundamentalist and natural law contention which states that there is only one proper type of sexual relationship because God created Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve. Themes that are important to a queer ecological ethic are the centrality of embodiment, valuing diversity at all levels, overcoming disposibility and dispensibility, and recognizing the danger of appropriating resources without reciprocity.
A theology of angels and demons might also be a useful means towards the destruction of the dualism between humanity and nature. Angels and demons can serve to remind human beings that we are not the center around which the universe revolves and that there is much more to the universe than that which is visible within the created order. If this theology is ever to be adopted, it is essential that LGBT people begin to recognize that there is more to angels and demons than their role as agents of divine punishment. This assumption could be difficult to overcome, due to the fact that LGBT people are taught from a very young age that they will suffer the torments of Satan, demons and hell for their same-sex and/or gender variant acts. Cheng is persuaded that one need not abandon a scientific worldview in order to believe in angels and demons. He recommends that LGBT people begin to view sickness and disease as manifestations of demonic powers. According to Cheng, these forces do not belong to the realm of creation, but rather to the realm of the fall. He maintains that evil is the absence of good and that it does not have an independent existence as part of God’s creation.
The last of the three ways that the doctrine of creation can be understood as radical love is that it breaks down the dualism between marital and queer (or nonprocreative) sex. Creation is a pure act of the love and unmerited grace of God. God is under no compulsion to pour forth the radical love of creation because God is already a self-sustaining community of love within Godself. If God is not obligated to create, why should we assume that human beings would be obligated to procreate in order to reflect the image and likeness of God? If unmerited self-giving love is at the heart of all committed relationships, and procreation is not, what reason is there to restrict marriage to one man and one woman?
