This is the first of a series of four guest essays by Tom Cook concerning the metaphysical implications of gender roles in the scriptural narrative. Mr. Cook is a medical student at Northwestern University, and a Catholic lay theologian. The essays are of interest both for the conclusions they reach, and the ’speculative’ hermeneutical method they employ.

PART I: A DEFENSE OF SPECULATION

Today, the public eye is very confused about the role that the imagination plays in Christian theology. We are perhaps still affected by the sly Freudian idea that theology, being largely derived from the imagination, is therefore not reliable or less likely to be true. Because the imagination is, after all, a mere psychological construct.

My intention here is not to try to refute that assertion, but merely to point out that as so-called ‘progressive’ theologians have infiltrated various seminaries—both Protestant and Catholic—many traditional theologians have reacted in such a way as to banish the imagination from theological thought. From this reactionary stance, the imagination is regarded as a thing depraved, necessarily riddled with sin and error, and the prudent thing do to, is to be skeptical of it.

Ironically, this sort of hyper-conservative reactionism views the imagination much the same way that Freud did: as a deceitful thing, all mixed up with sexual and sorts of other sinful urges, generally not to be trusted.

So: we have a double-problem here. Not only are traditional theologians abstaining from healthy speculation, but the anti-traditional ones are doing it to excess, and without restraint. Consequently, there is widespread public confusion of what is properly ‘orthodox’ in theology with what is properly ‘speculative’. And there is perhaps no better example of this phenomenon, than the bewildering popularity of Dan Brown’s bestseller. The book’s theological implications were unmistakably Gnostic. And Gnosticism, having grown like a cancer off of the early Church, was a product of unrestrained speculation. Most heresies, for that matter, are likely the result of some bit of wildly speculative theology, being presented as if it were orthodoxy.

For instance, the Gnostic speculation ran something like this: some people claimed the Son of God was a male person, and since assigning divinity to masculinity instead of femininity is arbitrary, and since what is arbitrary without explanation must be questioned, therefore, there must also be some feminine incarnation of God, and therefore even God must be a strictly androgynous being. Let us name her Sophia, the sacred feminine. Male and female must be perfectly balanced, in order for God to be whole….

What Dan Brown did so deviously well, was to present this sort of theology in such a way so as to be confused with what is traditional and historical—in a word, with what is orthodox. And people loved it. But what is speculative in theology, must of necessity be grounded in what is not speculative. What is speculative must always be grounded in what is orthodox. Otherwise the imagination will never take itself seriously. Like pure mythology and like any sort of paganism, it will be forever plagued by its own insincerity. It will be alone, having no partner but itself, having nothing to contribute to, nothing to serve but the chaos of unbridled thought. Imagination needs company. We do not write children’s books for ourselves. Often, they are written for specific children. And every good children’s book must first of all be based in reality. What good children’s book hasn’t got a bland beginning? Likewise, good speculative theology is subservient to scripture, to history, and is made for the benefit of the Church.

C.S. Lewis said somewhere that ‘imagination is the organ of meaning’. This is obvious enough within Narnia, where imaginative metaphors run amok, but nearly all serve the same purpose: to illustrate the fixed truths of what is orthodox. For example, nowadays Adam and Eve are conceived of not without a tinge of laughter, of fantasy. It’s hard to find a sincere person who has any true reverence, or any true spitefulness, toward our first parents. But what the four children learn in Narnia, is that every furry animal in their right mind regards the human lineage as a matter of common sense. We humans are either a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve. And as such, there is a sense of inheritable royalty in being human. The animals of our own world, perhaps, sometimes look upon us with the same sense of reverence and expectation with which the first animals looked upon Adam & Eve. This is the orthodox understanding of man’s position within nature.

Thus, imagination helps to establish profound meaning. It helps us return to a profound understanding. It provides the necessary building-blocks to get us there. But as it is at the service of meaning, it serves that which is higher, that which is of a higher order. Set free from that mission, it will go haywire. But worse yet, left unused, it will waste away, and the mind will be vulnerable to other visions, worse yet. The mind, and especially the creative mind, is a muscle which mustn’t go unused. The best defense against heresy is not a stubborn orthodoxy, but a free-thinking one.

And that is no less true for reading the Bible, than it is for reading fantasy. The literary imagination is vital to our understanding of scripture, even for such vital things as hermeneutics. Historically, one of the first principles of scriptural hermeneutics is typology, or a reading by types or figures. A typological reading of the Bible, is the sort of imaginative reading which looks for all the subtle literary connections, for all the dim elements of a vast, unfolding drama. For example, someone reading the Bible might notice that the Joseph of the New Testament, is rather similar to the Joseph of the Old Testament. Both men had prophetic dreams, both men went down to Egypt, both men exhibited unusual generosity—whether to a deceitful group of brothers, or to a fiancé already pregnant. You see what I mean.

G.K. Chesterton was able to see in the Nativity scene, not only biblical and historical fact, but a profound typology for all of human history. Everything at the Nativity is recapitulating. Having created the whole world from the very beginning, Jesus now sits in his manger, almost as a playwright would sit secretly amongst his audience. For the first time He experiences as we do, all the beauty which His little hands hath made. Everything is fresh, young, peaceful, just as it was with His first creation, and now again, for the inauguration of the second. Having strewn the stars across the wide universe, His arms are too short to reach the huge heads of the cattle. And just as in the garden of Eden, again there are animals lying around. Having made them Himself, He is yet too young to pronounce their names.

But there is a darker ‘literary’ side to the Nativity, which is often forgotten. In Herod, there is something more than just the worldly worries of a godless king. In his spontaneous mass-infanticide, there is something undoubtedly demonic. Satan’s old and miserable world had been invaded and exposed. What Satan had begun in the garden of Eden, was threatened to be undone. In the long-running drama that is scripture, Satan is a sort of hopeless romantic character—he’s hopelessly in love with himself. He’s always there behind the scenes, manipulating this and that, always walking on and off the stage, always coming in and out of focus. There is even perhaps an element of comedy in Satan’s insecurity, which only our Lord can fully relish.

The main point for now, is that in the vast drama of human redemption, Jesus’s role was to undo all that Satan had accomplished through Adam. It is in this sort of recapitulation of roles, this typological understanding of scripture, that we have the basis for a useful speculative theology. Ultimately, we have the basis for a speculative theology which concerns the two sexes.

TO BE CONTINUED