There are many aspects to sexuality. It is difficult for any definition to embrace the whole. In exploring the relationship between spirituality and sexuality we will approach the subject from a number of perspectives.

Sexuality and Embodiment

We will focus first on the connection between sexuality and embodiment.

In defining spirituality, in the first chapter, we argued that we are not disembodied spirits. We are body-selves. Our sexuality is central to our embodiment.

In both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament a person's sexuality is accepted as an integral aspect of their personhood. In the Hebrew Bible people were viewed as integrated entities. The body, and the sexuality that was a significant aspect of that embodiment, was a central component of the unity of the person. This is reflected in the Song of Songs, a sensuous celebration of human love, where the male lover was described as "bounding" like a gazelle.¹ This phrase aptly depicts the thrusting energy of the male in the climactic stage of intercourse. The incarnation that the Christian Scriptures celebrate represents the ultimate acceptance of the body/self. Paul, in opposing sarx [flesh] to pneuma [spirit], was not setting up a body/spirit dualism, but was arguing, instead, that life lived without regard to God, which was what he intended by the use of sarx, was not to be compared with living with God in the energy of the Spirit.

While both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures unequivocally endorse the god-givenness of the human body and the beauty and enrichment of human sexuality, the Bible does not give us the last word on biological information. For example, it was assumed at the time that the total human embryo was potentially present in the male semen. What the woman contributed, through her womb, was the incubation of the foetus. The condemnation of Onan illustrates this perception. Under Levirate Law, if your brother died without producing children, you were required to impregnate his widow to ensure that his line would continue. Onan withdrew from his sister-in-law before ejaculation and spilled his seed on the ground. He was seen to be destroying potential human life.²

It was when the church came under the influence of later Greek thought that the body began to be despised. In the early stages of Greek civilization the beauty of the human form and the expression of human sexuality were celebrated in literature and art. Later, the influence of Neoplatonism and Stoicism led to a dichotomising of mind and body and to a despising of the latter. [178]

Certain Neoplatonists implied that matter was evil, while Gnostics went further and argued that the human body, as part of the material world, was to be rejected. It was to be forcibly controlled, lest it lead the mind, or spirit astray. Human sexuality was the most dangerous, maverick element in the body. Stoicism, while noble in many respects, was also plagued by a pessimistic attitude towards life and urged strict control of the body. These philosophies deeply influenced second and third generation Christians and were reflected in the theology of the early Church Fathers.

In time, with the cessation of persecution, when martyrdom was no longer the goal for Christians passionate about their faith, those aspiring to be spiritual athletes were urged to commit themselves to celibacy, which was celebrated as a new form of martyrdom. In time it became, not only the ideal, but a requirement of priesthood.

Augustine helped deepen the growing distrust of sexuality. A man of energy and passion, he had difficulty controlling his sexuality, despite, and partly because of his commitment to celibacy. As a consequence of this continuing tension, and of his pre-Christian experience, he argued that concupiscentia, or lust, was the root of all sin. He contended that, as a result of the fall, our genitals are no longer under our control. Furthermore, he contended that children are conceived in their parents lust and that Adam's sin is passed on through the act of procreation. Augustine was the father of the notion that marital sex should only be for the purpose of conceiving children. Pope John Paul's comment, in 1980, that men should not lust after their wives, is a contemporary reflection of this attitude.³

It could be argued that what John Paul was saying was that men should not treat their wives as sexual objects. If this was what he intended, I suspect it would have been better to say so explicitly. On the other hand, a tincture of lust, in a marital relationship, can enliven it.

Gender Identity

The second facet of sexuality that we will glance at is its connection with gender identity. Gender identity results initially from the sexing of the brain, or, more accurately, the sexing of the body/mind in utero. Brain-sexing, body/brain-sexing largely determines physiological gender, sexual preference and psychological gender.

Brain Sexing

The sexing of the body/self begins six weeks after conception with the development of the gonads and the secretion of appropriate hormones. The sexing of body-shape, or gendering, appears to be followed by the sexing of the hypothalamus, which, it is argued, governs gender preference. There next follows a progressive sexing of the rest of the brain. This brain-sexing is largely responsible for the distinctiveness of men and women. [179]

This does not mean that there are no individual differences among men and among women. There are. Besides genetics and environment, the level and balance of hormonal secretions during the time when the brain is being sexed, and the strength of consequent hormone production, particularly after puberty, account for considerable differences.

Nevertheless, despite these individual differences, there are sufficient gender-specific differences between men and women for us to be able to attempt to identify them.

We are all potentially female. If we have an XX chromosome structure we will remain female and be born as baby girls. If our structure is XY, or XXY, hormonal secretions in utero will result in our being born male.

Gender development, however, is not always plain sailing. Hormonal accidents can flood an XX embryo with testosterone and develop it into a boy or it can saturate an XY, or XXY embryo with oestrogen and the embryo will remain a girl. A woman suffering from diabetes, in order to prevent spontaneous abortion, may be given diethylstilboestrol, a synthetic female hormone. Toxaemia in a mother may be treated with a synthetic male hormone. Some women with kidney disease secrete a substance similar to male hormones. The strangest scenario of all concerns boys suffering from a chemical deficiency who are born with undeveloped male genitalia and brought up as girls. At puberty, their voices deepen and their testes and penises drop, much to the surprise of their parents.

Women

There are many genetic advantages in being a woman.

A woman's senses are far more acute than a man's.

Women hear much more clearly than men do. They are alert to small changes in volume. They can discern a tone of voice. They hear more than what men are aware of saying. They have better pitch. Six boys to every one girl sing out of tune. The only area in which boys have an advantage is in the discernment of animal voices, a vestige from their evolutionary past.

Women's sense of smell is also better developed. They are particularly adept at identifying exaltolite, a synthetic musk-like odour associated with men, to which they are more sensitive just before ovulation.

Their sense of taste is also superior. They are more sensitive to bitter tastes and their diet tends to contain a higher concentration of sweet things. Men have a fondness for salty flavours. Overall, women have a greater delicacy and perception in taste. [180]

Women also have keener sight. They can see better in the dark and are more sensitive to the red end of the spectrum. They can discern more blue hues and have a better visual memory. Men can see better in bright light, but are laterally blinkered. They have tunnel vision, focussing on a narrower field. They concentrate more on depth. By contrast, women have greater peripheral vision. They have more receptor rods and cones in the retina.

Women's sense of touch is also more sensitive. They feel pain more acutely, though they are more resistant to long-term discomfort.

With every one of the physical senses, women have an overwhelmingly greater sensitivity, so much so that the scores of men and women do not overlap.

Women also have a greater facility with language. There are four boys to every one girl in remedial reading classes.

The area of the female brain concerned with the mechanics of linguistics, grammar, punctuation and spelling is located in an area at the front of the left hemisphere. In men, these functions are carried out in two areas, in the front and back of the left hemisphere. Vocabulary and word definition, in women, are processed in the front and rear of both hemispheres. These functions, in men, are carried out in the same areas, the front and back of the left hemisphere, in which the syntactic abilities are located. There is little wonder that women have superior verbal fluency, in comparison with men. This is due to the fact that, in women, language areas are spread throughout the brain and also to the fact that, in women, the corpus colossum, which connects the two hemispheres and facilitates the exchange and co-ordination of sensory information, is thicker than it is in men.

In every one of the physical senses women are superior to men.

The fact that women are more in touch with their feelings than are men is also partly to be explained on the basis of the location of their feeling and language centres, both of which are located in left and right hemispheres. Men process their feeling in an area in the right hemisphere. Men's feeling and language centres are in opposite hemispheres. This helps account for the difficulty they often experience when asked to speak about their feelings.

Girls are also born with a physiological foundation for superior relational capacity. Where young baby boys are pre-occupied with their mobiles, girls spend much time cooing at their parents, or caretakers. When four months old they can distinguish strangers, from those with whom they are familiar, in photos presented to them.

But this is not all. Women can read emotions in faces in a way that men cannot. Cues are taken in through both eyes to both hemispheres. If men read the emotion in faces at all, it is only as the information is channelled [181] through the left eye into the right hemisphere. It is little wonder, as Carol Gilligan discovered, that women are more interested in emotional webs than in debating principles.

While specific functions are localised in different parts of men's brains, these same functions are spread more generally through women's brains. This helps account for the fact that women are better at remembering stray pieces of information.

The educational system also favours girls in the early years. Stories young children are given to read are generally relational and children are often told to sit still, which is inappropriate and impossible advice for little boys. In later educational experience the advantage shifts in favour of boys.

While women do enjoy considerable biological advantage, there are disadvantages in being a woman.

Women are generally not as adept as men at spacial perception, reading maps or manipulating three-dimensional objects. What men process in an area at the front of the right hemisphere, women deal with in linguistic centres. Their facility with three-dimensionality, with maps or abstract theory, depends upon the level of testosterone secreted when the brain was being sexed in utero and when they are working on a problem. A low level of testosterone, paired with a high level of oestrogen, severely diminishes this capacity. Young girls suffering from Turner's syndrome, whose bodies do not produce testosterone, can be taken repeatedly to a location, several blocks from their home and not be able to find their way back.

Another disadvantage, and one that is more obvious, is pre-menstrual tension, which for some can be quite severe. Approaching menstruation, women secrete high levels of oestrogen and progesterone. The oestrogen produces a sense of well-being and the progesterone dampens the effect of distresses and tensions. However, having produced this high, the two hormones often cut out, dumping the victim.

Men

Men have a superior ability with spacial perception. This visual capacity, which allows them to mentally manipulate three-dimensional objects, is located at the front of the right-hand-side of the brain. This visual ability in men is related to logic, rationality and hierarchy.

While men enjoy this advantage, because of their brain-sexing, they are at a disadvantage, compared with women, on a range of other indices.

Because linguistic and other capacities are located in both sides of a woman's brain, and are connected through a thicker corpus colossum, [182] women are able to access names and unconnected detail so much more readily than men, who lack the circuitry.

Men also tend to be more single-minded. It is not as easy to distract them from a task. This can be explained, in part, by the fact that functions are localised in specific areas in their brains and by the fact that our physical vision is more blinkered.

It would appear that men also have less circuitry for child-rearing. They lack both in inclination and capacity. The second lack is highlighted in their inferior sensate ability and relational capacity. The lack of natural inclination they share in common with most primates, where the females mother the children while the males exhibit either indifference of aggression.

Experimentation with rats is enlightening. The sexing of rats brains occurs after birth. Experimenters have injected male rats with a female hormone and these "male" rats have mothered their young. They have injected female rats with a male hormone and these "female" rats have treated their offspring with indifference or aggression.

It is also interesting that in Israeli kibbutzim women have been returning to traditional domestic female roles.

Men have one biological capacity that is seen both as an advantage and as a dysfunction.

Men secrete twenty times more testosterone than women do, though a decline does begin to set in after 50. It is also interesting to note that, if women's testosterone level diminishes after menopause, she will suffer a loss of libido. A decrease in oestrogen does not have this effect. What often happens is that, while men become quieter and more peaceful after fifty, some women, with a reduction of oestrogen and maintenance of their testosterone level, become more assertive, even manly.

Testosterone fuels aggressiveness. It is interesting to note that most criminal violations occur during adolescence, when male testosterone levels are higher. Testosterone also effects build and vocal depth. Researches have discovered that, among singers, basses have more nightly ejaculations than tenors!

Furthermore, deprived of sex, men become moody and irritable. While women crave the companionship of sex, men generally just want more sex. They are more interested in the act than the person. This is also why men have an interest in pornography, which is difficult for women to understand. They are more interested in the body than the person and they are turned on by visual rather than relational cues. Their higher testosterone level also helps explain why men are more unfaithful. [183]

Testosterone does not diminish with usage. It fact it increases. This is one of the reasons why football teams returning from interstate matches are not easily restrained from damaging the cabins of planes and why they sexually intimidate hostesses. It also helps explain why rape is prevalent in time of war.⁴

One consequence of this difference in abilities between men and women, a difference due largely to the way our brains are sexed, is that more men than women find their way into business, science, academia and government, not only because men's native capacities are favoured in these occupations, but also because these occupations have been structured by men in a way that many women find uncongenial, unless they are prepared to challenge men on men's terms. It is interesting that there were more women in the British cabinet in the 1930's than there are today.⁵

Socialization

Gender identity results, not only from the sexing of the brain, in utero, but also from socialisation. The influence of socialization in gender identity has been explored in chapters dealing with male and female spirituality.

Sexuality and Intimacy

Sexuality also has to do with intimacy. It represents a quest for intimacy, though it can never quite fulfil what it promises. Bernard Lonergan has argued that when we seek intimacy, or seek to express intimacy through sex, we are bound to be disappointed. We never quite make it. The reason for this, he argues, is that the intimacy, the unity, the completeness and the communion we seek can only be found in our relationship with God.⁶

Developing this further, I would want to argue that we cannot find in others what we need to look for initially in ourselves. We cannot absorb others into ourselves so that they compensate for what is lacking, or undeveloped, in us, so that they complete us. It is not fair to expect this of them. It does not respect their integrity and it does not work.

We will find completeness within ourselves when we discover and integrate the shadow, when we develop our contra-sexual side, the Yang aspect in women and the Yin aspect in men, and when we discover the encompassing Self, the cosmogonic Love, the God in whom our existence is grounded.

The healthy expression of our sexuality is but one aspect of the unity consciousness that draws us on and that will find its consummation in our being subsumed, though without losing our individuality, into the dynamic life of the Trinity. [184]

Sexuality and Love-Making

We generally associate sexuality with love-making.

Love-making, driven by genetic and hormonal factors associated with the survival and evolution of the species, and by learned sociological imperatives, is an aspect of the enchantment of life.⁷ In love-making, we should avoid, at one extreme, over-spiritualising the act, and, at the other, reducing it to a crass physicalism. Healthy love-making involves energy, abandon and sensitivity and the capacity to delight in the other, in oneself and in the act.

In more recent years, particularly since the 1960 when sex began to be spoken about openly, sexuality has come to be associated almost exclusively, with the genitals. This genitalization has been accompanied by an emphasis on performance. Sex has become a sport and, in some circles, is touted as the cement that holds marriages together. So long as sex is good, the marriage will survive. It is obvious, to those not caught up in this delusion, that sex is a far less effective adhesive than romantic love, which, over time, becomes friable and loses its adhesive potential. The notion that either romantic love, or sex, can hold a marriage together, on its own, or that they can do so together, is utterly illusory.

While our genitals are important to the expression of our sexuality, sexuality is a far broader phenomenon than genital engagement. It has to do with a rich sensuousness, with depth of feeling, with our maleness and femaleness and with our drawing forth the contra-sexual aspect in the other which our gender reflects.

The experience of this rich sensuousness, whether or not it culminates in coitus, is so much more enjoyable than sheer genital performance. It is also more enriching than the frenetic love-making that is generated by the illusions of romantic love.

Healthy and enhancing love-making involves the interplay, the intimate dance, of sensuous allure and respect for one's partner. Each of the lovers, with sensitivity and skill, plays the instrument of the other's body, bringing the other pleasure and filling the atmosphere with sensuous, haunting music. In the eyes of your lover you read an invitation to an adventure in sensual exploration and consummation. Love-making, in the context of a committed and healthy relationship, is a serendipitous journey in which our delight is not frustrated by too high an expectation and in which we do not take ourselves too seriously.

Sexuality and Spirituality

It is also important to note the intimate connection between sexuality and spirituality. Both access the central core of our being. [185]

Urban Holmes, drawing attention to the close connection between spirituality and sexuality, suggested that they are alike in three critical ways. Both are dynamic, in that they are an expression of eros, our basic libidinal energy. Both are dialogical, as both involve a communication in depth. Third, both are teleological, an expression of the movement of the self towards union with itself, with others and with God.⁸

A moment's reflection will convince you that there are other similarities. Both involve unqualified love and commitment. In seeking God and in making love there is a self giving and a loss of the self in the other. Both necessitate a degree of vulnerability and a surrender of self-control. Both engage the sensitive and intimate part of the self and are an expression of the desire to find the self in the other. In both there is the hope that hidden parts of the self will be discovered. In both there is a seeking of transcendence and a partial overcoming of our separateness, our aloneness. Both can result in enjoyment and a sense of well-being. Latent in both is the promise of ecstasy.

The enumeration of these similarities has not exhausted the subtle inter-connectedness between sexuality and spirituality.

The prophet Hosea, reflecting on the pain his wife's flagrant adulteries were causing him, was led to appreciate how God felt about a faithless Israel. In his own stubborn love, he saw reflected the love of Yahweh for his wantonly adulterous bride.

It is also of interest that the Song of Songs, a celebration of sexual love, was interpreted by Origin, Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard of Clairvaux and John of the Cross as a symbolic expression of God's love for his people. These commentators may have been unconsciously motivated by the difficulty of acknowledging that a book with such an explicitly sexual theme could have been included in the Hebrew Scriptures. Nevertheless, the fact that they made the connection is significant.

When Thomas Merton, a celebrated monk at the Trappist monastery of Gethsemane in Kentucky, was in his fifties he was hospitalised for a haemorrhoidectomy. In hospital, he fell in love with one of the nurses. Love turned his thoughts to Eve, to Mary, to "Jesus our Mother", and to hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), the Christian symbols of the feminine in God.⁹ The poignancy of this new love, which enabled Merton to engage his Anima,¹⁰ led him to associate the energy of his love for the woman with his feel for the nature of the cosmos and for the God who created it.¹¹

It is also interesting to note the sexual imagery in the prayers of Teresa of Avila.¹² Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), reflecting on this sexual imagery, depicts her in a sculpture with her head tossed back, her eyes closed, and her mouth open in the manner of a woman in orgasm. Over her stands an angelic being, with a dart raised to pierce her soul.¹³ [186]

The close connection between sexuality and spirituality is also reflected in our dreams.

Illustrating this connection, Urban Holmes recounted the dream of a priest, who was both fascinated and alarmed by what his dreaming mind had concocted. At the time, the priest was embroiled in controversy in his parish, in which his ministry was challenged and which involved him in deep emotional pain. During this time he was supported by two nuns. The dream was brief. Christ was hanging on the cross and was comforted by the two nuns, who were stroking him in an obviously sexual manner. The priest, in his distress, identified with Christ's passion. His pain, however, was an occasion of grace, largely because of the support of the two women, whose femininity was identified with his genital yearning and with the more generalised longing for oneness and acceptance that is the inner core of our sexual desire.¹⁴

A Physiology of Grace

James Nelson talks about a physiology of grace.¹⁵ By this, he means several things. The first is that the salvation that God effects includes the healing of our sexuality, of its distortions and dysfunctions. Second, he is suggesting that love-making, in the context of an affectionate, committed relationship, can be a means of grace. Tillich argued that the essence of salvation was the bringing together of what had been separated. It is the separation of the conscious from the unconscious self, and of ourselves from others, that is partially overcome in the act of love-making. Love-making is a symbol of the deeper union into which we are being drawn, an ultimate union with God, to which the grace experienced in lovemaking contributes.

The effect of the grace, implicit in love-making, is evident in the fact that minor tensions between couples can be overcome when they come together in this act of passionate self-giving. However, if tensions are severe, or long lasting, the invitation to make love, or the demand for sex, will be interpreted as little more than an expression of the need to relieve sexual tensions or as an act of aggression and it will be experienced as a violation of the body/self.

The fact that love-making can be experienced as a grace, in the sense that it affects us at the deeper level of our graced self-constitution as well as at the level of the physical experience itself, is reflected in Holmes comment that physical delight can be a means of divine presence.¹⁶ As this inner grace is drawing us ultimately into unity with the universal Self, into the all-encompassing life of the Trinity, it could be suggested, as Charles Davis has done, that the erotic dynamism of bodily love is not merely a symbol of, but also a means towards the plenitude of reality, towards God.¹⁷ [187]

The close relationship between spirituality and sexuality is most clearly evident in the extent to which those who have been sexually abused are damaged in their body/selves and in their capacity for recognizing, expressing and developing their spirituality. If the exercise of our spirituality has to do with meaning-making and communication, the ability to transcend oneself, the growth of latent abilities and of identity, the development of the capacity for self-giving and the deepening of relationships with oneself, others and God, then sexual abuse can be seen as severely damaging every aspect of this process.

Review

Sexuality and spirituality are inextricably related. Both have to do with the most intimate part of the self. One cannot be engaged without engaging the other. The enhancement of one leads to the enhancement of the other. Damage to one results in damage to the other. Our sexuality is both an important part of who we are, and, responsibly nurtured, plays a part in our spiritual development. The promotion of a healthy sexuality is an aspect of our spiritual development. [188]

[SFM 178-188]