Chapter Nine: Making the Meaning
My upcoming book, The Meaning of Singleness, will be published by InterVarsity Press on May 9, 2023. In the lead up to its release, I’m sharing a short weekly excerpt, chapter by chapter.
You can pre-order or see more information about the book (including its full contents page, endorsements & a free sample chapter) here.
Chapter Nine: Making the Meaning
“A final aspect of singleness’s meaning in demonstrating the teleologically hopeful expansive nature of human sexuality is well-introduced by Charles Williams, an early twentieth-century theologian. Williams hypothesized that a notion of sacramentality may exist within any authentically human experience and expression of love, sex, beauty, attraction, ardor, and so on. He suggests that iconic significance lies “in any relation of man into which the element of sincere and simple at- traction enters,”1 whether the object of such attraction be one’s spouse, nature, sport, or even stamp-collecting! Such significance is disclosed by the sense in which it permits the individual to perceive, even momentarily, “the very Presence of God—not manifested in his full glory, but more fully and universally manifested than in any other manner.”2 The one who “not in any sense for himself or to himself, is surrendered to an entire ardor cannot be said to be far from the Kingdom which will manifest Itself at Its chosen time.”3
If William’s contention is true, then the Christian person’s sense of rightly ordered and expressed sexual ardor or attraction may privilege them with an admittedly ephemeral, but nonetheless authentically sacramental perception of eternity in the eschatological now. Such existential experience, arising from the deep longings inspired by one’s created sexual nature—whether manifested in marital sexual intimacy, or its faithful direction toward celibate singleness—might be said to orient the individual toward a longing for the beauty of the divine presence. It might provide a momentary glimpse of the teleologically perfected intimacy with Christ—and so also each other—that yet awaits.
Such an argument directs us once again toward a more expansive understanding of human sexuality’s purposive character than is often typified in contemporary evangelical discourse, and especially discourse in relation to singleness.”
Taken from The Meaning of Singleness by Danielle Treweek. Copyright © 2023 by Danielle Elizabeth Treweek. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com.
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Charles Williams, Outlines of Romantic Theology (Berkeley, CA: Apocryphile Press, 2005), 69.
Williams, Outlines, 72.
Williams, Outlines, 72.
I haven't gotten to the full chapter of the book yet (alas, graduate studies have a way of delaying unassigned reading), but this point overlaps in interesting ways with arguments I have seen elsewhere about the theological point of sexual desire—arguments that it enables us to understand the ardor of God's love.
I think it's a fair suggestion, and possibly true, but I have some reservations due to the pitfalls that may emerge if we focus narrowly on the idea that desire for *sexual* union, specifically, is an experience that enables us to understand the love of God and/or what union with Christ will be like. While many people have a strong libido, some have a very weak or non-existent one. It would be unwise, I think, to tie insight into the divine so closely to sexual desire that it may imply people with minimal sex drives are lacking some key to understanding God.
I don’t read you as making that argument, but some other Protestant resources have gone that way. Do you have thoughts on how to conceptualize the importance of “sexual ardor or attraction” in a nuanced way that avoids making sexual desire *necessary* for this sort of spiritual insight?