"That's not how the song goes": Sarah Coakley on Desire

I love my church. Twice a year, Apostles will invite speakers to teach & dialogue with our church on a particular topic. This year, Katelyn Beaty came to discuss the topic of vocation. She recently wrote a book titled A Woman's Place. While the book articulates a comprehensive approach to vocation from the questions concerning women today, the title mischievously elicits past notions of vocation that unjustly limited which callings women could be a part of, only to undermine these unhelpful paradigms from the richness of Scripture & the Christian tradition. Phrases like "a woman's place" evoke a kind of discerned ickiness from an unexamined conception of what roles we play in our world, assuming a kind of natural hierarchy.

Hierarchy is another word that may elicit scorn. In a society priding itself on social equality, the very notion of hierarchy appears scorn-worthy. Yet a theologian I deeply admire, Dr. Sarah Coakley, examines the concept of hierarchy, especially the ordering of our desires, and finds that we ought not jettison hierarchy entirely from our discourse. Here, we will discover how hierarchy may be situated such that desires are not merely simplified. Rather, in keeping with the Augustinian intuition of ordered desires (ordo amoris), hierarchy considers the reality of the whole transcending its parts, recognizes the gaps where desire needs realignment, & confesses our ultimate dependance on reference to God & resting in grace to begin to properly contribute to our place in creation. In short, hierarchy may indeed look more like a beautiful composition rather than a broken system of power.

In God, Sexuality, & the Self, Dr. Coakley wants you & I to re-think how we talk about God. You may find any number of systematic theology books on Amazon, but I'd venture to say they will pale in comparison to the rich, honest, & personal approach Sarah Coakley presents. She understands how in our world questions concerning gender, identity, & sexual desire are at the forefront of our discourse. She intends to show how all these questions both point to & find fulfillment in our desire for God. Thus for Dr. Coakley, to be systematic means that no matter where you enter, all the pieces fit together.

Her book argues for a holistic approach to contemplating God. Dr. Coakley draws from the insights of feminism, social sciences, church history, art, & contemplative practices. Then in the final chapter, Dr. Coakley pauses to defend the concept of hierarchy. She notes that hierarchy requires analytical reflection in order to avoid simply lumping it in with patriarchal power structures. In fact, the term was used by various theologians including Dionysius to mean, "A holy order and knowledge and activity which participates in the Divine Likeness." Organizational order is a kind of necessity for anything to function, yet order does not necessarily include the kinds of sexed, gendered, or racial subordination so prevalent in our world.

What does hierarchical order look like? Here, Dr. Coakley quotes Mary Douglas's cultural analysis, writing,"The distinguishing feature of hierarchy is that every decision is referred to the well-being of the whole. A whole transcending its parts is what hierarchy means." Thus hierarchy, properly considered, appeals to ordering in accordance with the good of the whole. In a hierarchy built on power, the desires of the powerful merely dominate those below, instead of functioning to benefit & bless the whole society, community, family, or group.

Finally, Dr. Coakley situates hierarchy under God's care & concern for creation as a whole. "God is by definition the Source of all that is, the One who places each 'order' of being precisely where it is destined to flourish in ecstatic response to the Spirit's own ecstatic lure." We may tend to assume hierarchy is an inherently oppressive structure, but Dr. Coakley posits that oppression is desire out of control, out of bounds, & indeed out of order. The desire to dominate & manipulate is not inherent in hierarchy. Rather, disordered desire constitutes the ills of individual, the community, & every society, which may only be righted in reference to Divine rightly-ordered desire.

It is towards re-orienting & re-ordering our desire to God that Dr. Coakley's work speaks loudest.

"So what is being broken here is the idea that a false patriarchal hierarchy in the Trinity should be emulated by a false patriarchal hierarchy in the church or world. But what is also being broken, more challengingly to the 'liberal' mind, is any idea that by magicking the idea of 'hierarchy' away altogether there can be an enforced feminist rearrangement of God and the world.

In short, we cannot get this vision of powers & submissions right by political or theological manipulation or fiat; we can only get it right by right primary submission to the Spirit with all the purgative costliness that involves."

Where so much of systematic theology attempts to speak correctly about God, Sarah Coakley points us to the inherent messiness in desiring at all, and it is only in submitting all our desires to the Triune God that we may, by grace, begin to desire, speak, and live well. The beauty of orthodox Christianity shines in the embodied practices of prayer, contemplation, & resting in God's grace. The impulse to fix without reference to Divine desire & order will only yield more disorder of a different kind. To begin to move forward requires a naked waiting before the Triune God.

To close, imagine that all of creation is a symphony. All the dissonance & disharmony arises when the musicians miss their context, the part & parts they contribute to the whole song. When they merely desire to play louder, more uniquely, or better than others, the entire symphony suffers and may only be made right in reference to the Composer. The Christian story is the intuition that when you look at the world the way it is, in all the beauty & disharmony, you can't help but reply, "That's not the way the song goes." The Gospel story is a story of the Composer setting right that which is in disorder, decay, & disharmony. It is only in reference to & resting in the work of the Composer that we may begin to embrace our call, to contribute our song, & join in the harmony of creation.