Sex on Earth as It Is in Heaven: A Christian Eschatology of Desire by Patricia Beattie Jung (review)

A book about sex in heaven may sound like a work of speculative fantasy. In fact, Jung's text is an important contribution to the field of sexual ethics because it celebrates the grace of embodiment in a social context that too often flees or degrades our incarnate nature. By employing an eschatological framework for her moral reflection, Jung invites her reader to consider the telos of sexual identity, desire, and delight as well as share the work of healing and transformation so that God's "will be done on earth as in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). This text asks readers to view sexuality with "Easter eyes" to imagine what more is already possible for sexual intimacy in light of our not-yet bodily resurrection "so as to bear glorious witness to God" (xii). Jung covers new ground in exploring "the connections between Christian convictions about the ultimate destiny of sexual desire and delight and Christian norms about sexual activity here and now" (xviii).

The first five chapters of this book examine "sex in heaven," beginning with a comparative review of theological claims about life after death and what it means for embodiment, including gender and sex in heaven. This part of the book offers a cogent and compelling overview of the most influential ideas—Jewish, Hellenistic, biblical, and Augustinian—that have informed Christian theologies of sex and gender. It culminates in a theoretical proposition for an eschatological vision of sex in heaven that takes seriously "God's sanctification of and the potential tender sweetness of our sexual fires" (118). The last three chapters attend to "sex on earth," focusing on the anthropological issues that shape experiences of sexual desire and delight (and the lack thereof) in need of reform. Jung's ethical analysis is informed by an impressive array of research in biology and the social sciences, which she uses to discuss the emotions involved in sexual desire and cultivating virtuous sexual desire where it has been lost or lessened. She argues that "our culture grossly underestimates the capacity of people to educate sexual affections" (137–138). This ability to re-educate sexual desire is crucial in light of the poisonous effects of pornography on so many (including a majority of Christian men), the subject of the final chapter. Pornography does more than normalize sexual objectification; in Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (Beacon, 2011), Gail Dines reports that nearly 90 percent of the most popular internet pornography contained at least one kind of physical or verbal aggression "with an average of nearly 12 acts of aggression per scene" (xxii). Although Dines's work isn't included in Jung's final chapter, this points to the kind of social and structural sin that demands the attention of our guild. If we seek the embodiment of sex on earth as it is in heaven, a chief task is to combat the beliefs and practices that make sex more diabolical than divine.

Jung writes with the clarity of someone who has read, written, and taught this subject with exceptional thoughtfulness as well as deep concern for the embodied persons involved. Her eschatological orientation skillfully incorporates the virtue of hope into a part of human experience too often twisted by fear, lust, and shame. Jung explicitly affirms the inherent goodness of sexual identity, desire, and pleasure and effectively explains why this matters for personal and communal flourishing. This book will help undergraduate students recognize key theological contributions to sexual ethics as well as the communal and contextual features often ignored when sex and gender are considered personal and private matters. It will provoke new insights and questions for graduate students and inspire scholars and pastoral leaders to more creatively and concretely imagine what it will take to embody sex on earth as it is in heaven.