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A Theological Reader on Gender Diversities and Sexuality Envisioning Inclusivity A Theological Reader on Gender Diversities and Sexuality Envisioning Inclusivity Editors Roger Gaikwad and Thomas Ninan 2017 iv A Theological Reader on Gender Diversities and ... A Theological Reader on Gender Diversities and ... v A Theological Reader on Gender Diversities and Sexuality Envisioning Inclusivity— published by the Rev. Dr. Ashish Amos of the Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (ISPCK), Post Box 1585, 1654, Madarsa Road, Kashmere Gate, Delhi-110006. © CSA/KIA/NCCI, 2017 Contents All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publisher. The views expressed in the book are those of the author and the publisher takes no responsibility for any of the statements. Online order: http://ispck.org.in/book.php Also available on amazon.in ISBN: 978-81-8465-???-? Front Cover Title: Faces Illustration and Artwork: Varkey Parakkal About the Artist: Varkey Parakkal is a student of Journalism, a ‘hobbyist designer’, who has been designing for the LGBTI cause for several years. Back Cover Title: Breaking Binaries Illustration and Artwork: Angad Gummaraju About the Artist: Angad Gummaraju is a medical student at Manipal University. An artist, Angad describes surgery as the most noble form of art to exist. Angad identifies as a transgender, and often finds peace in the sanctum that is the operating room Laser typeset at ISPCK, Post Box 1585, 1654, Madarsa Road, Kashmere Gate, Delhi- 110006. Tel: 23866323, Fax: 91-11-23865490 e-mail: [email protected] • [email protected] website: www.ispck.org.in Printed at Allianz Enterprises, Delhi. Foreword viii A Theological Reader on Gender Diversities and ... A Theological Reader on Gender Diversities and ... ix Introduction x A Theological Reader on Gender Diversities and ... EARTH BIBLE SERMONS -1 1 Theological Perspectives: A Critical Evaluation of Early Teachings on Human Sexuality Philosophy and Theology of Mind-Body Dualism Mothy Varkey Introduction The term ‘dualism’(from the Latin word duo meaning ‘two’) denotes the state of two parts. It was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourses but has been more generalised in other usages to indicate a system which contains two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. ‘Dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of philosophy and theology. Moral dualism is the belief of the great complement of or conflict between the benevolent and the malevolent. It simply implies that there are two moral opposites at work, independent of any interpretation of what might be ‘moral’ and independent of how these may be represented. In ontological dualism, the world is divided into two overarching categories.1In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil—or God and the Devil2—are independent and more or less equal forces in the world.3In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical—or mind and body or mind and brain—are, in some sense, radically different kinds of things. In contemporary theology, ‘mind-body dualism’is often used to criticise world views which are male chauvinistic (patriarchal), ecologically inimical, and generally disparaging the physical reality/existence. Its historical roots 4 CONTRI EARTH BIBLE SERMONS -1 5 can be traced to both Hebraic and Hellenistic thought forms. Thus the between ‘mind’ and ‘body’ was quite different from that held in the Biblical accent on divine transcendence and sovereignty is perceived to Aristotelian tradition. For Aristotle, there is no exact science of matter. set God above and beyond the world in a way that undermines our need How matter behaves is essentially affected by the form that is in it. You to connect with one another and to foster relationships of equality and cannot combine just any matter with any form—you cannot make a knife mutual self-giving. Similarly, the Platonic division of mind and body is out of butter, nor a human being out of paper—so the nature of the viewed as leading to the devaluing of the physical world in a way that matter is a necessary condition for the nature of the substance. But the privileges the mind, denigrates the body and promotes the exploitation of nature of the substance does not follow from the nature of its matter nature/matter. alone: there is no ‘bottom up’ account of substances. Matter is a determinable made determinate by form. This was how Aristotle thought Mind-Body Dualism: A Historical Trajectory that he was able to explain the connection of soul to body: a particular In ‘mind-body dualism’, ‘mind’ is contrasted with ‘body’, but at different soul exists as the organising principle in a particular parcel of matter. times, different aspects of the mind have been the centre of attention. The crux of Descartes’ method is radical doubt. He doubts everything The classical emphasis originates in Plato’s Phaedo. Plato believed that the he can manage to doubt––all traditional knowledge, the impressions of true substances are not physical bodies, which are ephemeral, but the eternal his senses, and even the fact that he has a body––until he reaches one Forms of which bodies are imperfect copies. As a result, he conceived the thing he cannot doubt, the existence of himself as thinker. Thus he arrives material world as evil and “feminine” on the one hand, and the spiritual at his celebrated statement, Cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I exist”). as good and “masculine”. This not only succeeded in creating a negative From this Descartes deduces that the essence of human nature lies in and static dualism between the material and spiritual worlds, but also had thought, and that all the things we conceive clearly and distinctly are true. a major impact on Christian anthropology. Descartes’ cogito, as it has come to be called, made ‘mind’ more certain The Platonic understanding of the person as a soul imprisoned in a for him than ‘matter’ and led him to the conclusion that the two were body created a further disabling dualism between males and females. The separate and fundamentally different. Thus he asserted that there is nothing association of matter with ‘feminity’ and evil meant that women were included in the concept of ‘body’ that belongs to the ‘mind’; and nothing associated more strongly with their bodily natures and the life of the flesh in that of ‘mind’ that belongs to the ‘body’. The Cartesian division between in its fallen state. Men, on the other hand, were deemed to be closer to ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ has had a profound effect on Western thought. It has their higher spiritual nature and the life of the spirit in relation to God. taught us to be aware of ourselves as isolated egos existing “inside” our This deeply entrenched association of women with the natural world and bodies. Descartes based his whole view of nature on this fundamental evil, and men with the world of spirit. Scholars have traced how later division between two independent and separate realms; that of mind, or Hebraic and Christian thinkers elaborated this Platonic theme in ways res cogitans,the “thinking thing,” and that of matter, or res extensa, the which connected it explicitly with the theme of man’s rightful domination “extended thing.” In other words, ‘mind’ is a substance completely distinct of both women and nature.4 from the ‘body’. Thereafter human reason became the sole key to unlocking The more modern versions of mind-body dualism have their origin the external world, with nature becoming a vast soulless plane of matter in René Descartes’Meditations. Descartes (1596–1650) was a substance dualist.5 to be examined, ordered, and classified by the human mind. Substance dualism is also often dubbed ‘Cartesian dualism’.6Descartes believed that there were two kinds of substance: ‘matter’, of which the Artificial Intelligence (AI): The New Dualism/Cartesianism? essential property is that it is spatially extended; and ‘mind’, of which the The computer model of the mind, pioneered by Alan Turing’s strong essential property is that it thinks. Descartes’ conception of the relation Artificial Intelligence (AI) thesis prophesied the development of software 6 CONTRI EARTH BIBLE SERMONS -1 7 that would enable computers to stimulate human ‘intelligence’.7 The the human body it does not make much sense to speak of minds alone. potential that human have to create a machine that may successfully As Fergus Kerr reminds us, “the bodiliness that seems to keep us apart stimulate human capacities is at once attractive and threatening. However, is exactly what makes our being together possible in the first place”.9 It to create a machine in the human image (capacity to reason) is not is this “rancour against the physical and historical condition of human equivalent to creating a person. There are differences between the way in life” that creation-centred non-dualist theology makes it most valuable which the brain and the computer process information although many in contribution.10 the AI community dispute this observation. It is a question of whether a dynamical system such as nervous system can be modelled by a computer, Mind-Body Dualism: A Theological critique after all the brain is not a computer and consciousness is not the running As with the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries, Descartes’ of a programme. radical dissociation of the ‘mind’ from the ‘body’ and the subsequent exaltation of ‘reason’ over ‘emotion’ further reinforced the view of women From a Christian theological perspective the human being is and nature as objects for male use and pleasure.

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