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I couldn't begin to speak for Mader, but Christianity is not Platonism, however much anxious influence may exist between the two. In Christian thought, the body is not just an empty cipher or a shadow but part of God's good creation. The body's beauty and dignity is not just a dimly-perceived misrecognition of a metaphysical good, but the true stamp of its divine Maker. Moreover, the Word was incarnated in a human body, and so our bodies participate in the divine work of the new Creation. This is why sex is not a matter of indifference for Christians in the way it might be for Platonists. Sex is important - it can even be holy - but it can also become dangerous and idolatrous (as both Christian and Jewish traditions acknowledge). I happened to spend some time today in the company of the son of some friends of mine - a devastatingly beautiful, dark-eyed, colt-legged child right in the heart of my age of attraction. For me, my attraction to the child's body (nevermind for the moment his soul) is not wholly incidental - it is neither regrettable nor innocent. His body is something genuinely good and beautiful - it is not just the dim likeness of the good and beautiful. I am not suffering some baffled philosophical confusion in admiring the boy's lean grace. That beauty is something perfectly true. But it is also a danger, because such abject loveliness can become an object of adoration in its own right rather than pointing the soul - as it should do - beyond itself toward the source of all earthly beauty. That sounds a little bit Platonist, but I don't think Platonists would recognise sexual activity or the body as being invested with this kind of moral and spiritual significance. Platonists can leave sex discreetly in the background - whatever Socrates does or does not do with Alcibiades of Charmides is a matter of mere gossip. It is not clear that Christians have this luxury of this attitude. It would be nice, perhaps, to live the life of the angels, who neither marry nor are given in marriage. But for the moment we inhabit mortal bodies with passions that can be good or bad, edifying or destructive. Everything is permissible to me, as the Apostle says, but not everything is profitable. Maybe Donald Mader wanted to try to imagine a kind of Christian boy-sexuality that is beneficial (συμφέρει) to everyone concerned: body and soul alike. Or maybe not. Who knows? |