Desire and the Divine: Reading Sarah Coakley with a Prayerful Heart

Reflection From Chapter 1 of Coakley's: God, Sexuality, and the Self

I am taking an Independent Study on the sensus divinitatis (spiritual senses) — the innate sense of the divine inherent in each person. As I do so, it has been helpful for me to reflect (see here for a previous example) on some of the resources I’ve been using. In this post, I’ll do so as I work through Sarah Coakley’s excellent systematic theology: God, Sexuality, and the Self.

First, I appreciate Coakley’s clarity in writing. Systematic theology can often be dense, but God, Sexuality, and the Self is remarkably readable. Whether this is her own stylistic choice or the work of a good editor, it’s worth commending. Theology should not be unnecessarily obscure, but too often it is. Coakley writes as someone who wants to be understood, and because she does, I was able to read prayerfully and meditatively. Kudos to her!

What stood out to me the most in Chapter 1 was the centrality of desire in systematic theology. Desire — like our divine senses — is innate in every human; our desires drive our actions, thoughts, and affections. We are, to use James KA Smith’s phrase, “desiring animals.”

This raises an essential question for me in this class on the divine senses: Are these two concepts (divine senses and desires) synonymous, or does one operate at a more fundamental level, shaping the way the other works? If the sensus divinitatis is innate but can be dulled or distorted, might rightly ordered desire be the means through which it is rekindled? I think Coakley would say that reordering our deepest longings is key to seeing God. I am eager to see if she addresses this later in the book.

Coakley highlights the possibility of fallen or misdirected desires in systematic theological work. I thought this was important to emphasize at the outset, because we Westerners have been shaped by a methodology that rightly, but over-excessively, urges a knowledge of God that is almost entirely “brain-based.” So, theologians of all sorts, may approach theological work without at the same time assessing their reason for doing so.

However, she is not just highlighting an overemphasis on the intellectual ways of knowing God, but that theology that is severed from contemplative practices necessarily leads to domineering behaviors within and amongst God’s children.

Consider, for instance, this passage from Isaiah 58:

“Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high” (Isaiah 58:2-4).

To be fair to the Israelites, they probably didn’t see their pleasure seeking and domineering behavior as a direct result of pursuing God with disordered desires. Modern Western Christians certainly don’t.

Hear this from James:

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (James 4:1-3).

Rather than approaching God to satisfy our disordered desires, we should approach God to have our desires shaped. “Create in me a clean heart, O God!” The Psalmist cried.

So, knowing disordered desires to be a strong possibility, knowing that the desire to master, dominate, or bolster a reputation might be mingled within our desire to do theological work, what should we do? How should we approach theological work?

Coakley recommends a way of viewing theology that she calls theologie totale. This refers to the theological approach that integrates doctrinal, scriptural, and mystical dimensions, emphasizing contemplative prayer and other ascetic practices, with a goal of transformation through knowledge of God. Such knowledge, Coakley suggests, “is unlike any other knowledge; indeed, it is more truly to be known, and so transformed.”

In other words, to ensure one’s desires are being recalibrated, one must present oneself wholly to the Spirit of God through divinely ordained means, so that the Spirit can do the invisible cleansing and recalibrating work.

So, Coakley writes: “Systematic theology without contemplative and ascetic practice comes with the danger of rending itself void; for theology in its proper sense is always implicitly in via as practitional. It comes, that is, with the urge, the fundamental desire, to seek God’s ‘face’ and yet to have that seeking constantly check, corrected, and purged.”

I like the idea of thinking of theology in via. That means it has motion — as the cool young folks now say. It’s not statically stored in our brains but, energized by the Spirit, works its way transformatively through our bodies and communities. This way our desires are fixed on the One who can ultimately satisfy them. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” says Jesus, “for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

Coakley ends Chapter 1 with a claim that desire is so essential to human life that we should consider it more important than gender. She is not downplaying gender, as such, but highlighting it as a primary place where desire has been worked out in recent history. If desire is more essential than gender, a question she would have us ask is “How have unexamined desires shaped our theological assumptions about gender? How might the recalibration of those desires reshape our understanding of gender and identity?”

I am looking forward to reading how Coakley will expand on her notion of theologie totale, especially concerning contemplative prayer. This is personal for me, this study of the sensus divinitatis. I don’t want to conclude the class with just more information, but I want the Spirit to transform me through the pursuit. Therefore, Coakley’s emphasis on prayer as essential rings true for me. I see that prayer must be how I approach every theological pursuit. It’s not a charm on the bracelet of theological pursuit, it’s the bracelet from which the charms dangle.

This prayer from my collection of prayers came to mind as I read chapter 1. I hope it blesses you as it did me.

Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of thee; thou only knowest what I need... I simply present myself before thee, I open my heart to thee. Behold my needs which I know not myself. Smite, or heal; depress me, or raise me up; I adore all thy purposes without knowing them; I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice; I yield myself to thee; I am silent; have no other desire than to accomplish thy Will. Teach me to pray. Pray thyself in me. Amen.
— Prayer from François Fénelon