A Theological Engagement with Pornography

In Christian circles, consuming pornography has been treated primarily as a moral issue, and the analysis of pornography has dealt with motivations, harms and responses. This book explores how such analyses end up missing important theological dimensions of pornography, and in so missing those dimensions, leave important aspects of the cultural power of pornography unaddressed. The book argues that a purely moral analysis of pornography has led to several presumptions concerning pornography about sex, bodies and the erotic. Working through these presumptions is another, subtler presumption that the act of viewing pornography constitutes an act of viewing proper.

This book argues that the Christian tradition can also furnish a theological analysis of pornography as a theological reality, which uncovers these unaddressed dimensions concerning the cultural challenge posed by pornography. In addition, it argues that theology’s vocabulary will also yield surprising analyses that overturn these three presumptions. Ultimately, the book argues that pornography distorts the very act on which it trades, namely the viewing of the sexual act. More specifically, it states that pornography is not sexual, erotic or embodied, arguing instead that it is Christological, mimetic and divinizing. In making these critiques, Christian theology also declares that a properly theological engagement with pornography will involve the transformation of gazing into beholding.

Matthew John Paul Tan is Dean of Studies at Vianney College, the seminary of the diocese of Wagga Wagga in Australia. He also serves as Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia.