Toward a Theology of Eros Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline

by Burrus, Virginia; Keller, Catherine

• ISBN13: 9780823226368
• ISBN10: 0823226360
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-15
• Publisher: Fordham University Press

Summary

What does theology have to say about the place of eroticism in the salvific transformation of men and women, even of the cosmos itself? How, in turn, does eros infuse theological practice and transfigure doctrinal tropes? Avoiding the well-worn path of sexual moralizing while also departing decisively from Anders Nygren's influential insistence that Christian agape must have nothing to do with worldly eros, this book explores what is still largely uncharted territory in the realm of theological erotics. The ascetic, the mystical, the seductive, the ecstatic--these are the places where the divine and the erotic may be seen to converge and love and desire to commingle.Inviting and performing a mutual seduction of disciplines, the volume brings philosophers, historians, biblical scholars, and theologians into a spirited conversation that traverses the limits of conventional orthodoxies, whether doctrinal or disciplinary. It seeks new openings for the emergence of desire, love, and pleasure, while challenging common understandings of these terms. It engages risk at the point where the hope for salvation paradoxically endangers the safety of subjects--in particular, of theological subjects--by opening them to those transgressions of eros in which boundaries, once exceeded, become places of emerging possibility.The eighteen chapters, arranged in thematic clusters, move fluidly among and between premodern and postmodern textual traditions--from Plato to Emerson, Augustine to Kristeva, Mechthild to Mattoso, the Shulammite to Molly Bloom, the Zohar to the Da Vinci Code. In so doing, they link the sublime reaches of theory with the gritty realities of politics, the boundless transcendence of God with the poignant transience of materiality.

Author Biography

Catherine Keller is Professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University. Her most recent books are: Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming; Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire, co-editor; and God and Power: Counter-Apocalyptic Journeys. Virginia Burrus is Professor of Early Church History at Drew University. Her most recent books are ôBegotten, Not Madeö: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity; The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography; and Late Ancient Christianity: A People's History, editor.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Theology and Eros after Nygren
Virginia Burrus	xiii
PART I. RESTAGING THE SYMPOSIUM ON LOVE
What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Platonic Love?
Daniel Boyarin	3
Flesh in Confession: Alcibiades Beside Augustine
Mark D. Jordan	23
For the Love of God: The Death of Desire and the Gift of Life
Mario Costa	38
PART II. QUEER DESIRES
Sexing the Pauline Body of Christ: Scriptural Sex in the Context of the American Christian Culture War
Diana M. Swancutt	65
Homoerotic Spectacle and the Monastic Body in Symeon the New Theologian
Derek Krueger	99
Sexual Desire, Divine Desire; Or, Queering the Beguines
Amy Hollywood	119
Feetishism: The Scent of a Latin American Body Theology
Marcella Maria Althaus-Reid	134
Digital Bodies and the Transformation of the Flesh
Sheila Briggs	153
PART III. SACRED SUFFERING, SUBLIME SEDUCTION
Passion Binding—Passion
Yvonne Sherwood	169
Praying Is Joying: Musings on Love in Evagrius Ponticus
Virginia Burrus	194
Carthage Didn't Burn Hot Enough: Saint Augustine's Divine Seduction
Karmen MacKendrick	205
PART IV. COSMOS, EROS, CREATIVITY
American Transcendentalism's Erotic Aquatecture
Robert S. Corrington	221
"She Talks Too Much": Magdalene Meditations
Catherine Keller	234
Ethical Desires: Toward a Theology of Relational Transcendence
Mayra Rivera	255
New Creations: Eros, Beauty, and the Passion for Transformation
Grace Jantzen	271
PART V. REREADING THE SONG OF SONGS
Lyrical Theology: The Song of Songs and the Advantage of Poetry
Tod Linafelt	291
The Shulammite's Song: Divine Eros, Ascending and Descending
Richard Kearney	306
Suffering Eros and Textual Incarnation: A Kristevan Reading of Kabbalistic Poetics
Elliot R. Wolfson	341
Afterword: A Theology of Eros, After Transfiguring Passion
Catherine Keller	366
Notes	375
Contributors	465