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.
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