Toward a Theology of Eros

Toward a Theology of Eros

Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline

In: Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquia

Edited by: Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller

Fordham University Press | 2009

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823238712

Overview
Contents

About this book

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 information

Burrus Virginia :

Virginia Burrus is the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. Her teaching and research interests in the field of ancient Christianity include gender, asceticism, constructions of orthodoxy and heresy, and the history of theology. She is currently president of the North American Patristics Society and co-editor of the University of Pennsylvania Press series Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion. She is the author of six books, including Seducing Augustine: Bodies, Desires, Confessions (Fordham University Press, 2010), co-written with Mark Jordan and Karmen MacKendrick; and Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). She is also coeditor, with Catherine Keller, of Toward a Th eology of Eros: Transfi guring Passion of the Limits of Discipline (Fordham University Press, 2006).Keller Catherine :

Catherine Keller is George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology in the Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion at Drew University. Recent books include Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement; On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process; Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming; and Ecospirit: Theologies and Philosophies of the Earth (Fordham).

Reviews

[A] fascinating volume . . .

Writings on covergences between the erotic and the theological such as in the realms of the ascetic, the mystical, and the ecstatic.

. . .the essays are meaty, rigorous, thoughtful. . .There's something in this volume for just about everyone.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
CONTENTS Free access PDF PDF	vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Free access PDF PDF	ix
Introduction: Theology and Eros after Nygren Virginia Burrus Free access PDF PDF	xiii
PART I . RESTAGING THE SYMPOSIUM ON LOVE
What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Platonic Love? Daniel Boyarin Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
Flesh in Confession: Alcibiades Beside Augustine Mark D. Jordan Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	23
For the Love of God: The Death of Desire and the Gift of Life Mario Costa Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	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 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	63
Homoerotic Spectacle and the Monastic Body in Symeon the New Theologian Derek Krueger Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	99
Sexual Desire, Divine Desire; Or, Queering the Beguines Amy Hollywood Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	119
Feetishism: The Scent of a Latin American Body Theology Marcella María Althaus-Reid Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	134
Digital Bodies and the Transformation of the Flesh Sheila Briggs Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	153
PART III. SACRED SUFFERING, SUBLIME SEDUCTION
Passion—Binding—Passion Yvonne Sherwood Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	167
Praying Is Joying: Musings on Love in Evagrius Ponticus Virginia Burrus Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	194
Carthage Didn’t Burn Hot Enough: Saint Augustine’s Divine Seduction Karmen MacKendrick Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	205
PART IV. COSMOS, EROS, CREATIVITY
American Transcendentalism’s Erotic Aquatecture Robert S. Corrington Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	219
‘‘She Talks Too Much’’: Magdalene Meditations Catherine Keller Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	234
Ethical Desires: Toward a Theology of Relational Transcendence Mayra Rivera Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	255
New Creations: Eros, Beauty, and the Passion for Transformation Grace Jantzen Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	271
PART V. REREADING THE SONG OF SONGS
Lyrical Theology: The Song of Songs and the Advantage of Poetry Tod Linafelt Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	289
The Shulammite’s Song: Divine Eros, Ascending and Descending Richard Kearney Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	306
Suffering Eros and Textual Incarnation: A Kristevan Reading of Kabbalistic Poetics Elliot R. Wolfson Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	341
Elliot R. Wolfson Catherine Keller Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	366
NOTES Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	375
CONTRIBUTORS Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	465

Toward a Theology of Eros

Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline

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