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

What might it mean, at this particular moment, to theologize eros, to eroticize theology? The ascetic, the mystical, the seductive, the ecstatic-such are the places where the divine and the erotic may be seen to converge and love and desire to commingle. Such too are the shared interests that bring philosophers, historians, biblical scholars, and theologians into spirited conversation in a multi-vocal volume that traverses the limits of conventional orthodoxies, both disciplinary and theological. The eighteen chapters move fluidly across 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 also link the sublime reaches of theory with the gritty realities of politics, the boundless transcendence of God with the poignant transience of materiality.

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 “Begotten, Not Made”: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity; The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography; and Late Ancient Christianity: A People’s History, editor.