This book interprets fourth-century theological discourse as an incident in the history of masculine gender, arguing that Nicene trinitarian doctrine is a crucial site not only for theological innovation but also for reimagining and reproducing manhood in the late Roman period. When the Trinity became for the first time the sine qua non of doctrinal orthodoxy, masculinity was conceived anew, in terms that heightened the claims of patriarchal authority while cutting manhood loose from its traditional fleshly and familial moorings. In exploring the significance of this late antique...
This book interprets fourth-century theological discourse as an incident in the history of masculine gender, arguing that Nicene trinitarian doctrine ...
This book interprets fourth-century theological discourse as an incident in the history of masculine gender, arguing that Nicene trinitarian doctrine is a crucial site not only for theological innovation but also for reimagining and reproducing manhood in the late Roman period. When the Trinity became for the first time the sine qua non of doctrinal orthodoxy, masculinity was conceived anew, in terms that heightened the claims of patriarchal authority while cutting manhood loose from its traditional fleshly and familial moorings. In exploring the significance of this late antique...
This book interprets fourth-century theological discourse as an incident in the history of masculine gender, arguing that Nicene trinitarian doctrine ...
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...
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, ...
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...
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, ...
"Brilliant and important. . . . From page one she challenges approaches to hagiography that dismiss ascetic desire as the sublimation of sexuality and a pathological hatred of the body."--Theological Studies "Countering the assumption that ascetics repress, sublimate, or even eradicate sexual desire, this fine book detects a vibrant eroticism in tales of fourth- and fifth-century saints. Rather than read ancient saints' lives as anti-erotic, or, worse, an-erotic, Burrus reveals a flourishing ars erotica. . . . A deft reading of the interplay between gender and erotics in...
"Brilliant and important. . . . From page one she challenges approaches to hagiography that dismiss ascetic desire as the sublimation of sexuality and...
Augustine's Confessions is a text that seduces. But how often do its readers respond in kind? Here three scholars who share a longstanding fascination with sexuality and Christian discourse attempt to do just that. Where prior interpreters have been inclined either to defend or to criticize Augustine's views, Virginia Burrus, Mark Jordan, and Karmen MacKendrick set out both to seduce and to be seduced by his text.Often ambivalent but always passionately engaged, their readings of the Confessions center on four sets of intertwined themes-secrecy and confession, asceticism and eroticism,...
Augustine's Confessions is a text that seduces. But how often do its readers respond in kind? Here three scholars who share a longstanding fascination...
Augustine's Confessions is a text that seduces. But how often do its readers respond in kind? Here three scholars who share a longstanding fascination with sexuality and Christian discourse attempt to do just that. Where prior interpreters have been inclined either to defend or to criticize Augustine's views, Virginia Burrus, Mark Jordan, and Karmen MacKendrick set out both to seduce and to be seduced by his text.Often ambivalent but always passionately engaged, their readings of the Confessions center on four sets of intertwined themes-secrecy and confession, asceticism and eroticism,...
Augustine's Confessions is a text that seduces. But how often do its readers respond in kind? Here three scholars who share a longstanding fascination...
The Life of Saint Helia, a late ancient Latin hagiography of uncertain provenance, is a remarkable and virtually unknown text, of which a critical edition and English translation appear here for the first time, accompanied by an introduction and commentary. Written predominately in dialogue format, the Life records a lengthy and highly polemical debate between a young girl Helia and her mother regarding the relative merits of virginity and marriage, followed by a dialogue between Helia and a bishop and a debate between Helia and a judge. The arguments both for and against virginity are...
The Life of Saint Helia, a late ancient Latin hagiography of uncertain provenance, is a remarkable and virtually unknown text, of which a critical edi...
