Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian TheologyFew would doubt that this is a time of transition in our understanding of human sexuality. The confusion about sexual morals and mores is the more obvious evidence of this. But there is something else. For too long the bulk of Christian reflection about sexuality has asked an essentially one-directional question: what does Christian faith have to say about our lives as sexual beings? |
Contents
| 11 | |
| 19 | |
| 37 | |
Sexual Salvation Grace and the Resurrection of the Body | 70 |
Love and Sexual Ethics | 104 |
The Meanings of Marriage and Fidelity | 130 |
The Morality of Sexual Variations | 152 |
Gayness and Homosexuality Issues for the Church | 180 |
The Sexually Disenfranchised | 211 |
The Church as Sexual Community | 236 |
Epilog | 272 |
Notes | 275 |
Index of Subjects | 296 |
Index of Names | 300 |
Index of Biblical References | |
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Common terms and phrases
acceptance affectional orientation affirmation agape Alexander Lowen alienation androgyny attitudes basic become behavior biblical biological bodily body body-self capacity Chap Christ Christian church commitment communion creative culture Derrick Sherwin Bailey dimensions divine emotional eros erotic experience faith fantasy fear feelings female feminine gay persons genital intercourse God's grace heterosexual homosexual human sexuality Ibid important intercourse interpretation intimacy issue Jesus John A. T. Robinson Karl Barth lives major male marital marriage masculine masturbation means monogamy moral nature ness nurture one's orgasm orientation partner patterns Paul Tillich physical pleasure pornography positive possibility procreation procreative psychological regard relation religious responsible resurrection Ruether sacramental self-acceptance sense sex act sexist dualism sexual acts sexual desire Sexual Ethics sexual expression sexual intercourse sexual love sexual relationship sexual theology simply sion social society spirit spiritualistic dualism spouse symbolic theologians tion traditional understanding whole woman women word York
Popular passages
Page 103 - There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Page 117 - Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.
Page 59 - The material suggests that we may say that many, if not all, of the personality traits which we have called masculine or feminine are as lightly linked to sex as are the clothing, the manners, and the form of head-dress that a society at a given period assigns to either sex.
Page 22 - We cannot possibly interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society, and to see the powers and dangers credited to social structure reproduced in small on the human body.
Page 78 - It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted.
Page 183 - Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
Page 287 - Derrick Sherwin Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition (London: Longmans, Green, 1955; reprinted by Shoe String Press, Inc., Hamden, Conn., 1975); John J.
Page 46 - It seems that so long as we are alive, we shall continue closest to knowledge if we avoid as much as we can all contact and association with the body, except when they are absolutely necessary, and instead of allowing ourselves to become infected with its nature, purify ourselves from it until God himself gives us deliverance.
Page 63 - But in a secondary sense the image of God is found in man, and not in woman, for man is the beginning and end of woman, just as God is the beginning and end of every creature.