Desirable Belief: A Theology of Eros

Desirable Belief: A Theology of Eros is a work of critical and constructive theology informed by the phenomenon of erotic love. Within the Christian tradition, passion has long been associated with sinful lust, incurring shaming and accusations of narcissism. Contemporary theologies of eros, on the other hand, extol sexual desire as God-given, even sacred. This book eschews these two extremes through an examination of the complexities of love and desire, as narrated in biblical texts, allegorized by church fathers, manifested in the lives of mystics, analyzed in psychodynamic theory, and depicted in poetry, literature, and Christian art. The volume pairs writers on love as different as Augustine and Jane Austen or Angela of Foligno and Simone de Beauvoir. Desirable Belief argues that eros is human and, as such, informs the Chalcedonian claim of Christ as fully God and fully human. A christological perspective that takes eros into account, in turn, affects the doctrine of the bodily ascension of Christ, the nature of resurrected bodies in heaven, and whether trinitarian impassibility is still a coherent concept.