Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality

Chris Boesel

Published by Fordham University Press 2010

Apophatic Bodies

Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality

Chris Boesel

In the series Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquia

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823290895

Overview
Contents

About this book

The ancient doctrine of negative theology or apophasis—the attempt to describe God by speaking only of what cannot be said about the divine perfection and goodness—has taken on new life in the concern with language and its limits that preoccupies much postmodern philosophy, theology, and related disciplines. How does this mystical tradition intersect with the concern with material bodies that is simultaneously a focus in these areas? This volume pursues the unlikely conjunction of apophasis and the body, not for the cachet of the “cutting edge” but rather out of an ethical passion for the integrity of all creaturely bodies as they are caught up in various ideological mechanisms—religious, theological, political, economic—that threaten their dignity and material well-being. The contributors, a diverse collection of scholars in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies, rethink the relationship between the concrete tradition of negative theology and apophatic discourses widely construed. They further endeavor to link these to the theological theme of incarnation and more general issues of embodiment, sexuality, and cosmology. Along the way, they engage and deploy the resources of contextual and liberation theology, post-structuralism, postcolonialism, process thought, and feminism. The result not only recasts the nature and possibilities of theological discourse but explores the possibilities of academic discussion across and beyond disciplines in concrete engagement with the well-being of bodies, both organic and inorganic. The volume interrogates the complex capacities of religious discourse both to threaten and positively to draw upon the material well-being of creation.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Negative Theology: Unfolding Traditions
The Cloud of the Impossible: Embodiment and Apophasis Catherine Keller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
Subtle Embodiments: Imagining the Holy in Late Antiquity Patricia Cox Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
‘‘Being Neither Oneself Nor Someone Else’’: The Apophatic Anthropology of Dionysius the Areopagite Charles M. Stang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Incarnations: Body/Image
Bodies without Wholes: Apophatic Excess and Fragmentation in Augustine’s City of God Virginia Burrus and Karmen Mackendrick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
Bodies Still Unrisen, Events Still Unsaid: A Hermeneutic of Bodies without Flesh John D. Caputo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
In the Image of the Invisible Kathryn Tanner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
More Mysterious Bodies: Veils, Voids, Visions
‘‘The Body Is No Body’’ David L. Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Revisioning the Body Apophatically: Incarnation and the Acosmic Naturalism of Habad Hasidism Elliot R. Wolfson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
Bodies of the Void: Polyphilia and Theoplicity Roland Faber Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	200
Apophatic Ethics: Whose Body, Whose Speech?
The Metaphysics of the Body Graham Ward Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Emptying Apophasis of Deception: Considering a Duplicitous Kierkegaardian Declaration T. Wilson Dickinson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Feminist Theology and the Sensible Unsaying of Mysticism Sigridur Gudmarsdottir Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273
The Infinite Found in Human Form: Intertwinings of Cosmology and Incarnation Philip Clayton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	286
Love Stories: Unspeakable Relations, Infinite Freedom
The Apophasis of Divine Freedom: Saving ‘‘the Name’’ and the Neighbor from Human Mastery Chris Boesel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
Let It Be: Finding Grace with God through the Gelassenheit of the Annunciation Rose Ellen Dunn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	329
Intimate Mysteries: The Apophatics of Sensible Love Krista E. Hughes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	349
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	367
CONTRIBUTORS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	465

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 448

eBook

Published: March 24, 2022
ISBN: 9780823290895