Passionate Embrace - Gerle, Elisabeth

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Résumé :
Protestant ethics has often been associated with work and duty, excluding sensuality, sexuality and other pleasures. In an age of body worship as well as body loathing, Elisabeth Gerle explores new paths, embarking on a conversation with Martin Luther in dialogue with contemporary theologians on attitudes towards desire, ethics and politics. She draws on Eros theology to challenge traditional Lutheran stereotypes, such as the dichotomies between different forms of love, as well as between spirit and body. Gerle argues that Luther's spiritual breakthrough, where grace and gifts of creation became central, provides new meaning to sex and desire as well as to work, body and ordinary life. Women are seen in a new light - as companions, autonomous ethical agents, part of the priesthood of all. This had revolutionary consequences in Europe at the time, and it represents a challenge to contemporary theologies with a nostalgic appetite for austerity, asceticism and female submission. Luther's erotic and genderfluid language is a healthy challenge to oppressive political structures centred on greed, profit and competition. A revised Scandinavian creation theology and a deep sense of the incarnational mystery are resources for contemporary theology and ethics....

Biographie:
Acknowledgments and Thanks A Short Introduction 1. The Contemporary Landscape: Body Worship and Body Loathing 2. Luther: Heroic Liberator or Oppressor? 3. Human Bodies as a Phenomenon: Body Theology and Longing for the Past 4. A Woman Reads Origen, Augustine, Bernard, and Luther 5. The Movement of the Senses: Towards the Everyday 6. Commercial Transaction or Loving Embrace? 7. Eros as Poisoned Chalice, Medicine, or Everyday Body? Eros and Agape in a New Light 8. Eros Theology Challenges Traditional Lutheran Binary Opposites 9. Body, Sexuality, and Institutions: Roads to Salvation, Disciplining, or Presence and Gift? 10. Passion That Transforms: Patriarchy and Paradise, Personal and Private 11. Birth and Blossoming: Passionate Vision for the Future and Contrast to Greed Bibliography...

Sommaire:
Elisabeth Gerle is Professor of Ethics at Lund University and at Church of Sweden Research Department. Her works deal with religion and politics, Luther, politics, and the erotic....