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Incarnation has always been an important concept within Christian theology. For centuries theologians have wrestled with how best to conceptualize the vexing problem of what it means that Jesus the Christ is fully God and fully human. In his work Desire for the Flesh, Adam Pryor explores how the incarnation has intersected corresponding issues well beyond the familiar question of how any one person might have two natures. Beginning by identifying four critical themes that have historically shaped the development of this doctrine, Pryor goes on to offer a constructive account of the incarnation. His account seeks out the continued meaning of this doctrine given the increasing complexity that characterizes our understanding of human bodies bodies that can no longer be understood as the locus of distinct subjects separated from the world of objects with the skin as an impenetrable boundary between the two. Making use of contemporary phenomenologies of the flesh and the erotic, Pryor develops an understanding of the incarnation that seeks to go beyond classical issues presented by two natures christologies. Incarnation, in guises as various as Jesus the Christ, cyborg bodies, and sacramental practices, becomes a way that God is diffused into the world, transforming how we are to be-with one another."
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Adventing God
Part I: Inescapable Incarnational Themes
Chapter 1: The Heritage of Chalcedon
Chapter 2: The Eschatological Difference
Chapter 3: Kenotic Absconding
Chapter 4: Overflowing Relationality
Part II: Bodies Beyond Dermal Metaphysics
Chapter 5: Being-With in the Flesh
Chapter 6: Jesus in the Flesh
Part III: Bodies Scandalized by being-with God in the Flesh
Chapter 7: Cyborg Bodies
Chapter 8: Deep, Promiscuous Incarnation
Chapter 9: A Touch of Sacrament
Conclusion: Incarnational Wild Things
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Adam Pryor is assistant professor of religion and director of the Varenhorst Center for Discovery, Reflection, and Vocation at Bethany College.
