An Essay ‘On the Trinity’
Forging a new venture in systematic theology, Sarah Coakley ignites open conversations on sex and gender by challenging readers to re-think the connection between sexual desire and the desire for God in relation to the theology of the Trinity. Her goal with God, Sexuality, and the Self is “to integrate the demanding ascetical undertaking of prayer with the recovery of lost and neglected materials from the tradition and thus to reanimate doctrinal reflection both imaginatively and spiritually.” A provocative and bold read, this publication will be treasured by all searching for a compelling vision of the human longing for and transformation by a triune God not limited by the impasses of the church and secular ideologies.
In an excerpt provided by the Cambridge University Press, Coakley writes:
“My thesis is that this nexus of association (between trinitarian thought, prayer of a deep sort, and questions of ‘erotic’ meaning), caused sufficient political difficulty to press the prayer-based approach to the Trinity to the edges of the more public, conciliar discussion of the doctrine, even in the patristic period itself, and further marginalized it as far as modern histories of dogma were concerned.
But by the end of the book it will be argued that the critical retrieval of this spiritual nexus today has great potential theological importance… Here ethics and metaphysics may be found to converge; here divine desire can be seen as the ultimate progenitor of human desire, and the very means of its transformation.”
For more information on this book, click here. Continue reading the excerpt here.
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