| Description |
xxx, 306 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Series |
Challenges in contemporary theology |
|
Challenges in contemporary theology.
|
| Contents |
Pt. I. Introduction -- 1. Desiring Bodies -- Pt. II. Cavities -- 2. Seeing in the Dark -- 3. Visionary Screens -- Pt. III. Copulations -- 4. Alien Sex -- 5. God's Sex -- 6. Sex Slaves -- 7. Want of Family -- Pt. IV. Consolations -- 8. The Man Who Fell to Earth -- 9. The Garden |
| Summary |
"Gerard Loughlin is one of the leading theologians working at the interface between religion and contemporary culture. In this work he uses cinema and the films it shows to think about the church and the visions of desire it displays." "In the figure of the alien, Loughlin finds a metaphor for that which is both most feared and desired: the body and its cravings. Secular culture follows St. Augustine in thinking sex an alien force within the body. But the ancient church also found in sex the presence of a yet stranger desire that secularity forgets: the divine eros that is always other to us even as it draws us into its embrace. In God we find that which is both infinitely alien and intimate to ourselves." |
|
"Alien Sex explores the Christian tradition of 'sacred eroticism' - from Gregory of Nyssa to Hans Urs von Balthasar. Through a close reading of such films as The Devils, Breaking the Waves and Derek Jarman's The Garden, Loughlin shoes how Christianity calls to us to view sexuality from the perspective of heaven, not in order to escape the body but to encounter it more intensively. Through desire of the body we regain paradise."--BOOK JACKET |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Human body -- Religious aspects -- Christianity.
|
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Sex -- Religious aspects -- Christianity.
|
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Motion pictures -- Religious aspects -- Christianity.
|
| LC no. |
2003015211 |
| ISBN |
0631211799 |
|
0631211802 paperback |
|
