The Broken Body

A fascinating collection of essays exploring a fresh contemporary approach to the person and doctrine of Jesus Christ

How should Christians think about the person of Jesus Christ today? In this volume, Sarah Coakley argues that this question has to be 'broken open' in new and unexpected ways: by an awareness of the deep spiritual demands of the christological task and its strikingly 'apophatic' dimensions; by a probing of the paradoxical ways in which Judaism and Christianity are drawn together in Christ, even by those issues which seem to 'break' them most decisively apart; and by an exploration of the mode of Christ's presence in the eucharist, with its intensification, 'breaking' and re-gathering of human desires. In this sequel to her celebrated earlier volume of essays, Powers and Submissions, Coakley returns to its unifying theme of divine power and contemplative submission, and weaves a new web of christological outcomes which remain replete with controversial implications for gender, spirituality and ethics.

The Broken Body will be of interest to those working in the fields of systematic theology, philosophy of religion, early Christian studies, Jewish/Christian relations, and feminist and gender theory.

"Fusing biblical and patristic theology, analytic philosophy, and spiritual tradition, Sarah Coakley has produced a fascinating, inspiring, and compelling account of Christ's identity, and its importance for questions of life." -Professor Mark Wynn, University of Oxford

"Coakley argues that good Christology arises only from intellectual and spiritual postures learnt by encountering Christ openly. This volume subtly and powerfully facilitates such encounter, with God and, in him, with our neighbours, especially the Jewish people." -Professor Judith Wolfe, University of St. Andrews

"Everything we have come to expect from Sarah Coakley is here in this extraordinary collection: wonderful clarity; startling and fruitful comparisons, within and beyond the theological canon; a brisk defiance of feminist conventions that in turn sharpens and deepens feminist analysis; a resistance to cheap theological certainties; and an abiding faithfulness, anchored in Christ, borne aloft by the Spirit. Christology is here shown to embrace abjection and jouissance, to advocate sacrifice that is itself the end of patriarchal violence, and to demand a eucharistic sharing that is incomplete without solidarity to the outcast and the poor, themselves the face of the living Christ. In these essays Coakley exemplifies the semiotic richness of priest and scholar, a breaking open of theological reserves that will transgress, startle, renew, instruct. This is sacrifice, re-made." -Professor Katherine Sonderegger, Virginia Theological Seminary