The Liturgical Body

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Eugene F. Rogers, Professor (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: I had feared that this might be a book to alienate all possible readers: too conservative in theology to suit social liberals, and too liberal in conclusions to suit social conservatives. I am therefore grateful for constructive engagement from both sides. Cahill is exactly right when she wonders if “perhaps Rogers’ aim is not so much to produce a systematic moral analysis, as to reshape the mental universe, to recolor the background screen, against which Christians consider the reality of Christian gay men and lesbians in committed relationships”. Indeed, I seek to recover a symbolic universe, a nuptial hermeneutics, to address the reality of all Christians in committed relationships, including same- and opposite-sex marriages, celibates in community, and the committed relationship of baptism. I am gratified when Wannenwetsch writes that “too often, ethical guidelines are directly aimed at so as to narrow down the rich doctrinal horizon to a window”, and that “Rogers’ exercise in ‘irregular dogmatics’ (a notion borrowed from Karl Barth) may be closer to the core of doctrinal theology”. Between the two reviewers I imagine that we have an ethicist and a theologian, a Catholic and a Protestant, a liberal and a conservative. Cahill wants more ethics and Wannenwetsch less moralism. It is an index of the re-thinking that I hope to provoke if both are impatient that I don’t go further. Indeed more will be needed, if an account of sexuality theologically to the right and socially to the left is to flourish. I hope that over time others more skilled in ethics and liturgics can help provide it. For this book is less about the ethical question what we are to do, than the theological question what God may be doing with us.

Additional Information

Publication
Modern Theology, 16(3), 365–376
Language: English
Date: 2000
Keywords
Theology, Christianity, Marriage, Sexuality

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