Sexuality and the Christian Body

God and the Body addresses the challenges to traditional Christianity by gay and lesbian Christians and their critics within the church. This controversial book will be welcomed for the radical new insights it provides into Christian arguments about the body.

Acknowledgments. Introduction. Part I: Orientation in the Debates: Sexuality and the People of God. 1. The Politics of the People of God. 2. The Identity of the People of God. Contrary to Nature. 3. The Holiness of the People of God: Monogamy and Monasticism. Part II: Retrieving Traditional Accounts: Aquinas and Barth. 4. The Storied Context of the Vice against Nature: Retrieving a Narrative. 5. Nature and Justice when Science and Scripture Conflict: Retrieving a Narrative. 6. Karl Barth on Jews and Gender: A Preliminary Critique. 7. Unintended Abstraction in Barth's Doctrine of Israel: Retrieving a Doctrine of the Spirit. 8. Unintended Abstraction in Barth's Account of Gender: Retrieving Co-Humanity. Part III: The Way of the Body into the Triune God. 9. Creation, Procreation, and the Glory of the Triune God. 10. Eros and Philanthropy. 11. The Shape of the Body and the Shape of Grace. 12. Hostility and Hospitality. 13. The Narrative of Providence and a Charge for a Wedding. Bibliography. Index.