Studies in Christianity and Literature – serie

Continuing the work began in The Sacred Desert, David Jasper here turns his attention to the body, seeking a profound understanding of what it means to be in the flesh. A deeply autobiographical journey through disparate written texts (in literature, philosophy, theology and religion), art, and cinema, The Sacred Body rigorously and artfully pursues the body of the Christian tradition of ""the Word made flesh""--a body torn and crucified, resurrected, and divinized, embracing both deep suffering and profound joy. Engaging ascetic traditions that began among fourth-century desert monastics, as well as George Herbert, Simone Weil, Meister Eckhart, James Joyce and others, David Jasper once again provides a bold, learned, and original theological exploration.

American literature offers exceptional resources for understanding the complex role religion has played in the life of the culture and in the experience of its people. In recent decades, however, the academic study of that literature has largely treated religion, in the words of a noted scholar, as an ""invisible domain."" In joining the rich conversations that have enlivened American culture for centuries, Invisible Conversations seeks to bring to light the vital role that religion has played in the literature of the United States.

G. Douglas Atkins here offers an original consideration of T. S. Eliot's essay as a form of embodied thinking. A combination of literature and philosophy, the genre of the essay holds within itself a great tension--that between truth and creative prose. And, as Atkins explains, these conflicting forces of truth and creativity exist not only within the literary format itself but also within the writers and their relationships with the genre, making essay writing a wonderfully enriching ""impure art.""Exploring the similarities between Eliot's prose and poetry with the art of essay writing, Atkins discovers remarkably similar patterns of Incarnational thinking that emerge in each. In so doing, he establishes for the first time the essayistic nature of the great poem Four Quartets and provides an eloquent reflection on how the essay in all its impurity functions as Incarnational art, an embodiment of truth.

Seeming Knowledge revisits the question of Shakespeare and religion by focusing on the conjunction of faith and skepticism in his writing. Cox argues that the relationship between faith and skepticism is not an invented conjunction. The recognition of the history of faith and skepticism in the sixteenth century illuminates a tradition that Shakespeare inherited and represented more subtly and effectively than any other writer of his generation.

Thomas Gardner artistically describes Jesus - ""the Word made flesh"" - as a poem penned by God for the world, and John - author of the Fourth Gospel - as the poem's interpreter. John's structural patterns, repetitions, and narrative interventions invite readers to experience for themselves the beauty of the divine poem. John in the Company of Poets deepens this invitation by re-imagining the biblical text through the eyes of such artists as Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Wendell Berry, and T. S. Eliot, offering a literary reading of the Gospel based upon their powerful poetic replies. Poets are our best readers, contends Gardner, and his deft analysis forges a fresh path into the issues and tensions of John's Gospel.