Christ and Culture

This work by Graham Ward, one of the most visionary theologians of his generation, contains nine interrelated studies of representations of Christ. Drawn from sources as diverse as the New Testament and twentieth–century continental philosophy, Ward develops his own original incarnational theology. From his exploration of contemporary categories such as the body, gender, desire, politics and the sublime, a Christology emerges that is both rooted in Scriptural exegesis and concerned with today’s cultural issues; and a vision appears of the possibilities for living orientated towards the Good, the True, the Beautiful and the Just.

Acknowlegements. Introduction. Part I The Economy of Response . 1. Christology and Mimesis. 2. The Schzoid Christ. 3. The Body of the Church and its Erotic Politics. Part II Engendering Christ . 4. Redemption: Between Reception and Response. 5. Divinity and Sexual Difference. 6. The Politics of Christ’s Circumcision. Part III The Living Christ: Economies of Redemption . 7. Allegoria Amoris : A Christian Ethics. 8. Spiritual Exercises: A Christian Pedagogy. 9. Suffering and Incarnation: A Christian Politics. Index

Graham Ward is Professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics at the University of Manchester. His previous books include Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology (1995), Theology and Contemporary Critical Theory (1996), The Postmodern God (Blackwell, 1997), Radical Orthodoxy (1998), The Certeau Reader (Blackwell, 1999), Cities of God (2000), The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology (Blackwell, 2001), True Religion (Blackwell, 2002) and Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (2004).

In this book Graham Ward lifts debates about Christ and culture to an unprecedented level of sophistication and at the same time decisively moves them away from a theologically liberal ambience towards one that is genuinely orthodox and Catholic, but in a new, critical and unavoidably controversial mode. He most significantly advances our ability to tackle the question of what should be the Christian stance in the face of advanced modernity. John Milbank, University of Nottingham Graham Ward has always written insightful and arresting theology, but in this book he exposits scripture, retrieves tradition and interrogates culture with a yet more brilliant and surer touch than ever before. His concern is with the cultural mediation of the Mediator, Jesus Christ, who, in the endless displacements of his body, is not so much an identity to be known as an operation, a movement, in which to participate. This book is about the ‘first born’ of creation, the one by, for and in whom we live, the ‘culture’ by which we are given to be. Ward’s transcorporeal Christology challenges our secular certainties and finds for us the promise of the transcendent in the textual—and indeed sexual—negotiations of our always encultured bodies. This is wonderfully mesmeric, bravura theology. Gerard Loughlin, University of Durham "New book attempts to break out of the Christian insularity to produce a genuinely public theology of significant interest to postmodern philosophers and social theorists." Modern Theology