Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Part One THE ECONOMY OF RESPONSE 27 1 Christology and Mimesis 29 2 The Schizoid Christ 60 3 The Body of the Church and its Erotic Politics 92 Part Two ENGENDERING CHRIST 111 4 Redemption: Between Reception and Response 113 5 Divinity and Sexual Difference 129 6 The Politics of Christ's Circumcision (and the Mystery of all Flesh) 159 Part Three THE LIVING CHRIST: ECONOMIES OF REDEMPTION 181 7 Allegoria Amoris: A Christian Ethics 183 8 Spiritual Exercises: A Christian Pedagogy 219 9 Suffering and Incarnation: A Christian Politics 248 Index 267

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.

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