The Erotic Word : Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible, Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible

Historically, the Bible has been used to drive a wedge between the spirit and the body. In this provocative book, David Carr argues that it can–and should–do just the opposite. Sexuality and spirituality, Carr contends, are intricately interwoven: when one is improverished, the other is warped. As a result, the journey toward God and the life-long engagement with our own sexual embodiment are inseparable. Humans, the Bible tells us, both male and female, were created in God’s image, and eros–a fundamental longing for connection that finds abstract good in the pleasure we derive from the stimulation of the senses–is a central component of that image. The Bible, particularly the Hebrew Bible, affirms erotic passion, both eros between humans and eros between God and humans. In a sweeping examination of the sexual rules of the Bible, Carr asserts that Biblical “family values” are a far cry from anything promoted as such in contemporary politics. He concludes that passionate love–our preoccupaton therewith and pursuit thereof–is the primary human vocation, that eros is in fact the flavoring of life.

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