Product Description

Questions around sexuality have been major ones for the Episcopal and other mainline churches in recent years. Those questions have heated up substantially in the last couple years in most mainline denominations, particularly in the Episcopal Church.

In this short book, based on lectures that Bill Countryman has given in the US, as well as abroad, he explores the intersection of sexuality and spirituality, and their relationship to the biblical texts, to our relationship to God, and to one another.

Christians have long tried to separate eros and agape--eros being the more passionate form of love and agape being the "holy" one. Countryman argues that this is an over-interpretation of the linguistic differences of the original Greek, and that there can be no difference between the two. Christians have been very uncomfortable with the idea of passion, but have been unable to completely dispense with it, given that The Song of Songs is part of our Bible and that God is portrayed there as passionate. In this important book, Countryman explores how God's passion and our passion meet, in communion with one another, and in community.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1161948 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 79 pages

About the Author
L. William Countryman is Sherman E. Johnson Professor in Biblical Studies at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. He is a popular speaker, and the author of many books including Gifted by Otherness, Living on the Border of the Holy and Forgiven and Forgiving, all available from Morehouse Publishing.

Customer Reviews

A worthy reflection on the meanings of LOVE
In this brief volume, L. William Countryman, reflects on the theme of "love" using the "Song of Solomon" and pasages from Thomas Traherne's works. How is God's own love being refected within the world and humanity as "eros?" Countryman attempts to reclaim "eros" as a valid and meaningful part of God's creation in the Church that has for so long engaged to hide "eros" by insisting on submerging it into "agape." Whether one agrees with Countryman's ultimate premise that eros will be transformative for the Church and for Christian expression in the world, this book presents wonderful and thoughtful insights into love.