Intercarnations - by Catherine Keller (Paperback)

About the Book

Affirmations of body, flesh and matter pervade current theology and inevitably echo with the doctrine of the incarnation. Intercarnations redistributes its flesh, sometimes unrecognizably, in the boundlessly entangled ecologies of the world. These essays attend to matters diversely religious and irreligious, sexed and gendered, social, animal, cosmpolitan, and cosmic.

Book Synopsis

Intercarnations is an outstanding collection of provocative, elegantly written essays--many available in print for the first time--by renowned theologian Catherine Keller.

Affirmations of body, flesh, and matter pervade current theology and inevitably echo with the doctrine of the incarnation. Yet, in practice, materialism remains contested ground--between Marxist and capitalist, reductive and postmodern iterations. Current theological explorations of our material ecologies cannot elude the tug or drag of the doctrine of "the incarnation." But what if we were to redistribute, rather than repress, that singular body? Might we free it--along with the bodies in which it is boundlessly entangled--from a troubling history of Christian exceptionalism?

In these immensely significant, highly original essays, theologian Catherine Keller proposes to liberate the notion of the divine made flesh from the exclusivity of orthodox Christian theology's Jesus of Nazareth. Throughout eleven scintillating essays, she attends to bodies diversely religious, irreligious, social, animal, female, queer, cosmopolitan, and cosmic, highlighting the intermittencies and interdependencies of intra-world relations. According to Keller, when God is cast on the waters of a polydoxical indeterminacy, s/he/it returns manifold. For the many for whom theos has become impossible, Intercarnations exercises new theological possibilities through the diffraction of contextually diverse multiplicities.

A groundbreaking work that pulls together a wide range of intersecting topics and methodologies, Intercarnations enriches and challenges current theological thinking. The essays reach back into feminist, process, and postcolonial discourses, and further back into messianic and mystical potentialities. They reach out into Asian as well as inter-Abrahamic comparison and forward toward a political theology of the Earth, queerly entangling climate catastrophe in materializations resistant to every economic, social, and anthropic exceptionalism. According to Keller, Intercarnations offers itself as a transient trope for the mattering of our entangled difference, meaning to stir up practices of a better planetarity. In Intercarnations, with Catherine Keller as their erudite guide, readers gain access to new worlds of theological possibility and perception.

Review Quotes

This is a truly dynamite book. Although it may seem initially descriptive to write that the book is about divine immanence and panentheism, it recasts those pale initiatives in stunning directions and with almost distractingly dazzling prose... The book is a kaleidoscopic and creative presentation of unexpected insights into numerous important theological issues.-- "Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society"

"Keller at her scholarly best. Intercarnations deals with theological bodies be they female, carnal, animal, vegetal, mineral, cosmological. She generates new and exciting outcomes and possibilities, speaking across disciplines with grace and ease."-----Lisa Isherwood, University of Winchester

"Keller's scholarship is vast and detailed. The essays in this volume move seamlessly between the history of Eastern and Western thought, as well as process theology, political theology, ecology, feminism, and recent Continental philosophy. Whatever one makes of her controversial claims, Intercarnations is an important contribution to current debates in Continental philosophy of religion."-----Brian Gregor, California State University, Dominguez Hills

About the Author

Catherine Keller is George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology in the Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion at Drew University. Recent books include Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement; On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process; Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming; and Ecospirit: Theologies and Philosophies of the Earth (Fordham).