Body and Belief: Why the Body of Jesus Cannot Heal Book

Body and Belief is a work in postmodern Catholic theology that explores the meaning of brokenness: the broken bodies of Jesus and of the saints. The wounds of Jesus have been the focal point for innumerable devotions throughout the history of Catholic piety; there has, however, been very little attempt to read those wounds from a contemporary theological/philosophical perspective. This book is such an attempt, focusing not only on the broken and resurrected body of Jesus, but also on the martyred bodies of the saints, drawing on sources ranging from Saint Augustine and medieval mystic Angela of Foligno to deconstructionists Jacques Derrida and Mark C. Taylor. Its thesis, as fully developed in the final chapter, is that the holes in Jesus' body articulate a longing for God that is a human's deepest knowledge of God, a longing that is not a lack incapable of being filled, but is grace itself. Must reading for anyone interested in post-modern thought and Catholic theology.

Author Biography: Theresa Sanders (PhD, Syracuse University) is on the faculty of the Department of Theology at Georgetown University where she teaches courses in Christian thought. Her research interest is the intersection of postmodernity and Catholicism. She serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory and the Editorial Advisory Board for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Postmodernism.