I just finished Miles' section titled, "Interlude:The Asexuality of t he Father and the Sexuality of the Son." It was interesting, though not entirely for the theological stuff. The most interesting thing, in my mind, was the evolution of sexuality since Freud. Freud saw sex as, "highly personal, intensely subject-centered" "intenssely private." whereas "in our own era, sexual matters are decreasingly private, increasingly impersonal, and decreasingly consequential." "Everyone's sex life is just part of a large, collective, impersonal, well-understood, but ultimately meanginless process."
As I said in my response to Melancthon Miles talks first about God as the repression of sexual feelings in comparison to other dieties, but later on when he talks about Song of Songs, Ezekiel 16:25-41, 23, and so on he says God is kind of more sensual than the Greek gods. I found that a little weird, perhaps I'm misreading it slightly.
He also talks about Genesis 6:1-4, sons of God and such. He uses them to talk about the "sensuous immortals." He also lumps Adam into that as well, as he knows about his nudity (a sensous thing). Miles' point about the "sensuous immortals" is that whenever an immortal tries to have sex God snuffs them out. Miles contends the reason for this is simple, "everything sexual dies," and "everything that does not die is not sexual."
Well, I've messed around enough online for the day, I'm going to get to work, I have a sermon to write, and two 15 page papers to write as well.
Peace,
Chris
1 comment:
Miles doesn't seem to be overly concerned about consistency. His overall position, that he is approaching the New Testament as a work of literature, is somewhat contrary to his actual method in as much as he doesn't interpret the life of Jesus the way the epistles themselves do. Now I suppose in a stretch you could take an "unreliable narrator" approach to Paul's letters, but overall, I think he would have been better off just calling his work an interpretation of the Gospel of John. He brings in other works very selectively.
Overall, and this is where the sexuality discussion relates to this comment, I feel like his editor let him be too indulgent. But he does produce a lot of food for thought in the process.
Post a Comment