331 - Body Theology

Body Theology
By James B. Nelson
Louisville, Westminster/John Knox, 1992. 216 pp.

In this collection of eleven essays and two sermons, Nelson discusses, in popular fashion, many of the issues he has addressed more systematically in two previous books: Embodiment (1978) and The Intimate Connection (1988).

The most valuable of these essays provide clear introductions to the treatment of sexuality and gender issues in mainstream Christian thinking. "Seven Sinful Problems and Seven Virtuous Possibilities," for example, argues that two associated hierarchical dualism's (spirit over matter and male over female) continue to distort Christian thinking, despite their denial of the Bible's psychosomatic anthropology.

"Sources for Body Theology: Homosexuality as a Test Case" is an effective summary of what each of John Wesley's four sources of theological truth (Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience) has to say about homosexual acts (condemned by Scripture in certain contexts, as are similar heterosexual acts), homosexual orientation (unknown to Scripture, but recognized by the "reason" of social science), and homophobia (which reason and experience understand to be a expression not of divine or natural law but of prevailing socialization in what it means to be-or not to be-a man).

William H. Becker
Bucknell University
Lewisburg, PA.