The scandal of sacramentality
Subtitle: the Eucharist in literary and theological perspectives
By: Brannon Hancock ; forewords by Ann Loades and David Jasper
Contributors: Loades, Ann, author of foreword; Jasper, David, author of foreword
Publisher: Pickwick Publications
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Eugene, Oregon
Language: eng
Number of pages: 203
ISBN-13: 9781620326329
Copyright date: 2014
Subjects: Christianity and the arts; Lord's Supper; Religious aspects; Human body; Christianity and literature
Description: The sacrament par excellence, the Eucharist, has been upheld as the foundational sacrament of Christ's Body called Church, yet it has confounded Christian thinking and practice throughout history. Its symbolism points to the paradox of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of God in Jesus of Nazareth, which St. Paul describes as a stumbling-block (skandalon). Yet the scandal of sacramentality, not only illustrated by but enacted in the Eucharist, has not been sufficiently accounted for in the ecclesiologies and sacramental theologies of the Christian tradition. Despite what appears to be an increasingly post-ecclesial world, sacrament remains a persistent theme in contemporary culture, often in places least expected. Drawing upon the biblical image of "the Word made flesh" this interdisciplinary study examines the scandal of sacramentality along the twofold thematic of the scandal of language (word) and the scandal of the body (flesh). While sacred theology can think through this scandal only at significant risk to its own stability, the fictional discourses of literature and the arts are free to explore this scandal in a manner that simultaneously augments and challenges traditional notions of sacrament and sacramentality, and by extension, what it means to describe the Church as a "eucharistic community"
Notes: Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Glasgow, 2010.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-203).
Table of contents: title: Part 1. The scandal of sacramentality. Skandalon : stumbling over sacrament; title: "The word..." : the problem of language; title: "...made flesh" : the problem of the body; title: Part 2. Literary and theological perspectives. Fracturing : brokenness and sacrament; title: Consuming : cannibalism and sacrament; title: Penetrating : eroticism and sacrament; title: Conclusion: In-conclusion.