Sarah Coakley is one of the most exciting and creative figures in contemporary theology. Her far-reaching systematic vision of the Christian faith has integrated insights from systematic theology, gender studies, sociology, patristics, analytic philosophy of religion, and evolutionary biology. This integrated vision coheres around the mystical and contemplative core of Christian experience. In her challenging revisionary work on themes such as gender, sacrifice, desire, and the doctrine of the Trinity, Coakley reconnects theological reflection with its contemplative roots and pushes toward a new approach to systematic theological reflection. In Sarah Coakley and the Future of Systematic Theology, scholars explore Coakley’s multifaceted contribution to contemporary theology and consider the ways through which her work sets a new standard for systematic reflection on the Christian faith. This volume brings together, around Coakley’s work, a gathering of established and emerging scholars and asks critical questions of Coakley’s work as we await three further volumes of her systematic theology.

Sarah Coakley is one of the most exciting and creative figures in contemporary theology. Her far-reaching systematic vision of the Christian faith has integrated insights from systematic theology, gender studies, sociology, patristics, analytic philosophy of religion, and evolutionary biology. This integrated vision coheres around the mystical and contemplative core of Christian experience. In her challenging revisionary work on themes such as gender, sacrifice, desire, and the doctrine of the Trinity, Coakley reconnects theological reflection with its contemplative roots and pushes toward a new approach to systematic theological reflection. In Sarah Coakley and the Future of Systematic Theology, scholars explore Coakley's multifaceted contribution to contemporary theology and consider the ways through which her work sets a new standard for systematic reflection on the Christian faith. This volume brings together, around Coakley's work, a gathering of established and emerging scholars and asks critical questions of Coakley's work as we await three further volumes of her systematic theology.

God, Sexuality and the Self is a new venture in systematic theology. Sarah Coakley invites the reader to re-conceive the relation of sexual desire and the desire for God and - through the lens of prayer practice - to chart the intrinsic connection of this relation to a theology of the Trinity. The goal is to integrate the demanding ascetical undertaking of prayer with the recovery of lost and neglected materials from the tradition and thus to reanimate doctrinal reflection both imaginatively and spiritually. What emerges is a vision of human longing for the triune God which is both edgy and compelling: Coakley's théologie totale questions standard shibboleths on 'sexuality' and 'gender' and thereby suggests a way beyond current destructive impasses in the churches. The book is clearly and accessibly written and will be of great interest to all scholars and students of theology.

Sarah Coakley is one of the most exciting and creative figures in contemporary theology. Her far-reaching systematic vision of the Christian faith has integrated insights from systematic theology, gender studies, sociology, patristics, analytic philosophy of religion, and evolutionary biology. This integrated vision coheres around the mystical and contemplative core of Christian experience. In her challenging revisionary work on themes such as gender, sacrifice, desire, and the doctrine of the Trinity, Coakley reconnects theological reflection with its contemplative roots and pushes toward a new approach to systematic theological reflection. In Sarah Coakley and the Future of Systematic Theology, scholars explore Coakley's multifaceted contribution to contemporary theology and consider the ways through which her work sets a new standard for systematic reflection on the Christian faith. This volume brings together, around Coakley's work, a gathering of established and emerging scholars and asks critical questions of Coakley's work as we await three further volumes of her systematic theology.

Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus provides the first full study of Thomas Gallus (d. 1246) in English and represents a significant advance in his distinctive theology. Boyd Taylor Coolman argues that Gallus distinguishes, but never separates and intimately relates two "international modalities" in human consciousness: the intellective and the affective, both of which are forms of cognition. Coolman shows that Gallus conceives these two cognitive modalities as co-existing in an interdependent manner, and that this reciprocity is given a particular character by Gallus' anthropological appropriation of the Dionysian concept of hierarchy. Because Gallus conceives of the soul as "hierarchized" on the model of the angelic hierarchy, the intellect-affect relationship is fundamentally governed by the dynamism of a Dionysian hierarchy, which has two simultaneous trajectories: ascending and descending. Two crucial features are noteworthy in this regard: in ascending, firstly, the lower is subsumed by the higher; in descending, secondly, the higher communicates with the lower, according to the nature of the lower. When Gallus posits a higher, affective cognitio above an intellective cognitio at the highest point in the ascent, accordingly, this higher affective form both builds upon and sublimates the lower intellective form. At the same time, this affective cognitio descends back down into the soul, both enriching its properly intellective capacity and also renewing the ascending movement in love. For Gallus, then, in the hierarchized soul a dynamic mutuality between intellect and affect emerges, which he construes as a "spiralling" motion, by which the soul unceasingly stretches beyond itself, ecstatically, in knowing and loving God.

This systematic theology begins from the treatise De Deo Uno and develops the dogma of the Trinity as an expression of divine unicity, on which will depend creation, Christology, and ecclesiology. The Invisible God must be seen and known in the visible. In this way, God and God's relation to creation are distinguished—but not separated—from Christology, the doctrine of perfections from redemption. In the end, the transcendent beauty who is God can be known only in worship and praise.

We live in an era of unprecedented growth in knowledge. Never before has there been so great an availability of and access to information in both print and online. Yet as opportunities to educate ourselves have greatly increased, our time for reading has significantly diminished. And when we do read, we rarely have the patience to read in the slow, sustained fashion that great books require if we are to be truly transformed by them. In Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics, renowned Harvard Divinity School professor Francis Clooney argues that our increasing inability to read in a concerted manner is particularly notable in the realm of religion, where the proliferation of information detracts from the learning of practices that require slow and patient reading. Although awareness of the world’s many religions is at an all-time high, deep knowledge of the various traditions has suffered. Clooney challenges this trend by considering six classic Hindu and Christian texts dealing with ritual and law, catechesis and doctrine, and devotion and religious participation, showing how, in distinctive ways, such texts instruct, teach truth, and draw willing readers to participate in the realities they are learning. Through readings of these seminal scriptural and theological texts, he reveals the rewards of a more spiritually transformative mode of reading—and how individuals and communities can achieve it.