Flesh Made Word

Medieval Women Mystics, Writing, and the Incarnation

by Emily A. Holmes

Published by: Baylor University Press

Imprint: Baylor University Press

Sales Date: 2013-10-17

Hardcover
ISBN 9781602587533
246 Pages

$54.99

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Digital
ISBN 9781481301091
246 Pages

$49.95

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ISBN 9781481300124
246 Pages

$49.95

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

For most of Christian history, the incarnation designated Christ as God made man. The obvious connection between God and the male body too often excluded women and the female body. In Flesh Made Word, Emily A. Holmes displays how medieval women writers expanded traditional theology through the incarnational practice of writing. Holmes draws inspiration for feminist theology from the writings of these medieval women mystics as well as French feminist philosophers of écriture féminine . The female body is then prioritized in feminist Christology, rather than circumvented. Flesh Made Word is a fresh, inclusive theology of the incarnation.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction, The Problem of Incarnation

1 Attending to Word and Flesh, An Inclusive Incarnation

2 Hadewijch of Brabant and the Mother of Love

3 Angela of Foligno Writing the Body of Christ

4 Writing Annihilation with Marguerite Porete

5 Transcendence Incarnate, Apophatic Bodies and the Apophatic Christ

Bibliography

Index

Emily A. Holmes is Associate Professor, Department of Religion and Philosophy at Christian Brothers University and coauthor of Women, Writing, Theology: Transforming a Tradition of Exclusion. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

It is a rare achievement for a text to embody what the author describes in theory. In Flesh Made Word, Emily Holmes joins medieval mystics Hadewijch, Angela, and Porete in writing as a practice of incarnation. Her engagement of feminist theorists, feminist and womanist theologians, and queer scholars is thorough, creative, and transformative. Each theoretically rich turn is grounded in the social impact of theologies of incarnation for her medieval subjects as well as contemporary ethical and spiritual practices.
~Kate Ott, Assistant Professor of Christian Social Ethics, Drew Theological School

In clear and graceful prose, Holmes guides contemporary readers through the various ways that certain medieval women we've come to call 'mystics' gave textual flesh to divine love. She offers us resources for writing new incarnations of the theological for our own time and place. A rich mix of theory and practice, language and what exceeds it, the historical and the contemporary.
~Ellen T. Armour, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair of Feminist Theology, Vanderbilt Divinity School

Flesh Made Word brings medieval mystical writers and postmodern theorists into dialogue in order to demonstrate their relevance for a contemporary feminist theology and a theology of the incarnation. This is an engaging and elegant work of history and theology.
~M. Shawn Copeland, Professor of Systematic Theology, Boston College