Wolfhart Pannenberg

 I am including in this post a review of another book by Coakley. Review of The New Asceticism Sarah Coakley’s  The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God  Bloomsbury Continuum, 2015) is a compact but ambitious theological intervention into some of the most divisive questions in contemporary Christian life: sexuality, gender, priesthood, celibacy, prayer, and the meaning of desire. The book gathers essays around a single constructive proposal: the churches will not move beyond their exhausted polarities until they recover a serious theology of asceticism. Coakley is not calling for a return to repression, moralism, or ecclesiastical control. She refuses to enter the familiar debates over biblical texts, ecclesiastical policies, or competing ethical positions. Rather, she argues that Christian asceticism, rightly understood, is the lifelong training, purification, and intensification of desire in relation to God. The modern church has lost a coherent theol...

  Bibliography Girard, R. (1999, 2001).  I See Satan Falling Like Lightning.  (J. G. and Foreward, Trans.) Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Girard, R. (2013, 1997, 1972).  Violence and the Sacred.  (P. Gregory, Trans.) New York: Bloomsbury. Palaver, W. (2013).  Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory (Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture.  East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University. Pannenberg, W. (1998, 1991).  Systematic Theology.  Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Taylor, C. (2007).  A Secular Age.  Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.     This exploration into the thought of Rene Girard will focus upon his insight into the mimetic cycle. While he discusses his personal conversion to Christ, it has little influence upon evaluating the validity of mimetic theory. I will focus upon the insights his theory yields in biblical and theological studies, especially related to St. Augustine. I expr...