Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-323).

The contemporary landscape: body worship and body loathing -- Luther: heroic liberator or oppressor? -- Human bodies as a phenomenon: body theology and longing for the past -- A woman reads Origen, Augustine, Bernard, and Luther -- The movement of the senses: towards the everyday -- Commercial transaction or loving embrace? -- Eros as poisoned chalice, medicine, or everyday body?: eros and agape in a new light -- Eros theology challenges traditional Lutheran binary opposites -- Body, sexuality, and institutions: roads to salvation, disciplining, or presence and gift? -- Passion that transforms: patriarchy and paradise, personal and private -- Birth and blossoming: passionate vision for the future and contrast to greed.

"Luther, passion, and sensualism? In an age of body worship as well as body loathing, Elisabeth Gerle explores new paths. Protestant ethics has often been associated with work and duty, excluding sensuality, sexuality, and other pleasures. Gerle embarks on a conversation with Martin Luther in dialogue with contemporary theologians on attitudes toward body, sensuality, desire, sexuality, life, and politics. She draws on Eros theology to challenge traditional Lutheran stereotypes, such as the dichotomies between different forms of love, as well as between spirit and body. Gerle argues that Luther's spiritual breakthrough, where grace and gifts of creation became central, provides new meaning to sex and desire as well as to work, body, and ordinary life. Women are seen in new light--as companions, autonomous ethical agents, part of the priesthood of all. This had revolutionary consequences in medieval Europe, and it represents a challenge to contemporary theologies with a nostalgic appetite for austerity, asceticism, and female submission. Luther's erotic and gender-fluid language is a healthy challenge to oppressive political structures centered on greed, profit, and competition. A revised Scandinavian creation theology and a deep sense of the incarnational mystery are resources for contemporary theology and ethics." --