Monday 6 August 2007

More theology of kissing

Last year, we discussed the theology of kissing. The discussion has recently been revived – Cynthia offers some classical and jazz variations on the theme, and Sci Fi Catholic offers some kisses from science fiction.

So it looks like we should also do a little more kissing around here. I haven’t written any new ones myself, but here are some of the highlights from readers’ comments on the original post:

Kierkegaard: In a land where everyone kisses, nothing is a kiss.

Marcus Borg: I’d like to kiss you again, for the first time.

The Anselmian Kiss: The kiss than which none greater can be conceived.

Jonathan Edwards: ’Tis nothing but the mere pleasure of God, yea, his mere arbitrary will alone, that alloweth a miserable creature like thee the pleasure of kissing for one moment.

Walter Brueggemann: There is the kiss and the counterkiss, and if one wins, we both lose.

Gerhard Forde: Before kissing, we must first make a couple of moves.

Meister Eckhart: I kiss God and God kisses me. We kiss with the same lips.

Alasdair MacIntyre: Surely, after virtue comes “Which Kiss? Whose Lips?”

Stanley Hauerwas: In the community established upon the principle of nonviolence, the question “whom should I kiss” never arises – since to refuse to kiss is itself an act of violence. We kiss not because Jesus recommended it, but because in Jesus we discover that God is a kisser. So you’d all better damn well pucker up.

11 Comments:

derek said...

Tillich: The Kiss of God does not exist. His kisses are kiss itself, beyond all mortal kissing. Therefore, trying to kiss God make his kissing of you impossible.

Jackson said...

The Lindbeck kiss: "What is kissing except an intimate language shared between two people?"

::aaron g:: said...

John Shelby Spong:
The first Christians never did kiss. The Jewish non-kiss was taken captive by Gentile smooching sensibilities. Today, we are beckoned, not by an actual kiss, but by the liberating mythos of the post-Easter non-kiss.

Christianity must not kiss or it will die!

Anonymous said...

“This amalgam is a ‘thing’ not a kiss, yet becomes a kiss in being given to us, given as a promise or kiss of future kissing, and so given as the turning of all things into kiss, which also means 'kiss', since a kiss is a kiss only in its signifying promise of renewed kiss to come.”

A Radical Orthodoxy kiss - not to be confused with a liberal necrophiliac kiss (that's just disgusting...)

Anonymous said...

The Hauerwas version is absolute genius!

Anonymous said...

Aquinas: "Whoever is kissed is kissed by another. Either that kisser was in turn kissed by a yet earlier kisser or s/he was not. If not, there should be no kissing anywhere. If so, there must be an unkissed Kisser which starts the sequence of kissing, for otherwise the kissing would extend backwards into infinity, which is absurd. This unkissed Kisser we call God."

Anonymous said...

John Piper: God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him in the midst of kissing, not prosperity.

John the Apocalyptic: And he siezed the dragon...and kissed him for 1000 years.

Anonymous said...

The von Balthasar kiss:

it is in our ecstatic movement toward the kiss and our experience of the concrete kiss that we realize that we will never exhaust the depths of the kiss. There is of course a trinitarian analogy that involves perichoretic movement but I'll stop now.

Best wishes,
Cynthia

Anonymous said...

Lacan: I only kiss those whom you want to kiss.

Deleuze and Guattari: We are all kissing-machines.

Zizek: Christians and Marxists should be kissing each other.

(Sorry, I know that these are not theologians -- they are more of a blend of philosophy and psychoanalysis -- but I couldn't resist.)

Kyle said...

LeRon Shults:

"The kiss is the absolute origin, condition, and goal of our longing to know, act, and be in peaceful and joyful communion"

solarblogger said...

Karl Barth: "You cannot kiss God by kissing Man passionately."

Brunner: "You derived your knowledge of kissing from human experience?"

Barth: "Nein!"

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