The Wedding Feast of the Lamb: Eros, the Body, and the Eucharist

by Emmanuel Falque, George Hughes (Translator)

Overview

Emmanuel Falque’s The Wedding Feast of the Lamb represents a turning point in his thought. Here, Falque links philosophy and theology in an original fashion that allows us to see the full effect of theology’s “backlash” against philosophy.

By attending closely to the incarnation and the eucharist, Falque develops a new concept of the body and of love: By avoiding the common mistake of “angelism”—consciousness without body—Falque considers the depths to which our humanity reflects animality, or body without consciousness. He shows the continued relevance of the question “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52), especially to philosophy.

We need to question the meaning of “this is my body” in “a way that responds to the needs of our time” (Vatican II). Because of the ways that “Hoc est corpus meum” has shaped our culture and our modernity, this is a problem both for religious belief and for culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823270439
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2016
Series:	Perspectives in Continental Philosophy
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Emmanuel Falque is Honorary Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Paris. His most recent book in English is The Wedding Feast of the Lamb: Eros, the Body, and the Eucharist.

George Hughes has served as Professor in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Tokyo.

Table of Contents

Translator's Note
Opening
Preface: The Ghent Altarpiece or The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb

Introduction: The Swerve of the Flesh

Part I: Descent into the Abyss
1. Philosophy to its Limit
1. The Residue of the Body, - 2. Chaos and Tohu-Bohu, - 3. The Limit of the Phenomenon, - 4. Bodying Life,
2. The Staging of the Last Supper
5. The Figure of the Lamb, - 6. From the Mystic Lamb to the Flayed Ox, - 7. Towards Another Metamorphosis, 000 - 8. A Matter of Culture
3. Eros Eucharisticised
9. The Body Eucharisticised and the Body Eroticised, - 10. Charitable God, - 11. From Birth to Abiding, - 12. The Reason for Eating

Part II: The Sojourn of Humankind
4. The Animal That Therefore I Am
13 The Other Side of the Angel, - 14. The Animal in Common, - 15. From the Turn to the Forgetting, - 16. The Metaphysical Animal
5. Return to the Organic
17. What the Body Can Do, - 18. Manifesto of the Flesh, - 19. In Flesh and Bones, - 20. The Work of Art in Prose
6. Embrace and Differentiation
21. The Difference at the Origin, - 22. Love of the Limit, - 23. Desire and Differentiation, - 24. The Gaps of the Flesh

Part III: God Incorporate
7. The Passover of Animality
25. Return to the Scandal, - 26. Getting Round the Scandal, - 27. The Dispute Over Meat, - 28. Hominization and Filiation
8. "This is My Body"
29. Transubstantiation, - 30. Incorporation,- 31. Consecration, - 32. Adoration
9. Plunging Bodily
33. The Assumption of the Flesh [the "encharnement"], - 34. The Viaticum, - 35. The Rapture of the Wedding Feast, - 36. Abiding [the "manence"]

Conclusion: The Flesh in Common
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Animality, embodiedness, and eros: such, for Emmanuel Falque, are the grounds for our hope as we kneel before the altar and await the words of consecration in the Eucharist and behold not only what nourishes us here but also an intimacy promised to us hereafter. Here, as a complement to theologies of the Eucharist, is a phenomenology of the sacred liturgy: perhaps the most capacious account of our desire for Christ in the Sacrament offered to us by a contemporary."—Kevin Hart, The University of Virginia

From the Publisher

...a generative text for advanced study of worship and a deeper engagement of phenomenological approaches to sacramental theology.

Homiletic: The Journal of the Academy of Homiletics

Animality, embodiedness, and eros: such, for Emmanuel Falque, are the grounds for our hope as we kneel before the altar and await the words of consecration in the Eucharist and behold not only what nourishes us here but also an intimacy promised to us hereafter. Here, as a complement to theologies of the Eucharist, is a phenomenology of the sacred liturgy: perhaps the most capacious account of our desire for Christ in the Sacrament offered to us by a contemporary.

The University of Virginia - Kevin Hart