Christianity and Eros : Essays on the Theme of Sexual Love

Denise Harvey, June 1995. Paper Back. New. Philip Sherrard (1922-1995) was a convert to Orthodoxy who, after an academic career at Oxford and Cambridge, retired to Greece and produced a body of work which is slowly making its way into general circulation and forming his reputation as one of the most important Orthodox thinkers of the century, continuing in a tradition of lay theologians for which the Christian East is distinctly known. This collection of essays is a critique of the Christian tradition's approach to sexual love from within the tradition. Sherrard's influences range from Plato's <i>Symposium</i> to the philosophical speculations of Vladimir Solovyev, but his fundamental authority is St. Paul's use of marriage--and specifically sexual love within marriage--as the primary symbol of the love of Christ for the Church. Any sustained reflection on this analogy is astounding; we should not be surprised if Sherrard's theology seems to lead him near the edge of a precipice beyond which lies an abyss of heterodoxy. But Sherrard repeatedly makes a strong case for the heterodoxy of certain legalistic and ascetic strains within historical Christianity regarding sexuality. One need not accept all of Sherrard's arguments to admit that they need to be heard and considered by the Orthodox Christian tradition from which he speaks, and indeed by the Christian community as a whole, in discerning the meaning of the sexual dimension of human being, in the overall struggle to ''seek after the holiness without which no one will see God.''