Patricia Cox Miller

The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (review)

rises is what fell.” Origen, as Riemer Roukema shows in a rather continuous commentary on passages from 1 Cor 15, has a nuanced view. Since Christ’s resurrection took place with the flesh he had, ours has to resemble his. In an attempt to explain the meaning of “spiritual body,” Origen employs the term e‰dow in its Platonic/Aristotelian sense of “form” as opposed to matter. Thus, the risen body will be spiritual since it has the same “form” as the earthly body without being material. But Origen stops short of saying that the final condition of spiritual bodies will be incorporeal. Gilles Pelland’s essay on Hilary reveals an informed and sensitive theologian who stays close to the biblical text. In Phil 2.6–11 Christ passes from forma servi to forma Dei, but he does not cease to be flesh. What happens to Christ will happen to us, Hilary insists. This famous text he links with Phil 3.21, where it is said that our lowly bodies will be conformed to the body of Christ’s glory. It is a transformation by conformation, as Pelland explains. Marie-AnneVannier’s treatment of St. Augustine is the closest thing to a systematic study in the volume although it is too short to be called such. She argues that the resurrection has a decisive place in Augustine’s thought from his earliest writings to his last, and the references she cites would tend to support her claim. It is to be hoped that this sketch will lead to a more complete study. La Resurrection is a collection of competent and interesting studies about a central teaching of the Christian faith as interpreted by great thinkers in the Church’s early centuries. It casts a wide net, but succeeds in grappling with problems that remain a concern both for scholars and others as well. George C. Berthold, Manchester, New Hampshire