Lexington Books
Pages: 126
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4985-2156-7 • Hardback • December 2017 • $104.00 • (£80.00)
978-1-4985-2158-1 • Paperback • February 2020 • $43.99 • (£35.00)
978-1-4985-2157-4 • eBook • December 2017 • $41.50 • (£35.00)
Christina Smerick is professor of philosophy at Greenville University.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Bodies of Christ
Chapter 1: Thinking the Incarnation
Chapter 2: Raising Up the Body of Christ
Chapter 3: Eucharist, Prayer, Faith: The Body of Christ-the-Church
Conclusion: Why Christianity?
Bibliography
Smerick (philosophy, Greenville Univ.) examines the deconstruction work of Jean-Luc Nancy—his deconstructions of what is called the bodies of Christ: the incarnated body (i.e., the doctrine of the Incarnation), the resurrected body (i.e., the Resurrection), and the mystical body of the Church (in which she includes Nancy’s discussions of the Eucharist, prayer, and faith). As Smerick writes in the introductory matter, “The trajectory of this book is to orient Nancy’s interpretations of the body of Christ in the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the practices of the Church to the dogmas from which they arise and in which they have their complex articulations.” Smerick attempts to tie Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity to the teaching of the early Church fathers. She writes that "just as Nancy himself uses Christian doctrines in order to trace a deconstruction where Christianity undoes itself, [she uses] Nancy’s account of said doctrines not to work against deconstruction or to work against Nancy, but rather to play out or trace back the origins of these ideas, such that perhaps Christianity can indeed complete the work it begins in its deconstructive tendencies.” Smerick’s book is very specialized and esoteric; its audience will be a select group of readers interested specifically in Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity.
Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.
— Choice Reviews