Sexual Desire and Love: Origins and History of the Christian Ethic of Sexuality and Marriage

In a comprehensive, ground-breaking study of the Christian teaching about sexuality, Eric Fuchs surveys the ‘taboos of Judaeo-Christian morality.’ He looks at the ethics of sexuality as they are presented in the Bible, and by early theologians, medieval scholastics, reformers and counter-reformers, and present-day thinkers. Through it all he is concerned to answer the question: ‘By what mysterious alchemy did the liberating Gospel of Christ who unconditionally accepted wounded humanity become transformed into moral requirements that were so guilt forming?’ Fuch’s exhaustive study leads him to develop his own theological interpretation of sexuality: its liberating aspects in the fulfilment of human life, the completion of personality, end the expression of humanity’s highest ideals.