God and Difference The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude Gender, Theology and Spirituality Series

God and Difference interlaces Christian theology with queer and feminist theory for both critical and constructive ends. Linn Marie Tonstad uses queer theory to show certain failures of Christian thinking about God, gender, and sexuality. She employs queer theory to dissect trinitarian discourse and the resonances found in contemporary Christian thought between sexual difference and difference within the trinity. Tonstad critiques a broad swath of prominent Christian theologians who either use queer theory in their work or affirm the validity of same-sex relationships, arguing that their work inadvertently promotes gendered hierarchy. This volume contributes to central debates in Christianity over divine and human personhood, gendered relationality, and the trinity, and provides original accounts of God, sexual difference, and Christian community that are both theologically rich and thoroughly queer.

Prelude.Part 1. 1. Dramas of Desire 2. Suffering Difference: Graham Ward’s Trinitarian Romance 3. Speaking ‘Father’ Rightly: Kenotic Reformation into Sonship in Sarah Coakley Interlude. Part 2. 4. Patterns of Personhood in Three Variations Part 3. 5. A Topography of the Trinitarian Imaginary: ‘Through a Critical Mimesis’ to God 6. The Lord of Glory 7. Apocalyptic Ecclesiology: Temporality, Futurity, and the Reproduction of God’s Body Postlude

Linn Marie Tonstad is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, and affiliate faculty in both Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and LGBT Studies at Yale University.