Reading Jay Johnson

I've just finished reading Jay Emerson Johnson's thought-provoking Divine Communion: A Eucharistic Theology of Sexual Intimacy. Like Jay (a longtime friend and colleague) I have long been emphasizing the centrality of God's love in Christian faith; and he kindly cites a couple of my writings. But he has gone much further in framing a comprehensive way of speaking about human sexual intimacy in the larger context of God's passionate love for humanity and the specific context of the sacraments. This strikes me as a very important contribution to the effort to construct a Christian understanding of sexuality that comprises less a set of rules than a spiritual integration of human life. It's a bold step and deserves careful reading.
It also ties in with the series of reflections on finitude that I've begun in this blog. For one thing, finitude is a necessary condition of sexuality. For another, sexuality is one of the transforming consequences of finitude.