Christ Without Adam

Dale B. Martin, Yale University:
In this theoretically and theologically sophisticated book, Dunning argues against the reclamation of the 'universal' attempted in Breton, Badiou, and Zizek, rendered problematic by their erasure of sexual difference in their 'Pauline universal.' Dunning draws on poststructuralist feminist theorists—Judith Butler, Amy Hollywood, Eve Kosofski Sedgwick, and Jacqueline Rose, among others—to argue instead for an unsettled queer and variable sexuality in theological anthropology. Dunning makes a Christian theological argument that Paul's texts, no matter the 'historical Pauline intention,' allow us to imagine open-ended ways of being sexed and gendered, and that such a possibility need not mean falling into uncritical 'identity politics,' so despised especially by Badiou and Zizek. Dunning's proposals are fresh and compelling—and surprisingly generative for constructive theology.

Elizabeth Clark, Duke University:
Dunning pointedly unpacks theorists' misreadings and partial readings of Paul. He constructively suggests how looking to Paul, while paying closer attention to human embodiment and sexual differentiation, might provide a richer Christian anthropology. A smart and timely book.

David Brakke, Ohio State University:
In Christ Without Adam, Benjamin H. Dunning provides the fullest and most acute critique of 'the philosophers' Paul' thus far. In Romans and First Corinthians, Paul places embodied humanity in a theological space defined by Adam and Christ, who are inseparably linked—a space haunted by the female Eve. By showing how Stanislas Breton, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek ignore or play down Paul's Adam in their diverse appropriations of Paul's Christ, Dunning exposes the suppression of sexual difference that their versions of Pauline universalism entail. He compellingly argues that Paul's Adam-Christ typology renders queerly unstable gendered identities that some philosophers and theologians claim to be naturally and eschatologically stable. An outstanding contribution not only to Pauline studies and critical theory but also to contemporary Christian theological anthropology.

Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley:
Dunning convinces even those who 'are not in Christ' that the Christian theological enterprise has something to teach us all, that its questions are questions with which we all can identify, that its answers are more than relevant even for nonbelievers, and that the theological reading is more universal, against all expectations, than the postmodern philosophical ones.

Karmen MacKendrick, LeMoyne College:
Ben Dunning's Christ Without Adam is a nuanced consideration of the typological framework for a human anthropology that can be derived from the letters of Paul. Noting the enthusiasm with which Paul has been taken up by contemporary theologians, critical theorists, and Continental philosophers, Dunning traces the arguments of three of the most important and influential such thinkers—Stanislas Breton, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek—on the relations between Adam and Christ in creating this typology. The thinkers Dunning takes up are notoriously complex and not infrequently obscure. He does an excellent job of making their work as clear and accessible as it can possibly be.

Jennifer Glancy, LeMoyne College:
Christ Without Adam stands alongside scholarly works by a number of notable scholars of religion who engage efforts by contemporary continental philosophers to draw on the writings of the apostle Paul. It is exceptionally well positioned and appropriately in dialogue with relevant secondary literature, with an original—and important—thesis.