Christopher Ben Simpson is Professor of Philosophical Theology at Lincoln Christian University. Simpson is the author of Religion, Metaphysics and Postmodern (2009), The Truth is the Way: Kierkegaard's Theologia Viatorum (2010), Deleuze and Theology (2012), and Merleau-Ponty and Theology (T&T Clark, 2014).

The philosophical contributions of French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, carry great untapped potential for theologians thinking through some of the central affirmations of the Christian faith. This exploration is structured against the background of the fundamental interrelation between three "bodies" in Merleau-Ponty's thought and in Christian theology: the material as such or "nature" (the corporeal), the human body as a living body (the corporal), and the social body (the corporate-including language and tradition). Merleau-Ponty's philosophy offers a finessed and non-reductionistic understanding of the relations between these orders of bodies. Appropriating Merleau-Ponty's thought helps one think through Christian doctrines of creation, theological anthropology, Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology.

Preface
Part One: Merleau-Ponty in Brief
1. Merleau-Ponty, by way of introduction
2. The corporeal and the corporal
3. The human I: body and world
4. The human II: the corporate (others, language, history)
Part Two: Merleau-Ponty and Theology
5. Merleau-Ponty and Theology
6. Theology and the material
7. Theology and the living
8. Theology and the human
Notes
Bibliography
Index