Each chapter of The New Asceticism concentrates on a contentious issue
in contemporary theology - the role of women in the churches,
homosexuality and the priesthood, celibacy and the future of Christian
asceticism - in an original thesis about the nature of desire which may
start to heal many contemporary wounds. Professor Coakley is as familiar
with the Bible and the Early Fathers as she is with the writings of
Freud and Jung, and she draws heavily on Gregory of Nyssa's theology of
desire in what she proposes. She points the way through the false modern
alternatives of repression and libertinism, agape and eros, recovering a
way in which desire can be freed from associations with promiscuity and
disorder, and forging a new ascetical vision founded in the disciplines
of prayer and attention.