Theology of Kissing

The following is from Ben Myers of faith and theology http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2006/02/theology-of-kissing.html with addtions from the ensuing thread as well as another blog that picked up on the theme http://blog.nelmezzo.net/2006/02/21/the-theology-of-kissing/

For those of you who have some working knowledge of theologians this will crack you up. For those who have no theology background consider it a crash course.

-Bob

Augustine: "You awaken me to delight in your mouth, and my lips are restless until they’re kissing you."

Luther: "If the Word of God tells me to kiss, then I will kiss—and let the pope, the world and the devil be damned!"

Adolf von Harnack: "Jesus’ own simple teaching about kissing was immediately eclipsed by the early Christians’ Hellenistic approach to kissing."

Karl Barth: "'I kiss you.' There are three related problems to consider here. I kiss you. I kiss you. I kiss you."

Hans Urs von Balthasar: "Kissing is not only true and good, but it is beautiful."

Hans Küng: "The Church’s approach to kissing is in urgent need of the most radical and most far-reaching reform."

Wolfhart Pannenberg: "One’s first kiss is a proleptic anticipation of all that is still to come."

N. T. Wright: "Every kiss is a dramatic enactment of our return from exile."

Billy Graham: "Will you walk down the aisle and kiss me tonight? Will you do it tonight? You many never have another chance—you might be dead tomorrow!"

Gerd Lüdemann: "After many years of careful research, I have decided to kiss my faith goodbye."

Walter Brueggemann : "There is the kiss and the counterkiss and if one wins, we both lose."

Thomas Aquinas: "There are five ways to prove the existence of a kiss...."

Marcus Borg: “I'd like to kiss you again, for the first time.”

Calvin(ism): “Even though you don't deserve me, I chose to kiss you.”

Moltmann: “A kiss is a present promise of the future hope. Yeah baby!”

Stanley Hauerwas: "In the community established upon the principle of nonviolence, the question 'whom should I kiss' never arises - since to refuse to kiss is itself an act of violence. We kiss not because Jesus recommended it, but because in Jesus we discover that God is a kisser. So you'd all better damn well pucker up."

Meister Eckhart: “I kiss God and God kisses me. We kiss with the same lips.”

Anselmian Kiss: “The kiss that than which a greater cannot be conceived.”

Jonathan Edwards: "Tis nothing but the mere pleasure of God, yea, his mere arbitrary will alone, that alloweth a miserable creature like thee the pleasure of kissing for one moment."

Ignatius of Antioch: “I can’t wait to kiss those lions!”

Justin Martyr: “Greek kisses and Jewish kisses were preparations for The Kiss.”

Irenaeus: “Those ridiculous Gnostics have invented 30 crazy ways to kiss and not one of them is the True Kiss.”

Tertullian: “There will be no kissing! But I can provide you with a whole new Latin vocabulary on the subject.”

Athanasius: “A kiss is both human and divine.”

Anselm: “Why a kiss is satisfying.”

Aquinas: “Substantially, a kiss is no accident.”

Huss: “Allow us to kiss with both lips!”

Calvin: “I offer you my lips, promptly and sincerely.


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In addition I offer my own:


Cory: "Before we go any farther, I'd like for us to create a nice chart showing the various ways kissing is viewed from the key stages of the kiss."


Ryan: "Of course we're going to kiss people outside this group. What I'm proposing is we as a community have a distinct kiss and our lips are primarily directed towards each other."

Bob: "A good kiss is like a rich chocolate eclair."