‘Who is it that touched me?’ Contact Tracing the Divine in the Era of COVID19

23 November 2022

The Sydney College of Divinity Theology Research Network (TRN) exists to promote theological research. It draws together scholars from the diverse theological disciplines (systematics/doctrine, patristic, biblical theology, ethics, liturgy) within the SCD, and provides them with a forum and focus for theological research.

The video is an online presentation of Dr Michael Jensen’s paper, ‘Who is it that touched me?’ Contact Tracing the Divine in the Era of COVID19. The paper is the fourth in the 2020- 2021 seminar series Theologising in the Shadow of a Pandemic, an initiative of the Sydney College of Divinity Theology Research Network.

The contagion of COVID19 has made deadly that for which human beings yearn: touch. We must be satisfied, for now, with only prophylactic contact. A similar ambivalence haunts the notion of touch in Scripture: touch heals, but also contaminates, and even destroys.

Despite the sentimentality of the Sistine Chapel, direct contact between God and Adam is deeply problematic. The hand of God touches/strikes the Egyptians with the plagues. The touch of the angel dislocates Jacob’s hip. Uzzah’s presumptuous touch of the ark of the covenant kills him. The Israelites may not touch the mountain in the desert. Who may know the divine touch, and live? We investigate this question with the assistance of Jacques Derrida and Katherine Sonderegger.

‘Who is it that touched me?’ Contact Tracing the Divine in the Era of COVID19

50 min

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