Theology of Kissing

Culled from various sources on the web, we bring you this smoochariffic complication of what various theologians had to say about kissing:

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.

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

Calvin: Even though you don't deserve me, I chose to kiss you.
OR
Calvin:My kiss I give to you, promptly and sincerely.

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

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

Thomas Aquinas: "There are five ways to prove the existence of a kiss...."
OR
Thomas Aquinas: Kissing is an occasion of lust unless it is the custom of the country.

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

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.

Some Patristic additions:

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!