Violence in Bloomsbury: A Theological Challenge

Abstract

Abstract: This article argues for a new, incarnational conception of theology in its relation to the world. The terrorist attacks in London on 7 July 2005 are subjected to hermeneutical analysis as cultural and political signs, and are seen to reflect an extreme version of religious and social incommensurability. They present a theological challenge, the response to which is the development of a positive theological account of world. This comes into view in London, the ‘City of the Incommensurable’, in a special way, since it is nevertheless a domain of negotiated time and space and an environment held by many in common. This environment of pluralism and proximity is taken to be both iconic of globalization and a particularly dynamic locus of its many instantiations. The intersection of global and local, and the kinds of encounters it supports, argue for a new kind of theology which, with all its proper resources in scripture, doctrine and tradition, can recognize the world as sphere of common human interests and practices, and can allow itself to become, in accordance with its own incarnational ground, an agent of transformation within it.