Postmodern Theology Research Articles

Postmodern Theology and Modern Liberalism: Reconsidering the Relationship

In recent forms of postmodern theology, especially in what has become known as “radical orthodoxy,” there has been a concerted effort deliberately to reject liberalism, both in its modern secular and in its theological manifestations. In the historical and theological genealogies they construct, liberalism is portrayed as the enemy of true theology, the Trojan horse through which theology secures its own demise. This essay questions these assumptions and argues that postmodern theology and modern liberalism are not as antithetical as has often been claimed; rather, the relationship between them should be seen as fluid, dynamic, and perhaps dialectical. Furthermore, postmodern theology has something positive to learn from modern liberalism.

The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology. Edited by Graham Ward

The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology. Edited by Graham Ward

Rethinking Missio Dei: a conversation with postmodern and African Theologies

When Missio Dei is examined from the perspective of Postmodern and African Theologies, new possibilities and metaphors emerge that can contribute to our understanding of God and Church’s mission in the world. Missio Dei, it is shown, should also deal with panentheism, relationships, sacrifice and justice.

Why gift? Gift, gender and trinitarian relations in Milbank and Tanner

AbstractThe category of ‘gift’ has become one of the central constellating themes for discussion in recent post-modern theology. This paper (originally given as an address at the AAR meeting in Atlanta, November 2003) first sets out to explain how and why the theme has come to exercise such fascination since the original appearance of Marcel Mauss's anthropological monograph, The Gift, in 1924. It goes on to provide a critical comparison of the recent treatments of ‘gift’ in the systematic work of John Milbank and Kathryn Tanner. Arguing that questions of economic justice, inner-trinitarian relations and human gender hang together in Milbank's and Tanner's rather different approaches to ‘gift’, a critique of both authors is then essayed from this systematic perspective. Whilst Milbank's attempt to ‘ground’ the gender binary in the Trinity causes question-begging claims about gendered ‘difference’ in God, and a texture of seeming assent to economic inequalities, Tanner's obliteration of any sense of reciprocity or exchange within the divine economy veers in the opposite direction, seeking merely the suppression of difference. Returning finally to the New Testament, to the Cappadocian insistence on radical donation to the poor, and to Augustine's insistence that donum applies specifically to the Spirit, it is concluded that the patristic heritage presents a more demanding and subtle account of divine ‘gift’ and human response than is found in either of these contemporary authors, for all their insight and flair.

Should We Dispense with Sola Scriptura? Scripture, Tradition and Postmodern Theology

Abstract: This essay deals with Kevin Vanhoozer's warning that the central attention that sola scriptura had once enjoyed is being paid instead to a sola traditio principle in postmodern theology. It argues that the emphasis on tradition does not necessitate a dispensation with sola scriptura. It points to Martin Luther's and Friedrich Scheliermacher's understanding of the role of Scripture in faith, and to Hans‐George Gadamer's hermeneutic understanding of tradition, to show that the original content of sola scriptura proves its principal value for today's interest in the tradition(s) of performance in the church. Sola scriptura both takes the text and its enactment into consideration and postulates that neither Scripture nor tradition alone work as a criterion for doing theology.

Biblical Exegesis and Postmodern Theology

Biblical Exegesis and Postmodern Theology

As below, so above: A perspective on African Theology

African theology can be understood as a theology from below – or rather, “as below, so above”. This phrase not only reflects the concept of ubuntu and the African partiality towards horizontal relationships, but may help explain African perspectives on shame and guilt, sin and reconciliation, liberation, the ancestors and eschatology. Subsequently, there seems to be some concurrence between African theology and Western postmodern theology. Although these theologies challenge traditional theology, and should in turn be scrutinized, they may offer useful and valid ways of thinking and speaking about God.

The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology. Edited by Gareth Jones; The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Christianity and the Postmodern Turn: Six Views. Edited by Myron B. Penner

The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology. Edited by Gareth Jones; The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Christianity and the Postmodern Turn: Six Views. Edited by Myron B. Penner

The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology. Edited by Graham Ward

The Heythrop JournalVolume 48, Issue 1 p. 160-161 The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology. Edited by Graham Ward Richard S. Briggs, Richard S. Briggs St. John's College, DurhamSearch for more papers by this author Richard S. Briggs, Richard S. Briggs St. John's College, DurhamSearch for more papers by this author First published: 20 December 2006 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2265.2007.00308_35.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume48, Issue1January 2007Pages 160-161 RelatedInformation

Deconstructing Radical Orthodoxy: Postmodern Theology, Rhetoric and Truth edited by Wayne Hankey and Douglas Hedley, Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, Vt, 2005, £50, Pp. xviii + 191 hbk.

Deconstructing Radical Orthodoxy: Postmodern Theology, Rhetoric and Truth edited by Wayne Hankey and Douglas Hedley, Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, Vt, 2005, £50, Pp. xviii + 191 hbk.

Book Review: The Solidarity of Others in a Divided World: A Postmodern Theology after Postmodernism

Book Review: <b>The Solidarity of Others in a Divided World:</b> A Postmodern Theology after Postmodernism

Radical Orthodoxy’s Poiēsis

For Radical Orthodoxy participatory poiesis is the only form of authentic postmodern theology and determines its dependence upon, as well as the character of, its narrative of the history of philosophy. This article endeavors to display how the polemical anti-modernism of the movement results in a disregard for the disciplines of scholarship, so that ideological fables about our cultural history pass for theology. Because of the Radical Orthodox antipathy to philosophy, its assertions cannot be proven rationally either in principle or in fact, and its followers are reduced to accepting its stories on the authority of their tellers. The moral and rational disciplines are replaced with a postmodern incarnational neo-Neoplatonism in which the First Principle and sensual life are immediately united, without the mediation of soul or mind. With this disappearance of theoria, surrender to the genuinely other, or even attentive listening, become impossible.

Stretched Flesh-Space

When philosophers take an interest in nonphilosophy (religion, art, politics), it is presupposed that philosophy does not stand apart from and to side of that which is other to it, that philosophical problems are best approached from points both inside and outside their own formal parameters. Once subjected to an extra-philosophical competence, philosophical judgment is as good as most current scholarship guiding it. The claim in this essay-that rabbinic Judaism provides a platform from which to explore spatial motility, religious iconicity, and non-realist, plastic expression-is itself only a recent scholarly possibility with which to stretch philosophy. Our attention goes in particular to holy space, though not for any religious reason per se. God will make no appearance, nor will any of God's surrogates in recent postmodern theology (event, gift, face of Other). Without recourse to any point of absolute transcendence, holiness will be understood as phenomenal space opened out by special rules negotiating difference between inside/outside, pure/ impure. These rules define a Temple-system, which after destruction of its physical site by Romans in 70 CE retains its status as a pseudo-place in rabbinic memory and imagination. Talmud brings to philosophical phenomenology and to phenomenology of religion an architecture based on bent space and movement, an embodied presence in a world that is no longer present at hand. The cliche regarding Judaism in contemporary theoretical circles (from Adorno through Lyotard and Derrida to Zizek and Badiou) assumes that the is hostile to plastic representation and to all representation tout court. The Judaism upon which this cliche rests is not without Jewish support, just as Kant construed his anti-Judaism on good authority of Spinoza and Mendelssohn. As observed by Kalman Bland in The Artless Jew, notion that Judaism is aniconic was a conceit, embraced warmly by Jewish thinkers imbued with intellectual elan of German Idealism. One finds it expressed by eminent historian Heinrich Graetz in nineteenth century and by Marburg neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen at start of twentieth. The counter-image of Judaic law that I will offer in this essay belongs more to plastic art and to late twentieth century scholar-theorists at work in pre-modern Jewish source material.1 It draws on Leviticus and ritual more than prophecy and revelation. Fixed upon bodies that are at once concrete and imaginai, this analysis runs alongside Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology of perception. My aim is to pull Jewish philosophy and philosophy of religion away from Levinasian Judaism and new apophatic theology, to tug them back into platonic cave, what Baudrillard called the seductions of space.2 The difference between Jewish and Christian iconicity lie in form as well as in content. Christian icons are luminous, self-centered shapes. For Jean-Luc Marion, they comprise a physical presence saturated by an infinite meaning that is surplus to it. Viewed more prosaically, Christian icon is a physical copy of a copy of a copy. Icons of Jesus, Mary, and saints proliferate. There is no one single original image, apart from Son, i.e., image of Father. In contrast, Judaism suggests a model of iconicity without icons. By this I mean organization of being around a specialized, spatial configuration with no visible image, object, or person position at its center. Pre-ceding figure of Jesus Christ, Tabernacle and first and second Temple (first qua physical site, then qua image) constitute this configuration in classical Judaism. Not figure of God, not image of God, not God as an object of worship, it is rather architectural frame, a three-dimensional place of worship, that constitutes icon which first draws eye.3 The Order of Holy Things in Mishna and Talmud provides one such example. …

Discerning the Spirits of Modernity and Postmodernity

I characterize controlling pictures or assumptions and concomitants of first modernity and then postmodernity. In brief, these assumptions are the possibility of absolute transcendence of one’s body, language, and culture versus the inescapability of some immanence in the same, of standing in the world. I trace the historical trajectory of the modern spirit and conclude that the move from modernity to postmodernity has been a long, gradual one that continues today. Modern thought increasingly recognized the historical relativity and conditionedness of everything human, yet held on to at least one version of absolutism. Recognizing that all of even one’s own thinking is always incarnate and conditioned is the decisive point for entering postmodernity. The critical and non-critical aspects of the postmodern spirit are described. I next offer an evaluative overview of modern theology, evaluate two movements in modern theology and philosophy—existentialism and process thought—with important postmodern elements, and commend liberation theologies for exposing absolutistic assumptions of modern theology. Finally, with some trepidation I evaluate three types of self-consciously postmodern theology (which can find possible or actual counterparts in all the disciplines of the humanities). Radical or deconstructive postmodernism hypothesizes total immanence in our representations of reality. It alternates between the relativistic standing everywhere of equally endorsing all interpretations and the standing nowhere of nihilism. In its hidden standard of absolute truth and its refusal to (claim a) stand in the world, radical postmodernism reveals itself to be modern rather than postmodern. Conservative postmodernism or postliberalism emphasizes the importance of enculturation in a tradition. Hypothesizing immanence in incommensurate worldviews, its posture is defensive. Protestant postliberalism, including Radical Orthodoxy, postmodernly claims Christianity as a self-authenticating context of meaning, but then incoherently shifts into the posture of modern or pre-modern absolutism and claims it as the one true religion. Only moderate postmodernism can adequately reflect the postmodern spirit. It charts a course between absolutism and relativism. It gives the critical aspect its due, affirming limited human transcendence. It grants that all persons are rooted in the world, that all are embodied and enculturated in some meaning.

Hans URS von Balthasar (1905–88): The Wave and the Sea

Hans Urs von Balthasar's unique approach to theology took the form of a trilogy of works focused on the beauty, goodness, and truth of God: Theological aesthetics, theo-dramatic, and theo-logic. Rejecting the conventional binaries of both modern liberalism and traditional conservatism, as well as eschewing the radical perspectivalism of postmodern theology, Balthasar developed his own phenomenological view of Christian life, focusing on the inherent attractiveness of God's splendor, initial human response to that beauty, and the truth revealed only in and through that human response. His extensive, creative theology leaves many theological fruits on which contemporary thinkers may continue to feast.

THE RATIO DEI AND THE AMBIGUITIES OF HISTORY

The Radical Orthodoxy movement has revived postmodern theology’s interest in John Duns Scotus. This article reviews Catherine Pickstock’s substantial contribution to this discussion and the several articles that engage Pickstock in this same issue. The article notes two lines of engagement: the first, more analytical line considers the logic of “God-talk,” the ratio Dei, to consider whether Scotus’s doctrine of univocity is adequate to speak of divine transcendence. The second is more historical and asks whether Radical Orthodoxy’s historical genealogy offers a sufficiently generous account of the plurality and ambiguity of the history of the church.

Educating for Commitment: Insights from Postmodernity

Secular pluralism in contemporary culture and current theological divisions within churches have important implications for Christian education. This paper addresses the question of how religious commitments can be made and convictions held outside of polarizing and exclusionary understandings of truth, and without the presence of uncontested doctrines. What habits, practices and dispositions should Christians cultivate in this context? It brings resources from postmodern theology and philosophy into conversation with the Anglican tradition, in order to propose ways that Christian education can foster faith commitment in the midst of pluralism and disagreement. The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.—W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.—Rumi

Book Review: The Solidarity of others in a Divided World: A Postmodern Theology after Postmodernism

Book Review: The Solidarity of others in a Divided World: A Postmodern Theology after Postmodernism

Foucault and Theology

Exploration of the import for theology of the thought of Michel Foucault has been growing steadily in recent years, principally in relation to the Christian tradition. This article traces the evolution of this dialogue with his work, with a view to assessing its current state of development, highlighting the critical issues involved, and suggesting likely lines of investigation going forward. Having surveyed applications of aspects of his work to a variety of theological questions, and the discussion of his work under the rubric of 'postmodern theology', the article focuses upon the more in-depth theological engagement with his thought inaugurated by the work of James Bernauer and Jeremy Carrette. It is proposed that one of the most critical issues in this debate, currently and going forward, concerns assessment of the kind of relation to theology, if any, that can be extrapolated from Foucault's deployment of notions like 'spirituality' and his engagement with various theological themes.

Skrifbeskouing in die lig van postmoderniteit

Perspective on Scripture in light of postmodernityThe aim of the article is to focus on the Reformers’ so-called “Scripture Principle” in light of the paradigm shifts from pre-modern, to modern and to postmodern theology. The “Scripture Principle” relates mainly to two notions: the Bible is God’s word in human speech and Scripture is handed to all believers who are encouraged to interpret it for themselves. In light of the perspectives on Scripture by Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, and Rudolf Bultmann, the article discusses the “Scripture Principle” according to three positions: the Bible as book of the church; the Bible as book of believers; the Bible as book of theologians. The article advocates tolerance for users of the Bible to regard the authority of Scripture in concurrence with anyone of these positions without the hegemony of the one over the other. Yet, an overlap is an indication of postmodern theology.