Theology after Postmodernity is a ground-breaking study that has the capacity to transform the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and Christian theology. Reading the theology of Thomas Aquinas in close engagement with the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, Tina Beattie shows how Thomism exerted a formative influence on Lacan, and she also shows how a Lacanian approach can bring rich new insights to Thomas's theology. A growing number of English-speaking scholars now recognize the extent to which twentieth century French theorists and philosophers were influenced by medieval theology, and there have been several studies of Jacques Lacan's Thomism. However, this is the first study published in English to bring a Lacanian feminist perspective to bear on the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Focusing on the centrality of desire in Thomas's theology and Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, Beattie follows Lacan along an overgrown and often hidden path through the changing configurations of desire, gender, and knowledge from their Aristotelian formation in the medieval universities to their fragmentation in the collapse of modernity's visions and values. Beattie offers a penetrating critique of Thomas's Aristotelianism, but she also excavates the mystical treasures within his theology. This enables her to show how Thomas's God remains an unconscious but potent influence in the shaping of modern western thought, and to ask what transformations might be needed in order to bring about a Thomism for our times. Probing beneath the surface of Thomas's Summa Theologiae and other writings, she brings to light the Other of Thomas's One God - an incarnate, maternal Trinity who emerges when Thomas's Aristotelian ontotheology is suspended and the more neglected aspects of his doctrinal and theological insights are allowed to emerge. Lacan makes possible a renewed Thomism which offers a rich theology of creation, incarnation, and redemption capable of responding to some of the most urgent and far-reaching challenges that questions of gender, nature, and God pose to Christian theological language in its classical and postmodern formations.

This volume deploys theology in a reconstructive approach to contemporary literary criticism, to validate and exemplify theological readings of literary texts as a creative exercise. It engages in a dialogue with interdisciplinary approaches to literature in which theology is alert and responsive to the challenges following postmodernism and postmodern literary criticism. It demonstrates the scope and explanatory power of theological readings across various texts and literary genres. Theology and Literature after Postmodernity explores a reconstructive approach to reading and literary study in the university setting, with contributions from interdisciplinary scholars worldwide.

Postmodern Theology consists in a sharp-edged retrospective and reflection on the forty-year history of the most important movement in contemporary religious thought that is only now passing from the scene. The author, Dr. Carl Raschke, is generally credited with having sparked the movement, even if he did not always happen to be its leading spokesperson. Not only has a comprehensive survey of postmodern theology in all its different phases and complexity not been published prior to the appearance of this book, but it is even more remarkable for someone who both "launched" it and had a central role in shepherding it along to offer what may be termed a "movement memoir." Postmodern Theology surveys and summarizes the major figures and trends that have given currency to such familiar expressions as "deconstruction," "deconstructive theology," "radical theology," "a/theology," "God is dead," and of course, "postmodernism" itself. Dr. Raschke also contextualizes the emergence of these catchy phrases from a frothy soup of new intellectual theories and philosophical innovations, which were international in scope but customized for both academic and popular religious writers--mainly in Britain and America--from the late 1960s onward.

This introductory 2003 guide offers examples of different types of contemporary theology and Christian doctrine in relationship to postmodernity.

Gavin Hyman explores in depth two antithetical schools of postmodern theology--the "radical orthodoxy" of John Milbank and the "nihilist textualism" of Don Cupitt. Hyman critiques Milbank's influential project from a postmodern perspective, and then points out the major difficulties with Cupitt's approach. Finally, he explores the work of Mark C. Taylor and Michael de Certeau to articulate a "third way" that leads beyond the responses of both Cupitt and Milbank.

This book, the first to explore religious education and post-modernity in depth, sets out to provide a much needed examination of the problems and possibilities post-modernity raises for religious education. At once a general introduction to this topic and a distinctive contribution to the debate in its own right, Religion, Education and Post-modernity explores and illuminates the problems, and possibilities opened up for religious education by postmodern thought and culture. The book describes the emergence of post-modernity, considers the impact of post-modernity on religion, addresses its impact on the philosophy of religion and considers the nature of religious education in the post-modern world. Andrew Wright argues that, although post-modernity has much to offer the religious educator, there are also many pitfalls and dangers to be avoided. Steering clear of the extreme of post-modern hyper-realism, he constructs a religious pedagogy sensitive to post-modern concerns for alterity, difference and the voice of the Other, whilst insisting on the importance of reasons in cultivating religious literacy.

For a generation and more, the contribution of Christian theology to interreligious understanding has been a subject of debate. Some think of theological perspectives are of themselves inherently too narrow to support interreligious learning, and argue for an approach that is neutral or, on a more popular level, grounded simply open-minded direct experience. In response, comparative theology argues that theology, as faith seeking understanding, offers a vital perspective and a way of advancing interreligious dialogue, aided rather than hindered by commitments; theological perspectives can both complement and step beyond the study of religions by methods detached and merely neutral. Thus comparative theology has been successful in persuading many that interreligious learning from one faith perspective to another is both possible and worthwhile, and so the work of comparative theology has become more recognized and established globally. With this success there has come to the fore new challenges regarding method: How does one do comparative theological work in a way that is theologically grounded, genuinely open to learning from the other, sophisticated in pursuing comparisons, and fruitful on both the academic and practical levels? How To Do Comparative Theology therefore contributes to the maturation of method in the field of comparative theological studies, learning across religious borders, by bringing together essays drawing on different Christian traditions of learning, Judaism and Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, the wisdom of senior scholars, and also insights from a younger generation of scholars who have studied theology and religion in new ways, and are more attuned to the language of the “spiritual but not religious.” The essays in this volume show great diversity in method, and also—over and again and from many angles—coherence in intent, a commitment to one learning from the other, and a confidence that one’s home tradition benefits from fair and unhampered learning from other and very different spiritual and religious traditions. It therefore shows the diversity and coherence of comparative theology as an emerging discipline today.

>

It is impossible to understand the history of Christian theology without taking into account the relationship between faith and reason. Many works give an overview of faith and reason, or outline key principles, while others put forward a thesis about how one should understand the relationship between faith and reason. In this theological essay, Grant Kaplan revisits the key figures and debates that shape how faith and reason relate. Divided into three parts, Kaplan invites readers into a conversation rather than a drive-by. Readers will encounter the words and arguments of some of Christianity’s greatest thinkers, some well-known (Augustine, Aquinas, Newman) and others nearly forgotten. Readings of these figures bring them to life in an accessible manner. In Faith and Reason through Christian History, the roughly fifty figures treated are given sufficient room to breathe. Rather than simply summarizing their thought, Kaplan traces their arguments through key texts. This book will appeal to a range of audiences: theologians and philosophers, instructors, graduate students, seminarians, lay study groups, and undergraduate theology majors. No book today accomplishes what this book does!

Simultaneously arising out of such diverse contexts as the black community in the United States, grassroots religious communities in Latin America, and feminist circles in North Atlantic countries, theologies of liberation have emerged as a resource and inspiration for people seeking social and political freedom. Over the last three decades, liberation theology has irrevocably altered religious thinking and practice throughout the Americas. Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity and the Americas provides a meaningful and spirited debate on vital interpretive issues in religion, philosophy, and ethics. The renowned group of scholars explore liberation theologies' uses of discourses of emancipation, revolution and utopia in contrast with postmodernism's suspicion of grand narratives, while assessing what the postmodernism/liberation debate means for strategies of social and political transformation. Guided by the experiences of those at the margins of social power, liberation theologies demystify the eurocentric myths of secularization and modernity, and calls for a re-appraisal of religion in contemporary societies. Contributors: Edmund Arens, David Batstone, Maria Clara Bingemer, Enrique Dussel, Gustavo Gutierrez, Jurgen Habermas, Franz Hinkelammert, Dwight Hopkins, Lois Ann Lorentzen, Eduardo Mendieta, Amos Nascimento, Elsa Tamez, Mark McLain Taylor, and Sharon Welch, Robert Allen Warrior