Theology

Negative Theology And Its Problems: Barth And Marion, Lecture 3 (Johannes Zachhuber)

The following is the third lecture in an eight-lecture series.  I have described in last week’s lecture how, during the 19th century, some serious challenges arose to theological thinking about God. I have not included in this account cases of pure materialism or atheism which consist in little more than a denial of traditional claims […]

Philosophy of Religion Theology

The Dangers Of Dealing With Derrida – Revisiting the Caputo-Hägglund Debate On The “Religious” Reading Of Deconstruction, Part 3 (Neal DeRoo)

The following is the third installment of a three-part series.  The first one can be found here, the second here.  Revisiting Another Debate But one could embrace another prevalence for deconstruction, what we have here been calling the ‘extra-logical’ factors of deconstruction, its contextualizations, its context. It is precisely this claim that Caputo puts forward—not that the […]

Philosophy of Religion Theology

The Dangers Of Dealing With Derrida – Revisiting the Caputo-Hägglund Debate On The “Religious” Reading Of Deconstruction, Part 2 (Neal DeRoo)

The following is the second installment of a three-part series.  The first one can be found here. Deconstruction in Context If deconstruction problematizes the idea of a ‘pure’ logical structure, devoid of content or any other extra-logical factors, then we find ourselves forced, by deconstruction’s own logic, to question the extra-logical factors of that logic. […]

Philosophy of Religion Theology

The Dangers Of Dealing With Derrida – Revisiting the Caputo-Hägglund Debate On The “Religious” Reading Of Deconstruction, Part 1 (Neal DeRoo)

The following is the first of a three-part series. On the surface, the debate between John D. Caputo and Martin Hägglund in the Spring 2011 edition of The Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory seems to be a straightforward discussion between mutually opposing views on religion—on the one hand, Caputo, who claims an essentially “religious” reading […]

Critical Theory Theory

Beyond Religious Ideas – The Legacy Of Max Weber In Critical Theory And Critical Religion (Joel Harrison)

This article was initially published in The New Polis, March 23, 2018. In his essay “The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion,”[1] Donald Wiebe heralds a courageous return to the Enlightenment principles which once characterized the “science of religion,” particularly in the nineteenth century. Just a year after he first published the […]

Philosophy of Religion Theology

The Critique Of Theism – Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Lecture 2 (Johannes Zachhuber)

The following is the second lecture in an eight-lecture series.   The first can be found here. I introduced these lectures last week by pointing out the unique situation within which our thinking of God is situated. Intellectual developments over the past two hundred years have meant that discourse about God has increasingly become both more […]

Hermeneutics Theory

Mischief, Idolatry, And The Demonic – Toward A Hermeneutic Of Play, Part II (Kevin Lewis)

The following is the second part in a two-part installment. The first  part can be found here.  III. We proceed first by a reminder of Scripture itself (which makes no claim to be taken “literally”) and, specifically, of the references to the demonic (the Devil, Satan, Beelzebub) scattered through the Synoptics, the Pauline letters, and […]

Hermeneutics Theory

Mischief, Idolatry, And The Demonic – Toward A Hermeneutic Of Play, Part I (Kevin Lewis)

The following is the first part in a two-part installment. Biblical hermeneutics, studied reflection upon interpretation of scriptural passages, has not remained static in method or approach over the centuries. It has manifestly evolved in response to evolving cultural forces generally, as the needs and opportunities of Christian communities have changed and changed again over […]

Lutheran Theology Philosophy of Religion Theology

Lutheran Theology and Postmodern Philosophy, Part II (Olli-Pekka Vaino)

The following is the second part in a two-part installment. The first part can be found here.  On Epistemology Postmodern thinking is generally suspicious against post-Enlightenment epistemological projects, which aim to achieve objective knowledge. Postmoderns typically deny the possibility of having neutral “God’s point of view” or “a view from nowhere” to things. Instead, our […]