In complex philosophical ways, theology is, should, and can be a "theopoetics" of multiplicity. The ambivalent term theopoetics is associated with poetry and aesthetic theory; theology and literature; and repressed literary qualities, myths, and metaphorical theologies. On a more profound basis, it questions the establishment of the difference between philosophy and theology and resides in the dangerous realm of relativism. The chapters in this book explore how the term theopoetics contributes to cutting-edge work in theology, philosophy, literature, (...) and sociology. (shrink)

Wording the world and worlding the word -- The kenotic utopianism of language -- God and the fallacy of identity: a theological disintoxication of the west -- The secular, a Christian contribution to the east/west dialogue -- No Christ no Jesus -- Christ beyond Christ -- Language & Co: the conditioning of God, a foray.

This paper looks at the phenomenon of theopoetic art. The word theopoetic dates back to the Patristic authors—referring to the making divine of the human and the making human of the divine—and has been radically revived as part of the recent religious turn in continental phenomenology and hermeneutics. Looking at an example of religious art, Andrei Rublev’s Trinity, the author traces the development of the idea of “God making” from Jewish and Christian literature to contemporary debates on the relationship between (...) the secular and the sacred. (shrink)

For over twenty years, Richard Kearney has insisted that theology must not follow traditional metaphysical itineraries along paths that offer perspectives on God as Being Itself, or as Pure Act, or as causa sui. Instead, it should chart avenues that lead through the poetics of imagination, past the synthesizing dynamics of narrative, and toward the destination of God as a God that privileges potentiality over actuality. In constant dialogue with deconstructive and postmodern theories, Kearney has developed an "onto-eschatological hermeneutics" of (...) the "God Who May Be" that presents a post--metaphysical, perhaps even more biblical, interpretation of God as divine possibility. This paper investigates Kearney's "onto-eschatological" poetics of God as it relates to his imaginative theological method and to the Pauline notion of kenosis as the risk of divine love. It concludes by associating Kearney's theopoetics with Kierkegaard's idea of repetition as a cipher for understanding the kinetics of the God Who May be as an alternative to the traditional metaphysical structures of God as a static "I Am Who I Am." /// Desde há mais de vinte anos que Richard Kearney vem insistindo em que a teologia deveria deixar de seguir os itinerdrios metafísicos tradicionais, ou seja, deveria deixar para trás os caminhos metafísicos que oferecem perspectivas sobre Deus enquanto Ser-mesmo, Acto Puro, ou causa sui. Em vez disso, a teologia deveria antes seguir caminhos orientados por uma poética da imaginação, para além da dinâmica sintetizadora da narrativa e em direcção a uma noção de Deus que privilegia a potencialidade sobre a actualidade. Num diálogo constante com as teorias desconstructoras e pós-modernas, Richard Kearney desenvolveu uma "hermenêutica ôntico-escatológica" do "Deus que pode ser", hermenêutica essa que nos oferece uma interpretação pós-metafísica, talvez mesmo mais bíblica, de Deus como divina possibilidade. O presente artigo investiga a poética "ontico-escatológica" de Deus em Richard Kearney, ou seja, o modo como ela se relaciona quer com o seu imaginativo metodo teológico quer com a noção paulina de kenose enquanto risco do amor divino. O artigo conclui com o estabelecimento de uma relação de proximidade entre a teopoética de Richard Kearney e a ideia kierkegaardiana de repetição enquanto cifra, relação essa que nos permite compreender o movimento próprio do "Deus que Pode Ser" enquanto alternativa às estruturas metafísicas tradicionais e o modo como estas perspectivam Deus a partir do estático "Eu Sou Quern Sou". (shrink)

Though the very task of modeling God implies that the reality of God is to some degree unknowable, there are a variety of positions one may take concerning the degree to which one has epistemic access to God. If our models of God are too influenced by subjectivity, it makes no sense to test them against each other in rational competition. In this essay, I define four possible positions that may underlie the task of God-modeling: mysteriosophy, theopoetics, critical realism, (...) and fallibilism. Of these four, I propose that fallibilism is the most appropriate method for constructing models of God. Fallibilism simultaneously assumes that our models are able to refer to a divine reality, and yet always with a tentative stance, as absolute confirmation or universal consensus concerning them will almost certainly never be obtained. Models of God can engage in rational competition, but a final decision will probably be delayed indefinitely. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

The field of knowledge named Theopoetics, associated with the interfaces between literature and the general scope of the sciences that study religion and the spiritualties, has produced a large number of events and publications in the last three or four decades in Brazil. This paper presents radiography of bibliographic output within Theopoetics, focusing on four aspects: i) gender, age and institutional affiliation of the researchers; ii) their academic background and titling; iii) publications in the area and main investigators; (...) iv) models of reading, most widely-read writers and poets. This research was developed from a list of over 100 researchers whose bibliographic production was close to 600 titles and nearly 80 dissertations and theses in the area. The data point to an exponential growth of interest in religion-literature dialogue in recent years. (shrink)

Postmetaphysics in this book is interpreted as thinking through metaphysics at the closure of metaphysics by thinking the impossible possibility of metaphysics. In this site of the closure of metaphysics and the turn to language, the grammar of faith is discovered as the grammar of language or writing. The logic or grammatology of writing and thus of reality is revealed, not contra to philosophy or metaphysics, but when thinking through metaphysics to its end or closure, and there in that site (...) the grammar of faith is revealed as the grammar of texts and contexts and in such a site "God" is a good name to save and hence the possibility of postmetaphysical God-talk. The book concludes with three oblique offerings with regard to such postmetaphysical God-talk, namely a construction of an image, theopoetics and finally holy folly in response to the limitations and possibilities of postmetaphysical God-talk in the light of the conversation between Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida. (shrink)

The experience of the impossible churns up in our epoch whenever a collective dream turns to trauma: politically, sexually, economically, and with a certain ultimacy, ecologically. Out of an ancient theological lineage, the figure of the cloud comes to convey possibility in the face of the impossible. An old mystical nonknowing of God now hosts a current knowledge of uncertainty, of indeterminate and interdependent outcomes, possibly catastrophic. Yet the connectivity and collectivity of social movements, of the fragile, unlikely webs of (...) an alternative notion of existence, keep materializing--a haunting hope, densely entangled, suggesting a more convivial, relational world. Catherine Keller brings process, feminist, and ecopolitical theologies into transdisciplinary conversation with continental philosophy, the quantum entanglements of a "participatory universe," and the writings of Nicholas of Cusa, Walt Whitman, A. N. Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and Judith Butler, to develop a "theopoetics of nonseparable difference." Global movements, personal embroilments, religious diversity, the inextricable relations of humans and nonhumans--these phenomena, in their unsettling togetherness, are exceeding our capacity to know and manage. By staging a series of encounters between the nonseparable and the nonknowable, Keller shows what can be born from our cloudiest entanglement. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Naturalistic Empiricism as Process TheologyGary Dorrien (bio)The founders of the Chicago School of Theology sought to develop a fully modernist theology, the first one by their standard. They swept aside the a prioris of Kant and Schleiermacher, declaring that nothing is given and no norm from the past holds legitimate authority. Theologian Shailer Mathews, philosopher of religion George Burman Foster, church historian Shirley Jackson Case, and psychologist of religion (...) Edward Scribner Ames were the founders. They agreed with Ernst Troeltsch that Ritschlian historicism is not true historicism and with William James that lingering over the mystery of subjectivity is a loser for theology and philosophy. Theology had to change to deserve the modernist name. Instead of claiming that religious knowledge is a product of religious experience, theologians should say that religious knowledge is a product of disciplined empirical reflection on experience, especially the experience of external relations. Moreover, the Ritschlian approach of employing a Christian framework to get a Christian answer is illegitimate. The only way to make theology truly modern is to make it as scientific as chemistry, or at least, sociology.The Chicago School had a quintessential figure in each of its first three generations. Mathews was the emblematic founder, Henry Nelson Wieman defined the second generation, and Bernard Meland defined the third generation. Each generation had a process orientation that distinctly ventured theological claims. Mathews led the Divinity School as dean from 1908 to 1933, crafting a socio-historical theology of evolutionary process, functional patterns, value theory, and cultural progress. Wieman developed a theological behaviorism that touted its empirical objectivity and opened the door to the organic metaphysical system of Alfred North Whitehead, though Wieman subsequently tried to close the door. One stream of Wieman’s protégés stuck with his approach and another stream tacked back to Whitehead. Meland synthesized the history of the Chicago School, pulled it in Whitehead’s direction, and later regretted that Whitehead, philosopher Charles Hartshorne, and process theology were too scholastic. Process theology, Meland believed, should be more theopoetic, more culturally attuned, and less scholastic—a prescription with an ample future once feminist theology entered this field. [End Page 5]I. Shailer Mathews and the Early Chicago SchoolThe University of Chicago was the product of John D. Rockefeller’s money, Midwest Baptist anxieties about falling behind other denominations, and William Rainey Harper’s vision of a modern Baptist university. Harper, a Hebrew Bible scholar, and a phenomenally enterprising administrator, founded the university in 1890, stocking it with faculty stars he plucked mostly from New England colleges and universities. Mathews was not a star, or thought to be brilliant. Raised in the staid, thoroughly middle-class, evangelical ethos of Portland, Maine, he was educated at Colby College in Maine, befriending sociologist Albion Small, who became Colby’s president in 1888. Small opened a succession of doors for Mathews—seminary at Newton Theological Institution, a faculty position at Colby in public speaking, graduate study in sociology at the University of Berlin, teaching sociology at Colby, and in 1894, two years after Small moved to Chicago to found the nation’s first sociology department, following Small to Chicago. Harper chaired the Old Testament Department, Mathews’s former teacher at Newton, Ernest DeWitt Burton, chaired the New Testament Department, and Mathews was hired to teach New Testament history, never mind that he had no training in it except whatever Burton had taught him. Burton told Mathews not to worry—his Berlin training in sociology should apply just fine to New Testament history. The University of Chicago had a mission to make religion relevant again, and Mathews could help with that.1Harper enlisted him to serve as an extension of himself in Harper’s numerous endeavors. Mathews was really good at representing Harper, speaking for him on the road, hustling back to Chicago for classes, and enjoying his dual role. To ground himself in his acquired field, Mathews wrote a series of articles on “Christian Sociology” that became his first book, The Social Teaching of Jesus (1897). Christian sociology, he explained, was the use of social science to explicate the objective meaning of Christianity, an overdue enterprise. A scientific reading... (shrink)

Whitehead's God, the ‘fellow sufferer who understands’ and the ‘worldly poet’, shares the fate of the world but can only exert an influence on it by means of enticement, the ‘lure of feeling’. In reverse, this thesis is an attempt to understand the fellow sufferer and to fathom the tragedy of the divine poet, by indeed using poetry. God wants the best for all creatures but is unable to achieve his aim because of the stubborn ‘natural order of things’, for (...) all too often ethical or aesthetic values come into conflict, and at most, only one of two equally high ideals can be realised. This is, in brief, Whitehead's conception of tragedy, which obviously leads to the problem of evil and will eventually inspire a ‘theopoetic defensio’. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 25, Issue 1, pp 5 - 35 In this essay, I place Buber’s thought in dialogue with Eckhart. Each understood that the theopoetic propensity to imagine the transcendent in images is no more than a projection of our will to impute form to the formless. The presence of God is made present through imaging the real, but imaging the real implies that the nonrepresentable presence can only be made present through the absence of representation. The goal of (...) the journey is to venture beyond the Godhead in light of which all personalistic depictions of the divine person are rendered idolatrous. Perhaps this is the most important implication of Eckhart’s impact on Buber, an insight that may still have theopolitical implications in a world where too often personifications of the God beyond personification are worshipped at the expense of losing contact with an absolute person that cannot be personified absolutely. (shrink)

In one of his essays on art, Dutch author and essayist Joost Zwagerman reflects on the work of South African artist Marlene Dumas. Zwagerman addresses in particular Dumas' My Mother Before She Became My Mother, painted 3 years after her mother died. In his reflections, Zwagerman proposes an interpretation of Dumas' work. He suggests that Dumas, in her art, does not accept the omnipotence of death. Maybe against better judgement, but Dumas keeps creating images that not only illustrate the desire (...) for meaning but also embody this desire. The image and the desire for meaning merge in Dumas' paintings. The painting itself becomes an autonomous 'desire machine', according to Zwagerman. In this article, a theological reading of Zwagerman's own posthumously published volume of poetry, 'Wakend over God', is presented, with a specific interest in art, death and God. The sacramental hermeneutics of Richard Kearney and the theopoetics of John Caputo are brought into the conversation to elicit the dimensions of faith and religion in Zwagerman's own 'desire machine'. (shrink)

After reviewing the recent publications of Richard Kearney, appearing between 2017 and 2021, including an anthology of his essential writings over his career, and covering topics such as hospitality, God, religion, anatheism, theopoetics, hermeneutics, and touch, there follows a critical engagement with Kearney's work, one that sets out in particular how, despite the very considerable overlap in our work, as fellow travelers in continental philosophy of religion and hermeneutics, our positions differ on what we mean by God and by (...) welcoming the tout autre. (shrink)

Book review: FERRAZ, Salma; MAGALHÃES, Antônio C. M.; BRANDÃO, Eli et alii.. Teologia do Riso: humor e mau humor na Bíblia e no cristianismo. Campina Grande: EDUEPB, 2017. 574p. il. ISBN: 978-85-7879-409-5 ISBN E-BOOK: 978-85-7879-410-1.

Os heterônimos do poeta português Fernando Pessoa constituem uma das mais fantásticas criações da poesia moderna. Através deles, fingindo-se um deles, o poeta apresenta-se múltiplo, como que habitado por várias pessoas, encerrando vários eus, num jogo literário em que entretanto não se identifica com nenhum deles. Sem desconsiderar a complexidade dessa criação literária, o artigo propõe-se a abordar alguns aspectos da obra do “Pessoa ele-mesmo”. Em certo sentido, Pessoa ele-mesmo é também um heterônimo. Poeta fingidor, nada nele é diretamente confessional (...) ou biográfico. Pessoa ele-mesmo apresenta-se como a expressão dramática de uma busca de identidade, aberta numa constelação de personalidades complexas e sofridas. A dor fingida que finge a dor sofrida e outras representações da dor existencial de Pessoa ele-mesmo podem ser lidas como angústia e mística. Para tecer esse percurso, o artigo se reportará basicamente às poesias inéditas de 1919-1935, basicamente os últimos escritos do grande e múltiplo poeta português. Palavras-chave : Fernando Pessoa. Heterônimos. Angústia. Mística. Teopoética.The heteronyms of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa is one of the most fantastic creations of modern poetry. Through them, and pretending to be one of them, the poet presents himself as multiple, as if inhabited by several people, assuming several selves, in a literary game in which the poet does not identify himself with any of them. Without ignoring the complexity of such literary creation, the paper aims to address some aspects of the work of “Fernando Pessoa-himself”. In a sense, “Fernando Pessoa-himself” is also a heteronomous that carries a message that is neither confessional nor a bibliographic one. “Fernando Pessoa-himself” presents himself as a dramatic expression of an identity search within a constellation of some complex and suffered personalities. The “pretended pain” that pretends to be a true suffering as well other representations of the existential pain of “Fernando Pessoa-himself” can be comprehended as anxiety and mystique. To accomplish this purpose, the article will report primarily to the unpublished last poems of the great poet Fernando Pessoa, written between 1919 and 1935. Keywords: Fernando Pessoa. Heteronyms. Anguish. Mystique. Theopoetic - DOI: 10.5752/P.2175-5841.2012v10n25p93. (shrink)