{"title":"Hope in a Secular Age: Deconstruction, Negative Theology, and the Future of Faith. By David Newheiser","authors":"M. Kennel","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAB008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAB008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91047692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the relationship of truth and fiction through three case studies of imagined translation used to construct worlds. The first is The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, who presents the work as a translation of an ancient text. The second and third are both theological metaphors: imagining teaching as translation, and offering translation as a model for inter-religious dialogue. Comparing these cases extends the theory of world-building—most commonly associated with fantasy and science fiction—into a tool for reflecting on institutions and their structures. The case studies offer insights on negotiating relationships across difference, and on the fabrication of difference itself.
{"title":"Make-Belief Translation: Fictive Truths and World-Building from The Lord of the Rings to Theological Institutions","authors":"Mark A. Godin","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA037","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the relationship of truth and fiction through three case studies of imagined translation used to construct worlds. The first is The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, who presents the work as a translation of an ancient text. The second and third are both theological metaphors: imagining teaching as translation, and offering translation as a model for inter-religious dialogue. Comparing these cases extends the theory of world-building—most commonly associated with fantasy and science fiction—into a tool for reflecting on institutions and their structures. The case studies offer insights on negotiating relationships across difference, and on the fabrication of difference itself.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"38 1","pages":"55-78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75697689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Moses Mendelssohn’s work on imperfection might cause us to rethink the concepts of truth which follow from the Kantian tradition; he offers an alternative, if repressed, way of thinking about truth—one oriented by imperfection, rather than the structure of appearance. Understanding Mendelssohn as a philosopher of imperfection should affect how we read the word ‘truth’ in Modern Jewish philosophy: if imperfection is a fundamental ingredient of human life, then it is not something we must do away with, or annihilate, in order to find truth; it is not an obstacle. Rather—if we, like Mendelssohn, assume that we are incomplete and compromised—any relationship to truth must not seek to overcome imperfection and compromise, but proceed through them.
{"title":"Judaism and Temporary Community: Moses Mendelssohn on imperfection and truth","authors":"Dustin Atlas","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA028","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Moses Mendelssohn’s work on imperfection might cause us to rethink the concepts of truth which follow from the Kantian tradition; he offers an alternative, if repressed, way of thinking about truth—one oriented by imperfection, rather than the structure of appearance. Understanding Mendelssohn as a philosopher of imperfection should affect how we read the word ‘truth’ in Modern Jewish philosophy: if imperfection is a fundamental ingredient of human life, then it is not something we must do away with, or annihilate, in order to find truth; it is not an obstacle. Rather—if we, like Mendelssohn, assume that we are incomplete and compromised—any relationship to truth must not seek to overcome imperfection and compromise, but proceed through them.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"35 1","pages":"22-39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79894263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article takes up some questions, and problems, of truth, relating both to the place of theology, the study of religion, and the humanities in the academy, and to the lives within which scholarship happens. Looking at the university, the challenge of religious language, the limitations of the confessional, and the shattering effect of lost lives, the article places loss, desire, and ongoingness beside each other to stage the inadequacy of its own tools to a proffered vision of truth as temporally indexed adequacy: what matters to someone at some time. In conversation with Friedrich Nietzsche, Stanley Cavell, Sara Ahmed, and Deborah Nelson, the article performs the failures and intensities it hopes to surface.
{"title":"The Place, and Problems, of Truth","authors":"L. Tonstad","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA036","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article takes up some questions, and problems, of truth, relating both to the place of theology, the study of religion, and the humanities in the academy, and to the lives within which scholarship happens. Looking at the university, the challenge of religious language, the limitations of the confessional, and the shattering effect of lost lives, the article places loss, desire, and ongoingness beside each other to stage the inadequacy of its own tools to a proffered vision of truth as temporally indexed adequacy: what matters to someone at some time. In conversation with Friedrich Nietzsche, Stanley Cavell, Sara Ahmed, and Deborah Nelson, the article performs the failures and intensities it hopes to surface.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"18 1","pages":"4-21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82669230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: The Place of Truth","authors":"Mattias Martinson","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAB005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAB005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"11 2 1","pages":"1-3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83389746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Creation and Beauty in Tolkien’s Catholic Vision: A Study in the Influence of Neoplatonism in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Philosophy of Life as “Being and Gift”. By Michael John Halsall","authors":"Daniel Fishley","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAB003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAB003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"1 1","pages":"106-109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73085959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article introduces the conceptual couple first theology and second theology as an answer to J. Kameron Carter’s call for a theopolitical approach beyond the proper practice versus malpractice dualism in Western political theology. In order to find sources to further renegotiate the relationship between the material, the spiritual and the political, the article turns East to Russian avant-garde artists and thinkers Liubov Popova (1889–1924) and Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953), discussed in relation to Walter Benjamin (1892–1940). The conceptual couple according to which first theology is understood as theology is stuck in a representational logic where proper practice can be easily distinguished from malpractice. Second theology, on the other hand, is a performative approach to theology beyond the representational logic: theology that does and constructs rather than is and represents. Thus, second theology is theology that is political, even activist, without pertaining to truth claims or ideals regarding proper or improper theological practice.
{"title":"Toward A Second Theology: Avant-Garde Art and Theopolitics","authors":"Petra Carlsson Redell","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA035","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article introduces the conceptual couple first theology and second theology as an answer to J. Kameron Carter’s call for a theopolitical approach beyond the proper practice versus malpractice dualism in Western political theology. In order to find sources to further renegotiate the relationship between the material, the spiritual and the political, the article turns East to Russian avant-garde artists and thinkers Liubov Popova (1889–1924) and Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953), discussed in relation to Walter Benjamin (1892–1940). The conceptual couple according to which first theology is understood as theology is stuck in a representational logic where proper practice can be easily distinguished from malpractice. Second theology, on the other hand, is a performative approach to theology beyond the representational logic: theology that does and constructs rather than is and represents. Thus, second theology is theology that is political, even activist, without pertaining to truth claims or ideals regarding proper or improper theological practice.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"76 1","pages":"40-54"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86507702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coleridge’s Contemplative Philosophy. By Peter Cheyne","authors":"J. Smoker","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA032","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"4 1","pages":"102-104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90040725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Both Thomas Mann and G.W.F. Hegel accord beauty a particular role in their work: that of revealing truth. However, both differ in its particular stature and effectiveness. For Hegel it is an essential part of Bildung, a step to fuller knowledge of the Absolute Idea, whereas for Mann it is revelatory of the failures of Bildung, of knowledge, and self-control, and doing so it unmasks an existential truth. Drawing on Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Lukács, and Gadamer, this article explores the way in which Mann’s account of beauty, as detailed in Little Herr Friedemann and Death in Venice, challenges both Hegel’s philosophy and in doing so a particular ideal of Bildung, especially with regards to its relationship to truth.
{"title":"‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty’: A Novel Account of Beauty, Bildung, and Truth in Hegel and Thomas Mann","authors":"Deborah Casewell","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Both Thomas Mann and G.W.F. Hegel accord beauty a particular role in their work: that of revealing truth. However, both differ in its particular stature and effectiveness. For Hegel it is an essential part of Bildung, a step to fuller knowledge of the Absolute Idea, whereas for Mann it is revelatory of the failures of Bildung, of knowledge, and self-control, and doing so it unmasks an existential truth. Drawing on Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Lukács, and Gadamer, this article explores the way in which Mann’s account of beauty, as detailed in Little Herr Friedemann and Death in Venice, challenges both Hegel’s philosophy and in doing so a particular ideal of Bildung, especially with regards to its relationship to truth.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"2 1","pages":"79-97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74478066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores Marilynne Robinson’s attempt to reconcile the doctrine of predestination with a commitment to human agency by reading her novels Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack alongside their intertextual companion, John Calvin. I argue that, rather than attempting to penetrate the enigma of predestination and agency through theological treatises, Robinson embodies the tension between them in fiction. Rather than defining a solution to the problem, she meaningfully charts the lived experience of it. Indeed, in the Gilead novels the experience of agency is itself agency within a universe defined by God’s omnipotence. At the same time, characters’ freedom to act otherwise than habit or impulse would dictate depends on right perception. Robinson’s unique contribution to an American literary and theological legacy is to animate these tensions as only fiction can. Her novels offer a theological vista that cannot be separated from their fictional content, and so things that seem like tautologies grow profound through narration.
{"title":"‘Free to act by your own lights’: Agency and Predestination in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead Novels","authors":"A. Mouw","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAB007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAB007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores Marilynne Robinson’s attempt to reconcile the doctrine of predestination with a commitment to human agency by reading her novels Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack alongside their intertextual companion, John Calvin. I argue that, rather than attempting to penetrate the enigma of predestination and agency through theological treatises, Robinson embodies the tension between them in fiction. Rather than defining a solution to the problem, she meaningfully charts the lived experience of it. Indeed, in the Gilead novels the experience of agency is itself agency within a universe defined by God’s omnipotence. At the same time, characters’ freedom to act otherwise than habit or impulse would dictate depends on right perception. Robinson’s unique contribution to an American literary and theological legacy is to animate these tensions as only fiction can. Her novels offer a theological vista that cannot be separated from their fictional content, and so things that seem like tautologies grow profound through narration.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"458 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79159728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}