The ancient doctrine of negative theology or apophasis—the attempt to describe God by speaking
only of what cannot be said about the divine perfection and goodness—has taken on new
life in the concern with language and its limits that preoccupies much postmodern philosophy,
theology, and related disciplines. How does this mystical tradition intersect with the concern
with material bodies that is simultaneously a focus in these areas? This volume pursues the
unlikely conjunction of apophasis and the body, not for the cachet of the “cutting edge” but
rather out of an ethical passion for the integrity of all creaturely bodies as they are caught
up in various ideological mechanisms—religious, theological, political, economic—that
threaten their dignity and material well-being.
The contributors, a diverse collection of scholars in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical
studies, rethink the relationship between the concrete tradition of negative theology and
apophatic discourses widely construed. They further endeavor to link these to the theological
theme of incarnation and more general issues of embodiment, sexuality, and cosmology.
Along the way, they engage and deploy the resources of contextual and liberation theology,
post-structuralism, postcolonialism, process thought, and feminism.
The result not only recasts the nature and possibilities of theological discourse but explores
the possibilities of academic discussion across and beyond disciplines in concrete engagement
with the well-being of bodies, both organic and inorganic. The volume interrogates the complex
capacities of religious discourse both to threaten and positively to draw upon the material
well-being of creation.
CONTRIBUTORS: Chris Boesel, Virginia Burrus, John D. Caputo, Philip Clayton, Patricia Cox Miller,
T. Wilson Dickinson, Rose Ellen Dunn, Roland Faber, Sigridur Gudmarsdottir, Krista E. Hughes,
Catherine Keller, Karmen Mackendrick, Graham Ward, David L. Miller, Charles M. Stang,
Kathryn Tanner, and Elliot R. Wolfson.
| CHRIS BOESEL is Associate Professor of Christian Theology in the Theological School and
Graduate Division of Religion at Drew University. His most recent book is Risking Proclamation,
Respecting Difference: Christian Faith, Imperialistic Discourse, and Abraham. |
| CATHERINE KELLER is Professor of Constructive Theology in the Theological School and Graduate
Division of Religion at Drew University. She co-edited with Virginia Burrus the first volume of the
Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquia, Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the
Limits of Discipline (Fordham), and co-edited with Laurel Kearns its second volume, Ecospirit:
Philosophies and Religions for the Earth (Fordham). Previous books include Face of the Deep:
A Theology of Becoming and On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process. |
