Rethinking God As Gift

In this contribution to theological and philosophical discussion, Horner (religion and theology, Monash U., Australia) offers an in- depth study of the work of Jean-Luc Marion. Her starting point is the problem of the gift as articulated by Jacques Derrida. c. Book News Inc.

Pushing past the constraints of postmodernism which cast "reason" and"religion" in opposition, God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, seizes the opportunity to question the authority of "the modern" and open the limits of possible experience, including the call to religious experience, as a new millennium approaches. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, engages with Jean-Luc Marion and other religious philosophers to entertain questions about intention, givenness, and possibility which reveal the extent to which deconstruction is structured like religion. New interpretations of Kant, Heidegger, Husserl, and Derrida emerge from essays and discussions with distinguished philosophers and theologians from the United States and Europe. The result is that God, the Gift, and Postmodernism elaborates a radical phenomenology that stretches the limits of its possibility and explores areas where philosophy and religion have become increasingly and surprisingly convergent. Contributors include: John D. Caputo, John Dominic Crossan, Jacques Derrida, Robert Dodaro, Richard Kearney, Jean-Luc Marion, Frangoise Meltzer, Michael J. Scanlon, Mark C. Taylor, David Tracy, Merold Westphal and Edith Wyschogrod.

Rethinking God as Gift is situated at the intersection of philosophy, critical theory and theology. The first sustained study of the work of Jean-Luc Marion in English, it offers a unique perspective on contemporary questions and their theological relevance. Taking its point of departure from the problem of the gift as articulated by Jacques Derrida, who argues that the conditions of possibility of the gift are also its conditions of impossibility, Horner pursues a series of questions concerning the nature of thought, the viability of phenomenology, and, most urgently, the possibility of grace. For Marion, phenomenology, as the thought of the given, offers a path for philosophy to proceed without being implicated in metaphysics. His retrieval of several important insights of Edmund Husserl, along with his reading of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Lévinas, enables him to work out a phenomenology where even “impossible” phenomena such as revelation and the gift might be examined. In this important confrontation between Marion and Derrida issues vital to the negotiation of postmodern concerns in philosophy and theology emerge with vigour. The careful elucidation of those issues in an interdisciplinary context, and the snapshot it provides of the state of contemporary debate, make Rethinking God as Gift an important contribution to theological and philosophical discussion.

The essays in this volume focus on some of the topics that are shaping recent continental philosophy of religion. These primary topics include self and other, evil and suffering, religion and society and the relation between philosophy and theology. The articles are by an international group of leading contributors to recent continental philosophy of religion.

Is there such a thing as "Christian Forgiveness"? Christians speak as though there is. But what would it be? How would it differ from forgiveness as a basic human enactment? And if there is a distinctive Christian forgiveness, what might it have to say to our world today? To answer these questions, the present work traverses three distinctive intellectual landscapes--continental philosophy, Anglo-American moral philosophy, and psychology--to establish a phenomenology of forgiving before turning to contemporary Christian literature. The multilayered dialogue that ensues challenges the assumptions of contemporary approaches--secular and Christian--and invites the reader to rethink the meaning of Christian forgiveness.

What if our world were considered a gift? Extending postmodern gift theory to ecological and ecotheological concerns, Mark Manolopoulos explores how "creation"—the what-is—can be seen as a gift. Creation, when viewed in a radically egalitarian way, is the matrix of all material things—human, otherwise-than-human, or humanly manufactured. Utilizing and critiquing the work of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, Manolopoulos argues that the gift is an irresolvable paradox marked by the contradictory elements of excess (gratuity, linearity) and exchange (gratitude, return). Philosophical and theological reflections on the gift become entangled in its paradoxical tension, but ultimately both aspects must be respected and reflected. When it comes to the creation-gift, we should vacillate between responses like letting-be, enjoyment, utility, and return. Elegantly written and thought-provoking, If Creation Is a Gift both contributes to the ongoing debate on the gift and provides a fresh philosophical and theological consideration of the environmental crisis.

Is the God of Calvin a fountain of blessing, or a forceful tyrant? Is Calvin's view of God coercive, leaving no place for the human qua human in redemption? These are perennial questions about Calvin's theology which have been given new life by Gift theologians such as John Milbank, Graham Ward, and Stephen Webb. J. Todd Billings addresses these questions by exploring Calvin's theology of `participation in Christ'. He argues that Calvin's theology of `participation' gives a positive place to the human, such that grace fulfils rather than destroys nature, affirming a differentiated union of God and humanity in creation and redemption. Calvin's trinitarian theology of participation extends to his view of prayer, sacraments, the law, and the ecclesial and civil orders. In light of Calvin's doctrine of participation, Billings reframes the critiques of Calvin in the Gift discussion and opens up new possibilities for contemporary theology, ecumenical theology, and Calvin scholarship as well.

This book is a collection of engaging, entertaining, and often confronting dialogues with nine thinkers of faith in postmodernity, some of them more prominent than others, all of them possessing the rare quality or gift of thinking rigorously-tentatively-passionately: John D. Caputo, Kevin Hart, Robyn Horner, Richard Kearney, Catherine Keller, Kate Rigby, Mark C. Taylor, Mark I. Wallace, and Merold Westphal. The project was driven by two ambitions: to seek out their thoughts on the question of the gift, which has become a hot topic since the early 1990s in philosophy, theology, and a whole range of academic disciplines, and which was the subject of the interviewer's doctoral work; and, more generally, to examine key elements of these thinkers' most important works. Hence, the dialogues traverse a splendid range of issues - philosophical, theological, ecological, hermeneutical, biblical, scientific, and more. What's more, the dialogical medium has the advantage of casting complex issues in extremely accessible terms, thereby making this collection a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary Continental theory.