The Guide To Gethsemane

Already widely debated upon its publication in French, this text offers a provocative account of Christ's Passion in terms not of faith but of a 'credible Christianity' that can remain meaningful to nonbelievers. For Falque, anxiety, suffering, and death are not simply the 'ills' of our society but the essential horizon of what we confront as humans. Doubtful of Heidegger's famous statement that the notion of salvation renders Christians unable authentically to experience anxiety in the face of death, Falque explores the Passion with a radical emphasis on the physicality and corporeality of Christ's suffering and death, and on continuities with the mortality of our bodies. Written in the wake of a friend's death, Falques's study is theologically and philosophically rigorous, yet engagingly written and deeply humane.

Anxiety, suffering and death are not simply the “ills” of our society, nor are they uniquely the product of a sick and sinful humanity. We must all some day confront them, and we continually face their implications long before we do. In that sense, the Garden of Gethsemane is not merely a garden “outside the walls” of Jerusalem but also the essential horizon for all of us, whether we are believers or not. Emmanuel Falque explores, with no small measure of doubt, Heidegger’s famous statement that by virtue of Christianity’s claims of salvation and the afterlife, its believers cannot authentically experience anxiety in the face of death. In this theological development of the Passion, already widely debated upon its publication in French, Falque places a radical emphasis on the physicality and corporeality of Christ’s suffering and death, marking the continuities between Christ’s Passion and our own orientation to the mortality of our bodies. Beginning with an elaborate reading of the divine and human bodies whose suffering is masterfully depicted in the Isenheim Altarpiece, and written in the wake of the death of a close friend, Falques’s study is both theologically rigorous and marked by deeply human concerns. Falque is at unusual pains to elaborate the question of death in terms not merely of faith, but of a “credible Christianity” that remains meaningful to non-Christians, holding, with Maurice Blondel, that “the important thing is not to address believers but to say something which counts in the eyes of unbelievers.” His account is therefore as much a work of philosophy as of theology—and of philosophy explicated not through abstractions but through familiar and ordinary experience. Theology’s task, for Falque, is to understand that human problems of the meaning of existence apply even to Christ, at least insofar as he lives in and shares our finitude. In Falque’s remarkable account, Christ takes upon himself the burden of suffering finitude, so that he can undertake a passage through it, or a transformation of it. This book, a key text from one the most remarkable of a younger generation of philosophers and theologians, will be widely read and debated by all who hold that theology and philosophy has the most to offer when it eschews easy answers and takes seriously our most anguishing human experiences.

Continental philosophers of religion have been engaging with theological issues, concepts and questions for several decades, blurring the borders between the domains of philosophy and theology. Yet when Emmanuel Falque proclaims that both theologians and philosophers need not be afraid of crossing the Rubicon – the point of no return – between these often artificially separated disciplines, he scandalised both camps. Despite the scholarly reservations, the theological turn in French phenomenology has decisively happened. The challenge is now to interpret what this given fact of creative encounters between philosophy and theology means for these disciplines. In this collection, written by both theologians and philosophers, the question “Must we cross the Rubicon?” is central. However, rather than simply opposing or subscribing to Falque’s position, the individual chapters of this book interrogate and critically reflect on the relationship between theology and philosophy, offering novel perspectives and redrawing the outlines of their borderlands.

What comes after the end of Christendom? Christianity has ceased to function as the dominant force in society and yet the Christian faith continues. How are we to understand Christianity in this 'after'? Bringing into conversation seven unorthodox or 'heretical' continental philosophers, including Jan Patocka, Jean-Luc Nancy, Gianni Vattimo and John D. Caputo, Martin Koci re-centres the debates around philosophy's so-called return to religion to address the current 'not-Christian, but not yet non-Christian' culture. In the modern context of increasing secularization and pluralization, Christianity after Christendom boldly proposes that Christians must embrace the demise of Christianity as a meta-narrative and see their faith as an existential mode of being-in-the-world. Whilst not denying the religion's history, this 'after' of Christianity emancipates the discourse from the socio-historical focus on Christendom and introduces new perspectives on Christianity as an embodied religious tradition, as a way of being, even as a faithfulness to the world. In dialogue with a broad range of philosophical movements, including deconstruction, phenomenology, hermeneutics and postmodern critiques of religion, this is a timely examination of the present and future of post-Christendom Christianity.

The Christ Is Dead, Long Live the Christ: A Philotheologic Prayer, a Hermeneutics of Healing is a call for renewal and reinvention. Following a brief examination of the historical Jesus (Yeshua, using his actual Aramaic/Hebrew name), the book moves into a phenomenological study of the image, idea, and the place of both in our felt experiences. Looking closer at what we think were the actual words of this wandering sage, the picture we arrive at is one that will surprise, possibly unsettle. Moved out of our traditional comfort zones, we find the need to question what we have been told were Yeshua’s teachings, compelling us to further rethink messages on the afterlife, human finitude, so-called atonement theologies, and above all the “kingdom of God.” Whatever this vision was—and might yet be—it seems central to Yeshua’s efforts, and so we finally weigh these “kingdom” facets against a broader ideascape, offering suggestions for how a Yeshuan “kingdom” project situated within the panoply of a widely comprehended Judaic way-of-being might yield fresh life to we who find worth in the utterances and what they point towards, to we who wonder about a more human(e) world.

In By Way of Obstacles, Emmanuel Falque revisits the major themes of his work—finitude, the body, and the call for philosophers and theologians to “cross the Rubicon” by entering into dialogue—in light of objections that have been offered. In so doing, he offers a pathway through a work that will offer valuable insights both to newcomers to his thought and to those who are already familiar with it. For it is only after one has carved out one’s pathway that one may see more clearly where one has been and where one might be going. Here readers will discover the profound relation between Falque’s emphasis on the human experience of the world and his desire for philosophy and Christian theology to enter into conversation. For only by speaking within the human horizon of finitude can Christianity be credible for human beings, and it is because Christian theology teaches that God entered into our finitude that it can also teach us something of what it is to be human. Contemporary phenomenology, Falque warns, over-privileges an encounter with the infinite that cannot be originary. Calling us back to finitude, he calls us to a deeper understanding of our humanity.

A Note from the Editor What Can Theology Offer Psychology? Some Considerations in the Context of Depression Jessica Coblentz The Accompaniment of Psychology and Theology: A Response to Jessica Coblentz Anthony H. Ahrens A Force for Good: When and Why Religion Predicts Prosocial Behavior Karina Schumann Haunted Salvation: The Generational Consequences of Ecclesial Sex Abuse and the Conditions for Conversion Stephanie Edwards and Kimberly Humphrey The Body and Posttraumatic Healing: A Teresian Approach Julia Feder What is This Hope?: Insights from Christian Theology and Positive Psychology Barbara Sain Christian Meaning-Making through Suffering in Theology and Psychology of Religion Jason McMartin, Eric Silverman, M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall, Jamie Aten, and Laura Shannonhouse White Fragility as White Epistemic Disorientation Stephen R. Calme The Ontological Priority of Being a Body Beth Zagrobelny Lofgren ‘Resilient Faithfulness’: A Dynamic Dialectic Between the Trans- cendent and Physical Dimensions of the Human Person Christopher Krall, S.J. The Pastoral Mystique: A Feminist Ecclesiological Approach to Clergy Burnout David von Schlichten Psyche, Soul, and Salvation: Psychology, Theology, and the Science of the Human and Its Place in Theology Christopher McMahon Book Reviews