Volume 8, Issue 1

In his influential essay, “The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology,” Dominique Janicaud suggests that phenomenology and theology “make two.” On the thirtieth anniversary of that essay, here we consider some of the main lines of response that have been offered to his account. We suggest that there are three general approaches that have been the most prominent: indifferentism, integrationism, and pluralism. The indifferentists implicitly suggest that Janicaud is right about the divide between phenomenology and theology. The integrationists think that Janicaud is wrong about the divide because theology and philosophy are unable to be strictly distinguished. The pluralists suggest that Janicaud is right about the division, but wrong about how it works. For pluralists, philosophy and theology are distinguished due to the immediate evidential authorities that operate in the two discourses. As such, phenomenological theology and phenomenological philosophy of religion are importantly different. Defending pluralism as the best of the three options, we argue that it avoids the potential reductionism that is present in the other two. We conclude by turning to the ways in which, precisely because phenomenological philosophy and phenomenological theology make two, they can both benefit from being put into robust engagement with the other.

This essay addresses Jean-Luc Nancy’s “deconstruction of Christianity” and how what Christianity proclaims through enacting a deconstruction of itself brings an end to the western, hegemonic hold that Christian imperialism has perpetuated for centuries. Nancy, for his part, takes up the name of Christianity insofar as it is a religious phenomenon that signals a trajectory of thought in the West that must be discerned as providing an “exit from religion and of the expansion of the atheist world.” Since deconstructing the dominant narratives of the West means deconstructing the myth of a sovereign, autonomous deity whose reign, Nancy declares, has reached its end, Christianity utilizes its own kenotic narrative to point toward the end of religion and Eurocentrism at the same time.

From the beginning, Levinas’ thought was received not only by philosophers but also by theologians. But his thought is very radical and represents both a challenge and an inspiration for theology. The article aims to see where the challenge and inspiration might lie. Levinas’s basic question is how finite thought can think an infinite and transcendent God. Levinas develops the phenomenology of the Idea of the Infinite and interprets Descartes’ idea of God as a practical desire. For Levinas, the relation to God is intrinsically linked to the relation to the Other. It is an attempt to characterize an autonomous ethical subjectivity whose autonomy, however, does not begin with the subject but in the Other, in whom the presence of God is always already manifest. This description of the subject corresponds to the human being as understood in Christian theology.

This article explores the theological turn through the work of John Caputo, who famously transitioned from a philosopher of religion to a “weak theologian,” and later as a “radical theologian.” In so doing it argues that Caputo’s work as a radical theologian is an attempt at a practical performance of religion without religion: he inhabits the discourse of theology while radicalizing the tradition against itself. This article will show the value of this theological approach and how Caputo needs to directly inhabit this discourse as a theologian – confessing to be a theologian, becoming one of “their own” – to change theology’s trajectory. This trajectorial shift is felt both inside the academy and within the church itself. Caputo’s transformation from a philosopher to a theologian is a move from a (philosophical) description to a (theological) prescription. It is a transition from theory to praxis, and he could not do this without inhabiting that praxis’ context and its discourses. In doing so, and perhaps unintentionally, Caputo surprisingly respects critics like Dominique Janicaud, whose strident critique against the theological turn was at its apotheosis during Caputo’s transition: Caputo never ventures into crypto-theology nor does he sneak in prescription under the guise of a “phenomenology,” as many philosophers of religion are wont to do. Rather, he sees that one needs to embody the discourse to change it, which, ironically, is a position that would gain the approval of both Dominique Janicaud and traditional theology.

The theological turn provokes much debate on the nature of phenomenology but almost none on the definition of theology. I argue, however, that the theological turn not only enlarges the field of phenomenological exploration but also provides theology with a conceptual apparatus that can contribute to formulating rigorous theological positions. In the first step, I question the debate dominated by philosophers of religion which created a normative – restrictive – category of the theological turn. Instead, I argue that the full potential of the theological turn in phenomenology will only be revealed when we accept it as a descriptive category – a tendency that has always in fact been present in phenomenology. In the second step, I move towards theology to argue that the phenomenological engagements with the original theological thoughts are less de-theologized than they are transformed and in their new version offered back to theology, for which they can have crucial relevance. Hence, what is truly interesting after the theological turn is not so much the boundary between theology and phenomenology but their mutual and undeniable encounters.

What could it mean to think “after the theological turn”? This article proposes one possible answer by reframing the theological turn in light of the way in which Paul’s kenosis serves as a metaphor for deconstruction in a variety of continental philosophers who are all nevertheless hostile to overt theologising. Tracking this notion through the history of theology and philosophy, the article argues that it has been philosophically appropriated so as to indicate the point within the Christian theological complex that constitutes its fatal agent by setting in motion Christianity’s own self-deconstruction or de-theologisation. This dynamic, which implies that every engagement with theology ultimately carries itself outside of theology proper, will then allow the article to reconceive the gesture operated by phenomenology’s theological turn: in their right turn towards theology, the philosopher must be careful not to simply remain stuck there, for it only serves their investigation insofar as this engagement is precisely what allows them to turn away from “the theological,” or for phenomenology de-theologise itself. By drawing out the kenotic motif in contemporary continental philosophy and connecting it to phenomenology’s theological turn, the article thus argues that what is needed now is a deconstruction of the theological turn. This can be accomplished by way of what the article proposes to call a “phenomenology of kenosis”: namely, a phenomenology that starts from theology (Paul’s notion of kenosis), precisely so as to move beyond it (to de-theologise itself).

The difference between revelation and natural reason seems to be as obvious as it is indestructible. Despite this conventional view, Eric Voegelin claims that this difference must be “swept aside” and “cleared away” as it obscures the sphere of original meaning and manifestation and posits the divine as an object. According to Voegelin, through recourse to the ancient philosophers Plato and Aristotle, we can discover that there is no natural reason at all but instead: “reason is firmly rooted in revelation.” Obviously, this requires a reinterpretation of revelation. It can neither be equated with the content of the Holy Scripture nor should it be confined to the manifestation of God in Jesus Christ. Rather, claims Voegelin, we ought to think of it as a primordial attraction, a movement drawing into the search for truth and the ground of reality. Such an approach may raise objections and provoke accusations of either subordinating philosophy to theology or misusing the language. As I attempt to show in the article at hand, Voegelin insists on revelation because it designates the original manifestation of the ground, and both faith and philosophical elucidation are two modes of responding to this appearing.

This article seeks to challenge what may seem to be an obvious assertion: that finitude is original in the sense that it must be presupposed that any possible meaning can only be thought beginning from this finitude. I do this through a rereading of Derrida’s epochal essay “Violence and Metaphysics,” which perhaps is the most decisive interpretation of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. In the essay, Derrida demonstrates how Levinas is forced to betray his own intentions in his attempt to describe the Other as transcendent. By making use of a newly published lecture series, Derrida held at the same time as writing the essay, I show how Derrida’s reading of Levinas is intimately tied to his interpretation of Heidegger’s critique of the metaphysics of presence, and how both Levinas and Derrida end up in the paradox I call “original finitude.” I then show how new commentary literature on Levinas’ analysis of enjoyment gives us an alternative to Derrida’s notion of original finitude. I do not propose that this alternative overcomes Derrida’s problematic, but rather that it gives another option of how to relate to that which escapes the grasp of philosophy. The key difference will be whether transcendence is conceived as a failure of philosophy or its excess.

Despite Heidegger’s constant claims to the contrary, thinking is not opposed to faith. Indeed, against his own intentions, Heidegger’s critique of onto-theo-logy, which breaks the grip of modernity, issues in a faith more radically conceived. This faith is the thinking, this thinking is the faith that becomes possible in the post-secular space which Heidegger’s critique of modernity opens. Although the great medieval theologians like Augustine and Aquinas are not onto-theo-logians in a strict sense, they, along with the whole history of metaphysics, fall under its wider sense of any centered and foundational discourse. But any discourse that eludes onto-theo-logy in the wider sense finds itself embracing a faith, not reducible to belief, where thinking is a form of faith and faith is a form of thinking. Derrida’s “Circumfession,” a paradigmatic post-ontotheological discourse, is a work of prayer and a confession of faith in the open-endedness of the event, an un-programmable future ( à venir ). This text communicates with Heidegger thinking the “open,” the “promise” of language, of the Zukunft embedded in the Herkunft , constituting the “piety of thinking.”

This essay marks the start of a bold reorientation of a philosophical vision of the author: where the texts of the Christian theological tradition once served as point of reference, it is now the experience of trauma that guides the phenomenological investigation – specifically, the trauma of illness, separation, the death of a child, natural disaster, and the pandemic. These experiences, which befall me without rhyme or reason, open up a new field that has hitherto remained unthought by – and indeed unthinkable to – the phenomenological tradition: extra-phenomenality. As extra-phenomenal, a trauma is neither infra-phenomenal (preparing phenomenality) nor supra-phenomenal (overflowing phenomenality), but rather denotes the destruction of all possible categories of synthesis or horizons of phenomenalization: it is properly speaking outside of lived-experience both in that it cannot be lived through by the traumatized subject in conscious experience as well as making all subsequent lived-experiences impossible. Yet, existence nevertheless persists in this crisis: it is thus not a question of attempting to escape it, or pursuing the restauration of a previous state; but rather of a different way of being there. In this way, trauma reminds us of the very essence of our humanity as a continued transformation.

This article investigates the justifications of mass violence in Deuteronomistic historiography through the lens of cultural trauma. The analysis concentrates on the representation and justification of mass violence, that is mass killings and other forms of violence against non-combatants, in Israel’s conquest of the promised land in the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua as well as during the loss of the land at the hand of the Assyrian and Babylonian armies, as narrated in 2 Kings 17–25. A comparison of these texts and their respective historical backgrounds helps to profile the contrasts and continuities between them. Trauma theory sheds light on both narratives as media to recover agency and to reconstruct collective identity for emerging Judaism via the historiographical representation of cultural trauma.

Cultural trauma theory provides a framework for studying the socio-cultural process which takes place between an event and its (socially accepted) representation. This article will apply the process-oriented approach of cultural trauma theory to studying biblical narratives of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, focusing in particular on the destruction and pillage of the temple. The comparison of the various accounts of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, and of their different versions transmitted in Hebrew and in Greek, reveals that the memory of this event was by no means unified and developed over a longer period of time. Discussing passages from 2 Kgs 24–25 and their parallels in the book of Jeremiah, this article will argue that the devastation of the temple of Jerusalem, which is often regarded as a major traumatizing event in the history of ancient Judah, became remembered as such only as the result of a longer process.

Biblical trauma studies strongly emphasize that texts and traditions that eventually formed the Hebrew Bible helped both the authors and the (former) “readers” to cope with catastrophic events. This approach, however, leads to side-lining other functions of biblical texts, for instance the extent to which biblical texts were used and transmitted not only to “heal” but also to “wound” the collectivity, namely to shape the collective identity of ancient Israel and early Judaism as profoundly damaged. The perspective of cultural trauma studies may help us to go beyond the “healing hermeneutics.” The present article aims to understand how the psalms of communal lament in Books II and III of the Psalter contributed to make the collective trauma of the Babylonian attack become Yehud’s cultural trauma during the Persian period. It suggests that by building and transmitting a coherent metanarrative of the catastrophe and through the communal laments’ dramatic images and metaphors, the redactors of these portions of the Psalter made sure that during the Persian period the people of Israel in the province of Yehud would be wounded by their ancestors’ pain.

The Qumran Apocryphon of Jeremiah C (4QApocrJer C a-d ; 4Q390) provides reflections on the trauma of devastation, dislocation, and captivity at the time of the Babylonian exile as narrated in the book of Jeremiah. Yet, just as the Damascus Document (CD/4QD), its apocalyptic review of periods goes well beyond the biblical era. This article analyses the narrative discourses of the Apocryphon in comparison with the Damascus Document with the aid of modern theory about cultural trauma, cultural analysis of remembering and forgetting, and recent insights about theodical discourse in the Hebrew Bible. It analyses the recurrent trope of “God hiding his face” in Qumran Jeremianic traditions against broader biblical and early Jewish backgrounds. The article investigates the understanding of reciprocity in human-divine relations and explores how theodicy relates to forgetful remembrance of covenantal relationships. It contends that the Qumran Jeremianic traditions deal with cultural trauma in terms of lament, admonition, theodical discourse, and divisive memory against the historical background of the late Second Temple period, in particular the era of the Maccabean crisis.

The book of Ezekiel may be effectively understood in terms of Jeffrey Alexander’s theory of cultural trauma, in which catastrophic events take on a wider cultural significance because they are perceived as having consequences for group identity. The book of Ezekiel develops a new master narrative of Israelite history and identity, in which the catastrophes of 597 and 586 BCE are the culmination of generations of moral and religious offences against Yhwh, the God of Israel. Ezekiel’s narrative constructs these events as having profound consequences for Israel’s identity. Those taken to Babylonia are identified as victims of divine violence; as victims, they are the ones whom Yhwh has chosen as true Israelites. The book distinguishes this new Israel from the remnants of the old one still in Jerusalem, rejecting the claim that the latter are still members of the house of Israel. According to Ezekiel, to be an Israelite means to be a deportee. Although few texts outside Ezekiel are quite so overtly negative regarding Israel’s history, its reckoning of the significance of Jerusalem’s fall for Israelite identity resonates throughout the canon. With rare exceptions, the experience of deportation and life in Babylonia became the sine qua non of Israelite identity: only those who had it could count themselves true members of post-597 Israel. As a construction of the cultural significance of trauma, therefore, Ezekiel was remarkably successful. Thereafter, the events of 597 were construed not simply as practically and politically catastrophic, but as traumatic : the new master narrative placed them front and centre, with indelible and profound consequences for Israel’s self-understanding.

Trauma studies have seen rapid growth in popularity within the past two decades, moving from a psychological phenomenon to a concept utilized by literary critics, sociologists, and now biblical scholars. Yet, most of the work on trauma theory within biblical studies focuses on psychological aspects of trauma instead of sociological or cultural aspects of trauma. Drawing on Jeffery Alexander’s theory of cultural trauma, a cultural trauma reading of Micah 1–3 reveals how Micah 1–3 as a book transforms Micah’s localized psychological trauma to become a national trauma, explaining why scribes preserved Micah 1–3. Like holocaust testimony that became a cultural trauma, Micah’s testimony to his trauma became a trauma for all of Judea. To create a cultural trauma, Micah 1–3 define the trauma as divine punishment through an Assyrian invasion due to a breakdown of social order seen in the corrupt owners, rulers, and religious leaders. This cultural trauma then becomes one of the early texts to shape later biblical writers’ understanding of divine punishment. This article offers a different perspective of trauma theory and shows how cultural trauma theory explains why Micah 1–3 were preserved.

This article examines death’s symbolic role vis-à-vis life in cross-cultural perspective. It surveys various ways of suppressing, nuancing, or minimising death’s effects and different ways of assuming its non-impasse through a cross-disciplinary lens that combines ethnographic inquiry, philosophical conceptualisation, and a secular, religious studies approach to the sacred. Zoroastrian and pre-Rabbinic Jewish views on the resurrection of the body, Gnostic and Neo-Gnostic takes on the immortality of the soul, and ancient-Greek, Hindu, and medieval Peripatetic claims about the continuity of life beyond death are thus brought into discussion and confronted with the Epicurean dismissal of death’s relevance for us. Additionally, drawing on Heraclitus’s frag. DK B62 and Robert Gardner’s fieldwork among the Dani of Papua New Guinea, I argue that assuming death as life’s sacred and non-negotiable limit need not entail resignation before it, be it untroubled or despaired. For while life outlives us, life itself would be nothing determinate if our finitude were not to contain it, which shows that death is life’s final condition of possibility; and when humans do not lose sight of their mortality, they tend to reaffirm their aliveness so as to stress life’s sacredness before death’s terrible presence, which proves that death is not only life’s limit, but also life’s antagonist. I conclude by making the point that differences as to the exact nature of death’s role in life affect our understanding of what life is: momentary joy, boundless renewal, or tragic gift.

This article offers a critical re-evaluation of the role of death in Christian theology, especially as it is viewed in light of the incarnation. It situates the problem of death as an extension of the problem of evil and analyses the classical responses to this problem in the Western Christian tradition. From here, it brings in the theological “minority report” on the role of death that runs through the Western tradition, ultimately using it as a springboard for a constructive repositioning of death as a potential locus of encountering the benevolence of God in Christ.

The aim of this article is to address the topic of death from a Luhmannian perspective. First, the article will introduce the general theory of Luhmann to provide a background for the way he is tackling sociological and philosophical problems and then will describe its application to religion and deduce various implications for the topic of death. For the discussion of death, we will refer to some of Hegel’s insights, as they motivated central parts of Luhmann’s theory, though he replaced the Hegelian notions with system theoretical ones. Even if it might seem like a further abstraction and mechanization, we assume that it significantly facilitates the combination of outside and inside perspectives on death. In contrast to philosophical existentialism, the system-oriented approach of Luhmann does not emphasize the situated character of human reason and its gaining authenticity by facing death and finitude. Instead, it points to the entanglement of society and consciousness, focusing on the former while providing hints to the otherness of consciousness. Here, authenticity is not achieved by writing about existential topics, but rather through some sort of parallax view.

Facing suffering and death, or what is known as human fragility, does not seem all that difficult and challenging in the presence of a morally responsible God or the primordial source of all existence. However, if our theodicy does not allow for the existence of such a God or primordial source, as in Ashʿarite theology or Schopenhauer’s philosophy, then the encounter with human fragility necessitates a more sophisticated explanation. Schopenhauer, by rejecting the loving Christian God, adopts the Buddhist solution to death which, he claims, has been maintained in Sufism. While recognizing Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, Nietzsche disagrees with his moral approach and attempts to address human vulnerability from an aesthetic standpoint. In this article, I argue that Rūmī, following Ashʿarite theodicy, attempts to transcend the moral position of theologians with his concept of love and, instead of appealing to the dominant asceticism of fear and terror, confronts human fragility through the framework of his mysticism of love. The article then makes an effort to provide a reasonable interpretation of this mysticism in light of Nietzsche’s aesthetic metaphysics.

Scholarship and research in the field of thanatology require creative responses to address contemporary concerns regarding how people – individually and collectively – make sense of events and experiences associated with death and dying. This present study focuses on the broader Islamic traditions of the experience of death and the afterlife and provides a conceptual overview of the practices of mourning and memoria. This overview offers an exploration of considerations for the well-being of the deceased, interactions between the living and the dead, as well as how dreams act as conduits between the seen and unseen worlds. Additionally, this study draws from the narratives contained within the fortieth and final book of the eleventh-century Persian Muslim philosopher and jurist, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s epic, titled The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife , to address and juxtaposition Muslim conceptions pertaining to death and the afterlife with death anxiety research not currently articulated within the wider Islamic scholarship. Through the exploration of Islamic traditions and the contribution of al-Ghazālī’s citations within The Remembrance , this work will demonstrate how broader reflections on recognising the inevitability of death and the importance of relinquishing earthly attachments posit a creative response to contemporary death anxiety research. Bearing in mind the commonly studied tenets within the wider corpus of al-Ghazālī’s impressive epic, The Revival of the Religious Sciences , it is the literature presented here which warrants full consideration for creative responses to the discussion on death that may consequently be of pastoral significance and provide techniques for lessening death anxiety.

This article aims to present the specificities associated with the Hindu liminal phase and the sacred associated with death through an ethnographic account of the death rituals of the Hindu Saryuparin Brahmin community. Through this ethnographic account, the author argues against a uniform liminal phase across different cultures by bringing to the fore aspects specific to the Hindu liminal phase in death. This aids in analyzing the Hindu cosmogenic world and the movement of the deceased’s “pret” or “ghost” within the same during the liminal phase. Building a connect between the liminal and the sacred in Hinduism, the author further discusses how the sacred is understood in terms of purity/impurity and life/death through death rituals. While exploring the sacred, the author contests the classical understanding of the sacred within the religious realm and presents its contextual nature by discussing the “context-based sacred.” This article is divided into three sections: (1) death rituals in the Hindu Brahminic tradition, (2) deconstructing the “liminal” in death in Hinduism, and (3) understanding the “sacred” associated with death in Hinduism.

In the United States, the first decades of the twenty-first century have been marked by a worsening fatal drug overdose epidemic leading life expectancy to decline for the first time in a century. Often termed deaths of despair, this development is attributed to declines in civic life, including lessening religious participation, wrought by long-term deindustrialization. Despite this, civil society has responded by contesting despair and the conditions hastening fatal overdose trends. This article examines faith-based community responses to the American overdose crisis through an extended case study of a church-led campaign in Massachusetts. In the summer of 2017, the state of Massachusetts released its fatal overdose numbers to the public: 2,069 people died of fatal overdose in 2016. In response, Trinity Church of Wrentham, Massachusetts, launched the #2069 campaign resulting in over 2,000 billboards and lawn signs emblazoned with #2069 displayed across the state. The memorial project fostered conversation, but also forged new community active in its work of social support, public health outreach and nonpartisan political engagement. The article considers the role of faith-based public health efforts and the potential for further interfaith and interracial collaboration on public health issues and the role of public religion in contesting conditions of despair.

This article critically explores the question of how the image and metaphor of the Trinitarian divine dance could enhance the dialogue between theology and dance. Could this metaphor actually be a source of said dialogue? Does this idea of the Trinitarian dance really do justice either to the divine mystery of the Trinity or to dance itself? If we would like to go beyond metaphor, what further approach would be necessary? This article examines how different authors (e.g., C. S. Lewis, Paul S. Fiddes, and Catherine M. LaCugna) have used the image or metaphor of dance to describe the perichōrēsis within the Trinity as well as the creation’s perichoretic participation. This article concludes the survey by pointing out that contemporary usages of the Trinitarian dance metaphor are participating in European Christianity’s longstanding bias against dance, no matter how much they appear to appreciate it on the surface. The bias is related to Christianity’s ambivalent attitude toward the human body, despite its foundational belief that the Word became flesh. Therefore, a call to bring the lens of dance into Christian theology should be taken as nothing less than a call to eliminate this bias against the human body itself.

The material turn in the study of religion\s has opened new methodological vistas, rejuvenating the notion of fetish . Scholars in Africa must acknowledge and share in the successes of the material approach. At the same time, they cannot help but recall that in colonial Africa the notion of fetish was, par excellence, the mirror of primitive religion and the denigration of Africans in the missionary enterprise. Fetish was not only the medium for the fall of African religions and the enforcement of colonial authority, but also and especially, the genesis of the theory of primitive religion\s. This paradox looms large when the material turn is re-read from southern perspectives as a call for a radical intra-cultural critique of the epistemological positions and subalternity of knowledge production in Africa.

The linguistic method of the New Rhetoric and Argumentation (developed by authors such as Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca) seeks to persuade an audience utilizing logical and practical arguments, in order to achieve adherence to a thesis that wants to be effectively communicated. This method can be applied to biblical texts to convince about an issue and produce a performative (transforming) effect. This article aims to apply some elements of this method to the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25–37. Jesus, with the argumentative force of metaphor, not only answers the question “who is my neighbor?” but also reveals an eventual attribute of God: closeness. In the Samaritan, who is moved with compassion to care for a wounded man, God’s proximity is revealed. In the Samaritan’s mercy, God is manifested as an event of closeness.

In order to take the physical and incorporeal dimension of dance seriously in the context of Christian theology, we propose that it should be the neglected Christological Perichōrēsis (as well as concepts and ideas surrounding it) rather than the Trinitarian Perichōrēsis that is historically and traditionally relevant as a source of a dialogue between Christian theology and dance. First, we propose that the guiding metaphor should be Christ as dancer , historical examples of which already exist unlike with the notion of the Trinity as dance. Then, we look at St Maximus the Confessor’s Christocentric cosmology. With the human being understood as a “microcosm” of body–soul(spirit) unity placed at the center of the entire creation, his Christocentric cosmology could be a potential source for enhancing a dialogue between Christian theology and dance, while helping us overcome the dualistic separation between the body and the spirit and consequently between nature and culture.

Given panentheism, when trying to offer a plausible solution to the problem of evil, what is the most promising way forward? In this article, I argue that a panentheist who wants to answer the problem of evil by using the “only way” argument should embrace the metaphysics of process theism. In other words, she ought to be a process-panentheist. Process theism is a version of panentheism, while panentheism generally need not to imply process theism. I shall use the terms “process-panentheist” and “non-process-panentheist” to differentiate adherents of these two forms of panentheism. I examine the “only way” argument as a possible theodicy for panentheists and conclude that it is only a convincing theodicy for the panentheist if (i) she is a process-panentheist, or (ii) she thinks this is the best possible world. If she is a non-process-panentheist or does not think this is the best possible world, the “only way” approach fails to be a coherent theodicy.

This article focuses on the evangelical theology and revival practice of Charles Grandison Finney, popular in his time yet critically under-explored in American philosophy, specifically regarding his role in the emergence of American pragmatism. Spearheaded by American philosophers like Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, pragmatism argues that the significance of abstract concepts lies in their practical consequences in lived experience, as opposed to their internal logic or conformity to intellectual traditions. Whereas this philosophical method is often seen as predominantly secular in its origins, this article approaches pragmatic thinking and practice from the point of view of the spiritual conversion strategies of Charles Finney and antebellum evangelical culture more broadly. I expand on what Leonard I. Sweet has called Finney’s “pragmatic philosophy of revivalism,” addressing his theology and revival practice to disclose its latent pragmatic tendencies and those within antebellum evangelical culture. I argue that by looking at Finney as an early practitioner of this method, we must reappraise his and evangelicalism’s role in the emergence of philosophical pragmatism, challenge its putative secularity, and – as Charles Taylor has recently demonstrated – reassess what academic disciplines mean when they cite the presumed distinction between the religious and the secular.

This article examines early Jewish ideas of virtue that are usually ignored in presentations of the history of virtue discourse. We analyze the use of the Greek term ἀρετή in the Apocrypha of the Septuagint; all the occurrences of the term are in texts that were originally composed in Greek. We argue that the discussion on virtues – ideal human qualities and ways of living – in the Apocrypha has three thematic foci: (1) training, (2) courage, and (3) suffering and its postmortem rewards. Virtue prepares one to live well, encounter grave difficulties and even death with courage, and, finally, earn eternal life. We argue that it is implicit that virtuous Jews surpass, in ways that differ depending on the text, their more-or-less openly Greek antagonists who fail the virtue ideals that they would culturally be expected to uphold. Through their words and deeds, the exemplary Jews demonstrate that true virtue comes from a steadfast commitment to the Jewish tradition and the Mosaic law. Being a good Jew involves training that manifests itself in various desirable traits, but it also means acknowledging the divinity of the Jewish law as the basis of both the good life and the postmortem consequences of virtue.

This article applies a historical-contextualist approach to analyzing the Joseph sūra of the Qur’an. It first explores the theoretical framework of this study and introduces the historical-contextualist methodology employed and then provides a brief explanation of the Qur’anic account of the story of Joseph. The Joseph sūra is analyzed in light of the context of its revelation and the use it makes of fundamental Qur’anic teachings. This article demonstrates that the revelation of the sūra of Joseph was closely related to the sociopolitical context in which Muhammad and the Muslims lived, and that the sūra highlights several fundamental theological teachings of the Qur’an, including God’s unity and omnipotence, revelation and prophethood, and the afterlife, all themes emphasized in earliest sūras of the Qur’an including those revealed before the Joseph sūra .

I conducted anthropological fieldwork (2010–2018) in a charismatic Christian new religious movement the Lights founded by a Transylvanian contemporary folk prophet in 2008. The new religious movement (NRM) has local hubs in North Serbia, Romania, and Hungary. After offering insight into the techniques of how the prophet receives his visions of heaven and hell (as answers to the existential dilemmas of death and the afterlife), I analyse the role and reception of these visionary journeys. I combine interpretive anthropology with the genealogical way of discourse analysis introduced by Michel Foucault. I conceive of complex roles for the narratives about the prophet’s visionary journeys and his theory of reincarnation. These narratives attract people who encounter the prophet and inspire them to participate in the NRM’s religious events. The group wanted to legitimate the prophet with the visions’ moderate style and the relative correspondence with the Bible. Nevertheless, the prophet and the group recognized the divisive nature of these narratives. They found that they could manage their evangelization by creating graduated access to information to avoid preconception judgements. Between 2012 and 2014, the core group of this NRM (lights and the prophet) worked out a multi-level discourse space in the group: a gradation where access to knowledge is based on status. I called this balanced and long-term initiation process the system of threshold narratives.

To better understand how a particular community understands its story, we look at the philosophy, aesthetics, and historical–cultural contexts of those who have written its history. This article analyses an example of colonial era historiography entitled The Progress of Dogma written by Scottish evangelical theologian James Orr. It critically evaluates how Orr’s historiographical approach is at once an asset and a liability for evangelical Christians in the postcolonial era. Orr argued for the cohesiveness and continuity of historical orthodox doctrine, particularly as it stood over against the liberal, deconstructive approaches that were gaining traction in his day. In this sense, Orr’s work may be considered an asset to evangelical Christians today as they attempt to defend a foundationalist reading of history over against that of postfoundational philosophers such as Michel Foucault. There is a concern, however, with Orr’s adaptation of the historical methodology presented by GWF Hegel. This dialectical, linear approach has had a disastrous effect on the evangelical interpretation of doctrinal history. Rich traditions have been ignored or lost, Eurocentrism has prevailed, and many Christians whose home or origin is in the Global South continue to struggle with what they perceive as the residue of the colonial enterprise. This article argues that Evangelical historiography must be reconstructed. In the conclusion, new lines of enquiry are presented that may allow evangelicals to affirm the historical cohesiveness and continuity of their doctrine, while at the same time giving serious consideration to postcolonial sensibilities.

This article investigates the list of items of dress worn by the daughters Zion in Isa 3:18–23, as they are simultaneously stripped of them. It considers the poetic aspects of this list before turning to specific items, both jewelry and clothing, worn by the daughters in verses 18 and 22. These objects contribute to the complex characterization of the daughters Zion, as it poetically brings together a thick array of aesthetic, religious and traumatic meanings, and experiences.