Postmodern Theology as a Methodological Resource of Understanding Modern Religiosity: Conceptual, Worldview and Important Social Dimensions

The article comprehends the potential of the current achievements of the new Christian theologians in interpreting of the phenomenon of religiosity, its life and value-conceptual core and contexts of functioning, taking into account the modification of the historical conditions of the existence of culture, society, spirituality. The author ponders the conceptual content of the ideas of J. Milbank, J.-L. Marion and J. Caputo. The ideas of these authors are highlighted in their methodological uniqueness and at the same time the general paradigmatic context of their focus for comprehending the postmodern anthropological situation and the effectiveness of Christian spirituality in the conditions of post-secularism is taken into account. The research is interdisciplinary, combining the history of theological thought with the possibilities of philosophical anthropology and philosophy of religion.

Presence, Absence, and the Ambiguities of Ambience

This chapter seeks to contextualize the disciplinary interaction between theology and sound studies in the analysis of Pärt’s music within broader theological questions around presence, absence, and idolatry. The chapter engages both classical and postmodern theology to argue that, to the extent that Part’s music enacts an interplay between presence and absence as elucidated by sound studies, it can be a fruitful site of interaction between the two disciplines.

“Religion after Religion”, or Current Projects in Posmetaphysical Theology

Оne of the newest monograph is analysed where the ideas of Western theologians of the last decades, basing their theories on the reception of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, are examined, Caputo, Kearney, Manjussakis, Hart being choosed in the first place. The rejection of metaphysics and the search for new methods of cognition, new philosophizing ways are actual for theology as well. Methodological issues, updating the existential vocabulary of theology, rethinking the transcendent become the subjects of reflection of postmodern theology. The reviewer pays reasonable attention, in accordance with the book, to a transition from onto-thology to the theology of event and emphasizes that study of contemporary Western theologians is valuable for Russia, especially in the context of today’s introducing academic theology into the system of education.

Scriptural Spirituality as Postmodern Theology

Embracing David Tracy’s prophetic and christocentric vision for postmodern theology, this article argues that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s evolving interpretation of the Psalms forms a paradigmatic example of postmodern Christian spirituality and discipleship. From the 1935 lecture on Christ in the Psalms, through Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, to the unfinished exposition of Psalm 119, Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to find in the Psalter a privileged access to lifelong transformative experience of Jesus Christ and his redeeming power. Today, Jesus Christ is made incarnate not through abstract concepts and theories, but by means of prayerful personal participative involvement in the history of salvation.

Postmodern theology

The term ‘postmodernism’ is loosely used to designate a wide variety of cultural phenomena from architecture through literature and literary theory to philosophy. The immediate background of philosophical postmodernism is the French structuralism of Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan and Barthes. But like existentialism, it has roots that go back to the critique by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche of certain strong knowledge claims in the work of Plato, Descartes and Hegel. If the quest for absolute knowledge is the quest for meanings that are completely clear and for truths that are completely certain, and philosophy takes this quest as its essential goal, then postmodernism replaces Nietzsche’s announcement of the death of God with an announcement of the end of philosophy. This need not be construed as the death of God in a different vocabulary. The question of postmodern theology is the question of the nature of a discourse about deity that would not be tied to the metaphysical assumptions postmodern philosophy finds untenable. One candidate is the negative theology tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius and Meister Eckhart. It combines a vigorous denial of absolute knowledge with a theological import that goes beyond the critical negations of postmodern philosophy. A second possibility, the a/theology of Mark C. Taylor, seeks to find religious meaning beyond the simple opposition of theism and atheism, but without taking the mystical turn. Finally, Jean-Luc Marion seeks to free theological discourse from the horizon of all philosophical theories of being, including Heidegger’s own postmodern analysis of being.

Weak Theology and Organization Studies

This article demonstrates the pre-eminent position which the term oikonomia (household management) occupied in the first few centuries of Christian theology, opening up avenues which have been left virtually unexplored by modern management scientists. This first level of analysis reveals that the essence of management is inevitably associated with the concepts of non-power, burden and weakness. I then pursue this line of inquiry to look at the role occupied by the notion of ‘weakness’ in the postmodern theology developed by Gianni Vattimo and John Caputo, before extending the scope of this analysis to contemporary debates in the field of organization studies, revealing an entirely different vision of the figure of ‘manager’ from that championed in post-Taylorian ‘scientific’ management, with its emphasis on the behavioural and technical aspects of her/his role. The article concludes by looking at the theoretical and practical implications of ‘weak’ management.

Religious Metaphors at the Crossroads between Apophatical Theology and Cognitive Linguistics

This chapter introduces an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religious discourse, inspired by the observation that the tradition of negative theology, rediscovered by postmodern philosophy and theology, shares major points of interest with the cognitive theory of language. Its primary goal is an attempt to compare two epistemological systems in a fruitful and promising way. There are three major parts. The first deals with aspects of apophatical (or negative) theology and presents its rediscovery by postmodern theology. The second describes central aspects of cognitive semantics, with special attention to the theory of conceptual metaphor. The third brings the two theories together in search of both similarities and differences. It will be shown that there are common points of interest and methodology, and that each approach can contribute to the other, offering possible benefits to theology.