• Transcendence and Phenomenology, eds. Peter M Candler, Jr and Conor Cunningham. Was £40.00, now £15.00. [Link]
• Belief and Metaphysics, eds. Peter M Candler, Jr and Conor Cunningham. Was £35.00, now £15.00. [Link]
• Theology, Psychoanalysis, and Trauma, by Marcus Pound. Was £25.00, now £5.00. [Link]
• Tayloring Reformed Epistemology: Charles Taylor, Alvin Plantinga, and the de jure challenge to Christian Belief, by Deane-Peter Baker. Was £19.99, now £8.00. [Link]
• Christ, History, and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission, by Nathan R. Kerr. Was £35.00, now £15.00. [Link]

“Cunningham is not shy about pulling the ontological pants of materialism down to its ankles. He supplies an unremitting attack on the scientific and philosophical views of Dawkins and his ilk. The level of scientific sophistication on display is remarkable for a theologian; his reading and his ruminations have been extensive, more than sufficient to provide a devastating critique of the narrative stories and metaphors of Dawkins not just with respect to religion, but also with respect to evolutionary biology itself.”

Michael Rose, ‘Gods and Darwinists,’ The Quarterly Review of Biology 86, no. 4 (December 2011): 323-328. [Link]

Diagonal Advance: Perfection in Christian Theology

Publication Description:

Diagonal Advance argues for a radical revision of Christian thinking about the purpose of human life. Perfection is neither a vertical drop from the divine, nor a horizontal progression through social and personal development. Rather, it is a diagonal advance into the divine perfections through the perfecting of material culture. This vision is, the author argues, in line with the account of human ends that emerges from the Greek and Hebrew background, in the New Testament and in the classical Christian era. When the late medieval and early modern writers of theology and literature begin to name the problem differently, the classical vision is distorted, so that human perfecting and the divine perfections have little to do with one another. Through a critical engagement with contemporary texts, concluding with a dramatic revision of the Prometheus mythology, the author argues for a renewed diagonalizing of Christian perfection.

Blurbs:

‘I am a Methodist which means I have never trusted the language of perfection. So I am in Anthony Baker’s debt for reclaiming the notion of perfection. This is a wonderful book that is not only sound scholarship but is morally profound.’ —Stanley Hauerwas

‘Perfection is a crucial theme in the New Testament which lurks in much patristic thinking and was first foregrounded by the Wesley brothers. Within their tradition, and yet transcending it, Tony Baker provides us with the most sophisticated theological treatment of this topic to date – ranging over the Bible, Philosophy, Literature and Cultural History with a distinctive elan. He shows in particular how the loss of the metaphysics of participation was equally a loss of a sense of our relationship with God as a progress in perfection which was as much vertical as it was horizontal. This book is as close to perfection as one could hope for.’ —Catherine Pickstock, University of Cambridge

‘Is this a book or a symphony? Both. Does it concern theology or human existence? Both. In four movements, this book traces the emergence and deformations of the concept of perfection. Is perfection the plenitude of finite existence? The never-satisfied desire for the infinite? The imitation of God? Divinisation? Movement in repose? Without an empty nostalgia, A. Baker offers a critical history of Christian representations of perfection. He shows how the oppositions between nature and supernature, between the Bible and Hellenism, have been surmounted, but also how they have given place to a still provisional synthesis. He covers diverse “styles”–of concepts, which are also forms of life. He even offers his own style, in opposing the “distortions” to a more sound concept of perfection. A book immense with regard to stakes, dense with regard to the current mobilised culture. A book of supple and full construction, which will reward both the patient and the impatient.’ —Olivier Boulnois, Directeur d’Etudes, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes

And coming soon in the Interventions series through Eerdmans are the following two publications:

Metaphysics: The Creation of Hierarchy, by Adrian Pabst, with a foreword by John Milbank. [Pre-order UK | Pre-order US]

This comprehensive and detailed study of individuation reveals the theological nature of metaphysics. Adrian Pabst argues that ancient and modern conceptions of “being” — or individual substance — fail to account for the ontological relations that bind beings to each other and to God, their source. On the basis of a genealogical account of rival theories of creation and individuation from Plato to ‘postmodernism,’ Pabst proposes that the Christian Neo-Platonic fusion of biblical revelation with Greco-Roman philosophy fulfills and surpasses all other ontologies and conceptions of individuality.

“This book does nothing less than to set new standards in combining philosophical with political theology. Pabst’s argument about rationality has the potential to change debates in philosophy, politics, and religion.” (from the foreword)

Words of Christ, by Michel Henry, translated by Christina M. Gschwandtner, with a foreword by Jean-Yves Lacoste and an introduction by Karl Hefty. [Pre-Order UK | Pre-Order US]

In Words of Christ Michel Henry, an important French philosopher, asks how Christ can be both human and divine. Also, how can we as humans experience Christ’s humanity and divinity through his words? Are we able to recognize certain experiences or words as divine? How do divine words differ from human words? Henry approaches these questions from the angle of material phenomenology — the study of reality as we experience it. Startling possibilities — and further questions — emerge as Henry systematically explores these enigmas. For example, do divine phenomena possess their own kind of phenomenality, and do we have access to this other realm? Henry’s perspective on Christ’s words — here translated into English for the first time — is highly original and interdisciplinary in nature, in keeping with other volumes of the Interventions series. This was Henry’s last published work before his death in 2002.

Publication description:

This collection of essays outlines a new political economy. Twenty years after the demise of Soviet communism, the global recession into which free-market capitalism has plunged the world economy provides a unique opportunity to chart an alternative path. Both the left-wing adulation of centralized statism and the right-wing fetishization of market liberalism are part of a secular logic that is collapsing under the weight of its own inner contradictions. It is surely no coincidence that the crisis of global capitalism occurs at the same time as the crisis of secular modernity.

Building on the tradition of Catholic social teaching since the groundbreaking encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate is the most radical intervention in contemporary debates on the future of economics, politics, and society. Benedict outlines a Catholic “third way” that combines strict limits on state and market power with a civil economy centered on mutualist businesses, cooperatives, credit unions, and other reciprocal arrangements. His call for a civil economy also represents a radical ”middle” position between an exclusively religious and a strictly secular perspective. Thus, Benedict’s vision for an alternative political economy resonates with people of all faiths and none.

Table of Contents:

PART I: Christianity and Capitalism

1 A Real Third Way, John Milbank
2 A Tale of a Duck-Billed Platypus Called Benedict and His Gold and Red Crayons, Tracey Rowland

PART II: Christianity and Socialism

3 “We Communists of the Old School”, Eugene McCarraher
4 Beyond the Culture of Cutthroat Competition, Mark and Louise Zwick

PART III: Civil and Political Economy

5 Fraternity, Gift, and Reciprocity in Caritas in Veritate, Stefano Zamagni
6 The Paradoxical Nature of the Good, Adrian Pabst

PART IV: Caritas in Veritate and Traditions of Christian Social Teaching

7 The Anthropological Unity of Caritas in Veritate, David L. Schindler
8 Integralism and Gift Exchange in the Anglican Social Tradition, or Avoiding Niebuhr in Ecclesiastical Drag, John Hughes

PART V: Distributism and Alternative Economies

9 Common Life, Jon Cruddas MP and Jonathan Rutherford
10 Equity and Equilibrium, John Médaille

Endorsements:

“The current economic crisis is in fact a deeper crisis of cultural imagination and civilizational ethics. This collection of bold and provocative readings of Caritas in Veritate displays an intellectual verve unafraid to think beyond the fragmentations of modernity. By fully exploring the ontology of communion and gift, I believe this collection bears witness to the kind of daring discourse Pope Benedict XVI wanted to ignite. What is more, I believe the essays exemplify the kind of fruitful dialogue needed, not only for an adequate response to the crisis of Western civilization, but also to realize an economy that would facilitate the flourishing of the human heart. Adrian Pabst is to be commended for realizing this collection of excellent essays.”
-Javier Martínez Fernández, Archbishop of Granada

“Anyone interested in finding a ‘third way’ between today’s barely regulated capitalism and state socialism will find much to reward them in this collection. It goes beyond the rigid limitations of contemporary liberal thinking in order to explore some of the crucial resources, intellectual and cultural, that we need to devise a new politics of the Left.”
-Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age

“Caritas in Veritate is the first papal encyclical that addresses issues immediately relevant for economic and social theory. It also embodies challenges that concern directly the academic community of economists, in particular the nature and scope of the firm, the market and profit. The reading of this important book is the best way for engaging with these themes and discovering the significance of Caritas in Veritate in the present theoretical debate.”
-Luigino Bruni, co-author of Civil Economy

“This collection of essays addresses a key challenge for anyone trying to think clearly about economics: how to dig out from under the intellectual rubble created by the failure of conventional economic theories. The proposed answers vary but there is a common and welcome effort to think philosophically, about both the foundations of the economic order and the detailed and failed arrangements of finance. Particularly serious attention is paid to the great challenge posed by Pope Benedict XVI-to integrate ‘quotas of gratuitousness and communion’ into economic activity. This book’s breadth of views and the depth of analysis make it a rewarding read for anyone trying to understand and improve the modern industrial economy.”
-Edward Hadas, author of Human Goods, Economic Evils

“This book provides a compelling intellectual engagement with the vision of an alternative civil economy proposed in Caritas in Veritate. The diverse essays collected in this book marshal Anglican and Roman Catholic social thought in service of a bold account of a progressive moral economy rooted in a transcendent common good. It will be essential reading for those interested in the increasingly cogent argument that religious reason is an indispensable resource for the remoralizing of economic life.”
-Anna Rowlands, co-editor of Pathways to the Public Square

[Purchase: Wipf & Stock | Amazon US |  Amazon UK]

‘[This book] is nothing short of magnifi­cent. Every now and then Provi­dence sends a book to save the day. Darwin’s Pious Idea may be one of those books.’

Link. [Subscription required]

Description:

This book reflects the wide-spread belief that the twenty-first century is evolving in a significantly different way to the twentieth, which witnessed the advance of human rationality and technological progress, including urbanisation, and called into question the public and cultural significance of religion. In this century, by contrast, religion, faith communities and spiritual values have returned to the centre of public life, especially public policy, governance, and social identity. Rapidly diversifying urban locations are the best places to witness the emergence of new spaces in which religions and spiritual traditions are creating both new alliances but also bifurcations with secular sectors. Postsecular Cities examines how the built environment reflects these trends. Recognizing that the ‘turn to the postsecular’ is a contested and multifaceted trend, the authors offer a vigorous, open but structured dialogue between theory and practice, but even more excitingly, between the disciplines of human geography and theology. Both disciplines reflect on this powerful but enigmatic force shaping our urban humanity. This unique volume offers the first insight into these interdisciplinary and challenging debates.

Blurb:

‘Led by two influential scholars, this volume brings together a rich diversity of contributions from theology and social science disciplines to elaborate on the postsecular city, including its expressions and limitations. The volume promises to stimulate further dialogue about the simultaneous rapprochement and bifurcation between the sacred and the secular in the city. Consequently, both advocates and critics of the “postsecular city” will be challenged to think more deeply about the place of religion, faith and spirituality in the contemporary city.’ — Professor Lily Kong, National University of Singapore

The Saving Lie: Harold Bloom and Deconstruction, by Agata Bielik-Robson [UK | US]

Description:

Harold Bloom is our greatest living literary critic. His wide-ranging critical writings have plumbed the depths of Romanticism (The Visionary Company), explored the anxiety caused by the influence of one generation of poets on another (Agon, The Anxiety of Influence), wrestled with the idea of a literary canon (The Western Canon), introduced Jacques Derrida and deconstruction to America (Deconstruction and Criticism), and explored the relationship between religion, especially Judaism, and literature (Kabbalah and Criticism, The Book of J). Bloom is indeed a party of one, a truly strong poet of his own mode of religious-literary criticism, who, in a typically Emersonian manner, makes his own circumstances and sheds influences by incorporating them into his idiosyncratic theory. In this unprecedented full-length study on Harold Bloom, Agata Bielik-Robson explores the many facets of Bloom’s critical writings and career. In his work, she argues, Bloom draws on a variety of disparate traditions—Judaism, gnosis, Romanticism, American pragmatism, and Freudianism, but also, especially recently, Victorian aestheticism—that comprise a dialectical, difficult whole in a constant quarrel with itself. Yet, this is precisely the image of “life-in-antithesis,” which constitutes Bloom’s highest speculative achievement, she observes. The Saving Lie brings all these “Blooms” together and, despite their own tendencies toward dissociation, lets them speak unisono: in one almost harmonious voice that will clearly utter the principles of a new speculative position—Bloom’s antithetical vitalism. This study of Bloom and his contributions will not soon be surpassed.

The Catholic Church and the World Religions: A Theological and Historical Account: A Theological and Phenomenological Account, edited by Gavin D’Costa [UK | US]

Description:

This title is an introduction to the World’s major religions from a Catholic Perspective. There is no single standard textbook that outlines the official Roman Catholic theological position in relation to other religions which then explicates this orientation theologically and phenomenologically in relation to the four main religions of the world and the flowering of new religious movements in the west. The present project will cover this serious gap in the literature. After outlining the teaching of Vatican II and the magisterium since then (chapter one), each subsequent chapter will be divided equally between an exposition of the history and features of the religion or movement being studied; and a serious theological analysis of these features, showing how these religions do have elements in common, as well as how they differ in fundamental ways from Catholicism.

Blurbs:

‘This is an extraordinary book – intellectually rigorous but not turgid, historically informed but not tedious, theologically astute but not doctrinally reified. Written by Catholics, and ostensibly for Catholics, the book’s relevance extends well beyond the Roman Catholic Church to believers everywhere. The parodying so commonly found in Christian writing about other religions has been avoided in this book. Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and New Age devotees will without chagrin recognize themselves. With both religion and its stereotyping playing such a fractious role in our globalized world, this book will serve as a trustworthy guide for readers who want their engagement with the religious other to be marked by wisdom and integrity.’ — Jonathan Bonk, Overseas Ministries Study Center, New Haven CT, USA

‘Balanced, clear, and committed to conveying what the Church – above all at Vatican II – teaches on world religions, this book should find its way into classrooms across the globe. In terms of contemporary relevance, its chapters on Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism make it necessary reading. Highly recommended!’ — Matthew Levering, University of Dayton, OH, USA.

‘Pope Benedict XVI has called for a peaceful and reasoned dialogue of the great world religions. Such a dialogue acknowledges the truth of religious faith within contexts of human quests for justice and wisdom, rather than contexts of domination and repression. The Catholic Church and the World Religions is an important introduction to the Catholic Church’s efforts to promote such dialogues with the great world religions of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.’ — Rev. Matthew L. Lamb, Ave Maria University, FL, USA.

The Musical Structure of Plato’s Dialogues, by J. B. Kennedy [UK | US]

Description:

J. B. Kennedy presents a radical interpretation of the dialogues of Plato. In a detailed and systematic examination of the Symposium and Euthyphro, Kennedy reveals an underlying musical structure to Plato’s dialogues, one that uses symbols to encode Pythagorean doctrines. The followers of Pythagoras famously thought that the cosmos had a hidden musical structure and that wise philosophers would be able to hear this “harmony of the spheres”. Kennedy, an expert in Pythagorean mathematics and music theory, shows that Plato gave his dialogues a similar, hidden musical structure. His analysis reveals that each dialogue can be divided into twelve parts and that at each twelfth a symbol marks a musical note. These passages are shown to be relatively harmonious or dissonant, and so traverse the ups and downs of a known musical scale. Kennedy’s findings are shown to chime with many of Plato s ancient followers who insisted that Plato used symbols to conceal his own views within the dialogues.

Eros at the Banquet: Reviewing Greek with Plato’s Symposium, by Louise H. Pratt [UK | US]

Description:

After studying ancient Greek for a year, students often become discouraged when presented with unabridged classical texts that offer only minimal supportive apparatus.

In welcome contrast, this intermediate-level textbook reinforces the first-year lessons and enables students to read Plato s Symposium, one of the most engaging works in Attic Greek, the dialect taught in most first-year courses. To meet the needs of students who are reading extended passages of challenging Greek for the first time, Louise Pratt, a classical scholar with more than twenty years teaching experience, has lightly condensed the early readings, supplementing them with review exercises and new vocabulary. She includes the remaining portion of the dialogue in its entirety to give students the experience of reading Plato s imaginative dialogue in all its richness. All readings are glossed, with explanatory notes appearing on the same page as the relevant texts.

Enlivened by twenty-five illustrations, Eros at the Banquet also features an introduction explaining the Symposium s historical and philosophical significance, a comprehensive glossary, and an up-to-date bibliography. Instructors may also supplement this volume with Pratt s The Essentials of Greek Grammar: A Reference for Intermediate Readers of Attic Greek, which includes many examples from the Symposium.

Blurb:

‘This coherent and thoughtful book addresses the dearth of intermediate materials for Greek students and teachers. In a very teacherly way, evidencing many years in the classroom and great concern for students, the author has offered an important solution to this deficiency.’ –Drew Keller, author of Learn to Read Latin

Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish & Christian Literature, by Holger M. Zellentin [UK | US]

Description:

Holger M. Zellentin seeks to probe how far the classical rabbis took their literary playfulness in order to advance their religious and societal causes. Building on the literary approaches to rabbinic Judaism of the past decades, this work considers the rabbis’ attitudes towards their Byzantine and Sassanian surroundings. The author examines how the Talmud and Midrash in Palestine and Persia repeat previous texts with comical difference, oscillating between reverence and satire. The result shows rabbinic society and its literature engaging in the great debates of their times, commenting on issues such as pedagogy, abstinence, dream interpretation, inheritance law, ritual purity, and Christian triumphalism and asceticism. In constant conversation with the Bible, the rabbis reveal themselves as capable of critically reinventing the Jewish tradition, as well as of playfully engaging a few Gospel passages favoured by their Christian interlocutors. Rabbinic parodies cast deviant insiders as tantamount to outsiders and explore the limits of acculturation within the Jewish tradition – in the Talmud, even parody itself comes under parodic scrutiny.

“An amazing work of bridge-building that demonstrates convincingly that both Ultra-Darwinists and hard-core Creationists are “intellectually vacuous” in their respectively strident points of view. This sweeping interdisciplinary study is a must read for thinking people of faith who would like to understand the evolutionary process as not opposed to a theological vision of humanity, but as mutually enriching.”

See the press release here.

The ABC Religion website is hosting a five-part Symposium on Conor Cunningham’s Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong. Please follow the links below for each part.

• Part 1, “Mind all the Way Down: On Darwin’s Pious Idea,” by Rowan Williams
• Part 2, by Peter James Causton
• Part 3, by Kent Dunnington
• Part 4, by Phil Dowe
• Part 5, by Paul Tyson

“Ultra-Darwinism and Creation’s Sabbath: An Interview with Conor Cunningham”

• Part I
• Part II

In his recently publishedDarwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get it Wrong, Conor Cunningham, the Co-Director of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, surveys the vast expanse of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, philosophy of mind, naturalism, and intelligent design and skillfully argues against the reductive logics of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and their creationists interlocutors. By engaging the actual scientific and philosophical claims of Dawkins and Dennett (leaving their theological claims to be rebutted by others) and recasting the science-versus-religion debate as one that only makes sense within a philosophical framework, Cunningham demonstrates that the entire debate ultimately requires a theological framework of creation that is held together in second person of the Trinity. Darwin’s Pious Idea has already received critical acclaim from a wide variety of scholars in different fields such as Charles Taylor, Michel Morange (the atheist biochemist from Ecole normale supérieure), Ian Tattersall (the agnostic curator of the American Museum of Natural History, New York), Louis Dupré, and many others. Here, in Part I of this interview, Cunningham discusses Dennett’s universal acid, naturalism, and the banishment of God.

This news entry will be updated with links to the subsequent parts once they have been posted over at Biologos.

1. The Biologos Foundation and “Darwin’s Pious Idea”, Part 1
2. The Biologos Foundation and “Darwin’s Pious Idea”, Part 2
3. The Biologos Foundation and “Darwin’s Pious Idea”, Part 3
4. The Biologos Foundation and “Darwin’s Pious Idea”, Part 4
5. The Biologos Foundation and “Darwin’s Pious Idea”, Part 5
6. The Biologos Foundation and “Darwin’s Pious Idea”, Part 6

There are, always, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in one’s philosophy—and in these essays Charles Taylor turns to those things not fully imagined or avenues not wholly explored in his epochal A Secular Age. Here Taylor talks in detail about thinkers who are his allies and interlocutors, such as Iris Murdoch, Alasdair MacIntyre, Robert Brandom, and Paul Celan. He offers major contributions to social theory, expanding on the issues of nationalism, democratic exclusionism, religious mobilizations, and modernity. And he delves even more deeply into themes taken up in A Secular Age: the continuity of religion from the past into the future; the nature of the secular; the folly of hoping to live by “reason alone”; the perils of moralism. He also speculates on how irrationality emerges from the heart of rationality itself, and why violence breaks out again and again.

In A Secular Age, Taylor more evidently foregrounded his Catholic faith, and there are several essays here that further explore that faith. Overall, this is a hopeful book, showing how, while acknowledging the force of religion and the persistence of violence and folly, we nonetheless have the power to move forward once we have given up the brittle pretensions of a narrow rationalism.

The description from the publisher reads:

In La mostruosità di Cristo il filosofo Slavoj Žižek e il teologo John Milbank si confrontano in un testa a testa per tre round. Il filosofo dà avvio al confronto, il teologo risponde, e poi ancora Žižek: ognuno utilizzando un arsenale di mosse per avvalorare la propria posizione.

Il loro dibattito riguarda niente meno che la religione, la laicità, la speranza politica alla luce dell’evento mostruoso: Dio che si fa uomo.

Il lettore si trova avvinto nell’incontro dialettico tra un ateo e un teologo circa il significato della teologia, di Cristo, della Chiesa, dell’universalità, dei fondamenti stessi della logica.

Order the book from Amazon.it (here) or direction from the publisher (here).

Alternatively, this flyer may be printed out and mailed in. [PDF]

Advance praise for the book can be found here. [PDF]

You may also find links to Conor Cunningham’s BBC documentary ‘Did Darwin Kill God?’ (hosted on Youtube) here on the Eerdmans product page for Darwin’s Pious Idea.

Orders must be in by 15 January 2011 to take advantage of the promotion.

Click here to order from Eerdmans (Amazon links: UK | US).

Also available:

• See the blurbs from Justin L. Barrett, John Hedley Brooke, David Depew, William Desmond, Louis Dupré, David Fergusson, David Bentley Hart, Stanley Hauerwas, John F. Haught, David N. Livingstone, E. J. Lowe, Michel Morange, Michael S. Northcott, Dan Robinson, Holmes Rolston III, Robert Sokolowki, Ken Surin, Ian Tattersall, Charles Taylor, Slavoj Žižek, Archbishop Joseph Źyciński, and Tracey Rowland
• Read the introduction to the book [PDF]
• See Conor Cunningham’s Author Page on Facebook with links to audio, video, and other resources related to Darwin’s Pious Idea

Théologie et théorie sociale : Au-delà de la raison séculière , Collection Théologiques (Cerf, 2010). 730pp.

An extract of the translation can be read here.

• Official publishers page: Les Éditions du Cerf
• Buy from Amazon.co.uk
• Buy from Amazon.fr

Are there moments in Christian history when non-Christians in some ways understand Christianity better than Christians? The church fathers and mothers often did especially acute theology because they could remember well what it meant to inhabit non-Christian philosophies and religions. The Hindu Gandhi saw and acted on something in Christ’s witness that many confessing Christians overlooked. Today some leading secular thinkers have turned to a surprising source: the apostle Paul. The rediscovery of Paul by atheistic or agnostic European philosophers is one of the most striking recent developments in philosophy–and certainly one of keen interest to the church.

Bringing together Radical Orthodox theologian John Milbank, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and Creston Davis, who has been a student of both, this book reflects on Paul’s new moment in secular philosophy. In a debate format, Žižek brings Marxist and post-Marxist ideas into a discussion with Milbank about the influence of Paul. The book also includes a contribution from Catherine Pickstock [from the publisher's description].

Click here to purchase.