Adam Kotsko makes the case for the continued relevance of Christian theology for contemporary intellectual life, demonstrating its vibrancy as a creative and constructive pursuit outside the church, rethinking its often rivalrous relationship with philosophy, and tracing the theological roots of modern models of...
Preface | xi
Introduction: What Is Theology? | 1
PART I : THEOLOGY BEYOND THE LIMITS OF RELIGION ALONE
Bonhoeffer on Continuity and Crisis: From Objective Spirit to Religionless Christianity | 27
Resurrection without Religion | 39
Toward a Materialist Theology: Slavoj Žižek on Thinking God beyond the Master Signifier | 50
PART II : THEOLOGY UNDER PHILOSOPHICAL CRITIQUE
The Failed Divine Performative: Reading Judith Butler’s Critique of Theology with Anselm’s On the Fall of the Devil | 63
Translation, Hospitality, and Supersession: Lamin Sannehand Jacques Derrida on the Future of Christianity | 79
Agamben the Theologian | 94
PART III : THEOLOGY AND THE GENEALOGY OF THE MODERN WORLD
The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Legitimacy | 109
Modernity’s Original Sin: Toward a Theological Genealogy of Race | 122
The Trinitarian Century: God, Governance, and Race | 143
Adam Kotsko makes the case for the continued relevance of Christian theology for contemporary intellectual life, demonstrating its vibrancy as a creative and constructive pursuit outside the church, rethinking its often rivalrous relationship with philosophy, and tracing the theological roots of modern models of governance and racial oppression.
The secular world may have thought it was done with theology, but theology was not done with it. Recent decades have seen a resurgence of religion on the social and political scene, which have driven thinkers across many disciplines to grapple with the Christian theological inheritance of the modern world.
Adam Kotsko provides a unique guide to this fraught terrain. The title essay establishes a fresh and unexpected redefinition of theology and its complex and often polemical relationship with its sister discipline of philosophy. Subsequent essays build on this framework from three different perspectives. In the first part, Kotsko demonstrates the continued vibrancy of Christian theology as a creative and constructive pursuit outside the walls of the church, showing that theological concepts can underwrite a powerful critique of the modern world. The second approaches Christian theology from the perspective of a range of contemporary philosophers, showing how philosophical thought is drawn to theology even despite itself. The concluding section is devoted to the unexpected theological roots of the modern world-system, making a case that the interplay of state and economy and the structure of modern racial oppression both build on theological patterns of thought.
Kotsko’s book ultimately shows that theology is not a scholarly game or an edifying spiritual discipline, but a world-shaping force of great power. Lives are at stake when we do theology—and if we don’t do it, someone else will.
Adam Kotsko teaches in the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College. His most recent books are Agamben’s Philosophical Trajectory and Neoliberalism’s Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital.
