Interpreting the Postmodern: Responses to Radical Orthodoxy

Modernity and postmodernity are intensely contested interpretive spaces. In a time, or mood, that many in the industrialized world consider to be "postmodern," what should the contribution of Christian theology be? What are its chances, its challenges, its hopes and limits? This volume represents a collection of approaches by various authors whose work engages the contemporary theological space--modern, postmodern, and otherwise--in ways that are in critical conversation with "radical orthodoxy," but suggesting alternative approaches and readings. The authors in this volume respond to "radical orthodoxy's" controversial claims about postmodern space in ways that aim to acknowledge the importance of the questions and critiques raised by Milbank, Pickstock, Ward, and others, but that proposes different responses to issue crucial to contemporary theological discourse such as: the difficulty to engage the powerful critiques offered by radical orthodoxy, while resisting the totality of vision and approach, the struggle for justice and against poverty and predatory capitalism, theologies of incarnation, theological gender constructions, participation and presence in the eucharistic liturgy, narrative legitimacy through periodization, the radical nature of ethnic and cultural Otherness, reciprocity and redemption, immanence and transcendence, feminist philosophy of religion, a Jewish feminist re-enchantment of the world, theological eurocentrism, theologies of gift and economic exchange, and constructive theology.

Marion Grau is Professor of Systematic Theology, Ecumenism and Missiology at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Norway.