The second volume of the comprehensive and conceptual proposal of a Post-Systematic Theology – based on a phenomenological, narrative ontology – treats the trinitarian adventure of love, from the doctrine of God up to the doctrine of sin. In the doctrine of God, the distinctions of divine revealed personhood, narrative divine unity, and the divine attributes are discussed. The ecological ways of creation treat the classic themes of creation as the imago dei, cosmology, real possibilities, angels and aliens as well as biological evolution. Humans are presented as relational processes of becoming (humaning) in ontic solidarity to the created meshwork. The chapter on hamartiology conceives human sin as a displaced becoming in this mesh. The volume concludes with a proposal for an ethos of creatureliness. Interdisciplinary considerations between theology, philosophy, and the natural sciences are critical throughout the work.

lgrsnf/Post-Systematic Theology II.pdf

Germany, Germany

Front Cover
Table of Contents
Preface
Part 5 The Divine Love Adventure
Chapter 28 Insights from the Ways of Thinking
Chapter 29 Difference in God: The Threefold Personhood of God
29.1 The Problem
29.2 The ‘Modern’ Person in Locke and Fichte
29.3 Personhood and Purposiveness in Kant and Alexander of Hales
29.4 Personhood in Boethius
29.5 Excursus: The Problems of all Predicative Concepts of a Person
29.6 The Concept of a Person in Richard of St. Victor
29.7 The Contribution of Ramon Llull
29.8 Divine Persons as Particular Whence-and-Whither Becomings
29.9 The Traditional processiones and Relation of Order
29.10 The Personhood of the Spirit
Chapter 30 Divine Narrative Unity
30.1 The Problem
30.2 The Becoming of God as an Open Event
30.3 God as Story
30.4 Divine Contingency and Chance
30.5 God is Adventure
30.5.1 The Use of Adventure by Hauerwas and Schlarb
30.5.2 A Short History of Adventure
30.5.3 ‘God is adventurous in the highest’ – Luther’s Theology of Adventure
30.5.4 The Adventure of the Becoming of God
30.5.5 The Adventure of God as Coincidence of Chance, Goodness,
and Beauty
30.6 ‘God is Love’
30.6.1 The Biblical Foundation
30.6.2 Problematic Approaches and Prejudices
30.6.3 Augustine on Divine Self-Love
30.6.4 Richard Swinburne’s Practical Modalism
30.6.5 Schleiermacher’s ‘Loving’ Relation of Causality
30.6.6 Barth’s God of Self-Love
30.6.7 The Treatment of the Problem of Love by Eberhard Jüngel
30.6.8 Jürgen Moltmann’s Antinomy of Love
30.6.9 The Contribution of E.W.Chr. Sartorius
30.6.10 The Oscillating Love of Liebner
30.6.11 Zizioulas’ Ontology of Love
30.6.12 Pannenberg’s Person-Constitutive Power of Love
30.6.13 The Contribution of Richard of St. Victor for the Understanding of
God as Love
30.7 The Unity of God as the Perfect Adventure of Love
30.7.1 Divine Love as Surrender
30.7.2 Divine Love as Identity-constitutive Relationship of Mutual Fellowship
30.7.3 Divine Love as Power
30.7.4 Divine Love as a Way
30.7.5 Divine Love as Story
30.7.6 Divine Love as Perceiving Truth and Value
30.7.7 Divine Love as Adventure
30.8 Epilogue: The Unity of God as Perichoresis and Koinonia
Chapter 31 Divine Attributes of Becoming
31.1 Problems in Talking about Divine Attributes within the Framework of a Narrative Ontology
31.2 The Problem of Simplicity of Divine Attributes
31.3 The Problem of a Dual-Series of Attributes
31.4 The Attributes of God as Love Adventure
31.4.1 God’s Perfect Surrender
31.4.2 God’s Perfect Faithfulness, Perfect Veracity, and Perfect Faith
31.4.3 God’s Contingency, Freedom, Surprise, and Advent
31.4.4 God’s Righteous Generosity
31.4.5 God’s Reliability
31.4.6 God’s Power, Ability to Act, and Capability to Suffer
31.4.7 God’s Differentiated Consciousness
31.4.8 God’s Mediality, Passivity, and Activity
31.4.9 God as Conversation
31.4.10 God’s Bodiliness, Personal Presence, and Personal Transcendence
31.4.11 God’s Eternity as God’s Time
31.4.12 God’s Infinity as Divine Space
31.4.13 Divine Truth and Goodness
31.4.14 Divine Beauty
31.4.15 Divine Dramatic Coherence
Chapter 32 A Problematic Meta-Category: Monotheism
Part 6 The Way of Creation as imago dilectionis
Chapter 33 God’s Capacity for Creation
33.1 Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence to be Claimed in Relation to Creation?
33.2 Talk of Verbs, Adverbs, Substantives, and Adjectives
33.3 Problems with Speaking about Divine Attributes in Relation to the World
33.4 The Phenomenal Basis of the Doctrine of Creation
33.5 God’s Omnipotent Love in Relation to Creation
33.6 God’s Omniscient Love in Relation to Creation
Chapter 34 Creatio ex nihilo and creatio continuata
34.1 Problems of creatio ex nihilo
34.2 Creatio ex nihilo as Rejection of an Emanentist Understanding of Creation
34.3 Creatio ex nihilo as Rejection of Worldly Presuppositions
34.4 The ‘Mystical’ Interpretation of creatio ex nihilo
34.5 Creatio as Logical Relationship of Conditionality
34.6 ‘What do you have that you have not received?’ – The Phenomenal Background of the creatio ex nihilo
34.7 ‘nec ex materia’ as Creation of Possibilities
34.8 Creatio ex nihilo and justificatio sola gratia: Nature as Grace
34.9 creatio continuata
Chapter 35 Creation as imago trinitatis
35.1 Space-Time as imago dilectionis
35.2 The Question regarding Divine Ubiquity for God’s Creation
35.3 Incarnation as the Son’s Necessity and Mediation of Creation
35.4 Concarnation as Necessity of Creation and Mediation of Creation by the Spirit
35.5 Misleading Talk of Functionalities in the Mediation of Creation
35.6 Talk of Appropriations and the Hiddenness of the Father in Creation
35.7 Imago Dilectionis: The Becoming of Creation as Meshwork and Rule of Love
35.8 Est finis creationis gloria dei?
35.9 From Humanity as imago dei to Creation as imago dei
35.10 Goodness of Creation as Process and its Integrity
Chapter 36 Creation and Cosmology
36.1 The Theological Obligation to Consider Cosmology
36.2 Main Features of Contemporary Cosmology
36.2.1 The Theoretical, Model-like Component and the Empirical Component of Cosmology
36.2.2 The Development of the Standard Model into the Current Λ-CDM-Model
36.3 A Theology of Creation’s Approach to Λ–CDM
Chapter 37 The Creation of Real Possibilities: Angels and Aliens
37.1 Transcendental Possibilistic, Providence, and Angelology
37.2 Fantasy and Imagination
37.3 Strong and Weak Immersion into the Worlds of Fantasy
37.4 Angelology as Transcendental Possibilistic
37.4.1 ‘How Many Angels Can Dance on the Point of a Needle?’ or ‘Does Angelology have a Needless Point?’
37.4.2 The Basis of an Angelology in the Perception of Truth and Value of Primary Narrativity
37.4.3 Critique of 20th and 21st Century Angelology
37.4.3.1 Barth’s Angels: A-Personal Functionality
37.4.3.2 Westermann’s Angels: Narrationless Narrations
37.4.3.3 Rahner’s Angels: High Cosmic Principles of Unity and Order
37.4.3.4 Moltmann’s Angels: Creaturely Possibilities of a Creation Open to God
37.4.3.5 Welker’s Angels: Transformative Forms of Transition
37.4.3.6 Pannenberg’s Angels: Forces of Field of the Creative Spirit
37.4.3.7 Ruster’s and Dürr’s Angels: Emergences from Systems Theory
37.4.3.8 Heidtmann’s Angels: Marginal Boundary Functions
37.4.3.9 Yong’s Angels: Natural Philosophical Emergences
37.4.3.10 Herm’s Angels: Experience of the Perception of Creatures as Messengers of the Personal Presence of God
37.4.3.11 Agamben’s Angels: An Expression of the Theistic Antinomy of Power
37.4.3.12 Serres’ Angels: Communicative References to the Reality of Love
37.5 Concrete Questions of Transcendental Possibilistic and Angelology
37.5.1 Are God’s Actions Spatiotemporally Identifiable?
37.5.2 Can there be a Third ‘something’ between Creator and Creature?
37.5.3 Can Several Independent Creations Exist?
37.5.4 Is Humanity the Crown of Creation?
37.5.5 Are (intelligible) Living beings always Bodily-relationally Living beings?
37.5.6 In which Way are Living beings Always Constituted Narratively and Dynamically?
37.5.7 Can Creatures Contain Each Other?
37.5.8 Which Trajectories Influence the Dynamics of the Created Meshwork?
37.5.9 Is a Cosmic ‘mission’ Necessary?
37.5.10 Are All Creatures in Need, or Capable, of Redemption?
37.5.11 Are Angels Personal?
37.5.12 What are Perfect Creaturely Responses to Revelation?
37.5.13 Where does Evil come from and What is it?
37.5.14 Is Evil Personal?
37.5.15 How is Evil Finally Overcome?
37.5.16 How are Creatures Involved in God’s Action?
37.5.17 How does God’s Action Show Up in the Life of Particular Life Stories?
37.5.18 Can Angels be Friends?
37.5.19 Do Communicants Disappear behind Communication?
37.5.20 Why did God Create a World with the Possibility of the Fall?
Chapter 38 Creation and Evolution
38.1 Creation, Evolution, and Phenomenology
38.2 Expectations of a Theology of Creation on a Biological Understanding of Evolution
38.3 The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis in the 21st Century
38.3.1 Neo-Darwinism at the End of the 20th Century
38.3.2 Various Candidates for an Extension of Neo-Darwinism
38.3.3 Niche Construction as Evolution or Revolution of Evolutionary Theory
38.3.4 The Philosophical Implications of the Extended Evolutionary Theory
38.3.5 Critical Questions about the Extension of Neo-Darwinism by Niche-construction
38.3.6 Open Questions and Speculations about Evolution
38.4 Theological Approaches to Evolutionary Biology
38.4.1 The Lux-mundi Theology at the End of the 19th Century
38.4.2 Teilhard de Chardin in the First Half of the 20th Century
38.4.3 Gerd Theißen in the Second Half of the 20th Century
38.4.4 Sarah Coakley in the First Quarter of the 21st Century
38.5 Are the Theological Expectations fulfilled?
38.6 Summary
Part 7 Anthropology and Hamartiology: Human Becoming in the Way of Creation
Chapter 39 The Human as imago trinitatis
39.1 Imago personalitatis
39.2 Imago dilectionis: A Phenomenology of Love
39.2.1 Is Love a Feeling?
39.2.2 Is Love a Perception of Truth and Value?
39.2.3 Is Love an Attitude?
39.2.4 Is Love an Action and Real Relation?
39.2.5 Is Love a Power?
39.2.6 Is Love a Way?
39.2.7 Is Love a Wayformational Meshwork?
39.2.8 Is Love a Narration?
39.2.9 Is Love an Adventure?
39.2.10 Personhood and Love?
39.2.11 Cosmological Love?
39.2.12 Warnings: What Love is Not
39.2.13 Is Love Possible?
39.2.14 Differences of Divine and Human Love
39.3 Imago fiducialis
39.4 Excursus: Eccentricity, Openness to the World, and Openness to God
39.5 Imago narrationis
39.6 The Constitution of the Human Person in Relation to God
39.7 Likeness as Destination?
39.8 Imago corporealitatis
39.9 Integritas and sanctitas of the Body
39.10 Medicine and Jurisprudence as Expression of Cultural Forms of Bodiliness
39.11 The Bodily Gender Difference
Chapter 40 The Bodily Mind and Bodily Souling
40.1 The Bodily Mind
40.1.1 The Externality of Meaning
40.1.2 Active Externalism: The Extended Mind
40.1.3 The Ecological Brain
40.1.4 Perceiving Truth and Value in the Body-Phenomenological Tradition
40.1.5 The Non-Reductive mens extensa
40.2 Bodily Souling
40.2.1 The Soul as Identity Principle of Human Personhood
40.2.1.1 The Particularity of the Individual Human and the Problem of Continuity
40.2.1.2 Theological Challenge to the Concept of the Soul
40.2.2 The Example of a Philosophical Challenge to the Concept of the Soul
40.2.3 Aspects of the Problem of the Soul in Modern Brain Research
40.2.3.1 The Representationalist Paradigm of the Neurosciences
40.2.3.2 The Ecological Self in the Phenomenological Paradigm
40.2.4 Can Talk of the Soul be Abandoned?
40.2.5 To Soul as a Verb
Chapter 41 Faculties of the Bodily Mind
41.1 Reason
41.2 Affectivity
41.3 Will
41.3.1 The Debate about the Will in Philosophy and the Natural Sciences
41.3.2 Luther’s Contribution to the Question of the Will
41.3.3 Beyond Luther: Contingent Will
Chapter 42 Humaning
42.1 Relativizing the Difference between Culture and Nature
42.2 To Human is a Verb
42.3 Doing in Undergoing – Acting in Suffering
42.4 From a Theory of Action to Ethics
Chapter 43 The Exhaustibility of Creatureliness
43.1 Aging, Dying, Discontinuation, and Death
43.2 Sickness, Pain, and Suffering
43.3 Loneliness
43.4 The Human as imago dei and imago creaturae
Chapter 44 Sin as Displaced Becoming
44.1 Discussions on Sin at the Beginning of the 21st Century
44.2 Aporia of the Knowledge of Sin
44.3 The peccatum originale as Displaced Becoming
44.3.1 The peccatum originale as Displaced Love
44.3.2 The peccatum originale as Displaced Perceiving Truth and Value
44.3.3 The peccatum originale as Displaced Following of Trajectories
44.4 The Phenomenality of the peccatum actuale
44.4.1 Sin as Inversion of Wayfaring into Transport
44.4.2 Sin as Perception of the Gift as Givenness
44.4.3 Sin as Decontingentization and the Reduction of Contingency
44.4.4 Sin as Mercantilization and Manipulation
44.4.5 Sin as Pseudo-personalization and Functionalization
44.4.6 Sin as Unfaithfulness, Breach of Trust, and Lack of Truthfulness
44.4.7 Sin and Reason
44.4.8 Sin and Feeling
44.4.9 Sin and Imagination
44.4.10 Sin, Will, and Desire
44.4.11 Incurvatio: Sin as Individualism and Collectivism
44.4.12 Sin and De-Dynamization
44.4.13 Sin and Digitization
44.4.14 Religion as Sin
44.4.15 The Mediality of Sin beyond actio and passio
44.4.16 Sin as False Surrender or ‘Is there a specific gendered sin?’
44.4.17 Sin, Sanctification, and Ethics
44.5 Theological Misunderstandings about Sin
44.5.1 The Confusion between ‘Sin’ and ‘Guilt of Sin’
44.5.2 Sin, Guilt, and their Subjective Experience
44.5.3 Guilty Feelings and Shame
44.5.4 The Necessity of Sin
44.5.5 The Seriousness of Sin
44.5.6 Sin and Incompleteness: Death and Suffering of Creatures
44.5.7 The Problem of the Origin of Sin
44.5.8 The Terminological Misunderstanding
44.5.9 The Moralistic Misunderstanding
44.5.10 The Ethical Misunderstanding and Genesis 3
44.5.11 The Anthropological Misunderstanding
44.6 The Consequences of Sin for God
44.6.1 The Proprietary Consequence of Sin as Annihilation of Becoming
44.6.2 The Factual Consequence of Sin as Suffering, Pain, and the ‘Repentance of God’
44.6.3 The Wrath of God
44.7 The Consequences of Sin for Human Becomings
44.7.1 Experiencing the ‘Natural’ Consequences
44.7.2 Experiencing the Wrath of God as Occlusion of Meaning
44.7.3 Experiencing the Wrath of God as Contention
Chapter 45 Postscript: On the Way to an Ethos of Creatureliness
45.1 Preservation of Creation?
45.2 From an Ethic of Creation to an Ethos of Creatureliness
45.3 Ethe of Dynamic-Relational Connectedness
45.4 Interaction with Non-Human Animals
45.5 The Concepts of Ecology and the Ecosystem
45.6 Post-Ecology
45.6.1 The Position toward the Heuristic of Fear
45.6.2 Post-ecological Trans- and Post-Humanism
45.6.3 ‘Ecological’ Posthumanism, Agential Realism, and Cyborg Feminism
45.6.4 Human Enhancement or Extended Bodiliness?
45.7 The Concept of Sustainability
45.8 Future Problems and Conflicts
Literature
Index
Back Cover

2024-08-02