A theology without God, a God without being, a religion without religion, and an ethics against ethics--that is the daunting, postmodern challenge and the setting in which Jeff Robbins puts forth an uncompromising argument on behalf of theology. Robbins makes a plea for a theological thinking that genuinely thinks, that genuinely confronts reality--moral, cultural, and ultimate reality. Defending the possibility of a theology that is neither conservative nor reactionary nor in league with authoritarianism, Robbins leads in a lively style through the thickets of all the major debates in contemporary religious and philosophical thought. The result is a non-dogmatic, pragmatic, pluralistic theology for a postmodern age that adds an important new voice to the current dialogue.

John D. Caputo
David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy
Villanova University

This is an exciting and timely book. Though new social scientific and explanatory paradigms are making important theoretical advances in the study of religion, they too often are plagued by inadequate and outdated notions of religious discourse, and particularly of theology. Jeffrey Robbins helps us see why this is so and, by addressing incisive questions about transcendence, authority, and the meaning of secularism, he gives us the resources for a more sophisticated understanding of theology. In an interdisciplinary and informed manner, Robbins offers useful new ways to think about the boundaries between theism and atheism, academic and religious discourse. This is a book to be taken seriously not just by philosophers and theologians, but by all scholars of religion.

Tyler Roberts
Grinnell College
 

Robbins’ IN SEARCH OF A NON-DOGMATIC THEOLOGY is a provocative and original strategy for bridging the ever-widening chasm between theological and religious studies. In an era when hyperspecialization and methodological parochialism have lessened the intellectual significance of both disciplines, Robbins’ book provides a compelling and coherent roadmap for getting them back on track.

Carl Raschke
University of Denver

Is theological Thinking necessarily dogmatic?
If not, then what makes theology specifically theological?
And what value does theological thinking still have in our postmodern age of religious pluralism, philosophical skepticism, and cultural relativism?

In Search of a Non-Dogmatic Theology is Jeffrey W. Robbins’ grappling with these central questions and his attempt to give voice to what is emerging as a transformed religious and theological sensibility.  From the philosophical accounting of Nietzsche’s proclamation of the ‘death of God,’ to the cultural ramifications of postmodern pluralism, to the global rise of religious fundamentalism, and to the more recent ‘theological turn’ of phenomenology, the contemporary conditions of theological possibility have been unalterably marked. 

 This book is Robbins’ invitation to the reader to join him in this timely search for a more relevant and less dogmatic form of theological thinking, one that takes as its starting point not the assurances offered by a blindly accepted faith, but rather the concrete reality of diverging religious traditions and conflicting interests.  The non-dogmatic theology he proposes is a post-critical theology that is simultaneously an affirmation of the traditional theological pattern of ‘faith seeking understanding,’ and a radical recasting of that tradition by the realization of the changing structure of faith and the changing fundaments of intelligibility.

 It is a search that constructively engages the theological legacy of Continental philosophical thinkers such as Heidegger, Levinas, Deleuze, and Derrida, cultural theorists such as Žižek and Kristeva, and contemporary theologians and philosophers of religion such as Barth, Marion, Winquist, and Caputo.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments    ix

Introduction    xiii

Part One: Re-Placing Theology

• Chapter One: The Return of Religion    3

• Chapter Two: Theology in the Ruins    21

• Chapter Three: Theology without Religion    41

Part Two: The Step Back

• Chapter Four: Heidegger's Step Back    57

• Chapter Five: Ontotheology: Complications    71

• Chapter Six: The Theological Turn    87

Part Three: Theology at the Margins

• Chapter Seven: The Enlightenment at the Margins    107

• Chapter Eight: The Ethics of Ethics    129

• Chapter Nine: The Law of Religion    147

Conclusion        163

Endnotes        175

Index        203

Jeffrey W. Robbins is Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College and Associate Editor of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory.  He is also he author of Between Faith and Thought: an essay on the ontotheological condition (2003).

published by

 The Davies Group, Publishers
P.O. Box 44040
Aurora, CO  80044-4140