The Logic of Incarnation

James K. A. Smith's Critique of Postmodern Religion

Neal DeRoo, Brian Lightbody, DeRoo, Lightbody

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9781556359699
  9781498252126
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630877385
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

With his Logic of Incarnation, James K. A. Smith has provided a compelling critique of the universalizing tendencies in some strands of postmodern philosophy of religion. A truly postmodern account of religion must take seriously the preference for particularity first evidenced in the Christian account of the incarnation of God. Moving beyond the urge to universalize, which characterizes modern thought, Smith argues that it is only by taking seriously particular differences--historical, religious, and doctrinal--that we can be authentically religious and authentically postmodern. Smith remains hugely influential in both academic discourse and church movements. This book is the first organized attempt to bring both of these aspects of Smith's work into conversation with each other and with him. With articles from an internationally respected group of philosophers, theologians, pastors, and laypeople, the entire range of Smith's considerable influence is represented here. Discussing questions of embodiment, eschatology, inter-religious dialogue, dogma, and difference, this book opens all the most relevant issues in postmodern religious life to a unique and penetrating critique.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• About the Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One: Critiquing Postmodernism
• Chapter 1: The Logic of Incarnation
• Chapter 2: Determined to Reveal
• Part Two: Receiving the (Postmodern) Tradition
• Chapter 3: On Universality and Christian Particularism in a Postmodern Trio
• Chapter 4: Undecidability and Indecidability
• Chapter 5: Tasting the Inscape of Haecceity with Hopkins, the Franciscan Philosophers, Nietzsche, and Derrida
• Chapter 6: Defending a Universalizable Culture of Particularities (With and Against James K. A. Smith)
• Part Three: Applying the Critique
• Chapter 7: Deconstructing Institutions
• Chapter 8: All (For)Giving
• Chapter 9: Saving the Whale or Dancing with Dolphins?
• Chapter 10: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Tim Horton’s
• Part Four: Critiquing the Critique: Questions Moving Forward
• Chapter 11: Is James K. A. Smith Afraid of Postmodernity?
• Chapter 12: Who’s Afraid of Theology?
• Chapter 13: Unlike Any Other Hope
• Chapter 14: Is the Grace that Calls Whale-Riders Back to Catholicism any More Amazing for Smith than for Derrida and Caputo?
• Part Five: Responding
• Chapter 15: Continuing the Conversation