The Western philosophical tradition and mainstream Christian theology have a common flaw: both have failed consistently to appreciate poetic truth. Plato proposed to ban Homeric poetry from his utopia, while St. Augustine wished to shun the company of poets entirely. However, 19th- and 20th-century philosophy has seen a move towards rejection of this prejudice, pioneered largely by Heidegger and Nietzsche. In this theological work, Andrew Shanks argues that the rebellion of Heidegger and Nietzsche is also deeply flawed and proposes an alternative strategy for reconciling Christian theology...

Gillian Rose (1947-1995) was a highly original, enigmatic and pugnacious thinker, whose work draws together Continental philosophy, sociology, modern / post-modern Jewish and Christian reflection on ethics. She was also, famously, a convert to Christianity, baptised into the Church of England on her deathbed, from Judaism. She has been a major influence on many contemporary thinkers, not least on the thought of the Archbishop Rowan Williams. Her writings are teasingly poetic, often forbiddingly difficult, and yet at the same time vividly accessible, at any rate through her widely praised...

Hegel is a thinker who haunts modern Christian theology. Although forever being refuted and rejected, he is also forever resurgent as an influence. Here Andrew Shanks diagnoses that rejection, very largely, as a defensive reaction against the sheer, troubling, prophetic open-mindedness of his thought. No doubt there is some justice to the charge that Hegel is religiously one-sided; in particular, as this criticism has been developed by Kierkegaard and, more recently, William Desmond. Against Desmond, however, Shanks argues that the critique itself is no less one-sided. The argument focuses...

The thought of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) haunts the world of theology. Constantly misunderstood, and often maliciously misrepresented, Hegel nevertheless will not go away. Perhaps no other thinker in Christian tradition has more radically sought to think through the requirements of perfect open-mindedness, identified as the very essence of the truly sacred. This book is not simply an interpretation of Hegel. Rather, it belongs to an attempt, so far as possible, to re-do for today something comparable to what Hegel did for his day. Divine revelation is on-going: never before has any generation...