Saying the Unsayable, teaching the unteachable

I received word recently that the senior/grad student seminar I had proposed to my department chair has been approved and scheduled for spring semester 2008!

The seminar will be: THEO 5317 Recent and Contemporary Theology: Post/metaphysical theologies.

Basically, we will read, discuss, and critique texts from some of the major movements in theology influenced by the "post/metaphysical" challenge to onto-theology first articulated in the modern period by Nietzsche and Heidegger. I say "first articulated in the modern period" because I think a good argument can be made that this critique has traveled with the "onto" of "theology" since Pseudo-Dionysus & Gregory of Nyssa (i.e., the apophatic theologians of the Patristic period). We will be reading Kant, Nietzsche, Derrida, Lyotard, Tracy, Lindbeck, Milbank, Levinas, Marion, Vattimo, and several others. I promise to post a bibliography when I have it ready.

As you might imagine, this seminar will require some strenuous prep for the Ole' Prof here, so please feel free to browse the Buy Philosophy & Theology for Fr. Philip Wish List and see if the Spirit moves you to purchase a text that will help me help my students understand and undermine the destructive elements of post/metaphysical theology.

I've said before that teaching this stuff is like being the Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts! So, pray for me as well...