The experience of the impossible churns up in our epoch whenever a collective dream turns to trauma: politically, sexually, economically, and with a certain ultimacy, ecologically. Out of an ancient theological lineage, the figure of the cloud comes to convey possibility in the face of the impossible. An old mystical nonknowing of God now hosts a current knowledge of uncertainty, of indeterminate and interdependent outcomes, possibly catastrophic. Yet the connectivity and collectivity of social movements, of the fragile, unlikely webs of an alternative notion of existence, keep materializing--a haunting hope, densely entangled, suggesting a more convivial, relational world.Catherine Keller brings process, feminist, and ecopolitical theologies into transdisciplinary conversation with continental philosophy, the quantum entanglements of a "participatory universe," and the writings of Nicholas of Cusa, Walt Whitman, A. N. Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and Judith Butler, to develop a "theopoetics of nonseparable difference." Global movements, personal embroilments, religious diversity, the inextricable relations of humans and nonhumans--these phenomena, in their unsettling togetherness, are exceeding our capacity to know and manage. By staging a series of encounters between the nonseparable and the nonknowable, Keller shows what can be born from our cloudiest entanglement.

Product Description: This book offers an original account of an ancient, alternative form of 'negative' reason which stands in antithesis to its modern instrumental form which has dominated thinking about the pursuit of human development since the Enlightenment...read more

Product Description: Augustine's way of speaking about God has been frequently deplored. It has been dismissed as too confident regarding the content of its assertions and too narrowly confined. The reception of Augustine's work appears to indicate that there was not a little truth to this view...read more

Product Description: Theology is, for the sake of its own clarity, dependent on a notion of God's hiddenness and unknowability. This is a position that over the years has been maintained by a number of theologians and philosophers. Even within the Christian tradition, which understands God as manifest in the person of Jesus, the perspective of negative or apophatic theology has remained important...read more

Product Description: The ancient doctrine of negative theology or apophasis-the attempt to describe God by speaking only of what cannot be said about the divine perfection and goodness-has taken on new life in the concern with language and its limits that preoccupies much postmodern philosophy, theology, and related disciplines...read more

Product Description: This book provides a significant and insightful exploration of the so-called 'theological turn' in contemporary French thought. The philosopher Jacques Derrida speaks of a deeply ambiguous desire to 'save the name' of God in his work on negative theology, and this desire resonates in different ways in the work of his contemporaries...read more

From the mystic s experience of nothingness and the desert, The Other Side of Nothingness offers a theology of humility sensitive to religious pluralism and to the pain of spiritual oppression. With a passionate concern for contemporary interreligious issues, Beverly J. Lanzetta provides insight into how mystical consciousness overturns claims of dogmatic truth and prepares the self to experience the radical openness of divinity. The work draws on a variety of Christian mystical texts, including those of Meister Ekhart, Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Bonaventure, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing while also making reference to Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism and the thought of contemporary social mystics such as Heschel, Gandhi, Merton, Thurman, and Day. Lanzetta illustrates how the annihilatory mystical experience draws the seeker to a place beyond a tradition s self-understanding to new dimensions of the sacred and, in some cases, to new revelatory paradigms. It is here that she provokes our thought in her statement that the divine nature is itself pluralistic, non-absolute, and continually giving birth to new traditions. By showing how nothingness functions in mystical experience as a catalyst for the liberation of our hearts, we are brought to a vision of theology that is nonviolent and inclusive of all creation." (view table of contents)

Product Description: The classical texts of Christianity and Zen Buddhism contain resources with potent appeal to contemporary spirituality. The 'apophatic', or 'negative', may offer a means to integrate the conservation of traditional religious practices and beliefs with an openness to experience beyond the limits of doctrine and of rational thought...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)