The Turnings of Darkness and Light: Essays in Philosophical and Systematic Theology

This collection of essays, written between 1975 and 1987, covers the doctrine of analogy; the Trinity; ‘theological realism’; the problems of evil and suffering; the doctrine of God, tragedy and Christian life; the doctrine of the atonement, christology, the theology of religions, ecclesiology, discipleship and the so-called theistic ‘proofs’. The earlier essays reflect the author’s training as a philosopher in the Anglo-American ‘analytic’ tradition. Later essays have a more explicitly theological focus, and they represent an attempt to come to terms with, and to proceed beyond, this tradition. More importance is attached to issues in hermeneutics and literary and social theory in the later essays. This collection therefore tends to address a wider list of topics than is usual in works of philosophical theology, and it is also distinctive in respect of the methods and approaches used in considering these topics.

Preface; Abbreviations; 1. Creation, revelation and the analogy theory; 2. The Trinity and philosophical reflection: a study of David Brown’s The Divine Trinity; 3. ‘Is it true what they say about ‘theological realism’?’; 4. The impassibility of God and the problem of evil; 5. Theodicy?; 6. Tragedy and the soul’s conquest of evil; 7. Atonement and moral apocalypticism: William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice; 8. Atonement and christology; 9. Revelation, salvation, the uniqueness of Christ and other religions; 10. ‘Many religions and the one true faith’: an examination of Lindbeck’s chapter 3; 11. Contemptus mundi and the disenchanted world: Bonhoeffer’s ‘discipline of the secret’ and Adorno’s ‘strategy of hibernation’; 12. ‘The weight of weakness’: intratextuality and discipleship; 13. ‘Theistic arguments’ and ‘rational theism’; Notes; Index of names; Index of subjects.