John Franke’s lecture at ETS argued that postfoundational theology must be joined to a postcolonial attention to the “margins” of the Christian church. Though the postcolonial point was the thrust of the lecture, I was interested, given some current controversies in which Franke is embroiled, in his clarifications of postfoundationalism. (Franke ended the discussion of postcolonialism with an appeal to Levinas; I confess that since reading David Bentley Hart I cannot hear Levinas without shuddering.) He cited Nancy Murphy’s definition... Read more

One of the important themes that emerges from Lundin’s book (mentioned in the previous post) is the centrality of gratitude in thought. Heidegger, he says, “was fond of the seventeenth-century Pietist phrase Denken ist Danken , ‘to think is to thank.’” Lundin expounds the point a few pages later: “Through our participation in communities of language, we receive our very ability to comprehend anything at all . . . . without the gift of language – and without the traditions... Read more

Roger Lundin’s Culture of Interpretation (1993)is a very thoughtful discussion of the American cultural context of postmodernism. He argues persuasively for a strong continuity between the Enlightenment and Romanticism (both look to the transcedent self, albeit in different ways, as the source of truth and values), and makes the case that postmodernism is both a continuation of certain strains of romanticism and the exhaustion that has followed the collapse of what Robert Solomon called the transcendental pretense. By focusing so... Read more