Unsystematic Theology
I love and hate gathering my book lists for upcoming courses.
One the one hand, it’s great fun to research new books I haven’t yet discovered, review ones I do know well, and to anticipate all the joys and “aha moments” that will come from reading these books together as a class. On the other hand, it’s a bit excruciating for me because I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to these things–and I want to be sure I pick just the right texts. This means striking the right balance of including the pertinent content to accomplish course objectives; attending to gender, ethnic, and theological diversity; and keeping the costs and reading load manageable.
But that’s the beauty of the “recommended / not required” category. You can expand the list beyond the cost/reading load requirement and still provide a solid reading curriculum. It’s also an opportunity to offer suggestions for research assignments within the class. It’s also an opportunity to offer recommendations to people not taking the course, but who might be curious in the topic. In a short series of three posts over the next few weeks, I will offer up a list of 10 (or so) books on the topic of courses. So, here’s the first list, pertaining to the topic(s) Death, Evil, and Alienation, an elective course I’ll be teaching at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities:
Note for United students: This list is a mix of both required and recommended texts (see the website for the distinction).
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. This is a contemporary classic by the psychologist Becker, in which he unfolds his thesis that at the root of the human problem lies the paradox of the human being: that we are both mortal animals and also highly symbolic and intelligent beings who reflect on our mortality. The anxiety of our impending death (in particular, death without significance) creates an ongoing tension and has instigated the development of culture–including innumerable “immortality projects.” If we want to understand sacrifice, evil, and conflict, we need to begin by understanding the extent to which the knowledge of death impacts us existentially, psychologically, and theologically.
The Slavery of Death by Richard Beck. Beck, an empirical psychologist who integrates psychology with Christian theology, has been deeply influenced by Becker. In this, his most recent book, he appropriates Becker’s basic insights into a Christian theology of death and death anxiety. His most unique contribution is to re-evaluate the Christian doctrine of sin in relation to death, by utilizing Becker’s theory and an Eastern Orthodox theology of sin. Beck convincingly argues that death precedes and gives rise to sin, rather than the (commonly believed) other way around.
The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. This books continues the theme of Becker and death anxiety. These three authors have been enormously instrumental in formulating and disseminating Terror Management Theory (TMT), which took Becker’s theoretical approach and integrated empirical demonstrations of it, and which showed that death anxiety has a profound effect on human life, culture, and society. The book’s title is a reference to William James’ comment about the influence of the existential knowledge of our mortality on human action. This is a very recent publication which brings the reader up-to-date on TMT. For an earlier work which demonstrates the success of TMT is describing evil, see their In the Wake of 9-11: The Psychology of Terror.
Out of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil by Paul Kahn. Kahn is a professor of law and humanities at Yale Law School but in this work he explores the Genesis account of the origin of evil. He argues that an existential, phenomenological, and theological approach is needed to supplement the psychological and social approaches to evil–which left to themselves only provide a superficial understanding, not a true explanation. He takes on Hannah Arendt’s novel understanding of the “banality of evil,” offering it as an example of an insufficient attention to the existential roots of evil (again, springing forth from the paradox of humanity and of humanity’s anxiety about death).
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt. Arendt was a Jewish philosopher who was Martin Heidegger’s favorite student. This book resulted from a series of articles she published for The New Yorker, about the famous trial in Israel of the Nazi official and SS leader, Adolf Eichmann. As an observer of the trial, Arendt was mystified by the “banality” of evil represented in the dissonance between Eichmann’s insignificance as a person and the magnitude of the evil he helped perpetuate. She argued that evil, as represented in this case by Eichmann, results from an unwillingness or inability of people to think. As a result of the lack of thinking and critical reflection, they become swept up in an evil system. Arendt’s contribution was original–and was highly controversial–and is still debated today (see Kahn’s book above as an example), but it stands as an important perspective on the mysterious problem of evil that still haunts us in so many ways. See also the film Hannah Arendt, which portrays her observation of the trial, her writing of the articles, and the resulting controversy.
Alienation, by Rahel Jaeggi. My friend Silas Morgan, a scholar working at the intersection of theology and critical theory, recommended to me this work to me. Since I haven’t yet read myself–I’ll simply copy a portion of the description on Amazon: “In this book Rahel Jaeggi draws on the Hegelian philosophical tradition, phenomenological analyses grounded in modern conceptions of agency, and recent work in the analytical tradition to reconceive alienation as the absence of a meaningful relationship to oneself and others, which manifests in feelings of helplessness and the despondent acceptance of ossified social roles and expectations. A revived approach to alienation helps critical social theory engage with phenomena such as meaninglessness, isolation, and indifference. By severing alienation’s link to a problematic conception of human essence while retaining its social-philosophical content, Jaeggi provides resources for a renewed critique of social pathologies, a much-neglected concern in contemporary liberal political philosophy. Her work revisits the arguments of Rousseau, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, placing them in dialogue with Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and Charles Taylor.” Sounds good, right?
Reimagining the Human : Theological Anthropology in Response to Systemic Evil, by Eleazar S. Fernandez. Fernandez is a prominent contextual/liberation theologian, as well as a colleague of mine at United Seminary, where he is professor of constructive theology. The book is an incisive critique of “disembodied knowing,” and “universalizing and totalizing discourse,” and shows the relation between theology–as theoretical knowledge–and structures of oppression. He shows that constructive theology from the margins can be used to critique theologies that strengthen systems of oppression, and that perpetuate racism, sexism, economic oppression and ecological destruction (all of which Fernandez identifies as forms of oppression). He aims for an “integrated self’ and an “integrated society,” and rightly demonstrates how theology can contribute toward that end–by undoing the theology which undergirds oppression and alienation.
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, by Philip Zambardo. In this book, the author-a social psychologist who was responsible for the famous “Stanford Prison Experiment”–details the story of that disturbing window into human nature. In the experiment, college students were arbitrarily divided into “prisons” and “guards”; the resulting behavior of the guards against the prisoners became so disturbing that the experiment had to be called off. As the book’s description puts it, “He replaces the long-held notion of the “bad apple” with that of the “bad barrel”–the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around.”
Other works that could be included: Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety and Sickness Unto Death. Tillich’s Systematic Theology (in particular his discussion of “estrangement”). James Cone’s God of the Oppressed and The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Tatha Wiley’s Original Sin: Origins, Developments, and Contemporary Meanings. Simon Baron-Cohen’s The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty.
What would you add to the list?
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