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The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology (Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Religion)

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This 2001 collection is an exceptionally helpful way to begin to get acquainted with an area that is quite difficult to get a "handle" on. With contributors such as Thomas J.J. Altizer, Graham Ward, John Milbank, John Caputo, Catherine Pickstock, Stanley Hauerwas, Edith Wyschogrod, and Don Cupitt, writing essays in categories such as "Aesthetics," "Ethics," "Gender," "Hermeneutics," "Phenomenology," "Heideggerians," and "Derrideans," the volume provides a very broad overview of what is going on in contemporary theology.

Here are some quotations from the book:

"I call this 'hole' the implosion of secularism and it is the many consequences of that implosion that postmodernism explores and postmodernity expresses. The implosion of the secular has also facilitated a new return to the theological and a new emphasis upon reenchantment..." (Pg. xv)

"Present-day culture in the West, therefore, cannot be understood without theology. Post-modern theology is the study of this presence of the past within the present." (Pg. 4)

"Here, therefore, in the eucharist, we see the only possible paradigm for gift and therefore for ethics, not as one-way sacrifice but as total surrender for rereception." (Pg. 128)

"Postmodernism, in short, is the outworking of mistakes in Christian theology correlative to the attempt to make Christianity 'true' apart from faithful witness." (Pg. 147)

"In a word, God is CARNAL: through the Spirit, God incarnates Godself within the natural order in order to nurture and protect every form of life." (Pg. 211)

"A religious revelation is an encounter with ultimate reality. But it always occurs at a given time and place, within the frameworks of understanding built up by previous tradition." (Pg. 419)

"In our view, Jesus did NOT come to earth 'to found the church.' He was a prophet of the kingdom of God, in the hope of which he lived and died. But the kingdom was delayed, and after his death the church came into being as a stopgap." (Pg. 487)

"The Postmodern project, like the American experience itself, is administered by the sign of freedom. But it is a TENSIVE freedom."