A01=Gabriel Vahanian
atheism
Author_Gabriel Vahanian
Bible
binary
Cain and Abel
Category=QRAB
Category=QRVG
church
Cicero
clergy
commonwealth
communal
contingency
creation
critical theory
devotion
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Ernst Bloch
ethics
ethos
Genesis
holy
Immanuel Kant
incarnation
intimate
intratemporality
James Joyce
Ludwig Wittgenstein
mystical
philosophy
philosophy of language
priest
public discourse
religion
Richard Rorty
sacramental materialism
Saint Augustine
Saint Jerome
singular
solidarity
space
time
union
universal
Product details
- ISBN 9780813927015
- Weight: 422g
- Dimensions: 164 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Apr 2008
- Publisher: University of Virginia Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Conservative religious figures routinely warn against the dangers of secularization, just as proponents of the modern secular state decry the theocratic tendencies of religion. Both sides assume that the sacred and the secular are diametrically opposed. Gabriel Vahanian rightly calls such misbegotten assumptions into question. The problem lies elsewhere. In the light of the biblical dialectic of holiness and the secular, ""Praise of the Secular"" deftly ""vindicates"" the secular, weaving together philosophy, history, and theology in fine Derridean, yet reinforced, deconstructionist fashion.Vahanian argues that religion, far from being opposed to the secular, finds its fulfillment in the secular world. Armed with a compelling interpretation of Christ's incarnation, he claims that ""we have not grasped John's notion of the word become flesh, even of God as wording, until or unless we realize it must so expand as to demand the worlding of that very word, extending it into secular relevance."" In other words, the holy, if not the sacred, demands its own secularization.In this poetically written and profoundly life-affirming work, Vahanian reinvigorates the secular against the claims of fundamentalism, which makes the relative absolute, and against the ideology of a kind of atheism (""secularism"" in his term), which makes the absolute relative.
One of the original Death-of-God theologians, Gabriel Vahanian established his international reputation as a theologian of culture with such early books as The Death of God: The Culture of Our Post-Christian Era, Wait without Idols, and No Other God. In the four decades since the advent of the Death-of-God movement, he has continued writing, lecturing, and publishing such books as God and Utopia, Anonymous God: An Essay on Not Dreading Words, and Tillich and the New Religious Paradigm. Since 1995 he has been Professor Emeritus at the University of Strasbourg.
