Description: Recent critical theory is curiously preoccupied with the metaphors and ideas of early Christianity, especially the religion of Paul. The haunting of secular thought by the very religion it seeks to overcome may seem surprising at first, but Ward Blanton argues that this recent return by theorists to the resources of early Christianity has precedent in modern and ostensibly secularizing philosophy, from Kant to Heidegger.
Displacing Christian Origins traces the current critical engagement of Agamben, Derrida, and Zizek, among others, back into nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century philosophers of early Christianity. By comparing these crucial moments in the modern history of philosophy with exemplars of modern biblical scholarship--David Friedrich Strauss, Adolf Deissmann, and Albert Schweitzer--Blanton offers a new way for critical theory to construe the relationship between the modern past and the biblical traditions to which we seem to be drawn once again. An innovative contribution to the intellectual history of biblical exegesis, Displacing Christian Origins will promote informed and fruitful debate between religion and philosophy.Brief description: Ward Blanton is lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Glasgow.
Review Quotes:
"In establishing a series of insightful conceptual and textual links between modern historical and theoretical New Testament studies, Ward Blanton's remarkable book, Displacing Christian Origins, opens up a new possibility of post-secular critical thinking. Blanton establishes unexpected and illuminating alliances between such key historical-hermeneutical Biblicists as Schleiermacher, Deissmann, and D.F. Strauss, on the one hand, and philosophers such as Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, on the other. Blanton's thinking is informed throughout by questions of the relationship of religion and media--questions that derive in part from Heidegger, but take on compelling new forms in the light of recent work by Derrida, Weber, de Vries, Agamben, Badiou, and Zizek. Blanton's book is a rigorous project of interdisciplinary reading, attuned to the nuances that both distinguish biblical and philosophical thinking and allow for their mutual illumination."
--Kenneth Reinhard, University of California, Los Angeles