•  818
    Sexuality and Christian Tradition
    Journal of Religious Ethics 43 (1): 122-145. 2015.
    This essay aims to clarify the debate over same-sex unions by comparing it to the fourth-century conflict concerning the nature of Jesus Christ. Although some suppose that the council of Nicaea reiterated what Christians had always believed, the Nicene theology championed by Athanasius was a dramatic innovation that only won out through protracted struggle. Similarly, despite the widespread assumption that Christian tradition univocally condemns homosexuality, the concept of sexuality is a ninet…Read more
  •  638
    Derrida and the Danger of Religion
    Journal of the American Academy of Religion 1 (86): 42-61. 2018.
    This paper argues that Jacques Derrida provides a compelling rebuttal to a secularism that seeks to exclude religion from the public sphere. Political theorists such as Mark Lilla claim that religion is a source of violence, and so they conclude that religion and politics should be strictly separated. In my reading, Derrida’s work entails that a secularism of this kind is both impossible (because religion remains influential in the wake of secularization) and unnecessary …Read more
  •  539
    Foucault, Gary Becker and the Critique of Neoliberalism
    Theory, Culture and Society 33 (5): 3-21. 2016.
    Although Foucault’s 1979 lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics promised to treat the theme of biopolitics, the course deals at length with neoliberalism while mentioning biopolitics hardly at all. Some scholars account for this elision by claiming that Foucault sympathized with neoliberalism; I argue on the contrary that Foucault develops a penetrating critique of the neoliberal claim to preserve individual liberty. Following Foucault, I show that the Chicago economist Gary Becker exemplifies wha…Read more
  •  457
    Normative Political Theology as Intensified Critique
    Political Theology 19 (8): 669-674. 2018.
    Some theorists are suspicious of normative political theology because they believe it undermines critical rationality. In my view, these theorists neglect theological traditions that resist dogmatism through intensified critique. Because authoritarian dogma is not unique to religion, theology offers sophisticated techniques that may be useful for those who are not themselves religious. A normative theology that intensifies critique represents a valuable resource for political reflection, and not…Read more
  •  257
    Eckhart, Derrida, and The Gift of Love
    Heythrop Journal 56 (6): 1010-1021. 2015.
    This paper argues that Jacques Derrida and Meister Eckhart both construe love as a gift that is entirely free of economic exchange, and both conclude on this basis that love cannot be grasped or identified. In my reading, Eckhart and Derrida do not rule out consideration of one’s own well-being, but their accounts do entail that calculated self-protection is external to love. For this reason, they suggest, lovers should not expect to balance love against a prudential restraint: although both dem…Read more
  •  237
    This introduction argues that Derrida's analysis in “Christianity and Secularization” undercuts two influential interpretations of his work. Some readers assimilate Derrida to an indeterminate “religion without religion” while others claim that he represents a “radical atheism” that is opposed to religion as such. In contrast to the univocity of these readings, “Christianity and Secularization” clarifies Derrida’s unease and affinity with religious traditions: in the recognition that religion an…Read more
  •  233
    Christianity and Secularization
    with Jacques Derrida
    Critical Inquiry 47 (1): 138-148. 2020.
    In this essay Derrida reflects, for the first time at length, on secularization as a historical process. Whereas his earlier writings on religion focus on Jewish and Christian authors who blur the boundaries of religious belonging, this essay directly questions the categories of religion and secularization. Against this background, Derrida revisits the work of Kant, Voltaire, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, and he reflects on his own engagement with messianism, negative theology, and the khôra.
  •  214
    How hope becomes concrete
    Critical Research on Religion 9 (3): 349-352. 2021.
    Over the last year, many of us have found our hope to be tested. In this context, I think theoretical reflection can clarify the resilience required to acknowledge and address the challenges we face, both personal and political. Because that is the aim of my book, I am grateful for these responses from four readers whose work I admire. Although their comments diverge in important ways, they constellate around a question that I see as central: how does hope become concrete?
  •  202
    Theology and the Secular
    Political Theology 17 378-89. 2016.
    Sarah Coakley’s God, Sexuality, and the Self constitutes a major intervention in the debate over the role of religion in the modern world. Coakley criticizes Christians who reject modernity altogether, arguing that Christian thought should remain in conversation with secular sources. At the same time, she claims that only theology can solve difficulties of widespread concern - for instance, concerning gender and sexuality. Where this suggests that theology is still superior, I argue that the str…Read more
  •  156
    Derrida, Jacques. I. Derrida and Jewishness
    In D. Allison, V. Leppin, C. Seow, H. Spieckermann, B. D. Walfish & E. Ziolkowski (eds.), The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, Volume 6, Walter De Gruyter. 2013.
    Dictionary entry on Jacques Derrida's relation to Judaism.
  •  139
    We articulate a holistic understanding of hope, going beyond the common conceptualization of hope in terms of positive affect and cognition by considering what hope means for the underprivileged. In the recognition that hope is always situated in a particular place, we explore the perspective of the privileged and the underprivileged, clarifying how spatial contexts shape their goals for the future and their agency toward attaining these goals. Where some people experience precarity due to their…Read more
  •  125
    “Religion” and Its Other
    Philosophy Today 62 (4): 1277-1282. 2018.
    Like Lambert, my instincts are informed by Derrida, but I think Derrida points toward an alternative approach. In my reading, although Derrida complicates the concept of religion in terms that intersect with recent scholarship in religious studies. Even though he is not “religious” in any obvious sense, Derrida draws on upon Jewish and Christian texts (among others) in developing his project. In this way, he suggests that the relation between these traditions and modernity is too complex to be c…Read more
  •  55
    COVID‐19 and Religious Ethics
    with Toni Alimi, Elizabeth L. Antus, Alda Balthrop-Lewis, James F. Childress, Shannon Dunn, Ronald M. Green, Eric Gregory, Jennifer A. Herdt, Willis Jenkins, M. Cathleen Kaveny, Vincent W. Lloyd, Ping-Cheung Lo, Jonathan Malesic, Irene Oh, and Aaron Stalnaker
    Journal of Religious Ethics 48 (3): 349-387. 2020.
    The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID‐19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.
  •  36
    There is a tension in the Dionysian corpus between the resolute negativity of the Mystical Theology and Divine Names, on the one hand, and the affirmative confidence of the hierarchical treatises. Where the former works insist that God is entirely beyond created symbols, the latter speaks of "mediation" of the divine (CH XIII.4) and "a correlation between visible signs and invisible reality" (CH XV.5). Whereas the debate surrounding the Corpus tends to exaggerate one of these poles at the expens…Read more
  •  25
    Gianni Vattimo describes a postmodern Christian faith, centered upon love to the exclusion of dogma, that takes its orientation from Joachim’s practice of spiritual interpretation and his view of historical progress towards the age of the Spirit; however, he misconstrues Joachim on both counts. Whereas Vattimo supposes that Joachim's spiritual interpretation of scripture replaces literal readings, Joachim thinks they operate harmoniously together. Likewise, where Vattimo supposes that the Age of…Read more
  •  21
    review of Time and Philosophy: A History of Continental Thought. By John McCumber. Pp. x, 424, Acumen, 2011, $27.95
  •  20
    Ambivalence in Dionysius the Areopagite: The Limitations of a Liturgical Reading
    In J. Baun, A. Cameron, M. Edwards & M. Vinzent (eds.), Studia Patristica XLVIII, Peeters. 2010.
    A growing number of scholars claim that the significance of the Corpus Areopagiticum is determined by an ecclesiastical context. When Dionysius demands the negation of every symbol in The Mystical Theology, Andrew Louth and Alexander Golitzin argue that this simply refers to the Christian liturgy. Yet although this reading has helped correct the tendency to reduce the Corpus to a manual for abstracted dogmatics, it obscures Dionysius's often radical negativity. On the one hand, Dionysius somet…Read more
  •  16
    Foucault and the Practice of Patristics
    In Markus Vinzent (ed.), Studia Patristica LXII, Peeters. 2013.
    This paper argues that, among the many ways in which the work of Michel Foucault may usefully contribute to the field of Patristics, his attention to the invention of concepts represents a valuable corrective to the tendency to read ancient texts through the lens of later settlements. The temptation to construe the history of doctrine as an harmonious process of development is frequently motivated by the conviction that tradition represents a sort of continuity; in response, Foucault's method he…Read more
  •  15
    This book argues that hope is the indispensable precondition of religious practice and secular politics. Against dogmatic complacency and despairing resignation, David Newheiser argues that hope sustains commitments that remain vulnerable to disappointment. Since the discipline of hope is shared by believers and unbelievers alike, its persistence indicates that faith has a future in a secular age. Drawing on premodern theology and postmodern theory, Newheiser shows that atheism and Christianity …Read more
  •  5
    Hope in Turbulent Times: Derrida on Messianism and Rupture
    Critical Research on Religion 10 (3): 363-368. 2022.
  •  1
    Introduction to symposium on Devin Singh’s Divine Currency
    Critical Research on Religion 9 (1): 84-85. 2021.