Timothy Stanley

The University Of Newcastle, Australia
  • The University Of Newcastle, Australia
    School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences
    Senior Lecturer
The University Of Manchester
Alumnus, 2008
Newcastle, NSW, Australia
  •  5
    Barth's Repetition
    Modern Theology 39 (3): 455-471. 2023.
    In chapter three of volume 1.2 (§19-21) of the Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth provided one of his most thoroughgoing accounts of the concept of scripture. Throughout, he held in tension the Word of God with the frailty of the Bible’s human words. As Barth explored this two-fold aspect of the Bible, he relied upon the concept of repetition. However, what has not been fully appreciated is how repetition was at work not just in Barth’s account of the Word and letter of the text, but also the Bible’s …Read more
  •  6
    Printing Religion after the Enlightenment
    Lexington Books | Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. 2022.
    Over the course of the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, an interior private notion of religion gained wide public recognition. It then spread through settler colonial contexts around the world. It has since been criticized for its abstract, immaterial nature as well as its irrelevance to traditions beyond the European context. However, such critiques obscure the contradiction between religion’s definition as a matter of interior privacy and its public visibility in various printed publicatio…Read more
  •  4
    The Far Side of Religion
    In Stephen Gregg & Nicole Graham (eds.), Religion and Senses of Humour, Equinox Press. 2024.
    The 2003 complete collection of The Far Side memorialized both the cartoon as well as the printed newspaper context in which it was initially published. While prominent theorists of the public sphere have downplayed the importance of both humour and religion, Gary Larson persistently intertwined them in playful, thought-provoking ways. Moreover, his representation of monstrous encounters provided a theme rich with religious significance. Through it, he took on topics such as God, the gods, theod…Read more
  •  7
    Religion after Deliberative Democracy
    Routledge Press. 2022.
    Religion after Deliberative Democracy responds to gaps exposed by the case of religion in deliberative democratic theory. Religion's persistent visibility in political life has called for new solutions for healing deeply divided societies. In response, the author begins with Jeffrey Stout’s pragmatist vision of democracy before providing a series of supplements in subsequent chapters. Past legacies are refigured in a rapprochement with Jürgen Habermas’s work which is differentiated from the dist…Read more
  •  7
    A distinctive feature of the study of religion in Australia and Oceania concerns the influence of European culture. While often associated with private interiority, the European concept of religion was deeply reliant upon the materiality of printed publication practices. Prominent historians of religion have called for a more detailed evaluation of the impact of religious book forms, but little research has explored this aspect of the Australian case. Settler publications include their early Bib…Read more
  •  24
    Applying Arendt's Vita Activa to Religion
    Politics, Religion and Ideology 22 (1). 2021.
    Hannah Arendt clearly articulated a vision of political life free of religious origins as well as the dominance of religious authorities. Nonetheless, she both consistently drew upon religious ideas as well as encouraged religious actors to weigh in on political matters. To understand why, I firstly reiterate her account of intersubjective plurality articulated throughout the vita activa’s three categories of labor, work and action. Secondly, I apply the vita activa to some of Arendt’s most prom…Read more
  •  21
    The following essay begins by outlining the pragmatist link between truth claims and democratic deliberations. To this end, special attention will be paid to Jeffrey Stout’s pragmatist enfranchisement of religious citizens. Stout defends a deliberative notion of democracy that fulfills stringent criteria of inclusion and security against domination. While mitigating secular exclusivity, Stout nonetheless acknowledges the new visibility of religion in populist attempts to dominate political life …Read more
  •  10
    On Unity, Liberty and Charity
    Political Theology 20 (2): 103-111. 2019.
    Political theology has multiple provenances. One less cited is the seventeenth century irenic dictum: “and we would all embrace a mutual unity in things necessary; in things non necessary liberty; in all things charity.” While aimed at ecumenical peace, this call for mutual unity implied a deliberative context that went beyond sectarian Christian concerns. Liberty and charity were as conducive to a comprehensive church as more modest laws of toleration. My claim is that this dictum’s themes ar…Read more
  •  149
    Religion’s persistent and new visibility in political life has prompted a significant global debate. One of its key features concerns the nature and impact of secularization. This book intervenes in two ways. Firstly, it provides summative accounts of the history, culture and legal interactions that have informed Australia’s unique example. Secondly, it critically analyzes secular political theory concerning the public sphere, deliberative politics and democratic practices. The compendium aims t…Read more
  •  19
    The Pragmatist Question of Sovereignty
    Political Theology 20 (2): 139-56. 2019.
    In Democracy and Tradition, Jeffrey Stout asks Christian political theologians if they can discern God's activity in modern democratic cultures. In so doing they might "acknowledge the sovereignty of God while transcending both resentment of, and absorption into, the secular." As Stout recognizes, the question of sovereignty is relevant not only to Christian, but also Jewish and Islamic thought. However, interreligious comparisons remain undeveloped in his work. In response, the following essay …Read more
  •  31
    Faithful Codex: A Theological Account of Early Christian Books
    Heythrop Journal 57 (1): 9-28. 2016.
    This essay advances an interpretation of early Christian codex books, which goes beyond Catherine Pickstock’s critique of Jacques Derrida. Firstly, it summarizes Derrida’s deconstruction of Plato’s Phaedrus and introduces his understanding of writing as différance. Secondly, it outlines Pickstock’s After Writing in order to understand her emphasis upon the liturgical nature of platonic dialogue. It is here that an ambiguity emerges between writing and codex books in Pickstock’s account. In respo…Read more
  •  7
    Religion after Secularization in Australia (edited book)
    Palgrave MacMillan. 2015.
    Religion’s persistent and new visibility in political life has prompted a significant global debate. One of its key features concerns the nature and impact of secularization. This book intervenes in two ways. Firstly, it provides summative accounts of the history, culture and legal interactions that have informed Australia’s unique example. Secondly, it critically analyzes secular political theory concerning the public sphere, deliberative politics and democratic practices. The compendium aims…Read more
  •  18
    Writing Faith
    Fortress Press. 2017.
    This book provides a novel reevaluation of Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive account of writing. Derrida’s various essays on writing's materiality in books, scrolls, typewriters and digital displays, briefly touched on the question of religion. At times he directed his attention to the mediatic nature of Christianity. However, such comments have rarely been applied to formal aspects of religious texts. In response, this book investigates the rise of the Christian codex in its second-to-fifth-cent…Read more
  •  515
    Urban Surveillance: The Hidden Costs of Disneyland
    International Journal of the Humanities 3 (8): 117-24. 2006.
    Urban centers are being transformed into consumer tourist playgrounds made possible by dense networks of surveillance. The safety and entertainment however, come at an unseen price. One of the historical roots of surveillance can be connected to the modern information base of tracking individuals for economic and political reasons. Though its antecedents can be traced via Foucault's account of panoptic discipline which walled in society's outcasts for rehabilitation, the following essay explores…Read more
  •  19
    From Habermas to Barth and Back Again
    Journal of Church and State 48 (1): 101-126. 2006.
    What role does religious transcendence play in liberal democracies? In Jürgen Habermas’s early political theory of the bourgeois public sphere, religion was downplayed if not dismissed completely. In the past several years however, he has developed a greater interest in religion. Habermas seems to like the positive solidarity-forming effects religion can have on communities that mediate in a public sphere between private individuals and state authority. However, in light of continuing terrorist …Read more
  •  42
    Heidegger on Luther on Paul
    Dialog: A Journal of Theology 46 (1): 41-45. 2007.
    When it comes to how Heidegger understands theology, Martin Luther was instrumental in his early formulations. Heidegger's interpretation of Luther leads him to descry theology as a discipline best left unfettered by metaphysics and this attitude is carried right through Heidegger's career. By explicating Luther's influence upon Heidegger's early Freiburg lectures from 1919-1923, we can raise important questions about the nuanced way Heidegger construes Luther's theology in the hopes of inspirin…Read more
  •  19
    Redeeming the Icons
    Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 6 (2): 39-62. 2005.
    Computer technology has become an integral part of daily life. From online banking and shopping to email and instant messaging, cyberspace is increasingly woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. The mouse, the monitor and keyboard are all a part of the interfacing devices that over time become extensions of our bodies as we “surf” through graphical user interfaces. Icons patterned together in a mosaic on our screens link to infinite possibilities. We can visit museums, chat with family and …Read more
  •  609
    A Serious Man
    Bible and Critical Theory 9 (1): 27-37. 2013.
    The film A Serious Man cinematically deconstructs the life of a mid-twentieth century, mid-western American physics professor named Larry Gopnik. As it happens, Larry is up for tenure with a wife who is about to leave him, an unemployed brother who sleeps on his couch, and two self-obsessed teenage children. The film presents a Job-like theodicy in which the mysteries of quantum physics are haunted both by questions of good and evil as well as the spectre of an un-named God, reverently referred …Read more
  •  267
    Barth after Kant?
    Modern Theology 28 (3): 423-445. 2012.
    Barth consistently comments on Kant's importance for his early thought in his autobiographical sketches, letters, and even more explicitly in his 1930 lectures on Kant in his Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century. Interestingly, however, little attention has been paid to these latter lectures in the secondary literature. In part, this oversight is due to the manner in which Barth's theology has been thought to overcome Kant's influence much earlier on in his intellectual development. Hen…Read more
  •  15
    Currently, religion and globalization seem to be working towards opposite ends. As Mark Juergensmeyer has noted, while religiously invoked terrorism fragments society, the Internet, cell phones and the media industry foster the formation of an increasingly global social fabric. But religion is not a single faceted phenomenon. As much as there are prophets of violence such as Osama bin Laden, there are prophets of peace and reconciliation such as Bishop Desmond Tutu. How a civil society might be …Read more
  •  38
    Karl Barth and Martin Heidegger are doubtless two of the most important and influential thinkers of the 20th century. In this groundbreaking book Timothy Stanley investigates how the question of being developed through their respective accounts of protestant theology. Whereas Heidegger suggested a post-onto-theological pathway, Barth inverted the question of being in a thoroughgoing theological ontology. In the end, both reconfigured the relationship between philosophy and theology in ways that …Read more
  •  5
    The Early Codex Book: Recovering Its Cosmopolitan Consequences
    Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches 23 (3): 369-98. 2015.
    In 1933 Frederic Kenyon was one of the first to note the early Christian addiction to codex books. As later scholars confirmed, Christian communities reproduced their sacred literature in a way that differed from the largely scrolled Greco-Roman as well as Jewish bibliographic cultures of the first centuries of the Common Era. Book historians and scholars of biblical literature alike have developed a range of competing theories in order to better understand this peculiarity. By evaluating their …Read more
  •  30
    Bonhoeffer's Anti-Judaism
    Political Theology 17 (3): 297-305. 2016.
    On 2 July 2000, Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, deferred action on the petition to have Dietrich Bonhoeffer named a righteous gentile. My contention is that critics of this decision conceal a more pernicious difficulty that arises in Bonhoeffer's Lutheran legacy. David Nirenberg's recent Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, demonstrates the history and development of such categories with particular attention to Luther. What goes unnoticed is the ongoing o…Read more
  •  16
    There has always been a need for Christian theologians to engage contemporary philosophy in order to reflect upon their beliefs. It is in this sense that Jan-Olav Henriksen stands in a long tradition of Christian theology, only now in a postmodern mode. By exploring three categories, desire, gift and recognition, Henriksen gives his readers a series of helpful new twists on basic christological questions. In the process, however, he also points to those areas of postmodern thought which are part…Read more
  •  30
    Punch-Drunk Masculinity
    Journal of Men's Studies 14 (2): 235-42. 2006.
    Written and directed by Paul-Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love exposes the complexity and kitsch superficialities of masculine gender constructions. The following essay provides a summary of gender theory in order to uncover and better understand the film's post-patriarchal vision of masculinity.
  •  436
    Returning Barth to Anselm
    Modern Theology 24 (3): 413-437. 2008.
    This article focuses on Barth's explication of Anselm's Proslogion 2-4 in his book on Anselm and attempts to show how Anselm helped clarify for Barth the ontological nature of his own early theology, in particular what he meant by the “is” in his affirmation “God is God.” My contention is that Barth's continual pointing to Anselm's Fides Quaerens Intellectum as a vital key to his own theology should not be overlooked. In fact, I argue that only by returning Barth to Anselm in this way is it poss…Read more
  •  310
    Although the question of religion did not feature prominently in Jürgen Habermas’s early political theory, his more recent work has continuously addressed the topic. This later interest in religion is grounded in what one commentator in a volume on The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, cited as the urgent need to integrate religious voices in the workings of public reason in order to avoid social disharmony and to thwart potential violence. However, the following paper argues that the herm…Read more
  •  13
    Before Analogy: Recovering Barth's Ontological Development
    New Blackfriars 90 (1029): 577-601. 2009.
    What is the nature of Barth 's development over the 1920s? Barth himself understood this period as his “apprenticeship,” and cites his 1931 book on Anselm as a significant juncture in moving beyond this stage in his thinking. Barth 's emphasis upon both change and continuity lies at the heart of the discrepancy between two prominent interpreters of his theology, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Bruce McCormack. On the surface it appears as though their disagreement centers around Barth 's employment o…Read more