Theology and Difference: The Wound of Reason

"Theology and Difference" reconceives the options confronting modern theology. Pressing beyond the ready-made enlightenment offered by the subject-object framework, Walter Lowe uncovers a number of remarkable convergences between the contemporary philosopher Jacques Derrida and the early twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth. With these convergences as clues, Lowe reads modern theology as an extended debate over a certain notion of 'finite transcendence.' He argues for a theology that would preserve the memory of suffering and the awareness of human pain. Such a theology, he believes, is required in the face of the mass violence of this century. However, awareness of such violence need not entail a belittling of human reason. The wound of reason, Lowe argues, is not simply a wound inflicted by reason. It is a wound borne by reason - provided that reason realizes itself as truly critical and dialectical.