Fortress Press

Divine Empathy: A Theology of God

Divine Empathy

A Theology of God

Edward Farley (Author)

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A major work from one of today's leading theologians, Divine Empathy attempts to "think the unthinkable," how God comes forth actively and redemptively to meet the human situation.

Apologetic but not polemical, Farley's work sympathetically engages yet moves beyond both the classical tradition as well as contemporary anti-theisms in formulating a concept of God that is strikingly original, intellectually honest, and comprehensive. Farley's treatise employs the "facticity of redemption," the actual experience of freedom and empowerment, as the primordial source for our thinking about God (Part 1), God-symbols (Part 2), and God's activity (Part 3), including the figure of Jesus. Farley's astute analysis leads inexorably to a view of divine creativity and empathy that is one of the more profound religious visions of our time.
  • Publisher Fortress Press
  • Format Paperback
  • ISBN 9780800629762
  • Pages 336
  • Dimensions 6 x 9
  • Publication Date November 22, 1996

Endorsements

"What are they putting in the water at Vanderbilt? Such an excellent book! Clearly written, profoundly learned, shaped by contemporary science as well as the values of piety, it offers an original approach and profound insights into the fundamental question of God, God-symbols, and God's activity in the world."
— Elizabeth A. Johnson, Fordham University

"Divine Empathy is a full-scale constructive theology of God and God's relation to the world. It deserves a place alongside of the classics of twentieth-century theology. Farley brings his erudition to a wide range of theological issues. His constructive proposals are insightful and profound. They will mark the discussion for years to come."
— Francis Schussler Fiorenza, Harvard Divinity School

Table of Contents

    Preface

    PART ONE: THE COMING FORTH OF GOD AS GOD

  1. Approaches to the Question of God
    The Question of Ways to the Question of God
    Five Ways to the Question of God
    The Way of the Facticity of Redemption

  2. The Classical Catholic Theology of God
    Sortings
    Origins
    Elements
    Ambiguities

  3. Varieties of Anti-Theism
    Intratheistic Critiques
    Resymbolizing
    Demythologizing
    Deconstructive Anti-Theism
    Issues and Appraisals

  4. Meanings and Evidences
    The Reality of God as a Problem for Faith
    Atheism and the Problem of Meaning God
    The Anselmic Principle

  5. The Redemptive Coming Forth of God as God
    Human Desire and Eternal Horizon
    The Dynamics of Agential Evil
    The Dynamics of Agential Redemption
    Eternal Horizon as Actual
    Some Concluding Matters

    PART TWO: A SYMBOLICS OF GOD

  6. The Attribute and Anti-Attribute Traditions
    The Attribute Tradition
    The Anti-Attribute Tradition
    Is Divine Symbolics and Idolatry of God?

  7. A Path to a Symbolics of God
    Discernments and the Bespeaking of God
    Meaning and Appresentation
    Meaning and the Bespecaking of God
    Interhuman and Social Spheres and the Bespeaking God

  8. Ciphers and Qualifiers
    Ciphers
    Qualifiers

  9. Ciphers of Redemption
    Human Agency: Ciphers of Founding
    The Interhuman: The Cipher of Reconciling Love
    The Sociopolitical Cipher of Justice
    God as Spirit

  10. Ciphers of Creativity and Holiness
    Creativity
    The Holy
    Unity, Trinity, and the Symbolics of God

    PART THREE: THEOLOGY OF GOD AND WORLD

  11. Metaphysics and Its Critics
    Metaphysics in Classical and Neoclassical Theologies of God
    Metaphysics and the Theology of God
    Charges and Rejoinders

  12. On the Way to a Paradigm
    The Contributions of Anti-Theism
    The Many Faces of Metaphysics
    On Thinking God's Relation to the World
    Elements of a Paradigm
    Metaphysics and Hermeneutics: A Methodological Query

  13. Three-Dimensional World: Cosmos and Nature
    Cosmos
    Nature
    Structural Features of the Sphere of Life

  14. Three-Dimensional World: History
    Bears
    Historical Passage
    Ambiguity

  15. Manifested World
    World-For-Us
    The Being of the World
    World Constituents and Root Metaphors
    Entities, Relations, Events, and Environments

  16. World as Creation
    Theology of World
    The Genesis of World as Creation
    Creation: Unpacking a Symbol
    World Polarities: Implications of World as Creation
    Aporias and Boundaries

  17. The Vent of Jesus as Christ
    The Event of Jesus as Christ in Its Resolution: The Ecclesia
    The Event of Jesus as Christ: The Precipitating Figure

  18. The Figure of Jesus: Universality, Pathos, and Empathy
    The Universalization of the Faith of Israel
    The Pathos of the As-Such
    The Empathic Union
    Smmary and Conclusion

  19. Divine Empathy: Preliminary Considerations
    Some Guiding Principles
    Retrieving Elements from the Sources
    Divine Activity Minus "quot;Christian Cosmology"

  20. The Efficacy of the Divine Empathy
    Entities in the Making
    Efficacious Empathy
    Some Reinterpretations

    Index
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