Beschreibung
Domination, objectification, and control seem to be emerging as the virtures
of our time. Yet they also seem to misfire in frustration, violence, and
resignation. The human voice has shrunk to a whisper, drowned out in the
cacophony of consumerism, competition, egoism, and fear. Are we missing God?
Both the question and its answers are ambiguous. God may be missed
in different ways. Missing God may be a matter of our missing
the signs of God’s presence in the world. Talk about God and theology have
been marginalized as relics of the past. “Missing God” may refer to our
often hidden and sometimes misdirected longing for God.
The new political theology, derived from the work of Johann Baptist
Metz, offers a response to our missing God. It does this as an anamnestic
and eschatological resistance to forgetting grounded in a memoria
passionis responding to others’ suffering. Metz’s model of critical
understanding sublates the modern variations on the dichotomy of reason
and faith and provides an antidote to our cultural amnesia in the
mystical-political double-structure of faith.
A political theology takes its shape only when it engages the issues of
the times. The essays in this volume are by political theologians and
others influenced by Johann Baptist Metz. They sharpen the questions
and imperatives which mark political theology today. In addition,
this collection testifies to the dynamic continuity of political
theology in its German roots and North American developments.
Included articles by Johann Baptist Metz, Matthew Ashley, M. Shawn
Copeland, John K. Downey, Matthew L. Lamb, Jürgen Manemann, Bruce T.
Morrill, Steven T. Ostovich, Tiemo Rainer Peters, Johann Vento, Johann
Reikerstorfer, Bernd Wacker.
