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.
Edward Farley is Buffington Professor of Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School.
Preface PART ONE: THE COMING FORTH OF GOD AS GOD 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 The Classical Catholic Theology of God Sortings Origins Elements Ambiguities Varieties of Anti-Theism Intratheistic Critiques Resymbolizing Demythologizing Deconstructive Anti-Theism Issues and Appraisals Meanings and Evidences The Reality of God as a Problem for Faith Atheism and the Problem of Meaning God The Anselmic Principle 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 The Attribute and Anti-Attribute Traditions The Attribute Tradition The Anti-Attribute Tradition Is Divine Symbolics and Idolatry of God? 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 Ciphers and Qualifiers Ciphers Qualifiers Ciphers of Redemption Human Agency: Ciphers of Founding The Interhuman: The Cipher of Reconciling Love The Sociopolitical Cipher of Justice God as Spirit Ciphers of Creativity and Holiness Creativity The Holy Unity, Trinity, and the Symbolics of God PART THREE: THEOLOGY OF GOD AND WORLD Metaphysics and Its Critics Metaphysics in Classical and Neoclassical Theologies of God Metaphysics and the Theology of God Charges and Rejoinders 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 Three-Dimensional World: Cosmos and Nature Cosmos Nature Structural Features of the Sphere of Life Three-Dimensional World: History Bears Historical Passage Ambiguity Manifested World World-For-Us The Being of the World World Constituents and Root Metaphors Entities, Relations, Events, and Environments 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 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 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 Divine Empathy: Preliminary Considerations Some Guiding Principles Retrieving Elements from the Sources Divine Activity Minus "quot;Christian Cosmology" The Efficacy of the Divine Empathy Entities in the Making Efficacious Empathy Some Reinterpretations Index
