Abstract
A third generation of political theology has been taking shape in Europe, especially in the German-speaking area. If the work of Carl Schmitt shaped the first generation, and that of Johann Baptist Metz the second, a third generation continues the legacy of Metz but also engages contemporary political philosophers, especially in Italy and France. This is a public theology that strives to express itself not only after Auschwitz, but also grapples with the concept of postmodernity. The postmodern as understood here is a post-metaphysical reality marked by fragmentation, what Gianni Vattimo called “weak reason,” and encounters with alterity.
Ulrich Engel takes up the challenge of a political theology that engages both the church and the public sphere in this pluralistic setting by a series of Geistergespräche or conversations with thinkers who have grappled with the place of reason in the postmodern condition, including Agamben, Derrida, de Certeau, Esposito, Nancy and others. As the title of the book suggests, it is to develop a political theology both “after” (nach) the postmodern as well as “according to” (nach) the postmodern. The result is not a thoroughgoing or exhaustive treatment of the relation of faith and reason in the ecclesial and public sphere, but rather some forays into post-metaphysical thinking on the basis of themes such as representation, community, boundary, alterity, church, and prayer. Many of these themes are then tied back to the work of Metz, especially as mediated by one of Metz’s foremost students, Timo Rainer Peters.
Readers will not get a systematic overview of postmodern thinking within political theology from this book, but rather have the opportunity to develop a greater sensibility of what theology looks like within the purview of contemporary postmodern philosophy as it struggles to articulate how the Christian understanding of God, revelation, church and prayer takes shape within the Procrustean bed of the postmodern.