Theology and the Drama of History

A new theological approach to the question of God's role in history.

Ben Quash (Author)

9780521844345, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 August 2005

250 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.59 kg

'There is much to praise in this book, not least of which is its articulate insistence that Christian theologians (and, I would add, philosophers) need to be far more modest in their claims to have discerned God's presence and plans amid history's turbulent flow. Quash succeeds, sometimes brilliantly, in exposing some of the epic meanderings in von Balthasar's vast corpus.' Scottish Journal of Theology

How can theology think and talk about history? Building on the work of the major twentieth-century theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar as well as entering into sharp critical debate with him, this book sets out to examine the value and the potential of a 'theodramatic' conception of history. By engaging in dialogue not only with theologians and philosophers like von Balthasar, Hegel and Barth, but with poets and dramatists such as the Greek tragedians, Shakespeare and Gerard Manley Hopkins, the book makes its theological principles open and indebted to literary forms, and seeks to show how such a theology might be applied to a world intrinsically and thoroughly historical. By contrast with theologies that stand back from the contingencies of history and so fight shy of the uncertainties and openness of Christian existence, this book's theology is committed to taking seriously the God who works in time.

Introduction
1. Dramatizing theology
2. Freedom and indifference
3. Epic history and the question of tragedy
4. Eschatology and the existential register
5. Analogy's unaccountable scaffolding
6. Theodramatics, history and the holy spirit
Postscript.

Subject Areas: Christian theology [HRCM], Literary theory [DSA]