The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God / Edition 1

by Mayra Rivera

Overview

How far away is God? How different is God from human beings? This is the theological question of transcendence, and theology has long struggled to find answers that affirm a human relationship with God. In this provocative new work, Mayra Rivera's answer is that God is not within human grasp but is always within human touch. With a strikingly relevant concept of God as transcendent within—transcendence different from the ideas of God as far away, as outside human life and experience, or as above the human plane of existence—Rivera concentrates on transcendence as a relationship and uses it to describe how humans can touch God. In doing so, she engages a number of theological movements, including liberation theology, Radical Orthodoxy, feminism, and postcolonialism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780664230739
Publisher:	Westminster John Knox Press
Publication date:	09/14/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mayra Rivera is Assistant Professor of Theology at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.

Table of Contents

Preface     ix
Introduction     1
The Wholly Other     4
Transcendence in the Western Imaginary     5
A Call from Beyond     10
Radical Transcendence?     17
The Problem of the Demise of Transcendence     19
Participation     22
Beyond     25
Causality     26
The One and the Many     28
Affinity and Difference     33
The Apophatic Reserve of Language-and Creatures     37
Intracosmic Transcendence: Liberation Theology     39
Modernity and Postmodernity in Liberation Theology     40
Transcendence in History: Ignacio Ellacuria     41
Relating in God     44
Knowing in History     47
The Debate with Radical Orthodoxy     49
God-Talk in History     51
Intracosmic Transcendence     53
Transcendence in the Face of the Other     55
From Totality to Transcendence: Emmanuel Levinas     56
Transcendence     57
God and the Other     59
The Other and the Self     61
Transcendence, Infinity, and Exteriority     62
Irreversibility and Asymmetry in Relation tothe Other     64
From Modernity to Transmodernity: Enrique Dussel     66
Europe and the Other     67
Transcendence and Liberation     69
Exteriority     71
Totality, the Other, and the Critic     73
Transcendence In-Between: U.S. Hispanic Theology     77
Openings for Transcendence as Infinition     81
Transcendence in the Flesh of the Other     83
Disembodied Transcendences     84
Levinas's Eros     85
In the Beginning: Touch     88
Transcendence as Sexual Difference     90
Woman, Man, and the Third     91
A Cosmic Place     92
The Social Body     94
Transcendence of Planetary Creatures     99
Encounters in (Postcolonial) History     101
The Social Production of Otherness: Worlding and Foreclosure     104
The Wholly Other and Transcendence     109
Transcendence of the Other     115
Preparing to Encounter the (Wholly) Other     117
Transcendent Planetarity     122
Transcendence between Creatures     125
The Touch of Transcendence     127
Relational Transcendence     129
Creation: The Place of Transcendence     130
Divine Touch     135
The Glory of God     138
Notes     141
Bibliography     173
Index     183