Theology

Edited by David Jasper, University of Edinburgh.

Language

Barth, Karl. The Word of God and the Word of Man. Trans. Douglas Horton. [Boston]: The Pilgrim Press, 1928.

Jasper, David, and Jasper, R. C. D. Language and the Worship of the Church. London: Macmillan, 1990.

Ramsey, Ian T. Religious Language. London: SCM Press, 1973 [1957].

Raschke, Carl A. The Alchemy of the Word: Language and the End of Theology. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979.

Robinson, Edward. The Language of Mystery. London: SCM Press, 1987.

Soskice, Janet Martin. Metaphor and Religious Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.

—–. The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

—–. Naming God: Addressing the Divine in Philosophy, Theology and Scripture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Ward, Graham. Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

White, James Boyd. When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstructions of Language, Character, and Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Williams, Rowan. The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language. The Gifford Lectures, 2013. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Poetics

Dodd, Elizabeth S. The Lyric Voice in English Theology. Studies in English Theology. London: T & T Clark, 2023.

Farrer, Austin. The Glass of Vision. Bampton Lectures, 1948. Westminster: Dacre Press, 1948.

Greely, Andrew M. Religion as Poetry. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2014.

Hopper, Stanley Romaine. The Way of Transfiguration: Religious Imagination as Theopoiesis. Edited by R. Melvin Keiser and Tony Stoneburner. Louisville: Westminster, John Knox Press, 1992.

Jasper, David. The Language of Liturgy: A Ritual Poetics. London: SCM, 2018.

Prickett, Stephen. Words and The Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Von Balthasar, Hans Urs. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1982-1986.

Sample Literary Studies in Poetics and Theology

Burrows, Mark S., Hilary Davies, and Josephine von Zitzewitz, eds. Prophetic Witness and the Reimagining of the World: Poetry, Theology and Philosophy in Dialogue. New York: Routledge, 2022.

Burrows, Mark S., Jean Ward, and Małgorzata Grzegorewska, eds. Poetic Revelations: Word Made Flesh Made Word.New York: Routledge, 2021.

Caporicci, Camilla. The Song of Songs and its Tradition in Renaissance Love Lyric. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2024.

Cioni, Francesca. Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. (Highly Recommended).

Clutterbuck, Charlotte. Encounters with God in Medieval and Early English Poetry. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.

Hurley, Michael D. Faith in Poetry: Verse Style as a Mode of Religious Belief. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.

Knox, Francesca Bugliani and David Lonsdale, eds. Poetry and the Religious Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Knox, Francesca Bugliani and Jennifer Reek, eds. Poetry, Philosophy and Theology in Conversation: Thresholds of Wonder. New York: Routledge, 2021.

Knox, Francesca Bugliani and John Took, eds. Poetry and Prayer. New York: Routledge, 2017.

Jasper, David Jasper, Heaven in Ordinary: Poetry and Religion in a Secular Age. Cambridge, UK: The Lutterworth Press, 2018.

Soud, W. David. Divine Cartographies: God, History, and Poeisis in W. B. Yeats, David Jones, and T. S. Eliot. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Hermeneutics

Bruns, Gerald L. Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Caputo, John D. Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Fabiny, Tibor, ed. Literary Theory and Biblical Hermeneutics. Szeged: Attila József University, 1992.

Grusin, Richard A. Transcendentalist Hermeneutics: Institutional Authority and the Higher Criticism of the Bible. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.

Jauss, Hans Robert. Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. Translated by Michael Shaw. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.

Jeanrond, Wener G. Text and Interpretation as Categories of Theological Thinking. Translated by Thomas J. Wilson. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988.

Klemm, David E. Hermeneutical Enquiry. Two Volumes: The Interpretation of Texts, The Interpretation of Existence. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986.

LaCocque, André, and Paul Ricoeur. Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Sample Literary Studies: Hermeneutics
Copeland, Rita. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Theologians on Literature

Armstrong, Ryan M. The Book of Job in Wonderland: Making (Non)Sense of Job’s Mediators. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. (Highly recommended).

Barbeau, Jeffrey W. and Emily Hunter McGowin, eds. God and Wonder: Theology, Imagination and the Arts. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2022.Bouchard, Larry D. Tragic Method and Tragic Theology: Evil in Contemporary Drama and Religious Thought. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989.

Caputo, John D. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977.

Hart, Trevor. Between the Image and the Word: Theological Engagements with Imagination, Language and Literature. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

Hauerwas, Stanley. Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994.

Jens, Walter, with Hans Küng, Karl-Josef Kuschel, eds. Theologie und Literatur: Zum Stand des Dialogs. Munich: Kindler Verlag, 1986.

Lonsdale, David, Emilia di Rocco, and Brett H. Speakman, eds. Theological and Philosophical Explorations of the Call of Literature. New York: Routledge, 2025.

Middleton, Darren J. N. Theology after Reading: Christian Imagination and the Power of Fiction. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008.

Middleton, Darren J. N., ed. God, Literature, and Process Thought. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002.

Morgan, Stephen, ORG, ed. Sacred and the Everyday: Comparative Approaches to Literature, Religious and Secular. Macao: University of Saint Joseph, 2021.

Nelson, Paul. Narrative and Morality: A Theological Enquiry. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987.

Shanks, Andrew. Sublime Virtue: ‘Sainthood’, as Rendered Problematic by a Dozen Novelists. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2024.

Stock, Brian. Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Williams, Rowan. Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction. London: Continuum, 2008.

Wright, T. R. Theology and Literature. Signposts in Theology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.

Von Balthasar, Hans Urs. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1982-1986.

Sample Literary Studies

Cox, John D. Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith. Studies in Christianity and Literature. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007.

Perkin, J. Russell. Theology and the Victorian Novel. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009.

White, James Boyd. Let in the Light: Learning to Read St. Augustine’s Confessions. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. (Highly recommended).

Wood, Ralph C. Literature and Theology. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008.

For an overview of historical Christian theology relevant to the study of literature, see

Jeffrey, David Lyle. People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Press, 1996.

Modern theological works engaged by literary scholars.

Barth, Karl. The Word of God and the Word of Man. Trans. Douglas Horton. The Pilgrim Press, 1928.

Milbank, John, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, eds. Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Moltmann, Jürgen. Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology. London: SCM, 1967.

Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper, 1951.

Otto, Rudolph. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Divine and its Relation to the Rational. Trans. John W. Harvey. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1952.

Rahner, Karl. Theological Investigations. New York: Crossroad, 1974-1992. (including the essay “Poetry and the Christian.”)

Tillich, Paul. The Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper & Row, 1957.

Von Balthasar, Hans Urs. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1982-1986.

Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Abingdon, 1996.

Journal: Literature and Theology

Literature and Theology, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal, publishes work pertaining to the study of literature and theology. The terms literature and theology are broadly understood. “Literature” includes literary work of any genre and extends to other artistic media such as film and the visual arts. “Theology” includes all global religions, concepts of religion, spirituality, the relationship between the secular and sacred, and any aspect of religious culture. [Description taken from Oxford University Press website.] The journal also sponsors an annual lecture in literatue and theology.