Theology

This section is still under development and is edited by David Jasper, University of Edinburgh.

Language

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.

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

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.

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.

Theology and Literature

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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. For a more complete list, see the full Bibliography section.

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.