Badiou, Marion and St Paul: Immanent Grace
By (Author) Professor Adam S. Miller
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
10th April 2008
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
210
Hardback
176
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Badiou, Marion and St Paul addresses the difficult question of whether it is possible to coherently think the notion of grace strictly in terms of immanence. The book develops a model for the thought of an immanent grace that avoids the traps of both obscurantism (the invocation of a wholly ineffably or transcendent ground for grace) and banality (the reduction of grace to nothing more than a variation of the established order). The conceptual resources needed for the development of such a model are gathered from sustained and original readings of St Paul's letter to the Romans, Jean-Luc Marion's Being Given and Alain Badiou's Being and Event. As each thinker is taken up, their unique contributions to the model are elaborated and their positions are coordinated with each of the others in order to render a comparative evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses possible. The result of this triangulation is the emergence of a common conceptual strategy that simultaneously opens surprisingly direct paths into the heart of each of their disparate projects and, more importantly, a viable route to the thought of a genuinely immanent grace.
"Is there anything new" With subtlety and intelligence as well as uncommon clarity, Miller insistently responds to this question until it yields a conclusion: The new is both actual and immanent. With or without background in the philosophy of mathematics and contemporary European philosophy, religious or not, readers will find Miller's book insightful, compelling, and highly readable. James E. Faulconer, Professor of Philosophy, Brigham Young University, USA
Adam S. Miller is a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas, USA. He is the founder of The Journal of Philosophy and Scripture and the author of a number of articles addressing the intersection of religion, ethics and politics.