Reimagining the Analogia Entis: The Future of Erich Przywara's Christian Vision

by Philip John Paul Gonzales, Cyril O'Regan (Foreword by)

Overview

In 1932 German theologian and philosopher Erich Przywara penned his Analogia Entis, a vision of the analogy of being and a metaphysical exploration of the dynamic between God and creation. A translation into English in 2014 made Przywara’s brilliant and influential work available to more people than ever before. 

In this book Philip Gonzales calls English-speaking readers to embrace the Christian treasure of the Analogia Entis and to reimagine what it offers Christians today. Gonzales brings Przywara’s text into dialogue with debates in contemporary philosophy and theology, engaging in conversation with Edith Stein, Karl Barth, Martin Heidegger, the Nouvelle théologie, Vatican II, and leading figures in postmodern theology and the Continental turn to religion. The first book of its kind in English, Reimagining the “Analogia Entis” articulates a Christian vision of being for the postmodern era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467452304
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	01/15/2019
Series:	Interventions
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	616 KB

About the Author

Philip John Paul Gonzales is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas. He is the editor of Exorcising Philosophical Modernity: Cyril O'Regan and Christian Discourse after Modernity and the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and reviews.

Table of Contents

Foreword Cyril O'Regan ix

Preface xix

Introduction 1

Part 1 Formal and Critical Dialogue

1 A Crossroad Moment for Catholic Thought: The Modernist Crisis 39

2 Philosophy and Theology: Modernity and Countermodernity 56

3 Visions of Being: Foundation and Nonfoundation 103

4 Differing Reimaginings of the Analogia Entis: Anthropocentrism and Theocentrism 137

Part 2 Constructive Reimagining

5 Setting the Stage: Post-Conciliar Trajectories 205

6 The Postmodern Scene of Thought: Breaking Heidegger's Spell 219

7 The Resurgence of Analogical Metaphysics: Desmond, Milbank, and Hart 246

8 Enlisting Apocalyptic Theology: Cyril O'Regan's Pleromatic Vision 288

9 The Analogia Entis Reimagined: A Christian Analogical-Apocalyptic Metaphysics 321

Bibliography 355

Index 371

Editorial Reviews

John Milbank
— University of Nottingham
“Philip Gonzales here achieves a remarkable expansion and updating of the analogical metaphysics of Erich Przywara. Analogy comprises both being and revelation and a tensionality not just between God and creation but between essence and existence, past and future, potential and fulfillment. Therefore a metaphysics of analogy must be as much believed in as argued for, lived as much as believed, and hoped for through a welcoming of the fire of sanctity as much as lived. More radically than ever, Gonzales suggests that the biblical, Catholic horizon offers the only credible philosophy that is not a mere surrender to despair.”

Caitlin Smith Gilson
— University of Holy Cross, New Orleans
“Gonzales is that rare combination of exceptional scholar and visionary philosopher; he has shaken the dust off the analogia entis and, like Przywara, opened up worlds of conversation, communion, and nuance. Breathtaking, exhilarating, and grounded in the Christocentric substance which alone discloses truth, this book is indeed an analogia caritatis—an essential, graceful, and rewarding journey.”

D. C. Schindler
— Pontifical John Paul II Institute
“Erich Przywara responded to the crisis of modernity with a profound and creative philosophy that sprang from the heart of the faith. In this book Philip Gonzales springs from the theological heart of Przywara’s philosophy to respond to the thinkers of postmodernity; in so doing, Gonzales offers the valuable service of making Przywara’s notoriously difficult thought more widely accessible.”

John Betz
— University of Notre Dame
“I could give no better endorsement of Philip Gonzales’s excellent study of Erich Przywara than to quote from it. For anyone ‘seeking an antifoundationalist postmodern understanding of Christian philosophy,’ or how to strike an analogical balance between the discourses of philosophy and theology, ‘Przywara surely takes us forward.’ In this book Gonzales tells us with gusto why and how this is so.”

William Desmond
— Villanova University
“This excellent book is the perfect complement to the recent appearance of Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis in its first English translation. Gonzales has a superb knowledge of Przywara and makes a convincing case for the relevance and continued importance of Przywara’s thought to current debates. An impressively thoughtful and indispensable contribution, very highly recommended.”

— David Bentley Hart
“Erich Przywara is at last gaining the attention he deserves in Anglophone theological circles. For too long, he has enjoyed the status of little more than a repressed memory among us; and yet no figure is more crucial for an understanding of the immense revolutions in systematics and philosophical theology in the twentieth century, and the work of very few remain as perennially pertinent and fruitful as his. Gonzales is to be praised not simply for providing a survey of this remarkable thinker’s contributions, but for bringing them into deep conversation with so much of contemporary theological scholarship and speculation.

From the Publisher