Divine Enticement argues for a reconception of theology and it subject matter as modes of seduction, of both body and mind. Theological language as evocation opens onto rereadings of faith, sacrament, ethics, prayer and scripture. The conclusion argues for a sense of theology as calling upon infinite possibility.

Theology usually appears to us to be dogmatic, judgmental condescending, maybe therapeutic, or perhaps downright fantastical - but seldom enticing. 'Divine Enticement' takes as its starting point that the meanings of theological concepts are not so much logical, truth-valued propositions - affirmative or negative - as they are provocations and evocations. Thus it argues for the seductiveness of both theology and its subject - for, in fact, infinite seduction and enticement as the very sense of theological query.

In the face of religious and cultural diversity, some doubt whether Christian faith remains possible today. Critics claim that religion is irrational and violent, and the loudest defenders of Christianity are equally strident. In response, Desire, Faith, and the Darkness of God: Essays in Honor of Denys Turner explores the uncertainty essential to Christian commitment; it suggests that faith is moved by a desire for that which cannot be known. This approach is inspired by the tradition of Christian apophatic theology, which argues that language cannot capture divine transcendence. From this perspective, contemporary debates over God’s existence represent a dead end: if God is not simply another object in the world, then faith begins not in abstract certainty but in a love that exceeds the limits of knowledge. The essays engage classic Christian thought alongside literary and philosophical sources ranging from Pseudo-Dionysius and Dante to Karl Marx and Jacques Derrida. Building on the work of Denys Turner, they indicate that the boundary between atheism and Christian thought is productively blurry. Instead of settling the stale dispute over whether religion is rationally justified, their work suggests instead that Christian life is an ethical and political practice impassioned by a God who transcends understanding.

Exploration of the interface between mystical theology and continental philosophy is a defining feature of the current intellectual and even devotional climate. But to what extent and in what depth are these disciplines actually speaking to one another; or even speaking about the same phenomena? This book draws together original contributions by leading and emerging international scholars, delineating emerging debates in this growing and dynamic field of research, and spanning mystical and philosophical traditions from the ancient, to the medieval, modern, and contemporary. At the heart of which lies Meister Eckhart, perhaps the single most influential Christian mystic for modern times. The book is organised around significant historical and contemporary figures who speak across the intersections of philosophy and theology, offering new insights into key interlocutors such as Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Isaac Luria, Eckhart, Hegel, Heidegger, Marion, Kierkegaard, Deleuze, Laruelle, and Žižek. Designed both to contribute to current trends in mystical theology and philosophy, and elicit dialogue and debate from further afield, this book speaks within an emerging space exploring the retrieval of the mystical within a post-secular context.

Grau reconsiders the relationship between "logos" and "mythos" as a precondition to opening theological hermeneutics to discourse from other cultures and genres, other modes of telling and retelling.

"This book compares two mystical works central to the Christian Discalced Carmelite and the Hindu Bhakti traditions: the sixteenth-century Spanish Cántico espiritual (Spiritual Canticle), by John of the Cross, and the Sanskrit Rāsa Līlā, originated in the oral tradition. These texts are examined alongside theological commentaries: for the Cántico, the Comentarios written by John of the Cross on his own poem; for Rāsa Līlā, the foundational commentary by Srīdhara Swāmi along with commentaries by the sixteenth-century theologian Jīva Goswāmī, from the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava school, and other Gauḍīya theologians. The phrase "savoring God" in the title conveys the Spanish gustar a Dios (to savor God) and the Sanskrit madhura bhakti rasa (the sweet savor of divine love). While "savoring" does not mean exactly the same thing for these theologians, they use the term to define a theopoetics at work in their respective traditions. The book's methodology transposes their notions of "savoring" to advance a comparative theopoetics grounded in the interaction of poetry and theology. The first chapter explains in detail how theopoetics is regarded considering each text and how they are compared. The comparison is then laid out across Chapters 2, 3, and 4, each of which examines one of the three central moments of the theopoetic experience of savoring that is represented in the Cántico and Rāsa Līlā: the absence and presence of God, the relationship between embodiment and savoring, and the fulfilment of the encounter between the divine and the lovers"--

Autobiographical writings on faith frequently come from the lives of ordinary persons whose struggles with faith are often lived at the margins of the church, academy, and society. Yet these voices have the potential to reshape the ways in which each of these fields function. To find out what it means to stand before God with all of one's humanity on display is to engage in not only the act of confession, but to demonstrate a bold theological reflection that needs to be more explicitly understood. By turning to spiritual autobiographies as theological source texts, we learn to place our emphasis where it matters most, on the people whose lives of faith move us deeply and cause us to re-examine our own lives in light of their witness. Moving through a range of ancient, early modern, and contemporary spiritual writers in order to demonstrate a profound connection that unites them all, this book portrays how a critical self-examination of one's most personal, internal fractures (our "poverty" as it were) is the only way to develop a life of faith--the dual meaning of the word "confession," which expresses both a revealing of one's sins, or brokenness, and the articulation of what one believes.