Postmodern Universalization and the Logic of Incarnation

Neal DeRoo, a guy I met in April at the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology conference in Boston, has co-edited with Brian Lightbody a book called The Logic of Incarnation: James K.A. Smith's Critique of Postmodern Religion. Jamie Smith also contributes and responds.

Here's some blurb and endorsements:


"With his Logic of Incarnation, James K. A. Smith has provided a compelling critique of the universalizing tendencies in some strands of postmodern philosophy of religion. A truly postmodern account of religion must take seriously the preference for particularity first evidenced in the Christian account of the incarnation of God. Moving beyond the urge to universalize, which characterizes modern thought, Smith argues that it is only by taking seriously particular differences—historical, religious, and doctrinal—that we can be authentically religious and authentically postmodern.

"Smith remains hugely influential in both academic discourse and church movements. This book is the first organized attempt to bring both of these aspects of Smith’s work into conversation with each other and with him. With articles from an internationally respected group of philosophers, theologians, pastors, and laypeople, the entire range of Smith’s considerable influence is represented here. Discussing questions of embodiment, eschatology, inter-religious dialogue, dogma, and difference, this book opens all the most relevant issues in postmodern religious life to a unique and penetrating critique."

"This volume brilliantly highlights the importance of Smith's logic of incarnation. It amplifies a new and indispensable voice in the postmodern debate." —Richard Kearney, author of The God Who May Be and Strangers, Gods and Monsters

"The Logic of Incarnation offers the reader a helpful overview and critical discussion of James K. A. Smith's engagement with postmodern thought based on Christianity's central mystery: God's becoming human. In critically engaging Deconstruction, the emergent church, and the role of tradition, The Logic of Incarnation introduces the reader to central themes of current thinking on religion that have especially dominated North American discussions, but it also points, particularly in Smith's concluding response to his critics, toward recovering an ancient incarnational thinking whose radical quality—reaching far beyond modernity and postmodernity—lies precisely in recovering the ecclesial and eschatological nature of Christianity."—Jens Zimmermann, author of Recovering Theological Hermeneutics: An Incarnational-Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation

"It is as testament to James K. A. Smith's career that, even at a relatively young age (academically speaking), his work merits an interaction as robust as this book. The Logic of Incarnation will not only introduce many to Smith's important writings, but it will also spur on conversation about these very significant ideas where, indeed, theology, philosophy, and church meet."—Tony Jones, author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier