Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Liberal society and political theology
- PART I THE POSSIBILITY OF POLITICAL THEOLOGY
- 2 Theology and politics: context, community and prophecy
- 3 God, history and political theology
- 4 Totality, finitude and history
- 5 Narratives and foundations
- 6 Natural law and natural order
- PART II THE SITE OF POLITICAL THEOLOGY
- PART III LIBERALISM, RELIGION AND SOCIAL UNITY
- Select bibliography
- Index of names
- Index of subjects
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN IDEOLOGY AND RELIGION
5 - Narratives and foundations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Liberal society and political theology
- PART I THE POSSIBILITY OF POLITICAL THEOLOGY
- 2 Theology and politics: context, community and prophecy
- 3 God, history and political theology
- 4 Totality, finitude and history
- 5 Narratives and foundations
- 6 Natural law and natural order
- PART II THE SITE OF POLITICAL THEOLOGY
- PART III LIBERALISM, RELIGION AND SOCIAL UNITY
- Select bibliography
- Index of names
- Index of subjects
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN IDEOLOGY AND RELIGION
Summary
For wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
And so the Word had breath and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought;
Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
(Tennyson, In Memoriam)If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
(Psalm 11)It doesn't matter how you slice the salami, it's still the same salami.
(Anon, New York)Given the difficulties in undertaking a theology of history in the modern world, it might be thought that the basis for political theology has to be sought elsewhere: in systematic theology, so that the political implications of Christian belief could be derived by a process of inference from some sense of the foundations of theology as a doctrine of God. It might be thought that a doctrine of God would then yield an account of creation, within which would stand an account of the human person, and from this an account of society and politics. On this sort of view, the universal would be connected to the particular through a process of inference from what were to be taken as foundational propositions to be found in either a biblical or natural theology and their concomitant doctrine of God. Universal and particular would be linked through a greater and greater specification of the consequences of this foundational set of beliefs.
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- Politics, Theology and History , pp. 112 - 141Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001