I dissent from Hart's project of a theological aesthetics by a hair's breadth: but that hair's breadth is tragedy. The Beauty of the Infinite is an excellent book, but it would be still better without its misinterpretations of tragedy. Nietzsche told us that ‘we must understand Greek tragedy as the Dionysian chorus which ever anew discharges itself in an Apollonian world of images’: that is, Attic tragedy arises from the clash of Dionysian music with Apollonian thought. Hart regards postmodernism as a story involving the clash of two ‘violences’ – the ‘chthonic and indiscriminate’ violence of Dionysus versus the ‘discriminating’ violence of Apollo. Nietzsche's sympathies lay with Dionysus: ‘Dionysus versus the “Crucified”: there you have the antithesis.’ Nietzsche once confessed that The Birth of Tragedy ‘smells offensively Hegelian’. Both Hegel and Nietzsche read tragedy differently from Aristotle, and from the anterior Western tradition. Nietzsche could equally have confided that his first book imposes a nineteenth-century taste for melodrama on the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The argument of this article is that Hart likewise misconstrues tragedy as melodrama. If, as Hart says, ‘Nietzsche had atrocious taste’, it is self-defeating for him to assume that Nietzsche had the last word on Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. Hart takes the modern theologians at their word when they speak of ‘tragedy’. He spontaneously deprecates the use of what he calls tragedy and what most people can recognize as melodrama in the writings of theologians such as Robert Jenson, Donald MacKinnon and Nicholas Lash. He tells us that, ‘None of what I say … is intended as a rejection of tragedy as such … but only as a critique … of the sacrificial logic from which Attic tragedy … sprang and according to which … tragedy is still read’. But his misinterpretation and rejection of tragedy has a wider reference than the writings of Sophocles and Aeschylus and rebounds on his own theology.

This article is, in part, an effort to come to terms with the ubiquitous celebration of embodiment in feminist discourse, and particularly within feminist theology. It will begin with a brief introduction to some of the key concepts in feminist theology and its use of the body, beginning with the body theologies of those who might now be called ‘second-wave’ theologians – Carter Heyward and Beverly Harrison. From here, I will consider postmodern feminist challenges to the reified and essentialised body as I examine what I call the subversive body in third-wave or postmodern feminism, both secular and theological. Finally, I shall move from these to an alternative construal of the importance of the body through the consideration of Christian bodily practices. Such an alternative will allow me to reflect upon what it is to become a specifically Christian body through church practices. I shall then endeavour to return to the critical concerns raised by feminism about the subjugation of women's bodies in the church as I consider the resources that might be available within the tradition itself for critical and emancipatory practices toward women and other strangers within the Body of Christ.

Bede's Historia ecclesiastica makes it clear that Theodore of Tarsus, the seventh-century archbishop of Canterbury, is a figure who should command an immense amount of interest. His learning and cosmopolitan formation call upon the scholar to ask what it is that he contributed to the English church in his time and beyond. Yet interest in Theodore as a theologian has been lacking to date, most likely due to the limited amount of material attributable to him. Jane Stevenson's work on the anonymous Laterculus Malalianus in the early 1990s suggested Theodore as the most likely author. That this suggestion has proven consistent with other, cumulative evidence of Theodore's life and work makes the Laterculus an invaluable text for the student investigating his theology. This article seeks to present the theological themes of the text, especially as they relate to the person and work of Christ, and to introduce the reader to Theodore of Tarsus as a figure of interest in the study of early medieval christology.

In 2003, the year he was consecrated bishop of Durham, Tom Wright published his magisterial work The Resurrection of the Son of God. This volume of more than 800 pages is a monumental defence of the reality of the resurrection. Immensely learned and circumspect, the book impresses the reader with its academic and theological passion. In my view, Bishop Wright has succeeded in building a theological cathedral of illuminating historical insights, convincing and surprising exegetical observations, and thoroughly argued systematic conclusions. No prophetic intuition is needed to predict that this book will remain a classic among the writings which stimulate further thinking and discourse about this most important and highly controversial topic of faith.

Hans Schwarz begins his Theology in a Global Context: The Last Two Hundred Years in (or around) 1800. That date provides an appropriate point of departure, because about then a significant shift in outlook occurred, which marked the beginning of a new era in theology. The shift was from a static to a developmentalist view of the past and included a resulting emphasis on the contextual or historically rooted character of any theological proposal.

Publishers' blurbs for new books are often de trop. Those accompanying David Bentley Hart's opus, however, are surprising in the array of notable names that have acclaimed him, even in the pre-production phase. One of the famed maintains that with this first book Bentley Hart has emerged as the ‘best living American systematic theologian’, and another of the great and good hails him as: ‘one of his generation's leading theologians’. No small potatoes this, considering the first book in question is the revision of a doctoral thesis of a young man who has yet to start a university career. It seems, moreover, to have been two theses rolled into one. Having read the book, one understands why the accolades were so heart-felt. It is indeed a most learned, profound and immensely rich volume. It is undoubtedly one of the most important and timely works of theology written for many decades past, and will prove itself to be so, I suspect, despite its (many) eccentricities and idiosyncratic judgements, and despite its failure to say many things one might have wanted it to: but then at 448 pages, one needs to draw a line somewhere.

This article describes the process of the deconstruction and reconstruction of Islam in its transition from an Islamic to a Western culture, and does so from a hermeneutical perspective. In this process of reinterpretation of tradition ‘Western’ Muslims have a number of options: traditionalism, moderate orthodoxy, fundamentalism, radicalism and religious liberalism. On the basis of the process of change in orthodox Reformed churches in the last part of the twentieth century, I describe the process of change among Muslims who have to find a way in Western Europe. This process of reinterpretation in such a different context necessarily triggers off a discussion of the principles of fiqh and the right understanding of the Qur'an and hadith. In this discussion the ‘options’ mentioned arise. This hermeneutical analysis adds theological insights to processes of change and conflict that often are analysed only in terms of social-economic processes, and can help to understand the developments also from a theological perspective.

I should first of all thank John McGuckin and Francesca Murphy for their remarks; both are scholars I very much respect, and it is flattering that they think my work worthy of their scrutiny and of – occasionally – their animadversions. I much prefer praise to censure, of course, but only the latter affords any scope for a meaningful reply. One dare not respond to a compliment by agreeing with it, or amplifying upon it; but to demur from it is to squander a gift that may not come again. So it is probably for the best that, even if I have apparently succeeded on the whole in pleasing both readers, I have nevertheless failed to please either of them in every particular. And I hope I may be excused for confining my replies almost entirely to their more critical remarks.