The preface gives the background of the postmodern religious context within which a “view of God to consider” has become problematic. The preface also gives the methodology as well as the rationale for the study. The article examines the anatheistic concept of God of the well-known philosopher of religion, Richard Kearney, in order to answer the question whether Kearney’s concept of God is to be regarded in our postmetaphysical age and why. Two books of Kearney are selected to analyse, namely The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (2001) and Anatheism: Returning to God after God (2011). The article indicates that the anatheistic God is not easy to identify and that it mostly involves a risk or wager of hospitality to recognize this God who is amongst other, “weak, functionalist, the other, the stranger and the incarnated kingdom of peace and love”. It is argued that although this non-metaphysical anatheistic God has some positive aspects (creativities, plurality, not militant or dogmatic), it remains difficult to mull over (and accept) this view of God for various reasons (weakness, functionality, unrecognizability). Kearney helps one however through his anatheistic concept of God to think new about the possibilities to “return to God after God” in our post-metaphysical age. / MPhil , North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The preface gives the background of the postmodern religious context within which a “view of God to consider” has become problematic. The preface also gives the methodology as well as the rationale for the study. The article examines the anatheistic concept of God of the well-known philosopher of religion, Richard Kearney, in order to answer the question whether Kearney’s concept of God is to be regarded in our postmetaphysical age and why. Two books of Kearney are selected to analyse, namely The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (2001) and Anatheism: Returning to God after God (2011). The article indicates that the anatheistic God is not easy to identify and that it mostly involves a risk or wager of hospitality to recognize this God who is amongst other, “weak, functionalist, the other, the stranger and the incarnated kingdom of peace and love”. It is argued that although this non-metaphysical anatheistic God has some positive aspects (creativities, plurality, not militant or dogmatic), it remains difficult to mull over (and accept) this view of God for various reasons (weakness, functionality, unrecognizability). Kearney helps one however through his anatheistic concept of God to think new about the possibilities to “return to God after God” in our post-metaphysical age. / MPhil , North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

In response to Irish philosopher Richard Kearney’s recent proposal of a post-metaphysical re-imagination of God, the thesis asks how we may begin to reimagine the Christ-event, post-metaphysically. Specifically, it investigates the implications of such post-metaphysical thought for the theological categories of hamartiology and soteriology. Methodologically, the thesis proceeds from hermeneutical re-readings of biblical narratives and traditions. Via an archaeology of the biblical yetser, the concept of imagination is offered as a way to re-imagine sin and salvation. The Eden narrative is read within its ancient Near Eastern context, and the narratives of the Annunciation and Transfiguration also receives special mention, as well as the window that Song of Songs opens on the metaphor of the desire of God. What results from this approach is, first, yet another deconstruction of the Augustinian formulation of original sin, as well as an eschatological reinterpretation of the Christ event in terms of the messianic Kingdom of God. Christ, who submits his yetser to the will of the Father in an act of worshipful surrender, becomes the perfect embodiment of the Word of God to a humanity whose yetser is perpetually put in service of itself in an act of idolatry. The enabling of the Kingdom of God in Jesus, who embodies the human telos, captures the human imagination and transfigures humanity through the existential experience of transcendence which breaks into its concrete reality through the Christ-event and its retelling. In this way, realised eschatology is possibilised through the imagination. Christ as prototype of the divinely intended telos of humanity becomes an existential possibility via the transfiguration, enacted by the imagination. This enables humanity to become co-creators with God of a new creation, symbolised by God’s messianic Kingdom of love and justice. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / University of Pretoria Postgraduate bursary / Dogmatics and Christian Ethics / PhD / Unrestricted

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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-149) / In this dissertation the author reflects on the absence and presence of God within Christianity. This is accomplished through engaging and seeking to understand key conversations following the Copernican Revolution and the-death-of God . The goal is to understand and model how it is that Christianity defines itself as a faith tied to knowing God and yet is appraised by many as a religion characterized by God's conspicuous silence, absence and death. These are 'God after God' conversations understood to include contributions from philosophers, Essentialists, and Christians following the-death-of God. With these 'God after God' conversations are tied to the institutional expression of Christianity and the diversification of and within religion during the modern era. It is with this in mind that the conjunction and disjunction between Christianity as religion, spirituality, and mysticism can perhaps enable a post-institutional expression of Christianity as the practice of the relational presence of God. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Christian Spirituality)