Stephen Foster

Theology as Repetition Stephen Foster

Theology as Repetition revisits and argues for a revival of John Macquarrie's philosophical theology. Macquarrie was a key twentieth-century theological voice and was considered a foremost interpreter and translator of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. He then somehow fell from view. Macquarrie developed a new style of theology, grounded in a dialectical phenomenology that is a relevant voice in responding to recent trends in theology. The development of the book is partly chronological and partly thematic, and avoids attempting to be either deductive or inductive in argument, but rather reflects Macquarrie's phenomenologically styled new theology. Theology as Repetition is set out in two parts. The first part situates Macquarrie in relation to thinkers from the radical theology of the 1960s through to the postmodernists of the late twentieth century. The second part explores the intersection of key themes in Macquarrie's theology with the thinking of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and representative postsecular and postmodern figures, including but not limited to Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Marion.