ABSTRACT This article takes up questions regarding the interrelation of the given and the undetermined in Augustine’s understanding of the self. As a critical point, it argues that debate regarding the Augustinian self has been marked by an emphasis on given structures that has constricted conceptions of human becoming. This emphasis emerges by way of competing narratives of discovery: Augustine is presented as a discoverer either of a constitutive space of the self, or of a determinative temporality. It results in (...) accounts of formation that occlude the spiritual significance of the full sweep of Christ’s history, from incarnation through ascension. As a constructive point, this article argues that Augustine positions himself to develop a Christological vision of Christian becoming, rooted in attention to all aspects of Christ’s life and work, by understanding space and time not as structures that fix the bounds of human becoming, but rather as realities that take on different forms in accordance with differing modes of love. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the turn to polytheism in postmodern theory. In postmodernism, there is a strong interest in polytheism as an alternative to the much-criticized dominance of onto-theology in the philosophical tradition. The article argues that the new polytheism cannot be unequivocally understood as an alternative for an onto-theological way of thinking, or as a ‘liberation’ from monotheism. Already in Romanticism, the engagement with polytheism and paganism was ambiguous. There was the familiar superiority of Christian monotheism over polytheism. But there (...) was also an appropriation of polytheism that served a new self-perception of the West. This article focuses on this second line of interpretation and argues that postmodern theory inherits the theo-political concerns central to eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Romanticism. The article sets out to sketch the role of polytheism in a post-secular paradigm. Subsequently, it sketches the engagement with polytheism in British and German Romanticism. It will be argued that in Romanticism, polytheism was always embedded in more substantial cultural and political narratives. The remainder of the article will scrutinize the function of polytheism in the writings of Richard Rorty and John Milbank and how their respective forms of polytheism give way to different political theologies. (shrink)