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Luther after Derrida: The Deconstructive Drive of Theology

Publisher:
, 2023
ISBN: 9781978713932
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This book creatively engages Martin Luther’s theology and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction in a systematic theological enterprise. Guided by the general question of how to think about theology in postmodern times within a given tradition, Marisa Strizzi meticulously follows deconstruction at work, focusing on distinctive theological elaborations. She argues that Luther’s theology has a significant deconstructive drive and, through the thorough reading of texts, illustrates the ways in which such theology is interactive with the thought of Derrida. Intersections, echoes, and mirrors allow a happy exchange in which the vital theological topics of Luther meet key deconstructive motifs. Thus, the cross, the Deus absconditus, scriptura, fides, gratia and Christo encounter khōra, écriture, the gift, faith, the messianic and autoimmune sovereignty. Strizzi solidly sustains that the deconstructive reading of theological traditions proves to be a critical constructive way of honoring them.

Part I. Tremors

I.1 Reading Luther after Derrida

I.2 A Certain Strategy

I.3 On Metaphysics

I.4 Deconstructive Readings

Part II. Subversion and Displacement

II.5 Knowing Otherwise

II.6 The posteriora Dei

II.7 Otherwise than Knowing

II.8 The Deus absconditus

Part III. Four Deconstructive Gaps

III.9 Sola scriptura: Nothing Outside the Text?

III.10 Sola fide: “Yes, yes…”

III.11 Sola gratia: The Aneconomy of the Gift

III.12 Solus Christus: Something Happens to God

Part IV. The Deconstructive Drive of Luther’s Theology

IV.13 A happy exchange

Readers of Luther after Derrida will be pleasantly struck by the multiple ways in which Marissa Strizzi plays with postmodern irreverence in conjunction with postcolonial hybridity. A Latin American theologian dealing with two “European” thinkers, Strizzi make them enter a conversation that one could imagine it was taking place yesterday, in any café of the mysterious Buenos Aires. Her incursions into the pre-modern from a post-modern place show that throughout epochs and contexts, we are still grappling with the same spiritual and existential themes that make us humans. This book is a fascinating reading of Derrida with his deconstructive apparatus from within the theological text offered by Martin Luther, which opens a scenario for a very "happy exchange" between two authors separated by time and location, yet united by the passion of a Latin American theologian. Dr. Strizzi convincingly demonstrates that Derrida offers a key to making Luther speak afresh to persons, contexts, cultures, and churches that he would have never imagined. And through the doors that this key has opened, the author graciously invites us into a world of impossible possibilities, that is as fascinating as the worlds imagined by the great Dutch artist Maurits Etscher.

In her highly original and well-written study, Marisa Strizzi brings main ideas of Jacques Derrida, which are presented in brilliant clarity, into dialogue with writings of Martin Luther. She convincingly shows that some important and still relevant ideas of Martin Luther – formulated in pre-modern times – are close to the ideas of the post-modern intellectual Jacques Derrida. Interpreting Luther after reading Derrida throws a new light on both authors despite their very different historical and intellectual contexts. Marisa Strizzi’s book presents excellent information on the philosophical and theological ideas of Derrida and Luther, and shows similarities in thought between pre-modern and post-modern times.

Marisa Strizzi's fascinating book breaks new ground by placing Luther and Derrida at the same table as imaginary interlocutors. She unearths surprising overlaps between the deconstructive epistemologies of both thinkers, in resistance to entrenched dogmatisms and hierarchical orders. She provokes to open up to the radically Other and the unavailable outside ourselves. Her work is a passionate call to continue subversive deconstructions in one’s own theological thinking, resonating to the challenges in a globalized world; and, in particular, to critically re-read and thereby revitalize the Lutheran tradition and Luther's work itself. I strongly recommend paying attention to this admirable book.

Marisa Strizzi’s book is a cutting edge and compelling confrontation between Luther and Derrida. Luther after Derrida demonstrates how valuable a deconstructive reading can be, revealing the unsaid and unthought in texts written in a distant past, and hence bringing them to life in an unexpected and fascinating way in our time.

Marisa Strizzi is professor of theology at the Ecumenical Network for Theological Education (REET) and at the Institute for Contextual Pastoral Studies (IPC) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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