Synopses & Reviews
Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-298) and index.
Synopsis
This is a groundbreaking, highly original work of postmodern feminist theology from one of the most important authors in the field. The Face of the Deep deconstructs the Christian doctrine of creation which claims that a transcendent Lord unilaterally created the universe out of nothing. Catherine Keller's impassioned, graceful meditation develops an alternative representation of the cosmic creative process, drawing upon Hebrew myths of creation, from chaos, and engaging with the political and the mystical, the literary and the scientific, the sexual and the racial.
As a landmark work of immense significance for Jewish and Christian theology, gender studies, literature, philosophy and ecology, The Face of the Deep takes our originary story to a new horizon, rewriting the starting point for Western spiritual discourse.
Table of Contents
Part I: Creation now and then -- Mystery of the missing chaos -- "Floods of truth": sex, love and loathing of the deep -- Part II: Orthodoxies of nothing -- "Tears of Achamoth": the fathers' ex nihilo -- "Mother most dear": Augustine's dark secrets -- "Sterile waters": Barth's nothingness that is -- Part III: Monsters of hermeneutics -- "Sea of heteroglossia": return of the biblical chaos -- "Recesses of the deep": Job's comi-cosmic epiphany -- "Leviathanic revelations": Melville's hermenautical journey -- Part IV: Creatio ex profundis -- Bottomless surface: when beginning bereshit -- The pluri-singularity of creation: created God bara elohim -- Strange attractions: formless and void tohu vabohu -- Docta ignorantia: darkness on the face pne choshekh -- Ocean of divinity: deep tehom -- Pneumatic foam: spirir vibrating ruach elohim merahephet.