Questioning Back

This is the first of three essays in fundamental theology--along with Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth (1996) and Conventional and Absolute Truth (2015)--which attempt to reassess the status of Christian doctrinal language within the contemporary ""regime of truth."" In light of Heidegger's ""overcoming of metaphysics,"" it revisits the age-old tension between Athens and Jerusalem--between the metaphysical structures of the Greek mind and the texture of the biblical events of revelation and salvation. A deconstructive reading that traces this tension in classical Christian texts--continued in later studies. Including Christianisme et philosophie chez Origene, Editions du Cerf, 2011--clears the ground for a step back to biblical realities as they are apprehended in contemporary consciousness.

""This book elaborately and masterfully provides the sort of rethinking of Christian doctrine which I proposed two decades ago in The Future of Belief. It is a superlative achievement of scholarly yet lucid reasoning. It will answer the needs of many contemporary Christians.""
Leslie Dewart, St. Michaels College, University of Toronto

""O'Leary writes with great imagination, Nietzschean skill, zest, and profound fidelity to Christian revelation. An exemplary book in every sense.""
Fergus Kerr, OP, Theology Faculty, Oxford University

""Many have written about the crisis of faith and theology; O'Leary provides a remarkably penetrating diagnosis of the sickness and offers an original treatment. A remarkable and provocative analysis of what has gone wrong with the Christian enterprise.""
Paul M. van Buren, Religious Studies, Temple University

""The author breaks the conspiracy of silence that now surrounds the theological bankruptcy of the churches. He really confronts the crisis of faith and understanding that stems from this metaphysical tradition and its world negating images, a crisis which is certainly one of the main factors generating new fundamentalisms and dogmatic orthodoxies.""
Gibson Winter, Social Ethics, Princeton Theological Seminary


Joseph S. O'Leary is an Irish theologian resident in Japan since 1983. He was a professor at Sophia University, Tokyo, from 1988 to 2015, and held the Roche Chair for Interreligious Research at Nanzan University, Nagoya, 2015-16. His current research is devoted to a philosophical and theological dialogue with Indian Mahayana Buddhism.