Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology

Arguing that Christianity was an unacknowledged influence on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and postmodernism, this book examines the relationship between postmodernism and Christianity. It demonstrates the priority of the Judaeo-Christian tradition over attempts to displace it.

This book examines the relationship between postmodernism and Christianity. Postmodernism claims Christianity is ripe for dismantling. Professor Ingraffia argues against the version of Christianity constructed by Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida. Attempts to reconcile contemporary critical theory with biblical theology ignore Christianity's distinct identity. Christianity was, he argues, an unacknowledged influence on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and much of postmodernism, thereby demonstrating the priority of the Judaeo-Christian tradition over attempts to displace it.

Reviews

"The strength of Ingraffia's argument lies in his clear and, on one level, sympathetic exposition of the different but related projects of these three thinkers....With lucid expositions of crucial turns of their arguments and judicious appeals to current scholarship on each figure, Ingraffia shows how Nietzsche and Heidegger derive important concepts by borrowing from christian theology on the one hand and by distorting essential features of that theology on the other....While it may not produce the kind of immediate epiphany experienced by Clarence Wilmot...in any of its readers in reverse, it should unsettle the more thoughtful among them in their accustomed confession, ironically echoed by Kierkegaard from Descartes : de omnibus dubitandum est."

Walter L. Reed, Philosophy and Literature