Click to Purchase
I enjoy pointing out titles that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. A while back I pointed out a book from Eerdmans called Ordering Love: The Memory of God in Liberal Societies which explored the ontological ground of reality as love and then demonstrated how modern culture marginalizes this relationship.
Today, I am drawing your attention to another book from Eerdmans: Metaphysics: The Creation of Reality. The title seems straightforward enough; but the argument is potentially game changing. Pabst contends that the ancient and modern accounts of “being” as inherent expressions of individuation–or separated individual substance–fail to take express the ontic role of relationships in human “being”, namely, human-to-human and human-to-divine relationships.
As such, Pabst is questioning the marginalization of Platonic models in Christian theology so many modern thinkers strive after. On the contrary, he is suggesting that the fusion of the Platonic mode of being and the Christian metaphysical understanding of relationship does adequately take account of the relational element, and therefore provides a superior ontological account of human individuality.
(Very) Sparkling Endorsements
John Milbank (from foreword)
–University of Nottingham
“This book does nothing less than to set new standards in combining philosophical with political theology. Pabst’s argument about relationality has the potential to change debates in theology, philosophy, and politics.”
Graham Ward
–University of Manchester
“I have waited for Adrian Pabst’s Metaphysics for a long time, and, my goodness, it does not disappoint. The range of its material and the breadth of its historical scope are breathtaking, and Pabst’s analysis is as sharp as frost and just as penetrating. At the moment political theology is fashionable, but this book does not just examine something fashionable; I predict it will become a classic and lead the current trend in a new direction.
Catherine Pickstock
–Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge
“In this marvelous book Adrian Pabst gives perhaps the fullest account to date of why Christianity is closely allied to Platonism and why this alliance came unnaturally unstuck, with disastrous consequences for the realm of practice as well as the realm of thought. . . . This is a significant work.”
