Critical Theory and Early Christianity: (Studies in Ancient Religion and Culture)

This volume aims to create--in Walter Benjamin's terms--dialectical images from early Christian texts and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It blasts the past and the present into one another, creating new constellations of thought, ones connected with tensions and mediated by theory (mediation being what Theodor Adorno adds to Benjamin's concept of the dialectical image). Our ancient images derive from the Gospels, the Apostle Paul, Revelation, Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine. Our modern images and theories derive from Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Judith Butler. Together these images and theories challenge the way we think about gentrification, progress, early Christianity, revolutionary movements, history, the body of Christ, canonicity, language, gender, and bodies, both human and non-human. Eleven international scholars contribute to this volume. These scholars are experts in the fields of Biblical Studies, Early Christian Studies, Philosophy, and Critical Theory.

Table of Contents:
Preface: Dialectical Images and Critical Theory Mathew G. Whitlock 1. Introduction: Making Early Christian Texts Strange (Again) Matthew G. Whitlock Part I Walter Benjamin 2. Walter Benjamin and Early Christian Texts Matthew G. Whitlock 3. Reading, Libraries, and Urban Change in the Shadow of Capitalism and Apocalypse: Reading Walter Benjamin and John of Patmos Robert Paul Seesengood, Albright College, Pennsylvania 4. “On the Concept of History”: St. Augustine and Walter Benjamin C.A. Levenson, Idaho State University Part II Gilles Deleuze 5. Gilles Deleuze and Early Christian Texts Matthew G. Whitlock 6. The Deleuzioguattarian Body of Christ without Organs B. H. McLean, University of Toronto 7. The Many Acts of the Apostles: Simulacra and Simulation Matthew G. Whitlock and Philip Tite, University of Washington 8. Face-ing the Nations: Becoming a Majority Empire of God Reterritorialization, Language, and Imperial Racism in Revelation 7:9-17 Sharon Jacob, Pacific School of Religion Part III Alain Badiou 9. Alain Badiou and Early Christian Texts Matthew G. Whitlock 10. Christianity Appears First, As Itself Bruce Worthington, University of Toronto 11. Towards a Vulgar Marxist Reading of Christian Origins Today James Crossley, St Marys University, London 12. Recapitulating the Event: Reading Irenaeus with Badiou Hollis Phelps, Mercer University, Georgia Part IV Judith Butler 13. Judith Butler and Early Christian Texts Matthew G. Whitlock 14. Paul Exposed: Reading Galatians with Judith Butler Valérie Nicolet, Institut protestant de théologie, faculté de Paris 15. Mattering Bodies: Animacy and Justice in Origen’s On First Principles Peter Anthony Mena, University of San Diego

About the Author :
Matthew G. Whitlock (PhD, The Catholic University of America, 2008) is Associate Professor of New Testament at Seattle University. His research focuses on Acts of the Apostles, the Apostle Paul, New Testament Poetry, Critical Theory, and Science Fiction. His publications have focused on topics ranging from New Testament poetry in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly to the Body Without Organs and Christianity in Deleuze and Guattari Studies. He is currently working on a book of dialectical images from the science fiction of Philip K. Dick and from the letters of the Apostle Paul.