A Theology of Compassion: Metaphysics of Difference and the Renewal of Tradition

The wholesale rejection of metaphysics today has become the test of the postmodern. In this groundbreaking volume Oliver Davies argues for a renewal of metaphysics as the language of createdness based not in a return to outmoded concepts of essence but in a dynamic new understanding of ontology as narrative and performance. This repairing of the Western metaphysical tradition is grounded both in the divine self-naming in Exodus--which for the rabbis identified Gods presence in the world with Gods compassionate acts--and in the compassionate resistance of Etty Hillesum and Edith Stein to the violence of the Holocaust. Building on a new metaphysics of compassion that is attentive to the histories of the contemporary world Davies offers a renewed systematic theology of divine speech and relation focused in Jesus Christ who as the triadic Word of God speaks creatively at the heart of human culture and action and who as the redeeming Compassion of God regenerates the world.