Paul's New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology

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The rediscovery of the apostle Paul by atheistic or agnostic European philosophers is one of the most striking recent developments in philosophyand certainly one of keen interest to the church. These philosophers view Paul as having a revolutionary understanding of authority and politics.Bringing together Radical Orthodox theologian John Milbank, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and Creston Davis, who has been a student of both, this book reflects on Paul's new moment in secular philosophy. In a debate format, Žižek brings Marxist and postMarxist ideas into a discussion with Milbank about the influence of Paul. The book also includes a contribution from Catherine Pickstock.

Introducing Jesus: A Graphic Guide

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Compact INTRODUCING guide to Christianity’s central figure. Christianity depends on the belief that the Jesus of history is identical with the Christ of faith, and that God in the person of Jesus intervened finally and decisively in human history. But is the historical Jesus the same as the Christian Saviour? And how did an obscure provincial religion based on the paradox of a crucified saviour conquer the Roman Empire and outlive it? INTRODUCING JESUS – A GRAPHIC GUIDE confronts the enigmas. It sets Jesus in the perspective of his time – within Judaism and its expectations of a Messiah, in the atmosphere of Greek philosophy and the Roman deification of emperors. It traces the development of Christianity from St. Paul and the Romanization of the Church, to modern liberation theology. This book is a lucid and exciting investigation that will appeal to all readers, whether Christian or not.

Freud and the Legacy of Moses

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This important new title by Richard J. Bernstein presents a detailed examination of Freud's last book, Moses and Monotheism. Bernstein argues convincingly that this frequently vilified and dismissed book is one of Freud's most important works. It is in Moses and Monotheism that Freud answers the question that obsessed him: what is the essence of the Jewish people? Bernstein goes on to show how Freud developed a new interpretation of the concept of a religious tradition--an interpretation that is applicable to both Judaism and Christianity.

The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity by Slavoj Zizek

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Slavoj Zizek has been called "an academic rock star" and "the wild man of theory"; his writing mixes astonishing erudition and references to pop culture in order to dissect current intellectual pieties. In The Puppet and the Dwarf he offers a close reading of today's religious constellation from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis. He critically confronts both predominant versions of today's spirituality--New Age gnosticism and deconstructionist-Levinasian Judaism--and then tries to redeem the "materialist" kernel of Christianity. His reading of Christianity is explicitly political, discerning in the Pauline community of believers the first version of a revolutionary collective. Since today even advocates of Enlightenment like Jurgen Habermas acknowledge that a religious vision is needed to ground our ethical and political stance in a "postsecular" age, this book--with a stance that is clearly materialist and at the same time indebted to the core of the Christian legacy--is certain to stir controversy.

The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?

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What matters is not so much that Žižek is endorsing a demythologized, disenchanted Christianity without transcendence, as that he is offering in the end (despite what he sometimes claims) a heterodox version of Christian belief.
—John Milbank

To put it even more bluntly, my claim is that it is Milbank who is effectively guilty of heterodoxy, ultimately of a regression to paganism: in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank.
—Slavoj Žižek

In this corner, philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who represents the critical-materialist stance against religion's illusions; in the other corner, "radical orthodox" theologian John Milbank, an influential and provocative thinker who argues that theology is the only foundation upon which knowledge, politics, and ethics can stand. In The Monstrosity of Christ, Žižek and Milbank go head to head for three rounds, employing an impressive arsenal of moves to advance their positions and press their respective advantages. By the closing bell, they have proven themselves worthy adversaries--and have also shown that faith and reason are not simply and intractably opposed.

Žižek has long been interested in the emancipatory potential offered by Christian theology. And Milbank, seeing global capitalism as the new century's greatest ethical challenge, has pushed his own ontology in more political and materialist directions. Their debate in The Monstrosity of Christ concerns nothing less than the future of religion, secularity, and political hope in light of a monsterful event—God becoming human. For the first time since Žižek's turn toward theology, we have a true debate between an atheist and a theologian about the very meaning of theology, Christ, the Church, the Holy Ghost, universality, and the foundations of logic. The result goes far beyond the popularized atheist/theist point/counterpoint of recent books by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others.

Žižek begins, and Milbank answers, countering dialectics with "paradox." The debate centers on the nature of and relation between paradox and parallax, between analogy and dialectics, between transcendent glory and liberation.

God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse

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A brilliant dissection and reconstruction of the three major faith-based systems of belief in the world today, from one of the world's most articulate intellectuals, Slavoj Zizek, in conversation with Croatian philosopher Boris Gunjevic. In six chapters that describe Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in fresh ways using the tools of Hegelian and Lacanian analysis, God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse shows how each faith understands humanity and divinity--and how the differences between the faiths may be far stranger than they may at first seem.

Chapters include (by Zizek) (1) "Christianity Against Sacred," (2) "Glance into the Archives of Islam," (3) "Only Suffering God Can Save Us," (4) "Animal Gaze," (5) "For the Theologico-Political Suspension of the Ethical," (by Gunjevic) (1) "Mistagogy of Revolution," (2) "Virtues of Empire," (3) "Every Book Is Like Fortress," (4) "Radical Orthodoxy," (5) "Prayer and Wake."

The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?

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Argues that the subversive core of the Christian legacy forms the foundation of a politics of universal emancipation.

One of the signal features of our era is the re-emergence of the 'sacred' in all its different guises, from New Age paganism to the emerging religious sensitivity within cultural and political theory.

The wager of Zizek's The Fragile Absolute – published here with a new preface by the author – is that Christianity and Marxism can fight together against the contemporary onslought of vapid spiritualism. The revolutionary core of the Christian legacy is too precious to be left to the fundamentalists.

Jacques Lacan: The Triumph of Religion

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"I am the product of priests", Lacan once said of himself. Educated by the Marist Brothers (or Little Brothers of Mary), he was a pious child and acquired considerable, personal knowledge of the torments and cunning of Christian spirituality. He was wonderfully able to speak to Catholics and to bring them around to psychoanalysis. Jesuits flocked to his school.

Freud, an old-style Enlightenment optimist, believed religion was merely an illusion that the progress of the scientific spirit would dissipate in the future. Lacan did not share this belief in the slightest: he thought, on the contrary, that the true religion, Roman Catholicism, would take in everyone in the end, pouring bucketsful of meaning over the ever more insistent and unbearable real that we, in our times, owe to science.

- Jacques-Alain Miller


Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) was one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers. His many works include Écrits, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis and the many other volumes of The Seminars.

Table of Contents
Note by Jacques-Alain Miller
Discourse to Catholics
Lecture Announcement
I. Regarding Morality, Freud Has What It Takes
II. Can Psychoanalysis Constitute the Kind of Ethics Necessitated by our Times?
The Triumph of Religion
I. Governing, Educating, and Analyzing
II. The Anxiety of Scientists
III. The Triumph of Religion
IV. Closing in on the Symptom
V. The Word Brings Jouissance
VI. Getting Used to the Real
VII. Not Philosophizing
Translator’s Notes
Bibliographical Information

• Jacques Lacan was one of the leading thinkers of the 20th Century and the most influential psychoanalyst after Freud. His work has been hugely influential across a wide range of disciplines, from philosophy and psychology to literary theory, critical theory, gender studies and cultural studies.

• In this short book Lacan develops his views on religion, which played an important role in his life and in the development of his ideas - ‘I am the product of priests’, he once said of himself.

• Whereas Freud believed religion was an illusion that would be dissipated by the progress of science, Lacan took the opposite view, arguing that Catholicism - the true religion in his view- would take in everyone in the end.

• This important book, now available for the first time in English, will be of great interest to students and scholars in psychoanalysis, critical theory, literary theory, gender studies, philosophy and the humanities and social sciences generally.

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See also

 Lacan For Beginners

Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide