Saint Paul and Contemporary European Philosophy

Gert-Jan van der Heiden is Professor of Metaphysics at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is the author of The Voice of Misery: A Continental Philosophy of Testimony (SUNY, 2020), Ontology after Ontotheology: Plurality, Event and Contingency in Contemporary Philosophy (Duquesne University Press, 2014), The Truth (and Untruth) of Language: Heidegger, Ricoeur and Derrida on Disclosure and Displacement (Duquesne University Press, 2010). He is co-editor of The Gadamerian Mind (Routledge, 2022) and Saint Paul and Philosophy: The Consonance of Ancient and Modern Thought (De Gruyter, 2017). He is editor-in-chief of the Brill series Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology.

Gert-Jan van der Heiden provides an excellent map to the confusing terrain of modern-day philosophical appropriations of St Paul, in Badiou, Taubes, Zizek, Agamben, and others. Through his interpretation, Paul comes forth as a radical thinker of new beginnings and forms of life, opening a door to thinking the world differently.

• Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Another Legacy of Paul?Retrieving PaulPhilosophical Self-Portraits as PaulThree LeitmotifsOverview 2. The Dialectic Spirit of Paul Paul, a Dualist?Gnostic Temptation and Pauline SpiritDialectic between Monism and DualismWhich Dialectic?3. The Ghost of Nihilism Devaluations of LifeNietzsche’s Polemic Faith as Holding-to-be-TrueRetrieving Ancient Thought4. Meontology Nothing in the WorldSense of an EndingAs Not Cast Out from the World5. Time, Event, and Exception Death and ResurrectionDialectic of ExceptionParousia and Potentiality-of-Being-Otherwise Between Past and Future6. Law, Promise, and Grace State of ExceptionPaul’s Dialectic Political Theology Dualism of Law and Grace? Katargēsis and Charis7. Community, Exception, and Outcast All IsraelNeither Jew nor GreekA Part Without PartSet Apart8. Epilogue: A Pauline Dialectic of ExceptionPositioning Paul in Ancient ThoughtNavigating DialecticallyFirstfruits of the Spirit Bibliography