Douglas Knight

What they said about The Eschatological Economy

“No attentive reader of this book can fail to be impressed by its scope, boldness and sheer theological energy. As he moves across the fields of historical and systematic theology, biblical studies, and philosophy, Knight demonstrates the resources within the Christian tradition for critical analysis and hopeful reconstruction of culture. This provocative book deserves to be read and debated very widely.”

John Webster University of Aberdeen

“Read this book…wrestle with this book…please, please, take your time with this book. This book is rocket-fuel. This book wants to teach you precisely how classic Christian theology interrogates and soars above so much that is stale and dispiriting in modern thought, particularly in modern political philosophy and, more generally, in all the humanities and social sciences. This book is an invitation to intellectual freedom and genuine creativity in the service of God.”

Christopher Roberts Villanova University

“Ambitious, creative, and challenging, Douglas Knight combines a rigorous and scripturally disciplined dogmatic approach with fundamental analysis of metaphysical concepts. The result is an exciting and theologically motivated challenge to our modern assumptions about time and change, embodiment and identity.”

R. R. Reno Creighton University

“Douglas Knight is a free-flowing fountain of unexpected ideas and connections. Consider only the title of this book [The Eschatological Economy: Time and the Hospitality of God]: everyone one of the pairings does conceptual work, including those made by the chiasmus.”

Robert Jenson Center for Theological Inquiry, Princeton

“Dense, erudite, and provocative, this work confirms the vitality of British, indeed, European doctrinal theology. This is fundamental theology in the best sense, investigating the unity of thought and practice, language and reality, faith and politics, and doctrine and worship in the activity of the triune God. The reader opening to any page will be rewarded with startling and original theological insights. ”

Brian Brock University of Aberdeen

“Knight has produced an ambitious, engaging, and creative account of the drama of redemption by changing the base-line terms in the discussion. This is constructive theology of a bold and fresh kind, taking seriously Israel, sacrifice, and an account of the problem of the human condition indebted to Irenaeus and Zizioulas. It is remarkable for its timely account of our present destiny as the Church, in the world of God’s constant, caring, and consummative work.”

Christopher Seitz University of St Andrews

In this ambitious book, Douglas H. Knight sets out to illustrate the way Christian theology can function not as one category of knowledge within a larger secular account of the world but as itself the site of open and rich thinking on anthropology, sociology, psychology, language, history, and politics. It is not the secular economy but Christian orientation toward eschatology that provides this openness to the new. Knight attempts to do profoundly theological work while renouncing the religious language by which theologians tacitly accept their marginalization.
This work offers much for theologians to celebrate, ponder, and engage. Knight’s attempt to out-narrate anthropology and psychology challenges other theologians to take their own training more seriously and rather than cursing the darkness of modern anthropologies, to turn on the theological lights. He makes bold attempts to overcome spirit/body dualisms, so that “our theological concepts always remain in touch with the biological, chemical, and physical” (p. 203). His section on Israel’s sacrifice as parody of the sacrifices of pagans was, for this reader, revelatory. His integration of Trinitarian theology with scripture studies (and the attendant argument about the nature of scriptural scholarship) deserves serious attention from scripture scholars and theologians alike.
Most significantly, Knight’s flair for refusing to allow theology to be trapped in its own jargon without ever sacrificing the fullness of theological content marks out new territory in the sad old debate over the coherence and relevance of theological language in public. He argues that theology can and must be public and engaged, not by becoming less scriptural or Trinitarian, but by embracing the story of God’s work with Israel and the movement of history towards its End. In academic accounts of the “human” as in politics, the job of Christian theology is not only to be faithful to itself nor only to be in service to human well-being, but to work for the well-being of all creation by being the people who know what God’s work in the world means. The world is not to be abandoned, but to be brought out of its narrow and self-deceived economy, its paralyzing dualism of nature and action, and into the mutual giving that God is making humanity to be.
Kelly S. Johnson (University of Dayton) Modern Theology 24.1 2008

The Eschatological Economy: Time and the Hospitality of God is a new constructive systematic theology that explores the world-changing philosophical implications of Christian hope, and shows that secularism is just a kind of hopelessness. The Eschatological Economy has extensive treatments of christology and atonement, particularly through an extensive discussion of sacrifice and the temple in the Old testament and a radically theological account of the cross, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. It is God’s own labour that makes his people distinct: this labour meets resistance, but God overcomes this resistance and through slow and painful transformation makes his people holy. The book suggests how we should link the doctrine of the Holy Spirit to the people of Israel, to show that the New Testament is the fulfilment of the Old Testament, and that modernity is just a refusal to hear the promises of God, a refusal overcome by God’s own faithfulness.

The Eschatological Economy presents a dynamic understanding of the transformation that occurs as man is brought into relationship with God. It links the central Christian truth that we are changed by the action of God to inform our understanding of time and history. Christian doctrine uses the terms ’sanctification’, and ’sacrifice’ to name the process in which God redeems his people and transforms all creation. This very old doctrine, associated with Saint Irenaeus, teaches that God always intended come to man and stay with him. In the course of this coming, man would grow up, a process delayed, but not ultimately halted, by our rebellion. This book uses the idea of development, or paideia, to talk about this dynamic process. It presents a theological discussion of the work of God and the people of God, and looks at the ways in which biblical studies tackle this issue of the education or formation of humanity, in particular by asking about the role of the people of Israel.

The Eschatological Economy offers a new account of human relations which shows that we owe one another all the life we have, and that God supplies to us the life that we are to supply to one another. Our failure to provide the life and recognition that is due to them, means that they suffer a deficiency, for which the theological term is ’sin’. This ontological treatment of the doctrine of sin puts the fall into a properly Christian framework, which determines that the human condition is seen in the context of God’s ambitions for us. It examines sacrifice and other models of the work of Christ, and sets out a new understanding of the work, and the death, of Christ, showing that the cross and atonement are neither kind of mechanism or a metaphorical description of the human predicament, but simply God’s patience and power at work on our behalf.

The Eschatological Economy demonstrates that Christian theology is not just about ideas, but about life, practice and action, and about the plurality represented by the Christian community, created for us by God. It shows that the Christian gospel contradicts other systems of ideas and creates a real encounter and contest of world-views. When the doctrine of the Trinity determines the questions we ask about secularization, enlightenment and the idea of progress, it provides a way to avoid the divisions and tunnel vision that determines modern existence. Modernity is itself a religion, deeply conservative, and one which is contested by Christianity. Only Christianity can consistently point to a future. Modernity and Christianity are both forms of enlightenment, but modernity is the counterfeit version, Christianity the real one.

The Eschatological Economy links a number of Christian doctrines to the concepts of time and history. It attempts to make our understanding of time more complex by referring it to concepts of development and action. It relates ontology to action and to dramaturgy in order to promote the concept of the person. It suggests that that, in order that it be non-foundationalist, ontology must relate to action, and action to public demonstration. It offers the concept of paideia as means of discussing the transformation brought about by the relation of God to man, and suggests that it provides a way to avoid the dualism which is distinctive of modern thought. It asks questions about the enlightenment and the concept of progress. It discusses the theological concept of Israel and the variety of ways in which biblical studies tackle the issue of the status of Israel. It offers a discussion of the concepts of sacrifice and sanctification and relates them to the pneumatology at work in the wider theological self-understanding of Israel on display in the bible. It gives an account of the action of Jesus Christ that depends on this more public and demonstrative approach to action and being. It relates Christian talk of atonement to a number of Old Testament discussions that often go unrelated, and indicates what difference a less foundationalist ontology might make to some established readings of Scripture. It offers a hermeneutic of Scripture that is also a general political hermeneutic. It suggests that a discussion of cosmology can help us to avoid discussion of metaphor and religious language. Finally it offers a reading of the Christian tradition in confrontation with the central trends of the ancient world and suggests that this conversation and confrontation is required by any properly theological discussion of modernity. All these discussions are part of a theology that intends to be not only systematic but evangelical.

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