The Golden and Saving Chain and its (De)construction: Soteriological Conversations between Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion and the Cappadocian Fathers

Guise, M. (2017) The Golden and Saving Chain and its (De)construction: Soteriological Conversations between Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion and the Cappadocian Fathers. In: Studia Patristica. Vol. XCV - Papers Presented At The Seventeenth International Conference On Patristic Studies Held In Oxford 2015. Studia Patristica Series. The Fourth Century Cappadocian Writers, 21 (95). Peeters Publishers Leuven, London, UK. ISBN 9789042935914

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Abstract

This article considers whether the links between the divinity of the Spirit and soteriology (the Nazianzen's 'golden and saving chain'), as explored and endorsed by the Cappadocian Fathers and their theological allies, retain any relevance or potency when placed in rapprochement with the 'new Enlightenment' posited by, for example, Jacques Derrida, which looks towards a 'delimiting' of dogmatism, authoritarianism and religions of the book, and offers instead a structure of hospitality and of a 'messianic' faith in a justice to come. I will be suggesting that this is, indeed, the case, and will begin by revisiting the debate which took place between Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion during the 'Religion and Postmodernism' conference at Villanova University in September 1997, since one of the notable features of their discussion was the extent to which both protagonists cited the work of the Cappadocians. I shall be focusing especially on the dialogue between Derrida and Marion on 'saving the name', with a view to establishing whether their readings of the Cappadocians shed light on, or obfuscate, the latters' soteriologies. I shall conclude with a critical appraisal of the extent to which the Cappadocian metaphor of the golden and saving chain should be understood as irrevocably 'deconstructed' by the discrete conceptual schema of Derrida and Marion or whether, on the contrary, it might be construed as offering hospitality to, or even to some degree be the saving of, twentieth- and twenty-first-century understandings of salvation.

Publication Type: Book Sections
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BT Doctrinal Theology
Divisions: Academic Areas > Institute of Arts and Humanities > Theology, Philosophy and Religion
Depositing User: Margaret Guise
Date Deposited: 20 Dec 2018 14:51
Last Modified: 14 Mar 2021 01:10
URI: https://eprints.chi.ac.uk/id/eprint/3926

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