(2008)
Theology After Reading explores how recent novelists, alongside certain post-War Christian theologians, appear to be challenging, inverting, reinterpreting, and sometimes even affirming, the basic questions and answers of more traditional theologians. Focusing on five novels, Darren J. N. Middleton's book illustrates how literary art provokes theological reflection. Examining Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, Toni Morrison's Sula, Nikos Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ, Earl Lovelace's The Wine of Astonishment, and Paul Thigpen's My Visit to Hell, Middleton deftly illuminates the expression of both mainstream and progressive Christian doctrines as themes in these selected works of fiction, ultimately reaffirming the graced search for meaning in the mindful Christian life.
Learn more by clicking here
Christianity and literature 62.2 (2013)
“By drawing from the well of special meaning, these writers [the book’s featured novelists] gesture toward mystery—an act that opens up rather than closes off, pressing beyond doctrinal boundaries about what can and cannot be said about life and God. In this way, Middleton says, ‘language and story offer theology a return to humility,’ a sentiment that echoes contemporary critical theory in asserting our inability to attain absolute knowledge or to claim unmediated access to the world’s facticity…Middleton’s scholarly and critical talents are in full display in every chapter, and the approach he takes, as well as the issues he contemplates, make this an excellent addition to the body of literature exploring the middle ground between fiction and theology.”