Dark Theology as an Approach to Reassembling the Church

Abstract

Dark theology as a theoretical approach emerged during debates on human rights and inclusion in Orthodox theology. It is realized at the junction of such disciplines as ecclesiology, political theology, philosophy, and social theory. It is based on the tools of object-oriented ontology (OOO), one of the branches of the philosophy of speculative realism. The author proposes a theoretical framework by which we can talk about God and supernatural entities as real objects included in public discourses through the collective imagination. The article discovers the basic theoretical (ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic) principles of dark theology as they apply to ecclesiology and political theology. Additionally, it discusses the existence of church dark actors who do not come within the field of vision of the theological mind (ecclesiology) illuminating ecclesial space. The author concludes by proposing a concept of reassembling the Church based on Bruno Latour’s notion of the ‘collective’.

Keywords

• dark theology
• object-oriented ontology
• Orthodox theology
• ecclesiology
• Bruno Latour
• Graham Harman