European Literature and Christian Theology (1900–present)

Abstract

This entry considers the relation between literature and Christian theology in twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Europe, with attention principally given to those writers whose oeuvre takes up questions central to theology (in particular soteriology, eschatology, ecclesiology, creation, and liturgy, among other things) in sustained and original fashion. The aim, then, is not to offer a cursory survey of the much broader and diffuse theme of ‘(world) literature and religion’ or ‘literature and spirituality’ but, instead, to focus on those voices whose engagement with Christian theology is comprehensive throughout and often transformative of the latter. (For an earlier period see European Literature and Christian Theology [1700–1900].)

Keywords

• theology and the arts
• literary form
• poetry
• prose
• postmodernism
• imagination
• secularism
• culture
• allegory
• morality
• theology of language