Love's Entanglement: God as Nonviolent Relation and How That Brings the World to Peace

In a decisive advance, Love’s Entanglement locates meaning radically in relation, not metaphysics, breaking theology free from its long paralysis in Platonic other-world intellectualism. It discovers instead vital truth at the roots of human relation unearthed by the revolutionary anthropology of René Girard. The power of biblical revelation comes into its own, supplying new communication about what it means to be human—a choice between the annihilating cycles of violence and the inbreaking of divine peace in human history. Bartlett traces the Greek sources of Western philosophy and the slow separating out of the key function of relationship by thinkers like Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Peirce—the last developing the field of semiotics as the framework most responsive to this vision. This electric book brings to the surface the deep structure of Girardian thought, demonstrating its transforming this-worldly core—the revelation of a nonviolent mode of being human rather than the endless falsehood of sacred violence and its military and political functioning. What results is a dynamic contemporary offering of nonviolent transcendence as the shape and meaning of humanity today—a hope-filled theology and identifiable path forward in the midst of contemporary human crisis. Read more