"The Rebellious No is an important and original contribution to contemporary theological thinking. Vahanian's secular theology of language is intense, meditative and brilliant, and culminates in a profound vision of how rebellion and love are inseparable from each other." -- -Clayton Crockett University of Central Arkansas "Noelle Vahanian's writing style is pithy, playful, allusive, and often entertaining." -- -James H. Olthuis Institute for Christian Studies "God and Being are both words without referents. What is, then, the difference between them ? God is only a version of Being (Heidegger). God is "otherwise than Being" (Levinas). God survives the death of its Being (Vahanian). Such is the profound paradox of "secular theology". A fascinating achievement." -- -Catherine Malabou author of The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage "The sincerity within Vahanian's style speaks as clearly to the reader as does the style of her meditations on the difficulties of sincerity." -- -Joshua Ramey Haverford College
This book aims to renew theological thinking by extending and radicalizing an iconoclastic and existentialist mode of thought. It proposes a theology whose point of departure assumes and accepts the critiques of religion launched by Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and Feuerbach but nevertheless takes theological desire seriously as a rebellious force working within, but against, an anthropomorphic, phallogocentric worldview.
As a theology of language, it does not claim any privileged access to some transcendent divine essence or ground of Being. On the contrary, for Noelle Vahanian theology is a strictly secular discourse, like any other discourse, but aware of its limitations and wary of great promises—its own included. Its faith is that this secular theological desire can be a force against the constitutive indifference of thought, and it is a meditative act of rebellion. Aphoristic instead of argumentative, this book offers an original and constructive engagement with such seminal issues as indifference, belief, madness, and love.