Beautiful Bricolage

Theopoetics is a plea for a more fully human way of speaking about God in the twenty-first century, a way that offers new life to dry and dying platitudes. Drawing deeply from linguistics, theology, philosophy, and even quantum mechanics, theopoetics attempts to reimagine the relationship between human language and speech about God through poetic phrasing and metaphor--thereby proposing a new God-talk. Interacting with selective works from within the discipline, Silas Krabbe offers a guide that not only maps the diversity of thought but also charts what is going on in the depths of the field. Using the metaphor of a river, Krabbe attempts to baptize the reader into theopoetics by leading an immersive exploration: sounding its waters, hearing resonances and echoes, feeling its flow, and becoming entangled in the braiding of its streams. Plunging ever more deeply into the differences that exist within the discourse of theopoetics, Krabbe is able to identify common aims, currents, and even hints of where this theopoetic river may lead. Not only a text about theopoetics, A Beautiful Bricolage is a work of theopoetics itself. It thereby draws the reader into a mode of inquiry that repudiates those who attempt to grasp it. ""Silas Krabbe has produced a wide-ranging and engaging entree into the multiple varieties of theopoetic work, which succeeds in sorting out their divergences and intersections and assesses their contributions to a conversation that lies at the heart of what is called radical theology."" --John D. Caputo, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus, Syracuse University; David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Villanova University ""In A Beautiful Bricolage, Silas has not, thank the sweet heavens above, compiled an orderly array of meaning containers. He has instead engaged in poetic utterance replete with bumping, colliding, embracing, and lots of resonating. Given time and space to reverberate, these words can crumble walls and open worlds, not because Silas has captured and contained meaning, but because he daringly seeks to resonate with that which is already resonating.""  --Steve Frost, Executive Director, The Tasai Collective ""Krabbe's work is a subtle and patiently wending read, aptly contributing to theopoetics theory and interpretation within academic theology and continental philosophy of religion."" --L. Callid Keefe-Perry, The Association for Theopoetics Research and Exploration ""Krabbe offers a stunning rehearsal of the key moves and histories of theopoetics as such, even as he performs a gorgeously unpretentious poetics of his own. Aesthetic and political, deconstructive and creative, historical and prophetic, this beautiful bricolage conspires at multiple levels, across and beyond disciplines, with this ancient and cutting-edge discourse."" --Catherine Keller, Author; George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology, Drew University ""A playful scouting report on theopoetics, an exciting camp of religious thinkers . . . who are shaking up the theological world."" --James H. Olthuis, Emeritus Professor of Philosophical Theology, Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto Silas Krabbe is the Community Theologian and Coordinator at Mosaic Church located in Vancouver's downtown eastside, one of Canada's poorest neighborhoods. A graduate of Columbia Bible College (BA in Biblical Studies and Community Development) and Regent College (MATS in Christianity and Culture), he seeks to entangle contemporary theologies issued from the ivory tower with back-alley musings about the world.