Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World

By Catherine Keller and Catherine Keller

Book Overview

"In her brilliant, wide ranging, nuanced study of apocalypse, Keller has written a definitive cultural and theological essay. In this book she is doing the work of the true intellectual: providing learned, passionate guidance for living the good life, all of us together, here and now, on our planet."
--Sallie McFague, Distinguished Theologian in Residence
Vancouver School of Theology

"A richly evocative exploration of apocalyptic's ambiguous possibilities.... Inspiring in the fullest personal, political, and religious senses of the term."
--Kathryn Tanner
University of Chicago Divinity School

"Catherine Keller is a poet among theologians. Her writing attains imaginative heights and depths that expose the flatly prosaic character of most theological work. One finds oneself lingering over sentences, images and tropes, hearing them resonate with connections and insights."
--Peter Hodgson
Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"Densely packed and brilliantly articulated, this book challenges the reader's critical engagement with the cultural habits of postmodernity. Apocalypse Now and Then demonstrates that scholarship can be simultaneously poetic and rigorous, firmly grounded in the concrete while exploring the rarefied air of the esoteric. In the face of apocalypse we need not succumb to despair but can let Keller guide us to an affirmation of hope."
--Elizabeth A. Say, CrossCurrents

"Filled with passion and tension and vividness.... Insightful and provocative, Keller's Apocalypse Now and Then is a most enjoyable reading experience.... A book not to be missed."
--Ted Peters, Theology Today

"In assessing our postmodern situation and in searching for sustainable environments and persistence in the struggle against human suffering, Keller offers us all a profoundly grounded, lifesustaining alternative to despair."
--Rita Nakashima Brock, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley

"This is a brilliant book: brilliant in its content, brilliant in its prose, brilliant in its style.... This book is valuable not simply for what Keller says, but for how she says it.... Part of the pleasure of this book is that even as Keller builds her argument from chapter to chapter, she weaves a story around the edges of her chapters. And this story is itself the counter-apocalypse she argues...."
--Marjorie Suchocki, Claremont School of Theology

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0800637364
• ISBN13: 9780800637361
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.7" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Opening the Male Box

This is the book that changed my life forever. I read it many years ago, and it continues to reverberate in my theological practice. Apocalypse means "unveiling." As Keller says, this was the verb of the groom unveiling his bride. The next thing we know, that same groom is tearing open the earth for weatlth and pleasure. Thus economic development is revealed in the dark light of pillage. I have never read such an eloquent plea for the earth and her creatures, the earth itself as the Body of Christ. The book reads like a dream, revelatory, deconstructing the strictures of linear thinking to show its underlying chaos and self-interest. As a result of reading this, I began to do theology as dreamwork, an idea that Keller herself takes up in more recent writings, notably God and Power.

Apocalyptic Brilliance

If you'll only ever buy one book on apocalypse and apocalyptic phenomena, this is the one. A brilliant theological investigation in how the Western world, and especially the U.S. has been shaped, molded and thought through the storylines of John of Patmos' 'revolting revelations'. Keller's reading employs (among other) feminist and poststructuaralist perspectives to a biblical text that can neither be completely dismissed nor entirely embraced. Instead she argues for a 'counterapocalyptic' approach that avoids the closures of either a 'straightforward apocalypse' or an 'anti-apocalypse.' This is a powerful, exciting, astonishingly honest, thoughtful and brilliant text well worth the work it takes to grapple with its poetic cadences. A text from a most powerful contemporary theological voice, who is also a singularly inventive, smart and witty writer. Oh, and lest you think there is no need to read a book on apocalypse after we made it into 2000, this book will convince you that the influence and impact of apocalyptic thinking is far stronger, deeper and more subtle than much of the hullabaloo about 'the end is near' might make you think. This book lays bare some of the foundational ideas of the Western world without which our world would not be what it is. At times a tough read, but worth every effort.