Christian philosophy and philosophy of religion tend to be dominated by analytic approaches, which have brought a valuable logical rigor to the discussion of matters of belief. However, the perspectives of continental philosophy-in particular, the continental emphasis on embodied forms of knowing-still have much to offer to the conversation and our understanding of what it means to be both rational and faithful in a postmodern world.

The Nicene Option represents the full sweep of James K. A. Smith's work in continental philosophy of religion over the past twenty years. Animated by the conviction that a philosophy of religion needs to be philosophical reflection on the practice of religion, as a "form of life" (as Wittgenstein would say), this book makes the case for the distinct contribution that phenomenology-as a philosophy of experience-can make to philosophy of religion and Christian philosophy. Engaging a range of philosophers in this tradition, including Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Luc Marion, Richard Rorty, and Charles Taylor, Smith's constructive proposal coheres around what he describes as "the logic of incarnation," a "Nicene option" in contemporary philosophy of religion. By grounding philosophy of religion in the doctrinal heart of Christian confession, Smith gestures toward a uniquely robust Christian philosophy.

Besides issuing a clarion call for the renaissance of continental philosophy of religion, The Nicene Option also offers a glimpse behind the scholarly curtain for a wider audience of readers familiar with Smith's popular works such as Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?, Desiring the Kingdom, Imagining the Kingdom, and You Are What You Love-all of which are tacitly informed by the phenomenological approach articulated in this book. As an extended footnote to those works-which for many readers have been gateways to philosophy- The Nicene Option presents an invitation to a new depth of reflection.

James K. A. Smith

Introduction: God on the Left Bank? Prospects for a Continental Philosophy of Religion

I Outline of an Incarnational Continental Philosophy of Religion
1 The Philosophy of Religion Takes Practice: A Methodological Manifesto
2 Secular Liturgies: Prospects for a "Post-Secular" Study of Religion
3 Continental Philosophy of Religion: Prescriptions for a Healthy Subdiscipline
4 A Logic of Incarnation: The Nicene Option in Continental Philosophy of Religion

II Derrida, Marion, and the Possibility of a Christian Phenomenology
5 Determined Violence: Derrida's Structural Religion
6 Re-Kanting Postmodernism? Derrida's Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone
7 Determined Hope: A Phenomenology of Christian Expectation
8 Beyond Epistemology: Derrida and the Limits of the "Limits of Knowledge"
9 A Principle of Incarnation in Derrida's (Theologische?) Jugendschriften: Towards a Confessional Theology
10 Deconstruction--an Augustinian Science?
11 Picturing Revelation: Idolatry and the Aesthetic in Marion and Rosenzweig
12 The Call as Gift: The Subject's Donation in Marion and Levinas

Afterword: An Incarnational Phenomenology