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date: 15 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines the relationship between the thoughts of theologians and philosophers and the cities that nurtured and inspired them. Such an analysis is important because the development of modern theology, and many of the themes that have preoccupied modern philosophy – phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism, utilitarianism, liberalism, dialectics, dialogicalism, positivism, and post-structuralism among them – are linked to the rise of the modern city. The analysis focuses on the work of theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher, who lived in Berlin through some of its major urban changes. It demonstrates how urban landscape served as a backdrop for the development of Schleiermacher's theology and philosophical interests in hermeneutics and dialectics; and how the city is woven into the very thought processes of his work.

Keywords: theology, theologians, philosophers, modern city, material culture, Berlin, Friedrich Schleiermacher, hermeneutics, dialectics

Graham Ward

Graham Ward is the Regius Professor Divinity at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Balthasar at the End of Modernity (1999), Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology (1999), Cities of God (2000), Theology and Contemporary Critical Theory (2000), True Religion (2002), Christ and Culture (2005), Cultural Transformation and Practices (2005), and The Politics of Discipleship (2010). He is also the editor of The Postmodern God (1998), The Certeau Reader (1999), Radical Orthodoxy (1999), The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology (2001), and, with Michael Hoelzl, The New Visibility of Religion (2008). He is currently working on two volumes concerned with the doctrine of God, entitled Ethical Life.

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