I am incredibly excited to bring back the audio format of This Common Life in 2024! To kick things off, I talked with Dr. Hanna Reichel about their latest book, After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology (Westminster John Knox Press, 2023).

After Method assumes the impossibility of doing theology right–and moves beyond it. Leaning on that great Lutheran refrain of “grace alone,” Hanna offers a middle way between either baptizing method as salvific or throwing it out altogether. It is an intriguing read.

Hanna and I cover many topics, including the pursuit of theological perfection and the relationship between design and use. We also talk about Christianity and goodness—what kind of claim does Christianity have on goodness? Is ‘the good’ something we should attempt to locate and allocate?

Dr. Hanna Reichel is Associate Professor of Reformed Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Reichel’s teaching spans doctrine and political theology. Their research interests include Christology, theological anthropology, eschatology, doctrine of God, theological epistemology, political theology, queer theology, and theologies of the digital. Reichel has authored two monographs and more than two dozen peer-reviewed articles or chapters, as well as co-edited six volumes or themed journal issues. After Method is their second book.

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Purchase After Method here.

Subscribe to “This Common Life” here.

For a concise summary and review of After Method, I recommend Stephen D. Morrison’s review published on his website.

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