God Is Here: A Theology of Place and Displacement

This brief, systematic theology of place and displacement responds to the crisis of displacement in our world today. It asks how the Christian kerygma can be good news in a world such as we inhabit: a world of displacement and loss of place. In response to this question, it offers to the theological imagination an analogical concept of place, grounded in the Triune God as Place, first for Godself and also for creaturely life. It develops the meaning and assesses the adequacy of this way of imagining God by way of engagement with the theological symbol system, specifically the symbols of Trinity, creation, incarnation, cross, and church, and with the current discourse of place studies. This project contributes an interpretation of the Christian faith that takes seriously creaturely dependence on, attachments to, and suffering in places, and brings alongside it a conceptual vocabulary for thinking theologically about place and displacement.