Your comment that “50 yrs ago no one could have predicted” philosophical interest in a religious figure is exactly Milliner’s point: reread his first sentence, paying especial attention to the words “midcentury” and “the end of the century.” Yet your overall remark seems to suggest the converse.

Also, Žižek is in “serious” conversation with Christians? That’s a new one. I wasn’t aware that his contrarian rock star-ness held serious conversations with anyone. :).

Also, Caputo is Roman Catholic, once a monastic, who’s been plying a religious reading of Derrida for a generation. He’s not *just* a “philosopher,” unless one denudes him of his biography, which, thanks to Paul Ricoeur’s defense of human “identity” (in face of severe pomo criticism), we don’t have to do. Anyway, no surprise that Jack writes on St Paul–or that his engagement is so anemic.

You obviously want to advocate Continental engagements with “religion,” but I say, with St. Gregory of Nyssa, that philosophy of itself is “ever in labor but never giving birth,” while the Light of Christ, seen shining in the lives of the Saints, outshines the wise. As we pray in the Akathist to the Mother of God, in praise of her grace-filled life:

“Rejoice, thou who showest philosophers to be fools!
Rejoice, thou who constrainest the learned to silence!
Rejoice, for the clever critics have made fools of themselves!
Rejoice, thou who didst break the webs of the Athenians!
Rejoice, unwedded Bride!”

And we might all learn something.

It makes more sense to refer to Leo Strauss who saw Western culture as the product of a continuous dialogue between reason (Athens) and revelation (Jerusalem). Academia is very heavily on the Athens side as it was back in the days of ancient Athens itself. It is interesting to me that none of the people quoted above mentioned the word “revelation.” Instead, we hear of “sacred traditions” which is a bit of a vague, New Age term. Certainly, religion is more than philosophy or a set of traditions.

We want sure footing without chains, autonomy without irrelevance, and so we try to be both theist and atheist and succeed at neither.

Eh.
It will be more like, “What was that name you called me, and why did you go so soon?”

Philosophy witnessed a “religion (re)turn” during Derrida’s lifetime – in his own work – not after his death, as Stanley Fish seems to imply in his remark above. Follow the trends in Continental philosophy, both in terms of conferences and publications, and you’ll observe that even secularists, like Slavoj Žižek, are in serious and sustained discourse with Christians. See “The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity,” “The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?” (w/John Milbank and Creston Davis), “The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?”, and, most recently, “Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology” (w/John Milbank and Creston Davis). Another fine example of this trend is “St. Paul Among the Philosophers,” edited by John Caputo. Fifty years ago no one could have predicted that the apostle Paul would become a figure of fascination to philosophers.