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Recent post-metaphysical trends in contemporary theology seek to overcome “metaphysics,” in order to free God-language from the trappings of onto-theology. This means that theology prioritizes the conventional discourse of the church over the universal ambitions of metaphysical language. This article offers a corrective to the “post-metaphysical” corrective by proposing a broader definition of metaphysics, one rooted in concrete experience. In this regard I constructively consider Jean-Yves Lacoste’s “conceptual rescue operation” metaphysics in his wide-ranging Être en danger (2011)

The theological turn in phenomenology continues to generate cross-disciplinary discussion among philosophers and theologians concerning the scope and boundaries of what counts as a “phenomenon.” This essay suggests that the very idea of the given, a term so important for Husserl, Heidegger, Henry and Marion, can be reassessed from the point of view of Wilifred Sellars’s discussion of the myth of the “immediate” given. Sometimes phenomenology is understood to involve the skill of unveiling immediate data that appear as “phenomena” to a conscious and wakeful ego. In conversation with Jean-Luc Marion’s volume Givenness and Revelation, I challenge the assumption that phenomena are immediate in their givenness. The final remarks concern the “how” of the givenness of theological data, and in particular, the phenomenon of the Trinity.

Liberal regimes in the West are not homogeneous in their application of secular principles. What kind of “secular” state a particular government promotes depends in large part on the strength and influence of the majority religion in that region. This article acknowledges the heuristic value of a recent threefold taxonomy of secularism: passive, assertive, and benevolent forms of secularism. I take issue with and challenge certain institutional privileges granted to the majority religion in one benevolently secular regime, the Republic of Ireland. I consider how benevolent secularism, while remaining benevolent toward religion, can align its application of secularism in the arena of publicly-funded education (primary and secondary education). A politically liberal regime, defined by the idea of public reason, invokes the principle of publicity, namely, that discourse and public policy be intelligible (and acceptable to a large degree) not only to an individual’s religious or moral community but also to the broader collection of members who constitute a liberal state. Drawing on John Rawls’ conception of public reason, and using Ireland as a case study, I show how this particular state-religion interrelation can be recalibrated in order to increase the prospects of reconciliation with a secular space of public reason.

A liturgical existentialism attempts to situate Christian spirituality in view of a post‐Heideggerian world. To this end, French phenomenologist Jean‐Yves Lacoste has undertaken what is perhaps the most sustained analysis of Heideggerian existential phenomenology from a theological‐mystical point of view, and this paper highlights his major achievement: the liturgical reduction. Certainly existentialism, after Heidegger, makes the “world” an object of inquiry, and yet Lacoste's reduction is problematic precisely because it privileges an ascetic spirituality that desires to “bracket” the world. Both the temporality and topology of the liturgical reduction are exposed to view in order to show that a liturgical existentialism properly conceived, does not bracket the world, but is realized carefully in and through the world‐horizon itself.