Owen Barfield: Philosophy, Poetry, and Theology (Veritas Book 20)

In this book Michael Di Fuccia examines the theological import of Owen Barfield's poetic philosophy. He argues that philosophies of immanence fail to account for creativity, as is evident in the false shuttling between modernity's active construal and postmodernity's passive construal of subjectivity. In both extremes subjectivity actually dissolves, divesting one of any creative integrity. Di Fuccia shows how in Barfield's scheme the creative subject appears instead to inhabit a middle or medial realm, which upholds one's creative integrity. It is in this way that Barfield's poetic philosophy gestures toward a theological vision of poiēsis proper, wherein creativity is envisaged as neither purely passive nor purely active, but middle. Creativity, thus, is not immanent but mediated, a participation in God's primordial poiēsis.

"Michael Di Fuccia has produced the most major study of Owen Barfield so far. He shows just why the future of theology may belong to Barfield's seemingly wilder, but more metaphysically penetrating, style of orthodoxy. Barfield realized early, that in order to believe now, one must disbelieve much of what passes today as accepted secular wisdom. The alternative is some version of theistic positivism, credible only to the emotionally immature. I thoroughly recommend this new book to all sensitive and reflective readers."
--John Milbank, author of Theology and Social Theory

Michael Vincent Di Fuccia (PhD University of Nottingham) is a lecturer in philosophical and systematic theology.