Inconclusive Theologies: Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Kierkegaard, and Theological Discourse

Kierkegaard argued that Christianity is a lived religion, not a set of doctrines to be cognitively affirmed. This means theology’s proper focus is reflection on revelation within the God-human relationship, and human existence-always in process and shaped by different communities, relationships, and contexts-is significant to theological construction. As Christian knowledge is a relationship that cannot be communicated directly, theology is never concluded and cannot adequately function within totalizing systems.

The writings of seventeenth-century Mexican nun, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, provide an exemplary direction for contemporary theologies mindful of this need for indirect communication. Her writings show a respect of others’ cognitive freedom and their differing contexts and perspectives. Utilizing the religious work of this woman from Mexico’s colonial past, Powell builds a theological case for the inclusion of literary genres in the theological discipline, a move that resists western philosophy’s dominance of form and opens the theological canon.

The field of theology has witnessed a significant shift toward the perspectives of those outside dominant Western culture; in addition to featuring such a perspective through highlighting the work of this subaltern woman, this work provides additional methodological groundwork for this continued pursuit. Powell maintains that the genres Sor Juana employs-poetry, drama, and epistle-are especially appropriate for the communication of Christian knowledge. This book serves as a proposal for open forms of theological discourse marked by the limits of religious understanding emerging from human difference. Theology’s reflection, then, can be understood anew as a theology within the limits of the inconclusive.