This introduction outlines the focus and scope of the study, explaining its motivation, remit, and overall aim. It offers brief thoughts on relevant interpretive issues, explains the structure of the book, and provides brief summaries of each of the subsequent chapters.

In contrast to liberal democracy, which translates constituent power into processes and institutions of representation and government, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri place a premium on constituent power: inspired by social movements, such as Occupy Wall Street, they argue that the constituent power of a multitude should not be translated into the constituted powers of a state. Doing so would deprive the multitude of its revolutionary and radically democratic potential. Pure constituent power seeks to repeat in perpetuity the exception of the revolutionary founding moment of democracy. That Hardt and Negri rely on increasingly theological models in their account of constituent power and revolution highlights the antidemocratic tendency of their conception of “constituent governance.” A political theology that seeks to make the exception permanent is not compatible with democracy. The enactment of pure constituent power in the democracy of the common inevitably leads to what Carl Schmitt described as “sovereign dictatorship.” Hardt’s and Negri’s “constituent governance” is an arbitrary form of governance without any checks and balances.

This concluding chapter acknowledges the difficult topic the authors have sought to address: race. Done right, it is a tough conversation and not something normally reserved for polite dinner conversation. Providing an overview of critical race theory, the six key tenets that were detailed in the book and their application to social work, the authors review the key tenets and sections of the book. America is the country it is today because it profited from chattel slavery, physical and cultural genocide as reflected in the contemporary Make America Great Again movement. Despite over four centuries of three steps forward and two backward, the authors reflect on the overall purpose of this text: the praxis of hope. Hope is discussed conceptually with a call for readers to serve as examples of a world that can move us beyond our current condition.

This chapter troubles and redraws the hegemonic geography of a binary world that answers to Global North and Global South. It does so in order to track what is termed a “deep-time history Anthropocene of the Global South,” which is not necessarily contingent upon sameness of regional geography and nationality but predicated upon comparable and entangled experiences of the Anthropocene memory. It deemphasizes statehood by being attentive to the entanglement of human and planetary histories and identities along a spatiotemporal axis. Using the conceptual lens of “narrative archaeology,” the chapter rejects the late eighteenth century historical model of the Anthropocene, contending that for the Global South, it is much longer, going back to a spatiotemporal stretch of slavery and genocide in Africa and the Americas, besides the legacies of colonialism. While the chapter is basically a theoretical exploration, it complements the formulation with the analysis of texts across a range of geographies in the Global South. It concludes that there is nevertheless an enduring agency for resistance and hope through which identities of the Global South continue to withstand the negativities of the Anthropocene.

This chapter explores the significance of adopting a posthuman approach to placemaking as a strategy for cultivating hope and resilience amidst rapid global change. Drawing on posthuman theory, the author argues for moving beyond human-centric perspectives to embrace interconnectedness with other species, technology, and the environment. To strengthen a ‘psychology of place’, the author recommends recognising our kinship and deep psychological bonds with non-human entities and environments, embracing Indigenous knowledge systems, and fostering ethical relationships with technology. Practical strategies include designing places that encourage multispecies interactions, promoting local biodiversity, and integrating cultural rituals and ceremonies that reinforce communal and ecological bonds. Furthermore, fostering collective dialogues across communities to repair human and ecological relationships is emphasised. Ultimately, the chapter calls for a transformative approach to placemaking that prioritises ecological and relational repair, recognising shared vulnerabilities, and actively cultivating inclusive environments where diverse forms of life collectively can thrive.

This chapter follows Tocqueville in arguing that civic culture must support formal learning in schools and colleges, by providing a social spirit of reflective patriotism. A particular challenge given America’s civic fracture of angry polarization, but also widespread apathy, is to motivate citizens to care about America, citizenship education, and a discursive patriotism; thus, civics now should emphasize stories of American hope and achievement, forging an e pluribus unum out of our pluralism. It then develops the sections: (a) E Pluribus Unum and Civic Hope: Jazz, Constitutionalism, Religious Liberty – with subsections on (i) American Story and Song, Especially Jazz – featuring the Ray Charles version of American the Beautiful, Justice O’Connor and Wynton Marsalis in conversation, and jazz pioneers such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman, (ii) The Declaration and Constitution as Achievements of Harmony, and (iii) Religious Liberty and Pluralism as American Harmony, featuring George Washington, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The final section reflects on the future of white supremacy, challenging the notion that it is an intractable, unchangeable force. While acknowledging its stubborn persistence over three centuries, the final reflection argues that describing racism as “timeless” or “complicated” often serves to justify inaction. It points to recent global protests following George Floyd’s murder as evidence of growing solidarity across different justice movements. These intersecting struggles against various forms of oppression – from police violence to denial of indigenous land rights – suggest increasing recognition of how different systems of power reinforce each other. The conclusion emphasizes that major social systems have fallen before, and encourages readers to imagine a future beyond white supremacy without limiting themselves to short-term or small-scale thinking.

Dante’s two reports of his looks back to earth frame this section. After the first, Dante has a vision of Christ himself.Despite this theophany, Dante must undergo an examination of his Christianity, testing him on the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love.The eager “bachelor” answers the masters’ queries with definitions memorized from authoritative texts.The test, however, exceeds rote memorization.The question of the texts’ truth, which concern the most significant matter of our happiness, moves the participants to inquire more deeply.

Dante rethinks the Christian virtues as he rethought the sins in Purgatorio.His reassessment reconsiders Adam, the figure most intimately connected with the meaning of Scripture’s supremacy, namely, its discouragement of philosophic inquiry. Through this conversation, Dante reinterprets the text that originates the faith in which he’s tested. He recurs to that origin to direct it onto an alternative path, one that encourages rather than prohibits the philosophic life.

This alternative way of life requires an alternative divinity. In this realm of the fixed stars, to which he traces his origins as man and poet, Dante undertakes the ultimate poetic act, that of theopoiesis. Dante’s vision of Christ, he writes, prepared him to see Beatrice.

The conclusion shows that the righteousness of faith is polyvalent: if faith is motivated by fear, as in Donatists and lax catechumens, it fails to justify; if faith is motivated by hope in Christ, as in converting catechumens, it justifies because it will obtain the grace of the Holy Spirit; if faith is motivated by love of Christ, as in the faithful, it justifies as the essential superstructure of righteousness in Christ. In every case, faith justifies as the crucible in which God transforms desire. As final examples, the conclusion considers the catechumen as an image of the process of justification and the baptized as an image of the state of justification, though it is a state characterized both by righteousness in Christ and by hope in future grace. Ultimately, faith is a proper theological mystery for Augustine because faith’s righteousness comes from its being saturated with Christ and the Holy Spirit.

While many scholars have argued that Augustine’s theology of grace underwent a shift around 418, making the grace of faith more inward, Chapter 5 proposes that instead, Augustine’s vocabulary of faith simply expands to encompass hopeful and loving faith, which are due to inward graces. Augustine’s expanded vocabulary can be seen especially through his distinction between three different senses of credere (believing). Credere Christum – believing truths about Christ – is necessary for true virtue, since faith orders actions to their ultimate end, but is not sufficient for it. Credere Christo – believing Christ – justifies when motivated by hope. Hope is both the desire for the grace to love and the first beginning of love by grace. Hope therefore explains many puzzles in Augustine’s mature theology of grace. Lastly, credere in Christum – believing in Christ – is a synecdoche for faith, hope, and love. It signifies not merely the means to righteousness but participation in Christ and the very essence of human righteousness.

Despite the colossal importance of Augustine in the history of justification, no comprehensive study on this topic has yet been written. Moreover, the prevailing view is that Augustine understood justification to be caused by charity, not faith. This book aims to re-center Augustine’s theology of justification onto faith, and its thesis is that Augustine developed multiple accounts of how faith justifies based on whether faith is motivated by fear (which fails to justify), hope (which will justify), or love (which already justifies). The introduction then establishes the fundamentals of justification for Augustine: Augustine understands justification to consist in forgiveness and interior renewal, interprets iustificare (to justify) as making righteous by grace alone, and understands human iustitia (righteousness) as a created gift distinct from God’s righteousness. Lastly, the introduction shows how justification was central to Augustine, both to counter Pelagianism and to explain the work of God operative in the actions of the Church.

Chapter 3 begins with how the Donatist controversy shaped Augustine’s theology of justification by faith because the Donatists represented the real possibility of having faith without charity. The chapter then turns to the key features of Augustine’s theology of justification formed by the Pelagian controversy, especially participation in Christ’s righteousness. Both controversies pressed Augustine to consider how justification is by faith if faith sometimes fails to justify, as in Donatists, lax catechumens, and impenitent Christians. In both de spiritu et littera (The Spirit and the Letter) and his sermons, Augustine addresses this through a deeper psychology of faith: faith only obtains the grace of justification when it is motivated by hope and fails if it is motivated primarily by fear. The chapter concludes with de fide et operibus (Faith and Works), exploring Augustine’s understanding of faith, works, and charity, his criticism of sola fide (faith alone), and his development of a new terminology for justifying faith: fides Christi (faith in Christ).

Early in the text of Works of Love (1847) Kierkegaard makes the claim that “Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally and happily secured against despair.” The purpose of this chapter is to interrogate how this claim might relate to his later claim in The Sickness unto Death (1849) that it is faith that is the opposite of despair. The first section introduces the intertwined dynamics of love and despair as they are traced out by Kierkegaard in both Works of Love and The Sickness unto Death. The second section of this chapter argues that there is a genuine therapy that the loving person undergoes and is able through love of others to heal the sickness unto death that is nothing other than despair. The third and final section of this chapter considers the basis on which we might attribute to Kierkegaard a view of the theological virtues at least as being closely related by dint of a common structure and a common aspiration to consolation and integration of the self with itself in peace and reconciliation despite the unavoidable sorrows of our lives.