This book offers a novel account of grace framed in terms of Bruno
Latour's "principle of irreduction." It thus models an object-oriented
approach to grace, experimentally moving a traditional Christian
understanding of grace out of a top-down, theistic ontology and into an
agent-based, object-oriented ontology. In the process, it also provides
a systematic and original account of Latour's overall project.
The account of grace offered here redistributes the tasks assigned to
science and religion. Where now the work of science is to bring into
focus objects that are too distant, too resistant, and too transcendent
to be visible, the business of religion is to bring into focus objects
that are too near, too available, and too immanent to be visible. Where
science reveals transcendent objects by correcting for our
nearsightedness, religion reveals immanent objects by correcting for our
farsightedness. Speculative Grace remaps the meaning of grace and
examines the kinds of religious instruments and practices that, as a
result, take center stage.