enter into a relationship in which he or she can receive other gifts and
circulate them.^80 In this sense, forensic justification manifests the
logic of the gift rather than the logic of debt and merit.
Hoffmann applies the concept of‘gift of recognition’to various
areas in dogmatics, in particular the theology of the eucharist and the
sacrifice, as well as to the theology of love. In so doing, she goes
further than previous theologians. While Hector and Henriksen, for
instance, are content to show the relevance of the philosophy of
recognition to theologians, Hoffmann proceeds to show in detail
that Christian dogmatics displays important correspondences with
Hénaff’s idea of recognition.
At the same time, Hoffmann does not undertake the role of a
historian. She is not interested in showing the historical roots of
recognition thinking in Christianity but remains in the comparative
mood. As her comparison is mainly limited to the Hénaff–Ricoeur
concept of the gift of recognition, she is interested neither in unilat-
eral processes of personal recognition nor in events in which a fact or
some other non-personal matter is recognized. Although her work
does not cover these dimensions of the present study, she shares with
it the conviction that religious traditions have their own inherent
resources for recognition.
In sum, we see an emerging interest in the theory of recognition in
theology, much of which is sparked by the phenomenological think-
ing of Ricoeur and Hénaff. Religion and theology thus appear as
objects to which the post-Hegelian theory of recognition is applied.
With the exception of Hoffmann, scholars have not paid much
attention to the inherent historical and systematic resources of Chris-
tian thinking. The present study considers these resources in a con-
sistent manner in the succeeding chapters.
1.4. Concepts, Conceptions, and Paradigms
The plan of the present book is straightforward: in Chapter 2, Latin
religious traditions are investigated. In Chapter 3, the modern era
with its various linguistic traditions (mostly English and German, but
(^80) Hoffmann 2013, 323–6.
24 Recognition and Religion