We live in a world where certain bodies and spaces are marked by death. My dissertation argues that these death-bound spaces and bodies are produced within and for a particular theological imagination of redemption. Using G. W. F. Hegel and Sylvia Wynter to track and analyze the major moments of this global, racialized ordo salutis, the dissertation then turns to James Cone’s theology to engage in an interdisciplinary elaboration of one of his major theological and political concepts: the freedom to live beyond (the threat of) death, the freedom of Christ’s resurrection. This Christological account of eschatological freedom displaces the global configurations of life and death and thereby offers resources for helping Christians think, and live, beyond these continuing permutations of what W. E B. Du Bois called the global “color line.” The final chapter of the study turns explicitly to what this argument means for us white Christians, noting how this concept of eschatological freedom carries with it powerful resources for critiquing and dismantling contemporary modulations of white supremacy.

The dissertation contributes to multiple discussions, engaging the most substantial criticisms of Cone's work while developing his insights in relation to critical race theory, postcolonial studies, continental philosophy, and other Christian theologies. Unlike most other theological engagements with whiteness, this dissertation is fundamentally a work of constructive theology. It develops key, "minor" doctrinal concepts like nothingness, possibility, the body/flesh, metaphor, truth, and praxis, and it makes connections to larger theological doctrines, particularly Christology, Soteriology, and the Trinity. This doctrinal focus refuses to instrumentalize theology for the sake of the political while also refusing to sequester theology from the material realities in which Christians live and think. It thereby also contributes to ongoing conversations in "political theology."