transmuted it into a Christian theology of identity, difference, and sociality. Following Rose’s polemic against French postmodernism, he argues that difference is neither absolute nor ultimately reducible to sameness; difference must be endured, never resolved. Hegel’s dialectic, Williams argues, ‘is meant to challenge the all-sufficiency of the polarity of simple identity and simple difference.’7 If my identity is mediated to me through confrontation with another, then otherness and identity must