(Ir)religiosity

Philip Clayton and Harvey Cox both have new books out and they are taking them out on tour. One of the blog tour stops will be here, but as you can see below they will be making their rounds over the next month until they wrap things up in Montreal at the American Academy of Religion‘s annual meeting. There they will be joined by an illustrious panel including Eric Gregory, Bruce Sanguin, Serene Jones, Frank Tupper, and Andrew Sung Park to share a ‘Big Idea’ for the future of the Church. These ‘Big Ideas’ will be video tapped and shared, so be on the look out for live footage from the last night of the tour.

Philip’s new book is Transforming Christian Theology for Church & Society and Harvey’s is The Future of Faith. Both are worth checking out at one of the many tour stops. If you can’t wait you can listen to them interview each other.

Joseph Weethee , Jonathan Bartlett, The Church Geek, Jacob’s Cafe, Reverend Mommy, Steve Knight, Todd Littleton, Christina Accornero, John David Ryan, LeAnn Gunter Johns, Chase Andre, Matt Moorman, Gideon Addington, Ryan Dueck, Rachel Marszalek, Amy Moffitt, Josh Wallace, Jonathan Dodson, Stephen Barkley, Monty Galloway, Colin McEnroe, Tad DeLay, David Mullens, Kimberly Roth, Tripp Hudgins, Tripp Fuller, Greg Horton, Andrew Tatum, Drew Tatusko, Sam Andress, Susan Barnes, Jared Enyart, Jake Bouma, Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, Blake Huggins, Lance Green, Scott Lenger, Dan Rose, Thomas Turner, Les Chatwin, Joseph Carson, Brian Brandsmeier, J. D. Allen, Greg Bolt, Tim Snyder, Matthew L. Kelley, Carl McLendon, Carter McNeese, David R. Gillespie, Arthur Stewart, Tim Thompson, Joe Bumbulis, Bob Cornwall

This Tour is Sponsored by Transforming Theology DOT org!

If you have been to Rob Bell’s Drops Like Stars tour then you know that at an important point in his “talk” persons write “I know how you feel” on an index card (with their non-dominant hand!) and exchange the cards with someone else in the room who has undergone the same experience (divorce, affected by cancer, etc.).

At one point I exchanged cards with a person sitting next to me — who may or may not have been under the influence — and his card, instead of reading what it was supposed to, said “I know you feel.”  I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but I have been reflecting on that difference between the two statements for several weeks now and I’ve come to the conclusion that that the latter, that is the one with the “typo,” is truer than than the former, the statement we inevitably default to when empathizing with those who are suffering or hurting.

In fact, the more I think about how radically different each of us is and how strikingly dissimilar our seemingly similar experiences are given the intricacies and peculiarities of our own subjectivity, the more I realize how arrogant and rash it would be to tell someone that I know how they feel.  Even if I have shared an experience that we might for the sake of convenience call “similar,” or even “the same,” I simply cannot understand nor comprehend how that experience may have altered or radically augmented the other’s narrative in ways strikingly different from my own.  My subjectivity and the other’s subjectivity are wholly other to one another.  Even our shared and similar experiences different; we experience the same experiences differently, so differently that I would say we are precluded from state that we know how the other feels.  Such would be to collapse the other into myself, relegating the other into the order of the same.  I think this is devoid of true empathy and compassion because it still places my experience and my subjectivity above that of the other.  I experience another as an object, not a subject.

The closest we can come, by contrast, to truly identifying with the other in our (un)shared experience is by declaring: I know you feel.  This seems superficially axiomatic but I think one would be hard pressed to find normal instances in which the deeply heterogeneous ways in which we experience trauma and suffering are actually validated rather than simply recognized and shoved aside.  Moreover, I find it very powerful that while I can identify with the other on a certain level through various shared experiences I can never know the full depth and breadth of her subjectivity, indeed that is precisely what it means to experience the other qua other.  I do know empathize with the other, despite our shared experience, because I know exactly how that experience relates to the other’s subjectivity or because I know “how” that experience makes the other feel.  Compassion and empathy couched in that way is, at its core, narcissistic.  I know the other feels (not how!) and I identify with the other despite the mystery that is her complete subjectivity and despite my desire to project myself onto the other. This is, I believe, what it means to “be with” those who are hurting and those who are suffering, not because we have actually been in their shoes — because we haven’t and to say we have would be damaging — but because we are woven together in the fabric of humanity and we encounter one another face to face despite the enigmas the separate us.  We stand together and hold together our shared experiences whilst realizing we understand those experiences and their effects quite differently, that is what it means to relate to one another and see one another and respect one another as other.

I don’t know how you feel but I do know that you feel despite what the world around you may say.

This is part two in an ongoing series on systematic constructive theology. See part one for a longer introduction and please keep in mind that the following is provisional, unfinished, and ad hoc.  In other words, it is truly theology not a dogmatics. I look forward to the dialogue.

Contra traditional metaphysics and onto-theology, God, in our postmodern matrix, is not a Supreme, omnipotent Being or even Being itself; rather, the God revealed in the crucified body of Jesus Christ is a God otherwise than being, an event of eschatological possibility harbored by the name of theology which breathes life and dynamism to all things — God is dead, long live God.

In book ten of his Confessions Augustine asks, “What do I love when I love my God?”  a question he never fully answers for himself except to say that which we call God utterly transcends any categorization or conceptualization.  Negative and apophatic theologians such as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Meister Eckhart are right to suggest that we cannot speak of what God is, only what God is not.  Indeed, to definitively claim what God is would be to create a conceptual idol. God is beyond naming and knowing, beyond nomination and that which cannot be captured or tamed within the confines of mere language.  But still we must speak.  We must develop some sort of logos concerning this enigma, yet this enigma lies beyond our logos. Therein lies the paradox, the tension.  God is that which is unknown, whose name cannot be uttered, but God is also that of which we are always speaking and thinking, thus “we must speak and yet we must maintain our silence”¹ in the excess of meaning and presence that is the un/known God.  We thus begin our venture into the doctrine of God with the humble admission that our language can only hope to point us toward the enigma to which we ascribe the name God but simply cannot do it justice.  Our theology of God will always be unfinished, incomplete, and provisional.  Those interested in nailing it all down will serve themselves well to not be theologians.  Theology is not an exacting enterprise nor is it interested in definitive explanations.  It is an ongoing, open-ended project that is more interested in approaching questions from a new vantage point and wrestling with the tension inherent in the questions than with providing easy answers.  Easy answers are hopelessly banal and trite, but the questions, the questions themselves are pregnant with meaning and possibility.  Thus theology approaches the question of God, the question of who or what God is, not in hopes of providing a clear-cut air tight answer, but, as Bertrand Russell says, “for the sake of the question itself.”² Read the rest of this entry »

1. Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God, (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2006), 30. [↩]
2. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Radford, Virginia:  Wilder Publications, 2008) 101.  Russell was not, to be sure, speaking of the doctrine of God or even of theology but of the aim of philosophy.  Theology and philosophy have always had an odd relationship.  Here, though, it is not incorrect to equate their aims. [↩]

We’ve been discussing the nature of the Christian story in my evangelism class over the last few weeks, mainly whether or not Christianity is a metanarrative.

Of course, historically there is no doubt that Christianity unfortunately deserves to be placed alongside some of the more violent and totalizing metanarratives of modernity.  That is true.  I won’t dispute it.  However, I want to speak, more or less, normatively.

If we are to reify the Christian narrative after modernity, so to speak, how do we classify its narrative?

My conviction is that we have to be honest about the universal claims the Christian story makes on humanity and the course history, but unlike the metanarratives of modernity I think we also have to make room for respectful disbelief.  So the story is, I think, universal but not totalizing, invitational but not impositional.

That being said, I’m not sure I am happy or comfortable with calling the Christian story either a metanarrative or a micronarrative  It is universal but not domineering, it is contextual but not simply ad hoc.  I think it is a different story altogether and I find myself groping for another category.  I know, categories are limiting and so on, but I think it is important to have some sort of reference point, however limiting or provisional.

What do you think? Meta, mirco, or something else?