(Ir)religiosity

The Eschatological Problem

In our current context, eschatology is arguably the most important theological loci, demanding sustained critical reflection. It is certainly the most visible doctrine in the so-called secular world, forming and constituting our collective consciousness. Indeed, one could argue that the twentieth century with all its tragedies and atrocities — war, natural disasters, genocide, nuclear proliferation and the like — was one in which the eschatological narrative of modern of progress was thoroughly demystified. Yet with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s another eschatological narrative gained currency, that of global neoliberal capitalism best defended by Francis Fukuyama who claimed that the advent of liberal-democracy marked the highest form of human government and the definitive “end of history.”¹ The new emerging network of transnational corporatism, which undergirds the global market, constitutes what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call a new postmodern Empire.² With the financial crisis of 2008-2009 this narrative too was called into question and if the actions of both the Bush and Obama Administrations are any indication it would seem that depression and near collapse were not enough to adequately unmask the chilling logic of unbridled casino capitalism nor to delegitimize the eschatological narrative brokered by the purveyors of neoliberal globalization.³ It would seem, then, that a sound Christian eschatology has never been more important or needed than it is now.  Unfortunately, the usual alternatives are equally as grim, whether it is an escapist, other-worldly eschatology which implies that one should simply deal with her problems since this life is only a grand waiting room for the afterlife, on the one hand, or a bland realized eschatology which is reliant on the myth of modern progress and therefore remains complicit in the destructive status quo of Empire, on the other.   In other words, Christian eschatology, in both its conservative and liberal forms, all too often falls prey to the inertia of the prevailing metanarrative (in this case, global capitalism) rather than remaining fixed upon the rupture of the event, of the incoming of the reign of God within history.  Insofar as this is true Marx was correct in his famous assessment of popular religion as nothing more than an “opium of the people” and the “sigh of the oppressed.”⁴

It is my contention in this paper that a distinctively Christian eschatology, when liberated from the narratives of Empire and neoliberalism, is itself liberative.  I will begin by sketching the contours of the new postmodern Empire delineated by Hardt and Negri followed by an analysis and critique of the eschatological narrative, however overt or covert, imbibed by Empire and best seen in the work of Francis Fukuyama.  Relying on theologians and continental philosophers of religion such as Joerg Rieger, Jacques Derrida, and Jürgen Moltmann I will then offer an alternative narrative, an incarnational eschatology modeled after the gesture of the incarnation and the logic of downturn.  Ultimately, I hope to offer an eschatological vision that is both realistic and hopeful; realistic about the great weight and force of the totalizing narrative of Empire but hopeful that when unhooked from the telos of Empire an incarnational eschatology can be both wholly invested in the world and open to the in-breaking of God’s absolute future.  I am, therefore, arguing for an eschatology that is the very heart and soul — indeed, the very medium — of the work of theology, an eschatology that is not consigned to an ahistorical future, pontificating about “last things,” but an eschatology that is rooted in the material present, positioning itself as “the doctrine and wisdom of hope.”⁵

1. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, New York: Avon Books, 1993).  Even after Sept. 11, 2001, this narrative is not without its apologists.  In addition to virtually every elected official in the US government, noted New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in his The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York, New York: Picador, 2005) puts forward an argument in favor of globalization noting the technological benefits.  Interestingly, those benefits are only available for those in positions of privilege vis-à-vis the new Empire and not those upon whose backs the Empire is built. [↩]
2. See their recently completed trilogy: Empire (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000), Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York, New York: Penguin Press, 2004), and Commonwealth (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009). [↩]
3. Records of the rush to “save the system” and bailout the banks and corporations which hold the networks of power within Empire together are well documented.  For a scathing analysis of this response and its consequences if left untouched see Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (Brooklyn, New York: Verso, 2009).  In No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future (Minneapolis, Minnesota:  Fortress Press, 2009), Joerg Rieger explores this phenomenon from a theological perspective paying particular attention to the religious structure in the US governments response, i.e., the “faith” placed in the transcendence of the market despite its failure. [↩]
4. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, On Religion (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1993), 42. [↩]
5. Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2000), 51. This has been Moltmann’s contention ever since the publication of his Theology of Hope in 1965.  More recently he has stated more strongly and emphatically that “eschatology is not just one of Christianity’s many doctrines…it is quite simply the medium of the Christian faith, the keynote, the daybreak of colours of a new expected day which bathe everything in their light.  For the Christian faith lives from the raising of the crucified Christ and reaches out towards the promises of Christ’s universal future,” Experiences of God (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2007), 11-12.  To be sure, an incarnational eschatology fundamentally rooted in the historical present does not dismiss the advent of God’s future; rather, it rejects, contra the eschatological narrative of modernity and Empire, any inclination that that future is fixed and determined. [↩]

Recently, I wrote a paper entitled “Empire, Economics, and the Future: Toward an Incarnational Eschatology”  for a course on Gospel and Empire.  In it I trace the contours of what I believe to be the eschatological narrative tacitly exuded under neoliberal globalization (or, if you like, what Hardt and Negri have famously termed the new, postmodern form of Empire).  I then briefly develop what I call an incarnational eschatology in response to this metanarrative.  It is an eschatology sans telos insofar as telos these days is tantamount to an ahistorical, transcendent and regulative ideal which subsumes, however overt or covert, all difference under its logic (not to mention it prescribes desire and then fabricates various technologies which are supposed to satisfy it).  This eschatology is modeled after the gesture of the incarnation and thus involves a movement down and out, toward the margins.  I claim that faith collectives today must enact a critical repetition of this gesture (in the Kierkegaardian sense) as a means to pierce the seemingly immanent fabric of Empire; to make use of the ambivalences and antagonisms intrinsic to Empire and, concomitantly, to transcend Empire itself, at least partially, with a posture toward the undetermined future, toward that which is, as Derrida likes to put it, “to-come.”

Starting tomorrow I plan to post this paper in its entirety in four or five different sections.  I look forward to the feedback.

So I’m participating in the new Transforming Theology Project as member of the blogger consortium.  Dr. Philip Clayton explains what the project is all about in a short video here.  Next month, theologians and church leaders will be meeting to discuss how theology can be transformed, or better yet,  freed, from the ivory towers of the academy and placed back in the trenches of the church where it belongs.

Part of the project, since it is aimed at tranforming theology for the people, is to involve bloggers, who will read and critically engage books from various theologians and church leaders, hopefully coming up with some pressing questions that will stimulate the larger conversation.

First up is John Cobb‘s Reclaiming the Church sent to me last week by Tripp Fuller, of Homebrewed Christianity fame.

The book itself is really short, only 110 pages.  I almost wish it were longer.  I say that because Cobb spends a lot of time diagnosing the problem, which is good and he does so well.  But I think want is really needed are tangible, practical ways in which this gap between the academy and the church can be bridged.    We need people to cast a vision and offer a plan of action.

Part of this may have to do with when the book was published — it is now 12 years old.  Not that old, but when you consider what has taken place in the church over that period time it makes sense.  Let me explain.

As Cobb sees it, the problem in part — though he nuances it a bit more — rests on what he calls the “professionalization of theology.”  He argues that just over the last 50 years or so theology has been moved outside of the church and isolated in the university.  He states in the preface:

The church has come to identify theology with what professionals do. Since what professionals do has been increasingly determined by the norms of the university rather than by the needs of the church, the church has lost interest in what it understands to be “theology.” Too often the result has been that the church has ceased to think about its own life in terms of its faith, a faith that has itself become vague and unconvincing.

The abandonment and failure to have a more holistic faith with an informed and critically thought out theology has lead to two things in Cobb’s estimation:  a loss of passion and subsequent lukewarmness.  The church has simply ceased to be relevant because it has ceased to engage its culture, its context and its world by continually developing and re-developing a practical theology.

Cobb argues that this “professionalization” was brought on by Enlightenment rationalism and modernity in general.  The American church borrowed theological method and pedagogy from the German school and as theology became professionalized it also became a detached, scientific enterprise that offered little, if anything, to the church itself.  Disciplines themselves were fractured as theology was needless parsed into various sub-categories: ethics, systematic theology, church history and so on.

In the meantime the cultural and philosophical ground upon which the church stood literally shifted underneath its feet.  Cobb ends the book suggesting that if theology is to be reclaimed by the church, both the church and the academy as instiutions must appropriately accommodate and respond to the new emerging, postmodern worldview.  He argues that the shift from modernity to postmodernity opens up new possibilities for a transformative theology.

I would argue that much of what Emergent has done in the last ten or so years has greatly helped in making sense of the cultural and philosophical shifts that are occurring.  Many emergent/ing churches are now taking theological education very seriously and many pastors are in conversation with academicians and vice versa.  For some, the differences between the tradition roles of each office are becoming less clear. I wonder how Cobb might write the book differently today in light of that.

To be sure, I am not suggesting that any of this is enough.  Our seminaries and schools of theology are still very much entrenched in a very modern, Enlightenment-based pedagogy.  From that we need to be freed.  Furthermore, many churches still frown upon “theology” as a collective, ecclesial enterprise.  Many pastors and lay persons still don’t consider themselves theologians because there is a certain stigma surrounding the term.  This has to change.

We need some serious, creative pastors and academicians who are willing to step up and dialogue with one another about theological education.  Somewhere between the lectern in the classroom and the pulpit in the church theology is getting lost.  We need to find out where.  In the meantime professors need to understand that it’s okay to be pastoral and pastors that it’s not snobbish to be intellectual.  More people need to challenge those traditional roles.

I think the implications of such a conversation might suggest that we need to both rethink our pedagogy in the academy and our preaching/worship in the church.  I have to wonder if both institutions are willing not only to hear that but also modify their approaches in order to allow actual, tangible transformation of theology to take place.

I have hope, but bulky institutions don’t usually take to those things easily.  We shall see.

Thoughts?