(Ir)religiosity

Incarnational Eschatology: Eschaton sans Telos and the Logic of Downturn

In the preceding two sections, I described both the state of Empire in postmodernity, drawing upon the work of Hardt and Negri, and the ahistorical eschatological narrative imbibed by Empire, best seen in the work of Francis Fukuyama.  In this section, I shall turn to what I believe to be a robust constructive theological alternative to the eschatology of Empire.  Utilizing Rieger’s concept of the logic of downturn and Derrida’s notion of the impossible and absolute future, I will develop an eschatology that is intrinsic to the incarnation and, contra the escapism of both traditional Christian eschatology and the eschatology of Empire, deeply rooted in history and material reality.

“Christian eschatology,” writes Jürgen Moltmann, “must separate itself from the messianism of the modern world, and out of this world’s ruins must rescue the categories of redemption.”¹ From within the superstructure of global capitalism, Christian theology is faced with the public task of critically and consciously constructing a liberative and imaginative eschatology free from the messianism of Empire in all its homogenizing force.  As noted above, one of the hallmarks of Empire eschatology is its ahistorical transcendence, that is its detachment from the immanent place, from the actual affairs of socio-political reality.  As with Fukuyama, Empire can, on the one hand, make absolutist claims about the future and course of history and, in a quasi-theological manner, proclaim good news, on the other.  The future, then, or the eschaton, is enchained and fixed, determined by the present, and subsumed under the ideal and regulating orientation of the status quo.  It is therefore susceptible to ontological and epistemological closure insofar as Empire itself serves as its own transcendental signifier, adopting a posture of hegemonic totalization as the sole arbiter of truth and meaning.² My contention, however, is that Christian eschatology jettisons this determinism and rejects any static or fixed metanarrative.³ To be sure, this is not to say that a liberative eschatology has nothing to say about the future or the course of humanity history, on the contrary it has much to say.  But the crucial difference is that such an eschatology eschews the logic of Empire and the ethos of determinism by claiming that the future, insofar as it is part God’s unfinished and ongoing project of redemption and restoration, remains open and unrestrained by the oppressive ideologies of the present.  Thus, while Jean- François Lyotard might define “the postmodern” as that to which suspicion and incredulity are intrinsic, he also states that it is “as much a stranger to disenchantment as it is to the blind positivity of delegitimation.”⁴ There is thus a dual movement of delegitimizing the eschatology of Empire, on the one hand, and the opening, however small or qualified, of the aporetic, of the ambivalent, or what Derrida calls the impossible, on the other.⁵ It is here, in this small fissure in the bulwark of ontological closure and epistemological cessation, that a new eschatology can be resurrected from the underside of Empire.

The crucial initial move that must be made, however, is to separate eschatology proper from teleology, the latter being tantamount to the eschatological trajectory of Empire with all its forms of closure and the former being an open posture toward the unknown future and the in-breaking of the reign of God in the present.  Insofar as Empire points to a fixed and determined ahistorical telos, it is — as far as Christian eschatology is concerned — a “de-eschatologizing” force in that it “ignores the absolute that comes to it from outside itself in order that it be able to realize it in itself” so there is “no future, no next….[since] Empire is defined as eternal.”⁶ Eschatology, then, must unhook itself from the telos and messianism of this false and misguided trajectory such that it allows itself to remain open to coming of the Other, of the realization of an unknown yet fervently anticipated future — to borrow from Derrida, of that which is “to-come.”

[T]he effectivity or actuality of the [promise] will always keep within it, and it must do so, [an] absolutely undetermined messianic hope at its heart, this eschatological relation to the to-come of an event and of a singularity, of an alterity that cannot be anticipated.  Awaiting without the horizon of the wait, awaiting what one does not expect yet or any longer, hospitality without reserve, welcoming salutation accorded in advance to the absolute surprise….⁷

While Empire may lay monopolizing claims on transcendence, its covert work is unmasked.  For eschatology proper recognizes that true transcendence comes from God qua Other⁸ and literally ruptures the present with the future such that the present is wholly transformed. It is less a strong, well defined decree about the nature of the future as much as it is an opening up to the unknown future, the adopting of a posture of humility in the face of the impossible future that is to come as heaven and earth are fused and God, as John of Patmos and the prophet Isaiah write, will be “making all things new” (Rev. 21:1-5; Is. 65:17). Here divine transcendence pierces the immanent fabric of Empire and irrupts the usual cycles of normalcy.  Transcendence, in this sense, has nothing to do with determinism or other-worldliness as in Empire; rather, it involves tangibly and palpably “transcending a particular form of immanence that is determined by the status quo.”⁹ This liberative form of divine transcendence is the linchpin of an eschatology which seeks to run counter to the fixed and totalizing forces of Empire’s narrative as it provides a means to penetrate its seemingly impervious shields and to therefore transform the present.  As Moltmann puts it in his landmark work A Theology of Hope, Christian eschatology is “forward looking and forward moving and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming the present.”¹⁰ Moreover, contra the Fukuyama thesis, eschatology does not result in the end of history nor is it determined by ahistory.  Again, Moltmann states it quite well:

Eschatology does not disappear into the quicksands of history, but it keeps history moving by its criticism and hope. […] It is neither that history swallows up eschatology nor does eschatology swallow up history. The logos of the eschaton is promise of that which is not yet, and for that reason it makes history. The promise which announces the eschaton, and in which the eschaton announces itself, is the motive power, the mainspring, the driving force and the torture of history.¹¹

A counter-hegmonic eschatology, perhaps more than any other theological loci, provides the impetus for present transformation by virtue of its being unhinged from a determined or definitive telos.  The eschatological horizon, then, is the work of divine transcendence in breaking loose the crusts of normalcy such that the vicissitudes of Empire are met with new, creative forms of resistance and antagonism that anticipate the arrival and realization of the reign of God.  It is an eschatology sans telos insofar as telos is that which is determined and ordered by the structures of Empire.

While this move to delegitimize the eschatological narrative of Empire and construct an alternative eschatology divorced from teleological determinism is an important initial step, it is surely not the only step.  Indeed, such a move alone still consigns eschatology to the realm of transcendence alone albeit of a more open and less fixed variety than that of Empire.  The most important move, however, follows the rupture of the present with the absolute, heterogeneous future and the irruption of Empire’s immanent status quo with divine transcendence and alterity. For if, as Moltmann maintains, “Christian eschatology is at heart Christology in an eschatological perspective,”¹² then an equally liberative understanding of Christ must accompany an understanding of eschatology as that which pierces the fabric of the present with the presence of God’s peaceable reign.  The gesture of the incarnation, I claim, provides the foundation and the internal logic for eschatology.  For if divine transcendence provides the basis upon which the narrative of Empire, given its own internal ambivalences and antagonisms, might be ruptured, then the incarnation provides the impetus for critical liberative social and political praxis against Empire.

Through the incarnation, divine transcendence is rendered immanent¹³ as God not only becomes human, taking on the form of fragile, finite flesh (Jn. 1:14), but becomes a particular kind of human in a particular location in space and time.  Against the throws of Empire, the God revealed in Jesus Christ is a God who chooses not to be born among the high and powerful but among the lowly and the ordinary at the fringes of the Roman Empire.  It is here, at this location, on the margins, that divine transcendence ruptures the normalcy and immanence of Empire.  As such, the incarnation marks the inauguration of the reign of God, the beginning of the rupture of the heterogeneous incoming of God’s absolute future even in the midst of Empire’s homogenizing totalization.

In Christ, the absolute Other of God is said to enter into the mundane world and set up a home among us. Here God is neither reduced to the world of objects nor remains in some space utterly beyond the world, but rather ruptures the present with the future, fractures the finite with the infinite, and tears through the temporal with the eternal, inhabiting the now in the guise of the not-yet. Here God’s Otherness is no longer located in some eschatological realm beyond the present order of the world but rather in an eschatological realm that infuses the present world, rupturing it and placing it into question. Here the razor sharp cut of God’s kingdom does not presuppose a hairline gap between the present world and the world to come, but rather is that which slices through the present world with the world to come, inhabiting our world with a divine realm that is not reducible to our time and space.¹⁴

Indeed, this razor-sharp edge of God’s topsy-turvy reality cuts through the present — the eschatological immanence of Empire — and literally turns material reality upside down by placing the first last and the last first (Mt. 20:16; Mk. 9:35), by blessing the poor and chastising the rich (Lk. 6:20; 24) and, most of all, by demonstrating that “the least of these” are the very site of the divine (Mt. 25:35).  Joerg Rieger puts it like this: “as the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ turns things upside down, we might say that the incarnation is the logic of downturn.”¹⁵ Whereas the ahistorical eschatology of Empire points to a fixed and determined future, this eschatology — an incarnational eschatology — is rooted in historical reality, it involves corporeal bodies, and, most of all, it is driven by a logic of downturn that is the essence of the incarnation itself, a movement down and out, toward the margins and toward those that are invisible and repressed by the forces of Empire.  As the divine transcendence of God’s absolute future ruptures immanent reality and violently pierces the socio-political fabric of Empire, liberative theo-political praxis is galvanized by the logic of downturn and the move toward the Other at the margins.  As Karl Barth puts it in a line oft neglected by the purveyors of neo-orthodoxy, “God always takes His stand unconditionally and passionately on this side and on this side alone: against the lofty and on behalf of the lowly, against those who already enjoy right and privilege and on behalf of those who are denied it and deprived of it.”¹⁶

An incarnational eschatology, then, sides with the vulnerable victims of Empire and, through the logic of downturn, moves toward the margins in hopeful expectation of the in-breaking of the reign of God in history at the site of marginality. Yet, this is not the expectation of that which is completely absent, but the expectation of the coming of that which is already present and within us (Lk. 17:20-21).  To put it in Pauline terms, the reign of God is always already present yet always already absent and anticipated as we stand in between the already and the not-yet of history.  This reality is experienced “not as the absence of something that is to come, but rather the absence of a kingdom that is already here” where the “opening created by the eschatological kingdom of God is not an opening to the future but rather an opening into the present”¹⁷ by virtue of its “not-yet-ness.”  The reign of God is here but not here, present yet absent, already but still “to-come” with the advent of the impossible that is only made possible through one’s participation in the pockets of this reality that are already present in the midst of Empire.

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1. Jürgen Moltmann, God For a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1999), 220. [↩]
2. M. Douglas Meeks (“Economy and the Future of Liberation Theology in North America,” Liberating the Future: God, Mammon, and Theology, ed. Joerg Rieger [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1998], 45) calls this the “market logic” which has “defined the ground of certainty (what can be called true and factual), what can count as the development of human beings and progress of society, and the accepted conceptions or order, rule, justice, reason, harmony, and peace.  This spirit asserts itself in all spheres of sociality and increasingly proves itself as the one universal order of the world.” [↩]
3. Thus when Jean- François Lyotard (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi [Minneapolis, Minnesota:  University of Minnesota Press, 1984], xxiv) defines the postmodern condition as that which exhibits deep “incredulity toward metanarratives,” I do not believe the horizon for Christian eschatology is destroyed.  It would seem, rather, that such a condition spells the end of the eschatology of Empire writ large, finding it wholly lacking in legitimization. [↩]
4. Ibid., xxiv.  He continues adding, “Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside? […] Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principles is not the expert’s homology, but the inventor’s paralogy,” xxiv-xxv. Emphases mine. [↩]
5. For Derrida, the impossible constitutes an event that is not tantamount to logical contradiction (as in p or not p) but open to phenomenological alterity and the arrival of the unforeseeable.  As John D. Caputo puts it (The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event [Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 2006], 109-110), “the event is something for which no horizon of possibility of forseeability is able to prepare us, something that contradicts our mundane expectations, which is what we mean by the impossible. […] The event presupposes both a horizon of possibility and expectation and the possibility of shattering our horizons and expectations, the possibility of the impossible.” See also Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997), passim and Caputo and Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York, New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), passim.  As far as the eschatology of Empire goes, the impossible is that which ruptures the constructions of possibility regulated by Empire through divine transcendence. [↩]
6. Míguez, Rieger, and Sung, Beyond the Spirit of Empire, 20-21. [↩]
7. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 81. Cf. Caputo, The Weakness of God, 255. Emphasis original. [↩]
8. Contrary to the typical neo-orthodox appropriation, Joerg Rieger reads Karl Barth’s understanding of God as wholly Other as providing the foundation for a liberative theology that turns toward the other who is repressed by society and Empire.  See Rieger, God and the Excluded: Visions and Blindspots in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2001), 43-69. [↩]
9. Rieger, No Rising Tide, 70.  See also Mark Lewis Taylor, “Empire and Transcendence: Hardt and Negri’s Challenge to Theology and Ethics, Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo, Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter Goodwin Heltzel, eds. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2008), 201-218; Míguez, Rieger, and Sung, Beyond the Spirit of Empire, passim; and Mayra Rivera, The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 2007), passim. [↩]
10. Moltmann, A Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1993), 16. [↩]
11. Ibid., 165. Emphases original. [↩]
12. Ibid., 192. [↩]
13. As Moltmann puts it (God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Sprit of God, trans. Margaret Kohl [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1993], 170)  “the essential thing about the incarnation of the Son is that it is an event by which God binds himself [sic] to humanity.” Emphasis mine. [↩]
14. Peter Rollins, The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2008), 54. [↩]
15. Rieger, No Rising Tide, 130. Emphasis mine.  Similarly, Hardt and Negri, in the sequel to Empire (Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire [New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2004], 237) note the contrast between the force of Empire imposed “from above” and the power of democracy in the multitude which is galvanized “from below.” [↩]
16. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2:1, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance, trans. T.H.L. Parker et al. (New York, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), 386-87.  Emphasis mine. [↩]
17. Peter Rollins, The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2008), 51. [↩]