(Ir)religiosity

I ran across this quote from Jürgen Moltmann last night while doing some research for my last written statement in constructive theology for the semester.

Christian eschatology must separate itself from the messianism of the modern world, and out of this world’s ruins must rescue the categories of redemption.              God for a Secular Society, 220.

It seems to me that one of the biggest theological challenges facing us today is speaking of eschatology in light of postmodernism.  If Lyotard‘s critique of metanarratives is correct it would seem to spell the end of eschatology broadly conceived.  For Moltmann, however, eschatology could not be more important as it is the very medium and content of all theological discourse.

So the question then becomes the following one:  what is the ultimate Christian hope in the face of the failed and indeed violent narratives of the modern world, how can the Christian narrative be freed from those totalizing narratives, and how does it, at its core, differ from them?  What is its good news?  I think Moltmann is on to something here.  Yet I wonder how or if it is even possible to distinguish the Christian narrative from these other stories ontologically.  That is, how to speak of the Christian narrative without totalization.  In many ways this gets back to the question I asked a few months ago about whether Christianity is intrinsically a metanarrative.  Or does it spell freedom from the metanarrative?

I’m still working out where I come down on this, but it seems to me that eschatology is where the rubber meets the road as far as the interface between theology and postmodernism is concerned.

Thoughts?

I’ll put all my cards on the table:  I think Kierkegaard is unfortunately habitually misread today.  The common reading as dictated by the philosophical and theological canon and undoubtedly displayed in undergraduate intro. courses couches (and caricatures) Kierkegaard as a prime example of religious fidelity gone awry.  His “teleological suspension of the ethical” represents all that is wrong and dangerous with religion after the Enlightenment and such a position is decidedly irrational, lacking the proper grounding in ethical reasoning.  That is one reading.  To be sure, it is important and one that should be not ignored, but it is, however, not the only one nor is it, in my view, the best one.

I was re-reading some articles and interviews by John Caputo in preparation for Emergent Outliers’ first book club meeting tonight (you should join us!) when I ran across an interesting reading of Kierkegaard that avoids that usual, banal approach and obliquely offers a critique of modern ethics.  Commenting on Derrida‘s reading of Fear and Trembling, Caputo writes that:¹

“Responsibility is the issue of the singularity of the situation of the responing subject (for which “Abraham” is a place-holder) standing alone before the “wholly other” (for which “God” is a place-holder) while the demands of the “other others” (for which Isaac is a place-holder) press in upon and interrupt the intimacy of this exclusive tête-à-tête ["head-to-head"].  Thus, to decide responsibly is always a matter of sacrificing “Isaac,” the ones who hold the Isaac position, by which he [Derrida] means, of sensitizing oneself to my responsibility to all the other others who also lay claim to my responsibility, even as I respond to the other one before me.  Unlike de Silentio, Derrida’s analysis does not turn a suspension of my ethical duty in the face of the religious call that overrides it, but on the conflict of ethical duties that structures every ethical choice, which makes the paradox of the akedah [the binding of Isaac] the paradigm of everyday ethical decisions right on down to the smallest detail….”

Interesting.  So instead of fixating on Abraham’s suspension of ethics perhaps it is helpful to read the narrative in a different manner, one that recognizes the sacrifice and conflict that is inherent in every ethical decision.  One must always, in every situation (even the most mundane and seemingly insignificant), chose between opposing responsibilities as there always other others.  That is the paradox of ethics and a paradox that most popular approaches to ethics (the deontological, utilitarianism, etc.) seem to avoid precisely because they are impermeable systems conceived in the abstract, demanding fidelity to a certain set of presupposed to premises which may or may not relate to the situation at hand.  I suspect that this is what Caputo is getting at in his book Against Ethics (though I have not read it in it entirety) and I believe that this is what the usual readings of Kierkegaard miss:  that modern ethical systems, while helpful as guidelines, will always be deconstructible insofar as they posit a set of disembodied propositions that must be applied to situation that always already has other cards that have been played ahead of time.

Such a critique virtually renders moot the tiring discussions we’ve all had over which ethical system is the best because all systems are in agreement that the most proper approach should be conceived in the abstract, relying on the so-called impartiality of Reason and  constructed outside palpable relations with the wholly Other and other others.  But the  true ethical dilemma is the one that catches us by surprise as we realize the impossible choice we must make between two responsibilities, two others who have already laid claim to us.  Such an event, not at all unlike the one faced by Abraham, simply cannot be solved by a intangible system alone.

That is, I believe, an unsung lesson of Kierkegaard and one that Caputo and Derrida can both return to after the desert of modern criticism:  that there is always already conflict inherent in every ethical situation, conflict that cannot be fully resolved and conflict that demands a choice between rival responsibilities and irreconcilable others.

1. The quotation is taken from an article Caputo wrote in the 2002 Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook titled, “Looking the Impossible in the Eye: Kierkegaard, Derrida, and the Repetition of Religion, pg. 8-9.  Caputo writes on the same subject at length in The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida:  Religion without Religion, but the article provides the most concise and lucid description of his larger, more complex argument. [↩]

I agree with N.T. Wright:

“It really is high time we developed a Christian ethic of blogging. Bad temper is bad temper even in the apparent privacy of your own hard drive, and harsh and unjust words, when released into the wild, rampage around and do real damage. And as for the practice of saying mean an unjust things behind a pseudonym – well if I get a letter like that it goes straight in the bin. But the cyberspace equivalents of road rage don’t happen by accident. People who type vicious, angry, slanderous and inaccurate accusations do so because they feel their worldview to be under attack.” (ht)

I couldn’t agree more.  Blogging is at the same time both great and dangerous.  It brings out the best and the worst in us.  I am grateful for the many friends that I have made through this platform but I get really put out with the slander and hateful words that are put forth under the auspices of speaking the truth or defending the faith, or whatever else.  As Christians we have a great opportunity to have rich and robust conversation and to model what charitable dialogue and respectful disagreement might look like.  At our best we do that well, but sometimes we blow it.

I’m here because I want to do that well.  I blow it sometimes too, but I hope to create space for kind discussion and participate generous conversation with others.

The last sentence of the above quote is spot on I think.  People tend to really lash out when they perceive their particular worldview to be under attack (which is all the more interesting when you consider that Christianity does not offer a single worldview).  And the detached, abstract nature of commenting on blog without the dynamics of a face to face encounter are enough to make some people brave enough to type something they otherwise probably wouldn’t say directly to another’s face.

Maybe that’s a good way of approaching it — in the same way you would a face to face conversation.  Either way, I think there is always room for improvement.  We’ve got to be better at treating one another like children of God in our blogging and especially in our commenting.

This is Peter Rollins at his best.  I love it:

In the ethic of Empire one looks out for ones friends (inside the circle) and punishes ones enemies (outside the circle). It is an ethic that looks out for those who look out for us and loves those who love us. It is an ethic of economy (where we mutually give to one another). It would appear however that Christ ruptures this by giving preference to the one outside our systems (the alien, the enemy, the exile) over and above those privileged within our systems. This counter-ethic shows how the Christ trajectory is one that pushes outside the circle to those beyond its borders. Privileging those on the outside over those on the inside and offering a radical, impossible hospitality.

In this way, every time we draw a circle of who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ who we love and who we hate the Christ-action involves pushing away from those who are ‘in’ and identifying with and helping the outsiders, the scapegoat, the stranger, the monstrous other. If the Empire ethic is an ethic that seeks to draw people into the circle of exchange the Christ ethic privileges the exception. Always pushing out to those who are excluded, who live beyond the fortified boundary.

By refusing to expand ourselves and our theology we limit our capacity to create space for The Other, constructing self-imposed boudaries that menace that which unites us.  We simply draw our circle too small.  Or, maybe the real problem is that we insist on drawing a circle in the first place.

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