(Ir)religiosity

My last post generated quite a bit of feedback, both publicly and privately. It seems that I struck a nerve here and most of the folks I am hearing from resonated with much of what I said. I do, however, want to add a few clarifications.

Despite my tone — which is a little harsh in places and rightfully so I think — I am not suggesting that what some are calling “positive belief” simple be abandoned or dismissed. I am, after all, dealing with the Christian tradition in which I have been inculcated. I am a theologian and I use the symbolic framework and the social imaginary of this tradition. Better, I interpret these things as best I can and try to read and reread them in creative ways, hopefully in ways that have been for whatever reason silenced or glossed over by the dominant power discourse. All of this involves positive belief, argumentation, and responsibility for my thought ideas. On this point Derrida agrees with me. Though he is situated in a different tradition, I believe his body of work stands as a testament to detractors who would suggest otherwise.

For me, the problem is not with “positive belief” per se, but rather how said belief is used and wielded. The language and tone I hear around “reconstruction” suggests to me that belief may be given a new label but it is still built around a metaphysics of presence and given substantial recourse to some sort of big Other, what Derrida calls a transcendental signified, that ultimately secures things. For me this is untenable and representative of the attitude that deconstruction is merely a stage rather than an ongoing discursive strategy. As I said before it should alway infect theology, leaving the tension between religious desire and the belief structures that necessarily facilitate that desire forever open and haunted by that which that can never fully contain. If anything it is an argument for the proliferation of “positive belief” and a multiplicity of understandings within a tradition on the condition that these things are provisional, susceptible to reinterpretation, and open to fall under the judgment and analysis of rigorous scrutiny.

I am as much a critic as I am a theologian — the two are always closely intertwined for me — so when it comes to belief I tend to err on the side of deconstruction, hoping to bear witness to an event that even the most beautiful and persuasive positive belief structure can never fully contain (this is also why I have a deep love for the mystics and the apophatic tradition). I am alway unsaying what I have previously said so I can hopefully, maybe, say it a little better. That doesn’t mean I’m not interesting in saying anything. It just means I want to precise and open to being shown my blindspots, which is maybe another possible definition of deconstruction. I aim to be about the business of reframing and reinterpreting while at the same time taking responsibility for the Christian tradition by inhabiting its language, turning around in it, and showing that there is always some excess that never quite fits into the puzzle perfectly.

A theology infected by deconstruction is always looking over its shoulder, always oscillating between the known and the unknown, leaving the tension, the wound of divine desire, open and festering in order to say something, however feeble or inadequate, about the event by which it is animated. So in a sense, there is no reconstruction that needs to be done. It is all already there, the tradition is before us and ahead of us. We already have the constructions. Good theology is about negotiating how they function in discourse and life, asking whether they foster a posture of unmitigated hospitality toward heterogeneity and alterity, toward the divine itself, or whether they squelch it through misguided quests for ultimate grounds, bedrock foundations, and sedimented structures.

And that’s why I am not interested in leaving deconstruction behind for mere surface reconstruction — because for me deconstruction is, as friend of mine put it, a sustained spiritual practice, fostering a deep sense of awe and wonder at the world and incessantly reminding me that the divine always lies ahead of even my best theological ideas.

Related articles

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• Derrida and theology [video] (blakehuggins.com)

Recently I tweeted a truncated version of one of my biggest frustrations about the use of the word “deconstruction” in the emergent church. I got some responses suggesting that I clarify and elaborate. So here we go.

First, blame shouldn’t fall solely on emergent church folk. Philosophers and cultural theorists (who should know better!) have  also misused the word since it gained popularity in discourse. The fact that Jacques Derrida‘s (in)famous hermeneutic (if i can call it that) translates to a very common word in the English language doesn’t help much either. The word is already operative in our common vocabulary and it carries with it certain connotations that run completely counter to its theoretical function. So the inertia is against us before we get to the emergent church. I think Jack Caputo’s Deconstruction in Nutshell should be mandatory reading for anyone who uses or hopes to use the word deconstruction as a key concept (in the emergent church or otherwise).

Popular use notwithstanding, I do think that emergent church folk are particularly and especially culpable for their use and misuse of the word theoretically and theologically in large part because of their affinity toward postmodern philosophy and their use of key thinkers like Derrida. This makes things complicated and, if dissected closely, I think it shows that the emergent church — or at least some subgroup(s) within it — aren’t all that different from mainstream Christianity and certainly not as subversive as some had initially hoped.

My frustration stems from the tweets, Facebook statuses, and blog posts (and books) that I see from time to time where someone will in effect suggest that having a “deconstructive stage” was important for a while but now its time to “get serious” and start reconstructing things (faith, theology, etc.) toward some sort of “new” end. In essence, deconstruction is given a negative and overly critical connotation and is understood to be the initial step in a larger process. Doubt was good and cool for a time, criticizing and rejecting conventional religiosity was fun while it lasted, but the real work starts when you decided to start affirming and arguing core theological tenets anchored by a foundation. When I read and hear things like this I realize how unfortunate it is that the mystics and the via negativa don’t get more play in emergent church circles. Read the rest of this entry »

“Guide us…to the end of time.”

I ran across this quote from the final paragraph of Italo Cavino’s Invisible Cities the other day.

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form be being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. the second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

If the title hasn’t already given it away, this is another post about The Tree of Life. After viewing the film a second time I am convinced that the field of theological aesthetics could stand to learn quite a bit from Terrence Malick.

In my first post I drew attention to Roger Ebert’s wonderful mediation on the film. There Ebert states that he believes the film ”stands free from conventional theologies, although at its end it has images that will evoke them for some people.” I think this is true although I would go a bit further and say that there are images, symbols and even names that evoke conventional theologies throughout the film. And, as far as a more generalized audience is concerned, I think the line between tacit conventional theologies and the sort of impressionist pastiche Malick has created is so fine it practically doesn’t exist. The ending is a perfect example, as Ebert points out. Given the breadth and scope of the film Malick all but sets himself up for failure. Virtually any ending seems inadequate for a film of this magnitude, but the one chosen does seem to fall into the comfortable arms of convention and familiarity.

Despite this, though, it still works. Just like the ostensibly conventional religious images and theological symbols work — and work wonderfully. This is because Malick is a master at couching the familiar differently, of subtlety wielding the conventional otherwise. More than any of his previous films The Tree of Life relies less on dialogue and more on pensive narration and, especially, breathtaking images of life and nature (The Thin Red Line is a close, close second). This is why the ending, while certainly flawed, still works within the context of the film — because by the time the ending comes the overall aesthetic and the symbolic frame have created an environment in which such an ending is wielded differently than it would otherwise, albeit in a very subtle and delicate manner. Read the rest of this entry »

I think it would be irresponsible for me to offer more thoughts, fuller thoughts, on The Tree of Life without having seen it at least once more. I saw it for the first time last Sunday and it has been bouncing around in my head since then. I’m planning to see it again tonight and will likely post more next week. In the meantime I have been reading a ton of reviews (the group of articles here and the posts here are certainly worth reading. This “deconstruction” is surprisingly good.) and I thought I would post a few thoughts thus far. Minor spoilers to follow.

In my previous post I alluded to the possibility that one of the film’s major leitmotifs is not so much the opposition between nature and grace but rather the implication of the one within the other, of their inherent and seemingly ambivalent contingency. The film certainly does this. It may not be as overt as some of the narration in The Thin Red Line but it practically oozes out of the production design. As one review puts it, it is not at all the idea of nature versus grace it is nature and grace, often positioned in a type of contradiction that is, for Malick, subject of awe and transcendence, revealing all things shining.

One of the most talked about parts of the film is the origins and evolution of life sequence. Reading this post and the comments that followed it struck me that Malick’s version of pre-history offers an interesting counterweight to that of Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Kubrick’s sequence it is clear that Darwinian predation and violence are the common denominator of life. Predation is present for Malick, but not without contestation and ambivalence.

The Tree of Life’s most radical detour (the film is itself, a radical, unthinkable collection of detours) is a drop-in on the Mesozoic era after a sequence of shots tracks the birth of life on Earth. A raptor-like creature emerges from the forest and wades into a stream. At the opposite bank lies a wounded herbivore. The predator scampers over cautiously and apprehends his prey’s immobility. And just as we expect carnage (thanks to conditioning from Jurassic Park and its sequels), Malick provides instead, grace. The raptor, who has pinned the injured creature with one clawed food, shares a moment of silent communion with the wounded dinosaur, releases his grip and then leaves. This may seem an unlikely moment in the animal kingdom, even less so in the kingdom we can only know through the fossil record. But does Malick exhibit hubris here by applying a naive anthropomorphism to the scene, or do those who criticize do so by suggesting he’s necessarily incorrect in his vision, tacitly implying grace to be the sole provenance of humanity? A frighteningly elegant shot of a comet devastating the planet, and the dinosaurs with it, reminds that we’ll likely never know for sure. (link)

Is Malick suggesting that this is perhaps the first act of compassion in history? An instance of incipient grace? Of a type of grace found within nature, not reserved as the crowning achievement of humanity alone?

When read within the context of the larger trajectory of the film (if it can even be said to have such a thing) and within the even larger context of Malick’s entire oeuvre, I think the charges of anthropocentrism miss the point. In fact, if we go with the notion that the film reveals how unfounded the distinction between nature and grace really is — that the two are, in fact, more porous than conventional theology allows — then criticisms of anthropocentrism are actually more insipid instantiations of the very thing they denounce.

Why must it be the case that grace inheres in humanity alone? Whatever else it may do, The Tree of Life not only suggests that grace inheres in all things, but that grace and nature are, in some sense, in separable as constitutive of life and its processes the vicissitudes of which are at the same time both beautiful and dangerous. It is precisely this sort of ambivalence that is cause for the deep sense of awe and wonder that is characteristic of Malick’s films. One could even say it is transcendence without the metaphysical baggage of most theologies.

I’ve been looking forward to the enigmatic and reclusive director’s latest work ever since I saw the trailer. Malick is known for his idiosyncratic style, the juxtaposition of images of nature with the evils of humanity, and especially the haunting voice-over narrations. The Tree of Life looks to be no different. In fact, if the trailer and the early reviews are any indication it may be the pinnacle of Malick’s style, which makes sense since it is the very film that sent Malick on his 20 year hiatus after Days of Heaven. The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last week, winning the coveted Palme d’Or and opens today in limited release.

Malick’s films have always exuded a sort of poetic, quasi-philosophical, one might even say crypto-theological, quality. They explored the deep contingency and ambivalence of human nature, indeed of nature itself. A type of mystery that always leads back to the awe of existence, the wonder, the grace the inheres in all things and is, I think, the starting point of all theology. The opening narration in The Thin Red Line describes it well.

What’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one power, but two?

And later as the film closes.

The brother. The friend. Darkness from light. Strife from love. Are they the workings of one mind? The features of the same face? Oh, my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.

The cinematic ground Malick treads is ripe for theological rumination. It shouldn’t be too surprising. Though Malick has made a career out of scrupulously keeping to himself it is no secret that he studied philosophy at Harvard under Stanley Cavell and later at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He eventually left Oxford without a degree after a disagreement with his advisor over his dissertation on Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein. So Malick turned to film. And he has created some real masterpieces.

But it looks like The Tree of Life — and the IMAX documentary companion piece The Voyage of Time that Malick hopes to make — may be more explicitly his than any other project. We’ll see. I can only hope.

For now what interests me is an interview with Brad Pitt, one of the stars of the film, conducted by Time Magazine. Near the end of the interview Pitt comments on the religious and theological themes of the film.

Terry has an embrace for Christianity, for all religions, but not in the textbook definition of Christianity. You’re looking at a man who loves science, and has an interpretation and a feeling for God. In America those two things usually don’t coincide. And yet he sees the two as one: he sees God in science and science in God. [...] I’d say that Tree of Life is not a Christian so much as a spiritual film. I was surprised, watching it last night, how powerfully it struck me. What the film was saying to me is that there is an unexplained power; there is this force. And maybe peace can be found, but not by trying to explain it with the religion. Maybe there’s peace to be found just in that acceptance of the unknown.

Aside from the fact that Pitt’s somewhat predictable remarks reinforce and are based upon the tired, “spiritual but not religious” cliché, they proffer an unimaginative, flat-footed reading of religion, specifically of Christianity. By dismissing what he calls ‘religion’ as something that impedes rather than facilitates a sense of mystery in the unknown Pitt ignores a robust theological legacy that does just that.

It’s probably because I am preparing a sermon based on Paul’s famous sermon at the Areopagus and I’m just coming off writing a thesis and making a short film of my own dealing with precisely these theme. Contingency, ambivalence, and unknown mystery are central to theology. They may not be the most noticeable motifs in the public sphere, but they are there. This is exactly what Roger Ebert picks up on in his reflections on Malick’s latest film.

Terrence Malick’s new film is a form of prayer. It created within me a spiritual awareness, and made me more alert to the awe of existence. I believe it stands free from conventional theologies, although at its end it has images that will evoke them for some people. It functions to pull us back from the distractions of the moment, and focus us on mystery and gratitude.

These conventional theologies are certainly operative but they are not representative of the entire discourse nor should they be taken as such. Theology is about “seeing through a glass darkly,” into the unknown enigma that is our ultimate concern. It seems to me that this is precisely what Malick’s film is about, indeed the narration in the trailer is almost a word for word reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12 (one of the few passages I prefer in the King James). I’m sure I will have more to say after viewing but it seems a safe bet to say that The Tree of Life may be the best type of theological film, the type of theological film we desperately need. It is an exploration of the mystery that we can never fully know but can never stop seeking.

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This blog still exists! Writing here has dropped on my list of priorities lately. Between all the stuff going on in my life — finishing up a degree program, writing a thesis, waiting to hear about doctoral programs — and the temptations of bite-sized social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook I just haven’t made the time. That is too bad but that’s how it goes.

Lately, given my research interests I’ve been pondering how I might define theology for myself as a discursive practice. Of course the traditional way is to say that it is critical reflection of the teaching of the Christian tradition — and I accept that as a sort of lowest common denominator definition. But that really doesn’t say much and it casts the net very, very wide.

I still struggle to put language to this but I am inclined to say that theology functions as a form of cultural criticism. I am not completely comfortable with identifying theology with “cultural criticism” as such because it has its own — generic — connotations but I do think that those types of (progressive?) theology which move well beyond the traditional, even confessional, modes of explicating a conventional type of dogmatics or answering solely to “the church” assume a different type of critical and reflective posture. I don’t believe theology should simply remove itself from the tradition(s) to which is it indebted but neither should it cleave to them solely. So what is the basis for interaction?

The next set of questions, then, have to do with the “uniqueness” of theology, i.e., what makes it distinctive as a discipline. For example, if it is closely related to cultural criticism how does it distinguish itself as its own discourse? How is it different from critical theory, philosophy of religion, or even religious studies? The larger question for me is what are the limits of theological discourse? What are its boundaries and how do we demarcate them?

Embedded in all this is a whole host of other problems like the relationship of theology to culture, the method or starting place for theology, the sources it uses, and the authority to which it appeals. In a certain sense it (re)opens the age-old question of what Athens has to do with Jerusalem. I tend to blur the boundaries between the two quite a bit in my own work, but I am uneasy with a reductionist conflation of the two. At the same time I am deeply dissatisfied with the idea that theology must only answer to the church and must stay within the bounds of a singular Orthodoxy (as if such a thing existed in the first place). Another, more pointed way of putting it would be to ask the following: after the death of the death of God how does theology remain theology rather than becoming subsumed within another discourse?

So I find myself beginning again at the beginning. What is theology, anyway? What are its limits? Does it even have limits?

It’s been a while since my last post.  After probably the most grueling semester I’ve had in seminary I decided to take some time for some much needed rest.  I intend to do quite a bit of reading and writing over the summer, but I’m not sure at this point how much of that will be blogging.  We’ll see.

The more serious a student of theology I become, the more I find myself returning to a pretty basic but important question:  what is the theological task?  What is the aim of the theologian?  My answer to this question changes and evolves almost as fast as I ask it.  To be brief, for me the work of theology, at least in part, involves the critical, de/constructive examination of the ways in which our religious symbols and language — which are at times tacit and embedded — function as living discourse and practice.  To use Paul Ricouer‘s terms, theology involves a movement of suspicion (deconstructive) and a movement of retrieval (constructive).¹ The theologian, speaking on behalf of a particular community, raises new questions, re-situates or restates old questions, and critically examines those answers which are said to be normative.  As a discourse, theology is always an ad hoc and contextual enterprise, an unfinished, provisional dialogue addressed to particular problems, situations, persons, and communities.  Theology is the work of naming and examining the ways in which the religious functions in our daily lives.

Now, there are many ways of going at this.  I recently ran across one of the better attempts I have read in this post at Jesse Turri’s blog. The following is a quote from Catherine Keller‘s book On the Mystery (a book which sits on my desk as I write but I have yet to really read).

Anselm classically defined theology as fides quaerens intellectum–”faith seeking understanding.” Not faith that already understands and so no longer needs to seek. That would by definition no longer be theology. Theology itself is not the faith but its quest. If we stop seeking we are no longer on the way. Faith seeking understanding has then turned into “belief that understands.” It then closes down the very root of quaerens from which come both question and quest. Speaking divine wisdom in a mystery, theology remains a work of human speech. Theology is not the same as faith or belief, but a disciplined and relational reflection upon them. God calls, but we are responsible for what we call “God.” And God may be calling us to that very responsibility!

There you have it.  Much ink (and blood) has been wasted spilled in effort to equate theology with belief rather than a disciplined and sustained reflection upon belief and conviction.  The task of the theologian here involves holding the community accountable for what it is they call God.  Better yet, said task involves naming that which functions, however tacit or implicit, as God within religious and cultural discourse, for good or ill.  That is why I will always insist that theology is neither constructive or deconstructive but de/constructive, situated within a communal hermeneutical spiral.  The real work, then, may involve renouncing a certain (toxic)  understanding of God, the religious, etc. and taking up one which is more liberative.  I would argue that it is within this context that which should understand Nietzche’s famous dictum that God is dead — not as the vulgar, uncritical denial of the existence of God wholesale but the acknowledgment that certain understandings of that which we call God are no longer necessary and may in fact be destructive.²  Thus the task of the theologian is to unabashedly and unapologetically deliver the all important paradoxical and double-edged pronouncement:  God is dead, long live God.

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1. And I should add that I have learned from Derrida that these two are not as opposite as they may seem. [↩]
2. The paradox here is that one such understanding may be the traditional notion of God as the ultimate guarantor of metaphysics, as a transcendent Being and the foundation of the onto-theologic. For many, such an understanding is predicative of God’s existence in the first place! [↩]

I’m beginning preliminary research for an upcoming project exploring a poststructuralist pneumatology. Surprisingly, I have not found much out there dealing with the two. I’m hoping that someone might know of few articles or books dealing with that nexus.

I’d be especially keen on works that deal with the Spirit and Derrida’s notion of différance. Thanks in advance.

If God in Christ dies for real on the cross then what is the meaning of the resurrection?

My contention would be that Good Friday is not superseded by Easter Sunday, that the resurrection does not supplant the crucifixion.

The problem, I think, is that we are too quick to separate Pentecost from the Resurrection.  Pentecost marks the entrance of the Holy Spirit into the faith collective, the arrival of a new signifier which, after Christ’s death on the cross, is immanent to the collective itself.

The collective, then, is one that is deprived of its support from the Big other, as Zizek would put it.  Christ is raised in the community of believers through the liberative power of the Holy Spirit.  The entrance of the Spirit as the life of the collective spells the end of God as transcendental signified and the beginning of God as emancipatory event.

The resurrection of Christ does not involve a mere return or reduplication of his prior presence.  Rather, it involves the repetition of that presence with critical difference (i.e., the Spirit).  The logic of resurrection is in fact the logic of repetition.  The absence of God qua Big other, of God qua transcendental signified is overcome (that is, repeated, resurrected) with the presence of the Spirit, with the entrance of a new liberative signifier immanent and intrinsic to the community.

Under this sign, with the power of the Spirit, and the galvanizing memory of God’s crucified body, the community of believers perpetually enacts a non-identical repetition of Christ’s gesture under the conviction that Empire can never repress such a memory absolutely.  Indeed, there will always remain a liberative surplus, an emancipatory kernel, which opens up the space for crucial theo-political praxis and social antagonism.  It is here, in this tear in the ontological fabric of Empire, where God’s event pierces and violates its supposed immanence, that Christ is indeed resurrected.  And it is incumbent on the community, on its participation and repetition.

Shortly before he was martyred, Archbishop Oscar Romero wrote, “If I am killed I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people.”  Similarly, in an important scene of V for Vendetta, V states that “ideas are bulletproof.”  When Easter is celebrated in anticipation of Pentecost one can properly claim that the most important and liberative idea of all is in fact crucifixion-proof.  While God as transcendental signified may have died on the cross, the idea of God’s kin-dom surely did not.  The instruments of torture and state-sponsored terrorism cannot hold it because Empire can never maintain absolute hegemonic control.  Even as God is dead, even as God is eclipsed, Christ is risen, made present in the community through the power of the Spirit.  And it is through this dangerous, galvanizing memory that the church enacts critical repetition, in (e)sc(h)atological anticipation of the consummation of the (in/re)surrection.

I’d like to preface this — some stuff I reworked from a paper I wrote earlier this semester — by saying that while it ends on a more critical note, Segundo is without a doubt my favorite Latin American liberation theologian.  I think that especially now, with the so-called triumph of capitalism, Segundo’s work offers the best liberative alternative precisely because it is methodological and provides an ideological analysis of the foundations of theology.  My critical analysis revolves around the question of whether theology itself can provide a impetus for liberation or, as Segundo maintains, if a prior ideological or political commitment must be made.  If the latter is true, then I don’t see the need for theology as a liberative, praxis-oriented discourse.  In short, the question is this:  why be a theologian at all?

It seems that Latin American liberation theology suffers from an unintended epistemological problem.  If, in the final instance, praxis is the ultimate criterion of theoretical theology as many first-generation theologians have compelling argued, then what is the norm by which theological hermeneutics are employed?  To put it more bluntly, if praxis is the criterion for theory, then what is the criterion for praxis?  Such are the questions Juan Luis Segundo raises vis-à-vis Latin American liberation theology.  Whereas important founding thinkers like Gustavo Gutiérrez aimed to construct a theology of liberation by reifying classical Christian theological tropes against the backdrop of the socio-political situation in Latin America with the aid of Marxist analysis, Segundo opts for a different approach altogether.  One with the intention of the liberating theology from the cold grip of the ideological status quo, a move he believes is mandatory before theology itself can even begin its own program of liberation. This fundamental difference in approach is revealed in the title of both Gutiérrez’s and Segundo’s books: A Theology of Liberation and The Liberation of Theology, respectively.  Indeed, the latter suggests that what is needed is not so much a task of critical reconstruction, but rather a wholesale reevaluation of the form and foundation of theology as a potentially revolutionary enterprise, that is the conscious separation of theology from the dominant power discourse brokered — and I use the economically charged verb intentionally — by Euro-America.

For Segundo, the liberation of theology begins with the admission that any intellectual discourse — perhaps especially theology — is “intimately bound up with the existing social situation in at least an unconscious way” (8).  It is therefore imperative that the liberation theologian make the crucial connection between the past and the present situation in her critical interpretation of the biblical text.  Indeed, without such a connection Segundo is fearful that liberation theology will end up being a theology which only deals with liberation, lacking any real potency due to its “methodological naïveté” and eventually “reabsorbed by the deeper mechanisms of oppression” and the “prevailing language of the status quo” (8).  Thus, Segundo answers the question of epistemology with recourse to methodology.  In fact, it would not be wrong, in this case, to assert that a true theology of liberation is one that is concerned not only with concrete historical praxis but with the methodological processes that give rise to such action vis-à-vis the current situation.  For as Segundo provocatively claims, “the one and only thing that can maintain the liberative character of any theology is not its content but its methodology” as it is “the latter that guarantees the continuing bite of theology…however much the existing system tries to reabsorb it into itself” (39-40). Read the rest of this entry »