the church and postmodern culture: conversation

Christ, History and Apocalyptic: A Symposium, part 6

Nate Kerr's Christ, History and Apocalyptic has been something of a theoblogical sensation, generating thoughtful online conversation in ways I haven't seen before (see, for instance, here, here, and here).  And Nate has been generous in responding to critics and friends alike.   I have found the book provocative, pressing me to think about matters that I haven't previously, and wouldn't have otherwise--surely the sign of  a good book.  However, this also means I'm being stretched beyond my expertise and venturing into some new territory.  So I offer some reflections here very much in the spirit of conversation and "thinking out loud."  My assignment is chapter 6, "Towards an Apocalyptic Politics of Mission."  However, I'll also take some license to comment on other themes raised in the book, particularly since Kerr's critique of modern historicism engendered, for me, a number of questions and issues. 

1. Politics, Mission, and the People of God

Let me first say just a couple of things about chapter 6.  This chapter is very much the outgrowth of chapter 5--the chapter on Yoder which is really the fulcrum of the book.  One of the burdens of chapter 6 is to show how a "genuine" (132) apocalyptic yields a politics which is not just "anti-Constantinian" (as Kerr sees Hauerwas), but positively diasporic.  The church is not just called to be a counter-polis but to an exilic mission of encounter with the world--not a "centered" polis but a "nonconcentric" ("Jewish") "diasporic existence...that emerges as its people move out into and encounter foreign social contexts and settings" (183).  Playing off Certeau, Kerr such an exilic ecclesia as dispossessed--a church without property, without place, without centre, deprived of a homeland.  The faith cannot be identified with a place (181); rather, the church-as-mission is "the very 'non-site' of the church's gathering" (192).   The church is a sent people constituted by this encounter with the world: "Such an encounter, in fact, really is prior to any identifiable 'gathering' as a people" (183).  Such would be a people who can "embody the truth of the gospel" such that "the world can perceive it...without having to learn a foreign language" (184).

This picture of the church as mission provoked several lines of thought for me:

(a) I have to say that part of me felt like the dichotomy and distinction between "church-as-polis" (Hauerwas) and church-as-diasporic-mission (Yoder) was somewhat labored only because throughout the book I was never quite convinced by Kerr's critique of Hauerwas.  That's not to say Hauerwas is beyond critique.  But I felt like Kerr's argument hit a caricature that wasn't quite Hauerwas.  For instance, I couldn't buy the whole "ontologization of the church" line.  And I think there's an over-reading of "church-as-polis" here which is reductionistic: it makes the church-as-polis theme seem entirely parasitic, as if Hauerwas only knows what the church is NOT (e.g., NOT liberalism, NOT Constantinianism).  But of course such matters are entirely relative: if Hauerwas emphasizes the NOTs, it's not because the church-as-polis is only some parasitic inversion of liberalism or Constantinianism, but because those are--in his time and context--particularly dangerous threats.  The church is called to be the polis of God even if there's no alternative; in other words, the church is only contingently and not essentially a counter-polis.  When we appreciate that, I think the church-as-polis and church-as-mission models--so starkly contrasted in chapter 6--are more like kissing cousins.

(b) I found the Certeuaian (?) rendition of exile as not only dis-placed but non-placed felt more like Derridean "religion without religion" than Jewish exile.  What could it mean when Kerr claims that their "encounter" with the world is "prior to" their gathering as a people?  In what sense?  Isn't it already "their" encounter?  This feels like exilic Judaism without synagogue. 

(c) Finally, let me tentatively raise a concern I have with Yoder, and thus Kerr (insofar as he seems to affirm Yoder on this point).  In chapter 6, we hear Yoder emphasize that because this exilic ecclesia is not tied to any particular homeland, it's also not tied to any particular place or language or semantic world.  Rather, it can "embody" the "truth of the gospel" in such a way that the world can "perceive it to be good news without having to learn a foreign language" (184).  Does that mean the "truth of the gospel" transcends language?  I have suspicions about a rather naive hermeneutic implicit in such a claim.  I had the same concerns when Kerr invoked Yoder's claims about the "objective reality of salvation" (113) and the "independence" of Jesus.  In this context, Kerr criticizes Hauerwas for "elevating the language and culture of the Christian community to a meta-historical level which 'orders' the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth" (114)--an account he'll describe as "ideological" later on (117).  That sounds like it must be a bad thing, until one asks: what's the alternative?  What alternative picture is assumed behind this critique? 

For instance, Kerr counsels that "we will need to eschew the 'community-dependent' understanding of apocalyptic which is intrinsic to Hauerwas' narrative ecclesiology" (116).  OK.  But what's the alternative? (One can imagine a sort of Winston Churchill paraphrase: a 'community-dependent' understanding is the worst kind of hermeneutic--except for all the others.")

Just who is this "we" that's not dependent on communal structures of meaning and signification?  Does Yoder/Kerr think there can be an "irruption" that is given in such a way that the conditions of interpretation are suspended?  (One could restage Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments at this point.)

I think this issue is crystallized on pp. 108-109: There Kerr criticizes Hauerwas' "ecclesiocentric" apocalyptic for subjecting Jesus to conditions (I think one could find something analogous in Jean-Luc Marion's critique of ontotheology): on this score, "[t]he focus of the narrative thus comes to centre less upon the question of who Jesus of Nazareth is, and more upon that of 'the kind of community his story should form'" (108).  Thus Kerr accuses Hauerwas "of subordinating Jesus of Nazareth himself to a more 'metanarrative reality,' namely, the alternative polis of the church" (109).  But what if the formation of such a people, such a polis, is the goal of creation?  What if this 'metanarrative reality' is God's own story?  And what if this is not an idolatrous subordination, but rather God's incarnational condescension to inhabit this story? 

2. Creation, History, and Apocalyptic

Well, there's much, much more to be said.  Permit me to hastily sketch just one other line of thought/questioning that Kerr's book gave rise to for me--namely, how we think about history in relation to creation and eschaton.  I confess that in this regard, while reading Nate's critique, I felt sort of "Hegelian," but didn't quite feel free to relinquish that.  That is, I find myself not quite willing to give up on "development" (forgive me, father, for I have sinned!)  My thoughts here are half-baked at best, so I throw this out in the spirit of blog imprecision.  Here's the line of thought:

Christ, History and Apocalyptic: A Symposium, part 5

While comments from the previous engagement are still (!) trickling in, today's penultimate engagement of Nathan Kerr's Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission comes from Douglas Harink around chapter 5 entitled "John Howard Yoder: The Singularity of Jesus and the Apocalypticization of History."  Harink is Professor of Theology at the Kings University College in Edmonton, Alberta, and author of Paul Among the Postliberals: Pauline Theology Beyond Christendom and Modernity.  Again, please do not forget to chime in with your thoughts, comments, and questions by clicking on this link below.

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Benjaminian Ruminations on Yoder and Kerr

I am very grateful to be asked to contribute to this symposium on Nathan Kerr's book. The amount of critical attention Nate's book has already received is testimony to its quality and significance, as is the outstanding engagement it has already generated on this blog. I am responding to Chapter Five on "John Howard Yoder: The Singularity of Jesus and the Apocalypticization of History." Yoder is clearly the hero of Nate's story of apocalyptic theology insofar as Yoder's theology breaks free of the teleological progressivism in Troeltsch, the "obscure metaphysics" of time and eternity in Barth, and the near dissolution of Christology into ecclesiology in Hauerwas. According to Nate, for Yoder "apocalyptic" names the singular event of the incarnation, life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in which God breaks into and opens up history to God's own reality and sends the Holy Spirit to liberate us for participation in that singular apocalyptic event through our own "unhanded" historical acts of doxology and liturgy.

I have no argument with Nate's rendering of Yoder's theology, except to say that he often makes that theology clearer, and perhaps even better than we find in Yoder himself. It would be hard to find thirty pages anywhere that do a better job of stating what Yoder has to contribute to the discussion of apocalyptic and history. We see Yoder in the best light possible here; and so it is not Nate's reading of Yoder that I will critically engage, but rather the messianic/apocalyptic theology as such that takes shape via Yoder in this chapter. I do so as one for whom Yoder informs my every theological move.

Haunting the pages of Nate's book is Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History." And rightly so: Benjamin's meditation on "the messianic" now seems to me to be as crucial as the works of Barth and Yoder for shaping an apocalyptic theology. At the end of chapter five Nate invokes Benjamin again as the one who, with his concept of "Messianic time," calls us to "make the...passage from historicist political ideology to the revolutionary transformation of history" (159). Yoder's theology is surely focused on messianic apocalyptic agency as the "revolutionary transformation of history." "History" for Yoder and Nate just names the way in which the future is fundamentally altered through the non-teleological messianic agency of Christian mission.

But just here Benjamin, it seems to me, is about something quite different. It is not the future - and certainly not mission - that is the primary concern of his "Theses." Rather, for Benjamin, the concept of the messianic is in the first place about keeping faith with the past, in fact, keeping faith with the dead. The past is "the concern of history." "The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply" (Thesis 2). For Benjamin messianic agency has a "retroactive force... by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history" (Thesis 4).

Jesus the Messiah keeps faith with the dead. He becomes one of them. In fact, the dead are dead because the Messiah dies - his death has "retroactive force": "One died for all; therefore all have died." All of the dead are dead in the dead Messiah. The Messiah's historical action is his solidarity with the dead in his crucifixion (which is the end of his revolutionary action) and in his resurrection, the redemption of the dead by the action of God. He settles the claim of the past with his own death and resurrection. I do not see this solidarity with the past and the dead in Yoder. Redemption of the past is missing. Yoder (and Nate) are (still) agent-oriented, missional, eschatological in their concept of history. They are focused on life, active participation, transformative action, new creation, the coming reign of God. But for Benjamin "redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past - which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation à l'ordre du jour - and that day is Judgment Day" (Thesis 3).

The apocalyptic gospel is the messianic redemption of the past, resurrection of the dead, justification of the ungodly. History is not simply "opened" to a new future (true as that is). It is retrieved, taken up, judged, purified, transfigured, given again in eternity. Christ's messianity is uncontained by historical linearity; his apocalypse is cosmic as well as historical. Some sort of metaphysics of time and eternity (perhaps even an obscure one) would be necessary to make sense of that. What is the metaphysics of the Transfiguration? When these things are placed in the background or ignored, as I think Yoder tends to do, we are tempted to turn again to another "historicism" (as indeed Nate says we must), to the history that now opens up, through apocalyptic "unhanded" human action to be sure, but through human action in history nevertheless. And so justification in Yoder's Politics is about the inauguration of a new social order. The sacraments in Body Politics are about social processes. Doxology becomes a politics of mission. But the apocalypse as the radical divine-messianic reclamation of lost time and dead stuff itself gets lost. Is there salvation for Israel "according to the flesh"? Will the whole historic, baptized, divided, ungodly church be redeemed? Will even the kings and nations of the earth bring their glory into the city of God? Will the whole groaning creation know the liberty of the children of God? Does the hope of the world rest, finally, not with a new apocalyptic politics of mission, but with Judgment Day? I fear that Yoder is in the end not apocalyptic enough.

And I worry, because, as I said, Yoder continues to inform my every theological move.

Christ, History and Apocalyptic: A Symposium, part 4

The fourth chapter of Nathan Kerr's Christ, History and Apocalpytic: The Politics of Christian Mission is engaged today by John W. Wright. Chapter four is entitled "Stanley Hauerwas: Apocalyptic, Narrative Ecclesiology, and 'the Limits of Anti-Constantinianism' ", a topic which John Wright has given much thought to in the many years that he has known Hauerwas personally and engaged his thought.  John Wright is the senior pastor of the Church of the Nazarene in Mid-City in San Diego, CA, as well as Professor of Theology and Christian Scriptures at Point Loma Nazarene University, also in San Diego.  [Full disclosure: John was my pastor and professor for many years when I lived in San Diego.]  Be sure to click the 'continue reading' link at the bottom for the remainder of the post, and of course, to click on the comment link to offer your thoughts, questions, and comments!

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If I understand my task correctly, I am to engage Nathan Kerr's engagement of the texts of Stanley Hauerwas in Kerr's newly published Vanderbilt dissertation, Christ, History, and Apocalyptic:  The Politics of Christian Mission.  Perhaps I am the wrong person to write this response.  I am not a "Hauerwas scholar;" I have merely been immersed in the Hauerwasian text for over twenty-five years, though not in a disciplined manner.  At times I do not know where my thoughts ends and Hauerwas' begins, nor do I care.  Interlocutors have occasionally granted me the label "Hauerwasian" -  a verbal indicator that one has had one's frontal lobes surgically removed to become a glassy-eyed follower of the Master in his sectarian, fideistic, irresponsible, violently non-violent irrationality.  Kerr's claim that Hauerwas parallels Carl Schmitt's "rational ideology" (pp. 117-22) hits deeply at my existential sensitivities, particularly when one realizes that Schmitt's political theory paved the way for the rise of the National Socialists in Germany and re-emerged as a viable political theory within the Bush administration.  Kerr plays for keeps. 

Academic departments are good to discipline such purveyors of imperialistic ideologies as Hauerwas supposedly represents to preserve the freedom that liberalism presents - the freedom that prevents Nate from teaching at a state university as a theologian.  I have had the ability to teach classes and positions within my university limited because I am "ideological" in my "Hauerwasian" leanings.  Nor am I alone; if one listens closely one can hear stories like one I heard from a major North American seminary theologian that (s)he cannot assign books with "postliberal" in the title or authored by Hauerwas because colleagues will find them in the bookstore and submit him/her to informal and formal disciplinary actions.  Kerr's analysis, though admittedly at times based upon "my suspicion" (p. 104) and that "these are tendentious claims and that I have articulated them with an edge" (p. 112), confirms this "need" for the policing of "anti-liberal" thought or its Marxist inversion within contemporary theology.  One thinks of Zizek's work On Totalitarianism concerning the rhetorical effectiveness of this trope within current society.  It is interesting to note the tension between Nate's deep sensitivities and affinities with the Hauerwasian text and the rhetoric that Hauerwas seeks "to secure a certain fixed narrative and linguistic 'identity' for the church [that] forces him into a structurally imperialistic and functionally 'ideological' articulation of the church's political and missionary existence in the world" (p. 93).  One wonders the significance of the semi-quotes within this quote.  Kerr steps deeply into the fissure within the academy that the Hauerwasian text has formed and at times I wonder what exactly emerges.  Does Kerr's analysis show deep Oedipal tendencies within a Hauerwasian 'anti-liberal theological liberalism' or are other dynamics at work in the text?  Or both?  Neither?

Christ, History and Apocalyptic: A Symposium, part 3

Today's engagement with Nathan Kerr's Christ, History and Apocalyptic focuses on chapter 3 entitled "Karl Barth: Foundations for an Apocalyptic Christology."  [Part 1, Part 2]  Interacting with this chapter is John McDowell, a professor and chair of theology in a new post at the University of Newcastle. He is the author of Hope in Barth's Eschatology: Interrogations and Transformations Beyond Tragedy and is co-editor along with Mike A. Higton of Conversing With Barth.  Be sure to click the 'continue reading' link at the bottom for the remainder of the post, and of course, to click on the comment link to offer your thoughts, questions, and comments!

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How Not to End Things: A Symposium on Nathan Kerr’s Christ, History and Apocalyptic

It is a delight to be able to participate in conversing about Nathan Kerr's interesting book.  I have found the piece to have been a pleasure to read, informed as it is by a promising basic thesis, and densely presented both with no little eloquence and some evident sophisticated reasoning concerning its main interlocutors. 

      There are several questions that in another context I would want to ask of the study in general (for instance, to develop in more detail what it means to claim transcendental meaning consciously from a perspective; to put more critical pressure on Lessing's dualistic approach to history and Truth; and what the relationship between apocalyptic, as stressing novum, and history, as stressing continuities, can look like when conceived well).  Nonetheless, the invitation has enjoined me to focus on chapter 3, the critical engagement with the contribution of Karl Barth's theo-ontology. 

      The thesis of this chapter is relatively simple:  on the one hand, Barth's work helpfully develops an apocalyptic perspective on 'history', and yet, on the other, his thought is insufficient for doing the job well precisely because it has failed to subject a certain idealist frame to properly rigorous criticism and been unwittingly shaped by these "prior ontologico-metaphysical commitments" [89].  Here Nathan joins the ranks of those who feel that not all's quite right with Barth.  There is a growing dissatisfaction that suggests the symptoms are most identifiable in a failure to develop his theology in a more, perhaps for want of a better word (although it is certainly ideologically loaded), contextual fashion, reasoning concretely about the various particularities and contingencies involving Jesus' own history, and even more substantially, about the multiplicity of creatures' histories.  The trouble is that this is where the agreement, and it is very far from a universal sense among Barth commentators, tends to end in the main.  Identifying the reasons for this failure to be more specific are manifold, and in many ways are as yet relatively unsatisfactory. 

      It was Hans Frei who claimed that when Barth is tied to a mast (of criticism) he tends to slip free.  Nathan has attempted to tie Barth to the mast of idealism, something which is exhibited in "the unfolding of a certain 'obscure metaphysics'" in Barth's work [89].  In this Nathan is significantly following suggestions made by others.  Rowan Williams is someone who worries that Barth's 'disclosure' model or metaphysics of revelation circumvents our 'learning about learning' and thus returns us to the sphere of ideology.  More fully Richard H. Roberts advances that Barth's residual idealism forces him to provide an account of eternity which generates a Christologically constrained conception of time that renders revelation somewhat isolated from the contingencies of history.  Both, in their own and quite different ways echo something of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's earlier accusation that Barth's is a 'revelatory positivism'. 

      The influence of Roberts' thesis is perhaps most evident on Nathan's reading of Barth, although the latter develops this to different effect (Roberts desires not merely more particularity, but arguably something more akin to a natural theology that will, apparently, aid in conversation, and he subsequently provides a critique that has had critics wondering whether he has, in the end, mitigated the radicality of talk of the eschatological uniqueness of Jesus Christ.  The nature of Roberts' work since then suggests that the latter may indeed have been an astute observation).  Talk of eternity and time pervades the chapter, and not merely in relation to the section on the second edition of Der Römerbrief.