the church and postmodern culture: conversation

Hunger and Love - The Logic of "Late Capitalism" Unwinds into the Postmodern Apocalypse

By Carl Raschke

It’s another gray and misty morning here in the second district of Vienna.  The church bells toll to invite the sleepy-eyed revelers from the night before to churches that, except for Christmas tourists, will probably remain mostly empty. 

The second district is historically the Jewish district of Vienna, where Freud lived and hung out.  For some unfathomable reason Freud is in the air, virtually “everywhere”  these days.   His books are on sale, his named invoked regularly (even in newspaper ads), and he often serves as a self-identifier, as in the case of a student I know who met a girl at a Vienna dance club who in response to the standard, get-to-know-each-other  question “what do you do?” replied, “I’m a Freudian analyst, so what do you think now?” 

Perhaps the answer was simply intended as a well-practiced feint against any presumed,  male, predatory Anmarsch, as they say here.   But the “Freudian thing,” as his “Ur-postmodernist” French psychoanalyst descendant Jacques Lacan put it, may be more the temper of the times than we care to admit.   

In Civilization and its Discontents – a text that figures such as Derrida and Deleuze, for example, tend to cite – Freud sums up what might be called the “secular eschatological” implications of his lifelong work with the following quote from the German poet Schiller: “hunger and love serve as the gearworks of the world.” 

Freud was an infamous pessimist, and he certainly had nothing to "say" directly to Christian theology these days.  You can’t “take Freud to church” – really!   But Freud was definitely someone theologians should listen to, especially if you go prowling the streets of Vienna, or any European city, or any city at all for that matter, this late autumn.  You observe the growing numbers of beggars and prostitutes and every morning.  You see a new, more disturbing headline about the slow-motion economic meltdown of the EU, not to mention the ever louder warnings from economists about its apocalyptic implications for the world economy.   

Hunger and love!  Until 2008 the “gearworks” worked magnificently to generate an ever expanding global  consumer society that was supposed  to gradually alleviate all hungers by fulfilling every symbolizable and estimable desire.   Yes, we were worried about things like climate change, prompted by our using too much energy to produce too much “stuff”.   But that could be handled by both a new consensual system of intergovernmental policies and regulations and the adoption of new lifestyles that were “post-materialist,” even if they remained highly consumerist.   “Information” and “knowledge” leave no carbon footprint – allegedly.  Our increasing consumption and production of “significations” rather than material commodities -  i.e., Baudrillard’s distinction between the “hyperreal” and the real – would solve that problem, so we were told.    

It is the hyperreal that has done us in, however, I fear.   Although Baudrillard’s term converges with many familiar,  key philosophical terms used in postmodernist discourse, such as Lacan’s “symbolic order”  or Deleuze’s “difference machine,”  the force of its meaning remains symptomatic  of why the world order today appears to be inexorably and ever more painfully unwinding.    Baudrillard a generation ago playfully characterized the hyperreal as the order of “processing simulacra”, of self-generating significations in the form of commodity images, fantasies, political and social ideas, collective idealizations,  and so forth.  He argued that these idealizations take on a life of their own, and that we become increasingly unaware that they do not somehow rest on any tangible base stratum of things, a theme popularized in such movies as The Truman Show and The Matrix.   

But, more importantly, we do not recognize their generative and addictive power to guarantee what our senses assume is “really” real.  Hence, the expression “hyperreal”, which according to Baudrillard is “more real than real.”    The triumph of hyperreality in our time can thus be considered a reversal of the old order of repressed desires, which Freud diagnosed, in the sense that their purely virtual character now function as a whole new form of “repression” or unconsciously displaced meaning (the real force of Freud’s term Verdrängnis)  .   Just as our Victorian ancestors could not confront the fact that we are intimately bound up in material reality, we cannot confront our immateriality.   

Consider derivatives.   These so-called “special investment vehicles” (SIVs) proved to be the Achilles heel of the ever exploding global economy before 2008.   Although it was the collapse of the American real estate market that technically triggered the crisis, it was the so-called  derivatives that sent the worldwide jerry-rigged system into a downward spiral, which is still continuing.   As in mathematics, a “derivative” in finance is nothing more than a set of signifying linkages, the notational equivalent  of  “difference” in the relations between two or more functions. The word “spreads”, which one hears constantly right now with regard to the European debt  crisis, has a similar set of characteristics.  Without going into the technical details of what these words mean in investment parlance, we can say that the long-standing growth of “casino capitalism” was driven by a constant leveraging of the spreads, or differentials, in the mathematical algorithms that defined the new computerized global marketplace.  Much of what people actually invested in had nothing to do with commodities, real estate, the net worth of companies, and so on.  Investment increasingly was targeted toward “speculative” interrelationships between abstract calculative processes. 

This tendency to pursue an economy of pure sign functions is not some perverse immoral imperative foisted on us by the “one percent,” the “greedy multinational corporations,” or the faceless “speculators”, as garden variety anti-capitalist rhetoric routinely intones.    It follows the “logic of late capitalism” itself, as  Jameson referred to postmodernism as a whole in his book by the same title that appeared in 1991 (See Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism: The Logic of Late Capitalism, Verson, 1991) .  Jameson was in many ways prescient, although his work was considered largely  cranky and obscurantist at the time. 

Like Žižek, who rose to notoriety during the decade immediately after the book’s publication, Jameson did not see “postmodernism” as some new, emancipatory phase in the development of politics and culture.  He saw it as a form of worn-out modernism, at least in the cultural sphere.  In the economic  realm he regarded it as the final stage of the world-historical process Marx had analyzed in Capital.   The “crisis” Marx predicted, which actually did not come ironically until the early twenty-first century after communism itself had crashed and burned, would be a result, Jameson implied, not so much of the complete “immiseration” of the working class through capitalist expropriation of the value of their labor, but the transmogrification of labor itself into aesthetic trivialities and human consciousness itself into a whirl of  frivolous enjoyments (think mall shopping or cable television), the endless production of new commodified intensities propelled by insatiable sexual appetites (think contemporary art and internet porn),  the raising of compulsive triviality and narcissistic emptiness to the level of the pseudo-sublime (think Facebook).

Jameson wrote in 1991:  “What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods.”  The “occupy” movement that has gained so much attention lately, like the Wall Street bankers themselves, therefore is  simply one more node in the vast global net of signifying differentia, as Ferdinand de Saussure, who along with Nietzsche birthed postmodern thinking, would have put it.  Saussure in many ways sketched out the theory of the hyperreal in his Course in General Linguistics given at the University of Geneva on the eve of World War I.   Jacques Lacan, who influenced a whole generation of French postmodern philosophers, put it into practice with his analysis of how what he called the “symbolic order” – the order of linguistic and conceptual sign interactions – not only dominates, but absorbs all our desires and imaginings.   

In postmodern culture the endless thirst for the “latest and newest” French thinker  - the proverbial haut couture splashy intellectual “fashion model” with the trendiest, most recent, most outrageous position, or proposition,  to come down the publishers’ runway – is but one manifestation of such developments.    In pop Christianity it is the rage for an ever sexier way of making Jesus seem cool and relevant.  Jesus, the historical singularity that fused the infinite Lord of time with the finite depravity of humanity, is now just an inexhaustibly mobile Lacanian “sliding signifier” in the global marketplace of commodified Christianities.

But let us return to Freud.   As the slow motion apocalypse of the global system of empty significations (i.e., “late capitalism”) gathers momentum, hunger returns.    Not only the hunger for food, but the hunger for significations that are not hyperrealities, that are not pure differentia.  A hunger for a meaningfulness that is truly transformative and “sustainable”.  Aha, say the salivating cyberevangelists, now let’s give them Jesus.  But Jesus himself condemned the Pharisees for offering hungry men snakes and stones.  We can no longer give hungry men and women Saussurian signs.   

Just as we all suffer from so many environmental disorders because of the pollution of our bodies with additives, industrial chemicals, and waste products that we can no longer even define, so we pollute our spirits with the subtle hyperrealities we have no idea are no longer real at all.  The love of God satisfies the hunger and environmental hysteria of the postmodern soul, but it is a love that does not come through the endless natterings of the “symbolic order,” let alone the political as well as the religious preachers of completely virtualized fantasies of a new heaven and earth, of a redemption that can be carried out through out through social media theater, through nothing but private and collective gestures, posturing,  or signifying inanities. 

The apocalypse that is at hand is the apocalypse of a real God who really loves us and really loves through the real love that we show in deeds rather than our gestures, our placing of our hearts along with our bodies in the space of those who desire love, who desire intimacy, closeness, and relationship.  The love of God is inseparable from the love of neighbor (and even more so the love of child, spouse, significant other). 

The second commandment is no Baudrillardian simulacrum.  The true parousia of Christ (“Behold, I am coming soon”) is not “deferred” Derridean avenir.   

Hunger and love.  The real is relational and the relational is real.   It is NOW!

Carl Raschke is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Denver.  He writes regularly on religion, Christianity, culture, and postmodernism.  He is the author of The Next Reformation (Baker Academic, 2004`) and GloboChrist (Baker Academic, 2008).  His latest book Postmodernism and the Revolution in Religious Theory: Toward a Semiotics of the Event will be published by University of Virginia Press in 2012.

When a Nickel is Not Worth a Dime: Trakakis Rejoinder to Simmons

Conversation about Aaron Simmon's God and the Other continues with this rejoinder from Nick Trakakis to Simmons' earlier reply.

 

Simmons’ ‘reconstructive separatism’, as a way of reconceiving the relationship between philosophy and theology, is certainly a step forward from separatist conceptions (such as Heidegger’s methodological atheism) and reconstructivist views (such as Derridean ‘religious without religion’). To borrow Simmons’ analogy, one may liken this to finding a nickel on the ground – it’s a discovery of some value, and so is not completely without significance. But, at the same time, it’s not the ‘pearl of great price’ – it won’t take us far towards realising the goal we have been labouring after for so long. Simmons, however, disagrees: even a little progress is still progress, and “even nickels can begin to add up when combined with the nickels of others.” The problem is that, like Kant’s thalers, these nickels just don’t add up – the currency of (classical) phenomenology will never allow you to buy your dream philosophical home setting out the ultimate lineaments of reality (whether along Christian lines, or not). But that’s enough (strained) metaphor and analogy for now, and I’ll briefly return to this matter at the end.  

In the meantime, I wish to consider the two objections that Simmons discusses. The first objection which he finds in my review of his book – the “Novelty Objection” that Simmons’ postmodern apologetics program simply recapitulates much of what contemporary Christian philosophers of religion (such as Plantinga and Mavrodes) have been saying all along, and so does not offer anything new or distinctive – was not really intended as an objection. If anything, it was a positive appraisal of the path Simmons is taking, as it demonstrates an area of convergence between the often warring factions of analytic and Continental philosophy, and it shows how the same (or a similar) ideal (that of a humble and hospitable apologetics) can be fleshed out with the tools and resources of widely different philosophical traditions. And even if there were no such convergence with analytic philosophy of religion, it would be quite an achievement – as Simmons says – if a program of postmodern apologetics succeeded in showing that “affirming determinate religious beliefs and participating in traditional religious practices are possible for the philosopher working in the deconstructive and phenomenological tradition(s) without inconsistency with her deconstructive postmodern commitments.” No disapprobation from me on this score.

The real difficulties arise with what Simmons’ calls the “Neutrality Objection”, the objection that the neutrality of phenomenology prevents the phenomenologist from providing a positive case in support of the truth of Christianity and, equally importantly, from building what may be called a ‘Christian philosophy’, a philosophical account of reality that begins from an explicitly Christian vantage point. Simmons’ response to this objection exhibits some (understandable, I think) mistakes or misapprehensions of the kind of view that I, following Plantinga in some ways, was trying to develop. The first such error or misrepresentation arises from Simmons’ view that a Christian philosophy (a philosophy, that is, that takes its starting points and its driving force from the Christian tradition) “might invite a hermeneutic blindness such that one forgets to allow the epistemic humility previously called for to be functionally operative in one’s philosophical work.” Simmons goes on to add: “There is a big difference between saying ‘well of course I could be wrong’, on the one hand, and actually allowing one’s beliefs to be at stake in philosophical dialogue.” 

Now, I don’t see why the vices of hermeneutic blindness and lack of epistemic humility are more likely to manifest themselves in Christian philosophy (of the sort I am advocating) than other types of philosophy, phenomenology included. What needs to be borne in mind is that one’s ‘starting points’ (or, specifically, one’s commitment to the truth of Christianity – not to be confused with what Plantinga calls ‘basic beliefs’) need not be considered as irrefutable or infallible. In fact, they may well be just as open to scrutiny and debate as any other beliefs one holds. The important point is that the Christian philosopher, unlike the (classical) phenomenologist, is free to conduct his research in the light of his Christian commitments. These commitments, however, can and should be open to debate (or “at stake”, as Simmons puts it). But why should they be open to debate all the time? Why can’t we, as philosophers, investigate (say) the nature of personhood or knowledge in the light of what we believe or know as Christians, without having to demonstrate (to non-Christians) the truth of the general Christian framework within which we operate? (Note: I’m not saying that we shouldn’t bother demonstrating the truth of Christianity to non-Christians. I’m only saying that, if we do not do so, or are simply unable to do so, our commitment to Christianity is not thereby shown to be rationally unjustified.) Naturalists and materialists in philosophy (and other disciplines) do this all the time, so why shouldn’t we? This, in part, was Plantinga’s “advice to Christian philosophers” back in the 1980s.   

Perhaps the suspicion, as Simmons voices it, is that if we pursue philosophy in this way, then “all conversations with non-Christians would only be of limited use.” As he goes on to nicely illustrate, “It would be like a professional basketball player playing ball with a bunch of high-school students in the effort to strengthen his game without really risking being beaten.” (emphasis mine) But this is a further mistake and misrepresentation – indeed it is a non sequitur. There are, no doubt, Christians who pursue philosophy in such a way as to never (or rarely) subject their fundamental convictions to honest and rigorous critique. But there are plenty of non-Christians who do the same. More importantly, however, a philosopher who conducts his research from an avowedly Christian standpoint may well have the requisite openness and humility to not only dialogue with those of other faiths or none, but to also keep open the real possibility of being shown to be mistaken even in his own most fundamental religious beliefs. This, of course, is difficult to do (for anyone, not merely Christians), demanding great courage and humility. But I don’t see why the Christian philosopher is any less credentialed than other philosophers to achieve this.    

In short, dogmatism and insularity are obviously to be avoided as far as possible, but they need not inflict Christian philosophy, at least any more than other types of philosophy. Indeed, if “enlarging the philosophical conversation” is a goal to be prized, then why seek to enforce the seemingly artificial restriction that no theological beliefs or theological sources of belief can be relied upon in philosophical research? In this case, I’m afraid, I have to reject Simmons’ concluding irenic proposal. It’s just not possible for both Marion and Plantinga to be right: they represent mutually incompatible meta-philosophies, and one must therefore make a choice. To return to the analogy at the beginning, Christian dimes cannot be exchanged for phenomenological nickels, no matter how numerous. 

Perhaps Marion and Plantinga are Both Right: A Response to Trakakis

This is J. Aaron Simmons's reply to N.N. Trakakis's review of God and the Other:  Ethics and Politics After the Theological Turn (Indiana UP, 2011).  To conclude the Review Symposium on God and the Other, Professor Trakakis will soon be offering a rejoinder to Simmons's reply.      

J. Aaron Simmons is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Furman  University. 

 

The best thing about receiving criticism is that it provides an occasion to reexamine one’s own claims and see if they are still worth defending.  Professor Trakakis’s review of my recent book, God and the Other, rightly presses me on the way I work out the relationship between philosophy (particularly phenomenology) and theology.  While granting that my account of “reconstructive separatism” is a step forward from the general outlook articulated by many of the New Phenomenologists, Trakakis does not find it to be enough of a step forward.  Professor Trakakis suggests that even given the slight advance that “reconstructive separatism” represents, it is still too far away from the goal to be viewed as all that promising.  It is kind of like being $500 short for a particular purchase and finding a nickel on the ground.  Of course it is great to be five cents closer to the goal, but this really isn’t much to write home about.  While I appreciate the legitimate worry that I may have made too much ado about finding a philosophical nickel, as it were, I think that the Professor Trakakis’s concerns can be addressed without major revision to my basic argument. 

As I understand it, Professor Trakakis has two objections to reconstructive separatism and my notion of postmodern apologetics.  The first objection is a rather minor point and flows from some of his opening comments regarding the metaphilosophical engagement between different traditions (let’s call this the Novelty Objection).  The second objection is much more troublesome and concerns the entailments of phenomenological methodology (let’s term this the Neutrality Objection).  I will consider and reply to each objection in turn before offering just a few concluding comments about the scope of my notion of postmodern apologetics as it concerns the relationship between phenomenology and theology.   

The Novelty Objection

Simply put, the Novelty Objection can be stated as follows: If Continental philosophers were more willing to draw upon the resources of Analytic philosophy they might not so often seem to be reinventing the wheel.  In particular, as Professor Trakakis notes, the defense I offer of the humility and hospitality of postmodern apologetics (albeit worked out more carefully in my unpublished essay, “Apologetics After Objectivity,” than in God and the Other) is not really very new at all, but is rather “something that George Mavrodes and Alvin Plantinga, amongst many other analytic philosophers of religion, have been saying for quite some time.”  Moreover, the general strategy of “negative apologetics” to which Professor Trakakis understands my view to amount, is not really doing anything different in general (even if the specifics vary) than what one finds in Plantinga’s “Free Will Defense” and Plantinga’s various criticisms of positivism and naturalism, for example—namely, defending Christianity from outside attack.  So, Professor Trakakis indicates, although my account is “highly commendable,” it does not really add anything new to the debates, but just reflects where the debates have been for quite some time.  Now, Professor Trakakis does admit that, given the state of Continental philosophy of religion, my work on this front might help to problematize and challenge the comfort with which some in the field just begin by assuming that something like “religion without religion” is the only viable option for postmodern religion.  However, in anticipation of the Neutrality Objection, he notes that “the problem is that we would like apologetics to have the capacity to go further than merely defending Christianity from attack to offering reasons in support of the truth of Christianity.”

In response, I readily grant that my ideas about postmodern apologetics are quite resonant with the encouragement to humility and hospitality offered by Plantinga, Mavrodes, and others.  I certainly do not want to claim any novelty when it comes to such things.  Nonetheless, I would point out that the caveat for which Professor Trakakis allows regarding the resistance to possible assumptions that sometimes operate uncritically within Continental philosophy of religion is really the crux of my work on this front. Simply put, when I argue for a postmodern apologetics as opened by the reconstructive separatist strategy, my aim is to make clear that affirming determinate religious beliefs and participating in traditional religious practices are possible for the philosopher working in the deconstructive and phenomenological tradition(s) without inconsistency with her deconstructive postmodern commitments.  By itself, I take this to be significant, but if that were all that could be said then I grant Professor Trakakis’s worry that it might not be enough.  Importantly, though, my argument is merely for a minimal claim, i.e., this is at least the case, but it is not offered as a maximal claim—I think that it is quite likely that more can be said, but that requires a different argument than the one I offer in God and the Other.  This brings us to the second, and much weightier, objection.

The Neutrality Objection

This objection concerns the supposed neutrality of phenomenology itself and suggests that unless the phenomenologist makes rather radical breaks with traditional phenomenology (especially concerning the neutrality of the epochē regarding ontological claims), she is unable to move from arguing against critics of a particular religious tradition to arguing for the truth of that religious tradition.  Even though I do contend that postmodern philosophy of religion should not (and, indeed, cannot) minimize the importance of (propositional) belief (hence the emphasis on the possibility of a postmodern apologetics), the worry is that I am unable to then go further and argue for the truth of a specific set of such beliefs.  The underlying reason for this limit is, on Professor Trakakis’s account, the neutrality conditions imposed by phenomenological methodology.  In other words, as Jean-Luc Marion has often noted, phenomenology should (and perhaps must) stop short of affirming the actuality of religious phenomena and, instead, be content to make a case for the possibility of such phenomena.  Accordingly, my own account of reconstructive separatism might be viewed as a way of formalizing the point that phenomenology and theology are doing two different things internal to the various authorities operative in the different domains of inquiry (Scripture on the one hand and symbolic logic on the other hand, say).  But if this is right, then isn’t Professor Trakakis correct to say that, in the end, I am also stuck with a purely negative enterprise?  Shouldn’t philosophers of religion be able to do more than merely say that Christianity (or whatever religion one attempts to defend) is a viable existential possibility and instead argue that it is “the way, the truth, and the life” revealed to humanity by God?  Only if phenomenology were to shed its commitments to such methodological neutrality, suggests Professor Trakakis, could phenomenologists “be free to allow their particular faith-commitments full reign to shape and influence their philosophy.” 

In response, I want to make two points.  First, I think it is worthwhile to note that it is entirely possible to grant Plantinga’s claim regarding the rationality of religious commitments to operate as basic beliefs internal to one’s philosophical system, which is the alternative that Professor Trakakis endorses, while also resisting the notion that such commitments must always operate in this way.  That Christian philosophy is rational does not mean that it is the only game in town.  Now, I take this to be an uncontroversial claim, but I think that sometimes (Christian) philosophers of religion can seem to indicate (whether intentionally or not) that unless one specifically assumes the truth of Christianity as a starting-point for philosophical reflection that one has failed to do philosophy correctly.  The idea would be that since Christianity is true, starting with any other set of beliefs as premises for one’s arguments would be to introduce falsehood from the outset.  Though operating this way is not irrational, as Plantinga has successfully demonstrated, I contend that it can sometimes be problematic insofar as it might invite a hermeneutic blindness such that one forgets to allow the epistemic humility previously called for to be functionally operative in one’s philosophical work.  There is a big difference between saying “well of course I could be wrong,” on the one hand, and actually allowing one’s basic beliefs to be at stake in philosophical dialogue, on the other hand (which, incidentally, is why Nicholas Wolterstorff rightly points out the importance of allowing one’s “data-beliefs” to also challenge the “control beliefs” with which one started). 

Second, I think that there are dialogical dangers that can begin to emerge as temptations within so-called “Christian philosophy.”  Simply put, if one starts by assuming the truth of Christianity at the outset, then ostensibly it might seem that all conversations with non-Christians would only be of limited use.  It would be like a professional basketball player playing ball with a bunch of high-school students in the effort to strengthen his game without really risking being beaten—i.e., he doesn’t recognize the high-school students as “real” competition, as it were.  Although inquiry always begins from somewhere (i.e., there is no neutral starting point), there are more or less hospitable ways of inhabiting the place from which one starts.  As Brian McLaren might say, there are different ways of living in the story in which one finds oneself.  Even if only displayed in extreme cases, what can begin to emerge is a narrow (insider) dialogue that is too rigidly prescriptive of where the inquiry is able to go (given the set of premises with which it began).  

In such a context, I think it is quite understandable that many, though certainly not all, Continental philosophers of religion have chosen to move away from affirmations of determinate religious beliefs and the debates occurring in more mainstream philosophy of religion, and have moved toward “religion without religion” as a way of (1) resisting a perceived dogmatism in the effort of (2) enlarging the philosophical conversation itself.  Unfortunately, the Continental/Analytic split in philosophy of religion, I believe, can become further entrenched when both sides see the other as dogmatic and narrow, which are, more often than not, misperceptions of the other perspective.  Accordingly, the reason I advocate reconstructive separatism is that I think it achieves both (1) and (2) while avoiding an alternative deconstructive dogmatism regarding a-theistic assumptions.  Even if my project is viewed as merely a performance of negative apologetics, I take it to be a needed contribution to a discourse that only sporadically and haltingly shows signs of the sort of cross-tradition engagement to which Professor Trakakis and I are both committed.    

Not all philosophy needs to begin by affirming the Apostle’s Creed (although it might be important for some philosophy to do so).  But, similarly, not all philosophy needs to operate according to phenomenological methodology and deconstructive frameworks (although, again, it might be important for some philosophy to do so).  What I take postmodern apologetics to offer is a way of seeing how those starting from these different places might not, in the end, be so far apart after all.  It might be (indeed, I think it is) that inquiries into speech, prayer, faith, revelation, obligation, and liturgy offered by New Phenomenology might begin to point toward Christianity, say, as distinctly able to account for such realities in ways that resonate with, and even animate, phenomenological descriptions.  Similarly, it could be that Husserl’s conception of the difference between “empty” and “fulfilled” intentions can provide insight into some aspects of the difference between a life without a personal relation to Jesus and a life with such a relation.  Hence, even if phenomenology is only able to provide a prolegomena to positive apologetics, I think it is wrong to understand this as only a “negative” enterprise, but instead an important step toward more positive work.  Further, as Marion demonstrates quite frequently, it is important to realize that the phenomenologist need not always operate as a phenomenologist.  If one wants to engage in debates concerning positive claims about the truth of a particular religious tradition, then Plantinga, Mavrodes, and many others are likely to be good resources to which one can turn.  But, alternatively, those explicitly engaged in “Christian philosophy” (in an analytic mode) might find resources for guarding against the possible temptations to dialogical insularity and theological arrogance by occasionally drawing upon phenomenology (and vice-versa).  Christian philosophy and New Phenomenology are not at odds with each other, but that does not mean that one will necessarily lead to the other as its natural culmination.  Discursive interplay in this regard serves to enrich both discourses without narrowly forcing a particular philosopher into deciding between the two as mutually exclusive approaches to philosophy itself.  Marion is probably right to say that phenomenology is about possibility; Plantinga is probably right to say that philosophers need not abandon their religious commitments when doing philosophy.  Regardless of tradition, philosophers of religion should be able to draw upon both Marion and Plantinga (or Jacques Derrida and William Alston, Emmanuel Levinas and Linda Zagzebski, etc.).  Crucially, I think that Professor Trakakis and I would be in agreement on this point.  I entirely concur with his claim that by drawing upon both the Continental and the analytic traditions, philosophers are more likely to “produce possibilities for thinking that were not available or apparent previously.”

In conclusion, in God and the Other, I offered reconstructive separatism as merely one model of how philosophy and theology can be distinguished (even if only ever tentatively), but I think that the postmodern apologetics for which this model leaves room serves to challenge the notion that such distinctions themselves amount to conversation stoppers for inquiry.  Productive philosophy of religion is most plausibly fostered, I believe, when distinctions between philosophy and theology are possible (only then could we really understand where it is that one stands and where it is that one wants to go), but are always themselves at stake in the conversation itself (only then do we resist the insular circularity that can tempt us all).  I find reconstructive separatism to facilitate such an understanding.  Maybe this is only a philosophical nickel, but even nickels can begin to add up when combined with the nickels of others.      

The Church in the Present Tense: A Response from Kevin Corcoran

Kevin Corcoran is professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI and editor/co-author of The Church in the Present Tense.

 

Well, it’s my turn.  As the one who conceived this book, edited it and contributed to it, I want to take a moment to address some of David’s concerns and some concerns that have been vociferously voiced on other websites and blogs.  I’ll also touch on some points made by Tony, in his brief review. 

(Let me say just briefly myself, in defense of my friend Tony, and in answer to my friend Jason’s critique of Tony, that he (Tony) was right in the thick of a wedding and probably did not have the time required for a more lengthy and in-depth review of the content of the book.)

            David raises a couple of related worries and I want to address each of them in turn.  First, the biggest worry seems to be that the Emerging Church has produced precious little on-the-ground Jesus-activism.  It has raised lots of good questions, fomented lots of good conversation and stirred the proverbial pot, but little else. David wants to see “communities of Christ birthed…where true justice can be planted and infest neighborhoods.”  He wants to see “places of resistance called into being where individuals together can witness against the consumerist and pornographic excesses of American culture gone badly.”  And the implication is that the Emerging Church has not succeeded in doing this.  It’s done other things, but not this. 

            His second worry is like unto the first. The emerging church is nothing more than a “never-ending tolerant conversation.”  That’s it.  It has been nothing more than that for the last ten years and David wonders if it can ever be. 

            Well, I do not fashion myself a spokesperson for the emerging church.   Even so I will say this.  Activism—Jesus activism—is one of the salient features of emerging Christians.  In my chapter, “Thy Will be Done (On Earth)

I suggest that “planting justice” and “witnessing against the consumerist excesses of American culture”—to borrow David’s language—is precisely the sorts of things emerging Christians are up to.  Now, do they do this as part of a single, structural entity or community that is The Emerging Church?  No.  But that’s because there is no single, structural entity or community that is The Emerging Church.  In fact, I think it’s best not to speak of the emerging church for precisely this reason, it gives the impression that there is such a thing.  There’s not.  There are individuals—lots of them—dispersed and integrated parts of lots of different communities who share a vision, a concern, a longing, a cultural sensibility, and together they form what some refer to as the emerging church. 

            It is like a student visiting Yale university and being taken on a tour where she is shown the library, the labs, the sports complex and classrooms and then asking the tour guide, disappointingly, “But where is the university?”  The student is confused in thinking that “the university” picks out an entity, a thing.  It doesn’t.  In seeing the library, the classrooms and labs and the sports complex she has seen the university.  Likewise, the emerging church doesn’t pick out an entity either.  It picks out a bunch of individuals with a shared vision, a shared set of interests, concerns and cultural sensibilities and who are about the business of following Jesus in the here and now.  If you’ve seen them, you’ve seen the emerging church.

            Let me address myself briefly to the charge that the emerging church is a “never-ending tolerant conversation.”  Recall how the Platonic Dialogue, The Euthyphro, ends. In this dialogue Socrates asks Euthyphro what piety is.  Euthyphro provides an answer only to have Socrates show him that his answer is woefully inadequate.  So Euthyphro provides another answer.  Socrates proceeds to show him why THAT answer is also inadequate.  Poor Euthyphro offers up a third answer.  And to this answer Socrates responds with an even more important question than the original. That’s how the dialogue ends, with a question.  Plato seems to be suggesting that philosophy is like that, a never ending conversation.

            As a philosopher myself, I don’t find it at all disturbing or problematic if the emerging church is nothing more than a never-ending and tolerant conversation.  For it is a conversation about matters of fundamental human concern with people who though drawn into conversation because of shared interests, concerns and sensibilities are even still people from radically different theological and ecclesial histories and backgrounds.  If we can learn to talk to each other respectfully, then isn’t this just one more way we can show the world the stuff of God’s kingdom?

            Let me turn now to a couple of things Tony says and asks.  First, Tony asks at the end of his review, “Do [the authors of Church in the Present Tense] reject the pastiche aspect of ECM, or are they happy that their tradition gets a hearing.”  I think it should be clear from what I just said above that I do not reject this feature at all, but rather enthusiastically embrace it.  When Tony suggests that lots of people are disappointed with the emerging church, I am inclined to think that while true, it is only true because people are mistaken about what the emerging church is.  If it is recognized that the emerging church is not an entity, not a single, structural community, but rather a hodge-podge of individuals united by a common vision and a set of shared interests, concerns and cultural sensibilities from an array of different traditions and communties, then when the emerging church fails to speak with one voice on some important matter, one won’t be disappointed.  Because once it is recognized what the emerging church is one will not have such expectations. 

            Finally, I want to comment for what I hope is the last time on the fact that four white (and so far as I am aware, heterosexual) males are the contributing authors to this book.  This has been probably the single most voiced criticism of the book.  Here is what I have said elsewhere and elsewhen:

As the one who conceived the book, edited the book and chose the authors of the book, the responsibility for the utter lack of female voices falls squarely on my shoulders.  To offer an explanation risks the appearance of making excuses. So let me just say that I'm sorry there are no female voices among the authors (or among the interviewees that are included in the accompanying dvd). It's a shame. Period. I own it and will do what I can in the future to make it right. I can only ask that people forgive me.  The lack of female voices is lamentable. And, as I've said, I'm sorry. I will do my best to do better moving forward.

            I really don’t know what else to say.  Some however seem unable or ill-equipped to accept my apology.  I will say this, however; I make no apology for being white, male and straight.   My voice is no less worthy of contribution to the ongoing conversation for all of that than is anyone else’s.  

            Let me close by saying this.  Church in the Present Tense is offered as a modest, provocative contribution to the on-going conversation that is the emerging church.  From what I can gather, it is succeeding.  Thank you, David, for your contribution to the discussion and to you, Tony, for your continued contribution.  And thanks to Jason, Pete and Scot for their continued labor.  Peace to all. 

"God and the Other" Symposium: Trakakis

This final engagement with Aaron Simmons' God and the Other: Ethics and Politics After the Theological Turn is by N.N. Trakakis, Research Fellow in Philosophy at Australian Catholic University and the author of The End of Philosophy of Religion. 

 

Allow me to begin with a point about metaphilosophy. A previous reviewer (Christina Smerick) expressed the concern that, in Simmons’ book, “Continental philosophy is being asked to speak the language of analytic philosophy in order to be considered ‘legitimate’.” I’ll let Simmons fight his own battles, though I do wish to say that the kind of interplay and interaction (if not transgression) that is involved in the attempt to cross constantly back-and-forth between the Continental and analytic traditions of philosophy need not fall prey to the charge that in such an exchange one of these traditions will inevitably be prioritised, if not also absolutised. This, alas, has often been the result, but it is usually due to a poor or violent reading of the other tradition (the tradition that one dislikes and seeks to debunk). In a more open and friendly spirit, it is more likely that the language of both traditions is altered, even somewhat disfigured and radically transformed, so as to produce possibilities for thinking that were not available or apparent previously.  

Simmons’ engagement with analytic philosophy is therefore to be welcomed – not only because of the engagement itself (though, in the current institutional climate, this on its own is commendable), but also and more importantly because this is achieved in a conciliatory and non-polemical manner. Although his philosophical background and training are mostly Continental (or postmodern), Simmons is always ready to draw insights and arguments, as well as modes of reasoning and writing (he is, for example, refreshingly clear and precise) from analytic sources – though I would have liked this kind of ‘resourcefulness’ to have been performed more frequently in the book.

A further positive feature of Simmons’ book, perhaps also due in some way to its engagement with analytic philosophy, is the refusal to dismiss or marginalise the propositional and doctrinal dimensions of religious faith in favour of the personal and existential aspects of religion, something that many Continental philosophers of religion (especially those who espouse ‘religion without religion’) are wont to do. This is evident in Simmons’ excellent discussion of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard (in ch. 9), where Simmons refuses to follow Wittgenstein entirely in the view that, “The historical accounts in the Gospels might, historically speaking, be demonstrably false and yet belief would lose nothing by this” (from Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, quoted on p.200). There is much of religious value in Wittgenstein – I particularly liked the emphasis Simmons placed on Wittgenstein’s notion of the religious life as a struggle – but this need not blind us to Wittgenstein’s occasional blunders, excused in part by his ignorance of the history of Christian theology.

That said, in what follows I wish to look at Simmons’ understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology, and the implications this has for apologetics. My focus, therefore, will be on ch. 7 of Simmons’ book, where he identifies three ways of differentiating theology from philosophy (or philosophy in the mode of phenomenology). Firstly, there is the ‘separatist’ strategy, advocated by Janicaud, where phenomenology (and perhaps philosophy in general) is deemed to be theologically neutral and thus separate from theology. Secondly, there is the ‘reconstructivist’ strategy, where theology is first reconstructed by emptying it of any doctrinal commitment to a determinate faith, and is then (only then) permitted to enter the philosophical fray. (This is the general procedure followed by Derrida and the New Phenomenologists.) Thirdly, and this is Simmons’ via media, we have ‘reconstructive separatism’. On this view, theology and philosophy remain separate, insofar as each has distinct presuppositions and sources of authority: “Theology, I propose, begins with the authority of divine revelation, canonical texts, and/or ecclesial frameworks; phenomenology begins with the openness to investigate appearance in whatever form, or lack of form, appearance takes.” (pp.162-63) But despite this separateness, a doctrinal interplay between the disciplines is encouraged, so that (for example) the doctrinal content of Christian theology may inform one’s (postmodern, or phenomenological) philosophy, thus giving rise to “the possibility of a postmodern Christianity, a postmodern Judaism, or a postmodern Islam, rather than merely some ‘religion without religion’.” (p.164)

As Simmons is aware (since we have been privately discussing this matter), I don’t think this gets the relationship between philosophy and theology entirely right, though I admit that it is an improvement on the position of the New Phenomenologists. I won’t go into the details here, but I will say that my view is more in line with Plantinga’s conception of ‘Christian philosophy’ and the Radical Orthodox rejection of any secular or autonomous philosophy. My concern here, however, is with the consequences of Simmons’ reconstructive separatism for apologetics.

            Simmons holds that his preferred way of relating phenomenology to theology “leaves room for the possibility of a postmodern apologetics,” where this means that “one can give rational defenses of determinate religious belief and practice.” (p.164) This, unfortunately, comes at the very end of ch. 7, and so he hasn’t given himself much space to develop this promising idea. But from what he does say it is clear that such rational defenses would not aspire to the ideals of ‘classical apologetics’, the kind of apologetic programs formed within the Enlightenment framework and which seek objectivity, certainty, universality, and neutrality. Simmons briefly alludes to some possible examples of postmodern apologetics, including arguments showing that the God of the Bible is not the onto-theological God of metaphysics, and Kierkegaard’s ‘attack’ on Christendom. In an as-yet unpublished paper (“Apologetics After Objectivity”, which Simmons kindly made available to me) he develops the notion of a postmodern apologetics much further, showing how one could accept postmodern philosophy (and thereby reject the possibility of objectivity, certainty, etc.) while also engaging in a form of apologetics that aims to provide a defense of the specific truth-claims of Christianity. (This will be, following John G. Stackhouse Jr. and David K. Clark, a ‘humble’ and ‘dialogical’ apologetics.)

            All this is, I believe, highly commendable, and indeed something that George Mavrodes and Alvin Plantinga, amongst many other analytic philosophers of religion, have been saying for quite some time. The problem, however, is that it doesn’t do much to resolve the tension between New Phenomenology and theology. To see this, consider the question: How could the New Phenomenology, when brought into closer relation with theology (as recommended by Simmons’ reconstructivist proposal), help to provide a defence, particularly a robust defence, of the central truths of Christianity? It seems, at least on the face of it, that the Christian worldview cannot be presented (or defended) by the phenomenologist as anything more than a formal possibility, never as the ultimate truth, for to do so would break the cardinal phenomenological tenet of epochē, the suspension of any claim as to what (really) exists. I do not, of course, wish to downplay the importance of defending or establishing the internal coherence and hence the (logical or metaphysical) possibility of the truth of Christianity – particularly within contexts or communities where belief in God has been resolutely dismissed, as happened in the post-war positivist era. (Plantinga’s rebuttal of verificationism and his famed ‘free will defence’ thus performed an invaluable service in warding off once-popular philosophical ploys against theism.) The problem is that we (and I suspect this includes Simmons) would like apologetics to have the capacity to go further than merely defending Christianity from attack (so-called ‘negative apologetics’) to offering reasons (albeit reasons that are context-sensitive, person-relative, fallible, etc.) in support of the truth of Christianity. It is difficult to see how New Phenomenology can be stretched to allow for such ‘positive apologetics’ while remaining within the phenomenological fold.  

There may, however, be a way out. If the history of phenomenology, from Husserl to the new crop of phenomenologists, is any indication, the very contours and limits of phenomenology are (and always have been) up for grabs. Perhaps apart from a generic or vague ‘return to things themselves’ with a strong appreciation for subjective or first-person experience, all else – including therein the eidetic reduction and the method of epochē – is negotiable and can be discarded. (Consider, in this context, Edith Stein’s rejection of the transcendental reduction in favour of a realist phenomenology.) If this route is followed, then perhaps phenomenologists can finally fulfill Marion’s dictum: “It is forbidden to forbid!” Phenomenologists, like other philosophers, will then be free to allow their particular faith-commitments full reign to shape and influence their philosophy, rather than deceptively camouflaging their words with a studied neutrality. After Marion, this may be taken as the ‘fourth reduction’ – only this time we are unapologetically ‘reduced to’ (in the sense of being led back to) the only horizon capable of making sense of and thus truly disclosing anything: God.

Tony Jones on The Church in the Present Tense

Tony Jones is an ecclesiologist. He blogs and serves as the theologian in residence at Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis. His second book on the ECM drops in August, 2011: The Church Is Flat: The Relational Ecclesiology of the Emerging Church Movement.

 

It turns out that David Fitch is disappointed with the Emergent/ing/ence Church Movement (ECM). Well, he'd better get in line. It seems that all sorts of people are disappointed in us -- in the last week, I've read accounts on Facebook and blogs of evangelicals, liberals, mainliners, and GLBT persons who are disappointed with the ECM. Imagine my surprise, via Facebook, to discover that we had disappointed the bisexual and transgendered people of thew world.

No doubt, a lot of people have put a lot of hopes in the EMC, hopes that we were bound to disappoint. More interesting to me than how we've disappointed people, however, is what has led so many people, Dave and the authors of Church in the Present Tense among them, to be so disappointed with the modern church that they'd like to overhaul the entire thing.

So, it's like this: a bunch of us got together about a decade ago and said, "This patient is sick, really sick. Let's see if we can't help her get better." So we did our level best.

Turns out, other physicians and metaphysicians (see what I did there?) also care about this patient, so they started chiming in with their diagnoses. It's like we were doing our own little surgery on the church and suddenly, there were a bunch of other surgeons in the gallery, shouting directions at us.

"More radical reformation," said Dr. Fitch. "She needs to be more radically anti-imperialistic."

"No," countered Dr. Jamie Smith, "Put some Milbank in that IV bag and give her a radical orthodoxy drip."

"You've strayed too far from evangelical hermeneutics," said Dr. McKnight. "Just give her some blue parakeet pills."

"You're all wrong," shouted Dr. Corcoran, "These guys don't even believe that the patient is real; they think this is a game. What they need is a dose of reality."

I could go on, but I think you get my point. The very openness to conversation that has been engendered by the ECM is also our downfall. We've take a pastiche approach to church and theology -- we take a little bit from here and a little bit from there. The benefit of that is a great deal more freedom than many leaders in the church feel. The other side of that coin, however, is that we inevitably disappoint anyone who comes from a particular camp, because we're never really enough of anything.

Church in the Present Tense, in my reading, is along these lines. Each author takes the ECM gently to task, asking us to be more of something. Funny thing is, they don't agree on what we should be more of, and neither does Dave, who's interaction with this book precedes mine.

I happen to love this aspect of the ECM. I think that the pastiche model really works, thus I read each of the chapters in this book with keen interest, both challenged by them and wishing I could take each author to the theological woodshed.

I do wish that CitPT had done two things: 1) presented the diversity of the ECM more boldly (a book with four white, male authors just doesn't wash), and 2) dealt with the very pastiche model that I mention above. Do the authors reject that aspect of the ECM, or are they happy that their tradition gets a hearing therein?

Church and Pomo series available in Logos software

The entirety of the "Church and Postmodern Culture" book series (to date) is now available electronically through Logos Bible Software.  This creates a searchable version of all the books which could aid research and study.  FYI.

David Fitch on The Church in the Present Tense

What has Become of the Emerging Church? The Problem of the Never Ending Tolerant Conversation

By David Fitch

The emerging church frustrates me. Perhaps this is my problem because I am expecting it be something it was never intended to be. Nonetheless, the emerging church frustrates me because, over the past ten years, it asked so many important questions, fermented so many good conversations, yet seems to have produced so little on the ground, i.e. churches, activist work for God’s mission in Christ Jesus.  Good friends (in Emergent land) tell me to look at all the emerging church has done to promote a conversation that stirs people for action in their already respective places of ministry and social justice. I, a grouchy Neo-Anabaptist, argue that all we’ve done is stir the pot, and then blended in with existing structures.

I want to see communities of Christ birthed (we don’t have to call them churches if your stomach can’t handle that) where true justice can be planted and infest neighborhoods. I want to see places of resistance called into being where individuals together can witness against the consumerist and pornographic excesses of American culture gone badly. Forgive me for sounding like an anarchist but this is what I think matters.  

Perhaps the emerging church is supposed to be a conversation and that’s it. Nonetheless, I think it is fair to ask what has become of the emerging church and why? Ten years ago, it was defined by the organizing force of Emergent Village, a website and organization that ran conferences and local cohort groups. Today, it appears to be one all-inclusive massive conversation. I KNOW A LOT OF GOOD HAS COME FROM THIS PLACE BUT I WANT MORE (sorry for shouting).  So, again, I think it is fair to ask why more has not come from the Emergent that looked so promising 10 years ago.

This is where I think Kevin Corcoran’s new edited volume Church in the Present Tense: A Candid Look at What’s Emerging might be helpful at getting us at some of these issues. For I think there is something internal to the theo/philosophical logic of the emerging church in the States that almost by design forces all participants into a form of what I’ll call the “Never Ending Tolerant Conversation.” Don’t get me wrong (again); I see value in these conversations. Nonetheless, the logic of these conversations is to be parasitic off existing entities, existing structures, churches, political organizations, as opposed to shaping a political reality (in Christ) unto itself to live under these convictions. This theme is essential to us Neo-Anabaptists who worry about being absorbed into the exiting Symbolic Order.

At the outset, Corcoran offers a summary and assessment of the major theological trajectories in the emerging church of the past ten years. Corcoran describes an emerging church that is defined by its alternative worship, a chastened epistemology, orthopraxy versus orthodoxy and a soteriology aimed more at the present. He labels Community, Transformation, Worship and Social Engagement as dominant emerging themes. The book then provides engaging essays on all these topics. The essays are not simply “mantras.” They critique and engage the issues. The four writers of the essays offer the full range of perspective. Scot McKnight is an American evangelical Biblical scholar who has been in the middle of the conversation (he tells the story). Pete Rollins is a continental-type philosopher from Ireland who has been in the center of the movement in the US.  Jason Clark a Vineyard pastor from UK and of course Kevin Corcoran is a philosophy professor from Calvin College in Grand Rapids. All have been involved in the emerging church world for a long time from different perspectives. They write on all of the above issues including Scripture, the Atonement, Narrative and Philosophical Realism, the Kingdom, Liturgy, Transformative Art, Apophatic Language and Worship.  In one way or another, these essays, I suggest, reveal some angle on the nature of the Emerging church’s mode of being: “the never ending tolerant conversation.”

For instance, when Kevin Corcoran asks the question in his essay “Who’s Afraid of Philosophical Realism?” he describes the mode of story, narrative, deconstruction and conversation most often found within the emerging church.  I still think the groundwork on this laid ten years ago by Brian McLaren and others was singularly important. Yet Corcoran poses the need for something more, some “philosophical  realism,” that provides the means for some concrete social engagement (for Corcoran this means addressing the public square. For me it’s on the ground social engagements by live Christian communities in neighborhoods). To me Corcoran is pointing to the weakness of the emerging church: it is a certain epistemological humility that leads to never-ending questioning, deconstructing? For sure, there is an important posture that the emerging church has called us into epistemologically. But if there is not sufficient grounding in the ongoing work in the progress of traditions (where we work out together in history what we must do to be faithful), will it not lead to another “never ending tolerant conversation?” Just asking? Eh?

Peter Rollins writes a few essays in this book as well. To me, he offers another angle from which to view this same issue in the emerging church.  In one of his chapters, he extols the virtue of emerging church worship spaces. Here the emerging church offers a way of concretely enacting the “kenotic moment within the liturgical hour, forming a space where people are invited to suspend their interpretations of the world.”(26) It’s a great essay describing the application of Rollins apophatism to the practices of worship. It is proto-type Rollins. But again, I ask, with all “hermeneutical humility,” is this not more deconstruction that leaves us with little resolution on the ground for participating in God’s actual redemptive work in ongoing history? How do I discern this work in the world if I am always deconstructing liturgical meaning instead of being initiated as a participant in it? Deconstructed of history and hermeneutical resolution, can the people of God ever engage the world concretely as participants in God’s inbreaking Kingdom? (I address this issue in depth on Rollins in my recent book The End of Evangelicalism?).  Rollins, with his great inventiveness, brings us into a space of humility and chastened epistemology with respect to God. This is much needed in my opinion especially among my evangelical brothers and sisters. But does not Rollins also illustrate the same weakness (indeed it is Derrida’s weakness also according to Zizek and Badiou): that the emerging church often fails to provide the resources to move past conversation into the practice of everyday Christian life? Am I too strong here? What do you think? 

Jason Clark provides somewhat of an answer to these questions. He writes an excellent essay on the ills of consumer church entitled “Consumer Liturgies and Their Corrosive Effects on Christian identity.” Clark is a true practitioner.  He calls for a revival of ecclesiology. We must recover, he says (quoting Simon Chan), “the notion that ecclesiology, the nature of the church itself, is “an intrinsic part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not an administrative arrangement for the sake of the Gospel of securing practical results.”(57). The question for me remains: has the emerging church provided the basis for such a church?

To be sure, Scot McKnight provides two essays in the book that provide significant directions for the emerging church on the nature of the atonement and the doctrine of Scripture. McKnight’s helpful contributions on these topics are well known. I recommend his books The Blue Parakeet and The Community of the Atonement. Nonetheless, is not McKnight really “on the outs” with the emerging church people? He has famously been critical of Brian McLaren’s New Kind of Christianity in Christianity Today and elsewhere. Is this little spat not a sign as well that people who push for doctrinal determinacy are at odds with emerging Christianity? Just asking? 

In the end, Church in the Present Tense is a great primer on some of the major issues of emerging church. It’s a helpful presentation and critique. It reflects, in almost genius fashion, what has been accomplished in the Emerging church the last ten years and, then again, reflects on what has not been accomplished in the Emerging church the last ten years. What really interests me about the book however is the revealing of the bigger question, the elephant in the room of the emergent church: can the emerging church be anything more than a “never-ending tolerant conversation?” Can it lead to anything on the ground? I contend we need a new political coalescence of communities of mission in the neighborhoods that have the wherewithal to live in Christ together for God’s mission in the world? The question for all readers of this book should be then, will the emerging church lead us to something on the ground. Will the worship experiments, performative liturgies? cultural engagements in “the way of Jesus” and cohorts which converse,  get us to something on the ground? I worry that the Emergent Conversation is too deconstructive, too tolerant in the American homogenizing way, to do that? Am I right? I hope not. I love the people, I love the curiosity, and I love the justice that is emerging church.

 

Coming Soon: Church in the Present Tense

Church in the Present Tense: A Candid Look at What's Emerging is a uniquely collaborative book in which several sympathetic scholars (in theology, biblical studies, and philosophy) take stock of the "emerging" conversation to date, with a consistent focus on issues of hermeneutics, epistemology, and worship.  The collaborators and co-authors will be familiar to many involved in these conversations: Scot McKnight, Peter Rollins, and Jason Clark, all corralled by my colleague and fellow philosopher Kevin Corcoran who spearheaded the project. 

To get a feel for the book, here's the Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Emerging Church--Kevin Corcoran

Part 1: Philosophy
1. Who's Afraid of Philosophical Realism? Taking Emerging Christianity to Task--Kevin Corcoran
2. The Worldly Theology of Emerging Christianity--Peter Rollins

Part 2: Theology
3. Consumer Liturgies and Their Corrosive Effects on Christian Identity--Jason Clark
4. Thy Kingdom Come (on Earth): An Emerging Eschatology--Kevin Corcoran

Part 3: Worship
5. The Renewal of Liturgy in the Emerging Church--Jason Clark
6. Transformance Art: Reconfiguring the Social Self--Peter Rollins

Part 4: Bible and Doctrine
7. Scripture in the Emerging Movement--Scot McKnight
8. Atonement and Gospel--Scot McKnight

In addition, the book comes with a DVD that features both videos of alternative worship in the UK and USA, as well as interviews with key figures, including Brian McClaren and Archbishop Rowan Williams (!). 

Here at churchandpomo we're going to host some conversation about this book.  Next week, David Fitch will post a critical review/engagement with the book; the following week we'll feature a reply from Tony Jones.  And of course your comments are welcome all along the way.  We'll hope to conclude with some response from Kevin Corcoran and/or other authors of the book. 

Join the conversation next week, and invite your friends. 

Being Relevant: Confronting the latest sacred

 

by Rachel K. Ward

The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Its sole message is: “What appears is good; what is good appears.” Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1968

Relevance is the exact opposite of countercultural, the unintended consequences are significant. Gabe Lyons, The Next Christians, 2010

In the contemporary moment, the expectations of daily life appear multiplied, with more to keep up with than ever before. And because of instantaneous communication, there is also an increasing awareness of the latest ideas. The growing interconnection creates pressure that we prioritize what is in the news and what looks fashionable, in order to be "relevant." The definition is “closely connected or appropriate to the matter at hand,” with appropriateness being highly subjective. (dictionary.com) The great valor of the cultural intelligencia is being in the know, with shame falling on whatever is obviously irrelevant. 

The problem lies in thinking that being relevant is best. Media is the primary source of legitimization – what appears is made good. If media frames something as bad, it is still in the realm of appearances and only given the appearance of a trial, or more so of a false exorcism for an eventual unqualified sanctification alongside the media good. We can think of any number of scandals with notorious fame, that by falling in the media spotlight gain eventual acceptance. So whether media celebrates or crucifies, it certifies something as relevant, and thus more significant than whatever is not in the news.

Some could suggest that media’s sanctifying power has weakened. While in the past, media was the voice of a god to the masses, now we have many media outlets for many points of view and that is the postmodern crisis of meaning. Pluralistic, interactive media however, has not reduced media’s ability to make relevant, but simply increased its territory, making more things accepted. The media pre-approves topics, using the public sphere to normalize issues long before they are legally passed. But more than popularize, media gives things a momentary, iconic status to seem untouchable and unrejectable. Yet, unlike the conventional understanding of sacred as worthy of eternal veneration, the contemporary, secular sacred is admired for its lush ripeness alone. 

The fascination for the new was also common to ancient Greece, where “all the Athenians and foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. “ (Acts 17:21) While it is not known if “relevance” as a concept was debated, there was discussion of the strength of ideas. Today, after decades of political correctness, almost nothing can be de-valued, except what is marginalized by media. Media relevancy is the litmus test of value, save for the Christians. The great laugh on Real Time with Bill Maher is that Christians are irrelevant, blind to the latest accepted truths. Mahr righteously admits his liberal position, implying he represents the informed elite and its valid anti-Christian attitude. The uninformed, American-car driving Christian is his fail-safe closing joke.

Despite criticisms of being disconnected, many Christian churches now open their doors to relevant speakers or support relevant causes. Christian authors produce relevant texts, and Christian websites like this one look relevant. But what the masses seek is not satisfied by Facebook, or by churches that only resemble it. The shared consciousness, which is applauded as the global village, is a mere shadow of what’s possible. 

Postmodernity is neither the enemy of handmaiden for Christianity, as pluralism has been ever present. While vanity and illusion take form in the latest sacred, media’s ultimately all-inclusive scope exposes the fault lines of its value system, and leaves only desire for more. We live on demand for the next best thing. We move easily on to the next one, because the last one, the current one, and even the next one are already overdetmined as temporary. This analysis cannot discredit the milieu in which relevance is upheld as a value, in part because this text appears through media, but more so because media is not to blame. Even nature has temporary forms, but valuing futility is an interest of men who exploit media. And while media can be used to correct how we are misinformed, reality is the place for genuine transformation.

The culture industry will continue to flaunt its authority over men, discerning the most recent thing worthy of our attention, but the challenge to Christians is as it has always been, “communicating something authentic and true through their lives that gives pause to those who encounter them,” writes Gabe Lyons. He also quotes an ancient letter to Diognetus about early Christians: “They busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey established laws, but in their own lives they go far beyond what the laws require.” These are reminders that amid relevancy, we can raise the bar. Whatever it is that is deemed the latest sacred, is not the ultimate sacred. While we can be content in what we are given today, we should find a righteous discontent with the esteem for what is only relevant. This is not a mandate to never be relevant, but that amid the tyranny of urgent updates on life we should remember, “only one thing is needed.” (Luke 10:42) Keeping our gaze on what is eternally relevant to the living God, shines the greatest light on what is most relevant to all of us, anytime. It is not the news, but under it; not fashion, but the creator; not technology, but the giver of renewal. So rather than critique contemporary life, we can restore our focus on the eternal values that survive it. 

Image: Jan Gossaert’s Adam and Eve in Paradise, 1525, adapted as a MacBook skin by artist Michael Xuereb

On Risks Worth Taking: A Reply to Smerick and Minister

This post is a reply to the previous posts by Christina Smerick and Stephen Minister as part of the review symposium on God and the Other: Ethics and Politics After the Theological Turn (Indiana University Press, 2011). 

By: J. Aaron Simmons, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Furman University  

 

Let me begin by thanking Professor Smith for his invitation to host this symposium on my recent book, God and the Other: Ethics and Politics After the Theological Turn.  I also want to thank Professor Smerick and Professor Minister for their careful analyses of the book and especially for the serious criticisms they offer.  In this reply to Smerick and Minister, I will not only respond to their criticisms, but also attempt to clarify a few things about the intention of the book itself.

In light of Professor Smerick’s suggestion that my “main concern seems to be to ‘translate’ Continental philosophy’s main constructs to appear more reasonable and ‘grounded’ than they are often understood to be,” I want to make clear that my goal is less one of translation and more one of expanded conversation.  In the introduction to God and the Other, I outline three guiding questions for the book.  The third of these questions is: “Can the insights of Continental philosophy of religion and Continental ethico-political philosophy be brought into a productive conversation with ‘mainstream’ debates in Anglo-American philosophy?” (7)  My answer to this question (at least as presented in the book) is less of an unqualified “yes” than it is of an “I hope so” or, even better, “we should try.”  We should try because it is problematic to think that one philosophical tradition would have an exclusive grasp of truth while all of the work occurring in other traditions would rest on mistakes and misunderstandings.  For ease of reference, let’s term this view “disciplinary exclusivism.”  It is important to understand that I am not attributing such an exclusivist view to any specific thinker(s).  Rather, I see it as a temptation that can creep into one’s professional life for all sorts of reasons and, even if no one else is tempted by it, I know that I occasionally am (surely everything I believe is right, right?).  Moreover, I do not think that the temptation toward disciplinary exclusivism only affects continental philosophers; it can certainly run in other directions such that continental thought is what gets excluded. 

That said, in light of this temptation, I think that philosophers who take seriously the Socratic admonition to “follow inquiry wherever it may lead” would do well to remain open to the possibility that inquiry might best be served when one stands in conversation with those outside one’s own community (or professional society).  Now, crucially, this conversation may for the most part be quite critical.  This critical engagement, however, is not something of which philosophers should be wary.  The worry is that the temptation to disciplinary exclusivism can potentially give rise to what I term philosophical “cliquism” (7), which I take to be an obstacle to inquiry precisely because it would already too narrowly circumscribe where such inquiry could go.  For those who have not read God and the Other, let me note that I do not affirm the reality of such cliquism, but merely raise it as a possibility that can emerge if the answer to the question about bringing Continental philosophy and Aglo-American philosophy into conversation is “no.”  Accordingly, I would not say that my “main concern” is a project of translation, though there are certainly moments in the text where I do engage in such work, but instead one of encouraging dialogue where it has not been as prominent as it might have been.  However, my commitment to dialogue is not simply for the sake of dialogue.  As I see it, the central task of God and the Other is to demonstrate how key questions in the philosophy of religion and political philosophy are more productively addressed when one is receptive to both Continental and non-Continental voices.  In other words, I think that there are good reasons to affirm a Levinasian account of subjectivity, a Kierkegaardian approach to faith, and a Derridian model of democracy.  Nonetheless, these perspectives are themselves enriched and made more plausible when drawing upon, for example, Robert Audi’s notion of modest foundationalism, Susan Wolf’s critique of moral sainthood, and the excesses that attend to some dimensions of John Rawls’s political liberalism.  Though there are certainly risks when one attempts to draw upon different perspectives (sometimes entailments and assumptions can be introduced that lead to possible incoherence at different levels), I think that following inquiry wherever it may lead requires us to take this risk.  Hence, I do not think that I am asking Continental philosophy “to speak the language of analytic philosophy in order to be considered ‘legitimate’,” as Professor Smerick suggests.  Rather, I am attempting to work though issues such as political criticism, postmodern religious belief, and ethical normativity in a way that does not offer merely a “Continental” perspective or a non-Continental perspective, but instead provides what I hope is an account that is well-argued and made all the more substantive precisely because it draws upon relevant philosophical resources wherever they may be found.  Though it might seem trivial, I think the best philosophy occurs when we are motivated to answer difficult questions even if doing so might put in jeopardy our prior commitments. 

Nonetheless, one of the risks that Professor Smerick rightly cautions against is the possibility that when one brings Continental and non-Continental philosophy together it is easy to fall back into the “very ideas or lingo that Levinas, et al., was trying to problematize: that of agency and choice.”  I wholeheartedly agree that this is troubling and, if I am guilty of it, that it would indeed be at odds with one of the underlying claims of God and the Other—namely, New Phenomenology (when read in light of an engagement between Kierkegaard and Levinas) provides a more robust ontological account than one finds in liberalism (whether classical or contemporary).  Crucially, one of the key components of this ontology, which I term the “ontology of constitutive responsibility,” is that it does not rest upon autonomy and agency, but instead on heteronomy and obligation.  While I appreciate Professor Smerick’s objection, which I admit is perhaps invited by my occasional use of words like ‘assent’, ‘endorse’, and ‘affirm’, I want to suggest that there might be a confusion of levels occurring between my use of such terms and Professor Smerick’s critique of such use.  This can be illustrated by turning to her defense of a Levinasian approach to ethics, which she takes to be occasionally at odds with my own supposedly Levinasian account. 

While Professor Smerick is absolutely correct to say that “using [the] language of ‘assent’ seems very problematic when applied to Levinas, as it may indicate a self-that-asserts rather than a self that is itself constituted by the gaze of the Other,” I do not think that this poses a problem to my argument.  Notice that the passage from God and the Other quoted prior to Professor Smerick’s claim reads as follows: “Levinas and Kierkegaard . . . offer an account of human subjectivity and sociality that is worthy of our assent precisely because . . .” (32).  Here the use of “assent” is in reference to what account of subjectivity one decides to affirm.  Obviously there are many alternatives from which one can choose and when one chooses between such accounts one gives assent to one account while not giving assent to others.  This is not a matter of subjectivity itself, but of the account of subjectivity one considers to be true.  If giving one’s assent to the ontology of constitutive responsibility entails rejecting the priority of the Other found in Levinas, then this would indeed be a problem (since I have claimed that this ontology is in line with Levinas’s notion).  However, my contention is that one of the reasons that such a Levinasian ontology is worth assenting to is its ability to challenge the self-priority found in so many alternative ontologies. 

Part of assenting to the ontology of constitutive responsibility is recognizing that there is a deeper level of ethico-religious relationality that establishes selfhood prior to any autonomous decision of the self.  Nonetheless, affirming such relationality does not lessen the importance of choosing here and now how best to live in the world as a result of being constituted by the call/command of the Other.  Being (pre)originally given over to the Other does not mean that I am somehow not required to answer for what I do or do not believe, say, do, and endorse within my specific historical and political context.  I would even go as far as suggesting that for Levinas and Derrida this is precisely the underlying reason for why justice is said to be “impossible.”  My proposal is not that we abandon the language of autonomy and agency, but that we relocate such language as occurring on this side of the subjectivity that has always already been established by the Other’s call/command.  Now, I do think that Professor Smerick is right to say that I attempt to “arrive at some sort of normativity” in Levinas because I am worried about the problems that accompany a purely descriptive account.  Yet, I think that the place to look for such normativity (and I work this out in the last chapter of God and the Other) is the lives of individuals who have struggled with the requirement of choosing how to live in the world in light of assenting to an ontology of constitutive responsibility whereby the self is not its own ground. 

In response to Professor Smerick’s suggestion that I think that “if these thinkers will not tell us how to live . . . then they have no pragmatic advice to provide the world, and thus Rorty and others are right to dismiss them,” I want to draw a distinction between telling one how to live (which I take to be too authoritarian and final) and giving pragmatic advice (which I take to be dialogical and thoroughly revisable, though I don’t remember using that specific terminology).  New Phenomenology is decidedly not the right place to go for a thick theory of ethical and political normativity such that one could algorithmically live a righteous life simply by following a set of codified rules or instructions.  However, one of the central theses of God and the Other is that New Phenomenology can be read, nonetheless, as relevant to difficult realities that accompany postmodern social existence.  Part III of God and the Other is a series of suggestions on how the ontology of constitutive responsibility might offer productive ways forward for such issues as religious belief, epistemic justification, religion in the public square, climate change, and moral guidance.  While it is entirely plausible that others might take issue with the specific ways in which I work out some of the possible implications of New Phenomenology in such areas, I think that a more robust conversation about such implications would be a step in the right direction for overcoming the Rortian charge that much of continental philosophy is disconnected with the real struggles that individuals face.  Although we should not miss the weight of Professor Smerick’s question: “if one wants to hold that the subject/object dichotomy is not just problematic, but perhaps unethical in its very structure, how does one, who takes one’s subjected self seriously, agree to submit to a language that seems inherently unjust?”, my answer to this question is quite simple: we should give good reasons internal to the context of one’s discursive community for doing so or refusing to do so.  Yet, since I believe that the stakes of epistemology are ethical, giving good reasons is as much an ethical demand as it is an epistemic requirement (see Chapter 11 of God and the Other).  Accordingly, the Levinasian should be especially attuned to speaking in a way that does not prevent others from joining the conversation, but actively invites them to do so.  This is not tantamount to asking Continental philosophy “to adopt a language that it is trying to interrogate,” as Professor Smerick says, but rather amounts to trying to do the hard work of resisting the complacency that can accompany preaching to the choir, as it were.  This is the key move to my defense of democracy in God and the Other, and I appreciate Professor Smerick’s claim that I do not do enough on this front (especially as it concerns the work of Gianni Vattimo).  Though I have written other essays that attempt to go further in this regard, perhaps I should have done more in God and the Other as well.  Regardless, while it is tempting to give in to disciplinary exclusivism, it is also risky trying to resist such a temptation by seemingly calling into question one’s own tradition at key points.  For good Levinasian reasons, though, it is a risk worth taking, and I do not think that God and the Other is unique in this regard.  Many others have also attempted to work at similar intersections while taking similar risks—to name but a few, consider the work of Merold Westphal, John Davenport, James K.A. Smith, Bruce Ellis Benson, as well as that of the second of my reviewers, Stephen Minister.    

Let me, then, turn to the two main objections offered by Professor Minister.  On the one hand, he suggests that since I do not spell out in enough detail exactly what I mean by the “God-relation,” the bi-directional relationality I advocate is not adequately supported.  On the other hand, he challenges my proposal of a deconstructive approach to justification by claiming that all one needs is an understanding of “justifying” as an ongoing social phenomenon.  Though a substantial response to each of these criticisms would take a full essay in its own right, in brief I want to say that I actually agree (to some extent) with both of the objections as being quite on the mark.  I do think that I leave the “God-relation” underdeveloped and, as such, Professor Minister is right to wonder if more than merely leaving space for a postmodern apologetics, my account actually requires a supplemental apologetics (and he even suggests that it might require a theology) if I am to make the case for the bi-directional relationality.  That said, this underdevelopment was not an oversight on my part, but the result of an intentional attempt to think through the structural relationship between the relation to God and the relation to the Other (and the attending implications for ontology, subjectivity, politics, etc.) and not the specifics of a particular way of understanding that relationship as historically deployed internal to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc., and, I would even say, internal to Atheism. 

Of course Levinas and Kierkegaard (and Derrida, Henry, Marion, and others) will understand the content of the God-relation in different ways.  In this book, my goal was not to defend one specific content as more philosophically plausible (or even more pragmatically worthwhile) than another content, but simply to contend for the importance of keeping the Other-relation and the God-relation both in play and in tension with each other.  My hope is that God and the Other stands as an invitation to others operating from within different religious backgrounds and internal to different religious communities to see the ontology of constitutive responsibility and the attendant bi-directional relationality to be a helpful framework for thinking through different ways of understanding the God-relation itself.  So, I take the underdeveloped notion of the God-relation to stand as a strength for opening spaces for the political import of New Phenomenology beyond the primarily Christian and Jewish perspectives of its main proponents.  I grant that it is important to go beyond this structural account and get into the hard work of dealing with specifics, but I see that as a different project motivated by a different question.  For my own part, I do attempt to go further in this direction elsewhere.  For a book entitled Religion with Religion, that (ironically) Professor Minister and I are co-editing, I have written an essay entitled “Apologetics After Objectivity.”  Therein, I attempt to sketch what such a postmodern apologetic enterprise might look like in the context of Pentecostal Christianity (though my arguments there are certainly not limited to such a perspective). 

Regarding Professor Minister’s suggestion that we do not need a “full-blown, normative account of justification,” I think our disagreement lies in what counts as such a full-blown account.  I am very sympathetic with Professor Minister’s claim that descriptive relativism need not imply metaphysical relativism, and I grant that there is a danger of theories of epistemic justification “risk[ing] closing off the critical conversation with others.”  When one begins to speak about whether someone is or is not justified in affirming a particular belief, say, there is always the worry that claims to being within “my epistemic rights” can end up masking a persistent dogmatism. While granting this serious worry, which I think raises the same point regarding the ethical stakes of epistemology that I attempt to do in the book, I again think that offering an account of justification compatible with New Phenomenology is a risk worth taking.  Indeed, I would suggest that Professor Minister’s own notion of “justifying” is quite plausibly framed as a “full-blown” epistemic theory of justification in its own right—namely, I take it to be a variety of epistemic infinitism (which is a theory that suggests reasons are ongoing and nonrepeating, and has been defended variously by such thinkers as Peter Klein, Scott Aikin, and a few others).  The dangers of dogmatism are significant if a particular theory of justification allows for finality, certainty, or indefeasibility.  However, according to the modest foundationalism I propose as consistent with the philosophy of New Phenomenologists such as Levinas and Derrida (drawing on such philosophers as Robert Audi, William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Alvin Plantinga), none of these temptations toward dogmatism remain in place.  Instead, we are left with an account that is sensitive to non-inferential sources of belief while admitting that the beliefs we hold about how best to account for these sources (the particular content that we affirm about the ethical relation or the God-relation, say) are themselves bound up in language games, practices, histories, and shared understandings that occur internal to the community or communities in which one finds oneself. 

While strong foundationalism  or even some thick varieties of coherentism might indeed lead to the sort of dogmatism about which Professor Minister rightly worries, I do not see that modest foundationalism does so.  In fact, I think that abandoning the attempt to give a theory of justification might be likely to yield its own version of dogmatism.  That is, if we do not have a “full-blown” theory of justification (in the sense that it is not merely a descriptive but also a normative account), then it is hard to see what would prevent the conversations occurring “in the context of the shard social existence of responsible subjects” from being merely self-interested manifestations of power-play.  What something like a deconstructive approach to modest foundationalism gets us is a reason for understanding what is required of “responsible subjects” when it comes to the ethics of belief.  Importantly, the normative account of modest foundationalism is itself open for revision and so already allows for the ongoing “justifying” called for by Professor Minister.  However, within such an epistemic framework, which is itself ethically demanded according to the ontology of constitutive responsibility, I think that we have good reasons to keep the critical conversation going as not only an epistemic task, but also as an ethico-religious requirement.  Nonetheless, I do think that Professor Minister’s suggestion that we need to focus more on the constant social dimensions of justification itself is exactly right.  In a paper I recently co-authored with Scott Aikin, we attempt to make such a move.  Therein, Aikin and I argue that something like an “impure epistemic infinitism” (which would allow for modest foundationalist doxastic inputs) might come as close as we can get to a theory that recognizes both the virtues of a full-blown theory of justification, as it were, and also the importance of keeping the process of reason-backing ongoing in the context of “social justifying,” as Professor Minister might say.  As I see it, this impure epistemic infinitism is another way of cashing out the basic idea of a “recursive hermeneutics,” which I defend at length in God and the Other.    

Let me again express my genuine gratitude to Professor Smerick and Professor Minister for their thoughtful and engaging criticism.  I hope that my replies here to their insightful objections serve to stimulate further conversation in the “comments” section of the Church and Postmodernism website. 

"God and the Other" Symposium: Part 2

The second instalment in our review symposium on Aaron Simmons' God and the Other: Ethics and Politics after the Theological Turn is from Stephen Minister who is assistant professor of philosophy at Augustana College in South Dakota where he specializes in continental philosophy and ethics.

 

Simmons’ God and the Other is an impressive work, both in its range of ambition and its ability to deliver sophisticated, illuminating, and well-reasoned analyses across this range.  It is bound to shake up contemporary religious thought by demonstrating the viability of a continental philosophy of religion that is theistic not only in name but in substance, while also bringing together analytic and continental philosophers of religion into one coherent dialogue.

Simmons argues for three main theses.  First, despite their postmodern opposition to metanarratives, Søren Kierkegaard, Emmanuel Levinas, and the thinkers doing “new phenomenology” all advance an “ontology of constitutive responsibility” which offers an interpretation of the human that is contrary to the dominant strands of modern philosophy.  Secondly, contrary to Dominique Janicaud’s accusations of religious dogmatism, the new phenomenology of thinkers such as Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Jean-Louis Chrétien is properly phenomenological.  Finally, Simmons argues that the ontology of constitutive responsibility offers vital resources for the challenges of contemporary life.  As a performative argument for the practical relevance of this philosophical project, the final section of the book considers the implications of this ontology for religion, ethics, and politics, including a specific application of his notion of responsibility to the issue of climate change.  In arguing for these theses, Simmons is seeking to justify both the philosophical legitimacy and the ethical and political value of “God-talk” in a postmodern context.  Anyone interested in either of those questions will find this book to be a very worthwhile and stimulating read.

 In order to illuminate the obstacles to his project, Simmons turns to Richard Rorty who serves as the main antagonist throughout because he rejects the necessity and even possibility of grounding our ethical and political thinking in an ontological account of humanity.  Simmons is concerned that without such an account Rorty’s social vision lacks anything resembling a rational defense and so ultimately and paradoxically relies on political power play to achieve its goal of peaceful, autonomous co-existence.  It is precisely because Simmons shares Rorty’s belief in the pre-eminence of working for a better, more humane and just social future, that he endeavors to show that such an ontological account is philosophically possible and can be practically helpful in achieving this better future.  As this move illustrates, key to Simmons’ project is a much-needed resurrection (albeit with fallibilistic, hermeneutic bents) of some traditional philosophical notions that postmodernity seemed to have left for dead, such as ontology, epistemology, and justification.

 As Simmons points out all practical ethical and political action is inextricably tied up with an understanding, usually unthought and implicit, of ourselves as humans, that is, with an ontology.  Precisely because of their practical significance, we ought to articulate and philosophically think these ontologies, even if we no longer believe philosophy can secure the final, right answer.  The account that Simmons argues for here is what he calls the “ontology of constitutive responsibility,” where the responsibility is “bi-directional,” both to God and to singular others.  This account, which Simmons develops primarily from the work of Kierkegaard and Levinas, thinks of subjectivity as open, vulnerable, embodied, and always already called into loving relations with God and others.  This account contrasts sharply with the dominant modern ontologies that define the human in terms of self-interest or autonomy.

Establishing such a bi-directional responsibility from Kierkegaard requires refuting the notion that for Kierkegaard our religious duty negates our ethical responsibilities to others.  To this end, Simmons offers a sophisticated and compelling reading of Fear and Trembling in which he shows that Abraham’s God-relation does not eclipse, but actually intensifies his ethical responsibility to Isaac.  With regard to Levinas, Simmons’ account of bi-directionality amounts to a rejection of those readings that collapse all of Levinas’s references to God into the idea of responsibility to others.  Simmons suggests that such readings are unnecessarily tone-deaf to the consistent and significant place of God in Levinas’s philosophical work.  Nonetheless, as Simmons acknowledges, within their bi-directional ontologies Kierkegaard seems to give priority to the God-relation and Levinas to the Other-relation.  Herein Simmons leaves the question of priority undecided, suggesting instead that we see these two relations in an ongoing tension.  Tension is for Simmons, as equivalent concepts are for Kierkegaard and Levinas, a positive, productive force that, in preventing comfortable complacency, can drive us forward to a future of more faithful, ethical action.

 While I find Simmons’ readings of these thinkers’ works generally compelling, I’m not sure what a God-relation means in this book.  Certainly, Kierkegaard, the Lutheran, and Levinas, the Jew, have rather different conceptions of this.  Simmons is eager to avoid reducing God to an abstract term or mere reference to ethical responsibility as we find in much continental philosophy of religion.  However, since the notion of God in Simmons’ book is so regularly coupled with the notion of a responsibility to others, I’m not sure what a relation to God entails over and beyond such responsibility.  Moreover, given the fact that responsibility to a multiplicity of others already provokes tension—hence the difficulties of the political—it is not clear why we need a relation to God to add more tension.  Without answers to these questions, it is not clear what the force of the bi-directionality really is.  I get the sense that when he refers to a relation to God, Simmons has in mind something more Kierkegaardian, like a relationship with a personal, accessible, loving “being,” but this is not explicitly developed here.  Simmons rightly notes that his work opens up the possibility of a postmodern Christian apologetics.  Perhaps more than that, maintaining bi-directionality actually requires such an apologetics and correlative theology.  This point need not be read as a criticism.  God and the Other is primarily about ethics and politics, not apologetics and theology.  One book can only do so much and this book already does a lot.

Two of Simmons’ other resurrected philosophical notions are epistemology and justification.  Because much of postmodern thinking is, as the name suggests, born out of the rejection of the modern philosophical project, it consistently emphasizes the permanent failure of epistemology, the non-existence of neutral, unbiased Reason, and the impossibility of ever giving a final, true metaphysical account.  While accepting all of these postmodern points, Simmons helpfully clarifies that the rejection of modernity’s capital-R Reason need not precipitate the end of reason-giving.  Since at least Kierkegaard, philosophers have spilt much ink giving reasons for the death of Reason.  What is more, to abandon reason-giving isn’t just philosophical laziness for Simmons, but actually an abdication of ethical responsibility.  His ontology of constitutive responsibility to multiple singular others precisely calls us to reason-giving, even as it defies the possibility of possessing Reason “whole and entire” within oneself (Descartes) that “determines quite precisely what is to be done…with respect to all duty in general” (Kant).  If we are to work towards a just and peaceful social existence, we must be willing to engage each other in reasoned discussion, exposing our views to the criticism of others and listening critically to theirs as well.  Hence, throughout his work Simmons gives arguments for his positions, rather than appeals to religious dogma, power, aesthetics, or authority, and then willingly submits his work to critical reviews.  There is nothing in any of this fallible reason-giving the guarantees that we’re getting at truth, but it is politically and interpersonally significant nonetheless.

In pressing this point, Simmons brings in analytic epistemology to devise an account of epistemic justification.  Simmons advocates a “modest” or “minimalist” foundationalism, according to which beliefs are justified either through logical reference to other justified beliefs or when grounded in experience.  Simmons notes that this notion of foundationalism, as developed by Robert Audi, William Alston, and Alvin Plantinga, is fallibilistic and so contrary to any form of foundationalism that would claim we can get at a certain, fixed foundation for knowledge.  While I applaud Simmons for practicing what he preaches in being open to voices, such as those of analytic philosophers, that are critical of his tradition, and while this account strikes me as a generally accurate description of belief-formation, it remains unclear why endorsing the value of reason-giving requires a full-blown, normative account of justification.  Once we have a clear account of when a belief is justified, once I can know that I am, in the words of Plantinga, within my “epistemic rights” in holding a certain belief, then doesn’t this risk closing off the critical conversation with others that Simmons advocates?

 Simmons seems to turn to this epistemology in order to ward off the accusations of relativism or arbitrariness that sometimes dog continental philosophy.  It seems to me that reading this epistemology as a descriptive account of belief-formation, rather than a normative account of justification, is sufficient to accomplish this.  If beliefs are grounded (or through faulty logic or misperception sometimes misgrounded) in other beliefs or lived-experience, then regardless of whether beliefs are justified, they’re never arbitrary, but are always relative to lived-experience.  This descriptive relativism, need not imply metaphysical relativism, but instead in the context of the shared social existence of responsible subjects seems to call for precisely the conversation and discussion among people with diverse experiences that Simmons advocates.  So why not replace “justification,” a misleading and potentially dangerous honorific, with the permanent task of “justifying,” that is, the non-conclusive activity of giving honest reasons to others and listening to their responses in order to jointly think through our beliefs and actions.  After all, isn’t that what philosophy (analytic and continental), new phenomenology, God and the Other, and this very book review do anyway?

WPS CFP: "Curb Your Enthusiasm?"

Call for Papers | 2012 Meeting of the Wesleyan Philosophical Society

Curb Your Enthusiasm?  Philosophy and Religious Experience

Location: Trevecca Nazarene University, Nashville, Tennessee

Conference Date:  March 1, 2012

Proposals Due Date:  October 1, 2011

Keynote Speaker: Merold Westphal, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus (Fordham University)

Lectures: “Faith as Passion” and “Reason as Dispassion”

Not all that calls itself faith is passionate and not all that calls itself reason is dispassionate, thus the aim of these lectures will be to sort out the possibilities.

Conference Theme:

Enthusiasm was described by John Locke as a form of mental assent distinct from both reason and faith, an assent fueled by nothing other than a vain and groundless conviction that one is the recipient of illumination by the Spirit of God.  Locke was among the first in a long line of early modern thinkers, including John Wesley and Immanuel Kant, who warned of the epistemological, ethical, religious and socio-political dangers of countenancing enthusiasm and enthusiasts.  Currently, however, there are calls within the philosophical community urging us to reconsider the modernist marginalization of religious experience as a warrant for belief and action.  These calls span the analytic and continental divide, with some arguing that claims like ‘God spoke to me’ express properly basic beliefs for which no further evidence is available nor needed and others inviting us to practice philosophy within a discursive space delimited by particularistic creedal confessions.  Questions considered relevant to the theme of the conference include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

• Does religious experience warrant a belief in existence of God or perhaps more controversially a divinely inspired call to action?
• How do issues of ethnicity, gender or class factor into accounts and critiques of religious experience?
• Why were early moderns concerned about countenancing enthusiastic religious experiences and should we share these concerns?
• What should we say about purported experiences of the demonic?
• What are the implications of mystical experience for the philosophy of language?
• Can the public squares of long-standing liberal democracies or trying-to-emerge democracies accommodate appeals to particularist religious experience? And if not, should we care?
• What, if anything, distinguishes ecstatic aesthetic and religious experience?

 

We will also consider submissions on any philosophical issue, with priority given to those dealing with the selected theme. 

Special Note: This year we intend to host a special session on feminist perspectives on the issues under consideration.  Please note on the proposal form if the submission ought to be considered for this session. 

Please submit proposals of 250-500 words, the title of the abstract, along with name, position, and institutional affiliation (if applicable) to Brint Montgomery at [email protected] by October 1, 2011. The proposal should be sent as an email attachment in Microsoft Word format. Each proposal will undergo a double-blind peer review process.

Please check the WPS website updates for exact hotel and meeting site information at: http://wps.snu.edu. The Wesleyan Theological Society will be holding its annual meeting at Trevecca Nazarene University, March 2-3, 2012.

"God and the Other" Symposium: Part 1

Our first engagement with Aaron Simmons' God and the Other: Ethics and Politics after the Theological Turn  comes from Christina Smerick who holds the Shapiro Chair in Jewish-Christian Studies at Greenville College.

 

I am honored to have been asked to weigh in on Dr. Simmons’ weighty tome, God and the Other: Ethics and Politics After the Theological Turn.  I find myself in much sympathy with this intricate and wide-ranging text.  Its goals are lofty and laudable: to find areas of common interest between analytic and Continental philosophy, particularly regarding religion, ethics, and politics; and to demonstrate that Continental philosophy does indeed offer us concrete ways of navigating the world and living out our responsibility to and for it and for Others (be they human, divine, or…other).  These are difficult goals to achieve, and Simmons comes closer than most, even if I do have some concerns about what is sacrificed in order to arrive at these objectives.  First, however, I would like to touch upon the many strengths of this work.

Simmons evidences a deep understanding of both Continental philosophy’s language and methods, and analytic philosophy’s structures and concerns.  His main concern seems to be to ‘translate’ Continental philosophy’s main constructs to appear more reasonable and ‘grounded’ than they are often understood to be.  As such, the ‘translation’ is mostly in one direction: that of translating Continental philosophy into terms and structures more familiar to analytic philosophers.  In the first part of the text, he provides an in-depth reading of Soren Kierkegaard and Emmanuel Levinas, taking these thinkers as prime examples of  ‘Other’-first methods of philosophy.  While Kierkegaard maintains that this Other is primarily God, and Levinas insists that the Other who ‘comes first’ is the other person, Simmons demonstrates their areas of overlapping concern and has almost convinced me that Kierkegaard does have a ‘politics’ lurking in his existential philosophy. 

Simmons also claims that, “Levinas and Kierkegaard...offer an account of human subjectivity and sociality that is worthy of our assent precisely because it is one according to which all inhabitants of the earth are part of the same ethico-political community,” (32).  While I find this claim too bold (using language of ‘assent’ seems very problematic when applied to Levinas, as it may indicate a self-that-asserts rather than a self that is itself constituted by the gaze of the Other), this reading of both philosophers makes them more palatable to someone coming from a place of critique similar to Richard Rorty.  Simmons’ term for this human subjectivity is “constitutive responsibility”.  Rather than seeing the world in the Foucauldian sense of politics and power plays ‘going all the way down,’ Simmons is arguing that Continental Philosophy, via the figures of Kierkegaard, Levinas, Derrida, etc., offers an ontology of the ‘self’ that is first and foremost ‘ethical’.  The self is itself in its submission to the ethical, rather than as a freestanding cogito or ego ‘self-presencing’ itself.  I find this argument to be very helpful in framing Continental philosophy’s provisional conclusions in a language that may resonate with more traditional philosophical language. 

The work’s other concerns are to demonstrate the practicality of Continental philosophy’s constructs, and to address the ‘theological turn’ that it is ‘accused’ of making.  In this area, I found his account of Derrida’s philosophy to be particularly strong.  The notion of the ‘messianic’ in Derrida, while not strictly speaking ‘religious, suggests another plane than the lateral one we assume to be operative. Accordingly, the distinction between what politics can reasonably achieve and what our hope is regarding ethical relations must be maintained. Rather than imagining ourselves as the bringers of a future utopia, if only we work hard enough, get enlightened enough, sympathize with the other enough, religious thinkers maintain a ‘both/and’ dynamic.   The political as such will never be able to achieve justice, because by its very structure there will be losers and winners; but this does not get us off the hook, as we are still called to live toward a future Justice-to-come.  Simmons is not content to remain within the atheistic religiosity of Derrida, however, and makes the case that there is space within Continental philosophy not just for religious language, but also for specific religious beliefs.  In particular, the kenosis of Christ as a specific religious belief resonates strongly with Continental philosophy’s concerns for the Other, and its desire to maintain a construction of the self that is addressed by, rather than addressing, God and the world.  Simmons completes his project by attempting to bring Continental Philosophy ‘down to earth’ via exemplars—people who have embodied in some way the ‘trust and hope’ Simmons finds in the works of Continental philosophers.

Given the scope of the project, there are some areas in which Simmons may have over-reached.  For example, it seems at times as if he is trying to arrive at some sort of ‘normativity’ in Levinas--he does not want Levinas to remain primarily descriptive, because then the accusations that Levinas (or Derrida or Kierkegaard) is ‘inapplicable’ to real life seem to hold water.  If these thinkers will not tell us how to live, it seems, then they have no pragmatic advice to provide the world, and thus Rorty and others are right to dismiss them (111).  I agree that what we stand to gain from Continental philosophy is a notion of selfhood that disallows the collapse into reified notion of the liberal individual self, acting out of her own self-interest in the polis, with other free individuals.  The stories we tell ourselves about our relations with Others define the political landscape and delimit what we see as possible (or impossible)--thus, a different account of subjectivity, one that prioritizes the Other rather than the Self all the way down to the ontological level, is a crucial gift Continental philosophy can provide.  However, extending this gift to a more pragmatic level of ethical systematicity or ‘advice’ seems to be a stretch. 

Secondly, I am a fan of Gianni Vattimo, but I think Simmons lets him off the hook here.  The main issue I have with Vattimo’s philosophy is that it seems to adopt a loose notion of the liberal self: one imbedded in a hermeneutic and a tradition, to be sure, but a self that can act and will act freely within those bounds.  I think this blind spot in Vattimo’s perhaps problematic ontology of the being of the self is similar to Simmons’ relatively unexamined (in this text) belief in democracy--in fact, in such a  thorough work as this, his light treatment of democracy as the ‘hope’ for the world seems out of place. 

However, my main concern throughout the text is this: the manner in which Simmons frames the conflict between analytic and Continental philosophy  falls back into the very ideas or lingo that Levinas, et al, was trying to problematize: that of agency and choice.  Simmons writes in the introduction, “Unless I put the Other ‘first’ and work to make the world better for her...this ‘firstness’ risks becoming only a theoretical perspective and not a way of life,” (6).  If one falls back upon this language of agency, one undermines the ‘firstness’ that Simmons wants to retain.  The language of agency and action may be part of why we are not yet ethical.  We are not eager to be ‘submitted’ to one another, not eager to be submissive, to be responsive rather than active.  This is the key insight that Levinas’ philosophy provides us.  Further, while I am in deep sympathy with the call for ‘clarity’ that Simmons echoes, I am concerned that Continental philosophy is being asked to speak the language of analytic philosophy in order to be considered ‘legitimate’.  Thus, Continental philosophy is asked to adopt a language that it is trying to interrogate.  This implies a power dynamic, suggesting that those who are ‘serious’ about the world will only allow such philosophy in as submits to the subject/object dichotomy and language. I am in hesitant agreement with Simmons’ insistence that Continental philosophy cannot expect to be taken seriously by non-Continental philosophers without joining in some common language game.   However, is capitulation to the categories of analytic philosophy necessary for dialogue, or merely the rendering palatable of a language that seeks to avoid such palatability--and seeks to avoid it for ethical reasons?  Should analytic philosophy justify itself in the same way to Continental philosophy--speak its language? To his credit, Simmons raises this very question, and even points out that he may be trying to make Continental philosophy do something that it cannot, or should not, do (283).  Further, I think that he attempts a translation of analytic language to ‘Continental’ language in his chapter on “The Epistemological”.     

I admit to being at a moral impasse regarding this issue.  On the one hand, if I ascribe to the ‘tenets’ of thinkers like Levinas and Kierkegaard, then I must be willing--indeed I should be willing--to submit to the structures of analytic philosophy.   To hold to my own language and resist translation may be in violation of the very constitution of my selfhood as defined by the Other who faces me.  At the same time, if one wants to hold that the subject/object dichotomy is not just problematic, but perhaps unethical in its very structure, how does one, who takes one’s subjected self seriously, agree to submit to a language that seems inherently unjust?  My concern, from a ‘Continental’ perspective, is that Simmons’ laudable desire to bring the schools of thought together so as to better serve the world and our Others in it ends up succumbing to the very language (and language shapes our thinking and action) that can promote the kind of injustice he seeks to fight.

A work like God and the Other has been needed for a long time, and Simmons represents the ontologies of Continental philosophy in a powerful way to those who may be unused to its linguistic structures or resistant to its ‘poetics’.  The problems I addressed here are not those of Simmons’ making; and while it may be the case that it is a call to ethics to try to confront and undo these problems, this is not Simmons’ task alone.  This ‘dragon’ cannot be slayed by one book, or one person.  I am profoundly glad that this work has boldly entered the fray.  It is an honest, well-crafted and well-argued attempt to reconcile differences such that we may better live authentic lives with each other and in the world.

"God and the Other": A Symposium

Next week we're going to launch a multi-week symposium on Aaron Simmons' new book, God and the Other: Ethics and Politics After the Theological Turn.  Our contributors will be Christina Smerick (Greenville College), Stephen Minister (Augustana College), and Nick Trakakis (Australian Catholic University).  We'll roll out one engagement per week, with opportunity for comment and engagement.  Aaron Simmons (Furman University) will then respond to our symposiasts. 

God and the Other is an important book that stages helpful conversation between analytic and continental philosophy of religion, as well as wider conversations in political philosophy. 

Here's what some others are saying about the book:

"J. Aaron Simmons has firm command not only of recent work on Levinas and Kierkegaard, but also of a wide range of alternatives in analytic philosophy of religion and political philosophy. More than an exercise in analytic-continental bridge building, Simmons moves continental ethics forward and makes it politically worthwhile." —John Davenport, Fordham University

"Debates within so-called "continental philosophy" and "analytic philosophy" are far closer to each other than most on either "side" realize. By boldly crossing the continental/analytic divide, J. Aaron Simmons convincingly argues that engagement between the two is not only possible, but necessary. God and the Other is a significant step forward." —Bruce Ellis Benson, Wheaton College

"Combines solid research with thoughtful consideration of the issues, and opens up genuinely creative and integrative thinking. . . . Informative, challenging, and provocative." —Jeffrey Dudiak, Kings University College, Edmonton