St. Paul, Philosophy, and Politics

Outside of the little fact that I lost my conference folder containing all my notes, Saint Paul's Journeys into Philosophy (Vancouver, British Colombia: June 4-6) was a wonderful gathering of people and ideas.  It had a perfect balance between philosophical theologians and biblical scholars (reflected both in the plenaries and conference attendees), each interacting with recent philosophical appropriations of Pauline thought.

Of the four plenaries session, two were by theologians (Paul Griffiths and Travis Kroeker) and two by biblical scholarsh (J. Louis Martyn and Steven Fowl).  Martyn's began the conference by arguing that Paul was asserting the way of Christ in salvation against the "2-ways" of ancient moral theory (the way of Live and the way of Death).   Of all the papers, Lou Martyn's most sought to polarize theology against philosophy.  Travis Kroeker explored 'messianic becoming' in light of the thought of Jacob Taube.  Steven Fowl discussed Alain Badiou's 'indifference to difference' and a truly Pauline universalism.  Finally, Paul Griffiths discussed Giorgio Agamben and the politics of messianic quietism.  Outside of Martyn's paper, the conference on the whole was devoid of a polemic between theology and philosophy, and even more refreshingly it didn't get bogged down in methodological discussions of how one might relation theology and philosophy.  All the papers (not just the plenaries) assumed a relation and noted it consequences.

Three persistent questions arose through the discussion during and after the presentations:

1) How does metaphysics and theology relate?  Or, more to the point, how does eschatology and ontology relate?  Often through the conference, especially in regard to Agamben, the 'messianic of becoming' would be situated against the 'world of being' pitting eschatology against ontology.  But Paul Griffiths kept alerting us to the dangers of inscribing theology within the discourse of meontology in an attempt to overcome onto-theology.  Griffiths kept asking if theology really should be opposed to ontology.  Or, in other words, must we agree with Badiou that Paul is an anti-philosopher?

2) Relatedly, what is the priority of relation between theology and philosophy?  Does one give the coordinates for understanding the other?  Are they mutually interdependent?  Some argued for the absolute priority of theology over philosophy, while others asserted that often atheist philosophers are the best Christian theologians.  Often this question is answered according the how one answers the previous question.

3) Lastly, it became quite apparent that while interesting and illuminating, most often the exegesis Badiou/Zizek/Agamben/Taubes in relation to Paul is extremely incomplete, tending toward eisegesis.  But just as, say, Badiou's interpretation of Paul is incomplete in his St. Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, so too is an interpretation of Badiou incomplete when it is only through this one book.  And in fact, answering the challenges to Christian theology as posed in this book would miss the much more important critiques stemming  from the corpus of his work. 

Be that as it may, the piecemeal engagements like those at the conference, are still fruitful and productive because understanding and critique are always provisional affairs anyway, continually pressing in deeper and farther.  Therefore it is my hope that such engagements will continue along these fronts.

Lastly...
to conclude, I would like to make one final reflection (switching from the academy to the church):  One week after this conference, a young congregant of ours overdosed on meth (who was also my next door neighbor).  In light of such a tragedy I found myself wondering if all this going to conferences, writing papers, hoping to be published isn't all just vanity.  And in light of a looming global food crisis, it feels like all this really is just "academic".    Isn't his all just a waste of time? (and I think I can hear my dad with a hardy 'Amen')

But it's not.  These questions deal with how we as a church live and respond to death and suffering, both personally, corporately, politically.  The tensions between philosophy and theology are the sames tensions between lived reality and the life of faith.  It concerns how we affirm the salvation in Christ even amid a fatal  relapse into meth addiction.  It concerns how do we proclaim "Come Lord Jesus" in all its apocalyptic urgency while also affirming that "This is my Father's world" .  It concerns how we praise the God who created the fields which gives us bountiful harvest year after year, even while that same food is horded and wasted while so many hunger and die?  These are not merely spiritual questions, but also political questions, philosophical questions, and theological questions.

At the end of it, Paul might not be a philosopher, but he was certainly involved with politics.  And if Agamben, Badiou, and Zizek (along with others) can help us remember and see that Paul and politics belong together, then pastorally we ought engage their thought.

Comments

[Richard H]

"Martyn's began the conference by arguing that Paul was asserting the way of Christ in salvation against the "2-ways" of ancient moral theory (the way of Live and the way of Death)."

Is this the same (or similar) Two Ways we see in Didache & Epistle of Barnabas?

[geoff holsclaw]

Richard, I was thinking the same thing during the presentation. He didn't bring either up, but focused more on the wisdom tradition between the testaments and how it was co-opted by Greek through when it borrowed the 2-ways thinking. Unfortunately Martyn was unable to attend the conference for health reasons (doctors orders), so his paper was read and we discussed it without him present.

His main point was to argue against any type of virtue ethics connected to the 2-ways. During the discussion Steven Fowl pretty much dismissed that Paul was making any kind of a polemic and against the 2-way tradition.

[Terry Tiessen]

I wasn't at the conference so I appreciated your summation and assessment. On a more mundane note, perhaps one way to minimize the effect that conference travel has on the planet might be for attendees to quit flying and start riding the train. It would slow the pace of their lives down but time on the train can be very productively used, I have been discovering this year, with 6 lengthy train journeys in the last 6 months.

If more of us did it, train schedules would also become more frequent and service would doubtless improve.

[Richard H]

Thanks for the clarification, Geoff. The Two Ways kind of thinking certainly seems at home in a Wisdom environment. All I know of Martyn's paper is what you report, but I do have a some thoughts along those lines.

Modernity prefers the timelessness of wisdom over the contingency of history and narrative. Some, in reaction to modernity (they seem to be largely folks influenced by Barth) downplay or reject the wisdom approach because of this.

Paul, though offering wisdom to his churches, rooted his wisdom in the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not just a "10 Principles for a Happy life," or some other timeless abstraction. His wisdom is always offered "in Christ" - and TO those in Christ.

[Erin]

Thanks for the end note, Mr. Holsclaw. It is a poignant reminder. I think the question "Isn't this all just a waste of time?" is a question we can never get away from. It cuts through a lot of the prosthesis of society and reminds us we are small. And that's ok. (There is a similar discussion I just stumbled on at http://poserorprophet.livejournal.com/ ) I find I wish I were out and about on important matters, but when I am (well, out, anyways...) I can't help thinking about the Rich man and Lazarus, and wondering if I am actually doing any help in a place, and I wonder if it is enough to do good in an "idea-space"? Without a doubt politics and such are important things but I wonder if they sprang more from an immediate love of neighbor, would they be more gospel-centered? It is a hard question, and I am sorry for your loss. Thanks for your honesty.

[myles]

The temptation for myself is always that of Marx: to turn theology into a hammer, to turn it into something 'useful'. For my money, this is the worst kind of theology, that which materializes the supernatural, and ceases to wrestle with the 'more' of the material world.

This, I think, is where Christian theology, must continually return to the church, but not in the sense of returning to the liturgy, as has been proposed multiple times. The liturgy informs our senses and imagination, but the liturgy is not the end of theology: having been nourished in the church's practices, the theologian must look through them to the practitioners, and see the place where the text and the experience intersect: in the lives of its people. There, we see how theory and praxis meet, I think, as the intersections of the material and supernatural are engaged as 'lived theology'.