Speculative Grace: Decentering

A short, belated post this week on the topic of porting grace onto a non-theistic platform - the Fall semester is hard upon us!

Thesis: Let's say that sin is being centered on oneself. (Clearly this isn't the only possible definition, but it is, I think, an operational one.)

Let's say, then, that we are saved from sin to the degree that we have been productively decentered from ourselves.

Granted these two points, such a decentering may play out in a number of different ways in a number of different contexts. Three scenarios interest me in particular today:

1. For instance, it may be the case that I am a soul that is indivisible, independent, and autonomous, (i.e., I am and do have a center) but that I, nonetheless, ought not to be centered on myself because there is something greater than I am (i.e., God - the center of everything) upon which I ought to be centered. 

2. Or, it may be the case that I am not indivisible, independent, and autonomous (i.e., I am not and do not have a center, but am split, looped, and distributed), that sin is trying to pretend that I am nonetheless a center, and I need to stop pretending and acknowledge that there is only one thing - even if infinitely Other than me and everything in this world - that is indivisible, independent, and autonomous, a real center: God. 

3. Or, it may be the case that I am not a center and that pretending to be a center isn't sinful because there is one true center but because there is no real, ultimate center. Here, in this third scenario, God would be God not because he is the real center, but because he himself refuses to pretend that he is a center. God himself would be divine in that he himself perfectly exemplifies the work of endless kenotic decentering.

In light of these three scenarios, I'll venture three broad and (indefensibly?) over-simplified characterizations:

1. The first scenario is roughly equivalent to many classical approaches.

2. The second scenario is roughly equivalent to a "postmodern" approach to theology.

3. The third scenario is roughly equivalent to the way that sin and salvation play out in a non-theistic ontology.