Author: david cl driedger

West End Lamentations

Moreover, our eyes failed,
looking in vain for help;
from our towers we watched
for a nation that could not save us.

People stalked us at every step,
so we could not walk in our streets.
Our end was near, our days were numbered,
for our end had come.

. . .

The Lord’s anointed, our very life breath,
was caught in their traps.
We thought that under his shadow
we would live among the nations.
– Lamentations 4:17, 18, 20

I have determined to do this city harm and not good, declares the Lord.
– Jeremiah 21:10

This winter I gave up on biking and decided to walk to work.  Biking, particularly in winter, was a very focused and often stressful practice requiring constant focus and attention.  Walking has opened up time and attention regularly to other things.  It has allowed me to give small acts of attention both to my neighbourhood as well as to listening and exploring new music as I walk.  This has turned, unintentionally, into a sort of spiritual discipline or daily devotion (to use the old language).

This, in turn, has led me into spaces of lament (though bitterness and despair are likely more accurate words).  Last week there was a double shooting outside my house.  This brought to a point both the vulnerability of many in my neighbourhood as well as the mobility and privilege I have in how I want to deal with it.  This morning I walked past a still snow covered community garden and saw a pile of Lysol cans and by the end of the street I was greeted with a sign announcing the ‘grand opening’ of a new pawn shop.  This is a community suffering trauma.  A community medicating itself.  A community desperate to find access to the resources consistently denied to it.  A community too easily abandoned.

To be sure this is a beautiful community.  There are many reasons why we simply love living here.  But beauty is not armor, punch it enough and it bruises, breaks, and bleeds.  These are my devotions.  And I have tried to accompany them with the appropriate Psalms,

Dear Lord, have mercy
On the ones that go through life like it’s a game
We love
I won’t be forced to shut up when I don’t feel the same
Cause people gonna lie
Some people gonna steal
You gotta be careful not to shit where you live
Them people might try to have you killed
Lord have mercy, life is such a battlefield
For real
– Killer Mike and Scar

So it seems our people starve from lack of understanding
Cos all we seem to give them is some balling and some dancing
And some talking about our car and imaginary mansions
We should be indicted for bullshit we inciting
Hand the children death and pretend that its exciting
We are advertisements for agony and pain
– Killer Mike

Taubes and theology as the crisis of religion

I have been wanting to record a few points as I have been reading through Jacob Taubes’s From Cult to Culture.  The middle section of this collection of essays focuses on theology.  Part of what I have enjoyed about Taubes is his writing style.  There is always a hint of polemic but not overwrought, rather, the posture comes through in a basic clarity and force.  I have also really appreciated the introduction to a number of thinkers that I had either never heard of (Joachim of Fiore) or did not realize their significance (Franz Overbeck).

In any event I wanted at least to outline a few quotes from his article on Tillich and theology.  In this and other articles Taubes draws attention to the notion that “theology signals a crisis in religion” (here he is quoting Plato).  Theology emerges when “a mythical configuration breaks down and its symbols that are congealed in a canon come into conflict with a new stage of human consciousness” (193).

From the very beginning the church was thrown into a difficult situation in which extreme eschatological symbols were brought into the stark realities of history.  “The history of the development of Christian theology is a tragic history because there is no ‘solution’ to the conflict between eschatological symbols and the brute fact of a continuing history” (197).  Theology continued to employ a basic allegorical approach to canonical texts but the tension was heightened to a sort of impasse with the emergence of historical criticism.  This process working within the texts of the church came to view Christianity as “a ‘religion of Jesus,’ discarding all Christological doctrines as dead weight” (197).

Taubes introduces Paul Tillich’s theology as exemplifying the theological impasse of being a discourse for and within the church but possess tendencies to overcome or go beyond the confines of the church.  Taubes sees this as  a dialectical process moving between a ‘theology of the logos’ and a ‘doctrine of the church’.  And in its nature “the dialectical method is not a coach that can be stopped at will” (202).  In this way theology cannot be systematic “because the incarnation of the Christ cannot be treated as a systematic axiom” (203).  It is artificial and disingenous to put the allegorical genie back in the bottle.  We need to remain faithful to the impasse.

Taubes is trying to put a fine point on the paradoxes and contradictions at work within the projects of modern theology.  Again, what is at stake is the nature of revelation as a given authority.  While this is a tension that is typically recognized as being between theology and modernity Taubes is clear that this is between religion and theology.  And his response to remains suggestive,

Perhaps the time has come when theology must learn to live without the support of canon and classical authorities and stand in the world without authority.  Without authority, however, theology can only teach by an indirect method.  Theology is indeed in a strange position because it has to prove its purity by immersing itself in all the layers of human existence and cannot claim for itself a special realm.  In losing itself in the forms of the world, theology would not betray its destiny. . . . Theology must remain incognito for the sanctification of the world.  Theology should not strive for the vainglory to present a sacred science ‘separated’ from the sciences by special doctrines or dogmas, but rather it should serve in ‘lowliness of mind’ the secular knowledge and life. Would theology miss its point if instead of insisting on a separating circle, it would make itself of no special reputation and take upon itself the form of incognito? In such a fashion, theology would become more likely to present  the relation between the divine and the human in our time. (205)

An Ill Fit

“Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.  And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’” (Mark 15:37-38)

“Creation was subjected to futility. . . . We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves . . . groan inwardly while we wait for the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:20-23)

This second quote is not our reading for the morning, but it is what came to mind as I reflected on our text and reflected on Lent as we draw closer to Easter.  Paul is coming a little late to the story.  He was not a disciple during the life of Jesus and does not seem to have been present during the events surrounding Easter.  And perhaps for that reason Paul seems to be hit all at once with the futility of creation and how humanity exists within it.

There is a certain type of futility that must be faced as we approach Easter.  At Palm Sunday crowds are ecstatic, celebrating their potential Messiah, their king, but Jesus does not mount a war horse rather he ambles in on a donkey.  Pilate, the one in charge, examines Jesus and seems to be more interested in the crowd’s response then in executing justice.  The soldiers let off some steam adding insult to injury with their mocking punishment of Jesus.  The whole story seems to be a practice in futility.  No one really gets what they want.  The people do not get what they want and they do not give Pilate what he wants.  And Jesus seems to be deliberately instigating a denial of these desires.  Jesus evades the religious, social, and political expectations imposed on him that keep us from feeling the futility around us.  To recognize Jesus then, it seems would simultaneously be to recognize a certain futility, the futility of trying to build a kingdom that does not fit creation.

In light of this context what sort of recognition did the centurion offer staring at the cross and the dead Jesus?  The words out of his mouth were simple, This person really was a son of God.  Some scholars read the statement as an extension of the soldier’s mocking of Jesus.  Jesus dies, the whole trial and ordeal is over and here, this man who couldn’t even last on the cross as long as other convicts, have a look everybody this man is truly a son of God.  The irony and the mocking continue.  The centurion remains hardened, he has probably seen it all before and at some point it always ends up this way.  Hopes are ignited, expectations are frustrated, and the powers re-assert themselves.  Another reading of the text interprets this statement as the very first conversion after at the death of Jesus.  At Jesus’s death this Gentile centurion sees the light of salvation, makes his confession of faith, and becomes a member of the kingdom of the God of Israel.

I think these two interpretations reflect our tendencies in how we encounter the seeming futility in life at times.  Sometimes we simply buckle under it. We resign ourselves to the fact that nothing changes and nothing will change and so we find our expressions tainted with cynicism, sarcasm, and despair.  The other tendency is to respond to possible futility by creating beautiful and symbolic visions that can help transport us out of some of our more difficult material realities.  We have hope in what is possible through faith expressing itself in work, prayer, and imagination. This position does not buckle under the futility but it can also lead us into illusions and denials about some of the realities in the world.

So which was it?  Was the centurion’s statement a hardened cynicism or an enlightened confession?  There are grounds for both interpretations.  On the one hand it is truly hard to imagine a centurion uttering these words affirmatively because it equals treason as Caesar the ruler of the Roman empire is called the son of God.  And second, there seems to be no implications to his statement.  The centurion goes about his work following Pontius Pilate’s orders in the following verses.  On the other hand it is also clear that early interpretations of this passage viewed the centurion as offering a faithful confession of Jesus as divine.  While still open for interpretation both Matthew and Luke offer slightly different accounts that seem to view the centurion as being much more affirming as a confession of faith.

This morning I want to consider the centurion as someone stuck between the possibility and futility of the world.  In the Roman army a centurion is essentially one step up from a regular soldier.  A centurion commands a group of one hundred soldiers.  Centurions were often soldiers promoted from within the ranks.  As a soldier there was a chance for advancement.  A centurion would have known and experienced that change and improvement was possible.  It was possible to imagine and work for something within the larger faith of the Roman Empire.

But there seems to have been catch with becoming a centurion.  The pay and standard of living would have improved somewhat, but with that advancement you became the most accessible target of a soldier’s frustration and unrest.  The first century Latin historian Tacitus offers several accounts of how soldiers direct their discontent against their centurion leaders.  At one point Tacitus refers to centurions as “the customary targets of the army’s ill-will, and the first victims of any outbreak.”  But in reality the centurion seemed to hold little authority beyond his small group of soldiers.  In fact the blame could also be passed down onto the centurion from higher ranking figures.  After Caesar Augustus died under unknown circumstances Tiberius become the new Caesar and leader of Rome.  After Tiberius became emperor it so happened that one of his rivals also died.  When the death was investigated the centurion who killed the man was called to testify.  The centurion said that he was following the orders of Tiberius.  And as you might guess we find out that Tiberius said that he never gave the orders.

So with the centurion we seem to have someone who can experience very real change and yet, in the end, may still find it hard to believe that anything really changes.  At the cross he saw the soldiers under his charge mock and abuse Jesus and he saw Pontius Pilate above placating to the crowds and he was in the middle of it, striving for advancement but forever the target from below and at the whim of those privileged above.  The soldier in doing his job well becomes a centurion and this promotion makes him the scorn of former comrades and the scape-goat of his superiors.  And so maybe there was something about this event and encounter with Jesus that simply proved too much to take and something changed.

Thinking about the story in this light the centurion reminded me a little of the characters in some of Franz Kafka’s novels.  Kafka was a German novelist who wrote in the early twentieth century.  What I have noticed in Kafka’s novels is that they often start with some dramatic change but the implications and awareness of that change are not fully evident.  In his novels The Trial and Amerika the protagonists both find themselves in completely new situations, in The Trial Joseph K. is placed under arrest without being told his crime and in Amerika Karl Rossmann leaves his native Germany in disgrace and arrives alone in the United States.  In both these stories the protagonists believe, in good faith, that the place and the system they find themselves in will yield positive results so long as they learn and abide by the proper rules.  But in each case the rules themselves are always able to steer and bend things away from their favour.  Kafka is devastatingly relentless in how far he will depict people willing to work with the system only to find themselves further under the system’s power.  And, in turn, how a system (like the legal system or like a country’s culture) is able forcibly, even if subtly, to bend your will and change your beliefs, like the centurion who believed in the work and possibility of Rome.

So if for the centurion his encounter with Jesus is a confession and a conversion experience then it is a strange one, one that we don’t know how to talk about anymore.  It is not yet the promise of Jesus lifting the burden but may be a conversion to the full and crushing awareness of the burden that the world exerts.  It is to be with Paul who hears and utters the true groaning of creation under a system and power that is able to reach and apply its pressure on all people.  This is what Paul calls sin, and it is pervasive.

Towards the end of Kafka’s The Trial we find Joseph K. who experienced just how deep and smothering the legal system is and how it thwarted any good work and intention he might throw at it.  Joseph is talking with a priest, who is also a prison chaplain, someone inside the system of the law.  The priest tries to explain some aspects of this system telling him that it is not truth but the belief that it is necessary that is important.  Joseph responds to the priest saying, “Depressing thought.  It makes the lie fundamental to world order.”  This might be one way of interpreting the centurion’s confession.  In seeing Jesus’s death the centurion also sees clearly the system that surrounded and imposed itself on him.  And perhaps like some Kafkaesque character the centurion has changed but does not fully know it himself.

In perhaps his most well-known novel The Metamorphosis Kafka depicts a character waking up one morning only to find out that he is now a giant bug, a monstrous vermin in some translations.  The change is stark, extreme, and definitive but the character does not yet know what to make of it.  He tries to go about his day as usual but he cannot, his body does not work the same, he does not fit as he once did, despite his continued attempts to fit under the old conditions.

So the centurion continues his duties after his confession not understanding what happened.  But maybe he begins to notice that his helmet does not fit properly anymore.  Maybe his spear that was once an extension of his arm now looks foreign and strange.  The commander’s voice that directed his every action was now emptied of its authority.  The gods that watched over Rome become impoverished images and meaningless rhetoric.  He begins to see that in this situation he will always be despised from below and rejected from above.

For the centurion and for anyone who encounters the way this cross, this death, this person who brings into focus the order of the world, the question becomes how you will live out of the change.  How much and or in what way will we continue to invest in trying to fit into in a system that seems to be based on a lie.

As we encounter the death of Jesus and the opening of the Temple curtain how do we continue to try and fit within the world?  I used to think I knew some of those answers.  I used to think I had to change myself but what if, like in Kafka, the change has already happened and we are trying to figure out how to live into it?  And here we need to take Kafka seriously.  In his stories some characters will go to any length believing they will find redemption in the order and system established around them.  Many of these stories do not end well.

So do not stifle the groaning you feel at the parts of this world that do fit the form God has given you.  Do not stifle the groaning that others feel at the forces that push down on them to try and conform or distort them into something they are not.  You are not alone if at times you feel like some monstrous vermin in the light of the powers and the pressures of this world.  It is, after all, a false light.  So continue this Lent as we approach the darkness, lose your orientation to the light of the world’s powers, and wait.

Amen.

Hard deskwork

I take some comfort in this considering my own ‘creative process’ in trying to write sermons.

[At the library t]he way hard deskwork really goes is in jagged little fits and starts, brief intervals of concentration alternated with frequent trips to the men’s room, the drinking fountain, the vending machine, constant visits to the pencil sharpener, phone calls you suddenly feel are imperative to make, rapt intervals of seeing what kinds of shapes you can bend a paperclip into.  This is because sitting still and concentrating on just one task for an extended length of time is, as a practical matter, impossible.  If you said, “I spent the whole night in the library, working on some sociology paper,” you really meant that you’d spent between two and three hours working on it and the rest of the time fidgeting and sharpening and organizing pencils and doing skin-checks in the men’s room mirror and reading about, say, Durkeim’s theories of suicide.

– David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 291

Dear Tired Conversation . . . Give it a Rest

My humble contribution to the new series on a/theism over at the Spectator Tribune.

Dear Tired Conversation,

How are you?  I thought perhaps you were dead, well I knew better but one can hope.  In any event I came across you again in the Spectator Tribune of all places!  Perhaps you have more energy than I have given you credit.  While your birthdate may be a little ambiguous you must be nearing 2000 years as you are there already in 150 CE as Justin Martyr attempts to have conversations discussing the merits of Christianity to Rome and the supremacy of Christianity over Judaism.  In any event, you are old.  Perhaps I should give more deference to your age, but I am not convinced you have learned much.  At least with Justin Martyr I could understand the motivation.  I mean conversation was really in the hopes of ending the persecution experienced by some Christians.  But even there, it just seemed like empty posturing at times.  And so 2000 years on here in the Tribune the most noble goal you seem to be achieving is hey look we disagree about God but we are not killing each other, isn’t that great.  To paraphrase the Jewish philosopher and cultural critic Jacob Taubes, “Look how wonderful, the two of them speaking together!  That just completely misses the real powers at work here.”  As I mentioned, at least in earlier times this argument addressed the ‘real powers’.  Christians were being persecuted.  We may want to pause here and ask why they were persecuted.  There is not a simple or singular answer but one element of this situation that may be able to change or, better yet, put your current conversation to an end is the fact that many groups within Roman society charged Christians with being atheists.  Your conversation through Justin was not about whether God existed but who worshipped or adhered to the true God.

Wait, wait, wait, I am not actually interested in having a conversation here so just let me finish.  Yes, I know we are now in the modern age where the enlightened have shed antiquity’s shared veil of superstitious beliefs.  Good.  But that is not what I am talking about, that is not a conversation I am particularly interested in having at the moment.  The charge of atheism was significant because you were addressing and rejecting the power or presence that backed a particular expression.  ‘God’ (or ‘the gods’) was what you referred to as the power of a given nation, it was what ensured protection and flourishing.  Everything was somehow connected to the name or names of particular gods.  Today we would not lay the charge of atheist but the charge of treason or terrorism.

Again, listen carefully I do not care at the moment about whether God(s) exist(s).  I am interested in making clear how we have received this term and concept.  Because my guess is that the gods are quite happy that you, Tired Conversation, are still alive so they can go about their work.

Fine, I will lay my cards out on the table.  The nations are still represented by gods.  I mean a nation is an act of imagination and so long as enough people ascribe attention, value, and duty (worship?) to it then it will exist.  But that is the only place it exists.  People are still killing and dying for these gods.  In many ways though this is still not the god I am thinking of, I want to draw attention to the real king of heaven and earth.  Yes, I am talking about money.  Where does money exist?  What is it made of?  Of course money is real but how and in what way?  Omnipotent and Omnipresent, the creator of value, the jealous god who can bear no rival, the one who raises up and the one who casts down, infinite in reach; these are just a few of this god’s names and attributes.

So Tired Conversation, content yourself with another pint and rehash the glory days of when people cared about what you had to say.  Raise your glass to tolerance of intellectual difference.  You will always have a band of followers to be sure.  They will come with differing opinions proclaiming various (and even interesting) views of the world but be assured, Tired Conversation, that their allegiances are elsewhere (and probably shared).  Unless a frank and open acknowledgment of the gods that already rule in our world is also brought onto the table then you have already accepted your irrelevance, and the irrelevance of your theisms and atheisms.

Yours truly,

The De-scribe

Occidental Eschatology – Epilogue

In his brief and pointed Epilogue to Occidental Eschatology Jacob Taubes begins,

With Hegel on the one hand and Marx and Kierkegaard on the other, this study is not simply closed but is essentially resolved.  For the entire span of Western existence is inscribed in the conflict between the higher (Hegel) and the lower (Marx and Kierkegaard) realms, in the rift between inside (Kierkegaard) and outside (Marx). 191.

For Taubes this culmination or resolution is just that, an end.  This results in decision and crisis that is still (written in 1947) shaking the Western world.  Taubes sees this end as the trajectory that both classical (Greek) and Christian traditions have been weaving together and aiming towards.  With this end (which Taubes calls post-Christian) we are now entering a new age.

To all weak spirits longing for shelter and security, this age appears wanting.  For the coming age is not served by demonizing or giving life to what-has-been, but by remaining steadfast in the no-longer and the not-yet, in the nothingness of the night, and thus remaining open to the first signs of the coming day.  How many are liberated to what is to come is not important.  Who they are is the question that determines their position, for they are the ones who measure out existence by interpreting the signs of what is to come. (193)

What follows, in terms of what theological discourses we now reside in, strikes me as unexceptional.  The age has culminated the divisions of upper/lower and inner/outer.  What is to be done?  God.  God is higher than high, lower than low, etc.  God is everything and everything is in God therefore “everything has its center outside itself” (193).  Man forgets the divine measure and makes himself the measure (perhaps Taubes’s dated gender structuring is appropriate here).

By making himself as subject the measure of all things, man conceals the true correspondence of things and constructs fabrication; he fills the world with purposes and safeguards, fashions it into a protective shell, and wall himself in. (193)

This process pushes God into the realm of ‘mystery’.  This in turn makes the ‘intricate web things’ also a mystery and as such is more easily manipulated by human technology.

Taubes goes on to ask the question of why this error (of breaking with God) is prevalent.  Taubes does not really answer the question but states that this break reveals the essence of man as the ‘shadow of God’ and it is this shadow that moves to the center and creates the dark night.

Humanity then must look into this night and see it ‘for what it is’.  This form of sight will seemingly usher the dawn and humanity will again find its center in God and the measures of God will be established.  Taubes concludes,

The measure of God is the holy.  First of all, the holy is separation and setting apart; being holy means being set apart.  The holy is the terror that shakes the foundations of the world.  The shock caused by the holy bursts asunder the foundations of the world for salvation [being made holy].  It is the holy that passes judgement in the court of history.  History exists only when truth is separated from error, when truth is illuminated from mystery.  History is elucidated from the mystery of error to the revelation of truth. (194)

I could not help but be disappointed with this ending.  It reminded me of my hopes of ending sermons on a ‘strong note’.  You engage with these massive themes that try to account for immense swaths of human experience and engagement and somehow you begin to feel like you need to act accordingly even if the words are not there burning in your bones.  Reading this some 60 years on I can’t help but wonder if these de-centering accounts of theology have now run their course; they are increasingly common in how many areas are articulating theology as a dispossesive posture, but most accounts seem to be just that, a posture.   This may not have been the case when it was written but as far as a form of theological discourse or account goes I don’t know how much traction it has on its own.

This line remains suggestive for me however,

How many are liberated to what is to come is not important.  Who they are is the question that determines their position, for they are the ones who measure out existence by interpreting the signs of what is to come.

Who they are determines their position.  What is being asked for here in light of his engagement with eschatology and Hegel/Marx/Kierkegaard?  Also suggestive is the to what of liberation.  There is an inability to project liberation, not an inability to engage and work towards, measure, the present darkness and approaching dawn.  As I said though, this is suggestive, but not exactly moving or necessarily persuasive in light of his earlier grand claim of his work demonstrating the end of an age.

I am hoping to start his recently published collection of essays titled From Cult to Culture.  It will be interesting to see how some of these themes are or are not picked up there, particularly the notion of abandoning the oppositional space he articulated around Hegel/Marx/Kierkegaard.

A note on person and discourse in translation

During my time in seminary I was fascinated with the implications and practices of translation; the word ‘translator’ itself is caught up with the term ‘traitor’.  There is no faithful translation; no 1-to-1 equivalence.  This, also, of course does not mean there are not better and worse translations.  And how we judge these translations will depend on prior motivations and orientations.  But that there is no faithful translation should seem practically self-evident but of course theologies have a way of skewing the picture.  My seminary still held a confession of faith maintaining an inspiration of scripture in their original form.  Again, that whole articulation should be self-evidently problematic, but I digress (I should also note the institutions confession was more a function of the governing board than the faculty).

I remember having a conversation about translation with one of my professors.  He proposed the image of a person fluently bilingual creating a poem and speaking it in both languages.  For him, this would represent a faithful translation.  For some reason this memory came to mind as representing precisely the issue with (largely) evangelical or more conservative orientations to the world that hold to the autonomy or elevation of the individual to the neglect of social forces.  There was no conceding that the languages being spoken represented distinct discourses that held ideological forms and expressions that influenced the meaning of everything.  In this professor’s mind the intention of the author was a trump that could overcome this.  There was an inability to see how his own theological discourse was keeping him from understanding the realities and forces at work beyond him.

Abandoning the oppositional territory

Jacob Taubes’s doctoral thesis-turned-manuscript Occidental Eschatology is immense in scope, trying to account for the presence and expression of eschatology in the West.  In this account it seem that the notion of the ‘end’ and history has not been able to rid itself of the forms of apocalyptic that continue to emerge.  According to Taubes it appears that apocalyptic emerges when a generation or segment of society is no longer able to abide by the current forms of totality, whether it is a totality of empire or thought (Rome or Hegel).  His work culminates in Hegel’s grand system of spirit and how to think something’s opposition within its whole (a thesis always functions with and somehow exists with the necessary presence of its antithesis).

So Hegel himself is rather unremarkable in his context or to put it positively, Hegel is adaptable for his time causing few waves.  But not so for those who cannot abide by his whole or those who further extend its implications.  Neither Marx nor Kierkegaard can abide by Hegel as it is (and of course in this way it could be argued that Marx and Kierkegaard are more Hegelian than the later Hegelians).

Both Marx and Kierkegaard want a return to accounting for actually as opposed to remaining in an abstracted ideal system.  But there is a massive difference between the two approaches.

“The difference between Marx and Kierkegaard lies in the positions of inside and outside.  Marx pins his hopes for a proletarian revolution on the economic situation of the masses, while for Kierkegaard it is the individual that underpins the religious revolution of the bourgeois Christianity.  This contrast corresponds to the difference in their interpretation of self-alienation.  Marx sees bourgeois society to be a society of isolated individuals in which man is alienated from his species; Kierkegaard sees in bourgeois Christendom a Christianity of the masses in which man is alienated from his individuality.  . . . Both critiques are grounded in the disintegration of God and the world, which is the original pre-condition for self-alienation, as has been shown in the studies of apocalyptic and Gnosis. . . . When Marx builds a society without God, and Kierkegaard places the individual alone before God, their common assumption is the disintegration of God and the world, the division of the divine and the secular.” (176, 184)

In this way Taubes positions Marx and Kierkegaard in a sort of ‘face-off’.

“Inwardness and outwardness are divided between Marx and Kierkegaard into worldly revolution and religious repentance.  Kierkegaard has made it absolutely clear that Christian life is inward and therefore must be acosmic and antiworldly.  Marx has replaces the truth of the world beyond with the truth of this world, and has shown that the atheistic roots of communism are constitutive.  The fusion of inside and outside can only be attained if one is prepared to abandon the territory which holds Marx and Kierkegaard, even in their opposition, captive.” (191)

What I was not prepared for was Taubes’s Epilogue following this statement, his account of abandoning the shared oppositional territory.  It is probably why I was attracted to his style in The Political Theology of Paul precisely because he did not rest or reside in that territory but in doing so he also did not abandon what was important to both Marx and Kierkegaard.  And he does this, I think, then without also trying to return to Hegel, but that is not a statement I am certain I could back up.

I will post some quotes from and thoughts on his Epilogue shortly.

A short and beautiful interlude

I visited an elderly woman in the hospital the other day.  She was quite talkative and we chatted for some time.  She was in her mid-eighties and aware of her early stages of dementia.  The conversation was entirely intelligible and she was very quick with a good sense of humour.  But for a brief moment in the midst of that conversation she transitioned and I cannot remember exactly how it started but I will paraphrase from what I remember,

I have buried my parents once already.  But I see them at distance.  I can recognize them but they never come to me.  Mother, she never danced but now she dances.  Father, I don’t know, I think he is looking for his second wife.  . . . My husband, before he passed, told me that better times were coming.  I’m still waiting [looks at me and smiles].

Ancient existential crisis

I read a great little Akkadian parable over lunch.  It is titled (by the translators), “A Pessimistic Dialogue between Master and Servant.”  It has twelve short sections.  Each of the first eleven have the same form.

Master: Servant, Obey me.
Servant: Yes, my lord, yes.

This is followed by a statement of the master like I will love a woman  or I will help my neighbour to which the servant agrees stating what is good about such a choice.  Then the master changes his mind stating I will not love, help, etc.   The servant again agrees stating what is good about that choice.  I thought this repetition would just sort of fizzle out at the end but here is the final section,

Servant, obey me.
Yes, my lord, yes.
Now what is good?  To break my neck, your neck, throw both into the river – that is good.
Who is tall enough to ascend to heaven? Who is broad enough to embrace the earth?
No servant, I shall kill you, and send you ahead of me.
Then would my lord wish to live even three days after me?