Category: academic

Digging Into the End

I remember when my little brain first gained the conceptual ability to ponder (outer) space.  I let my mind wander as far as it would go into space.  It traveled deeper and deeper where the star lights began to grow dim.  Then light became absent.  Things slowed down but my mind continued.  Eventually my mind reached a wall, or more accurately a corner, a point where my mind was funneled.  This is the end, there is no further.  But the thought came to me, What if I began to dig into the end?

This thinking always comes back to me when the question of immanence and transcendence surfaces.  It always supported, in my mind, a position of transcendence.  I no longer see this as the case.  I see the question now more as a Hebrew one; that is a question of boundary.  In any  event I have been trying to think through various expressions of immanence lately.  Most of them are loosely or directly connected with Gilles Deleuze (and seems to characterize much of the contributions at AUFS).  Currently I am reading Philip Goodchild’s Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire.  As I am working through many things I do not understand I came across a very helpful and short statement on understanding immanence.

A truly critical philosophy can only be judged by the immanence of its criteria: it must do what it says, and say what it does.  It becomes a being-thought: a thought of being and a being of thought.  The second limit of critical philosophy is therefore a pure plane of immanence; this is the only possible meaning of the ‘end of philosophy’.  Immanence does not mean the absence of determination; rather, it implies that all that one is should be put into how one thinks, so that one’s entire mode of existence may be changed by encounters and idea within thought. [emphasis added]

This is far and away the most helpful thinking I have encountered in this discussion.  I have always approached the question as a jockeying for position over transcendence.  Who is policing the boundaries?  Who is claiming access or insight into the other side?  Who has dug through the end?  Goodchild’s (or Delueze’s) posture orients the question much more existentially and in many ways reminds me of statements found in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground in which the Underground Man attempts to face himself.

There are certain things in a man’s past which he does not divulge to everybody but, perhaps, only to his friends.  Again there are certain things he will not divulge even to his friends; he will divulge them perhaps only to himself, and that, too, as a secret.  But, finally, there are things which he is afraid to divulge even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of such things in his mind.

. . .

I particularly want to put the whole thing to the test to see whether I can be absolutely frank with myself and not be afraid of the whole truth.

This thinking has no interest in the perception from outside as an abstracted and inaccessible site of conversation.  This thinking desires to put all into play; a venture of risk and trust.  I cannot rely on a secure deposit outside the relations of this world.  What else is kenosis?  As such this becomes a venture that may offer traction to the Christian notion of faith.  And perhaps more importantly this thinking may actually put flesh on the possibility of conversion.

Naaman and the Parable of Academic Theology

In a couple of weeks I will be preaching on 2 Kings 5:1-19.  This is the story of Naaman a great commander of the army of Aram.  Naaman, however, is a leper.  In one of his conquests Naaman captures a ‘small girl’ who ends up as a servant for Naaman’s wife.  As the small girl sees Naaman’s affliction she says that Naaman should send word to the prophet in Samaria and he would heal him.  This is Naaman’s initial posture.  By almost all accounts he is a man of status and power and yet he is afflicted in such a way that everything is tainted.  In that position he is able to hear from the ‘small girl’ who in every way is his contrast.

Once Naaman hears of this possibility he does not send word to the prophet but immediately reverts to the ‘appropriate’ channels.  He sends word to the king.  He brings a large sum of money.  He travels with horses and chariots.  And the king of Israel upon hearing word tears his clothes.  What can he do for this powerful man?  Surely Naaman is trying gain some advantage through this encounter.  Naaman must a shrewd and clever dialogue partner looking for advantage in this relationship.  But Elisha the prophet simply asks that Naaman come and see him.  So Naaman arrives at the entrance of the prophet’s home with all his pomp and procession.  But Elisha does not even greet Naaman.  Instead he sends his messenger to tell Naaman to wash in the Jordan River seven times and he would be healed.  Naaman is infuriated by this action.  He goes on to describe what he imagined should have happened.  Elisha should have come out to greet him and standing their he would call on the name of his God and wave his hand and heal him.  The scene again is one in which the grandness of the result should be accomplished by a grand action.  There should be a proportional relationship.

This story reminded me of my academic development.  I began post-secondary education as though listening to a ‘small girl’.  I had a felt need and desire that this process could be a work of healing or restoration (it was all of course more convoluted than that but for the sake of contrast it is not entirely inaccurate).  Perhaps it did not happen as quickly as with Naaman but I began veering off course away from the prophet and towards the king.  This path called for a demonstration, a pageantry displaying the validity of my presence and purposes.  I saw around me that small and simple acts were inadequate.  One needed to call on the name of rigorous thinkers and wave the hand dense and nuanced argumentation.

Of course this parable falls apart on any number of levels.  Any Naaman could come across this post and demonstrate its inadequacies.  But it is only an attempt to begin writing in the spirit of a ‘small girl’.    There are many important things going on among important people who are able to sustain important discourses.  And these things are important as they affect many people.  I, however, suspect I have plugged the ears that once heard small things. I no longer know where the Jordan River is and I may not even have the patience to wash seven times in it.  And to what end would that accomplish in any event?  Naaman was convinced and he washed himself.  What happened?  His flesh became like that of a ‘small boy’.  This is no cult of beauty.  This is a reversion or a return to a way discounted by our culture.  It is a path not noticed.  A path not seen.