Category: theologians theorists and the like

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.

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.

More than meaning

Rene Girard’s basic thesis is well known; human culture arose out of the resolution of mimetic desire. By nature we desire what is desired by others, this leads to conflict and ultimately murder. Institutions and rituals arise out of this act. Girard sees the Gospel texts of the New Testament as a revolutionary exposing of this basic mechanism. However, the church has continued to offer a sacrificial reading of the Gospel which undermines its revelatory potential.

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is an excellent and accessible overview of his thought. What I found interesting was his conclusion. At the end of the book Girard suggests we suffer most basically from a lack of meaning. I find this to be a bit dissonant from much of his work. Perhaps he is was still too heavily influenced by the existential angst that seemed to exist in the middle of the twentieth century but I expected him to move in a much more ‘material’ direction in his conclusion. Here are some of his parting lines,

“What is important above all is to realize that there are no recipes; there is no pharmakon anymore, not even a Marxist or a psychoanalytic one. Recipes are not what we need, nor do we need to be reassured – our need is to escape from meaninglessness.
. . .
I hold that truth is not an empty word, or a mere ‘effect’ as people say nowadays. I hold that everything capable of diverting us from madness and death, from now on, is inextricably linked with this truth. But I do not know how to speak about these matters. I can only approach texts and institutions, and relating them to one another seems to me to throw light in every direction.
. . .
Present-day thought is leading us in the direction of the valley of death, and it is cataloguing the bones one by one. All of us are in this valley but it is up to us to resuscitate meaning by relating all the [Judeo-Christian] texts to one another without exception, rather than stopping at just a few of them. All the issues of ‘psychological health’ seem to me to take second place to a much greater issue – that of meaning which is being lost or threatened on all sides but simply awaits the breath of the Spirit to be reborn.”

At which point Girard concludes by quoting Ezekiel 37’s vision of the valley of dry bones.

To be clear, I find this conclusion hugely attractive.  I am sucker meaning, as in meaning of life meaning, but when hearing something so well developed as with Girard I can’t help that the truth which fends off ‘madness and death’ is something other than ‘meaning’.  And here I have to default to a confessional position and introduce some notion of worship.  For all his religious language and even examination of idolatry Girard does not really address the a non-sacrificial sense of worship.  In this way I take him to be broadly in line with the death-of-God thinkers who believe we must go far enough to situate the presence and Spirit of God in and only in and only as the life-giving community.  Here again, I am deeply attracted.  But for the life of me I just don’t know who these people are that believe ‘in the power of humanity’.  I don’t see it in myself or much around me.  I don’t mean this in a self-deprecating sense but more in a I-have-been-banging-my-head-against-a-wall-for-over-a-decade-trying-to-understand-life-giving-personal-and-social-change way.  I just don’t see it to be honest.  So we offer works of worship that at our end must be purged of idolatries (here Girard, and Zizek for that matter, are right) but beyond that, hell if I know.

If you want to go the route of ‘meaning’ don’t look to Girard, the Coen brothers do it much better.

A taste of mastery

I have gradually come to realize what every great philosophy so far has been: a confession of faith on the part of its author, and a type of involuntary and unself-conscious memoir; in short, that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constitute the true living seed from which the while plant has always grown.  Actually, to explain how the strangest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really come about, it is always good (and wise) to begin by asking: what morality is it (is he – ) getting at? . . . [E]very drive craves mastery, and this leads it to try philosophizing. – Nietzsche; Beyond Good and Evil

There remains a fundamental critique in this and, I think, there are two paths that follow when this is kept in mind.  One can remain delusional as though some access to a structure of meaningful (ethical) truth will irrefutably be discovered and articulated.  The other path is to see enough in advance the rabbit trails that philosophy will all inevitably lead down.  These trails are not bad, but they are trails.  No more, no less.  This tends to place an internal contradiction within the project of philosophy as many enter into this process because of a sense of enlightenment of something more and beyond; something does indeed seem to be discovered.  But the beyond can never be what was conceived at the first.  Because for many of us the enlightenment was actually (at least in part) a taste of mastery.

I always hated studying languages in grade school.  In high school French was the only subject I almost failed.  But in Bible college I took to learning biblical languages like it was a drug.  I was drawn intuitively to this discipline.  Why?  What was the difference?  French had no trackable position in the coding of meaning in high school.  What was it that helped to position myself in high school, what did have access to?  Sports, I guess.  I was pretty good at sports.  But by the end of high school I went through a conversion period in which I experienced faith and church as a site of different coding.  In church I found peers who expressed many of the same things I found otherwise but they also talked about meaningful and intimate parts of life.  This attracted me.  I began reading the Bible, here I began to see (not for the first time of course) that the Bible functioned in a central and authorizing position in this community.  It offered itself as the source for developing the codes and values of this expression.  So in Bible college I began to learn about the production of this text and tradition.  I began to see the esoteric allure of the ancient languages of the Bible, that, when handled by someone competent and creative the Bible could be wielded with a sort of authority I had not experienced.  I not only felt nourished by the Bible but I also got a buzz from it, perhaps even became intoxicated by it.

And so I set out over the next several years spending considerable time and energy learning Greek, Hebrew, and even Aramaic.  Like in high school, I was still by no means a natural but the drive behind it was strong.  In the process of studying biblical languages I was introduced to the field of hermeneutics.  With this process I experienced the conflict of interpretations.  Two experts in biblical language and history could and did disagree.  What informed their disagreement?  It depended on their theoretical and methodological orientation.  Some perspectives sounded more persuasive than others.  How could I navigate these questions and conflicts?  So I began to explore the field of philosophical hermeneutics and with the ‘linguistic turn’ in the philosophy of the last century this led me into philosophy more properly (at least a certain strain).  The truth of the Bible was not self-evident.  I searched again for the treasure that could establish and secure my own and my community’s value.  I now find myself engulfed in philosophical and psychological theory.  I am by no means an expert but I continue to find myself attracted to what might explain and give meaning to my (our) condition.

While I concede that this is a partial account and one that leaves out the sheer enjoyment I took in all these endeavors I am finding that, in retrospect, I have come to a sort of crossroads.  I have exhausted none of the above fields of study.  I remain significantly deficient in all of them and could be considered a ‘generalist’ at best.  The crossroads rather is now being unable to appeal to these pursuits as having some fundamental position in navigating truth and value.  I still find these disciplines fruitful for such navigation but the navigation is now on a different plane.  They did not lead to the treasure.  They did not discover first things.  To continue to use these disciplines in the sense that I once, I think unconsciously, did would be manipulative at best.

But that this Nietzsche’s point, in part.  What remains is the manipulation of values that are not grounded.  So we make choices and commitments and in time we change them on the basis of . . . what?  Is it enough to accept a Nietzschian position, a position of responsibility?  I find that once drawn into and, at least partially, inhabiting this logic it becomes difficult to see another alternative.  Sure I could return to a sort of orthodox grounding and orientation to theology but to do so would be making an self-conscious commitment that I would have to take responsibility for.  All of which leads back into this same insight.  I am not saying Nietzsche’s project is the way forward but I am also not sure we cannot responsibly move forward without first passing through it.  Thoughts?

And to paraphrase Nietzsche, do you disagree, do you have another interpretation?  Well, so much the better.

“The Postsecular Turn in Feminism” – A brief summary and outline of questions

This afternoon the reading group Critical Conversation will be discussing a text by Rosi Braidotti titled, “In Spite of the Times: The Postsecular Turn in Feminism.”  In preparation I thought it might be helpful to outline the position taken in the paper and draw up a few questions.

The subtitle of the paper is really an apt description of the work of the paper.  Braidotti begins by outlining the origins of feminism as nestled within the larger Enlightenment project which critiqued and largely rejected religious dogma and clerical authority.  This was based in a larger ‘negative’ position which functioned in a primarily oppositional mode and at times seemed “to have only paradoxes to offer” (3).  This position has led to some difficulties as the critique has, at times, been shifted wholesale onto the Muslim community resulting in blatant racism.

With the ‘return of religion’ many monotheisms have been developing a conservative politics based on ‘strong foundations’ that function at a number of disjunctions (separating women from mothers / gays from humanity / sexuality from health / science from faith).

Braidotti then proceeds to ask how ‘secular’ feminism really is in its various manifestations.  Here she cites a number feminist representatives within monotheistic religions as well as more marginal ‘spiritual’ forms.  This leads to the assertion that,

All non-secularists stress the deep spiritual renewal that is carried by
and is implicit in the feminist cause, insisting that it can be of benefit to
the whole of mankind and not only to the females of the species (Russell,
1974). This humanist spiritual aspiration is ecumenical in nature and
universalist in scope. (7)

The question then becomes a matter of how to maintain a universal scope while avoiding the temptation to seize this vision and establish it for all on their terms.

In an interesting turn of phrase Braidotti then speaks of the spiritual ‘residue’ that remains at work in secularism through its expression as a negation of particular religious forms.  The postsecular problematizes this position in light of increasingly complex expressions of ethnicity and diversity that are not allowing themselves to be defined under one ‘rational’ vision.  The second feature which secularism has not accounted for is a more psychoanalytic perspective which includes vital drives and totemic structuring of psychic order and social cohesion.

The main psychoanalytic insight therefore concerns the importance of
the emotional layering of the process of subject-formation. This refers to the
affective, unconscious and visceral elements of our allegedly rational and
discursive belief system. (11)

As I near as I understand this appears to be a definition of ‘spirituality’ by Braidotti.  And it is in these elements that she finds more “residues of religious worship practice.”

From here Braidotti outlines “Vital Feminist Theories” which reflect a process rather than foundationalist or idealist ontology.  In this account “immanence expresses the residual spiritual values of great intimacy and a sense of belonging to the world as a process of perpetual becoming.”  And further, “What is postsecular about this is the faith in potential transformation of the negative and hence in the future” (13).  The position is no longer based in a negative or reactionary critique of what is destructive but attempts to explore how the creation of conditions for liberation can be achieved which allows it to address expressions (religious or otherwise) in their particularity without rejecting them under a prior ideology (anti-clericalism for instance).

What this means practically is that the conditions for political and
ethical agency are not dependent on the current state of the terrain. They
are not oppositional and thus not tied to the present by negation; instead
they are affirmative and geared to creating possible futures.
. . .
As Rich put it in her recent essays,
the political activist has to think ‘in spite of the times’ and hence ‘out of my
time’, thus creating the analytics – the conditions of possibility – of the
future. (16)

I set this paper within similar moves being made which attempt to take greater account for the mutual positioning that occurs between religion and secularism.  In this case feminism is taken seriously as a ‘third’ in its attempt to form subjectivities that will find ways of affirming “what is not contained in the present conditions.”  What are some questions, theological or otherwise, that arise from reading this piece?

What do theological anthropologies say about the ‘subject’ and subject formation?  It would seem to me that dominant practices of subject formation in the church would fall under the critique of most global monotheistic religion leveled by Braidotti.

Do we accept her characterization of religion?  Is what she is placing religion/spirituality under (as a ‘residue’ of) too nebulous to have real social and subjective traction?

How do we navigate the Western world with secularized accounts of prior religious commitments (humanism)?  And further do we need to simply learn to ‘take our place’ amidst a larger collaborative project?  Do we need to ‘become less’ so that salvation/liberation would become more?

What is the theological concept of ‘new’?  Is it actually a return to the old?

First Fanon

I was slightly desperate not having a book at hand as I about to head to catch a rather long (city) bus ride.  Finally I grabbed a copy of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks that I picked up used a while back and headed out.  I don’t think I am sucker for just anything new but Fanon’s style was impacting to say the least.  And I think it was impacting because it struck a chord that I am tuned in to but rarely hear played with all notes together.  The notes comprising this chord looks a little a like this existential/psychological/social.

Fanon is not a philosopher as such, nor is a social theorist or poet.  He blends these influences into a sort of form that, for me, speak of acongruence, that is, of accounting for the gifts and passions in my life that should not be neglected.  Here are a few excerpts from the intro,

The explosion will not happen today.  It is too soon . . . or too late.
I do not come with timeless truths.
My consciousness is not illuminated with ultimate radiances.
Nevertheless, in complete composure, I think it would be good if certain things were said.
These things I am going to say, not shout.  For it is a long time since shouting has gone out of my life.
. . .
This book should have been written three years ago . . . But these truths were a fire in me then.  Now I can tell them without being burned.  These truths do not have to be hurled in men’s faces.  They are no intended to ignite fervor.  I do not trust fervor.
Every time it has burst out somewhere, it has brought fire, famine, misery . . . and contempt for man.
Fervor is the weapon of choice of the impotent.
. . .
It is good form to introduce a work in psychology with a statement of its methodological point of view.  I shall be derelict.  I leave methods to the botanists and the mathematicians.  There is a point at which methods devour themselves.

I have only a read a couple of chapters and there is little that is ‘new’ and some things I might question or challenge but to read someone for whom these ideas were formed out of the direct crucible of experience remains an important part of our formation.

Who comes first among all?

A few gems from Is it Righteous to Be.

The exceptional position of the I as the only one having to respond for the other thus finds itself understood starting from the generality of a code of laws, relevant for all of us.  For indeed, in the social multiplicity we are not paired off with the neighbour for whom I am responsible, but are linked also with the third and fourth parties, etc. Each person is, to the I, an other!  The exclusive relation for the I to the neighbour is modified.  How, in effect, can one be answerable for all?  Who comes first among all?  This is the essential ambiguity of the relation between the ethical order of the responsibility for the other and the juridical order, to which the ethical nevertheless appeals.  This is because in approaching in charity the first one to come along, the I runs the risk of being uncharitable toward the third party, who is also my neighbour.  Judgment, comparison, are necessary.  One must consent to comparing incomparable beings.

And in a later interview Levinas responds to the question of his definition of philosophy.

I would say that philosophy permits man to interrogate himself about what he says and about what one says to oneself in thinking.  No longer to let oneself be swayed or intoxicated by the rhythm of words and the generality they designate, but to open oneself to the uniqueness of the unique in the real, that is to say, to the uniqueness of the other.  That is to say, in the final analysis, to love.  To speak truly, not as one sings; to awaken; to sober up; to undo one’s refrain.  Already the philosopher Alain taught us to be on guard against everything that in our purportedly lucid civilization comes to us from the ‘merchants of sleep.’  Philosophy as insomnia, as a new awakening at the heart of self-evidence which already marks the awakening, but which is still or always a dream.

There are two ways

There are two ways of reading a biblical verse. One consists in appealing to the tradition, in giving it the value of the premise in one’s conclusions, without distrusting and without even taking account of the presuppositions of that tradition. . . . The second reading consists not in contesting straightaway, philosophically, but rather translating and accepting the suggestions of a thinking which, once translated, can be justified by what manifests itself.
. . .
Of course, I try to enter first into the language of the nonphilosophical tradition which is attached to the religious understanding of Jewish writings; I adopt it, but this adoption is the not the philosophical moment of my effort. There I am simply a believer. A believer can search out, behind the adopted intelligibility, an intelligibility which is objectively communicable. A philosophical truth cannot be based on the authority of a verse. The verse must be phenomenologically justified. But the verse can allow for the search for a reason. . . . I illustrate with the verse, yes, but I do not prove by means of the verse.

Emmanuel Levinas, Is it Righteous to Be, 61-62.

I put this quote up on Facebook as a stand alone.  It initially spoke to me of, or validated for me, how the biblical text can be used beyond confessional ‘logics’.  Immediately after reading this, however, Levinas went on to describe how confessional and philosophical readings acted like separate disciplines for him.  He even mentioned having separate publishers for these works.  Levinas continues this distinction maintaining that we need both Greek and biblical thought; one of reason and the other of sociality.  This troubles me because I simply do not know how to exercise these distinctions in practice.  I can understand how the distinct disciplines of politics and geology separately ‘read’ the land.  But if I understand Levinas correctly I cannot, as of yet at least, make his distinction in practice.

The context I am thinking of in particular is preaching.  When I approach the Bible as an ordained minister I do not know what it means to read it ‘simply as a believer’ as Levinas puts it.  The Bible continues to come to me as strange and I will literally take anything (philosophy, art, literature, psychology, observations, etc.) that will give me some point of orientation or manner of conversing with the text.  In the same way I cannot bracket some of my devotional postures of prayer when I try and gain congruence and coherence in my thinking.  Something other than reason wanders through my thoughts that I could not and would not want to exorcise from my ideas.  There is the matter of trust (I find that is a better term than ‘faith’ in most cases) that continues to inform and shape my reasoning.

In any event I look forward to working through my first full text of Levinas.  And I suspect in as much as he himself embodies both processes he may not adhere to strict divisions all the way through.  But what I am left wondering about is to what extent the sheer discipline of distinction would actually benefit both my faith and thought (or are those categories already too reductive)?

Experimenting with Rosenzweig and spiritual discipline

I admit that I am experimenting.  And so I am also admitting that I do not know what I am doing.  But I am hopeful.  I am increasingly trying to integrate my general interests in philosophy and theory in my profession as a pastor.  Sometimes this works easily in cases of preaching.  Other times it works surprisingly as in the case of hospital visitation.  And sometimes it must just be experimented with.  This is what I will be doing this Sunday.

Over Lent we are having an adult education series on spiritual discipline (big surprise!).  I am leading the opening session which will hopefully give some ‘frame’ for what follows.  I was originally going to frame sessions in the context of ‘prayer’.  This of course could have been helpful but I did not know where I would go with this and also many of the other sessions deal directly and indirectly with prayer.  I have recently finished Franz Rosenzweig’s Understanding the Sick and the Healthy.  I decided that I would experiment with this work as a context for understanding the motivation and direction for spiritual disciplines.  I will in fact introduce this framework as a spiritual discipline in that I am confessing it for testing and examination.

Understanding the Sick and the Healthy is an attempted diagnosis of the illness of philosophy in its tendency to essentialize reality.  Essentialism for Rosenzweig is the isolating of aspects of reality for examination in a way that ends up distorting the manner in which reality is distinguishable but integrated (Rosenzwieg uses the image of ‘flow’ as the metaphor for engaging reality).  What is the world?  Who am I?  Who is God?  These are ultimately paralyzing questions in isolation that lead to a sickness and insulation from reality.  Rosenzweig calls then for a return to ‘common sense’ which is re-establishing an appropriate view of World, Humanity, and God.  These are pictured as distinct mountaintops in which it is impossible to have all three in view at all times though one must have a ‘base’ at the centre of the three if healing is to occur.  So what is a common sense view of the three mountaintops?

What is our world-view?  Rosenzweig warns against the notion that we can dip water out of the river to analyze as it as the world and believe that in so doing we understand it.  My reading of Rosenzweig on this is that we should not look for deeper meaning when it comes to the world.  Understanding the world means beginning precisely on the surface.  The world is not us and the world is not God.  The meaning of the world is in its relation to Humanity and God.  Therefore we enter each day “frankly confronting each thing as we encounter it; we look for nothing beyond, do not try to walk suspiciously around the object; nor do we peer into its depths, but accept it rather as it is, as it hastens towards us.  And then we leave it behind and wait for whatever is to come tomorrow.” (74)  Therefore we do not look for God in the World because the world is something and therefore not God.  This frees us to embrace a fully scientific model of engagement (as though this should still be a major question) and warns against viewing God’s ‘blessing’ in particular world events.  Because if God blesses in this way then wouldn’t God also curse in this way.  Let the world be the world in all its ferocious and unyielding consistency.

What is our life-view?  There is tendency towards trying to ‘pin-down’ our identity.  But again to isolate and abstract in this manner is to have things truly come unhinged and find ourselves in a crisis of identity.  You cannot set out to ‘find yourself’ except maybe in spite of that process.  Nevertheless we tend to situate ourselves in some form of ‘worm theology’ or act as though we are ‘like gods’.  Both instances are unhealthy thou both instances present themselves with a sort of ‘security’.  I sense again the Rosenzweig is interested in a simpler descriptive account that has no interest in a stable definition but understands the basic variability of humanity in its temporal orientation.  Here is a fabulous quote,

Let us seek not seek for anything beyond ourselves. Let us be ourselves and nothing more. Such a moment of existence may be nothing but delusion; we shall, however, choose to remain within the moment, deceived by it and deceiving it, rather than live in deception above or below the moment.  Let our personal experience, even though it change from instant to instant, be reality.  Let man become the bearer of these shifting images.  It is preferable that he change masks a hundred times a day (at least they do belong to him) rather than wear continually the mask of the divine ruler of the world (gained by thievery) or that of the world’s bondservant (forced upon him).  The hundred masks will serve in lieu of one countenance. (79)

The strength of humanity might not be in securing identity but in accepting the variability.  Let humanity be human in all its fabulous variability.

What is our view of God?  How can we speak of God?  But didn’t we also have trouble speaking of the World and of Humanity when we sought essences?  Why would we expect anything else when seek God in this way?  But the stakes do seem higher.  When we claim or secure our identity of God then what we may be doing is articulating our own highest value and therefore become more threatened and aggressive when opposed.  But God is not us and God is not world.

Throughout his work Rosenzweig gives attention to the way in which language, words, and names form the bridges between these three peaks; that allow for the flow of the river.  The same is true of God.  The world is named by humans.  Humans engage past and future through their names.  God does not need a name but a gives a two-fold name.

One the one hand He embraces sinners (Humanity); on the other, He proclaims law for the world. The root of all of man’s various heresies is to confound the two parts of His name with one another; God’s love encroaches upon His justice, His justice upon his love.  It is indeed God’s task both to maintain the two-fold character of His name as well as reconcile them.  So long as there is reason for such a division, so long as God is not God-in-Himself whom philosophers drivel about; if He remains God of man and the world, then it is He, who by means of His two-fold name transforms – and we use the word in its technical sense – human energies into the energies of the world. (92)

Have faith in God.

What does this have to say about spiritual discipline?  Spiritual disciplines are the acts by which reality is properly distinguished and properly joined.  We do not secure and reside ‘in the world’ creating life as cogs and law.  We do not secure and reside ‘in humanity’ allowing ourselves to think too highly or too lowly of ourselves and each other.  We do not secure and reside ‘in God’ retreating from the responsibilities of life and creating an idol that will not heal and redeem.  It could be argued that for Rosenzweig spiritual disciplines are those things orient life thus,

There is in addition to the world and himself, He who turns His face towards both.  He it is who summons man by name and bids him take his place in the congregation who calls upon Him.  He it is who orders things so that they may form a kingdom bearing His name.  Thus man may act unconcerned with the outcome; he may act according to the requirements of the world as it is today.  That day, the day when action is required, lets him understand what he must perform. . . . Truth waits for him; it stands before his eyes, it is ‘in thy heart and in thy mouth,’ within grasping distance; ‘that thou mayst do it.’  In the same way as he has achieved certainty concerning the reality of the world and has found courage to live, he must also have faith in God who brought him into existence. . . . The proper time then is the present – today. To avail himself of today, man must, for better or worse, put his trust in God. . . . The proper time has come [when need calls], and thus God assists you. (93)

If I have given any justice to this short work then it should be somewhat apparent that Rosensweig has indeed given us a ‘common sense’ account of things in which the world is allowed to be the world, humanity is called to be human, and God turns toward and takes responsibility for both.

I am not entirely sure what to think of this project let alone how the presentation on Sunday will go.  What I appreciate about this project in terms of spiritual discipline is its liberating and clarifying possibility.  There are many critiques out there that deal with our need to ‘let go’ of our need for control but rarely have as helpful a supplement for how to take responsibility.  Perhaps after the session I can articulate some of those possibilities.

The hundred masks will serve in lieu of one countenance.

I hope to do a more extended post on my reading of Franz Rosenzweig’s Understand the Sick and the Healthy but I could not resist putting up this quote.  What can I say I really am an existentialist at heart (wait, is that self-contradictory?!).

Let us seek not seek for anything beyond ourselves. Let us be ourselves and nothing more. Such a moment of existence may be nothing but delusion; we shall, however, choose to remain within the moment, deceived by it and deceiving it, rather than live in deception above or below the moment.  Let our personal experience, even though it change from instant to instant, be reality.  Let man become the bearer of these shifting images.  It is preferable that he change masks a hundred times a day (at least they do belong to him) rather than wear continually the mask of the divine ruler of the world (gained by thievery) or that of the world’s bondservant (forced upon him).  The hundred masks will serve in lieu of one countenance.