I just want to recommend a good short Introduction to Slavoj Zizek's thinking about Christianity: Frederiek Depoortere's book Christ in Postmodern Philosophy which treats Gianni Vattimo, René Girard and Zizek. I have only read to part on Zizek but it was extremely helpful, giving a good simple introduction to Lacan and a very acessible treatment of Zizek's Christology. Highly recommeded.
In book five Augustine suddenly gets all theological (finally!). The main theme of the book is astrology ets. However, in V, 9 he discusses the possibility of prophecy with Cicero (who maintained that foreknowledge is impossible since it would make freedom of will impossible.
In V, 10 gets to answer the standard smartass question most theology teachers will face one day: How is it that God who is omnipotent cannot die or err.
For we do not make the life of God and the foreknowledge fo God subject to necessity if we say that it is 'necessary' for God to live forewer and to foreknow all things. By the same token, His power is not diminished when we say that He 'cannot' die or err. For this is impossible to him in such a way that, if it was possible, He would have less power. He is indeed rightly called omnipotent even though he cannot die or err. For He is called omnipotent because he does what he wills and does not undergo what He does not will: if this were not so, He certainly would not be omnipotent.Of course, this makes it dificult for Augustine to approach the problem of theodicy, but that question is not treated here. This is to me very much not the Eastern concept of pantokrator that might be defined as to have the ability to do what one wills, but perpaps not always not undergo what one does not will.
In the final part of book on Augustine discusses another legendary Roman, Scipio Nasica, the Pagan High Priest and Senator that opposed the destruction of Carthago. Augustine's take on this complicates my interpretation in the previous post. Scipio's point was that the romans would be corrupted if they did not have a strong enemy.
For Scipio feared security as the enemy of weak spirits. He saw that fear was necessary to the citizens: to act, as it were, as a suitable tutor during their pupillage. Nor was he mistaken in his judgement; for the outcome proved how truly he had spoken. For when Carthago was destroyed and the great terror of the Roman commonwealth thereby repulsed and extinguished, the prosperous condition of things immideately gave rise to great evils.The lack of an outer enemy lead the romans into civil wars and more importantly "lust for mastery" and the avarice and luxury.
If you, like me, have had a hard time to really understand what Milbank is really about, this is the book for you. What these essays do is really to clarify a lot of things that remains unclear in his other books. This happens in different ways. In the first section we get (mildly updated) versions of Milbanks really early eighties stuff, and this for me shows where he is coming from. These are readings of English theologians (!) that I have never heard of ( apart from Newman). These texts are mostly interesting to someone who wants to study Milbanks own development, but for the rest of us they are mainly interesting beacuase they are fairly ordinary. This is before TST, and he is not as well read as later (he mainly sticks to the writer at issue).
The fun begins with the TST era writings. There are two chapters (I think) must have been written while he was working on TST and here we see the Milbankisms starting to appear (sociology in inverted commas, references to nihilism and french philosophy by the truckloads). Then there are three chapters made up of responses to criticism of TST and these really help to answer some of the questions I had after reading it. In particular, Milbank really fleshes out his vision of the Church, the major flaw of TST, IMO. And obviously his politics is made much more explicit here.
But the most impressive part of the book is the three chapters under the header "Political Theology Today". Here Milbank uses his wide knowledge of western intellectual history to comment on current affairs, in he does this extremely well. In particular the essay on 9/11 is among the best I have read on the topic. As a critic of US policy he is defintiely on par with the chomsky's and Klein's of the world, and original too. I do not think I could say this about another theologian. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Then follows a part on theology and pluralism, and obviously this is much more problematic at least for me. If the "political theology" part is what attracts me to Milbank, this is what makes me hesitant. His stand on dialogue between religions goes beyond merely pointing out real problems in the field. His conclusion is bascially "convert!" and clearly this is a bit disappointing. I am not sure either that his rather fanatical view of theology as a field in academia is very helpful.
In the final part we find the superb "Postmodern Critical Augustinianism", which probably is the best text Milbank has written. Had I not chanced on this I would not have bothered reading a word more from him after TST. Why is it so good? Not only is it concise and well argued. It has a tone that is somewhat different from most of Milbanks writings, maybe because this is a rare moment where he is not polemicising against anyone (there are parts of "Being reconciled" that are similar in this sense). This feels like an important point to make, but I do not know what to make of it myself. It is clear that to be able to say what he says hear about Christianity and Theology would not be possible for him to say had he not first "liberated" himself from so much of the liberal and secular thinking he fights against elsewere.
All of these texts are published elsewere, so they can be dug up in the library. But the volume is really worth its price for anyone interested in political theology today.
This recently occured to me and I haven't really worked out the implications of this notion yet. There are certain kinds of theology that I just do not like, even if I agree with lots of what is said. I can be certain kinds of political theology, ecotheology, some feminist theology and so on. Why? Because it tries to make use of theology for other non-theological purposes. It speaks a lot of the Christian tradition as a resource for tackling various issues.
There are some obvious problems with this approach. Most importantly, it seems to imply that theology itself is not involved in the actual engagement with these problems, that happens on some different arena, be it the political world, everyday life or some kind of activism. Theology is then seen as a reserve of ideas or structures of thinking that can be taken out of its context and "applied" (is there any use of that world that is not corrupt?). Obviously very few of these theologians would agree with this image of theology, because paradoxically, that would be a extremely "conservative" view of theology, and the theologies I am now talking about usually thinks of themselves as progressive or even radical. So what is going on here?
What seems to be the motivation for this move is a wish to be relevant in a larger sphere of society than academia or church. This in itself is commendable, but there are a number of possible preconceptions that seem to be at work here that are problematic.
First, there seems to be an idea of the church as either isolated or insignificant, or both. To be relevant one has to engage with the secular, and then on secular terms, that is to bring in isolated ideas without connection to the messy religious stuff. Like, "See you can view nature as creation, with all the nice possibilities that opens up, without really having to think about God", which is obvious nonsense. So, instead of being relevant, you end up being incoherent or just confused.
Further, is not this an essentially market-based view of the world? Theology is then the production of marketable "ideas" as semi-products, competing in a imaginary marketplace of ideas. This is especially ironic if the "ideas" created are supposed to be a criticism of capitalism.
Ultimately this is a view of theology that presupposes that theology in fact is not "relevant" and thus has to become something else to be that. I wonder if one can say anything with some kind of importance if one starts by believing that one in fact cannot. Yet this seems to be the logic behind this kind of reasoning.
This brings me to the kind of theology that I do like. This would be the kind that instead of "exporting" ideas from theology to the outside, incorporates the world into theology. (see that I tried to continue with the market metaphor and say "import" but it would not fit). Now this is exactly what Tillich did, but I have to say that the ones that understand themselves to stand in some tradition from Tillich today are very often doing theology of the other kind. However, theologians that do theology more or less consciously against that tradition (Hauerwas, Milbank) end up doing what he did.
Adam Kotsko of An und für sich do not see what my problem is with Zizek's position in The Monstrosity of Christ. Adam clearly knows much more than me about Zizek, so it might just be me who do not understand Zizek, or (more likely) that this is what Zizek always have been saying.
My point is simply this: The way I read Zizek's response to Milbank is as an attempt to show that even though he finds some aspects of Christianity interesting (The death of God as a basis for Athesim), he really has no interest in ledning his support to theological projects of other kinds. He simplt isn't interested in love as Christianity understands it, in redemption and so on. It seems to me he wants to make clear how far away he is from any more properly Christian position on ethics, on community or on a vision of a good society. In seeking to avoid the "disgusting proximity" of other humans, Zizek effectively and completely rejects the idea of Church.
In short: I read him as saying: "Fu*k off stupid theologians stop bothering me".
This is from Andrew Louth's Discerning the Mystery:
The importance of liturgy, then, for tradition is that by the very fact of its being performed, of its being the doing of something that others have done before us, of its being a matter of significant actions that suggest meaning rather than define it, it introduces us into a context, a realm of values, in which the significance of tradition can be seen. By the fact that it goes beyond speech, it impresses on us the importance of the inarticulate: and it is not without significance that inarticulateness about what is deeply important is characteristic of the child, whom we have to be like if we are to enter the kingdom of heaven.This is exactly right. Isn't it so that traditions with little appreciation of liturgy either have little appreciation of tradition or a very legalistic understanding of tradition, as something that has to be obeyed? And his incredibly exact comment on the child has a very deep meaning, not only about how adults should approach the liturgy, but about how essential it is that we have children there - as teachers.
A collegue, upon hearing that I was reading a lot of Milbank, focusing on the political and ecclesiological implications, groaned and told me I should read Kathryn Tanner instead. Why not, I thought, there is plenty of room for other perspectives in relation to Milbank that is for sure. And the text on the back of this one was very promising, speaking of "alternatives to global capitalism" and "specific principles of economics and economic justice".
However, this is in my opinion false advertising. Tanner is not proposing an alternative to capitalism, she is concerned with modifying it in a slightly more humane direction. This is a pragmatic move, she wants to avoid utopia. Fair enough, I can accept that, although I personally think that we need a utopia to imagine what really needs to change.
Tanner's criticism of capitalism is rather shallow however. She criticises the rather obvious consequences of global capitalism - rampaging unfairness rather well, although anybody even remotely familiar with "leftist" writings will find little new here. She also argues for some "theological principles" based mainly on creation, trinity and grace in general that she maintains offers an alternative to capitalist economics.
But from a theological point of view i find the main part of the book "Putting a theological Economy to Work" the most problematic. None of the suggestions she actually makes here seems to need ant theological underpinning whatsoever. The Marxist "to each according to his needs" will work just as well. Furthermore, in order to be "realistic" she compromises each of the principles she argued for in the preceding chapters. In the end she ends up arguing for a model that "everybody" is profiting from, including (especially) the capitalist. In other words, what we have here is little but the now traditional "third way" socialism, an improved capitalism in an essentially Keynesian tradition.
This means that Tanner has to pass over some extremely important points. One, isn't it from a theological point of view less important if capitalism works or not, compared to what it does to us, what kind of human beings this system produces? In essence, capitalism in all its knows forms (including the famed Scandinavian model) makes use of (and thus encourages) greed, a vice an almost unanomous Christian tradition claims corrodes the soul. To try to improve this system thus ammounts to giving it a "human face" while its heart remains decidedly rotten.
There is a good discussion on method here, but apart from that, this just isn't very good theology. However, in the end that is not the point of this book. It is not driven by a theological motive, but a political one.
This book tries to provide such grounds for Christians, especially in the United States, advantaged beyond all decent proportions by the present system. The more economic benefits we enjoy, the more power we are likely to have to change things. We should use that power - say, the power of our vote in the most economically dominant nation on earth - to put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies for international trade and financing agreements that only further disadvantage the already disadvantaged around the globe. (p 142)While I do think a lot of the things she writes makes political sense, I would really like to see a more radical alternative than "vote for change".Because it is the lack of alternatives that at the moment continues to further capitalism today more than a real belief in its superiority.
I guess there should be a spoiler warning here, at least for me this book had what can be best describe as a surprise ending: I threw it away in disgust. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
A lot has happened since this infamous (in my universe anyway) post, where I went my frustration over Milbank's Theology and Social Theory. I have to admit that I am at the moment compeltely fascinated by Being reconciled, although there are large chunks of it I do not agree with, either regarding method (the chapter on forgiveness) or substance (violence, of course). However, the chapter on Church, Politics and Culture are about the best I have read in a long time.
I also enjoy(ed) Zizek a lot. His way of reading texts (in a very broad sense) is incredibly creative, and I will never see The Sound of Music the same way again.
This book leaves a lot of shattered dreams behind, I'm sure. A lot of attempts to do theology in dialogue with Zizek that will now have to be rethought, or abandoned. Because at least as far as I know, In his past discussion of Christian theology, he has always remained somewhat ambigous, always left things a bit open for interpretation. Not this time.
But no one can possibly be more disappointed than Milbank. I do not know where that blurb on the back of Being Reconciled comes from (does anyone know if there is an actual review of it out there somewhere?) where Zizek basically says that this is finally the real shit. Milbank must have been so proud of that. What theologian would not be when hearing praise like that from one of the worlds most famous intellectuals? And then this.
The first part, where Zizek presents his reading of Christianity adds little to The Puppet and the Dwarf. The most striking thing here is that it is really apparent that Zizek's knowledge is of theology is really patchy. He makes som really far fetched claims about Eastern Orthodoxy based on Lossky alone, and makes some rather obvious mistakes that Milbank rather kindly points out later on.
Milbanks part of the book, is not that revealing either. Lots of discussion on Hegel and more interestingly, Meister Eckhart. Milbank accuses Zizek of being protestant, basically. And for me this was the most interesting aspect of Milbank's text, his criticism of Lutheranism is fleshed out a lot more than what I have read so far. His attempt to make Kierkegaard an "Catholic honoris causa" is a bit awkward though.
So obvious it is Zizeks response to Milbank's criticism that is what ultimately makes this book worth its prize. After som niceties about the "authentic spirituality" of Milbank's position, he bluntsly states: "Of course i fail to see this ... because to me, there is no transcendent God-Father. " What that basically says is: "Nice120 pages, but did do miss the part about me being an atheist?" But it gets worse, much worse. For then he goes on to show Milbank that his Catholicism is basically a form of paganism, that is protestantism that is the kind of Christianity he finds interesting, with the focus on the Cross, and especially, get this, radical death-of-God theology in the vain of Thomas Altizer. Poor Milbank.
So that is the one big point of this book. Now a completely different kind of theology is endorsed by the great Zizek. However. The other point is that I am not sure if any theologian actually want tha endorsement anymore. Because the dialogue form of this book makes Zizek come clear on several areas at least I was not aware of his stance on. Maybe it is just me, but I kind of felt all this talk about being stalinist and so on was ironic posturing. Not so. Not only does Zizek's atheism in the end be like any other atheist's, only slightly more educated. But his ethics are described in a way that made me, as a christian, loose al my interest in whatever else he has to say.
At one points he discusses the situation where he would encounter one of thos doctors that aid in torture, helping the torturers decide how much the victim can take.
I must admit that if I were to encounter such a person, knowing that there was little chance of bringing him to legal justice, and be given the opportunity to murder him discreetly, I would simply do it, without a vestige of remorse about "taking the law into my own hands."In another instance he seems to endorse a "violent totalitarian regime", but here there is some ambiguity. But no matter, for his final definition of his moral ideal in itself is enough, and that was where to book flew out of my hands in disgust.
This is where I stand - how I would love to be: an ethical monster without empathy, doing what is done in a weird coincidence of blind spontaneity and reflexive distance, helping others while avoiding their disgusting proximity. With more people like this, the world would be a pleasant place which sentimentality would be replaced by cold and cruel passion.Surely, after this any theological engagement with this kind of philosophy will be nothing but a waste of time, a way of keep missing the point about Christianity?
There is a extremely revealaing discussion with John Milbank posted at livedtheology.org (HT: Theopolitical.com, F&T). It discusses the last chapter of Theology and Social Thery, but it goes off in all kinds of directions, and Milbank talks a bit about his background and stuff. For those of you, like me, still trying to figure out what it actually is Milbank wants to accomplish this is a great source.
Otherwise, the book came to be written really by accident in the sense that I was asked to write a textbook, and the publishers were totally horrified when I didn’t produce a text book. And when I set out to write it I really honestly and truly assumed I was going to talk about the mutual help that theology, sociology, and Marxism could give to each other. But somehow quite quickly when I started to get into that I felt that there was an incredible assumption going on in the usual approaches, that somehow social/scientific discourses were sort of theologically innocent or neutral, and that theology wasn’t inherently itself a social theory and an account of history. And I suppose that is the main methodological point in a sense that is being made.
Dan asks the difficult question: when confronted with 'the Poor' of our day, how do you justify your own academic endeavours?
As I have said before, living in Finland, "the poor" tend to be arather abstract concept. Although the divide between those that have and those that don't has widened considerably in Finland during the last few decades, what goves for poverty here is still being privileged if want takes the global perspective.
But that does not really change things that much. So I would answer the question this way.
1. The Academy has not given me very much in terms of money, power or security. I'm really badly paid (mind you I'm not complaining), my wife works in a kindergarten and she has a lot more than I. Which is ok, because I love my job. People that have jobs that need big salaty as motivation are kind of sad. What I'm saying with this is that working in the academy has for me moved me closer to the "poor" of our community, in that I share with them the constant feeling that when my short term working contract ends (next month) I have no real idea how to pay the mortages on our house.
2. I would never ever ever accept to do academic work that I do not feel in the long run at least serves to somehow change this world a little. Be it by teaching future pastors to see the global implications of their future work, or by working on theology in a way that asks the questions about the way our world functions. I cannot honestly say that I know of a way that I could hope to do more good than in the way I hope to do inside, or one the margin of academia. For me, in my situation, the university is still a place where there is at least some space for thinking against the powers of the world. As long as that is true (and that space is shrinking all the time), I'll try to hang on.
I'm not sure if a meme on a subject like this can work (a bit easier to name your favourite book!), but do feel tagged if you like to.
I was very excited about this volume, since it seems to take the Radical Orthodoxy in the direction I find most interesting, and because it has such a impressive list of writers from outside of Theology, many of which I regard highly (Zizek, Toni Negri, Simon Critchley to a degree). And there is much of interest here (and a lot of filler, that has to be said), but still one comes away from it with some sense of disappontment. None of the writers from outside theology engage with the RO perspective, nor, with the exception of Zizek, with theology properly. Thus the title is kind of misleading.
In this volume the bad i mostly boring so I won't waste time on that. The writers that stand out for me in this volume is Zizek, Daniel M. Bell, Catherine Picstock (much better here than in "Radical Orthodoxy"), Graham Ward and John Millbank. In other words, the core of the RO-Movement all give good contributions here.
Zizek reads Chesterton like no other, and comes out with very interesting things about paganism and Christianity. Only Christianity gives us possibility to enjoy this world, because unlike for pagans, Christians do not belive that "tomorrow we will die". Funny as hell also, although I still do not understand why he insists on describing Christianity as perverse.
Bell reads Deleuze, and more interestingly, Anselm. To read Anselm away from the ususal economic framwork is fruitful, and of the many criticisms of Capitalism that are found in this book, Bell's is the one I feel most likely to return to.
Ward does Marx. His argument, that is repeated in many of the other essays, is that capitalism and marxism share too much in terms of basic premises, and that Christianity offers a radically different view of man and the world, one that is based on gift instead of contract, on love instead of fear and so on.
Millbank discusses the Christian claim to universality based on Badiou and Zizek. I think a lot of this is solid stuff. I have been hesitant to think much about the idea of universal truth and Milbank does have some interesting points. But there is an obvious problem, that is not so much visible here as in this interview.
(The ‘other religions’ thing doesn’t matter. The world as a whole is rapidly Christianizing and even in Islamic countries Muslims are finding their own intriguing Islamic way to Christ in ever increasing numbers; this is readily verifiable).What on earth can he possibly mean? Is this Milbank's suggestion for how Christianity is to deal with "other religions". It seems absurdly naive, to the point of delusional. If this is what his notion Christian universalism is like, I think we'd better pass on it.
This recently occured to me, and I am a fool for just spilling it out on the net and not writing an article for some famous periodical on it.
I now why Tillich fell out of favour. It's David Tracy's fault.
See, every time I see a reference to correlation in theology these days, I always have the same feeling that there is something wrong. I always feel that what the writer is criticising has little resemblance to what Tillich intended with his correlation method.
Let me first describe what I feel is the usual notion of what the method of correlation does, then describe what Tillich really meant, and finally describe how this is the fault of poor Tracy.
It may all be down to a poor choice of term (English, as you know, was not one of Tillich's strengths). Usually people think that when using a correlation method in Theology you seek for similarities in the Christian tradition on the one hand, and for example (secular) philosophy on the other. In effect you would be saying something like "The Christian doctrine of sin is the same as Heidegger's notion of guilt". This method is correctly criticised for in effect using semi-religious language to re-tell the secular story.
However, this was not what Tillich meant with the method of correlation. For Tillich the point is to use philosophy, psychology, art and similar discourses to describe relevant questions in the present cultural situation. Theology then seeks to give answers to these questions, based on revelation (scripture, tradition and so on). Interestingly a few decades ago this idea was considered to be to give theology a to great role, believing that theology could actually provide answers to common human problems. Wouldn't it be better to just let Theology deal with religious problems?
I guess this is one of the reasons Tracy developed Tillichs method by adding the idea of the hermeneutic circle. No longer would Theology give answers to problems in the human situation but there would be a going back and forth where theology and the situation would interpret each other. This, however, seems to lead to a situation where theology looses its right to interpret itself by its own rules, which is what the method is usually criticised for.
Of course, Tracy is not completely wrong. What he describes does take place. But it is not a method for theology. What he describes is something that has to do with being a theologian, which is a slight but important difference.
Tillich's point was that Theology always has used the method of correlation and always will. And I still can't see how it could be otherwise if theology want to be relevant in any way. So, case in point. In the introduction of "Radical Orthodoxy - a New Theology" we read:
The present collection of essayes attempts to reclaim the world by situating its concerns and activities within a theological framework. Not simply returning in nostalgia to the premodern, it visits sites in which secularism has invested heavily - aesthetics, politics, sex, the body, personhood, visibility, space - and resituates them from a Christian standpoint; that is in terms of the Trinity, Christology, the Church and the Eucharist.
Here's some thoughts on Radical Orthodoxy - A New Theology. I have to say that on the whole I am glad I read it. A few of the essay's are really good, and a few are quite bad, and a few are somewhere in between.
My faviorites are John Montag's essay on Revelation, and William T. Cavanaugh's text on the state. Montag's article for me cleared up why the reason-revelation dichotomy is false. That it is false i pretty obvious, but it was interesting to see how we got into that place.
Cavanaugh's text is my favorite of the bunch. I am actually discussing it more thoroughly in an article I'm writing at the moment. He shows how the state is a parody of the Church, that fails to deliver what both Church and State promises to deliver - peace. A Church that has given up this task (to bring peace) and delegated it to the secular state is to me a good definition of a State Church. We have a lot of those, and it really is a good question to ask if the can properly be called churches at all.
While I agree that the Eucharist should be the place where true peace is fostered, I wonder what we should do when it in practice clearly isn't to most. Most people that care about the Eucharist see it as some form of spiritual reload, and most, at least in Lutheran Finland, seem to see it as a nice coda after the sermon. These questions I discuss in my article...
But yeah, that bad ones. I already wrote on the one on Wittgenstein. I didn't understand a word of Catherine Pickstock's text on music. Graham Ward's text on the Body of Christ is interesting, but some of the themes hinted at there are quite disturbing... I am NOT sure if it is a good idea to explore Christ's relationship to Mary in terms of incest.
But the real rotten egg of the bunch is Philip Blond's essay on art. While he clearly knows way more about art than I do, I still feel he is in no position to lecture on what art should be like. I won't even go into why he makes these recommendations nor what they are, simply the idea that theology should somehow dictate art is preposterous. If that is his vision of a Christianity free from secular bonds, I'll go with the seculars, thank you. His vision of an art that correctly portays the real makes me think of Christian pop music, another disgusting concept.
Anyway, what I find inspiring with this book is that it covers such a wide area of themes, yet manages to keep one distinctive approach to them. This, I guess, is what has made Radical Orthodoxy so popular (for want of a better word). That, and the cool name. Although it is a bit ironic that a theology that carries a criticism of capitalism with it would make use of such a central capitalistic concept as the brand.
Next, I'll tackle the newer volume on Politics and Theology edited by Milbank.
I'm not sure if I feel ready to get back into theology-blogging, but maybe I'll give it a try. I'm reading theology again, and in the past blogging has been a good way for me to organize my reading.
First some updates, if anybody has wondered what I have been up to.
My thesis is more or less finished. Actually, It would have been finished already if a certain famous professor had not taken quite a bit more time than expected to read it and give it a go ahead...
As the last few posts showed, my interest in politics has lately overtaken my interest for theology... That may be changing at the moment, but as I say that is too soon to say. The combination of theology and politics is still my major area of interest.
If some of my more regular readers are still around, they will find this very ironic, but what I'm currently doing is trying to get a deeper understanding of, yep, postmodern theology. Particularly Radical Orthodoxy. I'm still not 100% convinced that it is worth while doing, but there are some aspects of it that intrigue me, and I have a hunch that my "expertise" on asceticism actually may have some value in this discussion... More about that later, maybe.
What I like about radical orthodoxy is that it shuns both conservative and liberal theology, although I do not at all agree with the image of 20th century theology that the foster. There seems to be a will to completely by-pass this century (and the 19th) among these writers. I don't think this is a valid way to be post-modern.
I am also intrigued my some of the political ideas around among these writers, but I'm still not sure about the way they fit together with the other ideas.
And I'm still to find a proper worked out radical orthodoxy ecclesiology - is there one? The entire concept points towards ecclesiology, but exactly what that ecclesiology is like seems to be difficult to articulate. But I may just have missed it. Suggestions welcome.
Anyway, I might post some on my continued reading of radical orthodoxy texts. Or not. Will see.
Last week I attended the biggest conference of my academic career, the fifteenth International Patristics Conference in Oxford. For those of you outside the field, this is a conference that is held every four years and had about a thousand scholars from around the globe attending.
It was fun to see the faces of all the people whose books I have been reading, and also the possibility to talk to some of them. Over all the social aspect of the event was what inspired me. To be perfectly honest, I did not find the actual papers and lectures that exciting, except four a couple that have direct relevance for my work. I guess I had hoped for more discussion on methods and the relation between Early Christian Studies and our present situation, which is what I am interested in. Now we had mostly very historical papers from the lesser scholars, while the giants presented overviews and synthesis of ancient thought. Impressive, but not exciting.
However, to meet these scholars was still interesting. Discussions of meals in St Edmund's Hall cover very interesting areas, and here I felt I was not alone in trying to seek contemporary relevance in the early Church. Somehow this interest, clearly present in the people I met, just did not seem to translate into the official proceedings. It was also interesting to see that - generalizing here - to most radical papers came from mostly female scholars of some maturity. There has been for some time a group of great women scholars in patristics, and the same group still is very good. But among the younger presenters, regardless of sex, it seemed people were dealing mostly with quite safe subjects.
This experience of mine could be caused by me not actually attending the right kind of conference, but I do not think this is the case, especially since I so much enjoyed spending time with these people. Rather, I have a feeling many shared my experience, which tells me that the problem seems to be in the general academic atmosphere at the moment, which seems to shy away from the radical and new.
Still, it was a great conference, well organized, and I especially appreciated again to meet my friends and colleagues in the now quite sizable group from the Nordic Countries.
I have from time to time commented on how few women feel the need to blog on theology, especially when it is time to create a list of some kind. Well Michael L. Westmoreland-White has gathered together a list of the actually-not-so-few exceptions.
Let's get one thing straight right away: I think liberation theology is great and feel very strongly that all theology needs to be contextual to be relevant. That said, this book didn't do much for me. There are several reasons for this. I am familiar with most of the ideas central to liberation theology, so there were few "new ideas" here. More importantly this really is "spirituality of Latin America". It s not even supposed to be particularly relevant for me.
This is not criticism then, but rather an effort to clarify the major differences between the Latin American outlook of Gutierrez and my North European outlook.
Of course, poverty is a rather abstract thing for me. There is very little poverty in Finland, because we still have a great social security system. It is being torn down as we speak, but still extreme poverty is not something you encounter here. This means that I can agree in principle that God has a preference for the poor, it is not something that has much existential meaning for me.
This does not mean that all is well in the Republic of Finland, because the solution to poverty is not more money, but liberation. People in Finland, too, needs liberation, but not so much from poverty as from the tyranny of the accepted opinion, as one might call it. Sure, people in Finland are free to express their opinion (if they have one), and to live their life in any way (within reasonable limits), but most people still live a rather destructive life, destructive not only for the environment (only USA and some other country (was it Australia?) produce more CO2 per capita than Finland) but also for their own souls.
In a way - and I do not say this to in any way downplay the atrocity of extreme poverty - we are little better off, because most Finns have no idea they are oppressed, because we are oppressed by a system so efficient that it has made itself nearly invisible. Why use violence when there is television? Still, we are forced to live a life centered of producing value for the system, by working way more than is healthy and to put any creativity we still have after what is commonly called education to the service of that same system. What this means is that there is way too little joy in our lives, way too little beauty. Instead of joy we have entertainment.
Surely this is a situation where salvation is deeply needed.
Another thing that is difficult for me with Gutierrez book is that is so much a spirituality of a people. I just cannot relate to that. Here again our situation is so different. If they are a people oppressed by an elite, then we are oppressed in part by the idea of being a people. Nationalism is still strong in Finland, as in the rest of Europe, and it seems to be even worse in the US where it is called patriotism. Nationalism is clearly the most destructive idea in the history of mankind (only religion comes close in the amount of blood shed), and even though we have few wars today in this corner of the world, people still argue with this completely abstract notion of the nation as a basis. For example, we hear people argue that "we" must work so that "all Finns" will have a better life. How about all humans? All lifeforms? Why draw any line based on who belongs to this made up concept the Finnish nation? Well, of course the reason is to make it OK to exploit the others, ow wage war against them if need (such as high petrol prices) arises.
I really like how Gutierrez lifts up death as the central symbol for evil, in part replacing for example sin, that is always transformed into some abstract form of spiritual aids. Death is real; it is there. We can be made aware how poverty (in their case) or compliancy (in our) is death. You do not live when you're working 14 hours a day, be it because you have to to put food on your family's table or because a bigger car seems to be a good idea. That is death. From that we need salvation.
Gutierrez is in this book also concerned with dispelling the idea that liberation theology is merely thinly veiled Marxism. Of course it is not. I doubt anyone who believes that has read this far, but if this is the case, do read the book. For the rest of us, we need to keep on working on a liberation theology of our own.
Johnson's book was the only one written by a woman that featured in the list of the fifteen most important books of the last 25 years. That's just sad. I hope it says more about who writes and reads theology blogs than about what is really the state of theology today. At least in my own field, the study of Early Christian Asceticism, there are lot's of great female scholars. In fact, from the top of my head I could probably mention more female scholars of note than male.
In any case, this just makes a book like Johnson's all the more important. The book tries to sum up the main insights of the first few decades of feminist theology in a systematic manner. Of course it cannot be complete, it focuses mostly on theology and Christology, and does not treat for example ecclesiology or the ministry. This has the clear advantage that she can avoid much disputed areas and that what she says is applicable in any church regardless of confession.
Johnson presents the case for the need of a feminist theology very convincingly and in a manner I think most people would find reasonable. There are still people out there who think feminism is dangerous (it is, but not in the way they think!), but Johnson writes in a way that is more likely to convince than anger.
I had a fair knowledge of feminist theology prior to reading the book, but I still learned a thing or two of great importance. For example, I was not aware of how sentimental my image of the symbol "Mother" actually was. I guess many a reader would be surprised at the multitude of female symbols for God found in the Bible. But more important is that I have tended to see the value if feminist discourse in theology mostly as criticism: the necessary pointing out of a deeply rooted problem in the Christian tradition. While Johnson does present this criticism, she spends more time in showing in what ways womens perspective actually helps moving the theological discussion forward. Particularly in the area of Christology I found many inspiring insights.
In conclusion, this book should be mandatory reading for all theologians. It (or another one like it) should be on every curriculum. It clears up so many misconceptions and brings home so many significant insights. It is not the best theology I've ready, but it may be among the most important.
