Life’s Paradox

Category Archives: Theology

Nov 04 6 comments

Events, Theology

Conference: Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination

Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination

March 24-27, 2010

Point Loma Nazarene University

Co-sponsored by the PLNU Wesleyan Center, Center for Justice and Reconciliation, Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, Center for Pastoral Leadership, and Center for Women’s Studies.

Call For Papers (Deadline Nov. Dec 15)

Plenary speakers:

Bill McKibben: Christian environmental activist, scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and author of Deep Economy, The End of Nature, Hope: Human & Wild, and The Age of Missing Information

Kathleen Norris: Poet and essayist, and author of Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith

Michael Eric Dyson: Professor Georgetown University, author of Can You Hear Me Now?, Come Hell or Highwater: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster, Holler if You Hear Me

Emmanuel Katongole: Theologian and priest, associate professor of theology and world Christianity and co-director of the Center of Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School, and author of A Future for Africa, Beyond Universal Reason

Special Guests:

Guest Emcee: We are excited to have Dr. Ron Benefiel join us as our emcee! Dr. Benefiel is the president for Nazarene Theological Seminary (Kansas City, MO). Trained as a sociologist, he is also an ordained minister who has pastored churches in a variety of urban settings. He is author of A Theology of Place: Ministry in Transitional Communities (1996).

Special Event: Dr. William T. Cavanaugh is a professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN). He is author of Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (1998), Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (2008), and The Myth of Religious Violence (2009). A special conference session will be dedicated to reviewing his most recent book. [Note: ~~This is just a discussion of the book itself. As far as I know, I do not think Cavanaugh will be there.~~ Cavanaugh will in fact be there. See Edie Chapman's comment below. ]

Download the Conference Schedule (PDF)

When many Christians consider the prophetic imagination, they think of attempts to decipher how the world will end or religiously based movements for social and political change. The biblical understanding of prophecy, particularly as embodied in Jesus and such prophets as Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah, while including both a hope for the future and a critique of the present social and economic situation, also seeks to free believers in Christ to witness to the future of God creatively in the present. The prophetic imagination is, in the light of the gift of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, a challenge for Christians to question the assumptions, beliefs, and practices that the church often takes for granted. It calls believers in Christ to reflect deeply on the ways that the church has accommodated itself to and allowed itself to be defined by the dominant culture and thereby has been a party to economic and social systems of sin, oppression, and injustice. The prophetic imagination provides a challenge to the church to renew its criticism of the dominant culture and envision a new and vibrant way of being in but not of the world.

This conference will explore various dimensions of the prophetic imagination, especially around the three key movements or stages of encounter with the prophetic imagination: 1) dissatisfaction with and critique of dominant culture; 2) taking responsibility for and learning to lament the extent to which we have been complicit with the sinful and destructive forces of the dominant culture; 3) creatively and hopefully envisaging new modes of being the church in the world and new ways of embodying God’s will for the world.

Call For Papers (Deadline Nov. Dec. 15th)

More info here.

Oct 22 2 comments

Theology

Bibledex

In a similar vein to the University of Nottingham’s Period Table of Videos (be sure to check out the Potassium one!), Brady Haran, in conjunction with our Department of Theology and Religious Studies, is now producing a series on the Bible dubbed Bibledex. There will be books on all 66 books of the Bible, and as the website states, they “are by no means comprehensive – rather they’re a curious assortment of academic insights into what is probably the most famous collection of books in history.” Each video consists of different insights from the different perspectives offered from the staff and postgraduates in our department (me mates!). The first three videos are now up, on Genesis, the Song of Songs, and 1 Corinthians.

Aug 02 0 comments

Irony, Kierkegaard, Philosophy, Socrates, Theology

Kierkegaard and Deception

On the heels of this discussion, I was reminded of this great passage from Kierkegaard’s The Point of View for my Work as an Author:

What, then, does it mean “to deceive”? It means that one does not begin directly with what one wishes to communicate but begins by taking the other’s delusion at face value. Thus one does not begin (to hold to what essentially is the theme of this book) in this way: I am Christian, you are not a Christian–but this way: You are a Christian, I am not Christian. Or one does not begin in this way: It is Christianity that I am proclaiming, and you are living in purely esthetic categories. No, one begins this way: Let us talk about the esthetic. The deception consists in one’s speaking this way precisely in order to arrive at the religious. But according to the assumption the other person is in fact under the delusion that the esthetic is the essentially Christian, since he thinks he is a Christian and yet he is living in esthetic categories.

Even if ever so many pastors will find it indefensible, even if equally as many will be incapable of getting it into their heads—although all of them otherwise, according to their own statements, are accustomed to using the Socratic method—in this respect I calmly stick to Socrates. True, he was not Christian, that I know, although I also definitely remain convinced that he has become one. But he was a dialectician and understood everything in reflection. And the quesiton here is purely dialectical—it is the question of the use of reflection in Christendom. Qualitatively two altogether different magnitudes are involved here, but formally I can very well call Socrates my teacher—whereas I have believed and believe in only one, the Lord Jesus Christ (Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998], pp. 54-5).

Kierkegaard here is relating this maeutic form of instruction to the way his own writing has unfolded. It’s also entirely similar to the way that Hamann’s own authorship came into being, although Kierkegaard is leaps and bounds easier to understand.

I think it’s interesting that here Kierkegaard lines up somewhat with the tradition of putting Socrates “within” the Judeo-Christian tradition in a sense. Justin Martyr says directly that Socrates was a Christian, and Hamann counts Socrates among the “prophets” in his Socratic Memorabilia, yet here Kierkegaard takes a slightly different route and says that Socrates has become a Christian.

Jul 30 0 comments

Art, Kierkegaard, Links, Socrates, Theology

Blogging elsewhere

Oddly, not much blogging around these parts lately, but elsewhere, I’ve posted the third and final post of my series on Kierekgaard and Socrates here at Cynthia Nielsen’s Per Caritatem blog (the first two can be found here and here).

Bruce Ellis Benson’s engagement with Dan Siedell’s God in the Gallery is also now up at the Church and Postmodern Culture blog.

OMGEES, this “No Pets Clause” post on Emails From Crazy People had me laughing very loudly this morning while I was eating my breakfast. Thanks Jenn, for sending that along.

Jul 24 0 comments

Books, Kierkegaard, Links, Philosophy, Socrates, Theology

A Couple of Items

A new book symposium has begun on the Church and Postmodern Culture blog on Daniel A. Siedell’s God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art. Two posts are up already, one by Jamie Smith and the other by Matthew Milliner (who blogs at millinerd.com) This Monday an engagement with the third chapter will be from Bruce Ellis Benson. The remainder of the schedule can be found here.

Second, I have begun a series of posts on Kierkegaard and Socrates over on Cynthia Nielsen’s Per Caritatem blog. The first post highlights Socrates’ importance for Kierkegaard at the end of his life, and the second post delves a bit into Kierkegaard’s “Sophistical” situation vis-à-vis the Danish Hegelian Christians of Copenhagen. I should have a third post up soon.

Jun 08 4 comments

Aesthetics, Books, Theology

Of excellent book covers

Tiana and I just got back from a two-week trip to the States. This was our first trip home since we moved to Nottingham in August 2008. We visited Cincinnati, OH and while in California, San Diego, Merced, and Concord. While in San Diego I visited the new Theology building on the Point Loma Nazarene University Campus. I was able to see a good handful of my old MA professors, and before leaving, I managed to catch Dr. Michael Lodahl, my professor for my History of Christian Thought I & II classes.

Glancing around his bookshelf, I noticed that he had several copies of the new edition of his The Story of God: A Narrative Theology book. The first one came out in 1994 (with the different subtitle “Wesleyan Theology & Biblical Narrative”) and has been assigned in many undergraduate Nazarene theology departments. However, being a computer science undergrad, I was never assigned the book, nor did I ever get around to reading it in between my forray into theology since then. What immediately struck me was how incredibly, vastly improved the new cover of the book was. Here it is below:

And here is a link to a picture of the old one. As you can see, ridiculously improved. Not only that, but it’s about one of the coolest book covers I’ve ever seen.

There is a brief but interesting write-up of the process of this cover’s creation over on the Face Out Books website.

[If I ever got into Jules Verne, this would definitely be the set to get (with covers designed by the same place), don't you think?]

May 05 4 comments

Deleuze, Kierkegaard, Paradox, Philosophy, Theology

Kierkegaard, Levinas, and an Inwardness Higher Than Itself

One cannot (probably) have too much Kierkegaard on his birthday. This is a great bit from Mary-Jane Rubenstein on Kierkegaard that wraps up all sorts of Kierkegaardian themes as they work themselves out in response to a critique by Levinas:

illustrator © Archipictor Ossi Hiekkala

Emmanuel Levinas claims that the Kierkegaardian subject, as radically inward, is egocentric: “Kierkegaard very powerfully rehabilitated the topics of subjectivity, uniqueness, and individuality. He objected to the absorption of subjectivity into Hegelian universality, but he replaced it with subjectivity that was shamelessly exhibitionistic.” In order to demonstrate this self-important selfhood, Levinas refers to the Abraham of Fear and Trembling, the most offensive instance of “a subjectivity raising itself above the ethical to the level of the religious.”¹⁰³ Yet Levinas makes such subjectivity far too easy. The self thus constituted by repetition does not precede repetition itself, but emerges through it, and is thoroughly infused with the God-relationship. This subjectivity, then, is relational rather than identical and, insofar as the religious subject is constantly in a state of becoming, thanks to what Gillian Rose calls “the eminence of futurity at the intersection of eternity and time,”¹⁰⁴ dynamic rather than static. Repetition, as Deleuze reminds us, is always a gift and, as such, a scandal; the subject cannot merely summon repetition and constitute himself qua subject. Kierkegaardian subjectivity, I would argue contra Levinas, does not raise itself above the ethical; rather, it is raised above the ethical. Between the two there is an absolute difference. And the subject that emerges through the madness of repetition is not a self-identical individual, alone in inwardness; it is rather a subject related at every turn to the eternal. The highest form of this selfhood is only selfhood insofar as it exists in the God-relationship—inwardness, in other words, gives rise to something infinitely higher than inwardness (Mary-Jane Rubenstein, “Kierkegaard’s Socrates: A Venture in Evolutionary Theory,” Modern Theology 17, no. 4 (2001), p. 467).

Emphasizing the paradoxical nature of such an inwardness, Rubenstein says, “The very locus of the subject’s self is beyond him. In other words, this subjectivity, which cannot be considered by itself but only repeated, is profoundly ecstatic” (ibid).

103. Emmanuel Levinas, “Existence and Ethics” in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, Jonathan Rée and Jane Chamberlain, eds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 26-38; p. 34.
104. Gillian Rose, The Broken Middle: Out of Our Ancient Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 99.

Mar 13 7 comments

Evolution, News, Philosophy, Theology

BBC2 Documentary: “Did Darwin Kill God?”

Hey mate, were not in Ulster anymore!

My superviser Conor Cunningham has written a BBC2 documentary entitled “Did Darwin Kill God?” This will air 31 March 2009 at 7pm (GMT). The idea of Conor’s documentary is that, from a theological perspective, he hopes to both provide a sharp critique of ultra-Darwinism on the one hand, while also offering a major critique to the Intelligent Design camp on the other.

Conor also has a book on evolution in the INTERVENTIONS series that goes into much more detail. This is slated to come out this Fall.

UPDATE: There is now a podcast on the University of Nottingham podcast site that is an interview with Conor Cunningham about his forthcoming documentary: “A plague on both houses” (mp3 Friday 13 March 2009; 32.1MB, 34.41mins).

Mar 05 6 comments

Books, Kierkegaard, Philosophy, Theology

Kierkegaard’s Hardcover-only Writings Soon in Paperback

It was recently pointed out to me by Chris Simpson that the pseudonymous authorship of Kierkegaard only consists of roughly 45% of his total writings, whereas the other 55% were signed/”religious”. With that said, it is exciting to discover that some of the harder-to-find Princeton editions of Kierkegaard’s work consisting of this signed authorship–previously only available in hardcover and therefore cost-prohibitavely expensive–are soon coming out in paperback! These volumes tend to be ignored in the popular scholarship on Kierkegaard, but these works, along with his Journals and Papers, are essential for any Kierkegaard scholar.

Looking at the paperback column below, these are clearly more affordably priced, although some are still a bit pricey. Those ones tend to be the larger volumes over 500-700 pages or so (e.g. The Moment and Later Writings), but there may be exceptions.

Here’s a breakdown with a price comparison chart where the paperback prices listed are the pre-order prices from Amazon. Hopefully it’s not too confusing. That being said, those viewing this post in an RSS reader like Google Reader, Netvibes, etc., may way to view this post on the blog itself because the styles may get munged.

Cover	Vol#	Title	Hardback Price $/£	Paperback List $/£	Paperback Price $/£	Release Date
	I	Early Polemical Writings	134.95* / £138.46	$35.00 / £19.95	$29.33 / £18.95	July 09 / June 21, 09†
	IX	Prefaces/Writing Sampler	$56.24 / $40.00‡ / £33.00	$29.95 / £17.95	$29.95 / £17.05	July 09 / June 4, 09
	X	Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions	$177.50* / £47.50	$24.95 / £14.95	$24.95 / £14.20	July 09 / June 4, 09
	XIII	The Corsair Affair, and Articles Related to the Writings	$500.00* / £unavail.	$29.95 / £17.95	$29.95 / £17.05	August 09 / July 5, 09
	XIV	Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age, A Literary Review	$67.50 / $45.50 / £32.01	$24.95 / £14.95	$24.95 / £14.20	August 09 / July 5, 09
	XV	Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits	$199.99* / £unavai.	$35.00 / £19.95	$29.33 / £18.95	July 09 / June 21, 09
	XVII	Christian Discourses: The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress	$57.00 / £64.60	$45.00 / £26.95	$37.42 / £25.60	July 09 / June 21, 09
	XVIII	Without Authority	$80.00 / $42.38 / £37.95	$35.00 / £19.95	$29.33 / £18.95	July 09 / June 4, 09
	XXII	The Point of View	$75.96 / $70.00 / £64.60	$35.00 / £19.95	$29.33 / £18.95	July 09 / June 4, 09
	XXIII	The Moment and Late Writings	$83.84 / £58.90	$60.00 / £35.00	$49.55 / £33.25	July 09 / June 21, 09
	XXIV	The Book on Adler	$95.00 / $50.00 / £44.88	$40.00 / £23.95	$33.38 / £22.75	August 09 / July 5, 09
	XXV	Letters and Documents	$125.00 / $85.00 / £99.14	$65.00 / £38.95	$53.59 / £37.00	August 09 / July 5, 09
	XXVI	Cumulative Index to Kierkegaard’s Writings	$99.50 / $90.00 / £59.95	$65.00 / £38.95	$53.59 / £37.00	July 09 / June 21, 09

* Items designated with an asterisk mean that Amazon only has them “used and new from [x price]“, indicating that they don’t have any in stock and used bookstores or individual resellers are trying to scalp them at usually batshit crazy insane prices (e.g. The Corsair Affair).

† The Princeton site for Kierkegaard’s works only lists a release date in “Month Year” format whereas Amazon has more specific dates that don’t always align with these dates. The format will be “[Princeton Date] / [Amazon Date]“. We all know that Amazon’s release dates don’t really signify anything real, so take these with a grain of salt.

‡ Hardcover prices with two prices listed are for the “[New Price] / [Used Price]” where the used price is the best price available in the Amazon Marketplace.

Feb 23 17 comments

Reflections, Theology

This House is Becoming Anxious

: The audience at the “Justification by faith (in Christ) alone” debate. About 75 people in attendance.

[Correction: today (25 Feb 2009), I spoke with Professor Richard Bell and he kindly let me know that I mis-paraphrased him below. He was not speaking of anxiety-riddled Catholics in Germany, but Protestants he met. My deepest apologies for this mischaracterization/misquote. I have adjusted the paraphrase below to reflect the actual substance of what Professor Bell said. Part of Bell's larger point here is to deeply call into question the notion that this is a "Catholic vs Protestant" issue. I agree, myself being a Protestant Nazarene, Adrian Pabst of the debate described below being Anglican, and we ourselves are still in opposition to the "justification by faith (in Christ) alone" doctrine. -- that being said, I do not think the substance of my comments regarding Kierkegaard actually changes any with this ammendation, especially in light of Alex's helpful comment which displays the flipside of 'bad' anxiety of wondering if we have had 'enough' faith.]

Last week I attended a debate here at the University of Nottingham entitled “This house believes that justification is by faith (in Christ) alone.” The sides of the debate represented two people for it (Richard Bell and Martin Street) and two against it (Aaron Riches and Adrian Pabst). Clearly, the side for the debate represents the usual ‘protestant’ side of the debate, while the side against the measure represents, loosely, the broader c/Catholic/traditional side.

The debate itself was rather interesting, very exciting, and I learned a lot, but I just want to briefly respond to a remark made by Richard Bell in his closing arguments. Bell presented a case that went something like the following:

“I have visited Germany and I encountered German Protestants there who were constantly full of anxiety over whether or not they were ‘doing enough’ to ensure their salvation. They were constantly frought over this issue, but let me present to you that the doctrine of ‘justification by faith in christ alone’ will assuage their angst, because then they will realize that entry into the kingdom of God does not depend upon works, but faith.”

Something like that. Essentially, the message assumes that 1) those who reject justification by faith in christ “alone”* therefore must fall into a duality of necessarily believing in “works alone” and 2) “justification by faith in Christ alone” aleviates the existential angst caused by this flight into works.

On point #1, clearly, faith is an integral part of the picture, as well as grace and love, but ”faith alone” cannot be just a univocal proposition that we are to assent to as believers as a part of the life of faith. On the night that Christ was betrayed, Jesus did not give his disciples a doctrine, but gave them his body in a Eucharistic practice of partaking his his broken body and spilt blood. Yes, faith is an integral part of this practice (and they would have had to have some faith initially to drop their nets and follow Jesus), but there is a fuller, richer picture to what salvation and being ‘justified’ means. (This was the general summary of the “opposing” side to the debate, but there are a few more particulars here and there.)

But more importantly for this post, I want to deeply call into question Bell’s account that propositional assent by faith just makes all our worries go away. There are a few reasons for this, and I hope to employ some more nuanced Lutherans in the debate.

First, the broad point is that we are never promised the easy, non-anxious life as Christians. The sermans about ‘assurance’ which tend to get a lot of play are really not about the assurance of our salvation as far as I can tell, especially since where it shows up in the Epistle to the Hebrews seems to talk about a more nuanced kind of assurance in light of being “diligent” in the faith so as not to become sluggish (as one example).

Second, and this was my initial thought in response to Bell at the time: doesn’t Kierkegaard/Johannes de Silentio–a Lutheran–talk about Abraham, who is the father of faith, as an incredibly anxious dude? In fact, Silentio says, “What is omitted from Abraham’s story is the anxiety [...]” (28, Hong translation). Abraham’s anxiety comes from living at that moment in the paradox where the ethical “ought” is suspended by the religious; the contradiction between the murder and the sacrifice is what makes Abraham what he is–anxious, distressed.

Moreover, it is Philippians 2:12 which says to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” from whence Silentio derives his title. The life of faith is inherently distressful. Interestingly, Silentio begins his discussion saying, “only the one who was in anxiety finds rest” (27). As my friend Alex reminds me, the truth is that we’ve never “done enough” anyway, and we can just get over that fact and realise that that is our condition so we must be diligent and not sluggish on the way to becoming a Christian.

Finally, Dietrich Bonhoeffer–also a Lutheran–is well known for his writings against “cheap grace” in The Cost of Discipleship. If I may, the way that Bell assumed that his formulation of the justification doctrine so easily provided a solution for the problem seemed incredibly close to something very much like cheap grace. Bonhoeffer contrasted the notion of “costly grace” against cheap grace, reminding us that the shape of grace is a cruciform one (Kierkegaard/Anti-Climacus’ emphasis on John 12:32 when Christ said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” also works well here considering his point is that the “lifting up from the earth” is Jesus Christ being lifted up to the cross). The way of the cross is costly; the path is a hard one. Any kind of attempt to make the Christian life ”easier” should, I think, be suspect; in Kierkegaard/Anti-Climacus terms, we shouldn’t try and slacken the paradox such that the Christian faith is as easy as putting on one’s socks!

Now, as a very serious disclaimer, I would distance myself with such any notions which aim to let the cart push the horse such that we strive toward anxiety, or that we need to make the Christian life hard, as much as I side with Kierkegaard that the Christian life needs to be ‘made’ difficult again. This would be ridiculous. My claim, rather, is that this is just what the Christian life is. The works of mercy, for instance, are not ‘difficult’, rather, they are a gift, in similar way in which love is both a command and a gift.**

Futher even briefer thoughts:

Something not brought up in the debate is the “Pistos Christou” issue, about which Richard Hays wrote a book. I borrowed it once from my pastor in San Diego, but didn’t get a chance to read it at all. I’m assuming there’s some relevance of this to the debate. Faith in Christ, or Faith of Christ, what are the implications, blah blah.
I haven’t read any Martin Luther at all beyond his stuff on the bondage of the will (which I thought was rubbish). So, I haven’t read Luther on this issue at all. That being said, it seemed like there were some slight caricatures of Luther being made in the debate, but I would still side against the general position which Bell and Street represented.
I am becoming more and more convinced that the Joint Declaration means not much beyond the fact that finally the the late 20th century were Lutherans and Catholics able to sit down together and attempt to work something out without beating each other up. Clearly, the issue is still very much extremely divided and real differences persist. I will need to re-read the document and also the relevant critical literature of it in its wake at some point, but I’ve spent enough time writing this post today.
I’m not sure what ‘work’ simply asserting “faith is a work” does. I don’t disagree per se with this, it’s just that saying this from the univocal standpoint of “justification by faith (in Christ) alone” seems to still discount the narrative of Scripture which introduces some sort of distinction or larger picture than the “faith vs. works” dichotomy (or its flattening) allows.
I’ve never really cared about this issue that much because it seemed really boring.
I didn’t give nearly as much blog ink to the issue of grace that Aaron and Adrian raised, but I will leave it here.

* “alone” is in quotes because it was an insertion by Martin Luther. It appears nowhere in the Greek of Romans 3:22 (I think that is the verse). Plus, a place where “alone” does appear is exactly where it refutes the doctrine: ”You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone” (James 2:24 , emphasis mine).

** On this see Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, p. 169.

Feb 02 0 comments

Evolution, Links, Philosophy, Theology

My Adviser on BBC Radio

charlesdarwin Fast-forward to 1 hour, 14 minute mark and you can hear my adviser Conor Cunningham, along with others, talking for about 15 about faith and evolution in light of the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species:

BBC Radio Ulster: Sunday Sequence with William Crawley

[Note: There's a chance that the BBC iPlayer may not work outside the UK, my apologies, although if you Google around a bit, there may be ways around this.]

Jan 14 1 comments

Books, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Paradox, Philosophy, Theology

Symposium on Christ, History and Apocalyptic

A series of posts has begun around Nate Kerr’s book Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission over on the Church and Postmodern Culture blog. First up is Joshua Davis on the introductory chapter 1, who has just posted his engagement on Monday. The conversation is already picking up nicely.

Here is the rest of the schedule:

19 January – Chapter 2: “Ernst Troeltsch: The Triumph of Ideology and the Eclipse of Apocalyptic”, response by David Congdon
26 January – Chapter 3: “Karl Barth: Foundations for an Apocalyptic Christology”, response by John McDowell
2 February – Chapter 4: “Stanley Hauerwas: Apocalyptic, Narrative Ecclesiology, and ‘the Limits of Anti-Constantinianism’ “, response by John W. Wright
9 February – Chapter 5: “John Howard Yoder: The Singularity of Jesus and the Apocalypticization of History”, response by Douglas Harink
16 February – Chapter 6: “Towards an Apocalyptic Politics of Mission”, response by James K. A. Smith
23 February – Concluding response by Nathan R. Kerr (although he has already been providing helpful clarifying comments already)

Also, Nate informs me that Cascade Books is still offering a 40% off discount if the book purchased through their site using the discount code “KERR40″, bringing the book down to $16.80 (significantly cheaper than Amazon).

Dave Belcher informs us that there will be a panel at this year’s Wesleyan Theological Society conference on Nate’s book as well. Panelists include Scott Daniels, John Wright, Sam Powell, and Michael Cartwright, with Nate responding, and Dave Belcher at the moderating helm.

Jan 09 2 comments

Hegel, Irony, Kierkegaard, Paradox, Philosophy, Reflections, Theology

Brief Thoughts on Irony

fly_spray

It is often said by the British that Americans do not understand irony. I think this is true depending upon which swath of Americans are being referred to, but by no means is it true in my circles of friends on the West coast. If I remember correctly, though, the place I heard this generalisation uttered was referring more to American pop culture: whereas American pop culture is more defined by glitz, glorification of celebrity, explosions and violence on television on movies, British pop culture, from what I can tell thus far, seems to be more defined by–yes–irony, wittiness (or attempts thereof), and sly humour.

Having now lived in England for a short period of about six months, I’m not so sure if irony is as ‘essential’ to the culture (if there can be such a thing) as just the fact of societal indirectness. When it comes to humour, this is great. But when it comes to relationships it seems like at its worst, such indirectness can quickly become passive aggressive writ large. Although, perhaps Americans are just too direct, too aggressive.

Now, on one level, as long as it moves beyond it’s stylistic embodiments in culture, irony is perfectly fine. Heck, I even wrote an MA thesis partly on irony (“Contradiction, Paradox, and Irony: Theological and Philosophical Stances of Hegel and Kierkegaard”). Søren Kierkegaard, in more ways than one, was an ironic figure, and even extoled the virtues (so to speak) of indirectness and indirect communication. In so many ways, especially within his context of Christendom, Kierkegaard’s approach seems to me the right one — and are we not in the same context?

Yet, I am not always so sure about this. Because of it’s tendencies toward sarcasm (of the biting kind), and because real relationships don’t really seem to work very well if one person thinks they can really be a gadfly, I am reminded of when Jesus said that we should let our “yes be yes” and our “no be no” (Matthew 5:37 ; James 5:12 ). Quintilian’s definition of irony is that the “phenomenon is different from the essence”; in other words, that when one speaks, they do not mean what they say. This is the famous definition of Socratic irony.

I am not entirely sure what to make of this yet… I went to sleep last night thinking of this for some reason. Clearly, I am not going to make some banal claim such that “see, Socrates isn’t Christian” or other obviously anachronistic idiocies. Kierkegaard/Anti-Climacus is correct when he talks about the indirect communication of the God-man in Practice in Christianity, which is something quite different from one’s communication. It’s like the indirectness of the God-man was more an existential one of stance or ‘comportment’. But then, I am reminded that Jesus Christ is the Father’s communication as the Word, so then I get confused again. I’m just thinking aloud.

Dec 15 1 comments

Books, Links, Naturalism, Philosophy, Theology

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

These are slightly old now (in internet time), but here are a couple of noteworthy reviews in NDPR:

Paul Draper has a very good and critical review of Naturalism, which is written by Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (Interventions series). The final paragraph:

Although [Goetz and Taliaferro]’s assessment of naturalism is, in my opinion, far from complete, I would highly recommend the book to philosophy students at all levels. It would be an ideal text for a course in metaphysics or philosophy of mind or even philosophy of religion. For not only is it a very short book, which increases the likelihood that students would actually read it, but it is full of arguments that are rigorous, clear, and free of technical jargon. In addition to being accessible, these arguments provide excellent models for students to imitate in their own philosophical writing. I would also strongly recommend the book to professional philosophers, especially to naturalists. For the book is an excellent reminder that, while naturalism is unquestioned by most philosophers, there remains serious and all too often unanswered opposition to it, and the problems it faces are deep and difficult.

Not a bad book cover, either, eh?

David Burrell has a review of Michael Allen Gillespie’s newest book entitled The Theological Origins of Modernity. The book sounds rather disappointing on Burrell’s take. Which reminds me: I still need to finish Gillespie’s earlier work, which I’ve been told by people who have read both, is quite a bit better. Oh here I go, getting all ‘indie’ on genealogical takes on philosophy and theology, oy.

In other news, it’s 4:30pm and the sun set about an hour ago. I’m definitely not anywhere used to that.

Nov 05 3 comments

Books, Philosophy, Theology

After Enlightenment

John Betz’s new and important book on Hamann is just out: After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamaan (Illuminations series, more details here). Our library doesn’t have it yet, and it is outrageously expensive — and I heard it may only be published in hardback — so I may not be able to borrow it from these parts for another few weeks.

Meanwhile, Peter Leithart has begun blogging the book:

Hopefully there will be more to come; it’s a rather large book, and in the newer, weird, large-and-bulky Blackwell format (e.g., the 2nd edition of Theology and Social Theory and William Desmond’s God and the Between).

Oct 24 1 comments

Books, CoTP, Theology

Nate Kerr’s Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission

Nate Kerr’s Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission is now out in the U.S. through Cascade Books. Ben Myers has posted an except on his Faith and Theology blog of chapter 5 bearing the title, “John Howard Yoder: The Singularity of Jesus and the Apocalypticization of History.” Those outside of the U.S. will need to buy the book here in the Centre of Theology and Philosophy’s Veritas series published by SCM Press, which will be out very soon.

This January on the Church and Postmodern Culture blog, we hope to have a symposium on Nate’s book. More on that later as we are still working out people to engage the book!

Oct 20 4 comments

CoTP, Links, News, Paradox, Philosophy, Theology

Rome videos update

Just wanted to make a brief note (as a good handful of people have been asking me) that unfortunately, it looks like I won’t get any studio time until November to edit the videos I took from the Grandeur of Reason conference in Rome. Turns out the studio all of a sudden had an influx of busy-ness or something. Sorry. I’m eager to see them too.

Meanwhile, this book is up on the MIT Press website now: The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? It’s a conversation between Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank (ed. Creston Davis). [via]

Sep 15 0 comments

Events, Philosophy, Reflections, Theology

Grandeur of Reason round-up

Some excellent reports and reflections:

Sep 08 8 comments

Events, Philosophy, Reflections, Theology

Reflections and a report on the Grandeur of Reason conference

Last Thursday was the last day of the four-day Grandeur of Reason conference. [Immediately after returning from the conference my wife and I took a bus down to London to visit a very good friend and I'll have a separate post on that with pictures later...all of which is why I am only now blogging this.] I attended with many of the University of Nottingham crew along with a total of over 250 attendees–180 of whom also presented papers. It was a very, very full conference, and I was definitely put to work. Unfortunately, there were some papers I was not able to attend that I really wanted to see, but that is what happens in a large conference such as this I suppose. I’ll attempt to go over some anecdotal highlights of the trip for myself. I’m looking forward to other blog reports from other perspectives!

I met the rest of the students from the University of Nottingham, including Andrew Thomas (lives in Norway) and Chris Hackett who is now studying at the University of Virginia, not to mention Philip Gorski and Thomas Lynch who is finishing up his MA.

Also, I had the pleasure of meeting Paul Tyson whose PhD adviser wrote a bookback in 1994 which is basically very similar to my own proposed research thesis. Thing is, I didn’t know about this similarity until a few months after I had already been accepted to the University of Nottingham. I had seen a footnote that Paul gave to his adviser’s book in the recently-released Belief and Metaphysics volume (see p. 412). Paul had some very encouraging words to say regarding that, and he was a great conversation partner. I hope to talk to him more and read more of his work.

I had this conversation with Paul on the way to St. Peter’s cathedral on the Sunday before the conference started. I don’t think I quite realized where we were going because within 90 minutes of arriving in Rome I was standing in front of an amazing sight:

We didn’t have a chance to walk around inside the cathedral because we had to head off to a late lunch and head back to the conference hotel to finish up putting together the packets of information for each delegate.

When the panels started the next morning at 9:00am, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the papers at this conference were top-notch. Rarely did I hear a paper that disappointed, and most also invited good discussion. The first plenary on Monday evening consisted of a session arranged by Conor of three of his former professors: James Williams, Cyril O’Regan, and Graham Ward. Of the three, I was really only familiar with the topic of Graham’s paper on ‘Hegel and the Messianic’ considering my MA thesis was half on Hegel. I want to be sure and follow up with him about as I am curious to see where his paper was intending to go–he was not able to finish the full implications of the direction of his thought due to time restraints.

The next morning I heard a very interesting panel which consisted of a paper entitled ‘If’ by Darrell Lackey (the only other former resident of central California in addition to myself at the conference); a paper on ‘A NonMisologist Platonism’ and the director Pasolini by Jones Irwin; and a paper by Cornelius Simut on the thought of Edward Schillebeeckx. It was a surprisingl good panel. Darrell had never presented a paper at a conference like this before and I would say he performed rather well, and his pastoral perspective was especially welcome. Jones Irwin’s paper was extremely intriguing regarding the work of Pasolini, and moreover, it was a surprisingly hospitable paper in regards to the conference topic (Tony Baker–the chair of that panel–and I were talking afterwards and definitely wanted to find out more about Pasolini). Cornelius Simut’s paper on Schillebeeckx was, for me, a helpful and bizarre introduction to the thought of Schillebeeckx. It was helpful because Simut’s paper was focused on little-known interviews with Schillebeeckx and it was bizarre primarily because of what Schillebeeckx actually believes. I’m probably the last to know this, but basically, Simut made the comment a couple of times that he was suprised that Hans Kung got censored (or whatever the official word is) but that Schillebeeckx did not, especially considering that Kung is far less radical than Schillebeeckx.

After lunch I was to present a paper with probably a few too many “and”’s in the title: “The Grandeur and Disenchantment of Reason: Universalism and Irony in Hegel and Kierkegaard.” The other students in the panel in which I was a part during the Tuesday afternoon student session were of high quality and the question and answer sessions after each were well-informed and lively. I would have liked to have attended the other Nottingham student papers, but they were all scheduled during the same time slot. After my paper people asked me how it went and all I could really say was, “people tell me it went well.” I got good questions and people complimented my paper but I honestly still feel like I can’t produce a real opinion on my performance just yet. So I think it went okay!?

Later that evening was the second plenary with François Laruelle, Michele Lenoci, and Dustin McWherter. Quentin Meillassoux was actually supposed to be presenting on that panel as well but just a few days before the conference–and after the programmes were printed–his father-in-law passed away and so he could not attend. I confess a nearly complete ignorance with the thought of these thinkers, so I will just post one picture for now of Laruelle (more later, probably in a post here).

The next morning began with a visit to the Vatican. Here is Graham Ward (back of his head), John Milbank, and Stanley Hauerwas standing in line:

We were standing in line to see Pope Benedict XVI give an address. And here he is:

I forget how large the audience was here, but I think it was something slightly below 10,000 people. Groups from around the world were introduced (“pilgrims from Nigeria…”, etc.), greeting Benedict with songs, flag-waving, cheers, and even brief musical numbers. And, despite the silly outfits of the Swiss guards (see above), it was a celebratory occasion: the catholicity in the room was apparent. The pope spoke in maybe 6 different languages, greeting different peoples and giving a brief homily of sorts. Afterwards, Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank personally greeted the pope and gave him a painting painted by Conor Cunningham’s sister, Sara Cunningham-Bell.

The remainder of Wednesday and Thursday consisted of non-stop panels. The first one after the Vatican visit was a plenary session with Oliver O’Donovan, Stanley Hauerwas, and John Milbank (chair: Graham Ward). As was to be expected, it was a varied and lively session:

As well as a session with Daniel M. Bell, Stephen Long, and Michael Budde (chair: Hauerwas…and apologies for the bad white balance on this one):

Thursday was jam-packed with sessions including a session on the three recently-released books in the INTERVENTIONS series of books published by Eerdmans. The volumes on Naturalism, Žižek, and Heidegger were represented by Charles Taliaferro and Stewart Goetz (pictured far left), Marcus Pound (pictured 3rd from left), and Sean McGrath (pictured far right), respectively, with Pete Candler and Conor Cunningham (pictured 4th and 5th from left) both chairing the session as well as representing themselves as the editors of the series:

The final plenary session was with Giorgio Agamben who spoke on the topics of his recent research on oikonomia and glory in Il Regno e la Gloria (helpful chapter-by-chapter notes can be found here on this work still not translated into English):

I’m still pretty tired from the conference, and there was a frickin’ ton of papers, so much of the sessions are a bit of a blur. But, despite all the lack of sleep, and despite the fact that it would have been better if all of the attendees could have stayed in one place instead of scattered throughout different hotels/seminaries–I would say it was overall a good conference. It was especially nice to see friends that I do not see very often such as Craig Keen and many of his former students, as well as the friends I have continued to stay in touch with since Granada in 2006 and the AAR in San Diego last year. It was also a pleasure to finally meet both the Archbishop of Granada whom I had not met when we were in Granada back then, as well as Dave Belcher–whose paper was quite beautiful (and who I somehow missed meeting at a conference that my pastor organized back in January 2007).

Every night we were up late till 3 or 4am and up again by 9am for the sessions, so while I am sleeping until term starts for me on the 22nd of this month, I look forward to hearing reflections from others who have blogs or who would care to add anything in the comments section below (and unfortunately I just read that Ben Myers got sick, so I am not sure how much of the conference he was able to attend).

As a final note, we plan on posting more pictures (in full resolution), videos of the plenaries + Q&A sessions for each, etc. online sometime soon, so stay tuned here or here for that.

Aug 28 4 comments

CoTP, Events, Philosophy, Theology

Programmes

The programmes for the Grandeur of Reason conference have been printed as of yesterday. I have to continue writing my paper so that page 10 won’t be tellin’ lies. More later!

the blog of Eric Austin Lee