Refuting the Allergy to Determinacy

My paper at the "Towards a Philosophy of Life" conference, "Making Good on the "Good" of Life: Emerging Logics and Poetics of the Kingdom" (see here for my abstract) was well received. A few people who hadn't been there had heard from others who were that it was good, which was really nice to hear. Jack Caputo called it 'sizzling,' but I don't really know what that means! He said he completely agreed with my analysis of James K.A. Smith's work, particularly the logic of incarnation (see blog post here about Jack's paper, "Bodies Without Flesh: The Soft Gnosticism of Incarnational Theology"), and said again that I read him very well (he had positive things to say about my Boston paper too, see here for an overview of what I said). But I guess it's easy to get those kinds of reactions when the person whose work you are reflecting on is a lovely guy and when you're saving favourable things! I'd love to get Jamie Smith's take on what I'm doing. Maybe I could email him? He's working on a trilogy (first part to be published this September, entitled Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation) on a theology of culture, but I'm particularly intrigued by his methodological work arguing for the importance of liturgical practices as the site for philosophical reflection on religion.

Anyway, this paper forms parts of my doctoral thesis, particularly chapter Six, "Truth and Fictionality." But, as slightly tangential to my main argument, it is something that could easily be turned into a journal article with some more padding out and the like. As you can see from the paper's abstract (here), my main concern is to refute the criticisms Jamie Smith levels at Jack Caputo's Derridean deconstructive theology. Jamie's criticisms can be found most accessibly in his "The Logic of Incarnation: Towards a Catholic Postmodernism" in Neal DeRoo and Brian Lightbody's The Logic of Incarnation: James K.A. Smith's Critique of Postmodern Religion, pp.3-37. Smith identifies in both Caputo and Derrida what he terms a 'logic of determination.' (See here for more details on all this). My paper argues that the operative logic at work in Caputo's theology is that of the call or the promise which, far from being allergic to particularity, as Smith contends, seeks to release the promise in particular determinate religious (and "non-religious") traditions.

My argument runs basically thus:

• A presentation of Smith's characterization of the 'logic of determination.'

For Smith, the Derridean/Caputian logic of determination results in an interpretation of particularity that assumes, first, the finite nature of human life to be structurally (that is, necessarily) regrettable and, second, the interpretive visions of life and hopes for life of humanity’s determinate religious traditions to be exclusionary, violent and unjust. Thirdly, for Smith, the consequences of such a logic include the translation of Derrida’s undeconstructible justice into an indeterminate, not specifically Christian, kingdom of God that is similarly structurally always to-come, never present.

• A defense of Caputo's theological project against these criticisms (in an alternative order).

Firstly, Caputo’s reflections on the name of God are associated with several particular determinate traditions, including the creation narratives and the kingdom parables of the Christian scriptures. Secondly, an exploration of these creation and kingdom themes reveals that finitude is affirmed as part of the "goodness" of creation, no matter what, by God's "good," his "yes," at the moment of creation, and that the kingdom of God is our second "yes," our affirmation of the task of "making good" on the goodness of creation, no matter what. Thirdly, then, a (mis)interpretation of the kingdom of God as a concept that corresponds to a literal reality that will either arrive (Smith) or never arrive (Smith's reading of Caputo) (mis)characterizes it as a concept that aims to be representational rather than as a concept that aims to be transformational.

• An argument that Caputo's theology is preferable to Smith's.
  

In reflecting phenomenologically on the general structure of religious experience, both Caputo and Smith emphasise the undecidability of life, the contingency of our interpretations of it, and the fictive nature of all hermeneutics. However, Caputo more successfully retains these phenomenologcal insights in his particular, determinate Christian theology than Smith.

You can view my powerpoint presentation below, and email me if you'd like a copy of the paper I gave; but I'm thinking seriously about turning it into a journal article. Over the next year (once I've finally submitted my thesis) I will be attempting to get a publishing contract to turn it into a book, but this little nugget of the argument could easily be slotted out and published in article form. At the moment, I'd entitle it: "Refuting the Allergy to Determinacy: Determining the Theo-Logic of the Call in Weak Theology."

Making Good on the "Good" of Life: Emerging Logics and Poetics of the Kingdom

View more documents from Katharine Moody.

Philosophy of Life Conference Round-Up

I got back last night from Liverpool Hope's "Towards a Philosophy of Life: Reflections on the Concept of Life in Continental Philosophy of Religion" conference, having had a thoroughly enjoyable (if not totally follow-able) weekend. My own learning style is not comfortable with listening to people read written papers. I'm much more at home with people presenting, rather than reading, work. But philosophers tend to go for the practice of writing a journal paper or book chapter or whatever, and then just reading it out - rather than thinking about their audience's learning styles and altering the piece in order to facilitate rather than alienate others! Only very few of the papers this weekend were easy to follow (even if you knew the material they were talking about) which was disappointing. But I have always felt that sociologists of religion are much better presenters, thereby actually helping their audience follow their argument. Didn't mean to start this post off with a bit of a moan, but philosophers' styles of presentation do tend to detract from the enjoyment of philosophy conferences.

I met a cool bunch of people, including Simon Scott (PhD student at Warwick), Shahida Bari (How To Live blog), Aaron Landau (University of Hong Kong), Todd Mei (University of Kent) and Chad Lackies (Concordia Seminary, here's his blog). It was particularly great to meet Colby Dickinson (KU Leuven) whose paper on Agamben, the messianic and canonicity was really stimulating because of a resonance with my own work. Canonicity, Colby writes, is "the 'desire' for the canonical over and beyond any canon," clearly mirroring the hope against hope for the messianic given voice in but not restricted to determinate concrete messianisms. My paper also charted this dual movement, but in relation to Jack Caputo's historical association with Christianity (I was looking particularly at creation and kingdom in order to refute Jamie Smith's characterization of Caputo's work as allergic to determinate particularities, more of which in a later post) and messianic disassociation. Colby made some intriguing connections with identity formation, and Jack, Colby and I had a useful discussion after his paper about how communities that adopt deconstructive theologies actually do (ir)religious community. It's what I'm hoping to work on next, getting together a proposal for a research fellowship after I've finished my thesis.

Anyway, Jack's paper on "Bodies Without Flesh: The Soft Gnosticism of Incarnational Theology" was very thought provoking, though I know there were a lot of people that were very disppointed that John Milbank only came for his own paper, rather than engaging with Caputo's criticisms of Radical Orthodoxy's incarnational theology. His excuse was that he had, apparently, been stuck on one of the amphibious vehicles (duck) that take you on tours round Liverpool and brokedown (lame). Well, Jack's paper draws from his work towards a sequel to The Weakness of God, currently entitled The Weakness of Flesh. He argued that incarnational theology's incarnation is not radical enough. It is a theology of in-carnation, rather than a theology of carnality. It places "the life of flesh within an economy of bodies without flesh." Like contemporary robotologists, incarnational theology attempts to transform bodies of flesh into bodies without flesh, in the process "betraying" flesh, harbouring a secret "horror of flesh." Instead, he asked, "What would a theology of carnality itself, before or without In-carnation, look like?" "Instead of a transaction between fleshly and fleshless being, I propose a more radical conception of incarnation as an event of flesh itself, of becoming-flesh," of taking, therefore, Christianity seriously, at its word, as the Word made flesh. Caputo is, as I intimated above, not removing himself from the Christian tradition but trying to make the tradition "make good" on its promises. Looking forward to The Weakness of Flesh already!

Congratulations to Dr. Carr

See? It can be done!!! Our friend, Patrick Carr, passed his viva on Thursday, June 11th. His thesis was entitled, "Moral Perception and Meditation: A Secular Study of Spiritual Exercises and the Cultivation of Compassion." Here's little bit from his abstract (hope he won't mind!):

"Forces of distraction and disorientation in contemporary culture which undermine moral engagement make the need for systematic means of cultivating moral agency particularly pressing. Whilst for many people today, religious frames of reference no longer remain convincing, religious traditions remain the repository of some of the most effective forms of self- and moral formation ever developed, so-called ‘spiritual exercises’. This thesis develops a naturalistic philosophical and psychological framework by means of which the form and content of one such historical spiritual exercise, Christian meditation, can be reformulated and applied to the challenge of moral formation in a post-religious context." If that's whet your appetite, you can hungrily await its publication!

Being a Young Theologian Today

In November, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, Ireland, are hosting a conference called "Interface: Being a Young Theologian in the World," from the 6 - 7th. Here's a bit of blurb: "The conference is aimed at young theologians and has two objectives - to explore the role of the young theologian and to explore the role of theology in contemporary society." That really is a bit of blurb. The only other information I can find about this conference is that abstracts (of no more than 25o words) are to be submitted to interfacemaynooth@gmail.com (along with applicant's educational status: Institution, course, year, etc.) by September 7th, and papers should be 20 minutes in length.

I'm thinking of submitting an abstract but, due to its subject matter, it may well not get accepted. It stems from my supervisors persistence that she thinks what I am doing is theology. Maybe it is. But I don't want it to be. And I don't want to be a theologian... Why is that? I thought I'd interrogate my thoughts about theology and being a theologian today a bit more and see where they got me. The reason that such a discussion may not get accepted is because its more about not wanting to be a young theologian in the world than being one! But maybe this perspective would be of use to others... Maybe not.

But how does one "be" a theologian? Am I one? Do I even know what I am, in order to say I am, or I am not, a theologian? There are clear parallels here with Jacques Derrida's thoughts on "being" an atheist. He tells us he "rightly passes" for one. But "is" he one? Does he know whether or not he is "one"? Is he "one" of anything? Are we not radically plural in our selves? Is there both atheist and theist (and more besides) within him? Is there both a theologian in me and another self, or even other selves, that are not, that do not want to be, and that hate the theologian in me? Maybe I "pass" for a theologian? But that is up to other people, not me!

Maybe the problem I have with being a theologian has to do with the status, or nature, or interpretation of theology itself? Jack Caputo used to refuse the label of theology and of being a theologian, because (in his Derrideanicity) he equated it with "onto-theology" (The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, pp.288-289), with a project that "takes God as an object of conceptual analysis - rather than the addressee of a prayer - and is awash in institutional power" (The Weakness of God, p.301, footnote 1). Now, however, Caputo equates such dreams of a "calm and objectifying" discipline with Religious Studies, whereas Theology is a "disturbing passiong for God" which he loves madly (The Weakness of God, p.301, footnote 2). So maybe I do want to be a theologian? Afterall, Jack Caputo is my kind of theologian.

But, then again, the kind of theologian that Jack Caputo is, is an a/theologian. His theology exists on the slash of undecidability between atheism and theism; his is a theology, for sure. It names God within a determinate tradition - Christianity. But it never forgets that names are subject to endless translatability and substitutability (differance, Derrida would say) such that his theology remembers that it can be determined otherwise. Caputo does not say that he has named God once and for all; damn those who disagree to hell. Instead, he recognizes that what goes under the name of God also goes under other names. So maybe I want to be a/Theologian? (I reflect further on the nature of theology itself in my thesis, particularly on theology as fiction; its also something I cover in my paper for the Towards a Philosophy of Life Conference, which I haven't finished yet!)

Maybe I assume theology lacks humility about itself, about its status as theology, and maybe my presumption of theology as dogmatic is what makes me nervous about it, and about being one. In the West's pluralistic context, is this not how theology is viewed in the world today? Is this not how young theologians are viewed in the world today? As having "the truth" all sown up; damn everyone else's truth?

I don't know. But I thought it would be interesting to interrogate this presumptions a bit further, and to try and get a paper on it accepted to a conference on being a young theologian today. I think I'll call it "On (Not) Wanting to be a/Theologian."

I thought about doing an informal survey of undergrads starting theology and religious studies courses next year, asking about their preconceptions about the disciplines, the boundaries between them, and how they are/how they think they are perceived by "the public." Some useful resources on these topics from the Higher Education Academy's Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies includes Angela Quartermaine's "Theology and/or Religious Studies? A Response from Graduate Students."

Listen to "Studying Religion and the Internet"

You can (if you really want to!) download an MP3 of my session, "Studying Religion and the Internet," at the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies' study-day "Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion," from the Birkbeck webpage here. I've done one other podcast - a reading of my chapter, "Theo(b)logy: The Technological Transformation of Theology," for Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolusion - and already knew that I hated the sound of my voice, so I was really not looking forward to listening to this. But it's not as bad as I remembered it being!


I had thought that it was the worst presentation I've ever done. Partly because we were waiting for another participant which meant that the time we had for discussion at the end was truncated; partly because I felt rushed anyway, getting everything in that I felt was valuable to know about studying religion and the Internet (which could have had a whole day to itself!); and partly because I felt I had written so many different things on religion and the Internet and in so many different formats that I got lulled into a false sense of security regarding my material: I felt that because I had already written particular points (and written them, of course, so well!) that I was loathe to change it; the result was that I felt I was reading my notes much more than I usually do when presenting. I should have had more confidence in my own abilities to make sense of sparse notes, rather than trying to convey that "already written perfectly" point, if that makes sense! Nevermind. It's there if you want it!

Back from Paris

So Sim and I got back from Paris, after a very hot few days wandering around looking at pretty things. We loved the Louvre and Musee Rodin, and watched the sunset from the Eiffel Tower. But my French is incredibly rusty and what I've picked back up from reading deconstructive theology isn't exactly helpful. Only the first half of Je ne sais pas, il faut croire is actually useful!!!


I heard back from Sexualities, to whom I had submitted my "Queerying The Spiritual Revolution: Religious Mediation among LGBT Christians" article (see here), and the editor and reviewers asked me to revise a few things. As I'm madly trying to complete my thesis, however, I'm quite uncertain as to whether or not to spend time on it and resubmit it. The revisions they asked for really would transform the piece into something much more socially scientific, with methodology sections and tonnes of data, whereas the piece is more theoretical than that, dealing with broader implications rather than the specifics of my study. My supervisor suggested Theology and Sexuality, but I'm not sure that's quite right either, possibly still too specialist. There are important implications to draw from this piece beyond the boundaries of sexuality studies. I was thinking of aiming high and going for the Journal of Contemporary Religion, which is a broader journal in which more people will be engaged in the mapping of the contemporary religious and spiritual landscape that will bring them in contact with Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead's The Spiritual Revolution in the first place. This means they might be more my audience, than a sexualities journal. JCR deals with

• "classical topics in the study of religion, such as secularisation and the vitality of religion or traditional sectarian movements;
• "more recent developments in the study of religion, including religion and social problems, religion and the environment, religion and education, the transmission of religion, the materialisation and visualisation of religion in various forms, new forms of religious pluralism, the rise of new forms of religion and spirituality, religion and the Internet, religion and science, religion and globalisation, religion and the economy, etc.
• "theoretical approaches to the study of religion;
• "discussions of method in relation to empirical research;
• "qualitative and quantitative research and related issues."

My article seems to fit well here. Here's the abstract (again):

This article uses small-scale studies among LGBT Christians to “queery” the dualistic framework of Heelas and Woodhead’s The Spiritual Revolution. Theories of mediation are required to explain the practices and beliefs of those negotiating both subjective-life and life-as modes of living. Identity integration strategies among LGBT Christians suggest ways in which individuals and communities might navigate these categories of religious significance and authority. Data confirms that different forms of life-as religions-cum-spiritualities are making the subjective turn; that participants nevertheless alternate between rather than ‘fuse’ internal and (albeit reconstructed) external authorities; and that Heelas’ more recent God without/“god” within distinction is a clearer marker of whether practitioners are already affiliated to either transcendent theism or inner-life spirituality and of when a transition from one to the other has been or is being undertaken.

Key words:

• Christianity;
• Heelas and Woodhead;
• LGBT;
• inner-life spirituality;
• spiritual revolution.

Aspiring Academics - Part Two (QAA and Curriculum Design)

At "Aspiring Academics," Dr. David Mossley (the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies manager) gave a workshop on curriculum design. It was actually the first time I had heard of things such as the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), which was established in 1997 to as an independent assessment of HE standards. The website has downloadable subject-specific "benchmark" statements which set out the expectations at each level of degree (click here to download subject-specific statements for undergraduate, and here for Masters level). They set out what any student at any level should be able to do in their discipline. The programme specifications for university courses have to reference these documents, in providing details of intended learning outcomes and the means by which these outcomes are achieved and demonstrated. Also relevant for course design is the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications (FHEQ), which ensures a consistent use of qualification titles that correspond to qualification levels.


David (who works in philosophy) talked about the different ways in which teaching could be linked to research interests; namely, directly and, you guessed it, indirectly. Direct linkage between research and teaching generally comes in the form of relevant content: teaching what you research (i.e. a course of your own design), teaching in the field in which you research, and using your research to directly inform another field. Indirect linkages tend to be drawn through the particular delivery of your teaching: teaching that draws on your research (e.g. using a particular view of autonomy or agency to inform a philosophy of education and actual practice) and teaching that is informed by a more general approach to philosophy, derived from your research.

He also spoke about teaching portfolios. I have a CV (see blog sidebar to left) which I regularly update with my teaching experience, but teaching portfolios are more detailed, including a statement of your teaching philosophy. It coversthe levels of ontology (what is education?), epistemology (how do we know about education?) and ethics (what is the value of education? what is its value in society? why is it a "good"?)

We then moved on to thinking about whether we could design a course around our (current) research interests (the workshop delegates were early career researchers and finishing PhD students). In terms of creating a course that directly links to our research, he asked us to think about what about our research would be appropriate to teach undergraduates, for example, at their level? what criteria could be used to determine how our research fits the needs of an undergraduate audience? and, does it fit with departmental, institutional or national frameworks? He also reminded us that we may need to explore equality legislation and access issues.

My list of courses to offer in an ideal world included:

• Progressive Christianity
• Christianity and Culture
• Christianity and Postmodern Thought
• Deconstructive Theology

Courses to which I could easily adapt my knowledge included:

• Contintental Philosophy of Religion
• Sociology of Religion and Spirituality
• Religion and the Internet
• Religion and Gender
• Research Methodologies

In relation to indirectly using our research, David asked us to think through the following questions. In terms of education and teaching practice,

• What does your research tell you about: the world and beings in it, the contested nature of knowledge, agency and persons, value (ethics, culture, diversity)?
• What implications can you draw from your research for how teaching should be done?

Some useful online resources in this area from the Subject Centre include,"The Qualifications Framework" by George Macdonald Ross and "Linking Teaching and Research" by Danielle Lamb.

The last session of the day ("Career Planning," Rebecca O'Loughlin) basically acted as a round-up of what had gone before. It concluded that the way to maximize academic capital was through publications, teaching and networking. In terms of publications, a strong publishing record is important, but what this means differs across disciplines. For example, Jonathon Wolff (Department of Philosophy, UCL) said journal articles were the way forward in philosophy, rather than monographs. For Mathew Guest (Department of Theology and Religion, Durham) the reverse was true. You can add to your own teaching experience before a permanent position through lecturing, tutoring and doing associated adiministration (e.g. managing modules, designing curriculum, developing curriculum, and working on departmental or module websites). Networking is, as always, important. Becoming part of your academic community (through conferences, discussion lists, etc.) will aid in building a network of contacts who can be a source of feedback on research and let you know about job opportunities, etc. Importantly, departments look for candidates who can integrate their published research with the institution's teaching and the current trends in the discipline.

The powerpoint presentations for Mathew's talk on funding (see my blog post here), and on curriculum design and teaching portfolios can be downloaded from the Subject Centre website, here.

Paris

Sim and I are taking a few days off and heading to Paris for a few days.

We're going to see Antony and the Johnsons tonight at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, staying in a hotel on Brindley Place and then Eurostar-ing it tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to some mellow time wandering around and looking at pretty things... Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Sainte Chapelle, the Louvre, Musee Rodin... Very excited!

While we're away I'm going to be (re)reading Jamie Smith's Speech and Theology Language and the Logic of Incarnation. Just in case you were thinking I was going to be able to leave work behind for a bit. Oh no. No time, missy!

Panel Review (2009)

So my fourth year panel review went fine. My panel consisted of my supervisor, Deborah Sawyer, and two colleagues from the Department, Shuruq Naguib and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad. I've not had them on my panel before so was keen to hear what they made of my project documents (including a one page summary of my thesis [here] and an annotated plan [see here for current thesis structure]).

Ram was eager to help me avoid over-engineering my thesis, basically helping me see that I've got internal reasons (i.e. in the interviews) for the theorists that I need to use, so that I don't have to use everyone!!! It's always helpful to hear you can do less than you've been thinking you need to. So it was good to hear the message of less is more!

As I didn't hand in a sample of writing that showed how I would integrate theory and empirical data, Ram was concerned that I not give the impression of over-interpreting what participants are saying, but just to let them speak for themselves. This won't be a problem, as my work inter-weaves theory and data well, I think. It's just I couldn't show Ram that, and he wanted to just make sure. He talked about how it was okay to both a) let the data say it plainly and b) say I am usefully interpreting the data as saying it. Shuruq also asked some interesting questions about the relationship between the data from my participants and my argument, in terms of how I am using my data, and what my relationship is to my participants.

Shuruq was worried that my initial contextualization of the empirical data in the UK gets lost throughout the rest of the structure. I'm not sure what to think about this yet. I need a "what is the emerging church?" section as it is not a widely known phenomenon within academia, but this question is not my research question; just the context in which I ask my questions. But I don't think I am losing that context throughout the rest of the thesis because I am continually coming back to the fact that participants are engaging the postmodern turn culturally and philosophically.

I think she was more concerned about the gender imbalance in both my use of (largley male) theorists and (largley male) participants; but this isn't something that I haven't noticed or plan to ignore! As she didn't know that my MA work had been in Women and Religion, I think she just wanted to make sure that I would mention the implications of this imbalance as and when they arose (which I have and will continue to). But, as Ram pointed out, my thesis isn't on gender.

All good food for thought. I'm sure I'll be posting again shortly with an altered thesis structure and abstract to reflect my thinking after this review.

Aspiring Academics - Part One (RAE, REF, and Funding)

My second (of three!) trips to London this week (here's the first [update: and the third]) was to Woburn House for the HEA Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies career workshop for "Aspiring Academics."

The first thing I have to mention about this day is that the cheap advance ticket I bought for my journey was actually in First Class!!! I've never travelled anywhere First Class before so it was all very exciting. Though I declined the offers of various complimentary goodies (tea, coffee, cooked breakfast!!!) because I wasn't made aware that they were complimentary and I thought someone was going to come round with a chip-and-pin machine and I'd have no where to run and hide! Anyway, I think it was pretty obvious to my fellow First Classers that I didn't really belong there. A very nice man (actually a senior member of staff at one of the other secondary schools here in Lichfield - not Sim's school) got me a free bottle of water from the minifridge (Harrogate Spa, no less!) with the word "complimentary" clearly front and centre so that I didn't freak out! Thanks, nice man.

Anyway, to get my train journey cheap I had to arrive two hours early, so I spent a bit of time reading at Euston (I also had four hours to kill the other end of the day!) before heading off to drink complimentary coffee at Woburn House.

The day began with a very brief introduction to the work of the Subject Centre, and then cracked on with the main talks.

Jo Wolff (this photoshoot is a cool thing to include on your uni page) spoke about the shift from the Research Assessment Exercise (here's the RAE2008 webpage, and, as an example, Lancaster University's submissions and results) to the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Mathew Guest spoke about funding opportunities and Joe Cain enthused us with an exercise on networking. As the RAE/REF has remained a mystery to me for a while (staff often presume you know what they are talking about when they use acronyms and Higher Education lingo, and you feel like an idiot for asking) I'll blog mostly about that. But it was great to chat in more detail with Mat. He's lovely. David Mossley was also very informative in his talk about curriculum design, but I think I'll post about that a little later on when I've thought more about it. The career planning session at the end was possibly the weakest, only in that it tended to repeat what we had already covered during the rest of the day. It could have covered a specific aspect of career planning or given us time to actually sit down and, you know, come up with a plan! I think the latter would have been a good idea, particularly as there were people in the room who have already done what we are trying to do and could have given us their perspective on our hopes and dreams from within our own discipline - which hardly ever happens at more general careers events.

In our conference packs we were given some useful resources, including Paul Edwards' "How to Give an Academic Talk: Changing the Culture of Public Speaking in the Humanities" (which you can get online here) Matthew Eddy's "Academic Capital, Postgraduate Research and British Universities: a Bourdieu Inspired Reflection" (online here) and Clare Saunders' "Developing Researchers in th Arts and Humanities: Lessons from a Pilot Programme" (here).

Now, onto the RAE/REF and issues of funding:

There are two sources of funding for research in English HE: the money distributed by Research Councils (like the AHRC and ESRC) and other bodies (where funding is based upon proposals submitted) and that distributed by HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Counil for England) at the time of the RAE. This latter money is therefore backward-looking (i.e. is determined by the quality of previous research) while the former is forward-looking (based on the quality of proposals for future research). The money from HEFCE is therefore (in principle, Jo stressed) for "blue sky" projects, although in practice little is given directly to projects - more often than not going towards the overheads of projects or to fund sabbaticals or library resources.

The instructions for the RAE differ each time it occurs, but this time round (RAE2008) staff had to put forward 4 publications (authored books, edited books, book chapters, journal articles, etc.) which were then assessed and graded from 0 to 5 (click here for an explanation of the ranking system). Jo believes that the REF, although adding various metric indicators to the process and including an assessment of the "social and economic impact" of research, will still boil down to the quality of publications.

It was good to have a bit more clarity on both the nature of the RAE and the proposed form of the REF, as well as to be able to reflect about what this shift might mean for us as nearly submitted doctoral candidates and early career researchers. Jo said that the RAE has introduced a cycle into employment practices, as the more staff that are put into the RAE the more funding the department has a chance of gaining. Before an RAE, therefore, departments high candidates with a good amount of publications in prestigious journals, for example, to boost their chances. This means that, at this point in the cycle, just after an RAE, there are less full time positions on offer and more temporary (unstable) jobs around. However, it's not necessarily all doom and gloom because, as new researchers, we will have fewer publications but those departments who are hiring fulltime members of staff will be less obsessed with hiring someone with an "RAE-compliant" (read chocka of publications) CV. Yay!

Jo's advice, nonetheless, was to try to get at least one article in a really good journal, to increase your employment prospects. Quality is better than quantity.

Research Methods: Religion and the Internet

My workshop, "Studying Religion and the Internet - Challenges and Opportunities: Theoretical, Practical and Ethical," at the HEA Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies' "Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion" day at Birkbeck went okay. I definitely think that my topic could (should?!?) have been given an entire day in itself, which meant that I had a lot to get through in my presentation. They sprung on me that it was going to be recorded, so you should be able to download the mp3 soon... if you particularly want to listen to me nervously speaking! I usually speak using less notes and I think you can tell, as I felt rather beholden to using the phrases I'd written down rather than speaking more off the cuff. Oh well, lesson learnt!

But it was good to meet up with old and new colleagues, and I particularly enjoyed a presentation by Helen Purcell (Open University) on her position as a Pagan academic that also reflected on narrative. Another conference delegate mentioned an academic who decided to write a novel instead of a thesis because that seemed to better reflect the experiences of her participants and her time spent with them. It generated some more thoughts in relation to my own concerns about having to "represent" the "truth" about my participants, whose notions of "truth" are often neither "representational" nor "non-representational," but are of what I'm calling "undecidable representationality." This dilemma leads to interesting questions about the literary dimension of the academic presentation of research "findings." Anyway, enough of that...

It was ashame that I missed fellow Lancaster PhD student Janet Eccles' paper on the "pitfalls and possibilities" of conducting an interview-based study in her local community. But I was good to hear about some of the PhD students just starting out in internet-based studies, like Anna Rose Stewart (University of Sussex). It was also great to catch up with Gordon Lynch, whom I haven't seen in a couple of years. Susannah Rigg (Birkbeck), me and Sim's housemate when she was at Lancaster, was on hand in an organisational role and it was good to chat over coffee.

Anyway, here's the powerpoint presentation from my workshop. There's a very illustrative list of resources at the end of it.

Studying Religion And The Internet

View more OpenOffice presentations from Katharine Moody.

Religion and the Internet workshop

I just finished finalising my "Studying Religion and the Internet" workshop for the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Philosophical Religious Studies' postgraduate study day, Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion at Birkbeck. I'll post more about it, provide a link to the PowerPoint on Slideshare, and reflect on how it went after it, you know, goes (May 16th).

"Making Good" on a Paper Submission

So my abstract for the "Towards a Philosophy of Life" conference at Liverpool in June (conference details here, abstract here) was accepted. My paper will be entitled, "Making Good on the "Good" of Life: Emerging Logics and Poetics of the Kingdom," and is basically the last chapter of my thesis, "Poetics." This chapter demonstrates how the preceding findings regarding the notion of truth in the UK emerging church milieu informs the debate between Radical Orthodoxy (particularly James K.A. Smith's 'postmodern catholicism') and deconstructive theology (especially Jack Caputo's 'weak theology'). So I now have to fit writing this paper into my thesis writing schedule (see here). But it'll be worth it, as both Caputo and John Milbank will be presenting at the conference too, so it'll be a great room of people to present this stuff too. I'll also have a bit of time after the conference for any revisions from the paper to feed into the chapter itself.

Dark Night of the Soul at Lincoln Cathedral

My partner, Sim, is from the beautiful town of Lincoln. His parents still live there and are active in the life of the cathedral. In August, the cathedral is hosting "The Dark Night," an exploration of the mystical theology of St. John of the Cross.

The event will be a whole evening, running from 7pm on Friday August 7th, until 9am the next morning. It will include an introduction to John of the Cross' mystical poem, The Dark Night of the Soul, 'forged', the publicity reads, by his 'own experience of darkness and suffering.' The cathedral will look beautiful lit by candlelight, and there will be the opportunity to explore parts of the building not normally open to the public. Gregorian chant will be used to mark the passing of the hours until the morning. The evening also includes a performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations by Charles Harrison, and a cooked breakfast in the morning!

Tickets (£30) are available from the Cathedral Shop (01522 561544), although there is a limit of 80 participants.

Thesis Structure - April 2009

Another Panel Review document I submitted this year was an annotated plan, presenting the panel with my thesis in detail, from chapters to sections to subsections. I can't very well post all of that here (my annotated plan is 6,200 words) but I thought it could probably edit it down to something more readable. It might also be useful to have a look at the one page summary of my thesis argument thta I also submitted to the panel (here).

Thesis title (at the moment):

Emerging Truth/Justice: Towards a Poetic Understanding of (Christian) Truth.

Introduction

Chapter One, Contexts

• Presents the emerging church as a diverse milieu in which familial resemblances can nevertheless be drawn between those within it, providing the reader with an understanding of the context in which the research questions were asked.
• Places the emerging church milieu in the context of current research within the disciplines of the sociology of religion and continental philosophy of religion, positioning the milieu in the wider religious and spiritual landscape and demonstrating the wider value of the research questions.
• Explains my own position as a researcher in relation to the UK emerging church milieu.

Chapter Two, Methods

• Reviews the research methodologies of currently available studies of the emerging church.
• Gives the rationale behind my multi-methodology and presents these methods of data collection.
• Justifies in particular my use of Internet-mediated research methods.

Interlude, Researching Truth

• Problematizes the preceding chapters through a consideration of this thesis’ interdisciplinary position in relation to the philosophy of social science and continental philosophy’s critiques of representationalism.
• Suggests that John D. Caputo’s distinction between logics and poetics (The Weakness of God) is not only useful for thinking about the nature of this thesis as a piece of writing, but also hints at a distinction between two understandings of truth explored below; namely, truth as representation and correspondence (logics) and truth as transformation (poetics).
• Plays with the word “icon” and concludes that my work exists on the Derridean slash of undecidability in the word “i/con.”

Chapter Three, Truth(s)

• Argues for the aptness of pluralism about truth, supplementing the recent work of Michael P. Lynch (Truth as One and Many) through suggesting that the concept of truth needs to also be explored as it operates in the domain of religion.
• Constructs a set of truisms about religious truth (at least as it is viewed within the UK emerging church milieu) from interviews with participants.
• Uses participant data to suggest the truism that truth in the religious domain is transformational.
• Distinguishes between truth as transformative proposition and truth as transformative event, aided by Michel Henry (I am the Truth) and Jack Caputo (The Weakness of God).

Chapter Four, World

• Argues that, for the first strand, connecting the truism of transformation to propositions results in a realist assumption about truth: ‘truth hinges not on us but on the world’ (Lynch, The Nature of Truth, p.9).
• Shows why this assumption is questioned by the second strand.

Chapter Five, Event

• Argues that, for the second strand, understanding transformative truth as an event of truth itself results in an important relationship between religion and deconstruction.
• Shows why the first strand are wary of deconstruction.

Chapter Six, Justice

• Argues that the property that satisfies the truism of transformation and therefore manifests truth for religious/spiritual propositions is the norm of justice.
• Demonstrates that the event of “truth” itself can also be translated as “justice,” thereby augmenting our folk concept of truth as transformation.

Chapter Seven, Poetics

• Demonstrates that the foregoing exploration of the notion of truth within the UK emerging church milieu enables an assessment of the extent to which two contemporary theologies that have been suggested as apt for the milieu are indeed appropriate.
• Argues that, following some revisions, both Radical Orthodoxy and deconstructive theology are practically viable for the milieu.
• Recalls the distinction between representational logics and transformative poetics to defend Caputo's theological agenda from James K.A. Smith's criticisms ("The Logic of Incarnation")
• Uses Gavin Hyman's The Predicament of Postmodern Theology to argue that the latter option remains, however, preferable in my opinion.

Conclusions

Writing Schedule

The other documents that I submitted for my Panel Review this year (see here for the thesis summary I also handed in) included my annotated thesis plan (a detailed run down of the contents of each chapter, section and subsection of my thesis) and a writing sample, which was just over 12,000 words setting out part of the central thesis of chapters three to six of my thesis. As I can't very well replicate those documents here I thought I would post the gist of my writing schedule for the next few months along with my expected submission date.

I have already written the first final draft of chapter two, "Methods," and completed some sections of my "Introduction" and chapters one, "Contexts," and three, "Truth(s)."

So, from May 4 - 10, 11 - 17, I hope to complete the remaining sections of chapter three so that I've got a first final draft of it. During this time I'm also planning my workshop, "Studying Religion and the Internet," for a postgraduate day at Birkbeck (May 16).

I've got another London workshop (for Aspiring Academics) on the 19th, and my Panel Review on the 20th, so during May 18 - 22 I hope to finish the first draft of the section of chapter six, "Justice," that completes part of the thread of the argument begun in chapter three.

After taking Sim to see Anthony and the Johnsons in Birmingham on May 22, Sim is taking me to Paris for a little break (it's his halfterm holiday) from May 23 - 27, so I won't get that much done from May 23 - 31, although when Sim starts having to prepare lesson plans again after we get back I imagine I'll get something done.

June 1 - 7 I'll try to get a first draft of chapter four, "World," done, and the same for chapter five, "Event," from June 8 -14.

June 15 - 21 I'll finish the remaining sections of chapter six, "Justice."

The "Towards a Philosophy of Life" conference runs from June 26 - 28, so if my submission gets accepted (see here for my abstract) then I'll need to have been working on this before now. However, the argument of the paper slots nicely into chapter seven, "Poetics," so I can be writing this chapter around about the same time, June 22 - 28, with any revisions after the conference, June 29 - July 5.

During the week of June 29 - July 5, I'll also start writing my "Conclusions."

Then, after having completed the remaining sections of my "Introduction" and chapter one, "Contexts," I can edit for about a month (July 6 - 12, 13 - 19, 20 - 26, 27 - August 2) until either submitting before our summer holiday to Andalucia (August 13 - 29) or, after having had a nice break to get away from it all, looking through it once more and submitting at the beginning of September.

Looking at this, it seems like a lot of work to do in not a very long space of time. But maybe writing it here will motivate me to try to stick to this schedule - even if by the time I've submitted my brain has leaked out of my ears.

Thesis Abstract - April 2009

For our annual Panel Reviews (here and here for posts on last year's panel review process and here for this year's comments!) we have to submit a number of documents for the panel to read and evaluate prior to the review itself. One of the things they ask for is a one page summary of your thesis, the title of which is (at the moment) going to be Emerging Truth/Justice: Towards a Poetic Understanding of (Christian) Truth, focusing on central arguments and main findings. I thought I'd post my one page summary here, so you can see what I'm hoping to argue and also compare it to another thesis abstract I wrote only a few months ago (here) to see how it is changing as I continue to write up. So it's a little longer than an abstract would be but it's been really helpful for me to write - I now know that not only do I know what I want to say in my head, I can actually get it out onto a piece of paper for other people to see!!! Along with the central argument, I decided to try to hone my keywords:

This thesis explores how the notion of truth is conceptualized within the UK emerging church milieu, a diverse network of individuals and communities connected by the Internet and often particularly interested in the relationship between Christianity and the postmodern turn. Participants’ post- or late modern context of religious pluralism and individualism has impacted the ways in which the truth claims of the Christian religion are understood. Further, the theological turn of contemporary philosophy has also brought participants in contact with thinkers like Nietzsche, Derrida, Marion, Lévinas and Žižek, whose work in relation to religion raises questions of the nature of truth. This project therefore sought to discover not only what the philosophical, theological and ethical implications of participants’ conceptualizations of truth might be for Christian belief and practice, but what these notions of truth reveal about the viability of academic theologies like Radical Orthodoxy and deconstructive theology for the UK emerging church milieu.

Qualitative data was gathered from emerging church literature, emerging church blogs and interviews with a variety of UK milieu participants. This data displayed a conceptual pluralism about truth: truth is not only a concept that could be manifest differently in particular propositional domains, but is also understood non-propositionally as an event of truth itself. Participants identified both this truth-event and the truth of religious and spiritual propositions with the transformation of subjectivity and behaviour.

The author distinguishes between two strands which arise within the UK emerging church milieu regarding the truism that truth is transformative.

For the first, religious/spiritual propositions are true just when the transformation they evoke conforms to the norm of justice, a norm that itself coheres with a durably coherent framework of moral judgements towards which human beings aim in community and dialogue with each other. This conclusion has implications for collaboration across religious/secular boundaries. Those participants within this strand often, but need not, assume a theologically realist ontology. It is, however, difficult to overcome the objection that transformation here is merely a response to truth and not inherent to the concept itself.

In relation to religious/spiritual propositions, the second detectable strand within the data connects transformative truth not to propositional content but to the way in which propositions are believed. This is a consequence of their emphasis upon transformative truth as the non-propositional event of truth itself. Here, participants endeavour to keep religious/spiritual propositions open to the auto-deconstructive event at the heart of all language. Deconstruction is therefore intrinsic to religious propositions, traditions and institutions, to all the ways in which humanity names the event. For these participants, the language of truth is often supplanted by that of the other words used for the undeconstructible event, including justice and kingdom of God, which are understood as transformational rather than representational notions. Conceiving truth in this way places transformation within the concept itself, rather than as a response distinguishable from the truth that caused it.

These findings regarding truth in the UK emerging church milieu enable the author to assess theologies that have been suggested as apt for the milieu, James K.A. Smith's Radically Orthodox 'postmodern catholicism' and John D. Caputo's deconstructive 'weak theology.' It is argued that Radical Orthodoxy needs to become more generous towards other religions if it is to be welcomed by participants, and that weak theology becomes more practically viable when communities also emphasize how beliefs are held above what beliefs are held. The author assesses Smith’s criticisms of Caputo, arguing that he overlooks the latter’s differentiation between representational logics and transformational poetics. I use this distinction to argue that an interpretation of the kingdom of God as a concept that corresponds to a reality that will either arrive (Smith) or never arrive (Smith’s reading of Caputo) mischaracterizes it as representational rather than transformational.

Key words:

• John D. Caputo,
• Christianity,
• deconstructive theology,
• emerging church,
• justice,
• kingdom of God,
• poetics,
• Radical Orthodoxy,
• realism,
• James K.A. Smith,
• truth,
• transformation.

Truth Conference

I've just come across details of this conference on truth (Truth: Current Debates) being held at the University of Connecticut (where Michael P. Lynch is based) from May 15 - 17 2009. Too late for me to register and get reasonably priced flights. Darn. Anyway, the questions around which the event is organized are very interesting and should make for a fascinating conference (and hopefully follow-up publication!). The conference site reads:

"Some of the most basic questions concerning truth ask for its nature: in what does truth consist? Does it even have a nature? And is that nature one or many?

"The objective of this conference is to foster discussion that will shed new light on the nature of truth. A particular emphasis will be placed on how one might oppose traditional approaches to truth according to which the nature of truth (i) is to be accounted for in terms of a substantive property (such as correspondence or coherence) and (ii) is uniform across all truth-apt domains. Among the issues to be addressed in relation to this question are the following:

• What is the most viable way of rejecting (i), i.e. what is the strongest version of deflationism about truth?
• What is the most viable way of rejecting (ii) i.e. what is the strongest version of pluralism about truth?
• What is the most viable way of combining a rejections of (i) and (ii), i.e. what is the strongest version of deflationary pluralism about truth?
• How does a commitment to deflationism, pluralism or a combination of the two impact our understanding of other philosophically important concepts, such as meaning, content, representation, valid inference, knowledge, and the normativity of truth? Depending on one's commitments, must such accounts be "deflated", "pluralized", or abandoned altogether?
• What, if any, is the relationship between pluralism about truth and pluralism about logic?
• What, if any, is the relationship between pluralism about truth and pluralism about ontology?
• What objections are there to pluralism? To deflationism? To deflationary pluralism?"

The line-up of speakers is particularly impressive and includes JC Beall (Connecticut), Marian David (Notre Dame), Pascal Engel (Geneva), Patrick Greenough (St. Andrews/Arché), Max Kölbel (Birmingham), Michael Lynch (Connecticut), Vann McGee (MIT), Gila Sher (University of California at San Diego) and Crispin Wright (St. Andrews/Arché, NYU).

Pluralism about Truth and Thesis Structure

Michael Lynch’s recently published Truth as One and Many (2009) has helped me crystallize my thoughts on pluralism about truth, and so will be particularly useful in helping me structure my third chapter (“Truth(s)”). As a result, I’ve also reordered my last three chapters (now “Justice,” “Generosity” and “Weakness” – instead of “Generosity,” “Weakness,” and “Justice”), the contents of which I blogged about a bit the other day. In this post, I’ll summarize Lynch’s argument, and then show how it has affected my thesis structure.

Following Lynch (but also some stuff I’ve read by Ralph Walker), I’m going to argue that most theorists of truth are monists about truth; that is, they assume that the notion of truth has one nature that is unchanged when the concept is applied to diverse phenomena, and seek to encapsulate that singular essence in a global theory of truth. However, the scope problem throws up numerous counterexamples across diverse domains of phenomena – the truth of which one theory of truth has difficulty explaining. For example, a correspondence theory of truth cannot account for propositions that are non-representational but are intuitively true (such as, murder is wrong). Hence, the move from global theories of truth (such as correspondence, coherence, or deflationism) towards a pluralism about truth that might include such conventional theories of truth but will apply them locally rather than globally.

Lynch’s thesis begins with what he calls the ‘folk’ concept of truth, which ‘embodies our preconceptions [about truth], the way we tacitly think about it in our ordinary life – even if, normally, we don’t even recognize ourselves as doing so’ (Lynch 2009:7). According to Lynch’s presentation of our folk concept of truth, it includes a number of truisms about truth:

• Truth is objective (the belief "p" is true if, and only if, with respect to the belief that "p", things are as they are believed to be);
• Truth is the norm of belief (it is prima facie correct to believe that "p" if and only if the proposition that "p" is true; or ‘truth is belief’s basic norm of correctness,’ Lynch 2009:11); and
• Truth is the goal of inquiry (true beliefs are a worthy goal of inquiry; truth is pursued indirectly through the direct pursuit of reasons and evidence; the processes of questioning have truth as their aim).
  
  

Lynch maintains that truth itself is a singular concept, identified with these three core truisms (there are other, intimately related concepts that I won’t go into here). A theory of truth is only a theory of truth if it incorporates these core truisms (or else it is changing the subject) and is only a theory of truth if it explains them (or explains away those it does not hold). According to Lynch, the correspondence and coherence theories of truth are only viable under certain additional conditions. Only in a propositional domain in which mental states “respond” to external environments, such that propositions either represent or misrepresent reality, the correspondence theory of truth is viable. Similarly, the coherence theory of truth is only viable in a propositional domain that imposes epistemic constraints on the truths of the domain (it must be in principle possible for someone at some time to have warrant for believing any given proposition), and these propositions must be non-representational in character. This problem of scope leads Lynch to advocate pluralism about truth, according to which neither correspondence nor coherence are global theories of truth but are instead theories of how truth is manifest locally in particular domains.

Truth remains singular, but is manifest pluralistically. Truth is one concept (exhibiting core truisms about truth essentially, or, as Lynch also phrases it, playing the truth-role as such), but truth is multiply realizable (in propositions that have a property accidentally that manifests truth). The concept “truth” remains singular but there are multiple properties of propositions that might manifest that singular concept in different ways. The property that manifests truth or plays the truth-role in a particular domain is dependent on the nature of that particular propositional domain. In other words, Lynch’s thesis is not that “truth” correctly applies to correspondence here or coherence there (suggesting two concepts of truth) but rather that truth is one concept that is manifest in correspondence in one domain and coherence in another.

Lynch applies his theory of truth as one and many to the domain of morality. He holds that ‘a property constructed of our epistemic norms for morality could serve to manifest truth for our moral judgements’ (2009:185). He demonstrates that the epistemological norms for the domain of moral judgements demand that propositions within this domain are non-representational, i.e. do not correspond to externally existing entities (‘It is difficult to know how to “locate” something like moral wrongness amongst the furniture of the physical world,’ Lynch 2009:1). Therefore, he argues, the correspondence theory of truth cannot act as a global theory of the manifestation of truth in this domain. Instead, Lynch supplies a theory of the manifestation of truth for the moral domain based upon coherence and concordance. Our folk concept of truth in the moral domain suggests that ‘we see our moral inquires as aiming at constructing frameworks of concordant judgements. Such systems, were there every to be any, would be durably improving coherent frameworks of judgements, some of which – the non-moral judgements – are true in virtue of corresponding t the facts, but others of which – the moral judgements – are true by supercohering to that very framework, that is, by durably belonging to the framework itself’ (2009:175-176).

What I think it is important to grasp here is Lynch’s methodology: we move from our folk concept of truth for a particular domain towards identifying the property that manifests these truisms for this domain. By the same logic, then, a property constructed out of the UK emerging church milieu’s epistemic norms for religion might serve to manifest truth for religious propositions in the religious or spiritual domain (or, at least, for the UK emerging church milieu's religious/spiritual domain). If truth is manifested by a property of propositions because that property plays the truth-role in that particular domain, then my own work needs to answer the following questions:

• What is the truth-role or truism about truth for the religious/spiritual domain? and
• What property of propositions plays this role (thereby making propositions true, for this particular domain)?

In Chapter Three (“Truth(s)”), then, I’m going to argue that:

• Lynch’s initial discussion of what constitutes our everyday folk concept of truth neglects the spiritual and religious dimensions to everyday life;
• my empirical data from the UK emerging church milieu suggests that the truth-role in the spiritual/religious domain is transformation and call;
• the property of propositions that enables transformation, call and response therefore manifests truth (for this particular domain), true propositions in this domain do not necessarily therefore have to be representational, and the truth of propositions are judged not by their ability to represent, but by their ability to transform; and
• the property of propositions that manifests truth in the religious/spiritual domain is the norm of justice.

My previous thesis structure (see post here for details) had closely followed my research questions:

• How is the notion of truth understood in the UK emerging church milieu? (chapter 3, “Truth(s)”) [Therefore, also, What is the UK emerging church milieu? (chapter 2, “Emergence”)] and
• What are the philosophical (chapters 4, “Inaccessibility” and 5, “Undecidability”), theological (chapters 6, “Generosity” and 7, “Weakness”), and ethical (chapter 8, “Justice”) implications of these notions of truth?
  

Now, however, I have decided to reorder things a little.

Chapter 2 morphed into “Contexts” a while a go, so that it more closely answered the question of not only what the UK emerging church milieu is but also why it is important to study it academically.

Chapters 3, 4 and 5 stay in the order they were but are more clearly focused on 3) arguing why pluralism about truth is a useful notion, suggesting that Lynch’s work needs to be supplemented through a study of the notion of truth as it operates in the domain of religion or spirituality, and arguing that the truism that truth is an event that transforms and calls is key here; and 4) and 5) documenting what the diverse philosophical structures of this domain are in order to demonstrate what property manifests truth in the spiritual/religious domain. This therefore leads on to Chapter 6, which is now “Justice,” having been moved from the end of the thesis. Here, I hope to be able to argue that the property that displays the truism of transformation (and therefore manifests truth) in the spiritual domain is the norm of justice.

This argument then informs the debate between Radically Orthodox ‘Catholic Postmodernism’ (James K.A. Smith, see posts here and here) and ‘religion without Religion’ (Jack Caputo, posts on Weak Theology here, here, here, here and here), thus shifting the “Generosity” and “Weakness” chapters to the end of the thesis. The gist of these last three chapters is contained in the paper I hope to give at the Towards a Philosophy of Life conference in Liverpool in June (see post the other day). I’m trying to write this chapter at the moment (in time for the deadline for Panel Review documents, April 27th) so more on this in the next little while as I bang out my argument in more detail. In the meantime, I hope the post here has given a few ideas of how chapters 3, 4 and 5 might go!

Philosophy of Life Abstract

So I submitted my abstract for the Towards a Philosophy of Life conference today: "Making Good on the "Good" of Life: Emerging Logics and Poetics of the Kingdom." The gist of it is basically the argument of my last three chapters (having now rearranged the order of my chapters - "Justice," "Generosity" and "Weakness" - which I'll blog more about tomorrow). Hopefully it'll get accepted, but even if it doesn't the words will go straight into my thesis so no real harm done... but it would be great to present this stuff to Jack Caputo and John Milbank as it directly relates to the rebate between elements of their work (see particularly my posts on James K.A. Smith's Radically Orthodox 'Postmodern Catholicism' here, here, here and here). Here's the abstract then:

This paper begins by illustrating how the deconstructive theology of John D. Caputo is embodied in the life of the UK emerging church milieu. Caputo’s theological project, articulated more recently as a Weak Theology, proposes both an ‘historical association’ with the determinate religious traditions’ visions of and hopes for life, and a ‘messianic disassociation,’ in order to refuse such traditions’ exclusionary, violent and unjust closure towards the other. Using interview and ethnographic data, I suggest ways in which this difficult tension between particularity and alterity might be lived out. I show why Caputo’s notion of the kingdom of God as a repetition or recreation of God’s generative proclamation that life is “good” is helpful as participants seek to live their lives as a form of “making good” on this original “good.”

In the process of exploring his notions of creation and kingdom, I defend Caputo’s theology against recent criticism by James K.A. Smith. In contrasting his Radically Orthodox ‘Postmodern Catholicism’ with Caputo’s work, Smith distinguishes between his own logic of incarnation and Caputo’s logic of determination. According to Smith, the consequences of the Derridean/Caputian logic include the translation of Derrida’s impossible, undeconstructible, un-present-able justice into an indeterminate, not specifically Christian, kingdom that is similarly structurally always to-come. However, I believe this is to overlook Caputo’s differentiation between representational logics and transformational poetics. I use this distinction to argue that an interpretation of the kingdom of God as a concept that corresponds to a reality that will either arrive (Smith) or never arrive (Smith’s reading of Caputo) mischaracterizes it as representational rather than transformational. These divergent notions of the kingdom are also present within contemporary Christian belief and practice. This paper therefore further unpacks the differences between these two understandings of the kingdom, as I see them emerge both in the work of Smith and Caputo, and in the UK emerging church milieu.

Annual Panel Reviews

So, it's that time of year again.