Panel Review UPDATE

So the panel review (middle of May) went okay. I had my supervisor (Dr. Deborah F. Sawyer - religion and gender, biblical studies and contemporary culture), Dr. Paul Fletcher (continental philosophy, modern theology, political theology) and Professor Chris Partridge (new religions, alternative spiritualities, occulture) - so a useful mixture of points of view.

I had hoped that it would be useful for my dilemma researching truth and representing research as truth. But it was unclear the extent to which the panel agreed that this is a question which will come up in my viva or is a problem of my own creation! We'll see. At least I can say that I have thought about the potential disjuncture between the theories of truth I am reflecting on and the theory of truth I am using in that very reflection!

I was grilled by Paul (rightly) about whether or not I am approaching the emerging church milieu and the work of Jack Caputo with the same level of critical judgment as I am approaching emerging church critics, critics of postmodernism, and some of the other theologies and philosophies I am using (Radical Orthodoxy, for example). I think a lot of my critical distance is going to come out as I start writing up (at which I am WAY behind schedule - not having completed transcribing yet!), framing the UK emerging church milieu within contemporary sociological theory and theorising a bit more on it as a social phenomenon.

And Chris asked to what extent I was taking ecclesiology into consideration in my discussion of emerging church epistemology, as there is a complex interrelationship between the two (which I agree). I'm not particularly interested in ecclesiology (sorry - leave that to the majority of the other postgraduates researching the emerging church) but where I do draw connections between ecclesiology and epistemology will be in the first chapter where I introduce the reader to the UK emerging church milieu.

Annual Review Panel Today

Each year the lucky research students of the Religious Studies department undergo a 'review by panel,' to make sure that our thesis actually is a thesis, to keep us on track with writing up, and to act as some kind of a practice for the viva. Mine's today at 3pm. Bit nerve-y.

I usually spend the Easter holidays madly writing stuff to hand in for it. In addition to a self-assessment form, a list of training modules we've taken, a detailed thesis plan, and a timetable for completion, we have to submit a writing sample of at least 5,000 words. I've kind of been going about it the wrong way round; in my first year I handed in about 30,000 (four papers - one on Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, on one Critical Realism and Radical Orthodoxy, one on the postmodernism of the Emerging Church, and a methodological one on the Emerging Church and Critical Realism), in my second year about 20,000 (a paper I gave at a conference on Theo(b)logy and the construction of identity, theology and society, and a chapter on the postmodern turn of Christianity which contextualises my research questions), and in this, my third and (hopefully) finally year, I'm handing in, at most, 7,000 words:

• The "Truth and A/theistic Orthodoxy" paper from Boston (3,000 words), and


• A hashing out of ideas concerning a persistent problem with my thesis (about 4,000 words): "Truth, Representationalism, and Research."

This latter piece of writing I hope will stimulate some useful discussion in my panel review, regarding what I see as a BIG HOLE in my project that relates to the underlying philosophical assumptions of the sociology of religion.

My research explores a social phenomenon (the emerging church milieu) through a philosophical question (how is truth conceptualised?). But this always brings me back to this problem:

• Can my research be said to present “the truth,” i.e. the external reality, about how the emerging church milieu conceive of the notion of truth, if many of them (and I) are sceptical about


• a) the extent to which reality can be represented in language (representationalism) and


• b) the extent to which truth is a correspondence between language and reality (correspondence theory of truth)?

See my persistent problem?

So I'm trying to think through the ways in which I can acknowledge this problem and address the difficulties in combining sociology of religion with post-strucutralist philosophies concerning truth, representation, and research. And I'm circling around several literary devices which might help me in this endeavour. I could...

• "Translate" the rather dry, concise, representationalist, and (of course, given it's history) scientific sociological discourse into Derridean vocabulary and syntax - a both daunting and exciting proposition; OR

• Write the different chapters (sociological, philosophical, etc.) in the language of their respective disciplines and allow the resultant jolt when reading from chapter to chapter to occur as an event in the reading experience which might highlight that the different disciplines are operating within different language games; OR

• Attempt to produce different introductions for readers with different understandings of truth (a little like Brian McLaren writes introductory paragraphs for different readers of his Generous Orthodoxy) - for example, readers who hold a correspondence theory of truth, which can be said to be the majority of conservative emerging church critics, might assume that my writings relate fully to the reality that is the emerging church milieu. If such readers do not like what they read, they can either question my academic credentials and research abilities (i.e. the methods I used to discover reality), or they can use my research for further evidence of the dangers of post-modernism. Either way, for them, there is a “truth” of the emerging church out there, waiting to (certainly) be discovered by (perhaps) more astute or discerning (or “biblical”) researchers than me.

What I've decided to do is to write a sociological chapter enumerating what I see as six ideological commitments open to those involved in the emerging church milieu - a classical sociological approach to a social fact.

But, simultaneously, I am going to problematise a number of the assumptions just made in such an approach to the emerging church milieu. There are, however, still a number of ways in which to present this "undercut."

• I could include what could be called an Interlude between this sociological chapter and the rest of the thesis chapters - considering the other alternatives, this option is a bit tame (!) and Derrida's work suggests a further two possibilities.

• In Derrida's (1986) Glas, the pages are divided into two columns, each column taking a different subject matter, so that the reader has to decide whether or not to read all of one first and then return to the beginning of the book and read all of the other.

• Writing alongside (or, rather, below!) Geoffrey Bennington's "Derridabase," intended to systematize Derrida's work, Derrida has constructed another piece of writing, "Circumfession," intended to slip out of such an endeavour. "Derridabase" occupies the top of the pages, whilst "Circumfession" is positioned on the bottom of each.

• Taking into consideration the format of the doctoral thesis, however, a fourth possibility presents itself:

Doctoral theses are printed only on one side of the page, on the right, with a blank page (the back of the preceding page) opposite it on the left. Pagination ignores these blank pages, with readers only paying attention to the pages with words on them as they turn and read. I have decided, therefore, to write a piece which delivers a post-structuralist blow to the sociology of religion and to print it on the pages opposite to the sociological Chapter One, Emergence. The reader will, first (foremost?), be shocked to find print on this side of the bound thesis, and will then have to decide which way to read it: sociology, then critique?; or critique first?

Conference Paper taken out of the Blogosphere

I've decided not to post in too much detail about the "Truth and A/theistic Orthodoxy" paper I gave recently, as I'm concerned about putting my ideas out there when I hope to publish in academic journals and monograph form later this year / next year. So I've decided to delete the earlier posts I wrote in which I detailed what I argued. I hope readers understand.

I'm going to blog very briefly back at the original post (here) about what I argued and about the responses I got to the paper.

Please email me at k.moody1@lancaster.ac.uk if you would like to read the paper, and I'll happily send you a copy.

A New Kind of Christian is a New Kind of Atheist: Truth and A/theistic Orthodoxy in the Emerging Church Milieu - part two

This post has been deleted. I feel that it went into too much detail concerning what I argued in my recent conference paper, and therefore threatened the publication of the paper in journal or monograph form later this year / next year. I hope readers understand.

Back at the original post (here), I blog very briefly about what I argued and about the responses I got from other conference delegates.

Please feel free to email me at k.moody1@lancaster.ac.uk if you would like to read the paper in its entirety.

A New Kind of Christian is a New Kind of Atheist: Truth and A/theistic Orthodoxy in the Emerging Church Milieu - part one

[update: this post has been edited, to remove too much detail about my paper - which threatened the paper's later publication in journal and/or monograph form. If you would like to read the paper, please email me at k.moody1@lancaster.ac.uk and I would be happy to send you a copy]

My paper at the "Postmodernism, Truth, and Religious Pluralism" conference went well.

I was nervous. I'd been imagining large the large auditoriums you see in films set on American university campuses, but the room wasn't too big and was all on one level - although I did have to stand up to deliver the paper, which I've never done before. I've also never really READ a paper. I usually do papers based on PowerPoint presentations and just talk. Then I sort of write the paper after I've presented it, so it was a bit odd for me to have to read something out. I hope my presentation skills were up to it! Early on, I decided to play the (always useful) postgraduate student card - conference delegates tend to be easier on us PGs. I decided to emphasise my cute Britishness too. It seemed to work.

First off, I introduced my project, exploring the UK emerging church milieu through the question of how truth is conceptualised. And explained the impetus of this focus in relation to critics' claims that the emerging church is departing from the biblical notion of truth as correspondence.

Then I read the paper. I posted my introduction in an early post, so here I'll just briefly make my main arguments and blog about the responses I got from other conference delegates:

Primarily, my paper argued that there is slippage in the work of Jack Caputo between the ways in which he conceptualises the notion of truth. However, I demonstrated that this slippage is a functional necessity of his weak theology. Although he slides away from a wholly performative notion of truth (as event, as confession, as weeping, as praying) towards truth justice - as a telos and as an adequatio (regardless of whether this telos can ever be known or whether it's equation to reality can ever come about) - this slide mirrors a key feature of Caputo's theology of the event: the slippery distinction between wholly other, undeconstructible messianic structures (truth as event and circumfession) and determinate messianisms (justice, hospitality, gift, forgiveness and the kingdom of the kingdomless).

Secondly, my paper situated this argument in the context of ethnographic data from the UK emerging church milieu, in which may participants are increasingly drawn to continental philosophy and deconstructive theology. I demonstrated that the understandings of truth discernable in Caputo's work can also be observed in the conversations I have had with a wide range of people within the emerging church milieu. In particular, I link the a/theism advocated by Caputo to an understanding of pragmatic orthodoxy which arises from within the UK emerging church milieu. This reformulation of orthodoxy moves away from right belief and towards believing in the right way, i.e. lovingly, and holding your beliefs lightly. I argue that what I call the "a/theistic orthodoxy" observable within the emerging church milieu is a practical expression of Caputo's project, particularly as it relates to the concept of truth. Hence my title: A New Kind of Christian is a New Kind of Atheist... i.e., an a/theist.

Update: The States

So March, April and May are pretty busy times in my department as all the research students madly rush to complete pieces to hand in at the end of April for the Panel Reviews that are held at the end of May. The Easter holidays usually pass in a panicked blur of reading and writing and editing. At least they usually do for me. It's the time of year when I realise I haven't done as much work as I should have done, and desperately try to rectify that situation. That was a long winded way of apologising for the scarcity of recent posts!

I recently got back from Boston. I stocked up on American goodness (Reese's peanut butter cups and Hershey's peanut butter kisses); I ate eggs over easy, a bagel with lite cream cheese, and a Boston kreme donut from Dunkin Donuts; I bought a large coke from Wendy's which lasted me two days; I found out what a Tootsie Roll is; and I got maple syrup candies for a UK-bound US mate. I went on a Duck Tour of Boston (my World War Two amphibious landing vehicle was either Beacon Hilda or Back Bay Bertha - can't remember exactly), taking in the Christian Science Headquarters, Boston Public Library, Copely Square, Trinity Church, Boston Public Gardens, the Make Way for Ducklings statue, Boston Common, Cheers, Beacon Hill, the State House, the Charles River, Bunker Hill, the USS Constitution, Old North Church, and the Holocaust Memorial. I went up to the SkyWalk observatory at the Prudential centre for a 360 of the city; shopped at Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, Macy's and Filene's Basement; and watched the Boston Bruins kick Montreal Canadien butt 2-1 in overtime Sunday night (only on tv, but it was still very exciting!).

I also did some work. I went to Boston for a conference at Gordon College in Wenham, MA, a Christian liberal arts college that was hosting the "Postmodernism, Truth, and Religious Pluralism" conference of the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology. I meant to post the programme before I went but things got a little on top of me! I'm going to blog about the conference in general on Jason Clark's site some time in the near future, but here's the programme to whet your appetite. I'll blog more in relation to my paper ("A New Kind of Christian is a New Kind of Atheist: Truth, A/theistic Orthodoxy, and the Emerging Church Milieu") soon too.

Friday, April 11

Roger Haight, Union Theological Seminary: "The Impact of Pluralism on Ecclesiology."

Ed Mooney, Syracuse University: "Tactile Truth: A View from the Trenches."

Katharine Sarah Moody, Lancaster University: "A New Kind of Christian is a New Kind of Atheist."

Saturday, April 12

Thomas Clarke, Stonehill College: "Truth and Castration."

Marion Larson and Sarah Shady, Bethel University: "Interfaith Dialogue in a Pluralistic World: Insights from Martin Buber and Miroslav Volf."

Wilson Dickinson, Syracuse University: "The Other of the Heading: The Deconstruction of Religion and Doing the Truth."

Lovisa Bergdahl, Stockholm University: "'Lost in Translation': On the Untranslatable and its Ethical Implications for Religious Pluralism."

Neal DeRoo, Boston College: "Toward a Testimonial Understanding of Reason and Religion in the Public Sphere."

Richard Kearney, Boston College: "Anatheism: Welcoming Strange Gods."

Christianity, Gender Roles, and Wife Swapping

My post for Jason Clark's blog is now up, "Christianity, Gender Roles, and Wife Swapping."

It reflects upon a recent episode of Channel Four's "Wife Swap," connecting my interests in contemporary culture and the social construction of gender and gender roles. It also draws upon my research among lesbian Christians which explores the construction of selfhood in a religion which encourages selflessness.

The Values of Metal?

I recently helped out a former Religious Studies student of mine by filling out a questionnaire about the values of metal music and I thought I’d post some thoughts about it here. Christian Goths have long been among my interests for future research, so it was a really interesting questionnaire for me.

For a bit of background, here’s some of the bands I listen to: Nine Inch Nails are my favourite, closely followed by Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Tool and Korn. There’s also My Ruin, Disturbed, Apocalyptica, Within Temptation, Nightwish, and Lacuna Coil – the last four of which could be called rock opera or orchestral metal rather than industrial rock like MM. I also like Switchblade Symphony who are (a now-split) goth/electro pop group (NIN are also pretty poppy). Then there’s stuff like Lycia, Faith and the Muse, This Ascension, and Love Spirals Downwards, which are more like ethereal goth, and the Cocteau Twins, of course. The Mission and Siouxsie and the Banshees can’t be left out, and neither can a few others that harbour a love of eighties goth electro/pop, like London After Midnight and The Cruxshadows.

Anyway, here are my thoughts, distilled through the process of justifying my musical tastes to my partner – he is now at the point where he can have a great time at Marilyn Manson, NIN and Korn concerts! – and as articulated in a questionnaire about the values of metal.

In a nutshell, I think that the values of the music I listen to revolve around three things:

• politics,
• religion,
• and sex.
  
  

Politically, RATM [Rage Against the Machine] are one of the most obvious band to mention in this respect. But I think that artists like Marilyn Manson, Trent Reznor [NIN] and Jonathon Davies [Korn] are particularly adept at tuning into a level of discontent with current social trends (capitalism and consumerism, for example) and current events (for example, the war in Iraq) and expressing this discontent creatively through music and lyrics.

When Marilyn Manson sings about fascism, he isn’t espousing that as an appropriate model for society; rather, he is trying to point to the fact that capitalism, liberal democracy, etc, is no more an appropriate model for society than fascism – it’s doing just as much damage to people as fascism does. These artists deconstruct the accepted meta-narratives of society, through which the status quo is justified and maintained, thereby trying to destabilise it through, among other things, word play, parody and anger.

A good example is the reaction I see in music to the position the UK and US took on the invasion of Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. It’s clear in Nine Inch Nails’ last album Year Zero, and even Muse are singing about it in their track Take a Bow! I don’t think that anyone can miss the anti-war sentiments in a lot of music today.

In terms of religion, the music I listen to does two things. Firstly, it critiques “traditional,” institutionalized, authoritarian, exclusivistic, patriarchal, homophobic Religion. This is most clearly seen in the kind of deconstructive lyrics I mentioned above, particularly in the music of NIN and MM, but another good example is Jonny Cash’s Personal Jesus which parodies televangelism and other aspects of American evangelical culture.

But, secondly, music enables spiritual experience and therefore constructs a much more positive (though definitely not institutional) religiosity that is probably more accurately called a spirituality. So, rather than having to contain any overt spiritual message in and of itself, metal is also a vehicle for me to have spiritual experiences.

And then, of course, there’s sex. Often, the lyrics themselves espouse particular approaches to sexuality – liberal, subversive, and explicit – for example, Nine Inch Nail’s Closer. However, other tracks are either less explicit in their lyrics or the music itself is sexual, with particular rhythms and bluesy chords which evoke the sexuality of metal’s musical roots. Also metal is often very poetic and mythological. Love and tragedy are a very common theme among lyricists – Marilyn Manson’s last album Eat Me, Drink Me is a good example of this!!!

In relation to these three things I think that metal deconstructs the normative value systems which uphold the status quo. Metal attempts to expose the power plays in contemporary society which privilege some of its elements whilst oppressing others. So its values are that of equalising power imbalances through espousing the values of marginalised groups.

I share many of these values, especially anti-war sentiments, socialist and anarchic political leanings, spiritual movements away from institutionalised religion towards what could be called an a/theism, and fluid sexual identity.

Some of my favourite lyrics, some rock, some not (‘xcuse the French):

“Well did you hear, there’s a natural order? Those most deserving will end up with the most? That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top? Well I say, sh*t floats. Bluntly put, in the fewest of words, c*nts are still running the world,” Jarvis Cocker, Running the World.

“This is Evolution, the monkey, the man, then the gun,” Marilyn Manson, Cruci-Fiction in Space.

“I pushed a button and elected him to office, he pushed a button and dropped a bomb, you pushed a button and can watch it on the television, those m*th*rf*ck*rs didn’t last too long,” Nine Inch Nails, Capital G.

“I never really hated the one true God, but the god of the people I hated,” Marilyn Manson, Disposable Teens.

“Lift up the receiver, I’ll make you believer, I will deliver, you know I’m a forgiver,” Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus.

“And it give us sight, and you’ll see the light, and it burns so bright, now we know we’re right. When his kingdom comes, and thy will be done, we’ve just begun, we’re the chosen ones. You cannot win, with the colour of your skin, you won’t be getting into the Promised Land. It’s just another case, you people still don’t know your place, step aside, out the way, wipe that look off your face, cause we are the divine separated from the swine, come on, sing along, everybody now, God-given,” Nine Inch Nails, God Given.

“Cast a spell, cast a spell on the country you run. And risk, you will risk, you will risk all their lives and their souls. Death, you bring death, and destruction to all that you touch. Yeah hex, feed the hex, feed the hex on the country you love. What we’ve become, is contrary to what we want. Now burn, you will burn, you will burn in hell, yeah you’ll burn in hell for your sins,” Muse, Take a Bow.

“Return to me, return to me, return to me, turn to me, leave me no one. Return to me, return to me, return to me, turn to me, case aside. Return to me, return to me, return to me, turn to me, leave me no one. Turn to me, return to me, return to me, you’ve made me turn away,” Disturbed, Prayer.

“I cross the oceans, I cross the seas, I cross the mountains, like a new disease. Take a look at the Earth from a plane, you’ll see the Earth cut up and in pain. I’m the scum of the Earth, I am a cancer, I am humanity,” Filter, Cancer.

“Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses,” RATM, Killing in the Name of.

“San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell. May your walls fall and may I live to tell. May all the world forget you ever stood. And may all the world regret you did no good,” Johnny Cash, San Quentin.

Off to Boston, baby, yeah!

I got confirmation yesterday that my paper, "A New Kind of Christian is a New Kind of Atheist: Truth and A/theistic Orthodoxy in the Emerging Church Milieu," got accepted for the Society of Continental Philosophy and Theology conference on Truth, Postmodernism and Religious Pluralism that I've been banging on about in other posts. Very exciting!

I'd booked all of my flights and hotels already because the theme of the conference is so similar to that of my thesis and it would have been a great opportunity to network - even if my paper hadn't been accepted. But it has, so now I need to go and read loads of stuff to prepare for the inevitable questions I'll get and to pray that the Arts and Humanities Research Council are nice enough to pay for my flights!

Here's my brief introduction to whet some appetites concerning "a/theistic orthodoxy":

Jacques Derrida writes that, ‘[w]e have to elaborate another truth of the true, another way of experiencing the truth.’ Jack Caputo’s translation of continental philosophy into a deconstructive theology, which he has recently articulated as a weak theology, begins this elaboration. However, his reworking of Augustine’s facere veritatem, doing or making the truth in one’s heart before witnesses, into making truth ‘come true’ lays him open to a charge of inconsistency in his deployment of the term “truth.” However, this paper argues that the slippage which occurs between Caputo’s conceptualisations of truth is a necessary feature of his theology of the event.

This paper is set in the context of ethnographic data from the UK Emerging Church Milieu, wherein participants are increasingly drawn to both continental philosophy and deconstructive theology. Their notions of truth exhibit the gamut of understandings discernable in Caputo’s work and elements within this milieu similarly seek to celebrate the slash of undecidability between theism and atheism. In conversation with Caputo, I argue for the linkage of this a/theism to an understanding of orthodoxy which arises from the UK Emerging Church Milieu. I argue, therefore, that an “a/theistic orthodoxy” is a practical expression of Caputo’s project of a weak theology as it relates to the concept of truth.

I'll post about "a/theistic orthodoxy" again in the run up to the conference, and address (as I do in the paper) the apparent contradiction in linking these two concepts: a/theism and orthodoxy.

Hermeneutics Quiz

Prompted by a post from Jason Clark, I took The Hermeneutics Quiz which Scot McKnight drafted for Leadership Magazine. I scored 85 out of 100 which makes me a "progressive."

Here's what Scot writes about progressives:

"The progressive is not always progressive. Those who score 66 or more can be seen as leaning toward the progressive side, but the difference between at 66 and 92 is dramatic. Still, the progressive tends to see the Bible as historically shaped and culturally conditioned, and yet most still consider it the Word of God for today. Following a progressive hermeneutic, for the Word to speak in our day, one must interpret what the Bible said in its day and discern its pattern for revelation in order to apply it to our world. The strength, as with the moderate but even more so, is the challenge to examine what the Bible said in its day, and this means the progressives tend to be historians. But the problems for the progressives are predictable: Will the Bible's so-called "plain meaning" be given its due and authoritative force to challenge our world? Or will the Bible be swallowed by a quest to find modern analogies that sometimes minimize what the text clearly says?"

By scoring 85 I guess I'm at the end of progressive-ness which is reluctant to articulate the status of the Bible as "the Word of God for today" without a recognition of contextualisation, interpretation, and undecidability, and I'm certainly uncomfortable with McKnight's question: "Will the Bible's so-called 'plain meaning' be given its due and authoritative force to challenge our world?" While I think that there is a flavour of love, justice, hope, hospitality and forgiveness running through both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, there is also a lot of stuff that, in the words of the hermeneutics quiz, I wish "weren't in the Bible" and their presence makes me wary of any talk of what McKnight rightly qualifies as the "so-called 'plain meaning'" of the Bible which might legitmately argue for the literal interpretation of certain 'texts of terror.'

But the quiz also got me thinking about Gordon Lynch's study of progressive spirituality, about which I've blogged before, and found particularly formative in my thinking of the emerging church as a milieu. I wondered to what extent McKnight's use of "progressive" mirrored Lynch's use of it as a classification in the sociology of religion and spirituality.

Gordon Lynch’s criteria for inclusion in the progressive milieu are as follows:

• 1. “sympathetic to core values of liberal democracy (for example, tolerance, autonomy, diversity)
• 2. “have green or left-wing political attitudes (for example, are concerned with environmentalism, social justice, civil rights)
• OR 3. “hold liberal or radical theological views (for example, are willing to revise religious tradition in the light of contemporary knowledge, are sympathetic to feminist critiques of organized religion, and/or believe that there is a truth inherent in all religious traditions).” (Lynch 2007:98).

His criteria for inclusion in progressive spirituality are:

• 1. “a belief in the immanent divine unity which nurtures and sustains the unfolding cosmos;
• 2. the sacralization of nature;
• 3. the sacralization of the self;
• 4. and a belief tha these spiritual truths can be discerned within and beyond different religious traditions.” (Lynch, 2007:98).

I'm unconvinced that those whom this quiz classify as "progressive" would fit into many of these criteria.

Hopefully debate over at Jason Clark's blog will help me think through the relationship between McKnight's "progressives" and Lynch's "progressives". I personally feel that those that ranked as "progressives" with, say over 80 out of 100 (I don't know the precise breakdown of mark boundaries the quiz uses here but McKnight acknowledges that "the difference between 66 and 92 is dramatic"), are probably comfortable in the emerging church conversation, which I see as part of Lynch's progressive milieu. However, I don't think those people are necessarily comfortable meeting the criteria for Lynch's progressive spirituality. I've asked Scot to comment more on his choice of language.

Guest Blogger at Jason Clark

My post frequency has suffered this month as I've been locked in my room completing a 3,000 word submission on "A/theistic Orthodoxy" for the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology conference on Postmodernism, Truth and Religious Pluralism, after giving a paper on "Truth and Weak Theology" in my department's seminar series.

Anyway, I'm a guest blogger at Jason Clark's blog next Monday (March 3rd) and so I've also been panicking about that. As (my few) regular readers will know, I've been struggling to find a suitable "blogging style" that doesn't read like I just chopped some bits out of something I gave to my supervisor yesterday. So I'm practing on someone else's blog! We'll see how I do!

Truth in Weak Theology - part five - adequatio, circumfession, facere veritatem

My presentation of Jack Caputo’s Weak Theology (in parts one [Names and Events], two [Aporia], three [kingdom without kingdom] and four [A/theism]) sets the scene for a discussion of truth in The Weakness of God, where three notions can be identified and linked to differing levels of his work. I treat these concepts of truth, not in the order in which they arise in this book, but in an order which reflects Caputo’s hyper-realist, messianic prayer for the to-come.

In his reduction/magnification of names to events, Caputo emphasises the conditioned nature of language and in so doing exposes that there are contingent reasons why certain names are chosen over others (288), and that no name can function universally for humanity (289). Caputo rejects, therefore, the first concept of truth as correlation. For him, ‘a truth that is not a matter of establishing an adequatio’ (286). Without denying the reality of the world – ‘The “world” is what really exists, whereas the kingdom calls for something else’ (37) – the truth of God is not found in theological realism nor theological anti-realism, which both demand a correspondence theory of truth wherein language corresponds to reality (whether reality is real or an illusion). Rather, the truth of the name of God is found in a hyper-realism, of which is cannot be said that it “is,” but that it is “to-come,” thereby disallowing a theory of truth which demands an adequatio between language and what “is.” The truth of the name of God is not (yet) ‘in being, in re’ (16).

The truth of God is found, therefore, ‘not in a proposition but in a confession’ (286). It is a matter of prayer, not epistemology (6). In this second understanding of truth, which can be referred to as a circumfession, Caputo uses phrases such as ‘a hard truth’ (6), ‘honestly facing the truth’ (6), ‘the cold truth’ (20), ‘if the truth be told’ (288), ‘in all truthfulness’ (287), and ‘to be honest to God’ (287). Here truth has the flavour of honesty – hard and humbling, it is the event of a confession, a cut, a wound, a confession that makes us weep and bleed. It involves the recognition of our condition vis-à-vis language, and therefore truth involves the rejection of truth as an adequatio. Instead, ‘Truth means truthfully to confess the poverty of our philosophy, the weakness of our theology, and the humility of our condition’ (286). Truth is a confession, which itself is a concession (293), an admittance of our situation – rather than truth being something that is sought after it is something which cannot be escaped (284).

‘To confess the truth means to own up to our own limits, to face the music about what we know and do not know… the truth demands an honest concession that we cannot contain the event harbored by the name of God’ (287).

This concept of truth as the event of ‘endless confession and circumfession and confusion’ (115) moves us away from truth as an adequatio on the plane of being, name, and realism/anti-realism, towards truth as ‘a deed, something to do, to translate into the flesh of existence’ (16). Here Caputo repeatedly employs the Augustinian understanding of “making” or “doing the truth,” facere veritatem, so that ‘a “truth claim” is less an exact claim we make than a exacting claim that is made upon us’ to make truth true (286), to actualise the promise, the call, the hyper-real.

Truth ‘wants to become true, to make itself true, to make itself come true, to be transformed into truth, so that its truth is a species of truth facere veritatem’ (118). The truth is less about descriptive content than about a promise calling to be fulfilled, so that the truth of the name of God is the truth of the event, ‘facere veritatem, doing and making truth happen’ (268).

In this sense, truth as facere veritatem is a hyper-truth beyond the truth of correspondence, a not-yet-true truth, a truth of future-correspondence-peut-être, of correspondence-à-venir, hyper-correspondence.

When Caputo talks about justice preceding truth (253), he refers to a translation of the name of God into an event and the event into a deed, which is a ‘translation into [the] justice which precedes truth [as correspondence with reality], or a translation into truth in the Augustinian sense of facere veritatem’ (272). This is suggestive of two of the concepts of truth which I have observed in Caputo’s work: truth as correspondence now, which in terms of theological truth is rejected as undecidable, and truth as facere veritatem, correspondence-to-come. As Caputo himself writes,

‘The truth of the event releases us from the order of names and transports us to another level, where truth does not mean learning a name but making truth come true, making it happen, facere veritatem, letting the event happen, sans voir, sans savoir, sans avoir, praying and weeping before an unknown god.

Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you to eat?

Is that you, Lord?

The truth of the event is not a name but a deed’ (299)

The first notion of truth identified, and rejected, in Caputo’s work is truth as a full and adequate correspondence between language and reality. Truth is not about correlation, because this theory of truth operates on the plane of being, of names and of the right names, the right correlations. Instead, truth is about the honest but hard recognition of our limitations on the plane of being. This existential truth is the second notion identifiable within The Weakness of God, on the plane of being, but facing the hard truth of our inadequacy. The third notion, facere veritatem, is the prayers and tears for truth to be made true, for the messianic to-come to be made a kingdom without kingdom, here and now, where ‘the truth of the event is not a name but a deed’ (299).

These second two movements which Caputo makes with regards to truth, after a rejection of the first position, mirrors the movements he makes within an experience of the impossible:

‘Having, or rather venturing, an experience [of the impossible] involves a double operation: first we understand full well that it is impossible to go, that we are blocked from moving ahead, that we cannot take another step, that we have reached the limit: then we go. We venture out and take the risk, perilous as it may be. First, immobilization, then movement. The movement is mobilized by the immobilization… The immobilization belongs to the more cognitive domain: we know that this can’t be done; we have been instructed by the understanding about the limits of what is possible. But then we go. Thus the movement is carried out by a shift to the sphere of praxis and the pragmatic order… to a certain non-cognitive leap which overcomes the hesitations of the understanding that is what Augustine calls doing the truth, facere veritatem’ (Caputo 2003:126)

So in relation to truth, Caputo makes two interrelated moves. First, we know we cannot know truth, cannot name it, contain it in language, cannot stop the endless translation and deferral. Then, we go – we act, we pray, we weep for the truth to become true; we translate the event’s truth – not it’s semantic content but what it promises (6) – into a deed; we respond to the call to being to go beyond itself, to be otherwise.

Truth in Weak Theology - part four - A/theism

Fourth installment about Jack Caputo's The Weakness of God, following on from parts one (Names and Events), two (Aporia), and three (kingdom without kingdom).

The undecidability of ontology forces translation not from realism to anti-realism, for aporia prevents final, transcendent answers, but from event to deed, from experience of the impossible, a promise to come, to the act of hospitality, actualising the promise (284). And this under not only the name of God and theism, but of atheism, ‘for Derrida could say whatever he has to say without the benefit of this name [God]’ (93).

The uncontainability of the event and the endless translatability of the name means that ‘[a]n event cuts across the distinctions among the various confessions, and even across the distinction between the confessional faiths and secular unbelief, in order to touch upon a more elemental, if ambiguous, quality of our lives, however this quality is given words or formulated, with or without what is conventionally called religion or theology’ (4).

‘To act in the name of God is to act in response to the event contained in the name of God, under whatever name the event addresses us, whether or not it is to the name of God itself that one responds’ (266), so that Derrida can both ‘rightly pass for an atheist’ (cited 25) and be theological, which means ‘to make the mind’s ascent to God, which means toward whatever event is astir in the name of God’ (6).

For Caputo, ‘the line dividing the kingdom and the world is not the line dividing theist and atheist; it is a matter of the event, not of nomination and denomination’ (268). It is the me voici, the “here I am,” that concerns Caputo, whether or not that is followed by au nom de Dieu or tout court – sans Dieu; the translation of the event, not semantically into theism or atheism, but pragmatically. So, ‘by the mad para-logic of the impossible, rightly passing for an atheist is no obstacle’ (266).

There is a resultant undecidability between theism and atheism, and each contains an element of their opposite, an a/theism where the contingency of the names constitutes their openness to the event. Under whatever name, in response to the event, there is the structure of the ‘messianic’ - prayers and tears for the to-come - without the ‘messianism’ of a particular Messiah. Under whatever name, in response to the event, there is the structure of a ‘religion without religion.’

Tomorrow, the final installment of Truth in Weak Theology - part five - adequatio, circumfession, facere veritatem - which (finally) addresses Caputo's notion(s) of truth in TWOG.

Truth in Weak Theology - part three - kingdom without kingdom

Third in a series about Jack Caputo's The Weakness of God, following on from Truth in Weak Theology - part one - Names and Events, and Truth in Weak Theology - part two - Aporia, today I'm posting about the pragmatic, rather than semanitc, translation of events; the kingdom (without kingdom) of God; and hyper-realism.

kingdom without kingdom

Conceiving the name of God as a weak force of a call holds implications for phenomenological scriptural hermeneutics, wherein ‘these texts are solicitations that call for a response, appeals coming from I know not where about a way to be, a style of existence, about a poetic possibility that we are invited to transform into existential actuality’ (117).

Scripture is not treated as representational of reality, but as ‘hermeneutically explicative or phenomenologically disclosive or revelatory about a mode of being in the world’ (188). There is thus a movement from text to call to response and actualizing activity. For Caputo, ‘[r]eligious discourses are not “verified” like propositions, by finding a fact of the matter out there with which the proposition makes a snug fit, but rather the event they harbor is “testified” to in experience, by being borne out or confirmed in our lives’ (118).

While names are endlessly translatable semantically, the event calls to be translated pragmatically. This translation is ‘radical, beyond any semantic transfer, beyond any aligning of meanings in different semantic fields, beyond being and knowledge, because it is a translation into witnessing, into action. The name of God must be translated into an event, and the event must be translated into a deed’ (272). Semantics should not block pragmatics, which is why Caputo is concerned to ‘save the name of God, not absolutize’ or literalize or ontologize it (40).

He reflects upon continental philosophy’s fondness for the French word ‘adieu,’ holding for Levinas the sense of being turned to God: ‘The à in à-Dieu represents a turn toward God, not a turn taken by the conscious freedom of an auto-turning autonomous self, but a being-already-turned to God, long before the conscious self steps in and takes on turn or another’ (264). Long before one turns to God though intentional actions and aspirations for God, ‘before I even know this name,’ one is ‘always already turned by God to God: à Dieu’ (264).

The name of God, which contains an uncontainable unconditional event, names a transformation (whatever name we give it) which turns the self to the other, because the name of God is an undeconstructible event of justice, forgiveness, hospitality, and love. This is where, Caputo argues, Levinas and Derrida converge:

‘Starting out from the opposite shores of theism and atheism, they join rails in the middle. Even as for Levinas, religion, me voice, au nom de Dieu [here I am, in the name of God], translates into ethics, me voici, tout court [here I am, just that], so for Derrida, for whom deconstruction is justice, messianic peace, and hospitality, deconstruction undergoes a parallel translation into an ethic-politics and therefore into the name of God, into a working equivalence with speaking in the name of God. Me voici, au nom de Dieu, and me voici, tout court – these translate into the same thing, into hospitality, which is not their “common meaning” but the event they share in common, whether or not one rightly passing for an atheist.’ (274)

The experience of the impossible, the event, which is ethics for Levinas and deconstruction for Derrida, turns from semantics to pragmatics, from names to events and our response to the event. ‘What matters with the event,’ Caputo writes, ‘is to take a step’ (298).

To recap, ‘It is not what we call God that is at issue, but what God calls. Then again, it is not what God calls that is at issue, but the response’ (97). For Caputo, the response, the action or deed, constitutes what he calls a ‘sacred anarchism’ (14), visible in the poetics of the kingdom of God. The kingdom which unfolds when the event harboured in God’s name rules (with sovereignty but without force, or, rather, with the sovereignty of a weak force, a call, a word, a sigh) is a ‘kingdom without kingdom,’ an anarchic kingdom, an (Alice in) Wonderland of a kingdom, which is a ‘holy disarray’ (14), a ‘kingdom of the kingdom-less’ (26). This anarchism, like deconstruction, is undertaken ‘in the name of something’ (140), in the name(s) which we ascribe to the event, the call, the ‘infinite task of making good on Elohim’s “good”’ (128) with acts of love, justice, gift, forgiveness and hospitality, if there are such things (s’il y en a).

This ‘making good’ is vital for one of the senses in which Caputo understands truth, which will be examined in a later post, but it also pertains to his understanding of ‘hyper-realism.’ Events, which are ‘not what is present but what is coming’ (6), avoid the realist/anti-realist debates which concern the level of being, the level of names (102).

‘I do not take the name of God to pick out an entity, as in realism, or an illusion, as in anti-realism, but an event, an advent, a future and a promise, a call and a claim, a hope and an aspiration, which is why I speak of a hyper-realism, which hopes in a being beyond or below being with a desire beyond desire and a hope against hope’ (124).

Reducing or magnifying the name of God to the level of events is to neither confirm nor contradict theological realism or theological anti-realism, but is to affirm a different reality altogether, the reality to come, the to-come (l’à-venir), whatever name it be given now or in the unforeseeable future. Hyper-reality is a reality promised beyond what is presently taken to be real’ (11). Hyper-realism ‘reaches beyond the real to the not-yet-real’ (11-12), so that it is a realism of the called-for to-come.

The translatability of names (mentioned in part one), the context of undecidability (part two), and the importance of pragmatics over semantics (here in part three) lead on to the discussion of a/theism, which I will post about in tomorrow's installment: Truth in Weak Theology - part four - A/theism.

Truth in Weak Theology - part two - Aporia

This is the second post in a series about Jack Caputo's The Weakness of God. It follows on from yesterday's post: Truth in Weak Theology - part one - Names and Events. Today we're looking at aporia, or undecidability; the impossible; and weakness. Here's where we left off yesterday:

Aporia

Faced with the radical ‘undecidability’ of life – of from whence the call comes, for example – it is this undecidability that constitutes the very condition of possibility for decisions to be made, for the non-cognitive leap of faith to be made.

‘[E]verything turns on keeping the gap between the name and the event open, on keeping the tension between them strong and alive, and thereby to be transported by that tension into the passion of life… It is when I truly do not know what I desire that desire is fired white-hot. It is when I truly do not know if there is anyone to pray to that I find myself praying like mad. It is when I truly do not know where I am going that I am really faced with making a move’ (298)

This radical uncertainty forms part of the ‘element of irreducible indeterminancy and instability built right into creation’ (64). Aporia is a condition of possibility for both re-formation and de-formation, for both promise and threat. ‘The event is subject to all the contingencies of time and tide, of chance and circumstance, of history and power – in short, to all the forces of the world that conspire to prevent the event, to contain its disruption, to hold in check its bottomless disseminative disturbance, to betray its promise’ (5). Good, good, yes, yes, ‘Good – now let’s hope it works’ (71).

The risk of creation – what Caputo says Levinas might call a ‘beautiful risk’ (64) – comes with the gift (promise and threat) of what Derrida calls an ‘absolute future to come’ (à venire) (175), an ‘unforeseeable surprise, a promise and a threat, but about which Jesus would tell us not to be afraid, not to be of little faith, but to trust in God’s rule’ (175). This is a future for which we cannot prepare, for which no horizon of expectation can ‘absorb the shock of the event’ (297).

A correlative (or a ‘least bad definition’ 103) of deconstruction, différance and the event is an experience of the impossible. The event contained in the name of God is the possibility of the impossible (87-88), which is not simply a logical contradiction (p and -p), which implies a horizon of logical expectations, but rather ‘something unforeseeable that shatters our horizons or expectation’ (103).

The possibility of this event, contained in the name of God as in many other names, isn’t an “anything-goes” eventuality, for this is not merely an experience of the impossible, but an experience by the impossible, external to (or beyond) the plane of being so that the experience is a desire beyond desire, ‘for the gift beyond economy, for the justice beyond the law, for the hospitality beyond proprietorship, for forgiveness beyond getting even’ (111; his emphases).

This experience of the impossible shattering of hopes, fears, prayers and tears, forces ‘being into motion, mutation, transformation, reversal’ (9). The experience of the impossible is ‘a transforming event on the level of meaning and existential significance’ (207), not instigating an entitative change but offering a new meaning and calling for transformation, for metanoia (206-207).

This transformation is not exacted through the strong force of the omnipotent God of metaphysics, a God which then requires the obscenity of theodicy. As Caputo writes, ‘God is not up to what metaphysics calls God’ (244). Rather, Caputo “cross wires” St Paul’s ‘weakness of God’ (which still hides power, 49) with Derrida’s ‘weak force,’ Vattimo’s ‘weak thought’ and Benjamin’s ‘weak messianic force’ (7). Both Caputo’s “God” and his theology are ‘weakened by undecidability and translatability’ (9) and ‘weakness is constructed as a blessing’ as in the Beatitudes (11). The event is thus weak, with a power of the powerlessness, as ‘a call is as weak as a word, as a breath of air, a trace, or a sigh’ (15) and is it a Derridean ‘sovereignty without force’ (29).

‘The name of God, what we call God, is God’s call, the word he pronounces, the promise that he inscribes in creation, the word that calls things good. The name of God is the name of an unconditional promise, not of an unlimited power. A promise made without an army to enforce it, without the sovereign power to coerce it. That is what I am calling the weak force of God. That force is the power of powerlessness’ (90)

Tomorrow: Truth in Weak Theology - part three - kingdom without kingdom.

Truth in Weak Theology - part one - Names and Events

Okay, enough posts on Oakland!



Over the next few days I'll post bits of what I'm working on at the moment, which is a paper on truth, weak theology and a/theism. To start with, a few posts laying down the key concepts in Jack Caputo's (2006) The Weakness of God. He ends with “A Concluding Prayer – for Theology, for the Truth, for the Event,” so I'll also be blogging about how truth is figured in TWOG.

• Weak Theology isn't a systematic theology, so it doesn't lend itself well to being broken up into distinct chapters within a linear progression, so it's going to be quite a job to hope (against hope!) to con(s)t(r)ain it to set of posts rather than one long one, but I'll try. The posts will roughly follow this pattern:

• Caputo's distinction between names and events

• Aporia, or undecidability; the impossible; and weakness

• Pragmatic rather than semantic translation of events; the kingdom (without kingdom) of God; and hyper-realism

• A/theism

• and truth in Weak Theology

Names and Events

Caputo’s (2006) The Weakness of God hinges on a reduction, which is at the same time a magnification, of the name of God to an event. His distinction between names and events pivots on the conditioned nature of names and the unconditionality of events. For example, the name of God contains an event it cannot contain, in a relative stability which will always be undone, deconstructed, by the event itself. In this way, ‘a name is a promissory note that it cannot itself keep… asked to carry what they cannot bear toward a destination they do not know’ (3). The burden of names is an event beyond and below being, not an actual entity nor being itself, but something – I know not what – astir in the plane of being, calling being beyond itself.

This event is uncontainable, while names are endlessly translatable into other names. ‘No name can be allowed to have a lock on the event, even the name of God itself, for the event that unfolds under that name comes and goes under many other names’ (267). As no conditioned name can contain the event and no conditioned name can ever be ‘impartially accessible to everyone or uniformly desirable by everyone’ (289), names need to be deliteralized and de-ontologized (3-4), reduced to the event which they harbour, a reduction which is simultaneously a magnification, even a Magnificat (123).

The event is a vocative, evocative and provocative force at work within names and beings, to solicit, seduce and disturb the plane of being (39), so that the event ‘would be something of which we would say not that it “is” but that it “calls”’ (13). The event is thus both excessive and unconditional, an in-coming (l’invention) rising independently of us (4), laying unconditional claim to us, without conditions (90) and without an ‘army to enforce its claims’ (17). The ‘best way to describe an event is not to say that “it is” but [that] it happens’ (153). Caputo prefers to ‘think of the world as addressed by a call, not produced by a cause, as an addressee, not an effect, and of God as a call, not a cause, as a beneficence, not a sovereign power’ (39).

His meditation on Genesis 1.2, in conversation with Catherine Keller’s (2003) theology of creation The Face of the Deep, highlights that God calls creation, contra creatio ex nihilo, not into being from non-being – as the barren earth (tohu wa-bohu), the deep (tehom), and the wind (ruach) are God's companions – but rather from being to beyond being, from being to life, from being to the good (58,67). Following this theology of creation, ‘God is an event, not in the order of power or being, but in the order of the good, the order of the order or command or call or appeal for the good, which calls for the good even when, especially when, things are going badly’ (53). Good, good, yes, yes. Viens, oui, oui. This call is Caputo’s ‘hermeneutical pre-understanding:’ ‘we are all constituted as the recipients of a call about whose origin we cannot comment with assurance’ (114).

While what is constructed (names) can be deconstructed, the event is undeconstructible. ‘The event is always undeconstructible because it is always promised or called for, always to come, whereas whatever actually arrives has arrived under present conditions and so is deconstructible.’ (6). Deconstruction of the conditioned name releases the unconditional event, but deconstruction is a condition built into the name, which cannot contain the uncontainable and so the name auto-deconstructs and the event translates itself endlessly. For example, ‘…when you cross the wires of différance with the name of God, the result is to have crossed out the name of God in order to release the event this name contains’ (35).

Deconstruction constitutes the slash between theism/atheism, the condition of possibility for distinguishing between names, their translatability, and the necessary structural gap between names and events (28). For Caputo, this gap ‘does not undermine faith but explains precisely why we need faith’ (25). Faced with the radical ‘undecidability’ of life – of from whence the call comes, for example – it is this undecidability that constitutes the very condition of possibility for decisions to be made, for the non-cognitive leap of faith to be made.

I'll pick up here tomorrow in Truth in Weak Theology - part two - Aporia

Oakland: Playing Games to Expose Emerging (Contemplative) Spirituality

Roger Oakland’s history of the emerging church and his aim of exposing emerging spirituality are a lesson in playing games.

Oakland’s aim is “to document in this book how the emerging church bridges Christianity and this ‘new spirituality’” of New Age mysticism (222), a “belief system that uses ancient mystical meditation practices to induce altered states of consciousness” (81).

However, his methodology involves neither fieldwork amongst authors, leaders, members and friends of emerging churches nor in-depth analysis of the published materials he quotes. Instead, Oakland uses several methods to draw inferences from literature by people like Leonard Sweet by placing this literature next to that of what Gordon Lynch terms “progressive spirituality” (2007 The New Spirituality), without interviewing those involved in emerging churches to determine if their spirituality is that of the New Age.

Firstly, Oakland plays a game of who’s related to whom. A few examples of this approach:

• Oakland refers to Lauren Artress, canon of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, whom he considers the catalyst for the use of labyrinths in ritual. He traces her connection to the emerging church through her pastoral overseer at the Cathedral, Alan Jones, who’s book, Reimagining Christianity, was endorsed by Brian McLaren (69)

• Concerning the history of the Emerging Church, the spirituality of the Leadership Network is traced from Bob Buford to the “business / management guru” (23) Peter Drucker: “while Drucker no doubt brought his business sense to the Leadership Network table, his spiritual overtones were prevalent as well; and they were passed on to Buford, who in turn passed them on to the emerging church” (24).
  
  

A second method used to demonstrate the mysticism of the emerging church, is to interpret the writings of emerging church authors and leaders through the lens of a more thoroughly contemplative or New Age author.

An example here is when Oakland quotes Brian McLaren writing on what Oakland refers to as “Kingdom Now theology,” and then goes on to explain what McLaren means through the work of New Age leader Barbara Marx Hubbard, who is described as “someone who might agree with McLaren” (158). While Marx Hubbard may well agree with McLaren, McLaren is never asked, nor are his writings analysed to determine, whether he agrees with her! Indeed, Oakland acknowledges that “she puts a little twist in the Kingdom Now theology” (159). But then he states, without demonstrating this, that “What Marx Hubbard proposing is little different than McLaren’s message” (159).

This methodology of inaccurate inference from one writer to another is astonishing and inexcusable – especially when Oakland aims to expose the former as similar to the latter. Oakland appears to be constructing his parallels between the emerging church and New Age mysticism, rather than exposing them.

A third tactic is to quote mystical elements of authors who are tangentially connected to the emerging church, or might be placed on the fringes of what I am calling “the emerging church milieu.”

For example:

• Marcus Borg (whom only one of my participants has mentioned). Oakland acquiesces that “most would not consider him an emerging church leader,” but engages in a game of “who are his friends?”, noting that he and McLaren participated in a conference together in 2006, and that Rob Bell references him in Velvet Elvis, and so on (196). Combing the second methodology mentioned above as well, Oakland proceeds to quote Borg and then asks, “What is behind this mindset? Listen to one New Ager describe what underlies this line of thought” (197). Did he think to ask Borg whether what underlies his thoughts is the mysticism of the New Age movement?

• Other people with tenuous connections to the emerging church but who Oakland includes regardless, include Philip Yancey, who “may not be an emergent leader, but his beliefs certainly fit with emerging spirituality” (213)
  

• As well as individuals whom emerging churches may not regard as emerging, Oakland also refers to practices such as drumming, which is included “even though some in the emerging church might consider [it] a bit extreme” (70)
  
  

A fourth strategy is a clear (intentional?) misreading of emerging church literature. A clear example is Rob Bell, quoted by Andy Crouch in his Christianity Today article, as “discovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life” (cited 109). Oakland asks, seriously, “does he really believe that Christianity is an Eastern religion?” (109) He seeks an answer to this question through Bell’s references to the science of emergence, in which he writes that, “God empowers the land to do something. He gives it the capacity to produce trees and shrubs and plants and bushes that produce fruit and seeds. God empowers creation to make more” (cited 110). From this quotation, Oakland concludes that Bell is saying that “all creation is divine. Everything is God” (111). I don’t believe that this is what Bell is saying here at all. And to couple this misreading with a misreading of the Christianity Today quote is to misrepresent what Bell is saying about Christianity. By referring to it as an eastern religion, I believe Bell is highlighting that the nature of religion is understood differently in eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism – as a “way of life,” something to be lived out rather than philosophically or theologically abstracted and dissected.

Surely, Oakland realises that he can only use tactics for so long before readers think that his criteria for including authors and leaders in his account of emerging spirituality serves his agenda of exposing it as New Age mysticism rather than accurately describing the spiritualities of the emerging church milieu.

There are a few other points to be made. Oakland’s characterisation of New Ageism, contemplative prayer, and Christian mysticism, is influenced more by his evangelical context than by academic study of these phenomena. This goes back to what I was saying a few days ago about the foundational position of Scripture in evangelicalism, which prevents serious consideration of church history, understood as the valid religious experiences of previous generations of Christians. Therefore, for Oakland, that “Catholic monks have taught [meditative] practice for a long time” undermines rather than legitimates the contemplative prayer (82). The same goes for the mysticism of the desert fathers. For Oakland, “while outer quietness is legitimate, inner stillness of the mind is not” (82). His rejection of church history and tradition is a necessary correlative of his rejection of Roman Catholicism as authentic Christian expression: “A mystical prayer movement endorsed and actually initiated by Catholic monks (and accepted by Catholic leadership) should be alarming to any discerning Christian” (83).

Oakland’s lack of in-depth (and methodologically sound!) analysis of emerging church literature and of empirical data, begs the question: Is the contemplative prayer and mysticism of emerging churches the same as that of New Ageism or eastern religious traditions? Tony Jones clearly identifies his Jesus Prayer and centering prayer (from his 2005 The Sacred Way) as based on “the reflections and writings of the Desert Fathers” (cited 105). Oakland’s rejection of church history is the motivation for his characterisation of such prayers as un-Christian because of their grounding in history rather than Scripture. But there are examples of evangelical beliefs which have their grounding not in Scripture but in church history – for example, the doctrine of creation ex nihilo (see Jack Caputo’s 2006 The Weakness of God and Catherine Keller’s 2003 The Face of the Deep).

Oakland’s desire to expunge all eastern aspects of Christianity betrays a colonialist mentality, in which it is forgotten that Christianity emerged in the context of the Middle East, before the canonization processes of Scripture, and not in the last few centuries of Western history.

The Emerging Church Road to Rome? The Foundations of Scripture and Tradition in Modern Theology

Okay, so I thought I was going to post about Roger Oakland’s history of the emerging church next. However, after finishing his book yesterday (2007, Faith Undone) I just had to comment on the anti-Roman Catholicism running throughout. Such sentiments got me thinking about the position of Scripture and tradition in modern (and therefore postmodern) theology, so I’ll also be reflecting on the other two books that I’m reading at the moment: the (2007) A New Kind of Conversation: Blogging Toward a Postmodern Faith edited by Myron Penner & Hunter Barnes, and Nancey Murphy’s (1996) Beyond Liberalism & Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda.

First up: Faith Undone. Oakland’s book is a presentation of the “belief system” underlying the emerging church (19), a belief system which he at first refers to as “emerging spirituality” but as the book unfolds he increasingly prefers the language of “contemplative spirituality” and “mysticism.” His work does suffer from not setting out this agenda in his introduction, as he claims at its conclusion to have “tried to document in this book how the emerging church bridges Christianity and this ‘new spirituality’” (222) whilst throughout conflating the emerging church and with the new spirituality of New Age mysticism. I’ll refrain from outright saying that this conflation is intentional and integral to his agenda, but, as you can see, I have no problem with inferring this. Having just read Gordon Lynch’s (2007) The New Spirituality, which is a much better analysis of the underlying spirituality of what many might refer to as New Ageism, there are clear differences between what Lynch describes as progressive spirituality and the spiritualities of the emerging church milieu – an analysis of which will form a part of my thesis.

The bridge Oakland portrays is not even accurately referred to as that between Christianity and new spirituality. Rather, he is keen to demonstrate that the emerging church bridges biblical Christianity (evangelicalism) and several “unbiblical” Christian traditions and other world religions, including New Ageism (97), eastern religious traditions (89), and Catholicism (79). Referring to the Catholic Church, he writes that “The emerging church is one of the more significant bridges that has been established to bring the separated brethren back to the Mother of All Churches” (130).

To take an example, Oakland writes that “many well-known Christian leaders and teachers who promote the emerging church are now advocating the Catholic view of the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist” (133). I have not researched understandings of the Eucharist within the emerging church milieu, but the evidence Oakland provides his readers does not support this claim. Despite an increasing emerging church focus upon “traditional” liturgy, which has been historically visible among many Protestants – for example, High Church Anglicans – as well as Catholics (a point Oakland forgets on p.139), transubstantiation is not mentioned explicitly and cannot be inferred merely from the authors and speakers Oakland quotes. As he himself recognises, the examples refer to “rituals associated with the Eucharist” (134) – for instance, the applying of ashes to the forehead, the signing of the cross, etc – but they are not necessarily supportive of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Where one author, Robert Webber, does experience a Catholic Mass (in the context of an ecumenical weekend retreat) he writes, “I had taken into myself the experience of another tradition, I had been in dialogue with another worship tradition, and I was surely the richer for it” (cited 138). Webber does not say “I had taken into myself the real body and blood of Jesus Christ.”

Throughout Faith Undone, Oakland is at pains to inform his readers that the aspects of the emerging church which he focuses upon – primarily contextualisation, certain liturgies and rituals, mystical experiences of God, a “Kingdom Now” theology, and a rejection of substitutionary atonement – are not found in the Bible. Repeated phrases such as “…cannot be found in the Bible” (64), “there is no evidence in the Bible that…” (67), “…unbiblical practices supported by Rome” (69), “foreign to Scripture” (83), “Nowhere in the Bible is there any precedent for this…” (183), “Nowhere in Scripture…” (99), “the Bible is not the source” (102) and “post-New Testament extra-biblical revelation” (73) hammer the message home to readers that “I have searched the Scripture. [insert an element that Oakland equates with the emerging church] just isn’t there!” (118). That these practices and theologies “can be found in church tradition” (60) is used, however, to denounce them, especially since, we are reminded, “the church fathers are the fathers of the Catholic Church” (74). “Why,” Oakland asks, “not just stay with Scripture in order to remain in the truth?” (73)

Oakland’s anti-Roman Catholicism has made me think about the positions given to Scripture and tradition within modern Christianity and modern theology, and what might be happening to these positions today.

Nancey Murphy argues that modern philosophy has given modern Christianity “only two viable strategies” (x), creating the distinctly liberal and distinctly conservative theologies of the contemporary Christian landscape. The shift towards what Murphy label “Anglo-American postmodernism” offers an opportunity for future theology, in which “there will be no intellectual compulsion to bifurcate the spectrum [from liberal to conservative] into two discrete camps” (3). Setting aside this part of her argument for another post, and for when I’ve finished the book (!), in reference to the justification of theological claims, the modern philosophical theory of knowledge – foundationalism – led to two possibile foundations for modern theology: Scripture or experience. “Conservatives have chosen Scripture; liberals, characteristically, have chosen experience” (2). For conservatives, this choice requires a bibliology (doctrine of Scripture – a word I learnt from A New Kind of Conversation) which includes the inerrancy of Scripture:

“if Scripture is to provide an indubitable foundation for theological construction, then all of its teachings must be free from error, lest the theologian make erroneous judgements in distinguishing true teachings from false ones or essential teachings from incidental cultural assumptions” (17).

For liberals, this choice requires a general anthropology which includes the possibility for all human beings to experience God, not just Christians (22-23):

“the scriptural claim that Christian self-understanding expresses an understanding of authentic human existence is to be tested against the criterion of adequacy to common human experience” (25).

Neither conservative nor liberals entirely divulge their theologies of either path, however each tends to privilege one over the other.


Murphy’s distinction is articulated in somewhat altered language in the multimedia project which produced a book of the blog http://www.anewkindofconversation.com/. Here, the dualism of Scripture or experience is expressed, as in Oakland’s work, as Scripture or tradition, which can be understood as collective experiences of Christians throughout time and space, history and geography. In responding to the observable suspicion or rejection of church history by evangelicals, Bruce Ellis Benson writes of the Protestant Reformation’s tenet of sola scriptura and its relationship to church tradition:

“Sola scriptura is taken to be the denunciation of the Roman Catholic magisterium as the true interpreter of Scripture, but not the denunciation of tradition as having an important effect upon interpretation” (68)

This position sparked a conversation among bloggers and commenters concerning the nature of epistemic foundations in postfoundationalist theologies, a conversation integral to my research in which many participants do talk of foundations for their “ordinary theologies” and “ordinary philosophies.” These foundations are, however, not based on rationalism. There are still profoundly important reasons for these foundations, however. In this sense, their postfoundationalism is a move beyond foundationalism, not beyond foundations themselves; their foundations are their beliefs, and this necessitates a whole other conversation about the nature of belief – which has itself shifted dramatically since one dictionary's definition of belief as “the feeling of certainty that something exists or is true.”