Scripts, Imagaination, and Worldviews

Coming out of the recent discussion concerning the work of Walter Brueggemann, Anthony Smith raised the concern that all this talk of scripts is really just a throw back to worldviews. I strenuously disagree, and here is why.

During college, and being a faithful evangelic, I was all about discussions of worldviews and apologetics, especial reformed apologetics. Here, worldview indicated the rational basis by which we understood the world- all the presuppositions, attending arguments, and consequences of a particular belief system. The goal of Christian apologetics (which is the defense of the Christian worldview) was to show the consistency of Christianity, and the inconsistency of all other worldviews to explain reality.

Now, of course like many other young evangelicals, I got a good intellectual buzz from all of this, but then it wore off and other concerns crept in; like, why is the church still so screwed up if we have all the right answers? why do we still get divorced, abuse our wives and children? why are we slaves to capitalism? etc... So, one day, while having breakfast with my fiance at the Heavenly Cafe, just before leaving California to go to seminary, I made a shift in my thinking and gave up on worldviews as utterly too rational and unable to form us beyond consumer-capitalism. What I put in place of worldview, was the imagination, by which I meant the internal interpretive filter, or hermeneutic grid, which not only structures our rational ordering of the world, but all the irrational, unconscious desires, dreams, hopes, and fears. Then, during seminary I found that this shift was not all that original, but had been outlined by the likes of Marx, Freud, Lacan, and Riceour (and of course many others). So now I'm armed with words like "ideology", the "unconscious", jouissance, distantiation, and the interpassive subject, to go along with what I already know: i.e. "the clearing", will to power, language games, and differance.

So this is where scripts come in. We live by the scripts we have been give, and those scripts are generally not worked into our worldviews. The way an abused child interprets a raised voice (or raised arm) is very different than children who haven't been abused, regardless of the intentions of the adult. And in politics, words like freedom and democracy are very different in a consumer society than one which has been excluded from that system.

Therefore, back to Brueggemann, when he says that the script of technological-therapeutic-militarist-consumerism promises safety and happiness, he is not saying that this is merely a worldview that best articulates how to promote safety and happiness, but also that is molds and shapes us into thinking that safety and happiness (individual safety and consumer happiness) are the greatest values, rather than, say, justice and peace. So we could say that this presidential election is a war b/w worldviews (how best sustain American military and corporate dominance), but based in the same script (which says the freedom of Capital is paramount). And when we conceive Christianity as a worldview, a set of propositions which needs defending and enforcing, we end up distancing ourselves from the transforming power of the Gospel. But when we see it as a script needing creative interpretation (even as it interprets us) the acts of the Gospel become a transforming power b/w polls Life and Death.

Recent related posts:
Faith and Fantasy
Discipleship and Desire: The Death of the Self

Brueggemann conference

Walter Brueggemann's 19 Thesis: or, what he's thinking right now about things.
(Walter is an old testament theologian of the post-liberal/yale school mentality if that means anything to you.)

1) Everyone lives by a script.
2) We get scripted through normal nurture and socialization.
3) The dominant script of our society is that of technological-therapeutic-mulitarist-consumerism.
4) This script promises safety and happiness.
5) This script has failed.
6) The health of our society depends on moving beyond this script, but doesn't want to.
7) [The task of Christian] Ministry must de-script this dominant script.
8) This task is accomplished thru alternative scripting, or the funding of a counter imagination.
9) This alternative script is funded by the scripture and tradition of the Church.
10) This alternative script is about the Triune God.
11) This alternative script is not monolithic, total, complete, but it is rather a rag-tag, disjunctive collection hinting at a hidden God.
12) This rag-tag script can't be smoothed out or domesticated (not even by systematic theologies/ians).
13) This script invites adherent of text to quarrel with each other.
14) The entree into this alternative script is Baptism.
15) The nurture/socialization of this counter script is the work of ministry.
16) Most of us are ambiguous about this alternative script. That is, we really want both scripts and vacillate between them.
17) The space of ambivalence toward scripts is the arena of the Spirit.
18) Ministry is the manager of this ambivalence.
19) The work of ministry is necessary because no one else but the church (and synagogue) is willing/able to enter this open of ambivalence.

Other memorable ideas:
-Concerning violence in the Old Testament, Brueggemann says that "God is a recovering practitioner of violence." By this he means that God used to think violence was a good idea, but then gave up on it. However, like all addicts, He has relapses. Of which the cross is either the final deliverance, or another relapse.

-Concerning faith and knowledge: "We all have a craving for certitude, but the gospel is all about fidelity." By this he means that certitude is an epistemological category while fidelity is a relational one. And the way of the Cross is to depart from our certitude, to die to our answers/desires/scripts.

There is also much to say about the scripture, scripts, and the imagination, but I’ll put that in the next post.

Theological Conversation with Walter Brueggemann

...is where I will be until Thursday. It should be a great time.

Faith and Fantasy

Many, diagnosing the current ailments of the Church, contend that "We are where we are because of what we believe," meaning that the formal content of Church doctrines are cancerous, needing the radioactive treatment of postmodern, post-foundational philosophy (which is Brian McLaren's assertion). Now, certainly I have no serious argument that many doctrines (or at least their current formulations) are horribly deformed.

But posing the question in this manner assumes an unfortunate direct relation between knowing and doing, and therefore, reinforcing the priority of knowledge over practice (and speculation over affectation). This perspective overlooks the imaginative, or fantastic, aspect of agency, or the fact that how we relation our action to our belief is an creative act of interpretation. As Kevin VanHoozer says, "We have biblical doctrines, but secular imaginations."

So my point is that while some, or many doctrines, need revision (i.e. substitutionary atonement, premillenialism, etc.), our recent modernist method (or lack) of cultural engagement blinded the Church to syncretistic moves in relation to the Enlightenment, modernity, and even postmodernity. What the Church has generally failed to do is what Freudians would call "analysis", Marxists call "ideology critique", and the Church used to call "casting out idols."

So our ability to engage (and I don't even like that term anymore—"engage" sounds like Capt. Pichard on the Enterpise) the postmodern context, or liberal democracy, or global capitalism, doesn't just depend on recovering/articulating the Faith, but on articulating the idolatries/ideologies of the present age which insinuate themselves into the practices of the Church.

So the question is not how what we know affects what we do, but also how what we are doing doesn't accord with what we think we know. It is not what we believe, but how we believe.

complexity and capital: metaphysics and the market; or are justice and charity self-organizing?

(the second of three posts coming out of my summer reading of Lev Manovich concerning new media and technology. Here is the first.)
___

What if all this talk about complexity, self-organizing systems, and the connectivity of life is really just the emergence of a metaphysic to under-gird global capitalism? As Len Manovich says in Abstraction and Complexity (an otherwise very intersting account of art and technolgy), "Just as the classical physics and mathematics fitted perfectly the notion of a highly rational and orderly universe controlled by God, the sciences of complexity seem to be appropriate in the world which on all levels - political, social, economic, technical - appears to us to be more interconnected, more dynamic, and more complex than ever before."

But shouldn't this collusion between science and the social order be questioned. Might not this marriage be the means of bondage rather than that of liberation? Isn't the logic of non-linear, non-hierarchical relations between the parts and the whole (the arche and telos, the cause and effect) the ultimate justification of the laissez-faire mentality of global capitalism which seeks to deregulate the entire globe for the free, spontaneous, self-organization of commodity exchange? Might not the paradigm of complexity be the new ideology which undergirds, and easelessly oils, the machine of global capitalism?

And conversely, are Justice and Charity even really self-organizing and spontaneous within a system? More often than not they are the explosion and violent reordering of a system. Justice and Charity would only be spontaneous and self organizing if we believed in the benevolence of the system, it parts and inputs. But is this what we really believe is the case of human systems?

And finally, if top-down or bottom-up reductionistic hierarchies can't be trusted, nor can the systems of complexity, whom can we trust? What specter within the system, what Spirit from beyond might moves us beyond these dichotomies?

Discipleship and Desire: The Death of the Self

What does "death to self" mean? Of course, it is not the literal/physical death of the body. So what part of the self is put to death according to the Christian discourse? While often thought so, this does not mean the death of desires or Desire, selfish or not. Why? Because merely placing the death (and therefore essentially life) of the self here, in desire, ends up affirming two discourses antithetical to the gospel.

The first is the discourse of Law and transgression which sees salvation in the denial of desire, b/c all desire is evil, which polarizes faith and works such that we can't make any sense of a good deed (thank to Kant's understanding of Duty and the ethical demand). This denial of desires drives wedge b/w justification (faith) and sanctification (works) which only confuses the development of discipleship.

The second is the discourse of liberal capitalism which confirms and legitimates all desires and distinguishes among desires only according to individual freedom and not on the communal good. Therefore, the outright denial, instead of the discernment among desires, ends up justifying the logic of capitalism instead of problematizing it.

Otherwise than Spiderman; or Beyond Superheroes

This is a serious post, even though it concerns a movie about a comic book. Last week I had the chance to finally read some of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas' writings, and I watched Spiderman (all because my wife's sister watched our son for a couple of days so we got to read and watch movies undisturbed. Praise be to God). Basically I read all afternoon, then I watched Spiderman 2, and then I was disturbed.

At first pass Levinas and Spiderman seems to be in agreement: the nameless face of the stranger, the other in danger demanding responsibility from Peter Parker; the non-reciprocal substitution of the self for the other because the poor citizen of NY can't help Peter in return (recall the scene on the train when the "people" resist Dr. Oct on Peter's behalf to no avail). And during Peter's time of testing, when he forgoes his superhero persona, we see him walk away from a mugging without helping, and all the audience can think (which is the pure manipulation of the movie) is, "This is wrong, Peter. You SHOULD help him. He is your NEIGHBOR!!"

But, unfortunately, even though within the movie Spiderman is the hero, the role model which every kid aspires to, we cannot follow him, and Levinas points the way. Why?

The superhero ethic that Spiderman presents us with ends up justifying our (as in the America public) lack of ethical/moral action. Only superheroes deal with ethical dilemmas, only they have choices. Movies like this teach us that "With great power comes great responsibility" (in the word of uncle Ben the wise), of which the reverse creed, which we the America public live by, is "Those without great power are without any responsibility." And isn't this generally the case with these comic book remakes (but I must note the exception of "Unbreakable' which is exceptional, but not a remake). These movies draws us in as an audience, presenting us with a dilemma which the superhero undergoes, which the audience then determining the good to be followed, and which, of course, the Superhero then does (even Matrix Reloaded follows this logic to a tee with Neo's choice for Trinity over humanity, which in the trilogy is a thoroughly predicable choice). The audience then feels as if they had actually undergone a moral dilemma (and acted rightly) just because they know how the superhero ought to act. But we haven't done anything but watch a movie, and more than that, we won't ever do anything, because only Superheroes have really dilemmas and only they have "super powers" with which to solve them.

So although we all know that Peter shouldn't leave that man helpless in the alley because he can it without getting hurt, where does that leave us? Would/Should we do the same thing? We might (will probably) get hurt. So, w simultaneously affirm the right thing to do but give ourselves a loophole (we are too weak). And this is the essence of the Superhero ethic, and the perpetuation of the ethics of indifference which makes America go round.

But, things would be different if these movies hinted at the possibility of everyone being a superhero, if they suggested that we were all beyond ordinary. Only then would we all enter into a non-reciprocal substitution with the Other. Only they could we respond in responsibility toward the infinite face of the Other. And what if we all were superheroes, and we all had a super power, might we then begin to act again? But what would our power be? And what transformed us?

And wouldn't us being superheroes be the perfect supplement to the fact that are all refugees, cast out as bare life? But again, whence this transformation and power?

And to these questions an political activist gives one answer, and the theologian another. (alas, again the division of the subject).

What Missiology can't teach the Emerging Church

or, dissolving the emerging church missions board!!

What is the Emerging Church? What are they up too? How do they conceive of what they are doing? Well, for many, they view themselves as missionaries (or missional communities) to the emerging post-modern culture of the West. But I disagree. (if you are short time, skip to the "culture" section, it's my harshest critique and most important).

Here's a familiar story (a true story many times over I'm sure): An overseas missionary comes home to find that his church has started a postmodern worship service. The pastor of this service, feeling somewhat confident in what he's doing, but a bit insecure next to this seasoned missionary ask, "So, what do you think about our servise? Pretty different, right?" The missionary answers, "Yes it is different. But you are doing just what I'm doing out in the jungles of Papa New Guinea, adapting to culture." This type of reasoning, which I've heard from several leaders of the emerging church, I totally disagree with. The tools of modern, or even postmodern, missiology don't apply directly, w/o modification, to the Western situation.

Here's why...
why we shouldn't use "missionary" or "incarnate" in the West using the three "c"s- "capitalism", "colonialism", and "culture".

Capitalism- global, market driven capitalism is the best missions agency in the world if we understand missions as adapting to culture and translating a message. Actually, capitalism understands that its not even about the message, but rather about desire (forming desire). If the Church understood that missions is about forming right desires they might actually start doing missions again!!! But too often the emerging church relies on sociological approaches which is no different from what advertisers do. I could go on...

Colonialism and Constantinianism- It is interesting that when we look at the modern missionary movement (i.e. the West evangelizing the Rest), we hear two stories of what happened; one from the missionaries, another from the converts. When we listen to the converts/natives we see that it is a matter of receiving (not giving) the gospel from God, of being faithful (instead of relevant) and a matter of our identity. From everything that I have read from the marginal theologies (african, hispanic american, latin american) the concern is not missions, but rather faithfulness. So might not missions, and the missionary perspective, have only arrived within a Constantinianism which not longer exists. In a post-Christian culture, rather than pre-Christian and therefore missionary, the issues is just as much faithfulness as it is missions. More could be said...

Culture- (this has two parts, and is a combination of the first two). First off, we don't live in a real culture but a faked one. Capitalism has ready-made cultural products, plastic artifacts made yesterday. Culture is virtually manufactured without substance. We no real Western real culture anymore to which we could be missionaly oriented toward. We are only engaging with a simulacrum. Secondly, if we are going to talk about "culture" and "identity" we also have to ask whether it is a minority or the majority culture? and is it given or chosen? More those in the minority their identity is given to them (it's called racism). Others projected expectations, intention, and abilities onto these minorities which they then have to deal with. It is not chosen, but given. But for many in the emerging Church (who happen to be white) being missional means reaching out and reinforcing the identities of those they encounter (ravers, hipsters, skaters, hippies, punks, etc.). The problem with this is most of these people are also white and they have chosen these personas, instead of having them given violently to them as in the minority/racial case. So we are trying to be missionally oriented toward a group of people who have chosen their identities, arranging church so that it might appeal to them (but of course they don't talk that we), and we think that through this we will create disciples. But that will never happen because we are reinforcing every thing we should be criticizing: market capitalism which perpetually fragments people from each other through niche marketing which the emerging church is mirroring instead of promoting unity through the discarding of fivolous identities. again, i could go on, especially on this point...

But i'll quit and see what happens.
so, in summary
1) we should disband the emerging church missions board, stop talking about postmoderns as if they were real people who identified themselves as postmodern, b/c there aren't any.
2) we should stopping saying that we are being "incarnational" b/c the church is already the incarnation of Christ as his Body. The question is are we being faithful?

New Pantagruel

The New Pantagruel has published my first real stab at relating theology and radical politics (you judge how successful). It is a combined reading of "justification by faith" and Zizek's fragile absolute, who is a Marxist of sorts. The conclusion is really just the introduction to a larger project that I'm only beginning to think through.

anyway..., I posted it here about 6 months ago for your thoughts and comments, but since I've met some other friend who read Zizek I thought I'd open up the comments here or at the pantagruel for some more discussion.

please, don't be nice. I can take some criticism....

and tomorrow, I promise that I will write about why the emerging church should use missionary terminology- and yes it has to do with post-colonialism, multiculturalism, and Capitalism.

Conversations: Emergent and Ekklesia

Two people walk into a bar (b/c both believe in drinking) and start a conversation. We will just pretent that they are called B. Mac and Stan H. representing Emergent and the Ekklesia Project. Let's listen in before they get to drunk to be coherent...

---

(the question posed by an third party is "What is Missions?"

Stan. H.: "The Mission of the Church is to be the Church!" he shouts out roughly.

B. Mac. responds calmly: "The Mission of God is to save the World."

Stan H.: "But what are you saving people into when there is no distinction b/w the Church and the World? The Church must be the Church so that the World will know it is the World" quoting one of his own books.

B. Mac.: "But why would the World care what the Church is doing if it never sees the Church and has no affinity with it?" he says with deep concern for the lost.

----

And so goes the conversation, each, and all their follower, presenting reasons for and ways of reforming the church, one seeking more faithfulness by the Church, and the other seeking more faithfulness to the World.

But the reality of this conversation, if we can speak so flamboyantly, is that this conversation needs to continue, and we need to diligently pursue it. Why? 1) Because in general, the Emerging Church has started as a pastoral movement concerned with issues of culture and evangelism, while the Ekklesia project issued forth as a movment from academia concerned with the Church and discipleship, and therefore will enhance each others discorse, bringing different questions, methods, and concerns to the table. 2) Each movement seeks renewal within the tradition they spring from, which is the mainline traditions for Ekklesia, and evangelical for Emergent. 3) Each is working on the same question but from different ends. Ekklesia from an ecclesiology to missions; Emergent from missions back toward ecclesiology.

So, to position myself (which is always hazardous and better left to you the community of readers to decided), I would say that I lean more toward the Ekklesia perspective, but deeply immersed in the Emerging Church. So generally, when I critique the Emerging Church it is not out of the love of criticism, but for love of the Emerging church, and not as an outsider finding fault, but as an insider hoping to fortify.

---

And all this leads up to the gauntlet that I layed down yesterday concerning the use of missionary methods in the West, particularly N. America.

Emerging Church and Cool?

Several people have recently criticized the Emerging Church (maggi dawn and raw faith) while others have defended its need for relevance and incaration (emergent~kiwi). It is an interesting conversation, usually split between the Emerging Church ex-evangelicals trying to reclaim but not become Mainline, Catholic, Anglican tradition, and mainliners from those traditions defending themselves from the savanger EMers.

I recently posted my view on the relevant question concerning the EM (which emerging church.info is publishing next month, I think...), and concerning the mainliners question of resistance, so I won't rehearse it all here. (i must have been using my spidy sense...)

shortly I'll post some thoughts concerning the theft of tradition coming out of a recently conference, where i spent the entire time defending the EC (something I don't usually do).

and just to throw this out, I DON'T THINK THE EMERGING CHURCH SHOULD THINK IN MISSIONARY TERMS TO EXPLAIN WHAT THEY ARE TRYING TO DO IN THE WEST. IT IS NOT HELPFUL.

Virtual reality, Freedom, Incarnation

(the first of three, or so, posts coming out of my summer reading of Lev Manovich concerning new media and technology)
___

What if the direction of virtual reality were reversed such that it is not us that enters into a virtual reality, leaving our normal plane of existence, but rather we are always virtual and the incarnation is God leaving his normal plane of existence and enters into our virtual reality, our copy/simulacra of reality.

Think about the Matrix. In the virtual reality of the Matrix, everything runs according to Laws and Programs which fulfill there destiny/function. But Neo comes in as one able to bend, break, augment these Laws according to his design. He brings freedom into the Matrix. And for us (humanity) this is how we must figure the break into and out of virtual reality-- the forced choice of Freedom conquering VR.

But what if the God's entering into our virtual reality is the opposite of this. Our VR is structure around freedom (even its forced choice), so might it be possible that this person would break with our Laws of freedom, conquering our VR with a new Law of necessity and function? And wouldn't this enable the great reversal where we see that our conquering of Law through Freedom is merely the greatest support of the Law, and God's conquering of Freedom through the Law is merely the greatest support of Freedom which is Love?

And of course, wouldn't this mean that Jesus' actions (and our repetition of them) would always seem irrational, impractical, insane, and leading toward death? And might this economy of sacrifice and love not signal the possibility of another life outside the laws of our VR: beyond selfishness and violence?

Ethics of the Other; Politics of the Same

I was brooding over the two different strains of postmodern ethics/politics while walking home from the train station earlier this week, and this is what I came up with conerning the differences b/w the "Other" and the "Same". From where did these two emphases come, and to which context are they addressed?
_______

Sprouting amid the ruble of post-war Europe, the ethics of the Other (represented by Levinas and Derrida) is meant to protect us against totalitarianism, at least the overt fascist expression with its attempt to exclude and destory all the doesn't conform (to the Same of the Party, Race, Gender, etc.). The ethics of the Other, therefore, stands against the totalizing effects of the Same (which might be the modern project) by reminding us of the irriducible and infinite obligation we have before the face of the Other, which never can be draw into our circle of understanding or sameness. So against the totalizing Same we must proclaim the Other.

However, within the soil of Easter European Communism and the emergence of global capitalism, comes the flowering ethics of the Same (Represented by Zizek and Badiou). This ethics, and its related politic, is meant to guard against a different totalitarianism, a more insidious exclusion and destruction based on the continual division and deterritorialization. Because of global capitalism's continual production of difference, and therefore distraction through the endless procession of the "new", the only way of standing against this fragmenting effect is to speak and promote the Same. Against the perpetually othering of capitalism, we must proclaim that we are all the Same.
____

So we can speak of two different politics, nurtured in two different soils, resisting two different locusts. Our question then is, which pestulance is the greatest? which plant will has the greatest chance to bear fruit? and, lastly, might we consider a variety within our diets?

after Ekklesia

Well, the ekklesia conference has come and gone and with it all the major activities of the summer.   I'm sad and glad about it. 

For a run down of all the activities see AKMA's summaries (who I finally met in person).  Others I met offline for the first time were anthony smith from the Weblog and Ryan from Kankakee, Jennifer Collins from scandal of particularity.

Also hero's of mine that I either met or caught up with were Stephen Long and Ed Phillips from Garrett Seminary, Micheal Cartwright, Glen Stassen, Brent Laytham, Micheal Budde, Daniel Bell, Jonathan Wilson and of course Stanely Hauerwas. 

Tomorrow I'll post my note from the workshop I gave for you all to dissect and some other thought from the conference.

Ekklesia Conference

Is any one going to the Ekklesia Conference next week? 
If you are could you post a comment letting me know.  We should try to get the Chicago blogger together and at least meet face to face sometime while we are there. 

The Way of Life

Who are the people? What is the vision?
This is the vision of the Living:
The Living see beyond themselves and their own desires.
The Living see the basic needs and hopes of others as the same as their own.
The Living know that even “dead men walking” can turn away from death toward life.
The Living recognize and practice a “community of life.”
The Living know good and evil tendencies are in every human being.
The Living practice repentance and forgiveness.
The Living are peacemakers.
The Living seek justice for all.
The Living are informed by history.
The Living see beyond their generation into the future.
The Living seek the same opportunity for others that they seek for themselves.
The Living respect, conserve, and share the resources of the Earth.
The Living serve the spirit of love.
The Living would rather build than destroy.
The Living seek truth instead of lies and illusions.
The Living choose trust over suspicion.
The Living celebrate life:  
  In the smile of a child,  
  In the loving touch of hands,  
  In the sharing of food and drink,  
  In the healing of the sick,  
  In the unique quality of each individual person,  
  In shared laughter,  
  In shared work,  
  In the beauty and sternness of nature,  
  In song, dance, and story.

from the bruderhof community.

cavanaugh discussion

for those interested in willian cavanaugh's Theopolitical Imagination and/or the creation of the nation-state and the individual, see the discussion over at scandal of particularity.

the prepubesant nature of christian radio

The entire time I spent in a car last week I listened to Christian radio. Not because I naturally do this, but because I was teaching at a youth camp, and every time we got in a van we started listening to the alternative christian rock radio station. Through spending a week with jr. higher and listening to Christian radio at the same time, I made a very sad discovery.

All the songs were perfectly accessable to these jr. highers.

Every thing that we listened to for an entire week could have been understood a kid who have barely reached puberty. Christian radio basically perpetuate a pre-teen understanding of God, life, and the gospel. The problem is that most people who listen to these stations are adults.

My church is spending the summer digging into the Psalms, looking at life, the hard/difficult/confusing side of life, but the Christian subculture as viewed through Christian radio doesn't even acknowledge that side of life.

I'm grieved that there is an entire segment of the Church acting prepetually prpubesant. What is to be done?

what i've been reading

in place of a really post, ill let you know what i've been reading and where I'm going.

Most importantly is the stimulating conversation stemming from the university without condition. They are reading The Perverse Perseverance of Sovereignty which discusses globalization and the nation-state. Other interesting articles relating this topic which I'm working thru are john milbank's Sovereignty, Empire, Capital, and Terror and william cavanaugh's wars of religion and the rise of the state and the world in a wafer. (both of which are in his Theopolitical Imagination and are brought to you by the jesus radical library.)Excerpt from World in a Wafer to show the trajectory of his thinking: "What I hope to show...is that globalization does not signal the demise of the nation-state but is in fact a hyperextension of the nation-state's project of subsuming the local under the universal."

After spending so much time on critical theorists/theologians I decided to revisit my hermeneutic root and picked up Paul Ricoeur's From Text to Action , esp. his essays on ideology (which zizek and badiou would despise) and also his Oneself as Another . As an intro to Ricoeur I would hightly recommend from text to action.

I've also been reading up on new media as mediated through Len Manovich. I'll be blogging about this soon as i'll be reviewing The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society for the matthew house project. This is some great matter for reflection in all this media/technology stuff.

so that's what I've been reading while I was away.

"the doubtful address of faith; or why faith is over-rated"

part one and two are diagnostic; part three is constructive. read in the order you see fit.)

Part One: Intro to Problem
"No one doubts anymore because faith has been banished! A life of faith has vanished, and with it the ability to doubt."

My primary concern is with discipleship and spiritual formation within the Church, but this reflection could be easily extended beyond ecclesial walls (see a gauche's "In Defense of These Deflated Meta-Narratives"). My premise is that we no long know how to truly doubt because we no long believe.

But let me begin again...What doubt am I talking about? Let's make a distinction: there is philosophical doubt and existential doubt; or there is methodological doubt and personal doubt (from hear on out I'll refer to "philosophical" and "personal" doubt because my homiletics professor would like the alliteration…).

Concerning the first, philosophic, the history is well known. Amid the religious wars which had engulfed Europe after the Reformation/Renaissance Rene Descartes began his quest for a universal foundation of human reason on from which he could evaluate conflicting epistemological claims. In other words, he was trying to find that one place from which everyone could agree. Methodologically this led him to doubt everything until he found that something of which it is impossible to doubt. From this process came is famous dictum, "I think therefore I am." And from this radical doubt springs the Enlightenment, the search for pure reason through the doubting of everything received whether it be tradition, religion, family, or even perception.

However, there is one catch. This radical "life of doubt," or philosophical doubt, was pursued for the explicit purpose of banishing all personal doubts. It was the Descartes, awash in epistemological chaos, full of personal doubts and anxieties that entered into philosophical doubt. Philosophical doubt was a retreat from and panacea for personal doubts, and the Enlightenment took up this quest diligently. Therefore, once the philosophical process is over, there is no longer any need to doubt, because now we have a certain answer for every personal doubt.

Part Two: Consequences
While those better informed might tease out the consequences of this "life of doubt" in our contemporary life, I will focus on the Church. The "life of doubt" has affected both the mainline/liberal as well as the conservative/evangelical church.

For the mainliners, the use of modern epistemological tools coupled with radical cynicism resulted in the deletion of much of orthodoxy replaced by culturally sensitive theological ambiguities which portioned off Christian identity. It left them with a radical critique of the faith such that the form barely consisted without content.

But the conservatives did not fair much better. In fact they might be worse off for their appropriation of Enlightenment doubt. Using the same epistemological tools, yet for a different use, conservatives began a militant defense of the faith, but not grounded in faith, resulting in a semblance of orthodoxy. They defended faith through doubt, thereby denying the faith of Paul/Abraham which moves from "faith to faith" (Rom. 1:17).

The relation of doubt and faith have been all screwed up, where now in much of the Church, real personal doubt is not allowed to be spoken. We are left with either radical doubt or militant faith, both of which kill true doubt and true faith. We aren’t allowed to question, we can’t voice our concerns, we can't speak our doubts, because this would be a betrayal of modern faith, which demands certainty.

Part Three: The Doubtful Address of Faith
So this is the difference between the "life of doubt" and the "life of faith." The "life of doubt" ("I doubt therefore I am") can truly only give answers. The "life of faith" can truly ask questions. In this "life of doubt" I must fill the in abyss with answer after answer, frantically dousing the fires of ambiguity with coolly reasoned answers b/c I can't persist in perpetual doubt. But the life of faith ("I belief therefore I am") floats above the abyss, suspended by the address to and from anOther, able to fully enter the questions and ambiguities of life precisely because doubt is not our horizon, nor the constitution of our being, but the voice of faith amid the complexity of existence.

This brings us back to the practices of discipleship and spiritual formation. The "life of doubt" can't bring to speech actual doubt. But the "life of faith" can bring actual doubts to speech. True faith, even during the dark night of the soul, even in the winter of disorientation, true faith can bring its doubts to God. It still addresses God and vocalizes doubts. This is seen continually in the Psalms. The Psalms are nothing but a persistent addressing to God the concerns of our lives. No matter the situation, the Psalmists are still talking with God. Can we cultivate in our Churches this doubtful address of faith, or are we too quick to answer the personal doubts of others?

Illustration of Job: Think through the life of Job, his suffering, his calling out to God, his receiving answers from his friends (orthodox explanations of what is happening and who is at fault). His wife advises him to curse God and die. But Job questions God and lives. His three friends come around and give him answer after answer, but he is never satisfied. So Job questions God, and demands an answer from God himself, not anyone else. But when God arrives, God doesn’t even offer the correct answer to Job’s question, there is no explanation. Only more questions. One questioner to another questioner. There are no answers, only questions. For Job, and for us, questions are the answer. Questions addressed to God, spoken to God, directed toward God, not the void or nothingness, and not silence and mute depression. Job in the midst of doubt and suffering still addresses God because there is still a relationship. And God, even though he questions Job, affirms the relationship through his questions.

So how can we affirm/encourage the doubtful questioning of faith? Or will we continue to replace true faith with the answers of doubt?

Concluding Aphorisms:
In the life of doubt, both doubt and faith are ultimately to be feared b/c they both close the space of the subject.

In the life of faith, both doubt and faith are embraced b/c they keep open the space for the subject to participate in/with Another.

Doubt ruptures relationships, but Faith forges them.

---
these thoughts brought to you by walter bruggemann's spirituality of the psalms and robert pfaller's Negation and its Reliabilities:
An Empty Subject for Ideology?.