False Humility

About a year ago some friends and I were in a book group reading through Simone Weil’s excellent work Waiting on God. As I often do, I found myself going off on tangents and talking theology. I tried to make a point about postmodernism and its connection to our knowledge of the resurrection. After the large speech, one of the girls in the group complimented me for being smart. Immediately, I found myself pulling one of those, “Oh, I’m not really smart I just have no life and read a lot of books to compensate for the lack of social engagement I have in real life.” Of course, she and others responded assuring me I was really, really smart. I persisted again, saying, “Thanks, but really I’m just passing off other people’s ideas as my own.” Then the conversation ended.

Being the obsessional neurotic that I am, afterward I tried to process what had occurred during the reading group. I must confess that I’m a sucker for verbal affirmation. I know, it’s pathetic. As I began analyzing the interaction, I was initially proud at my deflection of the praise, patting myself on the back for my apparent humility. However, as I began assessing more I became less and less certain of this analysis. Effectively by denying the compliment two things happened. First off, by minimizing the praise, I unconsciously demanded that they up the ante on the compliments. This deferral demanded that they move from saying that I was intelligent to affirming that I was really, really intelligent. Secondly, by refusing to accept the compliment I also increased the time on which everyone thought about the compliment. If I had been a humble person I would’ve thanked her for the nice words and shut my mouth. However, by denying the compliment, everyone had to dwell on the statement and its truth-value for even longer than was necessary. In summary: by appearing I humble I actually demanded not only that everyone think about how intelligent I was for a longer period of time, but that they elevate their appraisals of my intelligence and thus satisfy my narcissistic wishes

Another example of this happened today that got me thinking of this story. Currently, I’m listening to Caputo’s lectures on Derrida and religion off his website. It’s very good. He begins the class by working through Of Grammatology. Anyway, he recounts a story where he met with radical orthodox theologians like Blond and company. They ask him if God is deconstructible. Of course, he responds that the name of God was constructed in some contingent circumstances, so of course the name is deconstructible. But, then he says, “What do I know? Who am I to speak for God?”

I hate this sort of false humility. I’ll tell you who Caputo is to speak for God. He’s a first-rate academic hovering in the borders between philosophy and theology. He’s trained in continental thought along with a solid grounding in negative theology and Aquinas. If anyone can tell us something about man’s understanding of God, it’s him. I know he was meaning to say, “I’m just one man. I have no privileged vantage point to speculate about the knowledge of God”. This sort of humility is worthless. My only thought is this: “If you’re not an expert on God, then why are you lecturing about God?” I wish he would go ahead and list out his credentials and speak without all of this ironic rhetorical humility.

Goodchild and Deleuze

APS over AUFS recommended I read Goodchild’s work on Deleuze entitled Gilles Deleuze and the Question of Philosophy. Let me just say that this is by far the most accessible and comprehensive introduction I’ve yet to run across. My favorite aspect is that it focuses not only on his solo works like Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense (works I’m more interested in), but also shows how these concepts were transformed by Deleuze’s collaboration with Guattari in their coauthored works like A Thousand Plateaus. I think now I should make two plugs for Goodchild’s interesting work. First off, I’d encourage everyone to read his great work Capitalism and Religion. The entire thing is magnificent, and I loved his re-reading of Nietzsche’s death of God as more appropriately understood as the murder of God. Secondly, the guys over at AUFS are starting a book profile of Goodchild’s newest work a Theology of Money starting in December. I plan to read along, and I expect some interesting discussions will ensue.

Two New Resources

Great libraries of texts – both articles and books – of continental thinkers:

http://a.aaaarg.org/

http://www.bedeutung.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86&Itemid=46

A Psychoanalytic Tale, Question, and Story

Tale: Darian Leader describes a rather interesting story about a patient he saw in analysis. This man struggled with insecurities over sexual potency, and he had an upcoming date. On the date as he and his partner were entering the restaurant he asked the hostess for “a bed for two”. Of course this is your typical parapraxis that Freud famously analyzed in his great work The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. The orthodox Freudian interpretation would look something like this: unconsciously he was fantasizing about the potential sexual encounter that might occur later on the night and his wish broke through the censor and disrupted his request for a table. Basically, your typical analytic hermeneutic. However, Leader offered a much more provocative interpretation. He hypothesized that patient intentionally (on an unconscious level) had the slip of the tongue so as to deceive himself that he was more excited about the possible sex than the oral pleasure he would soon be deriving from the meal. This slip not only could convince him of his sexual excitement, but also his date.

Question: Michel Henry criticizes psychoanalysis for never allowing X to stand for X and nothing else. For example, the adolescent who fantasizes about being bitten a snake really imagines being overwhelmed or attacked by the (imaginary) Father’s gigantic penis. I often wonder how an analyst would interpret such a dream. One night, I dreamt that i had a sword fight with my father with the winner being promised my mother’s hand in marriage. After promptly slaying my father, I was able to consummate the relationship with my mother. Does this manifest Oedipal dream have any chain of associations to unravel, or can we merely quit unchaining the links and just admit the obvious Oedipal desires?

Story: I’ve always enjoyed Freud’s reading of Hamlet. I think the aspect of Hamlet that tends to annoy people is the time Hamlet wastes until he can finally avenge his father. Instead, he spends the entire play bitching and moaning. Not until the very end when his mother dies by poison does he finally have the nerve to murder his uncle. So, Freud asks the obvious question: why cant he kill his uncle immediately after receiving the command from his father’s ghost? Freud understood that Hamlet’s ambivalence in slaying his uncle stemmed from the fact that his uncle had, in fact, lived out Hamlet’s unconscious Oedipal dream. The problem was that his uncle had usurped Hamlet’s position in the Oedipal triad. Hamlet’s repressed self fully identified with his uncle’s role, and in turn he experiences serious self-loathing because of the Oedipal guilt. On an unconscious level exacting the revenge against his uncle would be unjust because Hamlet harbored identical wishes to murder his father and take his mother to himself. He can only mount the courage to finally murder his uncle after his mother’s death because he can then justify the murder in and of itself not as some ulterior motive.

Pannenberg on Youtube

Good News

So even though I’m currently being trained from a Freudian perspective in psychotherapy, unfortunately Lacan is all but neglected. However, by the grace of God my graduate adviser is a Klenian and Lacanian. He recommended me to some people in the DC area and beginning in December I’ll be joining a reading group of Lacanian clinicians. It’s going to be spectacular. We’re reading Freud’s case of Dora and Lacan’s interpretations of Dora in Ecrits entitled “Presentation on Transference”. I’m sure there will be many an update on this reading group. Praise God I’ve found some Lacanians! Also, I’m trying to sit in on this class at Georgetown next semester taught by a hybrid philosopher-psychoanalyst who’s teaching a course on Lacan and Philosophy.

Deleuze on Nietzsche

So I’ve begun working on Deleuze’s Nietzsche and Philosophy. It’s quite a violent and exciting read. Here’s quote I’ve especially loved. I’ll be sure to post more especially on the last section concerning the overman and the death of God. After this I’m moving on to his masterpiece Difference and Repetition.

“Nietzsche identified chances with multiplicity, with fragments, with parts, with chaos: the chaos out of the dice that are shaken and then thrown. Nietzsche turns chance into an affirmation” (Nietzsche and Philosophy, 26).

Historical Jesus and Theology

Over the churchandpomo website Carl Raschke has posted a review of the first two chapters of Westphal’s new book on hermeneutics in the Church and Pomo book series. He discussed hermeneutics and makes a claim that I’d like to explore more in depth, “So much of this Kantian-Diltheyean tendency in German philosophy throughout the nineteenth century is the real, hermeneutical innovation that underlies what we now know as the “historical-textual criticism” of the Scriptures,” which today dominates academic Biblical scholarship while driving fundamentalists, and even Neo-Orthodox as well as Radical Orthodox types, absolutely crazy.”

Let’s return Barth’s famous commentary on Romans to assess theology’s uncomfortable relationship with historical research. Barth’s powerful work is undoubtedly one of the most aggressive and impressive theological readings of Romans. What surprised Barth’s liberal Protestant teachers was the utter lack of historical research throughout Der Römerbrief. A historical-critical tradition in which liberal Protestant had been so immersed. His movement away from liberal Protestantism towards asserting the infinite qualitative difference between man and the wholly Other God changed the trajectory of modern theology.

Likewise, Tillich also adopted Barth’s attitude never wanting to equate the historical Jesus with the cosmic Christ. Although there are many differences that separate Barth and Tillich’s systems, both thinkers offered us ahistorical theologies.

Hauerwas followed Barth’s lead and focused on Christian orthodoxy’s interpretation of Jesus of Nazareth. His theological program has focused on the construction of communal narratives and enacting the gospel in local church community. This post-liberal communal-linguistic theology while interesting, has its shares of problem. I think Yoder’s criticism of Hauerwas is right on, “One reason Hauerwas does not do text-based Bible study is that he is overawed by the notion of community-dependency and underawed by the objective reality of salvation history. Also underwared by the study the real (unsaved) history. He would rather read novels” (Kerr, Christ, History, and Apocalyptic, 113-114). Milbank and clan also refuse to engage historical research on the singular history of Jesus of Nazareth.

I remember having a conversation with one of Hauerwas’ student. When I pressed on the issue of historical Jesus research his response was your typical “Whose History?” His justification for not listening to the research was something like a Foucauldian view of history where there’s no neutral, objective picture of the past. I remain skeptical. To me this is a clever ploy to avoid the awkwardness that abounds when one begins to study what we know historically about Jesus of Nazareth.

Whether you take a more apocalyptic view of Jesus via Schweitzer or rely on the work of Crossan and Borg, either way there are some disturbing results. When one begins to compare the gospels, contradictions abound. Genealogies, birth stories, crucifixion narratives, and the stories of the resurrection don’t match up. Even if we bracket the vast differences that separate the synoptics and John’s gospel, there are still issues that contradict our rather naïve on Jesus based on the story we grew up hearing in church.

My main issue is that I believe there are serious dangers if we continue speaking of a Jesus that might be nothing more than an idol. Or, better yet a mere Freudian projection. We need to go back to worshiping Jesus of Nazareth for who he was not what we would like him to be. Let me start offering some of the historical Jesus research how this could help us construct a more accurate (and I believe) challenging picture of the Son of God.

For one, it is virtually impossible that Jesus went around declaring himself to be the Messiah or the Son of God. In fact, when on reads the synoptics one gets the impression that he was constantly evading answering questions about his identity. His mission could not be hampered by these curiosities. His gospel message was a repetition with a difference of John the Baptist’s radical apocalyptic call for repentance of the Jewish people. Jesus’ innovation was declaring that this coming Kingdom was already breaking in the here and now but still to come (see Mark 13). His group of followers symbolically enacted the egalitarian community by practicing an open-table fellowship. Everyone was welcome even the unclean were invited. I think Caputo is spot on compare this sort of dinner party to the mad tea party as described by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. Except there’s no mad hatter just prostitutes, lepers, and children gathering to share a meal with the Son of God. Further clarification around the crucifixion stories also sheds light on this horrible event. He died the death of a political criminal. His sense of abandonment and failure is perfectly illustrated by his cry of dereliction in Matthew and Mark. I’ll leave it at that for now.

I guess what I’m pleading for is more honesty in theological circles. I don’t think that historical research necessarily ruins any belief in the divinity or resurrection of Jesus. It might make it more difficult, but I believe it’s worth the risk if we want to be honest followers of Jesus. I just don’t understand what is everyone so scared of? I could possibly understand theologians hesitancy to base their theology on research that’s evolving and impermanent. But, after 100 years of historical Jesus research it appears that most scholars are in agreement over how to interpret this man’s exemplary life. As much as Neo-Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy rightfully distance themselves from the insipid theology of Evangelicalism, it’s disturbing to me that they all three schools treat the Bible in the same manner. Although, Hauerwasians and Milbankians might not actually posit a belief in the infallibility of the Bible, they might as well given the way they appropriate Scriptures.

Colbert and the DC Catholic Church

My favorite part of this video is the verse in Matthew where Jesus said, “If you wish to be perfect, go and sell your possessions and give the money to the poor…unless a couple of dudes register at Pottery Barn, in which case, fuck the poor.”

http://tinyurl.com/ycffesn

Enemy Love

Matthew 5:43-45:

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

One thing that i’ve never understood is how am I supposed to love my enemies when I don’t have any? I don’t mean to suggest everyone loves me, certainly not the case. But, I cannot say that I’ve ever had an enemy or rival who I genuinely loathe. On the surface, this should suggest that I am sensitive, patient, and generous person. However, I’m starting to suspect something’s wrong with this picture. It reminds me of people who think the Holy Spirit’s working in a church based on how quickly the church is growing. I suspect that if the Gospel were truly preached everyone in his right mind would leave. Likewise, is the Gospel an offense or not? If all Jesus of Nazareth came to teach us was to love and tolerate one another while making sure not to offend, how is his message any different from the modern day wisdom of liberal tolerance? As much as liberal Protestantism wants to paint Jesus in this light, we have to dig deeper.

Back to not having enemies. Maybe if I actually bothered enacting the things I claimed to believe, people would honestly dislike me. Why? I believe because the Gospel is uncomfortable, challenging, and demanding. Jesus told his disciples to love their enemies because he knew the ministry he was forming would piss many people off (the state, the religious authorities, his own family). Remember Jesus’ apocalyptic words in Mark 13:13, “All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” So, why don’t Christians have more enemies? Why is that non-religious people often use the word Christian as a synonym for nice? “Steve, you shouldn’t hit the dog that’s not a very Christian thing to do”. Since, when did the word Christian come to mean nice?

As an exercise I would encourage everyone to read the Gospel of Mark all the way through. Listen to the words of Jesus. He never strikes me as nice. Fair, just, and clever yes, but nice? He would have his enemies because the importance of announcing the coming Reign of God trumped adherence to religious norms, familial expectations, and societal rules. Everyone goes on and on about the Love of God. I don’t mind love, but as long as we can move away from associating the word love and nice. The love of Jesus of Nazareth is a love too terrible to speak of.

So maybe next time we read these verses, we should consider failed chances when missed out on opportunities to make enemies. Again, I’m not saying we all go around being assholes. I ardently believe that if we began living as Jesus commanded enemies would emerge because the threat the Gospel poses.. Never forget Jesus didn’t die so we could be reconciled to God, he died because the state hated him (not the Jews, sorry Mel).

In summary: Jesus said in Matthew 7:20.”Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” That is to say if we truly live out the Gospel I suspect that some secondary fruits that will grow will be the animosity of others.