Erring

A Postmodern A/theology

Mark C. Taylor

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780226169439
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion

" Erring is a thoughtful, often brilliant attempt to describe and enact what remains of (and for) theology in the wake of deconstruction. Drawing on Hegel, Nietzsche, Derrida, and others, Mark Taylor extends—and goes well beyond—pioneering efforts.... The result is a major book, comprehensive and well-informed."—G. Douglas Atkins, Philosophy and Literature "Many have felt the need for a study which would explicate in coherent and accessible fashion the principal tenets of deconstruction, with particular attention to their theological implications. This need the author has addressed in a most impressive manner. The book's effect upon contemporary discussion is apt to be, and deserves to be, far-reaching."—Walter Lowe, Journal of Religion

PART ONE

“Deconstructing Theology”

. . . Prelude

We must begin wherever we are and the thought of the trace . . . has already taught us that it was impossible to justify a point of departure absolutely. Wherever we are: in a text where we already believe ourselves to be.

“We must begin wherever we are . . . Wherever we are: in a text where we believe ourselves to be.” But where are we? For many people today, there seems to be no simple answer to this question. Individuals appear to be unsure of where they have come from and where they are going. Thus they are not certain where they are. Furthermore, the “texts” that have guided and grounded previous generations often appear illegible in the modern and postmodern worlds. Instead of expressing a single story or coherent plot, human lives tend to be inscribed in multiple and often contradictory texts. What makes sense and is meaningful in one situation frequently seems senseless and meaningless in another setting. The resulting conflict creates confusion that extends far beyond the pages of the book. In Yeats’s well-known words:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.¹

This quandary is not, of course, particularly new. Though its sources are complex, the confusion in the contemporary intellectual, cultural, social, and spiritual landscape is closely tied to important developments in modern philosophy and theology. Standing at the threshold of the twentieth century, Nietzsche, one of the greatest prophets of postmodernism, declared: “God remains dead. And we have killed him.”² The eclipse of belief in God did not suddenly appear on the horizon. It emerged gradually over a period of at least two hundred years. The critique of authority that arose during the latter part of the eighteenth century was an important factor in the shift away from traditional religious faith. Although rooted in Reformation theology and the spiritualism of radical reformers, the heart of the Enlightenment critique of authority was the renewed confidence in human reason. “Sapere aude!” declared Kant. “Have courage to use your own reason!—That is the motto of enlightenment.”³ As Kant’s own position makes clear, critique does not necessarily mean rejection. In Kantian philosophy, authority is maintained, though internalized. Heteronomy is translated into autonomy, as the word of one becomes the voice of all. From this point of view, the apparent universality of reason seems to provide a safeguard against relativistic historicism and to preclude the solipsism implicit in egalitarianism. While Kant believed his elaborate philosophical enterprise to be in the service of faith, the recognition of the inextricable relation between Author and authority led more radical thinkers of the era to be less optimistic about the possibility of reconciling religious belief and practice with the aims of emancipation and enlightenment. Many went so far as to argue that the chains of authority could be broken only by the death of the founding father. In many cases, rebellion became secular communion. The fraternal bond joining the sons of the Revolution was forged by common participation in the act of patricide and was sealed by the blood of the slain Father.

Although at odds with Kant’s own perspective, the radicalism of post-Kantian thought was an understandable outgrowth of his critical philosophy. The Romantic veneration of creative individuality and preoccupation with historical process cast doubt on the purported universality of Kant’s forms of intuition and categories of understanding. Throughout the nineteenth century, increasing sensitivity to the historical character of consciousness led to decreasing belief in apriori cognitive structures. This development had important consequences for the interpretation of religious belief. Having recognized the social, cultural, and psychological conditions of consciousness, thinkers like Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud proceeded to examine religious behavior in efforts to discern its latent content. Though such hermeneutical suspicion led to analyses that differed widely, various interpreters agreed that what for centuries had been regarded as objective reality is, in fact, subjective projection. Inverting the traditional Creator/creature relation, God came to be regarded as the creation of human beings. This revolutionary reversal both called into question the actuality of the divine and rendered doubtful all forms of religious authority.

Typical responses to the disappearance of the divine Author and the corresponding demise of religious authority cover a wide, and usually predictable, range. In the wake of the criticism of belief, many people appear to have become completely indifferent to religious and philosophical questions. Totally engaged in everyday activities, they rarely feel the need to step back and reflect on their experience. Others seem deeply troubled by the implications of modernism and postmodernism for traditional religious faith. The reaction of these individuals often takes the form of a defiant rejection of every critique of foundational beliefs. The reassertion of traditional orthodoxies is presented as a bulwark against advancing infidelity. As I have suggested, still others receive the news of the death of God and the questionableness of authority with great enthusiasm. Like servants released from bondage to a harsh master or children unbound from the rule of a domineering father, such individuals feel free to become themselves. In addition to these contrasting points of view, there is a large, and I believe growing, group of people who find themselves caught in the middle of such extremes. Suspended between the loss of old certainties and the discovery of new beliefs, these marginal people constantly live on the border that both joins and separates belief and unbelief. They look yet do not find, search but do not discover. This failure, however, need not necessarily end the quest. Like Walker Percy’s moviegoer, those who are betwixt ’n’ between realize that “Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”⁴ It is to these marginal people (among whom I count myself) that this study is addressed.

Throughout the course of the twentieth century, Western philosophers of religion and theologians have addressed themselves in a variety of ways to those who find themselves between belief and unbelief. Some of the most thoughtful theological responses to modernity have been formulated by appropriating insights advanced in contemporary philosophy. Recent philosophers as different as Heidegger, Bloch, Wittgenstein, and Whitehead have provided the background for significant theological reformulations. In many cases this union of philosophy and theology has been very productive. Innovative developments in religious thought like process theology, liberation theology, theology of hope, existential theology, and hermeneutical theology would not have been possible without the contributions of contemporary philosophy. Nevertheless, in the face of the profound questions raised by postmodern experience, it is necessary to ask if any of these revisions has gone far enough.

In recent years there has been a philosophical development of major proportions that has yet to make a significant impact on philosophy of religion and theology. In France a “movement” of thought known as deconstruction has emerged. Although deconstruction is, in many ways, peculiarly French and distinctively postmodern, it is, nonetheless, closely related to critical developments in early twentieth-century philosophy, art, literature, music, linguistics, and psychology. Writers and artists like Heidegger, Joyce, Schoenberg, Saussure, and Freud must be counted among its precursors. Perhaps as important for deconstruction as any of these figures, however, are three major nineteenth-century thinkers: Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Nowhere in twentieth-century thought have the insights of these pivotal philosophers been more thoroughly absorbed and reworked than in deconstruction. This is especially evident in the writings of the leading deconstructive philosopher—Jacques Derrida. Derrida actually goes so far as to suggest that “We will never be finished with the reading or rereading of Hegel, and, in a certain way, I do nothing other than attempt to explain myself on this point.”⁵ In his reading and rereading of Hegel, Derrida repeatedly, though rarely explicitly, relies on the writings of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. This is not to imply that Derrida attempts to synthesize the insights of those who have preceded him. Though clearly parasitic on Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, Derrida’s deconstruction is not Hegelian, Kierkegaardian, or Nietzschean. It falls somewhere in between all three of these positions. By simultaneously drawing together and pulling apart the works of such seminal writers, deconstruction opens new perspectives on the perplexing worlds of postmodernism.

In many ways, deconstruction might seem an unlikely partner for religious reflection. As a form of thought it appears avowedly atheistic. Derrida speaks for others as well as himself when he adamantly maintains that deconstruction “blocks every relationship to theology.”⁶ Paradoxically, it is just this antithetical association with theology that lends deconstruction its “religious” significance for marginal thinkers. By reflecting and recasting the pathos of so much contemporary art, literature, and philosophy, deconstruction expresses greater appreciation for the significance of the death of God than most contemporary philosophers of religion and theologians. Though anticipated in Hegel’s speculative philosophy and Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom and proclaimed by Nietzsche’s madman, the death of God is not concretely actualized until the emergence of the twentieth-century industrial state. And yet, as Nietzsche realized, “This tremendous event is,” in an important sense, “still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men.”⁷ This deafness is all too evident among many contemporary philosophers of religion and theologians. Too often they attempt to solve difficult religious problems by simply trying to recapture a past that now seems decisively gone. This attitude is no longer defensible.

Postmodernism opens with the sense of irrevocable loss and incurable fault. This wound is inflicted by the overwhelming awareness of death—a death that “begins” with the death of God and “ends” with the death of our selves. We are in a time between times and a place which is no place. Here our reflection must “begin.” In this liminal time and space, deconstructive philosophy and criticism offer rich, though still largely untapped, resources for religious reflection. One of the distinctive features of deconstruction is its willingness to confront the problem of the death of God squarely even if not always directly. The insights released by deconstructive criticism suggest the ramifications of the death of God for areas as apparently distinct as contemporary psychology, linguistics, and historical analysis. In view of its remarkable grasp of the far-reaching significance of the dissolution of the Western theological and philosophical tradition, it would not be too much to suggest that deconstruction is the “hermeneutic” of the death of God. As such, it provides a possible point of departure for a postmodern a/theology. Given the marginality of its site, an a/theology that draws on deconstructive philosophy will invert established meaning and subvert everything once deemed holy. It will thus be utterly transgressive.

The failure (or refusal) to come to terms with the radical implications of the death of God has made it impossible for most Western theology to approach postmodernism. This shortcoming results, at least in part, from the lack of a clear recognition that concepts are not isolated entities. Rather, they form intricate networks or complex webs of interrelation and coimplication. As a result of this interconnection, notions mutually condition and reciprocally define each other. Such thoroughgoing corelativity implies that no single concept is either absolutely primary or exclusively foundational. Clusters of coordinated notions form the matrix of any coherent conceptual system. It would, of course, be a vast oversimplification to insist that all Western theology can be made to fit a single system. Efforts to totalize the tradition inevitably leave a remainder and consequently always negate themselves. It is, nonetheless, possible to identify a set of interrelated concepts that have been particularly persistent in theological reflection. This network includes at least four terms: God, self, history, and book. In order to anticipate the course of the argument that follows, it might be helpful to indicate briefly the interplay of these important notions and to suggest some of the assumptions and consequences of the closely knit network that they form.

According to the tenets of classical theism, God, who is One, is the supreme Creator, who, through the mediation of His divine Logos, brings the world into being and providentially directs its course. This Primal Origin (First Cause or Archē) is also the Ultimate End (Final Goal or Telos) of the world. Utterly transcendent and thoroughly eternal, God is represented as totally present to Himself [sic]. He is, in fact, the omnipresent fount, source, ground, and uncaused cause of presence itself. The self is made in the image of God and consequently is also one, i.e., a centered individual. Mirroring its Creator, the single subject is both self-conscious and freely active. Taken together, self-consciousness and freedom entail individual responsibility. History is the domain where divine guidance and human initiative meet. The temporal course of events is not regarded as a random sequence. It is believed to be plotted along a single line stretching from a definite beginning (creation) through an identifiable middle (incarnation) to an expected end (kingdom or redemption). Viewed in such ordered terms, history forms a purposeful process whose meaning can be coherently represented. Page by page and chapter by chapter, the Book weaves the unified story of the interaction between God and self. Since the logic of this narrative reflects the Logos of history, Scripture, in effect, rewrites the Word of God.

God, self, history, and book are, thus, bound in an intricate relationship in which each mirrors the other. No single concept can be changed without altering all of the others. As a result of this thorough interdependence, the news of the death of God cannot really reach our ears until its reverberations are traced in the notions of self, history and book. The echoes of the death of God can be heard in the disappearance of the self, the end of history, and the closure of the book. We can begin to unravel ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Frontispiece
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Epigraph
• Part One. “Deconstructing Theology”
• Part Two. Deconstructive A/Theology
• Interlude . . .
• Notes
• Biblio Graphy
• Index