Max Raabe - “You’re the Cream in My Coffee.” Wonderbar white noise for an afternoon with German passives and reflexives.

Some Tuesday Afternoon Absurdity

Here is a little piece of absurdity from the past, indicative not only of the shittiness of Metaxas’ book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but also the raw deception and fear-mongering that America is missing out on now that the Fox Entertainment Group has ‘released’ Glenn Beck. Well, let me emend that, Fox still is dolling the deception, just without Glenn. He’s served his purpose, now its time for election hope not other-izing fear.

So Metaxas hops on the air and, in between dropping his connections to Yale University and plugging his previous books, he tries to talk about Bonhoeffer’s attempt to assassinate Hitler, which is the typical event of interest when it comes to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Apparently, Glenn does not want to talk about this, a surprising fact given that he is so fond of equating the Democratic Left with the Reich, which is another pile of shit altogether. Perhaps that would have been too volatile an analogy, even for a Glenn Beck University classroom.

Directing Metaxas to a different point, Glenn says, “The Hilter part is not as important to me as the standing up to the churches and saying ‘no, no, no — Look what’s happening!’” This clearly sets up his attempt to utilize Bonhoeffer against the Christian Left’s interest in social justice, an interest that the every Bonhoeffer but Metaxas’ would share.

But before getting to this point, Glenn comments on the relationship of the institutional Church and the German state during the Wiemar and post-Wiemar period; he make particular mention of the co-opting of christian themes and  religious grammar into the speeches of Hitler. Funny thing is, Beck makes this point sitting beneath a red, white, and blue graphic of Sam Adams, George Washington, and Ben Franklin, the words “Faith, Hope, and Charity” captioned beneath… . Just laugh, don’t even say anything.

Metaxas’ response to Glenn’s observation makes the irony of the conversation and the dramatic irony of the situation almost too much to bear. Hitler, Metaxas’ says, cloaked himself in the guise of Christian culture in order to mobilize a significant portion of the population. Making note of the caliber of Bonhoeffer’s educational formation during his childhood and adolescence, Metaxas implicitly suggests that a lack of educated in political and theological tradition led to the rise of support for Hitler. In effect, Hitler could bolster his national agenda by preying on the religious sentimentalities of German citizens through false corroboration. Metaxas then draws an analogy between the superficial and cultural faith in Germany in the late Wiemar period with contemporary American culture and religiosity. Along with that, he draws a parallel between American religiosity as a cultural currency and a power mechanism for the U.S. and the co-opting of religion by the Reich in the 30’s. Again, all of this goes down in a Fox studio. Its just too much.

In the first volume of his Systematic Theology, Wolfhart Pannenberg accuses Barth of failing to relocate the most basic elements of his theology from the anthropocentric soil that nurtured the roots of Protestant Liberalism. What makes Pannenberg’s critique so mind-blowing is the doctrinal loci that he names as the source of  Barth’s supposed failure: the doctrine of revelation through Romans and on into I.1-2 of the Dogmatics. Essentially, Pannenberg believes that Barth grounded the task of theology in the subjectivity of the individual, and thus failed to establish a source and norm for theology outside the human being’s self-awareness and individual apprehension. Astounding? I say yes! But wait; there’s more. In leveling this criticism against Barth on this point, Pannenberg also equates Barth’s “anthropocentrism” with the relation of the feeling of absolute dependence as legitimate grounding of the theological task in Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre. Pannenberg also aligns Barth’s supposed anthropocentric subjectivity with  Ritschl and Hermann’s foundation for constructing doctrine in the faith of the individual subject in Jesus Christ. For Pannenberg, the difference in the content of faith of the four theologians is irrelevant at this point. What is relevant is the constitutive role of faith in the task of theological thinking in the their respective systems of doctrine (i.e., the relation of the thinking subject to the undertaking of the theological task by said subject). In short, according to Pannenberg, while the content of their positive theological statements on faith clearly differentiates the four theologians, they all share a common method for understanding the role of the subject in the process of theological construction. All four, Pannenberg believes, ground the theological  task in individual subject. This basic methodological congruency, Pannenberg believes, reveals the underlining individualistic anthropocentrism typical of Liberal Protestantism, an anthropocentrism that Barth not only failed to upend, but failed to steer clear of in his own theology.

So Pannenberg on the four theologians:

Schleiermacher —

“By making subjective belief the basis for dogmatics Schleiermacher combined the religious subjectivism of Pietism, the reference to the church community and its doctrinal tradition, and the standpoint of individuality as the principle of critical appropriation of tradition.” (ST, I: 42).

Ritschl —
“We also find a grounding of theology, and especially dogmatics, in a prior certainty or experience of faith in 19th-century theologians who were not under the influence of revival piety, especially Albrecht Ritschl… . Ritschl developed the thesis that we can appreciate the full scope of the historical work of Jesus only in the light of the faith of the Christian community, and therefore we have to understand and evaluate every part of the Christian doctrine from the standpoint of the redeemed community of Christ.” (43).

Herrmann —
“Wilhelm Herrmann’s question (1892) regarding the historical Christa s the basis of faith could not be pressed radically because faith here was always the presupposition of the argument” (ibid.).

and Barth —
“Barth wanted to cling to the twofold assumption that the reality of God and his Word precedes faith and is a fixed given for dogmatics from the very first. But the second thesis could be introduced only by way of the concept of the act of faith. The inevitable result was that Barth could no longer present unambiguously, as he intended, the priority of God and his Word over the act of faith… . The starting point of this new approach, with the reflections on risk, courage, and petitio principii, remains imprisioned in the religious subjectivism from which Barth wished to free himself” (44-5).

Here is where I have to take issue with Pannenberg’s accusation of Barth and his correlation of these four theologians. First, what was “the religious subjectivism from which Barth wished to free himself?” From Romans to the early Dogmatics and beyond, it seems one would have a very difficult time arguing that the religious subjectivism haunting Barth was simply accepted and recapitulated despite his own criticism of Liberal Protestantism. For Barth, the subject who is met by revelation is recreated in the meeting and must come to terms with the event of revelation by witnessing to its singular (and recapitulating) reality. While serving as the ground for theological witness, the event does not garuantee the veracity of unadulterated facticity of a constructed theology. The task of theology is then included within this “coming to terms” with the event of revelation, but this event does not lead into or open up a space for static theological reflection free from future correction (a point Pannenberg himself would like to uphold but in a very different way). As such, the source of theological thinking is not grounded in the subject but comes from without, demanding theological thinking as a response of gratitude.

This is where we have to differentiate between the subjectivism that Barth reacted against and the form of subjectivism coincident with Barth’s understanding of the task of theology. Barth’s desire to overcome a certain form of subjectivism is best understood in light of the type of subjectivism he does espouse in Romans and beyond. For Barth, revelation is not generally accessible to all humankind on the basis of an inner subjective dispensation or essence. The dogmatic task cannot be universally “do-able” because of some natural capability inherent within the human subject. For Barth, just the opposite is the case. While it is true that a person might make “true” or coherent doctrinal statements irrespective of the eventuality of revelation, the person making such statements is not really “doing theology,” but something entirely different. Such a person is not following revelation with their heart and mind; he or she is not witnessing to the reality of revelation, at least not intentionally or purposefully. As such, the task of theology does not give itself to such a  person in any decipherable way. To put it idiomatically, even a broken clock can be right twice a day, but the broken clock is still broken.

Over against such notions of inherent disposition toward or capability for the theological task as part of the essential make-up of the subject, as I have mentioned, Barth stressed the recreation of the subject. According to Barth, the revelation of God by its very nature is a subject forming event — dissolving the old and re-instating the new again and again and again. As McCormack has demonstrated in his fine work, this is true for Barth’s theology from Romans to the last volume of the Dogmatics, though the content of revelation and the meaning of the act clearly develop. So, as I read Barth, he never had a problem with understanding the faith of the subject as an indispensable aspect of really “doing theology.” And so, returning to and answering my own question, Barth’s indispensable “subject” we might say is a different subject than the one he was reacting against because it is a post eventual subject. It is a subject that is oriented to an event, WHO is the object of theology. As such, it makes little sense for Pannenberg to accuse Barth of failing to overcome the centrality of the subject with regard to the dogmatic task when Barth’s problem was not with the centrality of the subject per se.

But my critique of Pannenberg, can also be found within Pannenberg’s own ST. For this, we have to go ch.3. Here we find Pannenberg’s discussion of religion as an anthropological phenomenon. Tracing the shift of the authoritative center of the Protestant theological task from the Scripture Principle (whether emphasized as the subjective appropriation or objective truthfulness of the text) to  phenomenological study of the religious individual and/or community, Pannenberg again blows the anthropocentrism whistle on Schleiermacher and his theological method. “Schleiermacher’s Speeches on Religion,” Pannenberg states, ” gave the independence of religion a new foundation. Religion no longer owed its freedom from metaphysics and moral philosophy to the authority of the truth of God. It now had a basis of independence in anthropology with its claim to be a separate province in the mind (Speeches, p.21). The concept of God was now a product of religion, and it did not necessarily belong to it (pp. 93ff., 97ff.). Later Schleiermacher would link religion (or piety) more closely with the concept. In The Christian Faith, the feeling of absolute dependence stands on its own. It is not an effect of faith in God.” (ST I:126)

Pannenberg goes on to explain his reading of Schleiermacher in more detail. But, he basically concludes with the final point given in the quote above: the God-consciousness of the individual is not a consequence of the knowledge of God gifted to the subject from without (by a faith invoking experience or event perhaps?); instead, it is an expression of religion or piety belonging to the make-up of the subject from within. It is basically an essential component of the subject’s being.

Now, I am not an expert on Schleiermacher. I only have a basic knowledge of the new scholarship on Schleiermacher’s theology and only a bit more knowledge of Barth’s reading of Schly via Troeltsch. But whether or not Pannenberg gets Schleiermacher right is irrelevant. What should be obvious is that Pannenberg betrays his earlier critique of Barth by unpacking his understanding of Schleiermacher’s notion of subjectivity, which is, quite obviously, antithetical to Barth’s notion of subjectivity. If Pannenberg would have explained the different forms of subjectivity and the subject’s relation to nature of revelation and the theological task in 19th and 20th century theology when he was lumping Barth into the Liberalism category, he might have seen that Barth’s understanding of the subject “doing theology” is nothing like Schleiermacher’s. As such, to suggest that Barth never overcame the theological anthropocentrism of Liberal Protestantism is really nothing more than a two-fold oversimplification. In Pannenberg’s accusation, both terms— “subjectivism” and “anthropocentism” — are so broad they virtually become meaningless; with that, Pannenberg’s critique becomes meaningless as well (at least from this angle).

Pannenberg would have done better to level a critique against Barth on the relation of the subject and the task of theology by first differentiating the various forms of subjectivity, faith, and the theological task of the faithful subject in modern theology. If we read Pannenberg’s argument against Barth in light of Pannenberg’s own theological goals, I think we get a better sesne of Pannenberg’s worry when it comes to subjectivity than we do from simply looking at his argument against Barth on its own terms. Furthermore, from what I’ve read of Pannenberg thus far, we might also realize that his own take on the issue could use a bit more of Barth’s post-eventual subjectivism.

Tonight was the opening night for the 2011 Karl Barth Conference co-sponsored by Princeton Seminary’s Center for Barth Studies and the Thomistic Institute of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House Studies in Washington D.C. The conference title follows its unique subject matter and implicitly speaks to its direction and concerns, Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Protestant-Catholic Dialogue.

The night began with a banquet, which I, not so unfortunately, had to miss. Not so unfortunate because I was afforded the opportunity of picking up Father Guy Mansini, OSB, associate professor of systematic theology at Saint Meinard in Louisville, KY from the Newark airport.

Along with my friends who accompanied me, Father Mansini and I had our own Protestant-Catholic theological dialogue of sorts, mostly consisting of theological small talk regarding our interests and the likely coincidences and dissonances of our theological concerns. We did briefly discuss Barth’s take on the place of the ecumenical creeds (particularly the first four) as they are oriented to the theological task. We also spoke briefly on Barth’s understanding of submission to the creeds and in what way they are to be considered biding or guiding parameters in church theology.

We arrived in Princeton in time for the introductory remarks of Professor Bruce McCormack and Father Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

Both Professor McCormack and Father White indicated that the some of the churches are currently in a time of ecclesiastical transition, which for those interested, might open up new possibilities by way of ecumenical dialogue and theology across the Protestant-Catholic divide. The locus of and intent behind ecumenical discussion, they both suggested, seems to be shifting. Protestants and Catholics are now concerning themselves with points of doctrinal divergence that cannot so easily be overcome or obfuscated by swift linguistic maneuvering and or doctrinal-grammatical rearrangement. Rather, both speakers noted (and particularly Prof. McCormack on this point), many concerned theologians and laypersons already at the ecumenical table have come to an sincere admittance that Protestants and Catholics do have fundamental matters of disagreement in doctrine, disagreements that cut to the core of the common faith we confess. Some are coming to the table, because they feel welcome to voice the perceived discrepancies without fear of spoiling the atmosphere. 

Such admittances does not have to, and most certainly should not require Protestants and Catholics to put their mutual respect and common aim aside. The admittance of serious differences should not lead to a rejection of humility. Nor, when properly perceived, should it birth the desire to be excused from the ecumenical table. On the contrary, the common profession of faith and Goal encourages Protestants and Catholics alike to press on.  Though divergences can no longer be remedied by a form of mutual congeniality and consensus wiggled out through broad doctrinal statements, mutual congeniality and consensus might now arise freely and openly through clear, frank, and respectful discussion for the sake of mutual understanding and clarity. 

With this approach, Protestants and Catholics might be best suited to treat each other with the kind of respect and integrity all deserve. As Father White put it, we respect one another and our shared belief in the Lordship of Christ in and through our common search for truth together, and this truth includes bringing our concrete disagreements to the fore.

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Marilynne Robinson’s Abraham Kuyper lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary is available for free download at the Seminary website. The lecture is entitled: Open Wide Thy Hand: Moses and the Origins of American Liberalism.

Marilynne Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Her novel Gilead received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, and her follow-up novel Home received the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2009. More recently, she delivered the Terry lectures at Yale University, resulting in the publication of Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of Self.

The Princeton Theological Review posts the fall 2011 Call for Papers.

If you wish to participate, please visit the Princeton Theological Review website for further details.

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The Princeton Theological Review is a independent student-run publication body at Princeton Theological Seminary. The PTR is not an official publication of Princeton Theological Seminary, and the views expressed in the PTR do not necessarily represent those of the editors, the student body, or the Seminary.

“If Paul—quite apart from his general opposition to the idea that faith has a ‘wage’—cannot subordinate hope to the imaginary of a retribution, it is because resurrection has no meaning independently of the universal character of its operation. As soon as it is a question of contingency and grace, all fixing of divisions or distributions is forbidden: ‘A single act of righteousness leads to the acquittal and life for all [people]’ (Rom. 5.18). The “all [people]” returns without exception. There is no place here for vengeance and resentment. Hell, the roasting spit of enemies, holds no interest for Paul.”   — Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford, CA: Standford University Press, 2003), 96.

Whether or not Badiou gets Paul right in this quote, or in the book for that matter, is the least of my concerns. What is elemental is the stress on subjectivity. Post Liberal Protestant Christians need a dose of this in light of overreaction against buzz words like ‘experience’ and ‘consciousness.’ Juengel rightly shows us in his GMW, and reactions to GMW (e.g., Molnar) show us the battle rages on.

But about Badiou: he sees in Paul an utter conviction in the reality of the Event (here, the Resurrection) and its power to create the individual anew. According to Badiou, for Paul, only when a person is completely worked over with the conviction the Resurrection is the Real will law and its oppressive parameters be subverted. The the law can be a doctrinal form, a metaphysic, an identification of a political body with the Real, or any other type of deification of a particular cultural ideal/current.

Doctrinally speaking, this conviction includes the subversion of the law as it is projected into an eternal future or an afterlife. It also includes the subversion of the law that chooses to doubt the Resurrection as the Real, inevitably falling back identity mediated through the law resulting in yet another tribalism. Here we are not talking about historicality or some modern notion of factuality. The Real subverts such notions, dissolving them in the wake of its overarching Reality of another form. Cataloging the Resurrection event in the annals of history as a touchstone for faith and action is a bastardized way to go about relating to the Real. It is a movement of law.

Also and again according to Badiou’s reading of Paul, if any idea of hope and expectation for the triumph of love is to wholly ground action, then the projection of the Real into a future locale or event with a present idea of justice must be surrendered. Along with it, all attempts to hide it underneath or within a tribal law and grammar must also be left by the wayside. The projection of tribal law into the future (generally played out in some grand final law court culminating in a separation of brothers, mothers, and fathers according to the unknown-but-surprisingly-similar-to-my-rule Rule), is finally a rejection of Resurrection as the Real as well. Instead one, the subject, seized by the Resurrection Event, can only be obstinate here and now in post-eventual support of Resurrection’s Reality. The rejection of law becomes an issue only as it falls into its place among the ruins. In this respect, living by the Resurrection Event is primarily a progressive and not a reactionary way of existence.

Another way of looking at it: this means that idealistic notions of pure materialism or trancendentalism must both be rejected along with all forms that disguise the one within the other. The conviction must hold that Resurrection cannot be laughed out of material significance into the realm of the failed transcendent, nor can it be thrown up into the sky or into an afterlife in rejection of its reality here and now (often leading to an acceptance of the status quo). Both of these ways of dealing with the Resurrection make the same mistake. They fail to take it seriously as an ontologically constitutive reality for God, creation, and the subject. They believe in something else, not the Resurrection Event.

Of course, on this last point Badiou would not follow me. For him, Paul’s Resurrection Event is a “fabrication.” It is not the Event itself. Rather Paul’s universalism and emphasis on the subject is a parable of sorts, an opportunity for picking up the rubble of failed Transcendence and using it as artillery. So, the question: what to read to understand Badiou’s take on the EVENT? Any suggestions? And, please, don’t just say Being and Event, give me pg. #s.

Bon Iver Strawberry Jam Night: Morning After.