John Caputo - "Hoping Against Hope" in Poetic Structure, Chapter 1

I am slowly reading through two books - one by John Caputo, Hoping Against Hope, and the other by Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician. Both authors are friends with one another resulting from Peter's studies with John over the years. And as I am reading through each book I will try to capture each author's very similar journeys to the other by creating a poetic structure to their thoughts and insights. In this initial installment of poems I have attempted, however imperfectly, to put my pen to this task hoping to discover each author's profound vision of life through Continental Philosophy and Radical Theology. And then, at the end of this poetic section I will attempt a commentary  based on each author's approach and use of radical theology. Enjoy.

R.E. Slater

October 28, 2015

A Profane Spirituality

by R.E. Slater*

I see in myself three people -
as a boy in my youth,
a young man in rectory training,
and my older, more mature self.

Each version of myself is lost -
in the fearful wonder of boyhood,
in the zealotry of religious fervor,
in eternal wonder as a mature academic.

Yet each voice conflicts with the other -
resonating through my head and heart and soul,
where none are willing to be at peace,
so unlike each version of myself to the other.

Daily then I bear three existential yokes -
the religion of the Rose haunted by gift,
the nihilism of grace inhabiting reality,
the insistence of God as elusive phantom
    each nestled deep within the unconditional.

And there I lie in unsheltered turmoil -
discovering myself beyond self-made walls,
admitting the more I live the less sure I become,
of my positions, verities, creeds, and even my very self.

And now, as I stretch out my theologic (or philosophic) legs,
I reach for the infinitely eternal in the mortality of my being,
so that in whichever direction or sense of time I am in,
I may at last be found in a kind of constructed peace,
    spanning all three versions of my fractured self.

- R.E. Slater
October 25, 2015

*abridged observations derived from
John D. Caputo, "Hoping Against Hope"

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved

The Death of Nihilism

by R.E. Slater*

So long as I am,

death is not;

when death is,

I am not.

- Epicurus, ancient Greek Poet

The postmodern condition is existentially nihilistic,
which is incredulous to admit, but more than this, it is inhuman,
envisioning a humanity without memory or monstrosity,
or, without history, which is most unthinkable!
because history depends upon memory,
where hopes or fears are dashed,
dying with the death of our sun by star death.

And when all is done and history set aright,
all thought will have expired unthought,
and in the place of absolute spirit,
will be an absolute nothingness,
a pure catastrophe infinitely consuming,
and truly terminal condition of cosmic proportions,
bearing no hint to any presence of life having lived.

There will then be no feelings of dehumanization,
simply a post-human condition where death has died all deaths,
and mortal immortality is pure negation without reminder,
so that like Epicurus' own view of nihilistic death,
so too will be the end of all cosmic history,
as our universe, which was never ours, moves to oblivion,
and being becomes nothing and hope is no longer.

- R.E. Slater
October 25, 2015

*abridged observations derived from
John D. Caputo, "Hoping Against Hope"

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved

The Sacredness of My Idol

by R.E. Slater*

Like Adam of old -

I reach for the object of my desire,
but am forbade its holy grasp,
and when thus forbidden,
lust for it's power all the more,
investing into it magical powers,
of being, of presence, of nurture,
as it rises in my eyes like a sacred thing,
made inaccessible by outside denial, lusting
its capture where once there was no fiat constraining.

This thing has now become the fiction of my heart,
tearing me into so many pieces by its holy perception,
become now a sacred thing by other-denial,
transformed from mere material object,
to something God-like,
feared and lusted,
presenting itself as balm of life and salve,
to all known ills or found strife,
giving to me its sacred protection.

Vainly my desires are triply doubled,
inextinguishable, burning,
consuming my every thought,
prohibited its clutch,
filling its magic husk,
with whatever I think it may mean,
for my desires, nay my satisfactions!
reborne as I am,
by its sublime profane presence.

- R.E. Slater
October 25, 2015

*abridged observations derived from
Peter Rollins, "The Divine Magician"

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved

* * * * * * * * * *

Radical Theology is a philosophical conversation without biblical input to its conservation except for its existential contributions of cultural belief sets drawn from past and present religious communities. What this means is that radical theology is ideally an neutral (not atheistic) conversation of all things religious, irreligious, and all points in between.

For the Christian believer this would present an immediate conundrum and one not easily sorted out and yet, if considered as an hermeneutical tool, may present to the Christian the possibility of examining the underpinnings of the church's faith while attempting to launch a post-Christian, post-secular, (post)post-modern conversation with society at large. One that is very much needed in this day and age of religious argument and cultural wars.

The value then for Christian theology might be found in the opportunity to re-examine the church's hermeneutical belief set lately based upon Western Analytic thought since the age of Enlightenment through a combination of Continental Philosophical thought utilizing radical theology's newer development as an existential / phenomenological dissecting tool to re-right Christian hermeneutic thought and convention back into contemporary conversation with society once again.

Alone, present day church culture has gone along its own (secular) trajectories that have not seemed very "biblical" but more "culturally ingrained" and as such, have departed from the "biblical traditions" of the bible to its own re-interpretation of them. However, through continental philosophy and radical theology a return to a biblical hermeneutic laced with possibility and expanded thought might be discovered again. And in the finding re-discover the Person and Work of God in His missional outreach to today's turbulent societies.

Admittedly, using radical theology as an hermeneutical tool may seem incongruous with the overall attempt of examining God's Will and Word through the bible. However, it is through this dispassionate tool set that the possibility of hearing God's testimony again with new ears and new hearts may be reached. How? By breaking down the non-essentials of one's faith and casting these into the fires of darkness so that categories like doubt and uncertainty might be allowed to live in the hearts of the broken to rediscover Jesus' salvific work afresh.

Nor should radical theology be considered simply an atheistic study but rather a non-religious study (or, an a/religious study) that will challenge Christian beliefs at their core. And in the challenging help the Christian church rediscover its faith-life once removed from its culturally-based religious belief sets pre-determining what that faith-life now looks like to what it may become stripped of its religious dogmas and re-focused (or centered) upon Jesus Christ.

Radical theology can therefore be a useful tool both for both the atheist in examining a world without God (or, in Jack Caputo's sense, a world which has absorbed all that God is into its very bones, as a world where God has died and now "divinely insists" within its secular structures). Or, for the Christian church, in examining a world where God may have died in one sense to then "insist within its very structures" while in another sense continues to live as the God we know risen from death with renewed power and vigor to export salvation fully to all the world both intrinsically and extrinsically.

Without radical theology one cannot form a foundation of understanding that would include this "both-and, either-or" sublimity of God's divine work of imputing His sovereign will and Spirit-infused power into humanity's structures (nor even that of the cosmos, inanimate and indeterminately determined as it now exists). But with radical theology a Christian theologian may fully exert a theistic approach above the "roar of religiosity" with an empirical knowledge that even within the nature of nature itself - or, the nature of social structures and humanity itself - that God is there, partnered with us, to bring about His glory and will, however we describe it.

To be sure, an atheistic approach to radical theology would not admit this; or rather, would tell the Christian church that this is an abomination to the usage of radical theology itself. But, this would then portend to the atheistic belief the more superior approach when in fact it is but one approach based upon internal subjectivity prejudiced towards a kind of atheistic "neutrality." For the Christian believer, that prejudice is not his or her internal choice, being smitten by the opposite conviction that God is here and is not dead. That He has been radically transformed by death and resurrection and now made alive in desperately new ways as a Living Being extending throughout the cosmos of His creation. That despite claims of His ontological death, God is very much alive to rule over the evil of this world presenting its generations with existential despair and uncertainty. For the Christian then, radical theology can be a tool set to recover the church's sight - as well as this lost world's vision - of the God who rules and is higher than the wisdom of men and the power of evil.

Used in this sense then, radical theology ironically allows for hope, which is a hope that Jack Caputo looks for too in his own secular, a/theistic approach, though in a different sense from the Catholic tradition he had grown up with - first in naivety as a child, and then as a fervent believer in religious training. A unique training that allowed him to investigate the hermeneutical structures of his faith so that he might do the hard work of examining not only his beliefs, but that of the church's too, as it cross-sects with normative Christian theological structures.

So then, this subject of a "Christian radical theology" can be a hard one to discover, uncover, and move forward given its many premises. But it can be done so long as it is known that what lies ahead is the Scylla and Charybdis of academic biblical criticism:

"Biblical criticism is perennially caught between the Scylla of interpretive freedom

and the Charybdis of irrelevance. Too much hermeneutic freedom and the tradition

disintegrates, losing its epistemological appeal. Too little interpretive freedom and

the Bible becomes merely an irrelevant historical artifact, rather than the living

Word of God." Inherently, evangelical biblical interpretation is unquestionably

caught between a need for relevance and the need for textual validity." - anon

Philosophers of the world, and especially Christian-based philosophers such as Jack Caputo, give to Christian theologians the gift of insight set apart from the church as they are. The church itself has enough of its own burdens let alone to carry the weight of skepticism and disbelief upon its shelf of self-examinations and opportunities. But each theological era must bear its yoke and into this post-Christian era has come radical theology's contemporary insights which may be either (i) demonized by apologetic discourse and excised away or, (ii) addressed with the solemnity and gravity that it deserves. For readers here we would encourage the latter approach in the power and wisdom of the Spirit of God as is possible upon those few men and women expert enough in theology to carry forth this battle of self-examination to the greater good of God's Spirit.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

November 2, 2015

Pyro-Theology: A Place to Work Out Conflict, Disappointment, and Faith

Generations of senseless misery. High potential for the lucky. Actual miseries for the ill-fated. No one

ever seems to deliver on, the all-too-easily-forgotten-promise of, confronting and relieving suffering.

"An aim of pyrotheology is not to avoid conflict, but rather to create a space for it...

To hash things out, to be challenged and to perhaps discover that the other has

a perspective that might change you." - Peter Rollins

"The aim of pyrotheology is not to avoid conflict, but rather to create a space for it. There are real and serious issues to be addressed in every culture, and the strategies of [either the] hawk-like war mongers or neo-liberals would seek to avoid all conflict, are rarely the answer. Rather gritty, dirty salons are required where drinks can be slammed onto tables, obscenities shouted and tears shed. Spaces where the only real non-negotiable is a commitment to returning again and again to the same space and the same people. To hash things out, to be challenged and to perhaps discover that the other has a perspective that might change you. The point of embracing unknowing, interrogating assumptions and facing personal issues (the bread and butter of pyrotheology) is to facilitate a better form of life that is not only more enjoyable and enriching at a personal level, but also one that provides the basis of more healthy and effective political engagement." - Peter Rollins

"He lay listening to the horse

crop the grass at his stakerope

and he listened to the wind in the emptiness

and watched stars trace the arc of the hemisphere

to die in the darkness at the edge of the world.

As he lay there

the agony in his heart was like a stake.

He imagined the pain of the world to be

like some formless parasitic being

seeking out the warmth of human souls

wherein to incubate.

And he thought he knew what

made one liable to its visitations.

What he had not known was that

it was mindless, and so,

had no way to know

the limits of those souls

and what he feared

was that there might be no limits."

- Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

"If the only image of Christianity that a society can access is of a [j]esus that is intimately associated with subjugation, imperialism, colonialism; a [j]esus that articulates the language of the Domination System; a [j]esus that silences the critiques of logic, of science, of Truth; a [j]esus that reinforces exclusivism, tribalism, and nationalism as a way to consolidate its power; if that society is utterly unable to differentiate between that [j]esus and the True [J]esus, then the Prophet of our time is the Atheist.

"Pyro-theology is one of the only places that lead me to believe we are not at that desperate time yet, and that is encouraging to me, because I definitely think there is still [J]esus to be found amongst all the other manifestations of [j]esus in our world."

- anon

"I’m reading Walter Brueggemann's ‘Prophetic Imagination.’ He discusses how prophetic communities offer radical criticism of the empire through grief. On the surface, I’m wondering if this is another possible expression of pyro? Has anyone ever wrestled with his work in this regard?"

- anon

“It is the task of prophetic ministry and imagination to bring

people to engage their experiences of suffering to death.”

- Walter Brueggemann

“The prophet brings to public expression the dread of endings,

the collapse of our self-madeness,

the barriers and pecking orders

that secure us at each other’s expense,

and the fearful practice of

eating off the table of a hungry brother or sister.”

- Walter Brueggemann

“‘Jesus wept.’

Such weeping is a radical criticism,

a fearful dismantling

because it means the end of all machismo;

weeping is something kings rarely do

without losing their thrones.

Yet the lose of thrones

is precisely what is called for

in radical criticism.”

- Walter Brueggemann

"Ikon was perfect for me. A safe community at a time when no one understood me at my "church."

[Even] my own partner at the time thought Rob Bell was a demon and that I was possessed. He literally tried performing an exorcism on me.

Yes, I am still in shock years later.

So what brought me to that person and to those people and that point in life?

That is a more important question than any theological question I could have asked myself.

My recent revelation has made me so aware of questions that are far more necessary, greater, and practical than pyrotheology or questions about God.

These are the more important questions about the very physical world [than what I] can see and [touch and] test and find with a microscope.

More important questions about the reality of my brain. [That thing] which frames the God I imagine and everything else that I question. That I experience. That I think. That I feel. And that I say.

Now, more than ever, [I am] tempted to set pyrotheology itself alight with the flames of questions that challenge the place and priority of Pyrotheology - or any theology - in one's life.

With this discovery I am, for the first time in my life, truly feel [the prejudice of] what "looking down upon" minorities, [the impoverished, the castaways of life] feel like.

I've never felt a weight so heavy before of living under the dark cloud of an international ideological framework that looks at brains like mine and people like me, and sees us as "less than" human.

I quickly experienced belonging to a people that is patronized, misunderstood, made fun of, and shamed for who we are.

I never felt that in my life... ever!

I've always been in the cool group. [The dominant group.] Even in those brief times when I fell off the cool wagon I [have] never felt this kind of weight [before].

And once I realized where I belong a sense of justice rose up in me to start addressing that heavy weight of ideology that the media [and my friends] persist with. That outdated science itself has establshed [in my bible groups and church].

I now have my own "principalities and powers in heavenly places" to wrestle with as Ephesians says.

I see the dark forces of ignorance everywhere.

I look and I now know where to be a light and on what hill to shine. And I feel a sense of what gay folks and African Americans have felt in addressing a massive false perception.

And it feels good to shine.

So. So. Good.

- anon

"Now read from the bottom up"

What Is Pyrotheology?

What is Pyrotheology? It is the burning down of everything thought important to us. It is a deeply black, deeply dissettling time of life where everything is thrown out of our lives in order to begin again. To begin with a newer vision unformed and awaiting formation. A time of prophetic imagination when the soul becomes so deeply vexed that it despairs of life. It is deeply angered by the lies we've lived with and have told ourselves. It is a time where suffering and death become the same thing. Where no light exists and all is black.

It is a time of endings and beginnings. Of ending an old life overspent with old forms and ways of being to explore a new life with new forms and ways of being. It is being more wise and cautious than at first when youth was an incautious sponge absorbing everything it saw and heard from significant people and movements surrounding itself.

A time where only pain and suffering must now exist until a kind of repentance is made for being so foolish. Where peace only invades when a nothingness exists in our being holding no answers and glad for this space of darkness and void.

For myself, it was a time where I was forsaken by the God of my youth but never forsaken by the God of reality. The God that died for me during this time was the God taught to me by my culture oriented in bloodshed, violence, and politics of oppression.

A God whom inhabited an imperfect theology built upon imperfect teachings of past generations so sure of themselves and in their philosophies of Western domination. So sure of their religious destinies, their arduous lives, their societal fulfillments. Carving out a history not of God's love but God's ruthless wrath, anger, and judgment should I fail to follow in their footsteps of war, of conquest, of brow beating opponents with God's holy book and opposing unholy thoughts.

Here was a dark space that must be thankfully abandoned in order to see the God who inhabits light and not darkness. Here was a time in life that must be ripped apart by my own hands as moved by the Spirit of God's winnowing fork burning up the piles of combustible chaff of biblical idolatries. Here was a cross-current sweeping me away in mad, rushing, torrents from the turbulent seas of my past into an ocean beyond my control. Unswimmable. Unsurvivable. Without horizons. And at one time, without light.

But I knew then, as I know now, that God was there and had never abandoned me. Just my false image of Himself which needed destroying. Who needed to fall on the violence of my own metaphors so that by His own violence to my life I might find resurrection.

It is a curious thing, is it not, to speak of the God of peace and love in so violent a terminology? But this is what I still observe in this violent world we make and must break if it is to live in peace and love. of death, not to others, but to ourselves. To our every unholy thought that does violence to those that would be violent towards us - or struggles with the violence clutching lives different from mine own. Such is the way of the world if we are to survive. And so unlike what I imagine an Eden, or a renewing world, might be. A world without violence

But alas, pyrotheology says that one must argue and fight for one's faith lest it be usurped by a violence that would undo it. So that by destruction may come a new destruction. One that can be holy and burn up all things in our lives by fire so that we may be a pure aroma of sacrifice and offering to a God of war and violence and all-seeing justice.

In a world of sin and evil only a God who dies to His own violence can be resurrected to the destruction of creation's violence. Even so must the penitent sinner acknowledge his or her own death before resurrecting against the oppressions of this wicked world full of spiritual delusion, political lust, greed, and selfish desire.

Against a world that sees itself and not the other. Which would kill all unlike itself lest despairing of its own motives to fall into a pyrotheology destined for its own future. A future that will come if not now, then later. A fire that must come. Must burn. Must destroy if we are to become a renewing people of God resurrected into a holy fellowship.

A fellowship which is at peace with those struggling with their own peace. Steadfast in its love for the other refusing God's winnowing fire. Martyred upon the cross of its making once realizing that the cross is the end of violence and the start of violence and the beginning of renewal.

Pyrotheology is an unusual thing. It is unlike so much else I have been taught and hold dear. But it is a good thing when it is the real thing and not the substitute thing we give it if so fortunate to travel upon its hardness. For at the last, the substitute thing is the thing that may have to die as well. To burn once is not to burn again. Death in God is a continual death even as it is a continual resurrection. And hopefully, with each new death and resurrection we may inch forward closer and closer to this thing God calls us too in our lives. A call to life and light and fellowship with one another measured by love and forgiveness and peace.

I will be the first to say I have begun on this journey. But I have not ended my journey in the Spirit of God. It may be a journey long and hard where failure is as constant as mine own stubbornness to resist evil and oppression. But perhaps God has given me the sword and shield as much as the breastplate of righteousness and forgiveness. To act as warrior and priest, lover and accuser, in the same breath as the space I live within.

Not a Moses. Nor a David. Not a Christ. Nor a Paul. I am a prophet by God's own calling. And a priest to the testimonies of God's own revelation. But through this may His healing hand bring balm to all. And if not to all, then to my own soul desperate for His winnowing fire and steadfast love.

R.E. Slater

August 8, 2015

Peter Rollins Belfast Series on Radical Theology, Part 1 - John Caputo on Event

From Peter Rollin: John Caputo on Event

Over the next few weeks I'm going to offer you (my email subscribers) some advance access to videos from my yearly festival in Belfast. The actual event involves a blend of music, art, workshops and whiskey tastings as well as talks from some of the sharpest minds in the world of Radical Theology.

The videos I'll be linking to are in an unlisted area of Youtube and will include short talks from myself, Barry Taylor, Gladys Ganiel and Kester Brewin.

The one I'm offering you today is from the world renowned philosopher John Caputo. Dr. Caputo is a hybrid philosopher/theologian intent on producing impure thoughts which deny fixed and rigorous boundaries between philosophy and theology. Caputo treats "sacred" texts as a poetics of the human condition, or as a "theo-poetics." [That is,] as a poetics of the event harbored in the name of God.

In this talk Caputo explores the Event housed in Religion, asking if Radical Theology can preach.

or, click here to view

- Pete

Over the last twenty years I’ve been developing a project that has been described as “Pyrotheology.” Born and bred in Belfast, Pyrotheology has now grown into a vibrant movement with a world-wide impact.

In this intimate event, I’ll be presenting a clear and compressive introduction to the theory and technology of pyrotheology in the city where it all began.

This event will involve a mix of talks and discussions, and should be of interest to students of religion, academics, religious leaders and laypeople alike. We’re going to limit the tickets to 60. To register click on the Ticket link.

Cost £50

Price includes light refreshments, lunch provided by Flour Power, beer from Boundary Brewery and a free copy of “The Divine Magician” (or other book)

To secure your ticket, click here

* * * * * * * * * *

Who is John Caputo?

Reference #1 - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Caputo

Reference #2 - Syracuse University (below)

John D. Caputo
Thomas J. Watson Professor, Religion and Humanities

Research and Teaching Interests

John D. Caputo is a hybrid philosopher/theologian intent on producing impure thoughts, thoughts which circulate between philosophy and theology, short-circuits which deny fixed and rigorous boundaries between philosophy and theology. Caputo treats "sacred" texts as a poetics of the human condition, or as a "theo-poetics," a poetics of the event harbored in the name of God. His past books have attempted to persuade us that hermeneutics goes all the way down (Radical Hermeneutics), that Derrida is a thinker to be reckoned with by theology (The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida), and that theology is best served by getting over its love affair with power and authority and embracing what Caputo calls, following St. Paul, The Weakness of God. He has also addressed wider-than-academic audiences in On Religion and What Would Jesus Deconstruct? and has an interest in interacting with the working church groups like ikon and the “Emergent” Church. He is currently working in a book on our frail and mortal flesh, probably to be entitled The Fate of All Flesh: A Theology of the Event, II.

Professor Caputo specializes in continental philosophy of religion, working on approaches to religion and theology in the light of contemporary phenomenology, hermeneutics and deconstruction, and also the presence in continental philosophy of radical religious and theological motifs. He has special interests in the "religion without religion" of Jacques Derrida; the "theological turn" taken in recent French phenomenology (Jean-Luc Marion and others); the critique of onto-theology; the question of post-modernism as "post-secularism;" the dialogue of contemporary philosophy with St. Augustine; the recent interest shown by philosophers in St. Paul; the link between Kierkegaard and deconstruction; Heidegger's early theological writings on Paul and Augustine; "secular" and "death of God" theology (Altizer, Vattimo, Zizek); medieval metaphysics and mysticism.

He conducts a series of biennial conferences on these themes: April, 2005, "St. Paul Among the Philosophers" (now available from Indiana University Press); April, 2007: "Feminism, Sexuality, and the Return of Religion" (in press with Indiana University Press); April, 2009: "The Politics of Love" (in preparation. This year’s conference, “The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion,” will be held April 7-9, 2011. For details visit: http://pcr.syr.edu.

Recently, three books have appeared about his work: Cross and Khora: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo, Eds. Neal Deroo and Marko Zlomsic (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010); A Passion for the Impossible: John D. Caputo in Focus, ed. Mark Dooley (SUNY Press, 2002) and Religion With/Out Religion: The Prayers and Tears of John D. Caputo, ed. Ed. James Olthius (Routledge, 2002). Prof. Caputo joined the department in Fall, 2004 after retiring from Villanova University where he taught from 1968 to 2004.

Professor Caputo's The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Indiana, 2006) received the 2007 AAR Book Award for "Constructive-Reflective Studies in Religion." What would Jesus Deconstruct? was the winner of the ForeWord Magazine Best Philosophy Book of 2007 award.

Prof. Caputo will retire at the end of the 2010-11 academic year.

* * * * * * * * * *

In Defense of Total Depravity

by R.E. Slater

June 24, 2015

As an introduction to the article below, I would like to note that the more classical Christian view of total depravity is one that recognizes the imprint, or image, of God upon man as one that has been marred or subjugated in every way possible by that metaphysical reality of sin. Now a philosopher may decry total depravity as a "lack" of something missing (or affecting) the human spirit, but for the Christian we would acknowledge that what God hath made good-and-holy has now been marred in some way (and in every way) by sin.

And so, the way back is through a healing provided by God by way of a relationship with Himself rather than to be left isolated within ourselves to find that healing to our identity in relationship with all things. Ultimately, the answer to sin is in relationship with God who reforms our identity. And it is not in the denial of our sin (or sinfulness) but in the acceptance of this condition "of lackness" (as Pete terms it) that brings us to the Lord both before and after our renewed relationship to Him through Christ Jesus. 

For myself, sin is the other side (or perhaps, the opposite end) to the freedom granted humanity by God. To say we are free (or, free-willed) creatures must at the same time allow for its opposite declaration of bondage from freedom, from holiness, from goodness, which in Christian terminology is known as "sin". And thus, some will argue that we are really not free at all because of sin's affect upon us (Tony Jones tends towards this viewpoint of conditionalism), though for myself, I would argue we do have freedom given to us through God's image and by His Holy Spirit working in our lives either directly or indirectly (most usually through people, but also by circumstance, event, and even nature itself). Even so, it is always-and-ever the sovereign God who brings us to Himself, and not we ourselves to Him by our own means. For if we are left to ourselves this would never happen (according to the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans). But this holy work does only occur in-and-through the work of God's own (Holy) Spirit who bring us to Himself in some way, manner, means, or method. To which we humbly give thanks with bowed knees and hearts.

For a philosopher/theologian like Peter, he rather comes to the ideas of God, freedom, and sin as from the study of the human spirit through social/psychological contexts in what may be described as our "humanness." But, on the other hand, though he is interested in the religious aspect of our humanness - a subject he deals with constantly as you can tell by his writings - he feels much more comfortable examining our humanity in psychoanalytic terms rather than in classical theological terms. Especially as from within a philosophical context to the church's religious contexts.

Hence, the following article may feel foreign to the more conservative Christian. However, in pyschoanalytic terms, Pete's explanation is the more commonly accepted "starting point" amongst academics. He does not pretend to interpret Scripture so much as to interpret the human spirit from practical discussions that are being held within the field of scientific endeavor while leaving his discoveries to the Christian theologian to expand into whatever insight might be discovered as helpful and good and missional.

And so, rather than feel threatened by this approach it may be an approach than might lend some help to the contemporary theologian struggling to contextualize the Scripture's teachings of redemption, God, sin, and worship, in ways that might more readily appeal to the work-a-day world we live within. While clinging to past traditional church doctrines and dogmas today's theologians may wish to examine these newer insights to discover some value in these presentations if only to understand the mindset of the non-Christian world. One of which is how do we utilize the newer insights of psychoanalytics, philosophy, and even radical theology, in manners that might be helpful in explaining Christian theology's very own difficult subjects.... Perhaps no longer in classical terms of yesteryear built upon Greek and medieval philosophies and pseudo-sciences but in postmodern terms acknowledged by this 21st century generation. If so, we must then continue forward into these newer areas of thought if only to be better witnesses to the gospel of Christ as modern day apostles and prophets of the Lord speaking the oracles of God.

- R.E. Slater

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In Defense of Total Depravity

http://peterrollins.net/2015/06/in-defense-of-total-depravity/

by Peter Rollins

June 6, 2015

As some of you will know, every year I run a small festival in my home town of Belfast. This year one of our guests was the ever brilliant philosopher John “Jack” Caputo. During a discussion in the talks part of the festival someone asked him what the main difference was between the two of us. The question was asked partly because we share so much in common and I’ve been so influenced by his writing. Yet, there still seems a slight difference in our approaches. 

In response Jack said, “I think in listening to Pete this week I’ve finally worked it out, he’s a philosophical Calvinist!” For Jack, the Lacanian influence in my work manifests itself in the proclamation of a lack that touches every part of our being. Something he felt is a philosophical version of Total Depravity. The difference between us then lies in the way that Jack (as a heretical catholic) is much more positive about human subjectivity than myself.

Far from wanting to reject this claim, I think that he put his finger on something very important. The only thing I’d want to push back on is the idea that my position is depressing.

To understand the claim it will be good to briefly reflect on what Total Depravity actually means. To begin with, it shouldn’t be thought of as the idea that humans are utterly and completely sinful, but rather that every part of the human subject is touched by sin. If we take sin as an ontological category rather than an ethical one (something that is actually a conservative theological move, even if it is not one reflected in the contemporary church) then we can define Total Depravity as describing a lack that is infused into being itself.

Theologically speaking this means that Total Depravity defines the idea that human subjectivity is something other than a form of “pure life.” It is rather a form of impure life. It is a life infused with death. In philosophical terms this can be said in the following way: a human being is constituted by a lack at the heart of its subjectivity.

This recognition can actually be seen as the fundamental insight of religion. Namely, the religious impulse is born out of the sense of a lack experienced in the very heart of subjectivity. Rather than explaining religion as the result of some need for tribal identity, as the means by which we come to see the human essence, as a will to power, or as the result of postulating agency in a hostile world, Lacan saw the religious impulse as arising fundamentally from a recognition of the incompleteness hard-baked into the very nature of human subjectivity (a lack formed in and by language). The religious individual experiences this lack and then attempts to stop it up via some signifier such as “God,” “Historical Necessity,” “The scientific method,” or “Evolution.”

By directly affirming the ground out of which religion is born (in its sacred and secular forms), Pyrotheology affirms a form of Total Depravity in that it recognizes the constitutive lack at the core of being, and the various ways this lack is made manifest (the Real). The point however is not to offer up a way of closing down this lack (which is ontological in nature and thus cannot be filled). This strategy of corking up the lack is the way of fundamentalism, and secular philosophies such as positivism. Rather the theory and technology of Pyrotheology is concerned with directly assuming the lack and enjoying the desire that it creates, rather than seeking our pleasure in the closure of the gap.

It is this religion of the gap that I explore in my most recent trilogy of books: Insurrection, Idolatry of God and The Divine Magician.

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One Response to In Defense of Total Depravity

joe calandrino says:

June 22, 2015 at 9:15 am

Well here it is, Pete, in 7 paragraphs, the nexus of some of most stunning ideas about religion, all poised for some kind of synthesis (the elusive project of my own blogging efforts). Lack, desire, the Real, subjectivity, being. And, far from being depressing, it’s all good news.

I am coming to see this important contribution of yours this way: “lack” is constitutive of the subject/being(ens&esse) as the subject confronts the “loss” of immediacy: the loss of experiencing itself (as itself) and the world without mediation. Such is inherent in the growth of consciousness, and therefore constitutive of it. In the play of the Real and the Symbolic, all metaphysics enacts, in the Symbolic order, something actually going on in the ineffable Real.

If we take as axiomatic that the locus of the divine is the Real (Lacan), then all movements in the Symbolic (and Imaginary) order are analogical enactments that substitute for “lack” as they engage moments in the Real. These enactments in the Symbolic order of something occurring in the Real is “the ground…of…religion.”

It is this idea of “manifest[ing]” that fascinates me. Far from foreclosing on lack, pyrotheology opens onto the very givenness of the Real itself, In this sense, Jean-Luc Marion’s 3rd phenomenological reduction to ‘givenness’ brushes up against your pyrotheological opening, and instead of foreclosing on lack, discloses the formation of the subjectivity of self (a relation of metonymy, not identity).

Depravity, then, can be understood as a ‘deprivation’ of immediacy, that, unexpectedly, opens upon the horizon that situates givenness, presenting it to the intuition. When the intuition is ‘saturated,’ the ‘religious impulse’ becomes the response to Caputo’s ‘unheard call’, which commands the aim of intentionality. The religious subject is thereby called into itself, “constituted” as you say, by “lack” which is the _distance_ between the Real, and, well, everything else.

If we suspend Caputo’s notion that his ‘call’ is reduced to one’s “mommy” in psychoanalysis, then it’s really not Calvinism vs Catholicism that separates your pyrotheology from Caputo’s theopoetics/insistence theology, but rather entangles them in the play in his ‘chiasm’ where Marion’s new phenomenology holds “lack” in tension between givenness and the emerging self. For Marion’s system, the relation between what is given and subjectivity precedes the individuation of the self. Hence, lack, givenness, the Real are all anterior to the self coming into being.

The pyrotheological, phenomenological and theopoetical gestures share in the notion that relationality precedes being, and constitutes it as that which is anterior to it.

- John Calandrino