Paul Ricoeur, theism, and Holocaust

From "Philosophy and Religious Language," Journal of Religion, 54 (1974)

"In thus recognizing the hermeneutical constitution of the biblical faith, we are resisting all psychologizing reductions of faith. This is not to say that faith is not authentically an act which cannot be reduced to linguistic treatment. In this sense, faith is the limit of all hermeneutics and the non-hermeneutical origin of all interpretation. The ceaseless movement of interpretation begins and ends in the risk of a response which is neither engendered nor exhausted by commentary. It is in taking account of this prelinguistic or hyperlinguistic characteristic that faith could be called “ultimate concern,” which speaks of the laying hold of the necessary and unique thing from whose basis I orient myself in all my choices. It has also been called a “feeling of absolute dependence” to underscore the fact that it responds to an initiative which always precedes me. Or it could be called “unconditional trust” to say that it is inseparable from a movement of hope which makes its way in spite of the contradictions of experience and which turns reasons for despair into reasons for hope according to the paradoxical laws of a logic of superabundance. In all these traits the thematic of faith escapes from hermeneutics and testifies to the fact that the latter is neither the first nor the last word." [italics mine]

This was a difficult read for me, and I make the post somewhat to redeem the hour at Pancho's that I spent munching on a burrito and pulling my hair out trying to figure out what Paul Ricoeur was talking about. I include the paragraph along with the italicized sentence, both to contextualize the statement and as a taste of his knotty writing. He was a Christian, continental (European) philosopher in the tradition of Martin Heidegger.

I was perusing Wikipedia today and came across an article on John Williams, the composer, which led me to the long list of great movies for which he has written scores. Among them is Schindler's List, one of the most powerful and disturbing movies I've ever seen. That led, through several Wikipedia routes, to articles about the Holocaust, about the death camps, the gas chambers, the repose of the guards exterminating thousands of people per day, and the delight with which they picked through the gassed bodies looking for gold teeth. The largest gas chamber in Auschwitz was capable of killing 20,000 people per day.

I can't bring myself to theologize about the Holocaust. It seems to make a joke of theism, and of our prayers. Why would God help us with our small problems, when just over 60 years ago people were being murdered by the millions? I'm not interested in arguments describing when God does and does not act. Any statement that attempts to give some reason why God would not save victims of genocide is worthless. What I mean is, any attempt to say that God has complete power to act in the world and yet-for some reason that we can guess-chose not to act cannot be defended by decent people. If our theistic, all powerful God controls history, then He must be pretty horrible. Right? How could he eyes of God be in those gas chambers? How could God's presence dwell amongst such evil, without immediately fixing it? If anyone reading this is tempted to think that it must be due to something that the human being who is killed says, does, or is (i.e. they weren't Christians, this biblical prophecy said this, they didn't pray enough, etc.), I would kindly tell you that you are a horrible person.

This is an argument echoed for millenia. It's called the problem of evil. A good, all-powerful God in an evil world. Why hasn't it been solved? Because horrible stuff is still happening.

This isn't abstract speculation. It has direct bearing on how we live, how we pray. How do I pray for anything when I know about the Holocaust? I'd almost rather not know. In fact, a part of me that I'm ashamed of wishes I didn't know. I saw an advertisement recently for a Holocaust education film at a local library, and I remember having a strong reaction inside of me that, if it were verbal, would be "Do not watch that." I didn't want to see that film. It challenges my faith. It makes me think about horrors that mock my beliefs and the naive hope that someone is in charge, and that everything has a meaning. Try to give the Holocaust a meaning, I dare you. It defies purpose. The idea of contextualizing the Holocaust in divine history makes me physically ill.

This all leads to an even more ultimate question than the problem of evil, which is: what are we still doing here? The argument dissolves to that if you believe in a good, all-powerful God, because really the presence of any suffering is an affront to the Creator. Since suffering seems worked into the fiber of the world, and is present from small ill to genocide, and has been present from the beginning of history, the basic question must then be, what are we doing here? God's good, evil happens; shouldn't we just skip human life and go straight to a perfect heaven where no tear is shed and peoples aren't exterminated? Why does this earth even exist, and how can it co-exist with God? Theological insight on this matter depends on whether you start with God's power or you start with the world-as-it-is.

If you start with God's power, then all this horrible stuff happening every day must someone be part of God's plan. I'm not really interested in serving that God, even if He does exist, so that argument ends right there (it should be noted, however, that some Christians pursue this very line of reasoning, and end up serving what I'll call a "monster God." Don't worry though, they have a right to this: they're the elect). Starting with the world-as-it-is, I believe, yields a better but still worrying answer. The evil world is taken for granted, and our idea of God must be tailored to that fact. So, God has mysteriously ceded power over to the rulers and laws of this world, and is not acting for some reason. At least this limited God can still be good, in a sense. It might still be better if none of this existed at all (I mean existence, reality, since sometimes it sucks badly), but God has created it and here we are. And let's not underestimate the beauty of life as well.

So when we get sick, or have a family member in trouble, or see our government doing bad things, or need comfort, or want direction--should we pray? Is it presumptuous to think God will help us with our little problems when he didn't save all those people from the gas chambers? Yes it is. Yet we have to pray if we believe in the story about Jesus, because he tells us to.

The answer, if there is one, is to be humble about being able to cause God to do anything, and to realize that your situation is not unique. This probably feels de-humanizing and impersonal, I know, but at least it should prevent us from the idiotic self-centeredness of imagining there is some special thing we're doing that all those poor saps didn't get well or didn't get saved at the last moment forgot to do. The inexorable logic of human life contains suffering, even tragedy, even genocide. God may not help you. This has the effect of shrouding God in even more mystery for me and calling into question some much beloved Bible verses. But at least he still exists, and at least he's still good. I'd love to hear some other people's struggles with this, if you have struggled.

"Or it could be called “unconditional trust” to say that it is inseparable from a movement of hope which makes its way in spite of the contradictions of experience and which turns reasons for despair into reasons for hope according to the paradoxical laws of a logic of superabundance."

I believe in hope, in life, love, and Jesus Christ. Yet I wrestle with the dark contradictions that undergird so much of my faith. I refuse to leave the thick patina of turn-the-blind-eye ignorance (or perhaps laziness? or fear?) that encrusts the minds and hearts (for this, too, is a love issue) of too many believers. I hope and pray that my "paradox" is not just a more sophisticated, more rhetorical retreat from the callousness of reality.

PE & Spirit of Capitalism - The Fear of Doubt

The Protestant Ethic & The Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber, Third Roxbury Edition (2002; originally penned as essays, 1904-1905)

I'm not done with this book yet so I won't hazard a review, but there is so much inside that I'm going to have to write these thoughts down as they come. Weber is brilliant (you cannot read anything in the social sciences without coming across his name) and his thoughts come at you in waves. I've scribbled so furiously in the margins, some of the pages look like asylum cell walls. I have to unload these thoughts. So here's one:

Weber links the collective fear of admitting doubt to the presence of numerous self-confident "saints" of the church (quotation marks his). By self-confident "saints" he means people who believe it is their duty to acquire the "subjective certainty of predestination and justification" (66). The argument is this: the admission of fear and doubt is the same as an admission of a lack of faith, which is the same as an admission of the lack of God's grace in your life. This was especially important for Calvinists as they were (and are) always wondering deep down if they are members of "the elect" or not. For Calvin, your genuine faith was a sign of your being elect.

Even though Nazarenes don't believe in predestination and thus aren't as concerned with this election business, we still seek signs of salvation and (especially) sanctification. Sanctification, especially, is a doctrine very susceptible to being linked to good works and and outward signs. The presence of "self-confident saints" who must, on pain of having their sanctification questioned, always exhibit the utmost assurance and never be seen to question or doubt can be directly attributed to this felt pressure. As many young Nazarenes are uncomfortable with even the idea of sanctification, this maintenance of self-confident sainthood by older Nazarenes is repugnant to them. I think this is one of the reasons for the strong generational split within the Nazarene church. Nazarenes from the old guard equate doubt and questions with an admission that there is something lacking in their sanctification (and how can that be, if sanctification is thought to happen instantaneously and completely?), and so take pains to never express such fears. There can be no "dark night of the soul" for a sanctified Nazarene! The young ones, however, do not experience this heightened expectation of inward-outward perfection, and so find the renunciation of doubt, struggle, and questioning in matters of faith as very oppressive and contrived. The seniors can't doubt and the juniors don't know what it's like to be perfect (in the Wesleyan sense). Heck, I don't know what it's like to be perfect in the Wesleyan sense.

Not Right Belief, But Believing in the Right Way: A Review of How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins

This post is dedicated to anyone else who thinks reading too much postmodern thought will turn your mind to mush.

But, a little postmodern thought isn't too bad. It's like salt: good with other stuff, but horrible by itself.

I'll start with some of my favorite quotes from the book:

“Yet this does not mean that our definitions of God are somehow unimportant—indeed, they remain vital—it is only that we must recognize the extent to which these reflections fall short of that which they attempt to define and always reflect something of the one who makes the claims.”(18-19)

“This a/theism is not then some temporary place of uncertainty on the way to spiritual maturity, but rather is something that operates within faith as a type of heat-inducing friction that prevents our liquid images of the divine from cooling and solidifying into idolatrous form.” (28)

“For instance, if someone is convinced that there is a place where they will be tormented after death, and that the only way to avoid this terror is by affirming that Jesus Christ is Lord, then they will no doubt make that affirmation, regardless of whether they are genuinely moved by Christ or not…Like a lover of nuts who is offered thousands of shells with no centre, so we offer God thousands of ‘converts’ with no heart.” (38)

“To affirm the approach that I am advocating means that we must accept that to be a Christian is to be born of love, transformed by love and committed to transforming the world with love…In so doing, we will not merely sit around describing God to the world, but rather, we will become the iconic spaces in which God is made manifest in the world.” (75)

If you like these quotes, read the book.

My issues with the book are these: 1) Deconstruction is not a livable scheme, only thought-therapy 2) The biblical hermeneutic he employs is insufficient to connect us to our spiritual story as Christians

1) Peter Rollins is a very smart guy with a PhD in postmodern theory. From his book, though, I get the idea that he has mastered Derrida but not mastered Biblical interpretation and theology. From studying Biblical interpretation and Christian theology, one learns not only the content but the limits of interpretation, i.e. how far can you actually stretch the text and tradition before it becomes unrecognizable. So, Rollins puts his deconstruction to work on our spiritual tradition (surely a useful task) with his prodigious postmodern toolkit, but hasn't studied the subject enough to respect it's wishes. He's like a therapist who sits down with a client, works hard to get the client comfortable with the therapeutic process, and then forgets that the point of therapy is not to streamline the therapy process but to help the client with their outside-therapy commitments. Rollins is OK with deconstruction-as-faith because he holds firmly to the guidance of the Spirit and the transforming power of love. Awesome. I'm Wesleyan, I believe the Holy Spirit works too! But the radical subjectivity he proposes necessitates a foundation of essentials. He wants that to be love. I do too, but think there has to be more (God exists, Jesus died and was raised from the dead, there will be a bodily resurrection, etc.)

2) Christians are unable to ex nihilo create our own worldview. We just can't do it. Our believe in God, the people of God, the incarnation, redemption, and end of history tie our hands. And a big part of our Christian identity is living and reliving these shared beliefs. And they are BELIEFS, i.e. things that we believe will really happen. If there's one thing I've learned from life and books, it's that beliefs do matter. Alasdair MacIntyre argues forcefully for this in After Virtue, and we see it played out in the New Testament in numerous epistles and with Jesus, where the people are warned against false teachings which lead believers astray. The interaction between our beliefs and actions are not straightforward, but that doesn't make it any less important. I'm not sure he would agree, but I think a possible dangerous outcome of this line of reasoning is there is no difference between metanarratives (or grand stories that we use to give our life meaning)--they're all the same in that they all try to force to do things from a position of power. That leads to the fallacious assertion that Islam is the same as Christianity is the same as Buddhism. While they share similarities, Muslims behave in unique ways because of their book, as we believe in unique ways because of our book. These differences are not reducible to context, history, social class, etc. The differences in beliefs contained in the doctrines are reified (thank you Adrianne) as they are worked out in the lives of individual believers.

On the Love of God

I am in the throes of reading How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins, and I must say that I can't get two pages read consecutively without feeling a strong urge to go and pray. I don't know if that's a compliment or insult to Mr. Rollins. I think it's a compliment. PR loves destabilizing doctrine, which is wonderfully therapeutic intellectually, but can be emotionally weary. In the place of right belief, he plants the divine encounter which causes transformation. Hence, I am urged to pray.

Now, this is Black Saturday. Historically, we're trying to figure out whether or not to still be Christians, because our hero just died and the future is looking bleak. Also, rehearsing Paul-who I think wonderfully rehearses Jesus-we have been crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20) and no longer live. So now I'm caught in a dualism that Rollins would love: Jesus is dead, I saw him die yesterday, and I want to get out of here because I've been following the guy and I'm now thoroughly demoralized and freaked out. But surely that is not a faithful response, so I have this other option. Jesus was crucified and perhaps some part of me was also crucified, a part that hates God and other people and worships myself. I'm not literally dead as Christ was literally dead, but something has died in me, and it's painful! It hurts a lot, and it's scary imagining oneself up on the Cross, staring over at bloody Jesus and asking him how this is going to end. It's the unknown. I know my own selfishness and illusions of grandeur. I know what it feels like to want to have my name stamped all over everything, to receive praise and honor and esteem. My future, my self-expression, my theology, my direction. How much of that has to be crucified? Paul seems to think all of it (whatever the mystery of self-emptying requires of us).

So it's Black Saturday and I'm rehearsing what it means to hang on the Cross next to Jesus and what willingness is required to complete this drama in me. I won't understand this cognitively. When Paul writes that knowledge puffs up but love builds up (1 Cor 8:1), I think about the poverty of my own love. Try as I might, I can't love my parents, sister, housemates, and friends like I should. Like I want to. My error is thinking that love can find a true base in knowledge. Peter Rollins knows it cannot, and so do Jesus and Paul. Instead of knowledge I'll talk about feelings, and here I'm about ready to get really Wesleyan on you. You might snicker derisively, as I have, at the notion that our Christian walk could (or should) be based on something wayward like "feelings." Yet, when Wesley sat in that chapel and felt his heart "strangely warmed," is not "felt" the verb in that sentence instead of "thought" or "knew"?

If you tremor at the thought of being subject to feelings (they are so opaque and irrational!), then perhaps you also tremor at the thought of God holding us as a mother holds a baby, in the crook of her arm with her face about 6 inches from the face of her child. My counselor Mike said this is called the Mother-Child dyad, a foundation for healthy attachment. If the Love of God is only cognitive and rationally understood, we misrepresent not only the Gospel but also the human reality that our faith has to be felt. The poverty of my Christianity is isolating those feelings to worship time and perhaps prayer time, rather than letting the felt love of God (and of others we trust, surely) to run over into every aspect of our lives. I speak as a man and not a woman, but perhaps these artificial divisions apply for women as well. The masculine aversion to feelings, however, goes a long way to explaining why women are vastly overrepresented in our churches in the United States. If I, as a man, am not taught to feel and trust the loving presence of another, and especially taught not to use that love as a dominant mode of expression in my life, then why would I go to church? It's all a bunch of touchy-feeling nonsense, isn't it? But I'm convinced that the alternative to being filled with the love of God (which is felt just like one feels anxiety before speaking publicly or comfort in the arms of your mother or lover) is not nothingness. Nature abhors a vacuum. The alternative to being filled with love is to be filled with anxiety, with fear, and perhaps even with contempt or hatred.

This is Black Saturday, and God I pray that you are crucifying my darkness and will replace it with your love.

Review: The Fidelity of Betrayal, by Peter Rollins (Paraclete Press, 2008)

This post is dedicated to my lovely housemates at the Incarnation Station.

Peter Rollins 2nd book (I'm currently reading his first-a little out of order, I know) has the subtitle "Towards a Church Beyond Belief." Rollins is smart, with a gift for language. His book is interesting and speckled with humorous and enlightening parables, and manages to revolve in an orbit around a cluster of emphases without becoming repetitive. These can be summarized by (and this list isn't exhaustive):

• The Bible should not be read primarily (or maybe not at all?) for factual information about God, humanity, or the world, but rather as a text whose Word should be allowed to transform us.
• The Bible contradicts itself numerous times, and basing the "truth of faith" upon objective truth or (and he never uses this word) reason is an unsure foundation for the life-altering commitment to which Jesus calls us.
• There is NO disuniting belief from action. Rollins rejects a Christianity that claims propositional statements about God, Jesus, the Resurrection, etc. capture the "truth of faith." That truth is transformation.

The book is called The Fidelity of Betrayal because Rollins opens with a story questioning if Judas was really the villain in the Gospel accounts of Jesus' death. Since God (and presumably Jesus) knew what was going to happen, perhaps God/Jesus somehow told Judas that he was to be an essential part in the divine plan to reconcile humanity to Him. Judas' sacrifice was then to betray Jesus even knowing that Christians would vilify him for millennia to come, and literally equate his name with evil (Dante put Judas in the lowest level of Hell in The Inferno, in the mouth of Satan himself, eternally chomped on.) So, Judas betrayed Jesus--in our eyes--in order to fulfill the ultimate plan and will of God. Interesting, no?

In the same way, Christianity as a religious system has reduced the "truth of faith" to forms, rituals, and propositional (i.e. God is love, Jesus died, etc.) statements of truth, and in order to fulfill God's purposes in the world we're going to have to betray it, i.e. give Christendom in all of its power and doctrinal authority a holy kiss goodbye.

Rollins' is writing to galvanize a church that's lost it's way. That, really, is the mission the emergent church takes for itself. Emergent Christians balk at the idea that we could somehow conceptually grasp God enough to say that right belief is the most important signpost of the presence of living faith. Faith is fundamentally not like science, a realm where a professor of physics could make a great discovery while embezzling money from the foundation funding her. In science, the professor's findings still stand regardless of her "mode of existence" or "mode of relation." Not so with Christianity. What a Christian affirms with their lips is only smoke, i.e. a signal or clue that we should look for something radical happening in a life that is being transformed by encounters with the living God. The transformation is the fire, the verbal affirmation/doctrinal adherence/right belief is only the smoke. Show me your fruit!, Rollins says. Show me the evidence of the Spirit of God residing in you!

Rollins comes from a Pentecostal/Evangelical background, and you can feel that mystical Presence and Source flowing through his writing. It infuses his writing with a spirit that other emergent church thinkers lack. Because really, the emergent church is a a very postmodern movement. Postmodernism is about deconstruction, and therefore, if not careful, can have no CORE, no substance or cornerstone. The emergent church is in danger of the same error. Throw out the importance of right belief and doctrine, challenge the authority of the Scriptures, attack exclusivity, and what do you have? Some emergent church writers would say, "Jesus!", but then what is Jesus to many of them but more grist for the deconstruction meat grinder? Peter Rollin's says, "A transforming encounter with God." And really, he's right. For if you cannot speak to God and he cannot speak to you, then what's the point?

The danger of Peter Rollin's "transformance art" is whether the transformation will be anything identifiably Christian or Biblical at all. Emergent Pentecostalism is tempted by the same enthusiasm as regular Pentecostalism. It's just done by cooler, younger people. Amidst the rapture there must be clarity, there must be mission. How do we know our love is not only lust? And if we reject two thousand years of tradition (the great cathedral of thought) and downplay right belief, are we so certain the Spirit will lead us all the same way? I, for one, don't think so. But I affirm with James that faith without deeds is dead, and know that a car with no fuel isn't going to carry anyone anywhere.