Curtis A. Bronzan

Grades were due for the fall quarter at Fuller today, which means that after a couple busy weeks of grading 50+ final papers, I’m now able to return to some of my own research interests. I won’t begin actually writing my ThM thesis until this summer (after a required integration course in the spring), though this quarter I have the opportunity for another directed study with Barry Taylor, a professor who has significantly shaped my thinking in past courses as well as a previous directed study.

The first section of my ThM thesis will specifically examine Jesus’ action in the temple through detailed exegetical work. From there, however, I’m not exactly sure how best to proceed in arguing for a (post)modern de(con)struction of (our) temples that remain faithful to Jesus’ prophetic action.

As such, this quarter I’ll be examining the theological impact of a few different thinkers, some of whom I’m somewhat familiar with (Derrida, Vattimo, and Girard) and others of whom I’m not (Nietzsche, Rorty, and Foucault). Creating the reading list was rather difficult, especially considering T&T Clark’s recent “_____ and Theology” series as well as Baker’s Church and Postmodern Culture series. Ultimately, however, I’m excited about how it ended up – and am looking forward to conversations with Barry regarding the subject matter.

I’ve catching up on some Nada Surf of late, whose album Lucky I had completely missed, until recently, after hearing it at a wedding of some dear friends (with great musical taste).

The second track, Whose Authority, reminds me of the title of Alasdair MacIntyre’s book Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, as well as Merold Westphal’s recent Whose Community? Which Interpretation?, which is staring up at me from my office bookshelf like a lost puppy wanting someone to play with it. Whose Authority declares

I walk like you guide me, my eyes are shut like I’m blind
Turn to you and listening and tryin’ to be in your mind
There’s a feeling that I get when I look to the west
‘Bout having all the answers, still failing the test
Wolf packs and convoys and captains and men
Surprised in translation world without end
Welcome back to real life, the picture is gone
Put a contract out on things that go on and on
How do you stay where you most want to be?
Where’d you get the patience, did it come easily?
On whose authority? I have none over me
On whose authority? There’s none that I can see
On whose authority? I have none over me
On whose authority? No one speaks to me
On whose authority? I have none over me
All the tales with paper heroes, the ones who dyed the sun
And called it yellow, the ones who made you run

In the very next song, “Beautiful Beat,” Nada Surf lead singer Matthew Caws yearns for a song to save him:

Sometimes all I want is another drink or another pill
If I could get anything done maybe I’d hold still
I’m trying to levitate I’m trying to leave the ground
Tryin’ to remember when I could fix anything with sound
Beautiful beat get me out of this mess
Beautiful beat lift me up from distress
I believe our love can save me, have to believe that it can
I want to redirect myself with you, do you understand?

Are not these songs – and their proximity on Lucky – a near perfect explication of the human condition, simultaneously shunning authority and crying out for deliverance? And, further, do we not see in Paul wrestling with these realities in quoting the first century hymn in Philippians 2, as he reminds us of the One who did not use his authority to his advantage, but came to give his life?:

In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing,
 by taking the very natureof a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself 
by becoming obedient to death
-
 even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
 and gave him the name that is above every name
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

In the philosophical terminology used by Gianni Vattimo (building upon Nietzsche), it could be argued that in this One who comes from heaven to earth, the metaphysical God is shown to give up his “metaphysical essence.” But that’s a rabbit trail for another hike.

T & T Clark, an imprint of Continuum Publisher, is currently releasing a series entitled “Philosophy and Theology.” I first came across Žižek and Theology by Adam Kotsko, the first of the series, and worked through it in an Independent Study based largely upon Žižek’s engagement with Christian theology.

Later, I came across releases devoted to some big names: Derrida, Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. But alas, more recently, I’ve hunted down publication dates for books examining some lesser known names (albeit whose work is just as important): Badiou, Girard, and Vattimo.

It’s bad enough that Baker’s Church and Postmodern Culture series recently released books by Graham Ward and Merold Westphal, and now this!?

Come on Clark, you’re killing me!

Gianni Vattimo is one of a number of continental philosophers who have turned to religion as a result of the dissolution of metaphysical thought. Asserting that modern culture has realized the limit of reason, he has stated, “we believed that we could realize justice on earth, but now reckon that it is no longer possible and turn our hopes to God.” (Christ in Postmodern Philosophy: Gianni Vattimo, Rene Girard and Slavoj Zizek, 9) Interestingly, Vattimo’s (re)turn to the Catholicism of his youth – and his basis for the postmodern turn to religion – was prompted not by an engagement within the institutions of faith, but rather by his (re)reading of Nietzsche’s nihilism and Heidegger’s history of Being.

Furthermore, reading these thinkers in conversation with René Girard has provided a fascinating parallel between the divine in metaphysical thought and natural religiosity, thus highlighting the importance of the Incarnation. My thesis, then, is that by engaging with Vattimo’s weak thought, we can be further enabled for deconstructing the temples(s) of contemporary Christianity. Vattimo’s engagement with Nietzsche (and Heidegger) provides the foundation by which he is able to assert “there is no ultimate foundation.” (After Christianity, 3) In stark contrast to many fundamentalist theologies wherein Jesus embodies a violent God, Vattimo sees the Incarnation as the necessary precursor to the dissolution of metaphysics, and even the concept of the sacred.

Christianity accomplished the first attack against metaphysics construed exclusively as objectivity… [It] announces the end to the Plantonic ideal of objectivity. It cannot be the eternal word of forms outside ourselves that saves us, but only the eye directed toward the interior and the searching of the deep truth inside us all. (After the Death of God, 31)

Thus, in a view similar to Marcion, Vattimo sees Christian faith – and more precisely, the Incarnation – as the substantiation that the true God is one of mercy instead of justice. Accordingly, any element of a vengeful, taut autre must be discarded as natural religion. In his engagement with the Incarnation, Vattimo relies heavily upon the work of René Girard, adopting his views regarding violence and the sacred. He notes

if a ‘divine’ truth is given in Christianity, it is an unmasking of the violence that has given birth to the sacred of natural religion, that is, the sacred that is characteristic of the metaphysical God. (After Christianity, 38)

It is at this point that we catch the first glimpses of Vattimo’s contribution to our ecclesiological deconstructive project. Second temple Judaism undoubtedly wed the sacred with violence, as is seen in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ temple action. Following this prophetic Event, Mark notes “The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill [Jesus], for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.” (Mark 11.18, NIV)

It is for this reason that Žižek (in The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity) – and Rollins, following him (in The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief) – may give Judas entirely too much credit, or not do enough deconstruction (or “violence” to?!) to the Passion narrative itself.