Curtis A. Bronzan

Tonight, for the first time, I had the opportunity to impose ashes upon the foreheads of some friends who gathered for the church’s Ash Wednesday service.

Simply put, I wasn’t quite prepared how it would affect me to say over and over “You are dust, and to dust you will return. But in Jesus Christ, you have eternal life.”

You are dust, and to dust you will return. But in Jesus Christ, you have eternal life.

It’s a beautiful paradox. Like Peter Rollins’ How (Not) to Speak of God. Or John Caputo’s The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida.

Or the Gospel.

This commercial always reminds me of the writing of Peter Rollins, especially his book How (Not) to Speak of God (which, of course, builds upon John Caputo’s brilliant examination The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion, in which a chapter is entitled Affirmation at the Limits: How Not to Speak).

All that said, how brilliant that it’s for an Irish whiskey!

The Monsters of Folk self-titled CD has been spinning in repeatedly since it came out in late September. It’s a great record, but I’m starting to mourn the reality that projects like this end up detracting from the others that its members front(ed). For instance, My Morning Jacket, the brainchild of Jim James is done, it seems, due to his departure.

Supergroups, I’ve decided, are kind of like local businesses that go out of business when the multinational conglomeration comes into town. The big business is great and all, but the possibilities that the smaller businesses could have achieved – metaphorically speaking – will be missed.

The record’s first track, entitled “Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.)”, veers into some rather thoughtful theological territory, unlikely for some of the members of the group.

The first two verses (sung by Jim James and M. Ward, respectively) address the Divine in light of a sort of three-tiered universe as well as numerous passages from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures which refer to a faith that moves mountains (most well known, probably Mark 11.22-25):

Dear God, I’m trying hard to reach you,
dear God, I see your face in all I do.
Sometimes it’s so hard to believe in you,
but God, I know you have your reasons.

Dear God, I see you moving mountains,
dear God, I see you moving trees.
Sometimes, it’s nothing to believe in,
no, no, sometimes, it’s everything I see.

And then the chorus, which reminds me of a number of recent posts (including this one) regarding suffering:

But I’ve been thinking about it,
and I’ve been breaking it down without an answer.
I know I’m thinking out loud,
but if your love’s still around, why do we suffer?

Then, Conor Oberst, of Bright Eyes and Mystic Valley Band fame, refers obliquely to 1st Corinthians 13.12 (famous for it’s inclusion in wedding vows – as well as Peter Rollins and, of course, John Caputo books):

Dear God, I wish that I could touch you,
how strange, sometimes I feel I almost do.
And then I’m back behind the glass again,
oh God, what keeps you out, it keeps me in.

By the end, we’re all singing along:

But I’ve been thinking about it,
and I’ve been breaking it down without an answer.
I know I’m thinking out loud,
but if your love’s still around, why do we suffer?

In the midst of the trial before the Sanhedrin, testimony is brought against Jesus, asserting that He declared, “I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man” (Mark 14.58, see also Matthew 27.40, Mark 15.29, and John 2.20) though Mark is sure to assert that the testimony of these witnesses did not agree. Despite conflicting testimony, of course, Jesus is crucified as a political dissident.

To understand just how radically political Jesus actually was, we only have to ask why he was crucified. Clearly he was seen as such a major threat to the political powers who governed his land (both the Romans and the ruling Jewish establishment) that they saw only one way to deal with the challenged he presented – to remove that challenge by removing him through political execution. (The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 307)

In light of His crucifixion, of course, Jesus’ previously triumphant disciples quickly disperse. Commenting upon the section in the Apostle’s Creed which addresses this event, Karl Barth notes that at this point in the Credo, “the word of the believer completely coincides with the word of the unbeliever.” (Credo, 385) While it goes without saying that the three days in which Jesus remained in sheol were not experienced by His disciples as the high point of Christian community, His resurrection from the dead powerfully reinvigorates God’s initial purposes in Creation.

There is a great irony in John 20, where Mary’s assumes Jesus is the gardener, because in one sense, he is! (see Wright, The Challenge of Jesus) Jesus’ pronouncement of judgment on the Temple system, the destruction of His bodily Temple and its resurrection from the dead renews the Creator’s original purpose. It is in this light that Kirk rightly notes

[t]he Church is a ‘fellowship of the resurrection’, an event of the past which anticipates the transformation of all decay and corruption into new life. The Church is like a pin attracted to the magnet of the coming restoration of God’s rule over the whole of life. (What is Mission?, 218)

Following Jesus’ resurrection, of course, Jesus renews the call to “go” and “bless” through The Great Commission. After his ascension, God sends the third person of the Trinity, His Spirit “upon the whole community and upon each one of the members of that community. The Spirit creates koinonia, community with a purpose, to call all things to conversion and reconciliation in Jesus Christ.” (The Good News of the Kingdom, 135) This Spirit of koinonia is evident especially throughout the book of Acts, where it empowers Jesus’ disciples to continue His healing ministry.

Most notably for our study, of course, are episodes that involve the Temple, like the one found in Acts 3, where Luke sets the stage thusly: “One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer – at three in the afternoon.” (Acts 3.1) We should note, therefore, that even in light of Jesus’ proclamation of the destruction of the Temple, His disciples were drawn to it centripetally to continue their religious activity. This activity, however, did not preclude them from both healing in the Temple and proclaiming the good news of Jesus, even when it resulted in their immediate arrest. Furthermore, Peter’s message interestingly connects their interaction as well as Jesus crucifixion and resurrection to the story of Abram.

In his message following this healing, Peter not only connects what the people have just witnessed to the story of Jesus but to Abraham. He does this at the beginning of his word (‘The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus’ [v.13]), and then again at the end (‘You are the heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’… [Acts 3.25]). (The Mission of God, 246)

In Acts 8, conversely, the Temple is presented as a precursor, when an Ethiopian eunuch fulfills Isaiah 56.7 being introduced to Jesus not in the holy place but on his journey home through an encounter with Philip. Another interesting text is found in Acts 15, where James brings together two seemingly opposing ideas, namely the eschatological restoration of God’s “fallen tent” alongside the inclusion of Gentile nations. It is due to the implications of passages like these that we begin to find fault with Karl Barth’s assertion that the ecclesia is both the people of God as well as “the place where an assembly has been held, and is to be held again and again.” (Credo, 137)

These texts from Acts reach their highpoint, however, in Paul’s speech at the Areopagus, found in chapter 17. He asserts, rather boldly,

[t]he God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. (Acts 17.24-25)

Harvie Conn helpfully explicates the implications of Paul’s statement when he notes

Jehovah was no local urban deity; his territorial claims were bounded not by one ethnic city but by “the heavens and the earth”. (sic) In the eschatological shadow of the urban heavens and earth soon to come, the church proclaimed itself as the true city and its “city-zenship” in Christ, the cosmic beneficient “tyrant”/kurios of the city. (The Good News of the Kingdom, 99)

This, of course, reminds us of Solomon’s assertion, that God could not be held captive even in the highest heavens. Furthermore, though speaking to a thoroughly “pagan” (though “quite religious”) audience Paul’s statement questions the role of the Temple itself, a question many are asking regarding church attendance still today. Before addressing this question – and its missiological implications for postmodern ministry – we must first briefly address two passages that powerfully reorient our understanding of the Temple.

We could cautiously assume that Paul’s further deliberation regarding the nature of the Temple revealed even deeper theological and missiological implications. Though the terminology dates back at least to Jesus – and possibly even to the Creation narratives – Paul’s letter to the Ephesians most powerfully states how we are now to understand the Temple. Indeed, in light of the revelation and indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit, Paul can powerfully assert

you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2.19-22)

Note also the implications of 1st Peter 2.4-10:

As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”
Now to you who believe, this stone is precious.
But to those who do not believe,
“The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone,” and,
“A stone that causes men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message – which is also what they were destined for. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Even Gentiles have become

“nothing less than… part of the very temple of God. They may have been physically excluded from the inner parts of the temple in Jerusalem, as Gentiles, but spiritually they now constitute the dwelling place of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit.” (The Mission of God, 340)

In postmodern engagement with Christian tradition, texts like these provide the foundation by which philosophers argue that the Judeo-Christian tradition is to be credited for the demise of the sacred into secular. (see, for instance, After the Death of God, After Christianity and Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism) This dangerous type of thinking, in turn, has encouraged contemporary culture to increasingly withdraw from church involvement. This need not be the case. Indeed, what we see in these texts is not so much the dissolution of sacred into secular as much as the sacred being known in and through the secular, or more specifically, through those who have been called according to the purposes of God.

In fact, such postmodern Christian thinkers are not radical enough, for in joining together the sacred and secular, they have distanced themselves from the revelation of God through His Living Word, Jesus Christ, and the Written Word, the Holy Scriptures. If we view these passages in light of God’s whole revelation then, the result is not a nihilistic estrangement, but rather a missiological calling.

So the centrifugal mission of the New Testament church had its centripetal theology also: the nations were indeed being gather in – not to Jerusalem or to the physical temple or to national Israel – but to Christ as the center and to the new temple of God that he was building through Christ as a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (The Mission of God, 524)

Or, put more clearly, “All of us have been drawn into the church catholic so that the church may become increasingly universal. Then we are sent out to make disciples of others.” (Mission on the Way, 113)

A while back Peter Rollins and Paraclete Press ran a competition of parable writing to mark the release of Rollins’ The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales. The winner was announced last week via Rollins’ blog, and is none other than Kester Brewin, author of Signs of Emergence (The Complex Christ in the UK).

The parable is a sort of Žižekian parody of the well known Christian poem depicting life as a journey wherein God walks alongside us on the beach. When life was difficult, the author of the poem asks his Maker why during the difficult times of life God left him to walk alone. The response is, of course, that the one set of footprints seen in the sand was when God was carrying the author. Brewin’s reworking of the poem depicts, instead, the man carrying God:

The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when you carried me.

Alongside Rollins’ book title, this theological perspective is certainly heretical. As such, however, it reminds me of a number of things, including when ska band The Mighty Mighty Bosstones once defended themselves against riding the bandwagon, instead asserting that they had been carrying the bandwagon. Or, from a more theological perspective, Tom Waits’ song Road to Peace, which concludes:

And if God is great and God is good why can’t he change the hearts of men?
Well maybe God himself is lost and needs help
Maybe God himself he needs all of our help
Maybe God himself is lost and needs help
He’s out upon the road to peace

Or take John Caputo, who questions at the outset of The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event

Has not the name of God from time out of mind been associated with unlimited power so that “God Almighty” is practically a redundant expression? That I would never deny. I am not saying that power has not been a defining feature of theology right from the start; theology has been strong theology and religion has been strong religion, in love with strength, right from the gate. But I am suggesting that theology is a house divided against itself and that it lacks self-understanding to the point that it is intellectually bipolar, vacillating wildly between the heights of power and the depths of weakness. (The Weakness of God, 7-8)

There is no doubt an interesting conversation going on here between Waits, Brewin, Rollins, Žižek and Caputo (among countless others, including – I think – David Bazan). I certainly struggle with some of the ideas presented – especially when they limit the power of God – though I continue to affirm the centrality that we must start with Genesis 1, recognizing that all of humanity is called to co-creation and co-mission, to work together in remaking the world to what it was originally meant to be.

And, I will affirm the central message of the Last Judgment, that in caring for the created order we ultimately show devotion to the Creator:

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

Which is what Brewin may have been getting at all along.

I’ve been reminded not once, not twice, but thrice now, of some thoughts I’d hoped to express which got started with this previous post.

The first was an e-mail conversation with a great friend from my college days with whom I’d discussed David Bazan’s theological perspective. The second was ungrounding myself from Bazan’s recent release, Curse Your Branches. The third was overseeing John Caputo’s simple statement “Blessed are the weak!” in his The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event, which I had grabbed off the shelf to compose this, namely his

Curse Your Branches‘ second track “Bless This Mess,” opens like this:

God bless the man who stumbles
God bless the man who falls
God bless the man who yields to temptation
God bless the woman who suffers
God bless the woman who weeps
God bless the children trying her patience

Later, Bazan sings

God bless the house divided
God bless the weeds in the wheat
God bless the lamp lit under a bushel
God bless the man at the crossroads
God bless the woman who still can’t sleep
God bless the history that doesn’t repeat

The prayer that God would bless many of these things seems pretty obvious, especially those stumbling, suffering or weeping, though such prayers fly in the face of many well-meaning religious platitudes. All too often, the faithful can become quite comfortable praying for blessing over things which are already blessed.

Take a stomach-filling dinner, for example, when how many around the world are going hungry? Or bumper stickers which ask for God’s blessing upon a particular, rather prosperous and powerful nation.

But where we in the religious community can miss the point, Jesus corrects us:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5.3-12)

In Jesus’ economy, then, it seems as if those who lack are the ones who can truly recognize blessing – and the Blesser.

I am often asked, especially around the church, when I will be “ready for ordination.” Those asking this question are usually referring to the taking of 144 Master of Divinity units, four extra PC(USA) courses in preparation for five ordination exams, as well as church and hospital internships (totaling 400 hours each).

Then comes my rambling attempt to explain, in essence, “I’m there.” I have been approved, that is, to accept an ordained position, after which I will be officially ordained. But, don’t get any crazy ideas, I will never be “Pastor Curtis” or “Reverend Bronzan.” Just “Curtis” is fine, thank you.

You don’t call a plumber “Plumber Joe” or a secretary “Secretary Linda.” Referring to a pastor as “Pastor [Name],” I’ve become convinced, implicitly sets up an unbiblical hierarchy. Furthermore, I’ve become convinced that such titles often contradict Jesus’ ideas regarding religious leadership, note especially verses 8 through 12:

But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

“So,” comes the response, why are you still going to school? And at that, I struggle even more to respond coherently.

At times, I have said something to the effect of how the Master of Divinity degree (though earned from the best seminary in the history of the world) sought to make me into a Constantinian who had very little ability or developed skill to tell anyone outside the church anything important about Jesus. In short, it can become all about keeping butts in the pews, instead of faithfully exegeting our post-Christian culture, thus reaching outside the church to proclaim and enact good news.

Thus, I began a post-graduate degree focused upon contemporary, postmodern culture. My proposed thesis is tentatively entitled “De(con)structing the Temple(s): An(other) Attempt at Religion (without Religion).” Thus far in my research, I have found a rather interesting dynamic; when you ask big questions, like the role of institutions in the life of faith, lots of people (who would normally be ousted from discussions among the “faithful”) have something to say, including even the likes of Neitzsche (who taught us how to philosophize with a hammer).

It all got started with John Caputo’s brilliant little pamphlet of dynamite, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church:

The church is Plan B. (In deconstruction, everything is Plan B.)… The existence of the church is provisional – like a long-term substitute teacher – praying for the kingdom, whose coming Jesus announce and which everyone was expecting would come sometime soon. But this coming was deferred, and the church occupies the space of “deferral,” of the distance of “difference,” between two comings. (I just said, in case you missed it, the church is a function of différance!) In the meantime, and it is always the meantime for the church, the church is supposed to do the best it can to bring that kingdom about in itself, here on earth, in a process of incessant self-renewal or aut0-deconstruction, while not setting itself up as a bunch of kings or princes. The church is by definition a call (kletos) for renewal.

That is why the church is “deconstructible,” but the kingdom of God, if there is such a thing, is not. The church is a provisional construction, and whatever is constructed is deconstructible, while the kingdom of God is that in virtue of which the church is deconstructible. so, if we ask, “What would Jesus deconstruct?” the answer is first and foremost the church! For the idea behind the church is to give way to the kingdom, to proclaim and enact and finally disappear into the kingdom that Jesus called for, all the while resisting the temptation of confusing itself with the kingdom. (WWJD?, 35)

My contention is that in our day and age, the church has, in fact, set itself up as a bunch of “kings and princes.” Thus, I am hoping to short-circuit Jesus’ original, prophetic “de(con)struction” with post-modern ecclesiology, by engaging Scripture, critical theory and continental philosophy.

Slavoj Žižek unabashedly affirms that the central tenet of the Incarnation is Love. Central to this assertion is Žižek’s unorthodox, though extremely helpful (if not ultimately correct), definition of love. In Violence, he alludes to Augustine’s “Love God and do as you please” – alongside both Caputo and Radical Orthodoxy – rightly calling it “[t]he formula of the fundamentalist religious suspension of the ethical.” (Violence, 136)

Instead, he goes on to note “if you really love God, you will want what he wants – what pleases him will please you, and what displeases him will make you miserable.” (Violence, 137) Love, for Žižek, is an action whereby one “singles out, focuses on, a finite temporal object which ‘means more than anything else.” (The Fragile Absolute, 89)

To bring our examination full circle, is this not what is taking place within the Event of Jesus’ temple action? Is he not singling out and focusing on those who have been excluded? Does he not pronounce that the last will be first, and the first last? Is this not the central tenet of Jesus’ parables about sheep and coins and sons and parties?

This element of Jesus’ temple action is most profoundly emphasized in Matthew’s account, which depicts Jesus not merely teaching (as in Mark) but receiving the praise of children as well as healing the blind and lame. In an important sense, then, since Jesus is purposely upsetting the system, he is, what Žižek would term violent, creating “a perturbation of the ‘normal,’ peaceful state of things.” (Violence, 2)

The underlying paradox is that what makes love angelic, what elevates it over mere unstable and pathetic sentimentality, is its cruelty itself, its link with violence – it is this link which raises it ‘over and beyond the natural limitations of man’ and thus transforms it into an unconditional drive. (Violence, 204; see also Violence, 179, where Žižek addresses a “divine violence [that] explodes in a retaliatory destructive rage”)

This, of course, flies in the face of most contemporary versions of love, but may coincide quite closely with the Scriptural notion of divine love, which seeks justice for the widow, orphan and alien. It could be further argued that this notion of love coincides with the original purpose for the temple itself, though this is beyond the present scope of our study.

Jesus’ temple action – instead of a mere cleansing – is his final signifier of the coming Kingdom, around which his entire ministry circulates. Thus, there is a necessary break with the social institutions and religious constructions of his day. As Žižek notes,

It is precisely in order to emphasize this suspension of the social hierarchy that Christ (like Buddha before him) addresses in particular those who belong to the very bottom of the social hierarchy, the outcasts of the social order (beggars, prostitutes…) as the privileged and exemplary members of his new community. (The Fragile Absolute, 115, see also Žižek and Theology, 154)

In addressing social outsiders, Jesus is implicitly not addressing religious insiders (at least not with the same message), but instead calling them to judgment. Furthermore, in this Event within an event, we recognize Jesus’ invitation to and example of de(con)structing the elements of our institutions which do not serve the interests of the coming Kingdom. Thus, contra James K.A. Smith, who questions the validity of Žižek’s insights for Christian praxis since the Kingdom “has no lack,” we must instead recognize that, for us, the Kingdom does lack, precisely because it has not yet fully come, even – or especially – in our churches, much less in the world at large.

In that sense, then, we should follow Žižek’s insight that belief is what we do (see Slavoj Žižek, 67). As he states in The Fragile Absolute

As every true Christian knows, love is the work of love – the hard and arduous work of repeated ‘uncoupling’ in which, again and again, we have to disengage ourselves from the inertia that constrains us to identify with the particular order we were born into. (The Fragile Absolute, 119-120)

Though we may not go so far as to sacrifice sacrifice (see Žižek and Theology, 122) or accept that Jesus frees us from the need for God, (see Žižek and Theology, 97), we can wholeheartedly affirm that the lack – the fact that the Kingdom has not yet come in all it’s fullness – opens up an opportunity to truly believe. We can – with Caputo – recognize that loving our neighbor requires that we accept their smell (Violence, 166) and seek to de(con)struct our institutions that they would be made welcome within them. And all the while hope and pray that we don’t rob one bank only to set up another. (Violence, 209)

Have we?

Žižek engages the concept of church rarely, and never in “orthodox” terms. Instead, in a rather Hegelian – and possibly somewhat Augustinian – manner, he discusses the community of the Holy Spirit, though, of course, he means something quite different from orthodox pneumatological ecclesiology.

While this engagement is quite important to understand his theological perspective, it is outside the realm of our present study. Thus, I instead seek to examine some of Žižek’s theoretical arguments, in hopes that they can illuminate the role of church in contemporary culture. As above, my engagement with – and application of – Žižek’s thought falls outside the realm of his own purposes, though I seek to follow his example of short-circuiting.

Žižek regularly discusses the notion of jouissance, a French term denoting a deep level of enjoyment. In one sense, we could think of the history of Western spirituality as an attempt to harness some form of jouissance; as the first question of the Westminster Catechism reveals; “What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.” This fulfillment, however, is always kept at bay, continuously postponed, seemingly forever deferred. It is in light of this reality that the Lacanain notion of the objet petit a is helpful. Kotsko explains

It is an object because the subject experiences it as foreign, as outside of himself or herself… the ‘object-cause of desire’. It is the object of desire in the sense of being the goal that the subject continually pursues, but never reaches. Every time the subject finally reaches some particular object of desire, therefore, it feels like a disappointment – no matter how satisfying, it is somehow still not it, not objet petit a. (Žižek and Theology, 36)

Another Žižekian negative question (in Caputo’s lingua franca): Is this not an apropos metaphor for the church, as it prays and weeps for the coming of the Kingdom? In The Fragile Absolute, Žižek discusses this objet petit a by alluding to the writing of Henry Krips:

the chaperone is an ugly elderly lady who is officially the obstacle to the direct goal-object (the woman the suitor is courting); but precisely as such, she is the key intermediary moment that effectively makes the beloved woman desirable – without her, the whole economy of seduction would collapse. (The Fragile Absolute, 16)

Or, in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Madeleine’s “lock of curly blonde hair” serves as a stand in, “thus enabling us to entertain a livable relationship with it, without being swallowed up by it.” (The Fragile Absolute, 17) Objet petit a, then, provides a valuable metaphor for ecclesiological practice. In a sense, the church can become both the chaperone and the lock of curly blonde hair; it can act as both an obstacle to the Kingdom it is called to bring about (which leads to important questions regarding the church’s purpose or existence) as well as a remainder of that coming Kingdom, through which we can maintain a “livable relationship to it.”

The question is, then, whether the church functions – or should function – as an imitation of the grapes or of the veil (see The Fragile Absolute, xxvi). Or, put more directly, has the church become the place where “we create the illusion that there is, beneath the veil, the feminine Truth.”? (The Fragile Absolute, xxvii)

Žižek’s discussion of Coke as objet petit a also provides an interesting, albeit polemical parallel to church culture. In discussing Coke as the “ultimate capitalist merchandise”, he notes that the soft drink provides no use-value, but instead “has the paradoxical property that the more you drink the thirstier you get, the greater your need to drink more – with that strange, bittersweet taste, our thirst is never effectively quenched.” (The Fragile Absolute, 19) Thus, Coke never delivers on its promise, but instead endlessly defers fulfillment. Do not many contemporary fundamentalist ecclesiologies seek to do precisely the same, with their never-ending attractional, market-driven product of church?

Indeed, many contemporary church structures “are empirical objects contingently elevated to the dignity of the Thing, so that they start to function as embodiments of the impossible thing.” (On Belief, 97) Of course, the problem here is that these ecclesiological bodies exist for themselves, requiring their adherents to continually drink the coke, as it were, instead of following the example of Jesus, who sought not his own fulfillment, but graciously poured himself out as a drink offering to bring about the Kingdom.

In a sense, then, the church – which, as Caputo has put it, is “plan B” (see What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, 37) – has been (re)created not for the Kingdom, but for itself (just as Tyler Durden tried to keep his disciples from chanting “his name is Robert Paulson”). Building upon Hegel’s ‘mysteries of the ancient Egyptians that were also mysteries to the ancient Egyptians,’ Žižek notes that “after the notion of God as light and the celebration of plant and animal as divine, where the object of veneration is something found in nature, subjects [later] produce themselves the objects they honor”, (On Belief, 56) like bees building a honeycomb. The church’s (re)creation, then, continually longs for meaning, or, better yet, embodiment. Otherwise, the production of the church becomes a something which does not “meet or satisfy an already given need, but create[s] the need [it] claim[s] to satisfy.” (On Belief, 21)

In an important sense, then, we recognize that true Christian faith “accomplishes a kind of ‘synthesis,’ a partial regression to paganism, by introducing the ultimate ‘icon to erase all other icons,’” (On Belief, 131) instead of creating an icon – or even idol – out of the church, thus recognizing that truth exists outside itself (see Slavoj Žižek, 43). And if our present examination is correct, church as objet petit a is indeed a vice without vice (Violence, 167; and what are online communities but friends without friends?) This brings us to a necessary discussion regarding the Incarnation, which forms an integral aspect of Žižek’s thought, though, not surprisingly, his understanding falls outside the official doctrines of Christendom.

Similar to – and in all probability dependent upon – deconstructive thinker Jacques Derrida, Žižek sees the advent of the Messiah as similar to a waiting room. Quoting Heiner Müller and Jan Hoet, he notes

There would be an announcement: The train will arrive at 18.15 and depart at 18.20 – and it never did arrive at 18.15. Then came the next announcement: The train will arrive at 20.10. And so on. You went on sitting there in the waiting room, thinking, It’s bound to come at 20.15. that was the situation. Basically, a state of Messianic anticipation. There are constant announcements of the Messiah’s impending arrival, and you know perfectly well that he won’t be coming. And yet somehow, it’s good to hear him announced all over again. (The Fragile Absolute, 38)

Similar to his thesis in Violence, here Žižek goes on to note that in Communist Eastern Europe, people’s hope in the Messiah was ultimately lost, and by not engaging in frantic activity which would ultimately distract them (like the West), they were able to notice their surroundings, and ultimately change them. While Žižek recognizes this continual deferral of the Messiah’s arrival, he is also conscious of the importance of Incarnation in the Christian tradition. Though also viewed in light of the Hegelian dialectic, Žižek asserts that “belief in the temporal Event of Incarnation is the only path to eternal truth and salvation”, (The Fragile Absolute, 89) which reveals the extent to which it should be viewed as a religion of Love (to be addressed in greater detail in following posts).