Israel's work on the Enlightenment

I finally decided to dive into Jonathan Israel's enormous work.  He has written 3 large tomes numbering around 3,000 pages total on the Enlightenment.  His major contribution to modern scholarship is to define the time period along its intellectual bearings.  He classifies it by two categories: the moderate and the radical.  The radical Enlightenment is the one he favors because it is more democratic and egalitarian and has its roots in the thought of Spinoza.

What I am really looking forward to with regards to his last of the trilogy, the Democratic Enlightenment, is his attempt in defining the Enlightenment itself in the first chapter.  This is a serious, well-researched book that  non-historians who think in the shadow of the Enlightenment should at least be aware of.  The more we take the historians seriously when they produce massive works of erudition then the more we will not continue the silly, generalized statements about the Enlightenment.

It's all Nominalism's Fault???

Part of my dissertation preparation is to read as many books on the "theological" origins of modernity like the recent books by Michael Allen Gillespie and Joshua Mitchell.  In other words, to look at books and essays that note how important religious issues were at the beginning of modernity until the present.  Even the Enlightenment itself was a contest of competing religious options and not simply the triumph of science and rationality over superstition (even though it was probably the French that popularized this particular narrative).

I guess in some cases of popular wisdom, religion has ceased to be a major factor in the continual quest of Western societies quest for modernization.  However, research has shown that the narrative that says religion will be passed by because of growing secularization is a myth.

Now the more and more I read about this issue, the more and more I come to the conclusion that 1) religion is here to stay because it is adaptable (much like many other things in society-see Giddens post on tradition) and 2) in many cases, the religious element has learned to correspond with the secular elements quite well.  In short, it is a very complex relationship between the secular and religious forces.

The problem with books by theorists like Gillespie and others is the need to boil down this complexity to a single, overarching problem.  He claims that it was the Nominalism of Ockham, later inherited by Luther, that led Western society into secularization.  Now Gillespie joins a host of other thinkers (not typically historians, I might add) like Milbank and the RO, who lay blame for modernization at Nominalism.

A recent discussion with George Hunsinger led me to see this move toward the Nominalist bogeyman to be a traditionalist account of modernization.  In other words, when one pulls out the Nominalist card it usually is a catchword for "Catholic" defense of religious traditionalism where the Church is still the controlling center of society (I detect even some of this in Protestant thinkers like Pannenberg).  The fact that modernization and secularization has decreased religious influence in society is frowned upon by many of this group, but I think otherwise.  There is still religious influence in society, sometimes it crosses over the church/state borders, but again, I think that is due to its complexity and in a democratic society with competing structures, it is up to its subjects to work the messiness out.

Finally, of course Nominalism had a part to play in the beginning of modernity, but I do not think it had the central part.

Giddens and Tradition

As I get closer to actually writing my dissertation, I have really tried to look at all the possible ways to analyze "my" actual methodology.  Because of my experience in studying historiography, I have lately developed a sort of love affair with sociology.  Mind you, this is not a "Christianized" sociology, much like I don't like to talk about a "Christianized" history.  Since I will be teaching Historiography in the Fall, I will be dedicating much of my summer time to exploring important sociologist with regards to modernity.

A couple of sociologists I have warmed up to are Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens.  What makes both of these figures special is that they fall somewhere in the middle with regards to the structure and agency argument.   Being the Barth guy that I am, I believe that Barth is also somewhere in the middle of the two; one can see his late work on Christian witness as an effect in light of the Spirit's previous work in giving humans real agency but without losing the focus of our place in societies structures.

I have only read a little from Giddens; I have just purchased his Consequences of Modernity and just read his short book Runaway World.  One thing that stood out to me is his important words about traditions and the Enlightenment:

"In my view, it is entirely rational to recognise that traditions are needed in society.  We shouldn't accept the Enlightenment idea that the world should rid itself of tradition altogether.  Traditions are needed, and will always persist, because they give continuity and form to life." (62-3)

The valuable point Giddens makes is that traditions will never cease to exist, yet, in the globalized world, traditions will find it difficult not to change, adapt and reinvent themselves in order to survive.  In fact, tradtions have historically always adapted to their environment.  One of the mistakes that the "secular" Enlightenment made were to make superstition and ignorance synonymous with tradition.

Evangelical Calvinism=FAIL (or why John Piper is a bad man)...

It is an interesting thing to look back on why I decided to get involved in academics.  One of the motivating factors was that I was an avid reader of all types of evangelical Calvinism (Piper, Sproul, the Puritans featured in the Banner of Truth, some Augustine and of course Calvin himself), and I wanted to become a theologian to understand the Reformation better because of course the main problem in the world today is that there is a fight against the Reformation's view of justification by faith (ALONE)!

I tried to be a strong evangelical Calvinist for about a year or so (I remember famously getting in an argument with my mom and her "Wesleyian, Semi-Pelagian tenedencies"-c'mon, who talks like that!-over the issue of predestination and free will; there is a certain condescending attitude that sets in when you are one of the elect).  However, the fact that I studied history and enjoyed studying philosophy on the side "reformed" my theology to be less Calvinist (even though I have learned to appreciate Calvin, but the people who helped in this transition were Barth and Bonhoeffer).

One of the main issues had to do with the way evangelical Calvinists will almost robot-like claim that God was behind everything even events like genocide and murder (I guess tornadoes was the last event).  But they are consistent in the extent that God has to be sovereign over all things especially in the salvation of the elect; adding any foreign elements of goodness apart from God would mess up their formula (because humans are sinful to the core), so that leads them to make God completely in charge of salvation and also of damnation.

When it comes down to the issue of predestination and free will or the elect and non-elect I have gotten to the point of saying that I really don't care about this issue.  It has WASTED a lot of pens and paper and probably many an evangelical will argue some more over the Calvinist versus Arminius views.  However, rumor has it that many evangelical Calvinists are trying to draw the line in the sand that states they are the only "true" evangelicals.  Well, have at it...

If God is not a saving God and the gospel is not a good news for all humanity then I don't want to hear it (God is also holy and just and judges sin but, for me, not before the dawn of human time).  I would honestly rather side with Voltaire than with a Calvinist because at least Voltaire had the good moral sense to see disaster in the world as a bad thing and not try to rationalize how something like the Holocaust or child abuse could be somehow used to God's glory.  I just think it is about time for more evangelicals (or people in general) to call out this type of rationalizing.  It honestly does not help anyone.

Bruce McCormack on Why Barth is Orthodox and Modern: 2nd Part on Orthodox

Now we come to the subject on why McCormack thinks Barth is orthodox.  First, I should add that McCormack's view does not fit under the stereotypical view of some kind of neo-orthodoxy to describe Barth's position.

Instead Barth is positioned as a child of the Protestant Reformation (specifically the Reformed position).  That means that Scripture is authoritative for him and the creeds and church confessions are helpful guides to understanding theology not as universally binding.  However, our understanding of Scripture is not fixed and so we must continually go to the Bible to be challenged theologically by it.  McCormack writes: "Orthodoxy is not therefore a static, fixed reality; it is a body of teachings which have arisen out of, and belong to, a history which is as yet incomplete and constantly in need of reevaluation."  As McCormack also points out, this understanding of dogma is eschatological.

All in all, Barth is a theologian who struggled to understand the Orthodox-Reformed tradition in the modern era.  Unlike some of his contemporaries who abandoned the classical Christian tradition, Barth attempted to read it again in the present; by doing this he taught us a method as we try to understand the Christian tradition anew.

Bruce McCormack on Why Barth is Orthodox and Modern: 2 Parts

As I begin work on my Comprehensive Exams, one of the main figures under review is the work of Princeton's Barthian scholar Bruce McCormack.  His work has been crucial in my own understanding of Barth's theology.  One of the main things I am studying is the historiography of Barth's interpreters.

One term McCormack challenges about Barth's interpretation is the label "neo-orthodox".  This term seems to be the one given to Barth and other diverse thinkers like Tillich, Bultmann and Bonhoeffer by North American readers trying to place these figures somewhere between conservative (or orthodox) and liberal (or modern) theology.  What this term does not take into account is that Barth's theology is "working under the conditions of modernity" or that his is a "variant" within the framework of modernity.  For example, McCormack makes the point that many take it for granted that Barth works with a Kantian epistemology and a Hegelian ontology (while adding his own theological spin).

Modernity, for McCormack, is the time period in Western society when a "historical consciousness" was on the rise.  This went along with Kant's critique of pure reason and its limits and the eventual rise of the romantic movement.  What this means is that the turn to history and the social-cultural setting as context meant the rejection or at least the suspicion of classical metaphysics (including Christian ones).  This is meant to include the reasons for natural theology.

From as early as Barth's Romans, Barth's actualistic understanding of revelation (dialectic of unveiling/veiling) and then ontology followed a Kantian framework (based, for example, on the neo-Kantianism of the early 20th century from thinkers like Hermann Cohen).  Barth's actualism moved him to historicize the being-act of God in his doctrine of election.  McCormack writes that "God's eternal election of himself to be God 'for us' in Jesus Christ is an act in which God constitutes his being as a being for historical existence."  Here Barth is close to Hegel except that "this act of Self-determination was a free act on the part of God, not a necessary one."

What McCormack illustrates is that Barth worked under a modern framework with his basis in history, ontology and rejection of classical metaphysics.  Even when he wrote against Schleiermacher, Kant and Hegel it was on the level of modern concepts and not a total postmodern rejection.  I am finding that the more I understand the 19th century thinkers the more I understand Barth.  As Barth warned in his later thought, even though he once said No to the19th century, one needs to understand what went awry and not be totally dismissive as seen in some conservative or postmodern readings.  I think one of the real weaknesses of American theology is the utter lack of comprehension of modern thought especially in Kant, Hegel, and Schelling (which is why Zizek is important in his rehabilitation of them).  Some attempt to make the jump to the postmodern not knowing what the postmodern thinkers are even contending against. 

One of my goals in life is to write a historiography book based on this reading of Barth which includes a substantial input from the German idealists, some German-Jewish thinkers of the late 19th century and Zizek.

In the next part I will deal with McCormack's definition of the "Orthodox".

The Bianry of West vs Rest

In Dabashi's book, he targets a number of intellectuals and public figures for continuing the binary thought process of the West (Western Europe and the US) vs the Rest (basically the so-called Third World). One of the figures he targets is Oxford scholar Tariq Ramadan. He thinks that Ramadan (and Soroush) are fighting a lost battle by basically appealing for an audience from the modern West that is not listening now and for all intents and purposes does not exist. Ramadan's appeal to reform "Islam" in order to dialogue with the West is doomed for failure.


Instead Dabashi claims globalization has illustrated that the binary thinking of the West vs Rest is over. There is no real monolithic West as there is no monolithic Islam (in essence there never existed such things in the social-historical reality). Modern thought (as seen in Kant and others) brought forth Orientalism and thus colonialism. The response to colonialism is the Islamic nationalism of figures like Khomeini and Qutb. According to Dabashi, these narratives are ultimately oppressive.









Furthermore, a good point Dabashi makes is that for him Shiite thought is a powerful movement of critique against the powers as seen in the thought of Ali Shariati but when in power has the capacity to be as oppressive as other powers as seen especially with the Iranian Revolution (I think Christian theology has the same capacity as seen in history).

Where does Dabashi think we can move from this binary way of thinking? He believes that what is needed are more people movements (kind of like the multitudes of Negri/Hardt) to mobilize resistance against abusive powers. I think one of the key chapters which he closes the book with is when he compares the late global thought of a Malcolm X with other nationalist movements like Qutb. For Dabashi, Malcolm X went through many changes in thought until finally he became a more global thinker due to his pilgrimage surrounded by various peoples of color. Moreover, religion is a force that can provoke a way to a call for justice (see his references to Gustavo Gutierrez, for example), but can never be the transcendent power that tries to collapse the real, social-historical differences of the multitudes.

So, for a book I bought on a whim, it was really helpful to read a current thinker, arguing against various voices inside (like Ramadan) and outside (like Agamben) the Muslim world. I will still be working out his arguments about modernity and the secular for a while but it will probably start a trend in my reading to see the viewpoints of voices outside of the canon of the so-called West.

Ranciere (and Barth) on Equality and Disciplines

Below is part of a seminar paper I completed last semester on Barth and his view of modernity. I closed the essay with this section on Jacques Ranciére (who I was all about around Christmas time 2010).

The French philosopher Alain Badiou describes Jacques Ranciére in the following way: “Ranciére takes delight in occupying unrecognized spaces between history and philosophy, between philosophy and politics, and between documentary and fiction.”[1] This is a good description in that it helps us understand what Ranciére tries to do when he attempts to illustrate the connection between aesthetics and politics and how he blurs the lines between academic disciplines. He does this by articulating three regimes of art: the ethical, the representative and the aesthetic. What is important for me is the distinction between the representative and the aesthetic. He believes these regimes have historical presence, yet not in a historically progressive manner; in some ways these regimes still co-exist today. In short, these regimes serve the purpose of viewing and articulating the artistic changes that have occurred throughout history. The representative regime tries to establish what is considered proper in society especially in the way it produces form over matter by organizing what one can say, do, make and judge.[2] Thus, it is an all encompassing regime that delineates what is sensible and gives itself the responsibility of faithfully imitating the things in the world.

Ranciére asserts that the aesthetic regime of art which took shape in the late eighteenth century challenges the representative regime. He declares: “The aesthetic regime of the arts is the regime that strictly identifies art in the singular and frees it from any specific rule, from any hierarchy of the arts, subject matter, and genres.”[3] The openness to artistic practices especially to the things considered common has, for Ranciére, political implications. The aesthetic and the political link up to the extent that they are used to reexamine the distribution of the sensible. He writes: “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.”[4] In short, politics happens when the defined lines of what is considered normal is disputed; art can help open up the possibilities of this change. Badiou observes that what Ranciere “discovers is a discourse plotted and held in the aftermath of an event, a sort of social flash of lightning, a brief and local invention, both prior to and coextensive with domination and its burdens.”[5]

The way Ranciére articulates the disagreement of what is considered sensible as a disruptive event in the order of things through aesthetics fits well with Barth’s theory of the subject produced by the event. As we have seen Barth was also suspicious on how the modern idea of form was used to create divisions. In this sense, then Barth’s idea of absolutism as all-encompassing over different genres and forms of society matches what Ranciére says about the representative regime in its canonization of what is regarded as proper. However, Ranciére’s thought is aimed at a political reformation especially geared toward the outcast in a place that Barth’s thought really does not go. Ranciére’s theory highlights the mood of the discontent or those outside of the norm because equality is the presupposition that guides his thought. If equality is the presupposition then that means the hierarchies in things like art and politics are in constant need of reform. Therefore, Ranciére promotes an equality that “destroys all of the hierarchies of representation” because the aesthetic establishes the ambivalence of things.[6] Badiou is then correct in stating that Ranciére’s guiding theme is “that anyone, regardless of experience, can exert mastery without being in a position of mastery provided that anyone in question is willing to be unbound.”[7]

An example of what Ranciére is trying to accomplish can be seen in the way that he contests the delineation or proper form of disciplines and the hierarchies that form there. Here he relates how philosophy oftentimes relates to other disciplines:

Classically, philosophy has been considered a sort of super-discipline which reflects on the methods of the human and social sciences, or which provides them with their foundation. Thus a hierarchical order is established in the universe of discourse. Of course these sciences can object to this status, treat it as an illusion and pose itself as the true knowledge of philosophical illusion. This is another hierarchy, another way of putting discourses in their place. But there is a third way of proceeding, which seizes the moment in which the philosophical pretension to found the order of discourse is reversed, becoming the declaration, in the egalitarian language of the narrative, of the arbitrary nature of this order.[8]

His point is to show how that the allotted roles of the disciplines are really a fiction and that one must simply think through a problem and use whatever tools are necessary to come to some type of conclusion; in other words, the walls that separate disciplines need to be invaded for the sake of free thought. Ranciére challenges the hierarchy of the disciplines because it betrays the principle of equality for the fact that this structure ultimately produces those that are in the know and those that are not. Again, his principle of equality judges harshly any thought form that posits an enlightened one to guide the rest of the masses.

Ranciére’s attempt to blur the boundaries between disciplines also raises the issue of the relation of theology to other disciplines. On the one hand, one can see how his method could match Barth’s in criticizing the strict and proper roles forced upon theology in the eighteenth century. On the other hand, his principle of equality would challenge any so-called Barthian interpretation that judged the theology of modernity too harshly. In one sense, this was what Barth’s goal in addressing his historical lectures toward his over-zealous students.[9] One must also consider that much of the criticism of thinkers throughout the eighteenth century was aimed at the traditional hierarchies of the church and the state; the problem is that they would soon replace these traditional forms with a hierarchy and a normality of their own.

Theology is an open discipline; it cannot be used to control other seats of knowledge as the so-called queen of the sciences. Those days are long gone. Also gone is the idea that makes theology subservient to other disciplines like science, history or philosophy or irrelevant to the issues of the contemporary world; this flawed understanding of theology has its nascent in the eighteenth century. Barth’s reading of theology and history as event in that he declares a critical openness toward texts challenges these readings. In fact, Barth spent a lifetime trying to make the point that theology is a happy discipline for all that gives freedom to the other disciplines.[10] In one sense, he was trying to escape from the defined lines of the period of absolutism by positing the free happy exercise of theology.

---

[1] Alain Badiou, Metapolitics, trans. Jason Barker (New York: Verso, 2005), 108.

[2] Jacques Ranciére, The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (New York: Continuum, 2006), 22. For a good introduction to Ranciére see a very recent article by Joseph J. Tanke, “Why Ranciére Now?” The Journal of Aesthetic Education 44 (2010): 1-17.

[3] Ranciére, The Politics of Aesthetics, 23.

[4] Ranciére, The Politics of Aesthetics, 13.

[5] Badiou, Metapolitics, 108.

[6] Ranciére, The Politics of Aesthetics, 14.

[7] Badiou, Metapolitics, 110.

[8] Ranciére, “Thinking between disciplines: an aesthetics of knowledge,” trans. Jon Roffe, Parrhesia 1 (2006):10. Also see Sudeep Dasgupta, “Art is Going Elsewhere and Politics has to Catch it. An Interview with Jacques Ranciére,” Krisis 1 (2008): 70-75.

[9] Barth would later caution this same harsh reading of modern theology in his essay titled “Evangelical Theology in the 19th Century,” found in Barth, The Humanity of God, trans. Thomas Weiser (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960).

[10] See Barth, Evangelical Theology, 12 and 15 for an example of Barth’s comments on the theological discipline and its place as a happy science.

Ramadan & Barth: Orthodox & Modern?

I am finishing up Gregory Baum's book on The Theology of Tariq Ramadan and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I really like the conversational style of the book and the openness the author has toward Ramadan while having his theology relate to specifically the Catholic theology of Vatican II.

It seems one of the problems that people have with Ramadan is that he seems to be (like Bruce McCormack labeled Karl Barth) both Orthodox and Modern. In other words, both Barth and and now Ramadan work within the breakthrough of modernity (they use context, history, critical thought) while at the same time being faithful to their tradition and its founding scriptures. In other words, they are part of the Reformist tradition. The point is not to destroy the faith of the fathers but continue to be faithful to it by always reforming.

Liberals, Fundamentalists and Radicals really despise this position because it is not "faithful" enough to their own perspective. For a fundamentalist, they are too "liberal" in buying into the modern framework. For Liberals, they are too conservative for being to faithful to the past traditions and interpretations and their religious communities (better to have a vague spirituality). For Radicals, they are too conservative because they haven't deconstructed the whole religious paradigm and embraced pure secularism or atheism.

Instead a reformist is always looking to reform the current faith to be both faithful to their sources and the community of believers while at the same time open to the voice of God for changes that should be made today especially when the tradition is either silent or not clear on a matter. For example, Barth wrote particularly to the Church because they are the witnesses of God while Ramadan targets Western Muslims; there is a clear particularity in their target audience yet not denying their general readership as well. The point is that they want to be faithful to the real communities of faith that ascribe to their faith. Thus, when it comes to modernity, it is a mixed bag of blessings and problems; it is up to the reformist to see where the faith can value modern ideas while at the same time be critical as well. It is to say, yes, some of modernity is good because of its liberating dimensions, yet modernity and secularism is not our God; there is only one God and God is one. This is what I see both theologians doing...