Tuesday, September 20, 2005
(7:09 PM) | Anonymous:
An Epistle
To: FriendsFrom: Thomas J. J. Altizer
While visiting friends, I spent much time watching the TV coverage of the hurricane, thereby joining Americans as a whole, and reacting with horror not only to the immense suffering and damage but to the federal government itself. This seems to be shared by the majority of the American people, and perhaps the time is finally at hand to ultimately challenge this administration. But this only impels me all the more to renew or far rather to wholly revise my own theological language insofar as it is an ethical language or insofar as it can become a radical ethical language. By accident at this very time I was re-reading one of my favorite books, Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. Not only are these unbelievably exciting “ideas,” but they had an immense impact, ultimately transforming world history, for this was the initial expression of what finally became a world revolution. And this was a deeply and radically Christian revolution, but it is a world that has never been entered by subsequent theology, except insofar as this has all too slightly occurred among us theological radicals. Never did I encounter the English Revolution when I was studying theology, not a word was said or written about it by theologians, as this seemingly became an absolutely forbidden subject. Nor did I ever hear of Gerrard Winstanley among theologians, but at least until Nietzsche, he is our greatest ultimately radical theologian, and greatest radical preacher as well.
Who could even imagine a radical preacher today? Yet I rejoice in the Bush administration, and for the open theological role and identity of this administration, everything is blatantly clear, the ultimate policy is enhancing the power of private property, and absolutely enhancing it, even if this only benefits a tiny minority, and simultaneously reducing as much as possible benefits to the majority, and above all reducing benefits to the poor, and all of this in the name of the Christian God, who here is reverenced by a pure obedience to that One whom Blake named as Satan. I do not think that any previous administration in our history has so fully and so purely employed such a theological sanction, nor do I think that any previous administration has been so purely conservative or reactionary, and here these seemingly polar dimensions are truly and essentially integrated with each other. But most startlingly of all, there is no real or actual opposition to this administration, and above all not from the Democratic Party, which is simply hypnotized by its opponent, and virtually silent on all fundamental issues. I am fully persuaded that theology is now desperately needed, but this is seemingly unknown to all, and most unknown to our theologians who proceed as though they are facing no ultimate challenge. Yet here I must confess my own guilt, for my writing gives far too little attention to this ethical and political challenge, and while I could plead that no such politics was manifest while I was doing the great bulk of my writing, a small core of my writing does address this issue, and I now feel shame that this is such a small core.
I am primarily referring, of course, to History as Apocalypse, that major book of mine which has had the least effect, and is probably the least read. While this theme is not muted in Total Presence, this little book is strangely unheard within this arena, and perhaps unhearable. Now so far as I know there simply is no comparable theological work in our time, and certainly not liberation theology, which is finally conservative, nor the theology of hope which is even more conservative. A fundamental question that I have asked throughout my theological life is whether theology as an ultimate necessity must be conservative. Every modern radical thinker is deeply persuaded of this, and if only for this reason one must rejoice in the radical theological thinking which occurred during the English Revolution, and most profoundly and most gloriously occurred in Milton himself. Yet how revealing it is that theology has closed itself to Milton, too, and this despite the overwhelmingly original power of his Christian Doctrine, a book which the theological world not only ignores but will not even keep in print.
In short I feel impelled at this time to take up and to far more fully take up the challenge of doing a truly contemporary and truly radical ethical and political theology. In one sense this would be a fulfillment of a muted and even marginalized theme of my own work, and the more I think about it the more that this appears to be true, and have I become so hypnotized by nihilism in my later work as to forfeit this opportunity? True, I have thought that nihilism is a way into our contemporary ethical and political world, and that at bottom our new political world is a nihilistic world, and just as this impelled me to write that failed essay for “The Nation,” this very failure is perhaps a sign that this is not an effective way to proceed. No, I need a far more direct way, after all almost no one understands nihilism, just as all too few understand either Nietzsche or Heidegger at this absolutely fundamental point. However, I do believe that a language of absolute evil is truly necessary here, and necessary if only to expose the pure hypocrisy of the political world today, for I am persuaded that there is a depth or purity of hypocrisy here which is truly new, and new insofar as it occurs so spontaneously and even “innocently,” as witness our much beloved President. Our political analysts are simply not up to such a challenge, nor are our political contenders, and never have such contenders been in such deep need of genuine theological assistance, which they will certainly not receive from the established theological world. The truth of the matter is that it is only the theological mind that can genuinely explore or understand evil, and if I have given most of my energy since my retirement to such an exploration, the time is at hand to concretely embody this exploration, and to do so in such a way that it can be understood by the many instead of the few.
I recall once again those exciting days when I was a television preacher, for that is what at bottom I was when I was continually on television, and then I did communicate with a vast audience, and if nothing else I genuinely offended them, which we both know is an ultimate mode of theological communication. While I fully recognize that I shall never gain such an audience again, I refuse to give up the possibility of addressing a general audience, and think that this could most effectively be done in the ethical and political arena. Perhaps only here is there a genuine yearning for theology today, a yearning inseparable from that theological void so incarnate here, a void now inseparable from that evangelical cacophony now engulfing us, and I must confess that I would love to engage in a debate with an evangelical, as long ago I almost did with Billy Graham. And there is a little known truth about the evangelical mind today, one distinguishing it from its predecessors, and that is that it is not open to an ultimate or absolute evil, as witness its refusal to speak about damnation, or actually to speak about Satan. Here, I distinguish the evangelical mind from the popular evangelical preacher, the latter being truly mindless, and more mindless than it has ever previously been, which is essential to its power.
Indeed, popular theological language is so mindless today that this is a fundamental obstacle to the possibility of doing genuine theology in the public realm, and it is fascinating to contrast this situation with the world of the English Revolution, when the very opposite is true, and genuine theology abounded as it has never before or since. Is there a single Church historian who knows this? Yet it is known by all of the major historians of the English Revolution, and one can encounter far more theology in seventeenth century historiography than one can in contemporary theology, but if ours is a truly empty world theologically, this could make possible an ultimate theological innovation. We should also recognize that there is something truly evil in our theological condition, there is not simply a void which we here confront, but far rather a negative or lacerating void, and one consuming everything in its midst, as witness the consequences of employing theological language in our public world. Such language can only be heard as a curse to the sensitive ear, and a curse in a fully theological sense, one which once could be known as the curse of damnation, and now can be known as an ultimate apostasy, or an ultimate refusal of that which it seemingly evokes. So it is that the very name of God can be known as a curse today, and while earlier this was true in the literary language of a Joyce or a Kafka, now it is true in the public language of theology, or in that theological language which dominates our public institutions and life. Hence that theological language which now plays such a decisive role in the political arena is a truly demonic language, one enslaving rather than liberating its hearer, and one inseparable from that repression which is inseparable from it, but now a repression occurring universally throughout our world, and for the first time in history a universal but invisible and unnamable repression.
This is a fundamental reason why Marxist and Freudian language has become unreal in our world, and that our most sophisticated languages today have no point of contact with our public world, but this is a truly unique situation historically, just as the repression in our world is truly unique. And it is unique because its source or sources are so nebulous, it will not do simply to name the corporate or the fiscal worlds, for while they may well be genuinely evil they are simply not that powerful, nor is it possible to find any manifest source of our impotence or repression, here our philosophy is as empty as our theology, but this is nonetheless a theological rather than a philosophical question, and is so because it is inseparable from the question of absolute evil. Absolute evil is seemingly both unthinkable and unspeakable, but it was profoundly thought by German Idealism, just as it is profoundly evoked in the uniquely Christian epic, so that it is absolutely central in the epic enactments of Dante, Milton, and Blake, enactments of absolute evil which are inseparable from enactments of absolute redemption, so that here there truly is a marriage or genuinely dialectical relationship between Heaven and Hell. Only the dialectical philosophy born in German Idealism can comprehend that genuine relationship, but this is a philosophy as theological as it is philosophical, and most decisively theological in its very understanding of absolute evil, an absolute evil only fully embodied in Godhead itself, but it is the self-saving or the self-negation of the Godhead which is the ultimate source of energy and life. The overwhelming problem here is to translate such a vision or such an understanding into a common language, and into a common theological language, or a language that can be understood by everyone, or the “Here Comes Everybody” of Finnegans Wake.
One way to do this is to center upon the question of impotence or repression, and to see that our public theological language is illuminating here, for now “God” can clearly be understood as the source of our repression, as the very speakers of God can no longer speak of God without actually evoking our repression, and evoking the ultimate power and ubiquity of that repression. It is this very ubiquity which is unique today, a ubiquity which we can only associate with God, and whereas once this could only be known by a few, now it can be known by everyone, and by everyone who actually hears our public theological language. Now it is not accidental that God has now disappeared from our theological language, or from our critical theological language, as nothing is now more damning or more self-destructive than actually hearing God, or hearing that God who is now spoken in a hearable theological language. This, too, is historically unique, but it opens up a whole new theological path, and just as once we could know God as the God of absolute judgment, now we can know an absolute or an absolutely ubiquitous repression whose only source that we can name is God, and whereas once the way to God was through an absolutely guilty conscience, now the only manifest way to God is through an absolute impotence or repression, or that repression which only now is all in all. Now just as Marxist and Freudian language can no longer name our repression, is a new world now dawning for theology, for even as theology has always been our deepest naming of evil, is a new absolute evil now actual and manifest that only can be named by theology, and named by that theology which just thereby will speak our actual condition?
