Saturday, October 08, 2005
(11:46 AM) | Brad:
The Post Where I Sink Further Into Blogospheric Irrelevance
Recently, I was asked about how my idiosyncratic brand of non-confessional theology squares with certain aspects of, say, confessional Christianity -- 'really existing Christianity', we might say. For instance, he wondered, what do I think about 'the Cross' / death of Jesus, specifically its place in the Christian Gospel(s). I thought I might share my response here, in part because I think it is related to Old-Doug Johnson's post below, and also in hopes of drawing out some of the Vandy-crew, with whom I often disagree but often have lovely conversation nevertheless.By way of analogy, I approach the Gospel(s), and thus the Cross, in much the same was I do, long-time readers of my posts will not be surprised by this, Moby-Dick. Significantly, both seem to share a common structure: 1) a declaration of identity (Gospels: 'In the beginning was the word', genealogies, etc. / Moby-Dick: 'I am Ishmael'); 2) a becoming or presentation of that identity; 3) death (one that is vaguely suicidal, or at least classically tragic & thus unavoidable); and, for fear of ruining the ending of either for those of you haven't gotten to them yet on your reading list, 4) resurrection (Christ from the tomb / Ishmael from the sea).
If the similarities were simply structural, this would be a very banal thing to observe. (While, certainly, I'm not opposed to making banal observations. I do it all the time.) The importance of the similarity, though, is the profound implications it has for thinking about subjectivity and self-becoming. Take Ishmael's recounting of the suicidal thoughts that lead him to the sea and his dangerous flirtations with the fate of Narcisuss, ‘who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned'. Importantly, Ishmael's confession here is that of a narrator distanced from himself as a narrated character. Much of the enduring significance of Moby-Dick, in fact, is missed if one overlooks the paradox of its reflective complexity, whereby Ishmael-as-character retroactively / anachronistically informs his own characterisation by Ishmael-as-narrator. Hence the latter’s 'realisation' as he begins his tale that the same perception of self that draws him to the water is also 'the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.' Which is to say, the phantom of life for Ishmael-as-narrator, that which makes him what he is, is the incessant, suicidal return to the sea of his story's retelling. Ishmael-as-narrator (i.e., as Subject) is truly 'alive', then, only inasmuch as he is characterised (i.e., as Object) as plunging toward his death.
The miraculous 'resurrection' of Ishmael-as-character in the novel's epilogue, as such, effectively conditions the possibility of his suicidal narration from the novel's beginning. Moreover, it marks the site of Ishmael's subjective autonomy as a production / eruption of excess from the self-violent circularity of his necessarily being a Subject that is also an Object. Suicidal desire hints at this subjective surplus, though, not because it somehow precedes or motivates Ishmael-as-narrator. As Heidegger points out: ‘Dying is not an event’, but 'a phenomenon to be understood existentially.' The impossibility of Ishmael's desire to somehow consciously experience his physical death, itself the very cessation of consciousness, is not in lockstep with that of Heidegger's postmodern progeny. In him, such desire highlights the Subject's necessary, existential sublimation of an ontologically immanent self-violence that emerges from, but cannot finally be contained by, its (subjective) narration. It is, in fact, precisely the excessiveness, of his narrated desire, i.e., the absolute necessity of its failure, that makes Ishmael-as-narrator what he is, and what keeps him endlessly narrating.
What does any of this have to do w/ the Cross, though? My response is that the Gospel message functions similarly: namely, that it tells the story of God's self-becoming, of becoming In-and-For-Himself. Like Ishmael, God is God only in the the retelling of the inadequacy to be 'In-Himself' / transcendent -- i.e., the necessity of his tragic self-becoming in the Gospel story. In re-telling this 'fall' into himself, and the immanence of Christ in this retelling, the freedom of divine creativy / imagination is unleashed. Such is is the hope of the Gospel which reaches beyond the aspects of salvation as traditionally understood, to that of true / authentic living. The significance of the Gospel for faith is that it is a mythological symbol of that which makes all things new: the gospel of 'self-becoming' / 'self-presentation'.
What of Sin, though, and various Pauline concepts like that of Justification? In my reading, sin is truly unavoidable. Indeed, Sin is simply what must be the case for thought or existence TO BE. That is, without Sin, without self-assertion, there would be neither thought nor existence. (Obviously, my use of 'sin' here is a little idiosyncratic. I'm basically, and unapologetically, following the Hegelian / Schellingian line of thought, that truly to be oneself requires one to be MORE than simply In-Oneself. That is, that existence itself is a violation of the unified, pure Subject). So, in short, all -- including God (this is the point of the Gospel) -- have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In my reading, sin, as excess of self (i.e., the necessity of self-presentation) is precisely what makes God God & humanity humanity.
As for Justification (by faith) and all manner of Pauline soteriology, I find it unavoidable to regard the imaging of God as Judge as an inevitable ideological move. (Note: that is not a criticism or dismissal.) It is unthinkable that Law be completely suspended, and thus a sense of guilt / transgression / judgment / forgiveness be eliminated. Such Law, however, like Ishmael-as-character, can only ever retroactively posit itself as primary -- that is, only after the (divine) self-presentation. To the extent that it completely forecloses becoming & creation, this Law, too, is repressive, for it denies its own self-becoming, it's own inate transgression. I do not think, though, that this need be the case.
In short ... the Gospel seems less about the redemption of sin as a one-and-done kind of thing. It rather is that sin must itself first be redeemed as necessary -- not an a priori necessity, but, again, a necessity posited retroactively by the very fact of subjective existence or thought.
To sum up, I do not find it necessary to extract the Cross as a singular element of the Gospel whose theological import can be discussed in the abstract. As in any good story, Moby-Dick being one of the best, it pulls in everything -- reader, writer, fictive & literal worlds -- holds them together for an infinite instant, destroys them, and builds them anew.
