(8:50 AM) | Brad:

Aesthetics and Theology

"[O]ur experience of the world is an experience of godlessness. But in the cross we are presented with a God who is present even in godlessness, and in the resurrection we are promised that godlessness shall not have the last word. This provides a ground of critique by which we might distinguish false representations of God from true or, perhaps more precisely, by which we might distinguish 'idols' (our representations of the divine) from 'icons' (God's self-presentation in revelation). The 'cruciform' life of Jesus - and his life is cruciform in that it is lived in its entirety 'toward' the cross - serves as the norm of holiness, and all other claims to righteousness must fall under its critique. The cross and resurrection, in their very negativity and obscurity, become the icon by which God presents to us God's own unpresentable trinitarian life, and we are called not to irony, but to adoration and participation."

Now, everything in this quote sounds well and good, I guess. All very "theological", anyway. It certainly expresses the idea and language that are supposed to be the tools of my chosen trade. What bugs me about it, I guess, is the very conscious privileging of theological content, esp. that concerning God, over theological thinking. Ever the Idealist, I am concerned that theology becomes what it is only inasmuch as it thinks itself thinking itself. In this way, the aim of fundamental theology (the traditional name for this kind of inquiry) aligns theological thinking with a fundamentally atheistic (to borrow a phrase from Foucault) "aesthetics of existence."

An example. In Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi, we are told that the story of Pi will "make you believe in God." The first half of the novel tells the story of Pi's conversion to three religions at once -- Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam -- and the ensuing inter-religious strife that causes for him. From there the fantastically fablesque core of the novel takes shape. For basically the rest of the novel, Pi is lost at sea on a lifeboat with four animals; but, after predatory instincts kick in, with just one, a Bengal tiger. From there, we are treated to a pretty cool survival story. Obviously, Pi is trying to survive being lost at sea, and being lost at sea with a tiger! And yet, the tiger, too, is out of its element. Constantly seasick, and finally dependent on Pi for food (either by eating Pi, or by eating what Pi provides).

And survive they do. By the end of the novel, human and wild, ferocious animal have learned to cope with their situation together, without killing one another. Awww ... a story of tolerance, you say. Yes. But Martel has more in mind. In what seems like an epilogue, but is really the climax, the final pages of the novel finds Pi being interviewed by the Japanese Ministry of Transport, to find out what exactly happened to his ship, its crew, passengers and cargo. Pi relates his tale, but the interviewers think the story too incredible and unbelievable. They want the truth, they explain. Pi then offers a second version, in which the tiger is a human who survived the sinking, along with three other passengers, including Pi’s mother. The second story relates four humans in a boat who are reduced to two after one of them resorts to murder. Pi in turn must kill the murderer. Pi concludes: "Solitude began. I turned to God. I survived."

Finally, though, the interviewers officially accept the first interpretation over the second – not because it is more credible, but simply because it is a better story. "So tell me," asks Pi, "since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with the animals or the story without the animals?" The interviewers respond: "The story with the animals is the better story." "Thank you," says Pi. "And so it goes with God."

As with the long quote earlier in the post, however, I just don't see it. Have I just become confessionally obtuse? Granted, yes, It makes me believe in imaginative possibility, and the value of aesthetics and imagination to break open the stultifying effects of the status quo. But believe in God? Why? Is that just a cypher for 'believe in the power of imagination?' -- or does this conclusion, rather, further circumscribe the (aesthetics of) imagining God in religious confessions and liturgies? The openness / radical nature of the imagination, and thus, dare I say it, the atheistic core of fundamental theology, would in my perspective seem to come first, and only then would the objectified theological content be possible.

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