A Way Back Behind Christian Homophobia

I just discovered that Ted Jennings’ book Plato or Paul?: The Origins of Western Homophobia is available for preorder on Amazon. I have been deeply involved with this project of Ted’s since my first semester at CTS, and I am convinced that it represents a radical assault on the notion that homophobia is somehow inherent to Christian identity. Instead, Ted argues, the scapegoating of same-sex eroticism is rooted in the Plato’s Laws, which retrospectively reads as a chillingly accurate summary of the rhetorical strategies of homophobia.

This book completes a kind of trilogy on homophobia, consisting also of The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives in the New Testament and Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel. The strategy here is clear, aggressive, and absolutely necessary: he absolutely abandons the defensive stance of “explaining away” the supposedly “obvious” homophobic elements in the Bible that “everyone knows” about and instead presents us with a scriptural account that is deeply homophilic, even to the point of presenting us with a possible male lover for Christ himself. Once this ground is cleared, the question then becomes how a Scriptural tradition that is so overwhelmingly affirming of same-sex eroticism came to be read as the legitimation of homophobia. This final book is an attempt to answer that question.

I have said that I am thoroughly convinced by his overall argument, but I’m not naive — I know that even many religious people who are opposed to the scapegoating of same-sex eroticism will find Ted’s project absurd on its face. The homophobic framework through which even homosexuals and their allies often read Scripture (not just the proof text passages, but the whole thing, assuming that it’s simply impossible that the Bible could ever affirm same-sex eroticism) is extremely tenacious and difficult to displace. That will be even more the case for conservatives who are not in the least uncomfortable with affirming a homophobic agenda.

Who is the audience, then? Certainly it is first of all religious homosexuals themselves, whose struggles — leading in many cases even to suicide — inspired Ted to write in the first place. If they can be convinced that the religious tradition with which they wish to remain identified is not foundationally opposed to their erotic practices, that in itself will significantly relieve suffering. But the aim seems to me to be wider: Ted wishes to supply advocates for full inclusion of practicioners of non-normative sexualities in religious life with the means to “go on the offensive,” with a way of saying that, more than simply violating a vague and easily dismissed principle of “love,” the homophobic agenda has deeply warped the reading of the very Bible it claims to champion.

In short, it provides the materials for a kind of “Gay Reformation,” a return to the sources of Christianity that undermines the interpretative, moral, and liturgical tradition, not out of a desire to “water down” Christianity or make it more palatable to “worldly” values, but out of fidelity to Christianity. The stakes here are high, arguably even higher than the simple inclusion of certain excluded individuals: what is more fundamentally at stake is the development of a new Christianity that would no longer be afraid of the erotic. The success of such an attempt is far from guaranteed, but Ted’s work here has cleared out a space where we can say with real integrity and seriousness: this is what we want Christianity to be, and we are right to want it.

Soviet piety

One occasionally comes across statements that attempt to say, in one way or another, that properly speaking we do not interpret the Bible — rather, the Bible interprets us.

Surely this is a deeply pious sentiment, one I am in no position to critique even if I have no idea what it is supposed to mean. What I would like to point out, however, is how easily this trope of pious discourse can be plugged into the format of one of my favorite jokes: “In Soviet Russia, Bible interprets YOU!!!”

On Theological Method

Recently, at Inhabitatio Dei, the concept of freedom was discussed — the initial move was to oppose proper Augustinian freedom to the more contemporary affirmation of pure freedom of choice.  What’s interesting here, particularly, is that it was noted that there might be an ideological dimension to this opposition. 
 
In the comments, I pressed the question of what a nonideological account might look like — and giving a fastforward description of what happened, after some relatively serious dialogue, it was said (not by me, but by others) that freedom is “about the divine power to call and create a human person”, that “freedom is the translation of human beings into the triune life of God,” that “True freedom is an event which happens as human persons are taken up, transfigured, re-created by God’s radical grace.”  Etc, etc, etc…
 
My question: What is going on here?  To what degree should such strongly “theological” responses to the very problematic concept of freedom be leaned upon?  Is this a Barthian tendency that I just don’t get? 
 
In my mind, such responses exhibit the worst tendencies of transcendence, a kind of eternal trump card that is effectively meaningless, except in order to satisfy one’s capacity to possess answers.

Milbank on Anselm

Previous Catholic theories [of atonement], including that of Anselm, never (if one reads carefully) suggested that an infinite God could receive any finite tribute, since this would have negated Christ’s aseity, and pre-Reformed theology was governed by principles of metapysical rigor. [Here he drops a footnote to David Bentley Hart, who is credited with a "superbly accurate" rendering of Anselm.] Rather, they all insisted that sin, as necessarily finite by definition, locks one into finitude, and so further into structures of death and sinfulness. This can be overcome only by the entry of the infinite into the finite and the paradoxical identification of the infinite with the finite. (Monstrosity of Christ, pg. 212)

How on earth could anyone read Anselm — however carefully — and come away with this summary? Indeed, what is this even supposed to mean? I would say that he is trying to prove that all of Anselm’s critics are wrong — and I must say that as a person who has spent considerable time with Anselm, written a dissertation chapter on him, and has a deep and abiding respect for Anselm, I just do not understand this desire to “save” Anselm from his mostly completely correct critics by reading him perversely — but there’s not even enough information being imparted for me to know that for sure.

But of course God can receive finite tribute! That’s what the monastic life is all about, going above and beyond the basic requirements by doing the more perfect and meritorious thing. And it’s within that framework that Anselm’s argument in Cur deus homo makes sense. That argument has, in later years, come to seem to have some undesirable consequences that Anselm himself did not perceive. People who try to “save” Anselm from his critics seem to recognize that those consequences actually are undesirable, insofar as they try to clear Anselm of any involvement with them. But why this desire to keep the name “Anselm” and attach it to the theory you’ve just made up and supplemented with a bizarre misreading of Anselm? Does he have some kind of superlative authority that I’m not aware of? I mean, I could see trying to pull this move with Augustine or Aquinas, or Luther or Calvin — but in Anselm’s case, you have to ask, why bother? Why not just come up with your own new theory and present it straightforwardly?

What I hope to do this summer

[Update: It has been suggested that I cross things off as I go, increasing the intensity of the superego imperative for myself and others.]

LS has done what I have been intending to do for a while, namely, write up a list of things that I need to do this summer. I have thought in the past that such a practice might be a helpful use for academic blogs, as it could add some social pressure to help us motivate ourselves to actually do said tasks, which would normally be done in isolation. So here is my list:

Writing

• The highly anticipated “awkwardness book” (20-30K words) [polished ms. submitted to publisher]
• Articles:
  • One on Agamben and secularism for Anthony’s edited volume on continental philosophy of religion
  • One on Zizek for a special issue of Zizek Studies on theology (not totally clear on whether this is happening for sure — should probably check)
  • One on Zizek for a special issue of La revue internationale de philosophie (not actually due until the end of 2009, but I’d like to get it out of the way)
• A review of The Monstrosity of Christ for Political Theology
• An AAR paper on patristic perspectives on the cross
• Get started on translating Agamben’s The Sacrament of Language, on which I just signed a contract with Stanford yesterday (manuscript due March 1, 2010) — sections 27 and 29 are already done
• Reader report for a journal article I’ve been asked to referee
• Work on preparing my dissertation for publication — exact details of this are unclear for now

Teaching
Do course prep for the fall (Liberation Theology, Classical Christian Thought I) [syllabi are at least drafted -- still more work to do, obviously] and, to the extent possible, get started on the winter quarter as well (Classical Christian Thought II, Old Testament). I’ll have a long break between fall and winter when I can polish the winter stuff and get started on spring.

Reading

• Various works on Judaism and Islam (with the primary goal of enriching my teaching on history of Christian thought) [Not nearly enough, but at least a start]
• A good chunk of Tertullian
• At least one more novel, perhaps Infinite Jest [I read The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry and subsequently completed Infinite Jest]

A thought: My long-range goal is to limit the amount I do on continental philosophy, and particularly on Zizek, in order to free up time to build up my CV in historical theology, but as you can see I’m not succeeding in that at all in the immediate future. Hopefully something will evolve out of my teaching on that front that I can do next spring/summer.

Dan Brown the Symptom

Ross Douthat’s column on Dan Brown is getting a decent amount of attention today, with theology blogging mega-star Halden quoting it approvingly. There are some cheap shots — as Yglesias points out, the claim that no one could advance conspiracy theories about Judaism and Islam and get away with it elides the fact that the Roman Catholic Church really is structured in a way that invites conspiracy theories, whereas Judaism and Islam are decentralized — but that’s not what I want to address. The problem with this article is its central premise, which poses cheesy eclectic “religiousness” against presumably more authentic religions:

In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.

I would contend that the problem with “Brownian” religion isn’t a lack of truth claims — instead, the problem is that it’s nothing but truth claims. It’s an overflow of purported knowledge about the real story behind Jesus, or in the case of an eclectic fascination with “world religions,” about the deeper truths expressed by all faith traditions. The distinction between “Brownian” religion and Roman Catholicism, for example, isn’t that the former has no truth claims while the latter offends our postmodern sensitivities by insisting that we take our medicine of truth claims — rather, it’s that the former is made up of truth claims that undermine loyalty to any particular institution (and implicitly reinforce a kind of generic “going with the flow”), while the latter is made up of truth claims that underwrite loyalty to a specific institution.

The accusation that eclectic “religiousness” is uncomfortable with truth claims in general acts as a smokescreen to avoid dealing with the real problem: namely, that religious institutions have consistently betrayed the trust of their constituents, making them open to anti-institutional conspiracy theory literature. What’s more, the people who most loudly claim to be loyal to the institution tend not to be the types of people you want to imitate — for instance, outside of a small hard core group, I doubt anyone found the anti-Obama/anti-abortion protestors at Notre Dame to be an admirable bunch, and I don’t think it was because they were offending postmodern sensibilities by standing up for truth claims.

(And I would add: what is more postmodern than standing up for the idea of strong truth claims in general? To the one who sees nothing but nihilism in the contemporary world, the great temptation is an “at least it’s an ethos” mindset — which is itself the most dangerous form of nihilism.)

I admit that I share Douthat’s distaste for generic “religiousness” or “spirituality,” but for a different reason: fundamentally, it’s not serious. Most of the time, it’s just a kind of vague curiosity that makes people into boring conversation partners full of spiritual platitudes. At its best, it can become a kind of stress-relief technique, which is certainly important and necessary — though perhaps not what the great religious traditions of humankind have been aiming at. But at the end of the day, much of what our great religious institutions are offering us is difficult to take seriously as well.

It begins

There has already been two edited volumes on Agamben, along with a special issue of a journal, and now we’re finally starting to see book-length treatments, including one specifically on law.

Even taking into account the inherent slowness of academic publication, I’m surprised it has taken this long for the secondary literature on Agamben to build up. Thinking of other continental types of within Agamben’s “tier,” Zizek is obviously well-covered by now, and the literature on Badiou was already a big part of his becoming popular in the English-speaking world. Even Nancy has had a couple intros, an edited volume, and a journal issue — and he doesn’t have an obvious “big book” on the level of Homo Sacer.

Religion and a “quest for meaning”

This week I was at a panel where someone attempted to define “religion” as a quest for meaning. That definition is obviously wrong, but it comes up constantly — among many, many other examples, Nussbaum defines religion in that way in Liberty of Conscience. It’s not that religion isn’t a quest for meaning, just that other things are as well, most notably philosophy. In addition, religion can also be things other than a quest for meaning, as in practices aiming at concrete benefits (sometimes derided as “superstition”). So the definition is simultaneously overly broad and overly narrow.

In my view, the simplest definition of “religion” is “stuff having to do with a god or gods and our relationship to them.” (Sidenote: I don’t think religion in that sense requires any commitment to transcendence or any particular account of what gods “are.”)

The obvious objection to this definition, of course, is Buddhism. But maybe Buddhism isn’t a religion! People say it’s more like a philosophy, so why not go all the way and say that it actually is a philosophy — indeed, that it is more of a philosophy in the classical sense of being a way of life than any of our modern Western philosophies. You get the benefit of an economical definition of religion and you get to put Buddhism into a category where it isn’t the constant counterexample. Everybody wins.

(This is stated declaratively but is intended merely as a suggestion.)

A rhetoric lesson

A lot of people seem to misunderstand the idea of an ad hominem attack. Instead of sticking to its traditional and well-known meaning, they prefer to use it as a kind of intensifier, meaning, “a counterargument that is too sharply worded or uses sarcasm.”

Surely these people have a right to complain about such counterarguments if they so desire. I don’t have a lot of patience for such complaints, but again, I have the right to express my impatience if I so desire. Free speech abounds, the glory of America! The problem, however, is that using an established term for this complaint renders that established term less useful for pointing toward its original meaning — that is, claiming that one’s opponent’s argument is incorrect due to flaws in his character. Obviously when the same term can cover the following two statements, there is a problem:

• “Your argument is, in my view, completely nonsensical and now I’m going to sarcastically draw reductio-ad-absurdam-style consequences from it.”
• “Why should anyone listen to you, since you’re just carrying water for the racists and homophobes of the world?”

Under the classical definition, only the latter is an ad hominem attack. The former is perhaps rude, perhaps annoying, perhaps immature, perhaps uncalled-for — but not an ad hominem attack. It works at the level of the argument, albeit not with the level of deep and abiding respect that the opponent would desire. The only tenuous claim to a personal attack is that by so attacking the argument, the attacker is also attacking the arguer as the kind of person who makes bad arguments — but is making bad arguments really a character flaw? Is it not rather a deficit in a certain skill, remediable only through practice in, precisely, argument? And is the attacker not presenting the arguer with an opportunity to further hone that very skill?

Here the attentive reader can probably already detect the irony that is at work: by falsely identifying a dismissive or less-than-fully-respectful response as an ad hominem attack, the accuser is in fact the one making an ad hominem attack, attacking the accused as the kind of person who makes spurious attacks, as a bad faith debater who is therefore unworthy of a hearing.

For purposes of clarity, I propose this maneuver be dubbed the meta-ad-hominem.

Further reflections on Milbank

I think it’s fitting that the metaphor of a misty day is so central to Milbank’s essay in The Monstrosity of Christ. No matter what that metaphor tells us about the structure of reality, it does tell us a lot about the experience of reading Milbank, where various names emerge briefly from the fog, grounded in a certain haziness.