Christ did more than just suffer

Blogging mega-star Halden has posted a long quotation from an article by James Alison that Halden designates as excellent. (It’s a marvel to me that theology bloggers so seldom read something that falls short of complete excellence.) Here is a relevant portion:

And this for me is the central point in any discussion about monotheism and idolatry: what is the criterion by which we can learn the difference between idolatry and worship? The answer which the Catholic faith gives me is this: the reason why it is possible to be non-idolatrous is because God has given us God’s own criterion for what it looks like to be non-idolatrous. And that criterion, given that God has no parts or divisions, and in every movement towards us is One, is also God. The criterion took the form of a lived-out fully human life story, that of Jesus, whose meaning was the reverse of all the human criteria that are usually brought into play in such stories. God gave, as God’s own criterion for God’s own power, not the power of Emperors, legislators or Priests, but the ability to occupy the space of losing, curse, shame and death without being run by them, in such a way that that space and the whole anthropological structure of human existence that depends on it, is able to be relativised. Idolatry is seen to be an involvement in the human cultural reality of death from which God longs for us to be free.

In the comments to the post, I react with the annoyance that people have come to expect from me:

Why the “reverse”? Why not say that it was different from everyday standards, yet recognizably good nonetheless? Why this fetishizing of reversal for its own sake? It leads you to miss things — like the joyfulness of Christ’s life. He didn’t submit to the cross because that would really fuck with our preconceptions. Right? God isn’t just willfully trying to screw with us because he would be mad if our expectations were too accurate, right? Seriously. It’s perverse, the way so many Christians fetishize Christ’s suffering as though it’s the key to everything.

I’d like to expand on these remarks here, at some length. I am perfectly happy to say that Christ is against “the power of Emperors, legislators or Priests.” If I didn’t think he was, then I wouldn’t identify at all with Christianity. What I object to is the supposed logical consequence, namely that Christ’s true power is “the ability to occupy the space of losing, curse, shame and death without being run by them.” Why is it that God appears to be so bound by the expectations precisely of the Powers? Why does rejecting their claims amount to “losing, curse, shame, and death” and only that?

Look at things from the perspective of the oppressed. To them, is “the power of Emperors, legistlators, or Priests” a self-evidently desirable and good thing? Sure, it’s better to be powerless than not if you’re in the current system, but once you see an alternative to that entire structure in Christ, those power positions don’t seem very appealling. No one is going to follow Christ if he’s saying, “Just suffer for its own sake, because I’m God and I’m here to mess with your shit!” No — they follow Christ because of the joyfulness of his life, because of the unexpected abundance he brings along with him.

His life is recognizably good and appealling, and if you’re oppressed by the structure rather than benefiting from it, you can see that clearly. If you’re benefiting from it, he looks like a total nihilist who will destroy everything — and so with much regret and hemming and hawing, you must unfortunately put him to death. But again, I think it’s perverse to claim that this was the goal. Christ’s willingness to face death — though please note, he doesn’t do so stoically or nobly, he’s crying out in honest agony — is absolutely crucial to what he’s doing, because it shows that he absolutely refuses the blackmail of the earthly Powers and because it subsequently empowers his followers to refuse that same blackmail.

The alternative he’s offering isn’t to accept suffering instead of power — it’s to reject that dyad altogether and live with one another in a way that is not determined by that dyad. What he’s offering is something that is perhaps unexpected and yet still recognizable, something we didn’t realize we were hoping for. What he’s not offering is a simple reversal of the given for its own sake that we’re supposed to embrace because it shows how awesomely transcendent God is. I’m not a huge fan of transcendence, but this position doesn’t even give us real transcendence: God’s actions are still being determined by the Powers, only negatively.

In fact, I wonder if transcendence can ever really get us past this point to a genuine independence, where God’s actions are first of all independent and good and then you notice, “Ah yes, the world is in thrall to these Powers — I guess we’d better figure out a way to deal with that, too.” I believe that the patristic authors often do the latter rather than the former, particularly Irenaeus, and it makes sense in that context that he believes the Incarnation would’ve happened regardless of whether we’d sinned — and I would add that Irenaeus does not seem to me to embrace a doctrine of transcendence, or certainly not of the kind we are accustomed to.

The doctrine of transcendence that is bandied about most often just gives us a kind of fun-house mirror on the world: suffering is good, turns out! But no, it’s not good. It’s unavoiable and can sometimes form part of a larger strategy of resistence, but in itself, it’s bad. To claim otherwise is stupid and morally bankrupt, whether you’re a theologian writing an article or a transcendent God with a petty fixation on fucking with people’s shit.