A hypothetical parallel

As I’ve been reading Scholem this summer and as I’ve therefore become increasingly familiar with the Sabbatian movement, a hypothetical parallel occurs to me: making Sabbatianism so central to his understanding of Jewish history is like a scholar of Christianity making Mormonism central to his or her understanding of Christian history. This is not to say that Mormonism necessarily could be made to fill a parallel role, but I’m just trying to get a feel for how daring his move is — since I get the impression that Sabbatianism, like Mormonism for most mainstream Christians, is something mainstream Jews would like to forget about. (Pelikan doesn’t even mention it in The Christian Tradition.)

NOTES:

• Perhaps a closer parallel is the central role that Taubes grants to Joachim of Fiore in Occidental Eschatology.
• Also, searching in the archives I found this post arguing in favor of “quasi-Mormonism.”

Pain Compliance

In light of the crackdown on the protests in Toronto the past few days, I thought I’d do my very small part to get some attention on a fabulous and frightening article about these crackdown procedures from the March 2010 Harper’s. The article was was at the time mostly ignored because of the Gitmo suicides piece in that same issue. But I think its time has come. This post is still behind Harper’s pay wall, so I may not keep this up for too long. I encourage you to download.

“The church” as anti-market

There is a reflexive tendency for “the church”-fetishists to claim that the practices of “the church” are ipso facto anti-capitalist. I find this opposition curious. I’ll grant, for instance, that the experience of going to church is dissimilar from that of shopping or going to work. But is difference simply the same thing as opposition? If so, then it seems like you could say that virtually any religious practice is anti-capitalist — just to throw out a couple examples, Shar’iah law outlaws charging interest, and Amish practice obviously takes a different view of technological progress.

So why is “the church” a privileged site of resistence to capitalism in these people’s minds? At bottom, I suspect it’s because capitalism developed out of Christian society. And here’s where it potentially gets weird, because it taps into a long-standing pattern that seems to be specifically Christian — namely, believing that one’s enemies are acting solely out of perversity. In Trachtenberg’s study The Devil and the Jews, he brings this up over and over again: the underlying logic of medieval anti-Semitism was based on the assumption that the Jews actually knew that Christianity was true, but rebelled solely out of a desire to be evil. Something similar happens with Satan’s fall, which is gradually removed from the “mythological” narrative that would attribute jealousy to him and is turned into an incomprehensible motiveless malignancy (as in Anselm’s De casu diaboli).

These “the church”-fetishists are not consciously embracing such a simplistic theory, but the thought pattern seems to be informing them. We can tell that capitalism is anti-Christian (and Christianity is anti-capitalist) because living in a Christian society must’ve been so self-evidently desirable that anyone who would depart from it must’ve been driven by an insane desire to negate Christian values for their own sake. One can also detect this attitude in Milbank’s narrative of modern “nihilism” as a Christian heresy — despite the sophistication of his genealogy in Theology and Social Theory, the game is given away in the summary itself: modernity is defined solely in relation to Christianity and solely as negation.

Summer goals — Or, Goal #1: Not to have goals

This summer two factors — namely, continuing to get a paycheck and not yet being on the tenure track — have combined to give me remarkable freedom. The only thing that I really have to do is develop the Global Christianity course, which will take significant work but won’t require the whole summer by a longshot. I am probably also reaching the point of diminishing returns when it comes to pre-tenure-track publishing, given the two books coming out next year. I do have a handful of article ideas that I could probably work up relatively quickly, and I would like to do one just to show, as my advisor says, that I haven’t retired.

For the most part, though, this is my first major opportunity to do concentrated reading since I finished my exams. I’m trying to let my interests guide me and so am not setting myself a strict list — but I do know that I want to do further research in Judaism, and for that I’m starting with a list of recommendations Bruce gave me when I was trying to figure out how to develop courses in the area. I’m hoping to go through some 2nd Temple stuff as well, as time allows, primarily the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.

Aside from the global Christianity stuff, I’d also like to get into postcolonial theory (which will help for that course and for doing the feminist theology course again next year) and just generally “catch up” on things that I’ve been neglecting. This summer might actually see me engaging with Deleuze, for example, and I’ve also picked up a copy of the oft-mentioned Hegel Contra Sociology by Gillian Rose. The books that I currently have bookmarks in are Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism and The Messianic Idea in Judaism (the latter of which I put on hold until I finish the former, because nearly all the essays I have left are on Hasidism, which I didn’t know very much about) and Talal Asad’s Formations of the Secular.

I also want to work on my Greek, primarily by working my way through the authentic letters of Paul. I’ve done them roughly in reverse order of length, so at this point I’ve gone through 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, and Philemon, and I’ve started 2 Corinthians. I’m hoping to go over all of them at least twice, and then perhaps I’ll start going through the rest of the NT, too. I already feel more confident on Greek from doing it nearly every day, but at some point I think I’ll need to go through a grammar again to really solidify everything.

So overall, viewed from a career perspective, I’m taking advantage of this limbo period to really solidify language skills and engage with new bodies of literature, which will provide a firmer foundation for future research and teaching. From a human perspective, I’m enjoying having a chance to just read.

Paul’s Two Minds on the Law: Or, Paul’s One Mind on the Jews

In recent months, I have been advancing a fairly “strong” reading of the authentic letters of Paul, with Romans 9-11 as the guiding thread on his relationship to Judaism. As I’ve been going through the letters in Greek, though, my reading completely ran aground on Galatians. It seems clear that any attempt to get one consistent position from Paul on this issue is impossible, and that’s because Paul is always responding to events — as indeed his very mission to the Gentiles is a response to an event (the apocalyptic vision of Christ).

I’ve also been reading Gershom Scholem’s work on messianism in the last couple weeks, and based on what he says there, I’d say that Paul starts out as an “anarchist” messianist (as opposed to the kind of messianist who thinks the law will be intensified in the messianic age) — perhaps because the coming of the messiah required the ingathering of the Gentiles, Paul concludes that the law loses its force for the new messianic era.

Language and Idolatry

At Bruce Rosenstock’s suggestion, I read Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism (1783) this week. The goal of the work is twofold. First, Mendelssohn wants to demonstrate from natural law that there can be no such thing as “ecclesiastical law” (i.e., religious coersion). Second, he develops a compelling reading of Judaism as essentially the religion of reason.

In the second half, which is where the real emotional charge lies for Mendelssohn and where he was taking the greatest risks, he proceeds by means of a series of reversals. Where people have claimed that Judaism is the very pinnacle of religious coersion, he wants to show that the observances point toward universal religious truths. Similarly, where people have claimed that Judaism is a pure particularity and an example of “special revelation,” he wants to show that the doctrines of Judaism are at bottom identical with the general truths of religion that are equally available to all — the Jews would hence be a kind of living reminder of the truths of monotheism during the inevitable periods of decline and idolatry.

The reversal I’d like to talk about, though, is his claim that, far from being the ultimate “religion of the letter,” Judaism (at least in its earliest and most authentic form) is designed from the ground up to be a religion of living spirit. My Derridean radar was set off by a lengthy discussion of the origin of language, which at first seemed to be a self-indulgent aside but then revealed itself to be a crucial part of his argument. Though falling broadly within the tradition of privileging speech over writing, Mendelssohn adds his own twist: the problem with writing is that it leads to idolatry. While writing is useful and necessary, in the inevitable progress of human folly, the symbol is worshipped and its authentic meaning is lost. Hence the role of the Oral Law in Judaism: while the basic points are preserved in writing, it must be continually supplemented with the living human voice, with living deliberation, in order to be applied. This oral element keeps the law from ever being a dead letter — instead, the religion is structured in such a way as to prompt reflection and debate that will continually push for ever deeper meaning. (Mendelssohn views the codification of the Oral Law as something of a fall from grace.)

This brings us back to one of the major points of the literature on religion from Mendelssohn’s era: for them, religion is — perhaps paradoxically to our minds — considered strictly the realm of persuasion. Judaism in its original form (or what Mendelssohn claims as its original form) was explicitly structured around persuasion, as the living deliberation around the meaning of the law essentially requires that everyone living under the law be continually persuaded to follow it — and in fact, the observance itself means that this persuasion goes beyond simple mental affirmation to involve the body as well.

Judaism, then, is for Mendelssohn simply what religion should be, a living reminder of what religion should be — and for practical purposes in his setting, the Jewish law and supposed “special revelation” are, paradoxically to his readers’ eyes, precisely the best reminder that religion cannot and should not be subject to coersion. Indeed, extrapolating somewhat from his argument, any religion that loses that persuasive element, that fails to engage the spirit in an authentic way, can only be idolatry. So in the end, Mendelssohn is not just asking for religious tolerance: he’s asking the European nations to renounce their idolatry.

Update on Change in the UK

Today fairies lent their mighty steel to the ascendant Red Tory Gideon Osborne. Together they went about cementing the re-enchantment of the world by cutting public spending. Cuts which would help re-enchant the poor most, with rises on VAT and cutting corporate tax rates, driving the poor out of the hands of Big Government, who helped clothe and feed them, back into the arms of hope and faith. Remember, as that great Briton Jesus said, God remembers even the sparrows. The fairies and gallant Gideon also looked to liberate the universities, slashing their disenchanting spending by 25% and assuring that education would belong to the virtuous and ordained by God, while those who are meant to clean toilets and work at call centres will be able to join toilet cleaning guilds and call centre cooperatives, while recent PhDs are now free to pursue ordination in the ministry. What the enemies of re-enchantment, those left-wingers responsible for the fairie holocaust, what they fail to realize is that fostering inequality is the new equality. Even the liberals now know that fairness is the new equality and what is fair is that the whom God chooses to be rich gets richer.

Religion as “baggage”

Recent discussions on this blog have reminded me of a tic of many theologians: a tendency to jump straight to the level of competing, incompatible presuppositions, which presumably can never talk to each other. Often this is couched in the language of the other guy excluding the theologian who’s speaking: “If you can’t buy into my religious framework, then I don’t see how you’re going to be convinced.” On a less severe level, there’s a definite resistence to speak about Christian truths in anything but Christian jargon, as though a failure to use the traditional vocabulary is a step down a slippery slope. In many ways, it’s like the dynamic where Republicans claim government can’t work and then govern poorly in order to prove it — theologians claim that fundamental dialogue is impossible and then demonstrate it in their practice.

Thinking about this dynamic, I’ve returned to Bonhoeffer’s notion of “religionless Christianity.” Admittedly, the passages in the Letters and Papers from Prison are difficult to interpret and his definition of “religion” is idiosyncratic — to me, he seems to mean something like “the drama of the soul with its God,” centered on the fundamental weakness or sinfulness of humanity — but I think there is a kernel there that can be applied to these types of discussions.

A clue in this regard is his claim that he prefers to discuss theology with non-believers, because there he can be open and frank, whereas conversation with believers is stifling. So even if his definition of “religion” might be different if he were writing today, I’d say there would still be an overall push toward a Christianity without all the baggage.

For example, in this baggage-less Christianity, one would be able to view the life of Jesus as an event of the utmost importance, bearing directly on the meaning of human existence; to find the Hebrew and Christian scriptures (or at least part of them: we all have a “canon within the canon”) compelling and worthy of serious study and consideration; and to find certain Christian communities and practices attractive — and that could be enough. You wouldn’t have to sign up for the bullshit, whether that bullshit be a literal six-day creation, an infallible structure of apostolically-sanctioned authority, a conflation of abortion with murder, a mutated Aristotelian view of sexuality that renders all non-reproductive sex acts sinful, or even more basic stuff such as traditional theism or the existence of the soul.

The benefit of this approach is that you would be able to talk to actual human beings about your convictions. You would be able to give reasons why Jesus is a compelling figure or why the Scriptures have continued relevance, without playing the trump card of “God says so.” More broadly, you could talk directly about what you’re actually doing rather than first getting people to buy into some kind of narrative where they have to make sacrifices in this world in order to guarantee their place in the next.

Some might say this is “cafeteria Christianity” and that you have to take it all or leave it and that an attempt to “water things down” like this is just a capitulation to liberalism (which we oppose because… it’s not Christianity, I guess) — but I think that underlying all that rhetoric is a profound lack of faith in Christianity. If we don’t have hellfire to threaten people with, then no one will bother to show up for church. If we don’t present it as a key to the transcendent realm of God, people will leave the Bible on the shelf.

I don’t think that’s true, though, or at least I’m willing to take the gamble that people can find the Christian intellectual tradition, Christian communities, and Christian practices appealling without having a bone to pick with evolution, without caring about sex acts between consenting adults, without declaring fealty to the pope — indeed, without “believing in God.” Perhaps that’s a bad gamble to take, but if it turns out that Christianity can’t survive without the bullshit, then it’s all bullshit.

A critique of Amazon’s recommendation algorithm

On the Difficulty of Writing on Laruelle

Work on my doctoral thesis has taken priority as I barrel towards the deadline and with most of my other projects out of the way (some promotion for After the Postsecular and the Postmodern, a bit more publisher work left for the Future Christ translation, and some beginning stages work for a possible new project, but nothing that will demand huge amounts of attention) I can finally focus on the writing. I find that I can still do the bulk of research and some background reading while I’m engaged with other projects, but when it comes down to the writing I put on blinders and try to shut myself off from the world (gnosis as writing). I haven’t talked about the particulars of my thesis here, but broadly speaking it is an engagement with environmental philosophies and theologies, though I tend to deal with some of the more metaphysical questions of environmental thought, rather than the ethical (which is the norm in the field). Ethics is still important and, in fact, the real goal of the thesis is to do something like Spinoza’s unified thought of ethics and ontology.