The Prince of This World: Thinking the Devil in Light of Agamben’s Kingdom and the Glory

[This paper was presented on Sunday, November 18, 2012, at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, under the auspices of the Theology and Continental Philosophy and Theology and Religious Reflection groups.]

The reader of the first three volumes of Agamben’s Homo Sacer series—the eponymous first volume, State of Exception, and Remnants of Auschwitz—could be forgiven for being skeptical. Though Agamben’s meditations on the question of sovereignty had an immediate purchase during the dark days of the Bush Administration, it could sometimes seem that he was guilty of stretching the concepts of the sovereign exception and bare life to the breaking point, forcing them to take on an explanatory burden they could not really bear. One could concede that when pushed to a certain extreme, the Western theologico-political machine breaks down into the confrontation of sovereign power and bare life, and perhaps even that the Western machine operates within the tension between the two—yet there is so much going on in that “between” that it seems impossible that it can all be accounted for in Agamben’s terms.

From this perspective, The Kingdom and the Glory represents a crucial turning point in Agamben’s project, deepening his account of Western theologico-political structures by beginning to work out how the logic of sovereignty is deployed and transformed in order to penetrate the fine-grained textures of everyday life. In place of the easily delimitable “state of exception” where the sovereign suspends the law in order to save it, we are directed toward the workaday realities of flexible management.

Though it is perhaps surprising that he derives this logic from the Christian theological tradition, it appears in retrospect that many of his key points were more or less hiding in plain sight.

Sunday’s sermon: “Good News to Those Whom the Church Has Hurt”

The following is my draft of this Sunday’s sermon, the sixth Sunday of Easter, at Zion “Goshert’s” United Church of Christ, where I am Pastor.  There is no mention of Memorial Day but the subject of grieving is one of the threads at work here.  (We have a Memorial service in our cemetery early Sunday morning, which keeps the civic celebration separate from the Sabbath celebration.)  The scripture I am drawing from primarily is John 14:15-21, Jesus’ last speech before the ascension, and Psalm 66 and 1 Peter 3:13-22 will also be read.  Among the hymns will be “Abide with Me,” which is one of the great hymns.

The main theological shift here is that Jesus’ promise to abide with his disciples, which shifts tribulation and rapture eschatologies, takes on new meaning, at least for me, if one considers John’s audience when this Gospel discourse was written.  The promise is one made to outcasts.

Advice thread: The Devil

Dearest readers, as I’ve often mentioned here, my next major project is going to be on the devil. My tentative title is The Prince of This World: The Devil as a Political Symbol, and I plan to flesh out the subthread of Politics of Redemption on the devil, both by adding more figures and by extending it into the early modern period — I figure Milton is a good place to end. I’m also intending to limit it to the devil in the Christian tradition, though perhaps I’ll need to extend it to other monotheistic traditions as well.

I’d like to get started on some preliminary research this summer, and so I thought I would see if any readers know of good primary or secondary sources on the devil or closely-related topics. I intend to have maybe one brief chapter on the devil in the Bible, but my main concern is with the devil in the patristic, medieval (probably mostly Western, though we’ll see how that goes), and early modern periods. Again, either primary texts (i.e., references to where major figures discuss the devil in detail or use devil-centric rhetoric) or good secondary texts (just assume that I’ve heard of Girard here). Secondary texts on the devil in Judaism and Islam would be helpful as well.

Thanks in advance for your help.

The Incarnation as God’s Leap of Faith

At perhaps the pivotal moment in the Church Dogmatics IV/1, Barth poses the question Cur Deus homo? He discusses the incarnation and what it meant for God “to deny the immutability of His being, His divine nature, to be in discontinuity with Himself, to be against Himself, to set Himself in self-contradiction” (184). Continuing with these questions, Barth goes on to ask about the how the perfect, eternal, and omnipotent God could become limited, lowly, and impotent. Barth considers what it meant that “His becoming man, consisted in this determination of God to be “God against God” (184). Further on he writes, “God in His incarnation would not merely give Himself, but give Himself away, give up being God. And if that was His will, who can question His right to make possible this impossibility?” (184). This rift, this gap in the Godhead for Barth culminates in cry of dereliction on the cross. With fear and trembling, Barth wonders if this cry ultimately is a temptation that would encourage the notion that there is a “contradiction and conflict in God Himself” (185). Barth comes very close but ultimately rejects this idea because “God gives Himself, but He does not give Himself away” (185). Also, God is a God of peace not confusion (1 Cor 14:33). Despite the fact that God experiences this contradiction, “He acts as Lord over this contradiction even as He subjects Himself to it” (185). As Barth approaches the mystery of Christian theology, he stops short. He looks over the cliff but refuses to jump. At the very moment where he could ultimately embrace the death of the sovereign God, he pulls back. The sovereign God ultimately never left the control station even at the cross. Altizer once said that the death of God could help us finally come to terms with what the cry of dereliction actually meant for the Godhead. Radical death of God theologians seem to be the only theologians who actually take this question seriously.

Lent 1: Re-Member-Ing the Dis-Member-Ed

This morning’s sermon at Zion “Goshert’s” United Church of Christ, Lebanon, PA…  The lectionary readings for today are Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 and Matthew 4:1-11.  Today is a Communion Sunday for the congregation.

Many of us know this story from the Bible.  Shortly after being baptized, Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, fasting, and at the end of his fasting, the devil appears to him.  The devil tempts Jesus into making a magic trick, of transfiguring or changing stones to become loaves of bread.  But Jesus says no.

Then the devil took Jesus to the highest point of the temple, and said, if you are God, allow yourself to fall to safety.  And Jesus says no.

And then the devil brought Jesus to a high mountain, and there Jesus is offered all of the kingdoms of the world, if he would worship the devil.  And Jesus says no again.

What I find so interesting about this is that what the devil is actually tempting Jesus to do in all three of these cases here is something that Jesus himself later accomplishes. 

Devil Course Capstone Lecture

For the final session of my course Images of the Devil (syllabus here), I decided to write out a more formal lecture, somewhat on the model of a conference paper, to summarize and push forward the primary themes of the course, both to provide “closure” for the students and to spur myself toward developing a research project along these lines. The text follows, and readers who were skeptical of having group presentations will note that the presentations were, by and large, a great success — we’ll see about the final group papers.

I would like to begin by thanking you all for participating in this class. I conceived of the course as a collaborative research seminar, and I think that we have succeeded in making it that. Your presentations have contributed significantly to the course content, and discussion has generally been as good as could be expected for such a large class and an awkwardly laid-out classroom. I believe you have all benefited from each other’s work, and I have benefited as well—this course has spurred my own thinking in significant and unexpected ways.

What began as an attempt to follow up a strangely insistent sub-theme in my dissertation has moved closer toward a real research agenda, driven not only by the need to more clearly formulate my ideas for lectures and discussion, but also by your presentations and miscellaneous remarks in class (probably most often by remarks the students in question don’t even remember making). My goal for this paper presentation is simply to lay out my initial thoughts about how I might follow up on this class in my own scholarly work—but I hope it will be helpful in spurring your thinking as well, both for your final papers and beyond.

In the syllabus, I said that the course readings “trace a course from early Christianity to modern literature, attempting to find the theological roots of the modern tendency to view the devil as a fascinating and even heroic character—most famously in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.” Though we spent a significant amount of time in the biblical, patristic, and medieval eras, the real motivating question behind this course was about the modern era, a suspicion that understanding the strange fascination that the devil exerts on us might help to illuminate something about the modern West and about its relationship to its own past.

Further Crowdsourcing

I have been putting off mentioning this for fear of outrunning the big Other and getting burned, but T&T Clark has offered me a book contract for a revised version of my dissertation, under the title Politics of Redemption: The Social Logic of Salvation.

I am breaking my silence because my editor has asked me about a potential cover image, and I need help. Everyone agrees that something featuring the devil is absolutely essential, and I’m thinking there must be some medieval painting that would capture the spirit of my project in some oblique way. Anthony suggested the image above, which he got from this post, but I think it might be a little “much.”

I’m not sure I necessarily want something with the cross on it, though I’m not 100% sold on its absence — perhaps something like a “temptation in the desert” scene? Or maybe — and this is actually a good idea that I just suddenly thought of — something that juxtaposes the temptation of Adam and Eve with the temptation of Christ? Basically, anything that could include Adam, Christ, and the Devil would be totally perfect.