Welcome to a new blog! I have not been blogging for years. Back in the day, I used to blog occasionally at The Gordian Knott. Now I'm starting over. This post will discuss what this blog is about, why it is needed, and what distinguishes it from alternatives.
Red Fish is dedicated to radical Christian thought. "Radical" names a formal quality of the thought, and "Christian" names the material content.
There are plenty of blogs out there already for the kind of thought which combines a "radical" (leftist, communist, socialist, etc.) political stance, informed by content other than the Christian gospel, with an understanding of Christianity, synthetically. There are also blogs which, seemingly, wish to simply be "Christian" in a radical sense, but in such a way that their Christianity is apparently informed (in part, at least) by external content. Finally, following the thought of Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou, others seemingly wish to understand Christianity strictly formally, in terms of its subjective disposition, while ignoring, down-playing, or denying Christian content altogether.
Red Fish will assume and advocate a distinct perspective and method. It is our view that Christianity itself is a definable singularity of thought, neither needing nor allowing any foreign content to be smuggled into it or added to it synthetically. This singularity concerns God in Jesus Christ (crucified), and as such it concerns the whole of the ethical life. That means there is a distinctively Christian understanding of (the ethical dimension of) politics, economics, sexuality, etc.; in short, everything that concerns our embodied existence.
The reason we distinguish our perspective on the Christian faith with the term "radical" is that we are convinced that this quality of thought is inescapably inherent in the content of this singularity. That is, we are radical because we are Christians, full stop. It is because of this, and in this, that we find common cause with other radicals (communists, etc.).
However, we do not simply agree with other, non-Christian radicals. The form/content distinction is helpful here. Non-Christian radicals share the radical form of Christian thought, and as such are to be seen as allies. But their radicality is the form of a different content than ours. Therefore it is not a matter of agreeing with the communists on "political" matters whilst disagreeing with them on "religion." We sometimes disagree with them on political and/or social matters as well. And insofar as other Christians are not radical politically, it will be seen that they disagree with us theologically.
Other times, of course, we agree with non-Christian radicals on particular issues. This does not mean we are secretly really not Christians, or something in addition to Christians, on those issues. Nor does it mean that other radicals are "anonymous Christians" on those issues. Our agreements can be seen as ad hoc agreements; we can acknowledge agreement on issues which we reach by different paths. There are also, of course, theological issues to be dealt with in future posts, including natural theology, general revelation, parables, and the like, but we cannot deal with them here. The point is that we think all of ethics from Christianity itself, acknowledging and making use of agreements with non-Christians where they appear, but ultimately not driven by a desire for these agreements.
That, we think, will make Red Fish distinct. Hopefully some will find it helpful.
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