Action and Reflection

Though this is ultimately a blog about Christian radical politics, we have been spending a lot of time so far on conceptual issues, and will continue to do so. This brief post will explain why we think this is a necessary task, and how we perceive this task.

It is common in left-leaning circles, theological or non, to insist that action is primary, with reflection coming afterward and leading back to action. In this view, presumably, right action is something we know about a priori, and reflection is to be understood and judged based on this already existing knowledge. Jesus' statement that "you will know them by their fruit" (cf. Matt. 7:16) is taken as confirmation of this view.

Along these lines, one never ceases to hear complaints about Karl Barth's theology that charge this "Red Pastor of Safenwil" with being too conceptual and not practical enough in his ethics (for a recent example, see here).

Finally, it is common today to find theologians espousing what has been called "strategic essentialism" on issues of sex and race. This method, while accepting the philosophical criticism of all "essentialisms," nevertheless makes use of essentialist thinking to advance (what is thought to be) liberating practice.

However, I think it not only possible but preferable to problematize, if not completely reverse this ordering. Reflection (theory, etc.), it seems clear to me,  accompanies, if it does not always preexist, all action worthy of the name. Of course, in our individual and corporate lives we tend to do a lot of things without thinking about them critically, from bodily functions such as breathing, to the use of language and symbols, to a whole host of more or less significant activities like engaging in commerce and the arts. But is this the kind of "action" that accords with liberation? I think not. Rather, that kind of action is done under a conscious interpretation, some sort of reflective construal of events and their significance.

Admittedly, and as a matter of simple fact, we are always already acting in our social lives under an interpretation, whether we are aware of it or not. But that would make the presciptive call to begin with action unnecessary. What is needed is always careful and perspicacious reflection. Only then can true action take place.

This is by no means to demean or belittle action, nor is it to minimize its importance or make it unnecessary. Rather, it understands action in such a way that reflection cannot be minimized or made unnecessary.

In the case of Barth, he was active in leftist politics before he was a professional theologian. The case of the philosopher Badiou is very similar: he, too, has been involved in political action about as long as he has been a philosopher. In both cases, these thinkers recognized more and more in their work that reflection and theory are absolutely necessary tasks to be undertaken in their own right. Otherwise, we lack the tools to see how it is that action so often goes astray, and we begin to lose any self-critical consciousness of our own goals and methods.

The Christian faith, interestingly enough, is in my view an idea about an action, specifically the action of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself. But even this action was done under an interpretation; it was a willfully chosen act. Here I think one can split the difference, as it were, between Hegelian and more traditional theology (for a discussion, see here). Hegelian theology sees the second person of the Trinity as the man Jesus, simply. Traditional theology sees the divine Son not only in the man Jesus (the logos incarnantus) but also always standing behind and to be understood in abstraction from the life of this man (the logos asarkos, defined as that which is neither incarnatus nor incarnandus). The middle way, and preferable to both of these alternatives, is to see the divine Son as always incarnandus. That means the divine Son as God's Word to the world is completely given in God's act of reconciliation in the man Jesus, but never to be reduced to this man. The Word is only in the humanity, relating to it in a way that is analogous (and more than analogous) to the relation between text and interpretation.

If, on the other hand, we think action is to be taken as absolutely primary, the inevitable result, I think, is that we assume a certain interpretation of events that will control both the action and the subsequent reflection, and never in such a way that it can be self-critical. I see this again and again in political and religious discussions. It is always assumed that what "we" (Americans, Presbyterians, etc.) did in the (recent or distant) past was obviously the right thing to do, so that further action must always be along the same lines and done under the same interpretation. Unfortunately, what appears again and again in these discussions is a battle over who gets to interpret the interpretation; that is, all seem eager to foist onto the past their preferred interpretation for the present and future. So whether we like it or not, we are always brought back to reflection.

Therefore we will continue on this blog to deal with the conceptual framework in its own right, working from that to the actions, political and otherwise, that are called for by that framework.

Radicalism and the Idea

I have been engaging in a discussion over at Clavi non defixi. The author, in a post, brings up an old, particularly German tradition of thought that sought after the essence of Christianity, sometimes finding it to be an idea, only to at least minimize its contemporary relevance. I thought at first he was against "essentialism" as such, but in the discussion he clarified that he did not think the search for essence was wrong-headed, just the equation of the essence with an idea.

It is our contention here that part, if not the lion's share, of the contemporary Church's problems lies precisely in a facile dismissal of the task of articulating just such an "essence" of Christianity, particularly as an idea. As we suggested in the previous post, this problem affects both the evangelical/fundamentalist "right" and the liberal/postmodern "left." On the right, the assumption is that the Bible and/or the Church's tradition is to be accepted uncritically, without any necessity of  understanding (and therefore being able to criticise) what deeper assumptions, arguments, principles, and the like may have caused the tradition to be what it is. On the left, the mere, factual diversity of viewpoints and opinions, old and new, is thought to be the inescapable matrix within which we constantly have to (or get to) renegotiate what we think and who we are as the Church. In both cases, no attempt is made to articulate the essence of the faith in such a way that new understandings can actually be judged as better, other than by the mere fact of them being new.

Obviously, there are problematic kinds of "essentialism." The question is whether that means the way forward is giving up on the question of truth and remaining at the level of opinions. The wager of this blog is that this is not the case.

The "essence" of Christianity cannot be the Bible or orthodoxy or any specific tradition. Clearly all of these things contain contradictions within them, some more significant than others. That means articulating that essence must be an ongoing, critical and constructive task. The right seems to accept that the task should be critical, without accepting that it must be ongoing. The left seems to accept it must be ongoing, but fails to see how it must be critical. Neither side accepts that it must be constructive. We are talking in generalities here, but precisely in general these things seem to hold true.

So what is the idea of Christianity? My hypothesis is that it is the idea of God's reconciling act in Jesus Christ. Three points will help to show how this is one idea: (1) following Karl Barth's actualism, we insist that the being of God and of humanity is found only in this act, not in some static essence lying behind it, (2) following Barth's understanding of election, as Bruce McCormack has explained it, we insist that this act in time, by an eternal divine decision, "constitutes" God's triune being such that there is nothing behind or before the decision for this act, and (3) because this act is a purposeful act, done under an interpretation, there is no room for interpretive arbitrariness on our part. It is an idea in action, and thus our ideas about it are appropriate, and can, as it were, participate in its singularity.

Obviously, in this format we cannot explain or defend all of this comprehensively. Nevertheless, it seems possible to see this articulation as the "essence," or, if you will, the "subject matter" of the Bible and of orthodox theology. Obviously this reading is constructive and critical. Particularly with regard to the orthodox tradition, it leaves behind the doctrine of impassibility. However, as McCormack has shown, it is possible to see some inherent difficulties and contradictions within the Chalcedonian formula and tradition which are helped by this reading. The assumption is that there is a subject matter about which the tradition tried to speak, and did so with relative success.

With regard to the Bible, do we not find a critical and constructive Biblical hermeneutic within scripture itself? The New Testament includes, and in many senses is an interpretation of the Old Testament. But it is obviously a critical and constructive hermeneutic; Jesus Christ is, in a way that often seems shameless to us, simply read into the Old Testament texts. Paul defends this hermeneutic explicitly in 2 Corinthians 3, insisting that one must lift the "veil" over the Old Testament by turning--not to the New Testament--but to "Christ." We are saying the same thing about the New Testament, the Bible as a whole, and the theological tradition. Christ is hermeneutical key, the subject matter, and the essence of these things. If you do not deal with this subject matter, a veil of incomprehension will blind you to what these things are really "about."

As we may explain in more detail in later posts, it seems possible to articulate all Christian doctrines as "categories" (to use a term of Sylvain Lazarus and Alain Badiou) of the one truth of God's reconciling act in Christ. That is, they are not independent ideas, but merely ways of understanding the one idea. Obviously Christology, and, through election, trinitarian doctrine, are included in that. As we will repeat again and again, it is particularly important, given both traditional and modern difficulties, to insist that the doctrine of creation be understood this way (i.e., not independently).

Because all doctrines are categories of this one truth, it is not necessary to appeal to any authoritarian sources which purport to speak about the subject matter of the faith as if from outside of it. Rather, the one truth speaks for itself.

All of the theological and ecclesial squabbles going on right now will never make one tiny step of progress until and unless the debate becomes an earnest inquiry into the subject matter of faith.