Archive for the 'Theology' Category

Notes on Techno-Religion

Published on 17 October 2009 ago in Religion and Theology. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

I was involved in an ESF-sponsored workshop on technology and religion this past week. While the discussion focused on communicative technologies and media, we did drift at times beyond that. Here are some scribbles and notes of mine from the various sessions.

Mediation

Our first session started with Birgit Meyer and Bengt Kristensson Uggla. Conceiving of media as something external to religion makes questions regarding the intersection of the two unanswerable. However, if media is seen as being embedded within religion, these issues are transformed into understandable practices. Media, then, is able to mediate religious thoughts and beliefs. In this way, media become sacralised so that mediation is made immanent and the gap between and believer and the transcendent is significantly reduced. This immediacy, mitigated through semiotic ideology, denies media as media and leads to its being externalised. It may be a good idea to think of theology as a theory of mediation. Lastly, technology makes globalisation immediately local (again, mediation).

Identity

The second session was led by Siegfried Zielinski and Jan-Olav Henriksen (sorry, this one is in Norwegian). One important thing to keep in mind is that media as a generalised concept did not arise until the mid-20th century (i.e. the last 50-60 years). Communicative technologies existed prior to that (obviously), but these were particulars. Today’s globalisation is seeing the harmonisation and unification of media so that the different technologies appear seamless. Electricity has become the ’soul’ of ‘new media’, animating it as a machine. Machines always reduce complexity and mediate between two objects. It used to be that we humans had to believe in machines in order for them to work (i.e. by turning a switch, etc); but now machines have returned the favour by believing in us to animate them (e.g. interactive games, television, etc). On the other hand, religion provides a chain of memory–however fragmented and disjointed it may be. This is mediated by technology. However, technology can create a sensory excess that creates a feeling of divine presence without that chain of memory. In other words, technology has made it possible for one to participate in a religious community without ‘really’ participating in that community (e.g. Yoga videos in YouTube that provide simple instruction without the ‘full Yoga experience’). As Zielinski noted,  one is ‘always the same, never myself’ (his own reversal of the Calvin Klein tag line ‘Always myself, never the same’).

Secularisation

The third session was presented by Ola Sigurdson, Jayne Svenungsson, and Lieven Boeve. It is quite clear that religion isn’t ‘returning’ because it never left in the first place. The ‘privatisation’ of religion has led to a loss of body and particularity as religion loses its institutional form (c.f. Olivier Roy’s Globalised Islam). This ‘private religion’ turns religion into a fetish. In fact, this new ‘personalised’ religion has transformed religious pilgrimages such that the relics now go to the people instead of the people going to the relics. Technology isn’t showing us a ‘post-secular’ world (as in a ‘return of religion’) but rather a transformation of religion in the public space, particularly in the cases of extremist religious groups which have found new solidarity and strength in the techno-globalised world.

Revolutions

The fourth session was led by Caroline Vander Stichele, Ward Blanton, and Edmund Arens. Echoing the sentiment of the first session of technology being closely tied to religion, this session dealt with looking at religious revolutions based on technological revolutions. One example is that of Yoga in the West as a practice originally separated from its Hindu roots. However, it has become its own consumer-driven religion in which one can get meditative tranquility instantly. Another example, is Augustine’s discussion of the divine postal network (e.g. messenger angels, etc) in relation to his understanding of the Roman Empire’s postal network. Religion needs to be addressed as a communicative practice of memory and narrative. The danger of a consumer-driven religion is, as I mentioned above, the kind of (private) participation without (public) participation. Religion must occur in both the public and the private sphere.

Subjectivity

The final session was led by Arne Grøn and Anne Kull. Subjectivity is the key notion to formulate the problems above (between religion and society) as it gets directly at the concept of identity construction both in relation to the world and the self. In expressing oneself, one exteriorises oneself and bridges the divide between the public and private spheres. Public life is only possibile if it acknowledges a private life as well. Religion, as a public activity, is a meta-sphere of visibility of publicised figures (i.e. private individuals). However, one should be wary to use the term ‘virtual’ in describing religion in the new media (e.g. online churches) because in one very real sense, all churches are ‘virtual’ as they represent the ‘real’ church in a locality. There must be a hermeneutics of subjectivity as it is implied by a phenomenological ontology (a la Heidegger).

Paradoxa

Published on 8 October 2009 ago in Philosophy and Theology. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Hopefully, this is not against my better judgment, but I want to throw a little piece of something I’m working out at the moment.

Deleuze’s theory of meaning and sense is best described as ‘a series of paradoxes’, partly because ’sense is a nonexisting entity, and, in fact, maintains very special relations with nonsense’ (Logic of Sense, xiii). Paradoxes are produced from the relationship between sense and nonsense; it is the very excess of that relationship. I suggest that this can also be interpreted through Tillich’s definition of paradox as the ‘logical form in which the perfectly concrete and the perfectly absolute are united’ (Systematic Theology 1, 167). While the word choice is different, the content is strikingly similar. Tillich’s ‘perfectly concrete’ speaks of a particular instance within the finite–in other words an understandable revelation. This is very much in agreement with Deleuze’s usage of ’sense’. For both, this is not a final entity but a result, dependent upon the subject’s own context. The difficulty in equating Tillich’s and Deleuze’s definitions of ‘paradox’ comes with the second part of the ‘perfectly absolute’ and nonsense, respectively. For Deleuze, nonsense is can be compared to Tillich’s ‘perfectly absolute’ only as the infinite abyss beneath the surface. For Tillich, this abyss is the nonexisting God, the ground of Being.(ST1, 264) For Deleuze, however, this abyss is an empty signifier, a position without meaning; and this non-thing bears no relation to Being. With these differences aside, paradoxes are produced from the relationship between ’sense’ and something else (the absolute or ‘nonsense’). Deleuze paints the two (sense and nonsense, that is) using the image of a Möbius strip; the two form the two halves of the the hermeneutical cycle that plays in the figuring of sense; it is the ‘coexistence of two sides without thickness’ as a flat, endless plane of meaning(LS, 22). For Deleuze, a symbol’s meaning is an infinite regress of signification where a symbol always and only points to other symbols. He has reduced this regress to a process of four steps which repeat infinitely:

There is [1] the name of what the song really is; [2] the name denoting this reality, which thus denotes the song or represents what the song is called; [3] the sense of this name, which forms a new name or a new reality; and [4] the name which denotes this reality, which this denotes the sense of the name of the song, or represents what the name of the song is called. (LS, 30)

The meaning of this process, that is the sense of the symbol, occurs twice because both events are ‘two simultaneous faces of one and the same surface, whose inside and outside, their “insistence” and “extra-being”, past and future, are in an always reversible continuity’ (LS, 34). In other words, meaning occurs both when an object of sense is seen as being formed from other symbols and as constituting the formation of other symbols. In semiotic terms, sense occurs as the synthesis of two different series: one as signifier and one as signified. At the point of this synthesis, a singularity of sense is created in both series: as an empty place within the series of signifier and a supernumerary object within the signified series. The relation of these series at their convergence forms the dual meaning of an object as a paradox between sense and nonsense. Nonsense should not be understood as the absence of sense but as that which produces sense; likewise sense produces nonsense as the two form a paradox of meaning throughout both series of signification. Meaning is the excess of these productions such that it occurs in both directions, simultaneously. In other words, the meaning of an object is only understood when it is placed within the context of its own text. A short example here would be one’s understanding of a sentence. A particular sentence has no meaning until every word and expression within that sentence is understood within the context of the language (i.e. within the context of its general usage) and within the context of the sentence (i.e. as the particular usage). While a phrase may have a metaphorical meaning (e.g. ‘kick the bucket’), that particular usage can only be understood within the context of a particular sentence as it also has a non-metaphorical meaning; this cannot be realised until the phrase’s context is realised. At that moment of realisation, the event of meaning finally occurs. In summary, meaning as the ultimate regression is what Deleuze terms the ‘excess’ of signification; it is the redundancy that arises when a signifier is realised to signify its own self (A Thousand Plateaus, 114). To clarify this one more time: a symbol’s meaning is understood only when the entirety of the semiotic relations that develop out of and into that symbol are understood—the symbol as a singularity.

Returning to Tillich, now, we can cast new light on Tillich’s usage of symbols. Symbols point beyond themselves like signs, however they must also ‘participate in the reality of that for which they stand’ (ST1, 265). This participation, in Deleuzian terms, is the duality of cause and effect which must coexist for the event of sense to occur. A symbol that does not participate in such a reality lacks the cause that gives it meaning; a symbol is meaningless without a creative relationship with its reference. A cross has no meaning in Buddhism itself because it, as a symbol, does not participate in the Buddhist reality. It is the duality of cause and effect which provides a reciprocal relation for a symbol and its reference in that the reference itself (e.g. the death and resurrection of Christ) becomes an occupant without a place within the signification of the symbol (e.g. the cross) and the symbol becomes an empty place within the signification of the reference. It is in this reciprocity that symbol and reference participate in one another; and this is the singularity that produces meaning. Tied with this is something implied in Tillich which Deleuze makes explicit: symbols always produce meaning, regardless of what that meaning is: ‘Your wife looked at you with a funny expression. And this morning the mailman handed you a letter from the IRS and crossed his fingers….It doesn’t matter what it means, it’s still signifying’ (ATP, 112). This is the reason why Tillich argues that symbols are irreplaceable; they are always producing meaning such that replacing them changes everything.

For Tillich, symbols hint at a paradox of participation. Taken through Deleuze’s’s concept of paradox of the production of sense and nonsense, we can anticipate Tillich’s understanding of paradox as a ‘concrete event which on the level of rationality must be expressed in contradictory terms’ (ST1, 149). With God participating in humanity and humanity participating in God through the christological symbols, these symbols produce the same excess as the series of signification do. The christological symbols can only be understood in both directions simultaneously: without one, we have a Jesus without Christ; without the other, a Christ without Jesus. It is also here that Tillich’s christological paradox becomes clear: God does not exist (ST1, 227). Tillich does this by de-ontologizing God; God cannot exist because God is not a being that can exist. The ontology of God becomes in Deleuzian terms, the empty space in the series of signification; God becomes the supernumerary object in the second series such that God can never be found along the Möbius strip of theology. God is always immanent but never present. Perhaps this gives new meaning to Christ’s proclamation that the Kingdom of God is at hand; for Christ himself is the Kingdom of God, immanent and transcendent. Yet it is always both simultaneously. These two terms–immanence and transcendence–should not be confused with a concept of presence (which is, sadly, another post another day).

Difference and Pluralism

Published on 7 October 2009 ago in Religion and Theology. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

This is a followup of sorts to a previous post, Against Exclusivism.

In David Tracy’s On Naming the Present, he follows Ricœur in arguing for a ’second naiveté allied to a genuine openness to otherness and difference’. This is a call to pluralism with the alternative leading to a ‘Hobbesian state of war of all against all’.  Naiveté is exactly what it is, as this pluralism subjugates difference to identity so that difference itself is lost. Difference does not just exist; it exists outright and on its own (conceptual) merit. Deleuze argues early on (in Difference and Repetition) that being is difference. Tracy’s argument (and presumably Ricœur’s as well) rests on the philosophical framework that unites the concept of difference with the concept of distinction. In other words, it is a comparison of two different entities; in short, a comparison of identities. Deleuze’s philosophy of difference conceives of difference as something that exists prior to comparison and distinction (c.f. Levi Bryant). A call to pluralism must first conceive of difference in itself, as something intrinsic to an entity’s act of self-identification, as an ontological concept. Pluralism must be open to both simple distinction as well as difference as the ‘prior ground of distinction‘.

However, when this occurs, inter-religious dialogue (i.e. pluralism) itself becomes problematic. This is because openness to such dialogue requires a level of understanding that is not easily possible. Such level of understanding is based on the ability to relate distinctions to known concepts and identities. In other words, communicative understanding takes place within analogies at the contextual level, not within the words expressed at the textual/discursive level. Here is where the problematic of pluralism emerges. If other religious traditions are truly other, that is different, the comprehension at the contextual level is always flawed because it ultimately rests on a conceptual identification where difference is reduced to distinction. Historically, we can see this in the colonial period of religious studies where examples such as Western influences in India created Hinduism as a consolidated tradition, including the ‘trinitarian’ concept of Trimurti.* In the 1970s, Edward Said published Orientalism in which he argues that the Western representation and understanding of other cultures is flawed for reasons similar to what I have noted above. While many pluralists seem confident that we are able to move past these flaws, I take a more critical approach. Even contemporary postcolonial religious studies have kept these flaws. As Ian Almond recently wrote, ‘we have seen how the use [a religious tradition] is going to be put to automatically creates the identity it is going to have…The “otherness” control of [that tradition], like the volume control of any stereo or radio, can be turned up or down according to the required context’ (The New Orientalists, 195).

While pluralism may be possible, it seems clear that we have not yet been able to see other traditions as different. I believe this may be in part because inter-religious dialogue can only treat otherness as objects of apprehension. As an object of apprehension, difference is readily replaced with distinction as we attempt to relate to another tradition through our own identity. It is an implicit action that changes the dialogue into an excercise of relations (i.e. comparison and distinction). Perhaps a better avenue for such discourse is not to relate to other traditions but to discourse with them without apprehension. In other words, by following Blanchot’s remarks about reading and writing*, we can (re-)discover that comprehension occurs after the dialogue, after the discourse—not during. Understanding occurs after the event of communication.

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NB 1: cf. Susan Bayly, Caste, Society, and Politics in India: From the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age and David Smith, Hinduism and Modernity

NB 2: Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

Quote of the Day

Published on 29 September 2009 ago in Theology. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

To begin with the common Christian confession: the common confession is ‘We believe in Jesus Christ with the apostles’…The complexities intrinsic to any Christian theological interpretation of the scriptures becomes clear. For Christianity is not, strictly speaking, a religion of the book like Islam. And yet ‘the book’ does play a central role for Christian self-understanding. Christianity, in more explicitly hermeneutical terms, is a religion of a revelatory event to which certain texts bear an authoritative witness.

It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this distinction between event and text for Christian theological self-understanding. To fail to grasp the distinction is to lead into two opposite difficulties…[T]he route to Christian fundamentalist readings of the scripture under the banner cries of ‘inerrancy’ soon take over. Here Christians believe, in effect, not with but in the apostles.

The opposite danger is equally devastating…The difficult is, rather, that since the scriptural texts are not allowed to play any authoritative role, the contemporary Christian community can never know whether its present witness to the Christ-event is in continuity with the original apostolic witness. The historical central Christian theological affirmation–’I believe in Jesus Christ with the apostles’–would then be narrowed into the affirmation ‘I believe in Jesus Christ’.

From David Tracy, ‘Reading the Bible’ in On Naming the Present, 1994 (originally in Concillium 1991/1).

Against Exclusivism

Published on 15 September 2009 ago in Religion and Theology. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

In a recent discussion I had elsewhere, the topic of (Christian) salvation came up in the context of the Jewish people living before Christ. It seems to be a common Evangelical argument that at least some of these people (e.g. David, Moses, etc) were saved by Christ. However, I now take issue with this for a few reasons.

First and foremost is that the method by which ’salvation’ is dispensed changed between OT Judaism and NT Christianity. To put it another way, the ‘OT saints’ did not believe that ‘accepting Christ as Lord and Saviour’ was the way. Sure, they may have believed in a forthcoming Christ, but their idea of this Christ would have been fundamentally different, as the Gospels clearly show that the Jewish people were not looking for a spiritual salvation but a political one. The Christian NT (and subsequent theology) fits with interpretations of OT texts only by re-interpreting these texts in light of the Christ-event. It is an intellectually dishonest claim to argue that the people up to the time of Christ read the texts in that light; it’s an anachronism. As a result of this, the OT beliefs regarding ’salvation’ (if there were any at all) are very likely to be different than their NT counterparts.

Secondly and subsequently, if some people before the time of Christ were ’saved’ (in the Christian sense), the person arguing such must admit she is not an exclusivist.* She must admit that people outside of the Christian religious faith are ’saved’ in order to remain consistent. There are a few options that work, each of which I wish to address: (1) argue that ’salvation’ comes from something other than a religious belief/faith, (2) accept some form of inclusivism,* (3) accept some form of pluralism.*

Real Faith Isn’t a Religion

I believe this may be the most popular opinion in Evangelical Christianity, as it seeks to differentiate between religious practices (which may be flawed) and ‘true saving faith’. This is a hybridisation of exclusivism and inclusivism by arguing that only people who follow the real faith (exclusivism) are ’saved’ but that this real faith is not a single religious tradition (inclusivism). It is a short step from C.S. Lewis’s inclusivism he describes in The Last Battle.* However, there are two issues here that make this position untenable in my opinion. First, it can’t maintain its position as nonreligious with its call for proselytism/evangelism. If one must convert in order to ‘be saved’, then that set of beliefs are, in fact, religious. In other words, conversion is only necessary if there are wrong beliefs. Secondly (and less importantly), it must extend this position beyond just a few groups of people (i.e. post-Christ Christian and pre-Christ Jewish believers). In other words, it must also accept that Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jains, etc can be ‘true believers’ while remaining within their religious traditions both before and after Christ. The combination of these requires a view very close to that of pluralism, which has had some Evangelical Christian expressions recently from figures such as Brian McLaren.

Pluralism

In a nutshell, this position argues that no religious tradition is ‘more correct’ than another. Unlike its hybrid cousin above, it does not need to explain a particular notion of salvation for another tradition. Its one major fault is that it is incompatible with the history and traditions of Christian belief. Attempts to integrate it within some kind of ‘orthodox Christian belief’ ultimately fails because it must eject important pieces of historical Christianity or reinterpret them in order to succeed. As such, I am unable to accept it as a plausible resolution to the above situation.*

Inclusivism

In this context, inclusivism takes a form very similar to the hybrid position, as it argues that salvation comes only from ‘Christian’ belief. Its argument for OT Jewish believers, however, is quickly dissolved as it relies on the anachronistic reading of theology. It still has another option in arguing that even though these believers were not ‘Christian’, they happened (either by chance or by some divine intervention) to get enough concepts right to somehow have fallen into ‘Christian’ salvation before ‘Christianity’ existed (in the same way that one could argue that Augustine had fumbled into semiotics centuries before it was treated as such). Like the hybrid position, however, it must extend this belief to all people. However, unlike the hybrid, it is able to stand firmly within the field of inclusivism and accept a call to proselytism/evangelism without being backed into an intellectual corner. In other words, faith comes from some kind of theological revelation that is most easily found within the Christian tradition but not exclusively (either because of freak chance or by divine intervention). It is this position that I believe to be the only tenable response to the original situation. It is able to accept the possibility of people outside of the influence of the Christian tradition to have received the ‘right’ revelation while also being able to accept proselytism/evangelism.

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NB 1: For these terms, see here for my usage.
NB 2: For an description of this, see here.
NB 3: For a more sympathetic view to integrating Christianity with pluralism, I highly suggest reading John Hick’s works (e.g. God Has Many Names).