Process, not Progress: the Myth of Disintegration

In the world we live in, persistence and progress are everything. If the world cannot become a better place, life is meaningless. If that better world does not persist, life is meaningless. We cling to persistence and progress out of desperation. We cannot let our world crumble. Or rather, we strive to put it back together, after we believe it to have fallen apart. We live within the myth of disintegration.

It is fascinating how the myth of disintegration can take a myriad of forms. On one hand, the Garden of Eden comes to mind. Once upon a time, the world was ideal, our locality was a utopia. Evil was non-existent. Then everything fell apart. An act of disobedience occurred. The ideal shattered. The story of that ideal was passed on. Even as the world fell apart, the story makes us yearn for that ideal. If our utopia disintegrated, it is our responsibility to put the world back together. The puzzle may have fallen apart, but we have the exact plan necessary to put it back together. We appeal to what the world once was as an authority. The myth of disintegration becomes a blueprint for integration. For one thing, according to the traditional myth of Eden, there was once a time when women were subservient. The ideal has disintegrated. Humanity has fallen into sin. It is up to the myth's listener (or teller) to reintegrate the world. The sins of the present must be stopped by the ideals of the past.

Before any secularists nod their heads, however, they should consider that the myth of disintegration has persisted beyond Christianity. While the traditional myth of disintegration in the west (the Garden of Eden) had a very low theological anthropology (i.e. humans are sinful beings now), the modern rendition of the tale has a very high theological anthropology (i.e. humans are basically good). I've been told that the pieces for the modern rendition began in the Renaissance, but I'll confess I'm more familiar with its incarnation in the modern era. Beginning with figures such as Locke, Smith and Rousseau, a philosophy of progress had found breath. Hegel's later philosophy of progress was simply an extension of what had come before him. For all four, humans were naturally good until corrupted by entering restrictive society. For the Garden of Eden, freedom was the sin. For modern philosophers, restriction was the sin. Regardless, we had fallen from our former freedom, and only by embracing innate human goodness could we return to that freedom. Freedom was before us, just as for Eden, it was behind us.

An interesting byproduct of the myth of disintegration on modern thought is the way historical arguments function. It is a common event in modern historical studies to search back through the archives for more earlier actualizations of values we have today. The question of primacy (what came first?) only makes sense within a myth of disintegration - whatever came first is the ideal, the utopia. Consider a modern historical claim such as "hunter-gatherer communities were equal, before the advent of agriculture" and it will become clear that an ideal is being expressed within the historical claim. It is also important to note that outside a myth of disintegration, issues of primacy hold no weight. Within the moment, why should it matter what came first?

One might claim that because of the freedom/restriction dualism, the modern myth is quite different from the traditional myth. If one searches further however, chilling parallels reveal themselves. The absolute past is an ideal. The more immediate past is a state of disintegration. One way or another, progress must be made. The utopia of a past world must become a present reality. Moderns are open about the ability for humans, out of their goodness, to re-present a past ideal. Progress from our state of disintegration can occur. Christian Disintegrationists are more subtle about their claims for progress. After all, to Christian Disintegrationists, humans are sinful. We cannot make progress alone. But we still have a myth; we still have an ideal. As a Christian Disintegrationist might utter, with God's help, we can still find that ideal. Heaven is before us.

After all, isn't heaven the ultimate utopia, the ultimate fruit of progress? Heaven is a place where evil no longer exists (and for some, freedom no longer exists). Heaven is not instantaneous. Heaven persists for eternity. The myth of disintegration has come full circle. The ideal of the absolute past has become the ideal of the absolute future. Disintegration can be reintegrated. An ideal afterlife is before us (at least those that live into God's progress). Once the myth of disintegration has been fulfilled, once our ideals have been actualized, that they would persist is natural. And in our modern world, isn't the individual valued above all else, above freedom, above money, above one's country? We yearn so much for our own persistence.

The myth meets tragedy. The moment is born. On one hand, the sharer of the myth of disintegration would have us believe that the myth began with tragedy - began with an act of disintegration, of a locality ceasing to exist. On the other hand, tragedy itself is a myth. Tragedy did not pre-exist the story; tragedy is the story. That tragedy begins with our unfulfilled ideals. That tragedy begins with the fact that we, as individuals, die every moment. Nothing persists. There is nothing deeper than our ephemeral world, our locality of vicissitudes. There is nothing more tragic than the fact that our ideals are not absolute - no matter what chronology we place them on, past or future, our ideals have yet to remain actualized. They are potential and nothing more.

The irony of calling heaven a utopia is the double-entendre behind the word. On one hand, eu-topia can mean good-place, a good locality. On the other, u-topia can mean no-place, or a non-existent locality. Heaven is always before us. We cannot reach back to our absolute past for justification. We must not yearn for an absolute future. Progress is never made. All victories are momentary. The myth of disintegration provides a chronology. For the momentary potentialist, chronology itself has disintegrated. Persistence is an illusion. Our ideals are fragile, dreams we can be awoken from. Dreams that can change localities in an instant. Dreams that can become nightmares. Dreams that haunt us.

I have placed my cards on the table. Here is one place where I break with traditional Christianity. The only heaven, the only afterlife, is a no-place, a flickering potential. Here is one place where I break with process theology. The Hegelian underside of process theology, namely its metaphysics of progress, I can have no part of, no matter how much I wish to. Here is one place where I break with modern liberalism. No matter how much we wish it otherwise, our envisioned potentials are momentary. We cannot improve the world (which is not to say we shouldn't try). This is the place I stand within, the topia that gives birth to u-topia, the locality that gives birth to potential. This is the place I dream, the place I am haunted.

We live in a broken world that was never broken, a disintegrated world that never disintegrated. There never was an event of disintegration. The future will remain disintegrated. There was no absolute fall, nor will there be absolute salvation. We are haunted by these tragedies. Ghosts live within the moment. But let us not exorcise these ghosts by absolutizing them. Specters do not haunt the past, nor can we escape those specters before us. The myth of disintegration is an exorcism, a removal of the tragedy of the moment, of the ghostly potential envisioned. Our state of process is not about whether humans are good or bad. Process is not about absolute freedom or absolute restriction. Process is not progress. Process is the moment. And the moment is about letting ghosts speak. Let silent ghosts speak.

Pregnant with Potential

My apologies for it being such a long time since my last post. Lent has been more a season of reflection than production for me; hopefully that reflection will bare fruit. I have a number of posts planned for the upcoming month or so. First, however, is my overdue, promised post on beginnings.

I have been in a conversation with my cousin Joy (an English prof) over Facebook for some time now, with our conversation mostly circling around christian theology. In her most recent response, she brought up Mary and mentioned something I hadn't considered before - "Mary is... the moment of possibility into which that awareness can come... the mother-potential." For those of you familiar with my terminology below, you'll notice that my notion of a "locality" is similar to how Joy is understanding Mary by way of metaphor. I had considered using the metaphor of a womb with my concept of a "locality" before, but had never specifically considered Mary. I was particularly excited by this since I hadn't discussed with Joy anything about my momentary/potentialist approach. Apparently Momentary Theology need not be such the singular oasis I had originally perceived it to be!

In the context of my post on Christmas about Christ's death, and my promise to post on the birth of Christ on Easter, I had hoped to tie narrative beginnings to narrative endings. A story is contained within every moment, every moment of a cross, every moment of a birth. In my Christmas day post, I wrote about the tragedy of the cross, the unresolved tragedy of a broken world, a broken humanity. I also wrote that in the face of such tragedy, we must refuse to give up. One might wonder: why must we confront tragedy?

Before hearing from Joy, I had considered writing on Mary's Magnificat. The hope of Christ is contained within a "promise," a promised birth. Much is often made of Mary's faith in the face of possible crisis. A stranger comes to her door. She is told that she is pregnant out of wedlock. And yet, she still praises God. Mary blindly trusts God's mysterious ways, or so the story goes.

The story I wish to tell here is not nearly so simple. Mary is not so blind as to be ignorant of the potential before her. For Mary, God's ways are not so mysterious. The Maginificat, after all, is not simply an expression of praise for God; it is a recognition of potentiality. In Mary's own words: "He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty," (Luke 1:51-53). God's promise is one of upheaval. The potential before Mary is the birth of justice within a world of tragedy. God stands for the oppressed.

Keep in mind that the Magnificat is in the perfect tense - God's promise is not a past, present, nor future event. Potential is truly momentary. The (event of the) birth of Christ is omnipresent as long as Mary is mother-potential, as long as, in the face of tragedy and oppression, we take a stand. As long as we sing potentialities with Mary.

One cannot justify such a song in the fact of our lack of stability. Just like the confrontation with nihilism, the Magnificat, the song of reversals has no grounds. Out of this undecidability is born responsibility, and out of that responsibility is born potential. Christ has been born. To this extent, Mary's words are an act of faith - but not blind faith. Mary sees just perfectly. And that is why Mary speaks. That is why Mary sings. Potential comes with a soundtrack. Or, every beginning begins with music.

Ultimately, this is no theology of essentialized powerlessness. The powerless do not need to remain powerless in order to remain on the side of justice. After all, every act of potential is an act of transformation. Every song is a promise. The potentiality for justice must become the act(ualization) of justice. Not because it will succeed. Often times our acts will fail to become actualizations. Tragedy is inescapable. Rather, we act because it gives music to our words.

The mystery of God is, in the end, retained in the story. Or, perhaps, I should say in the beginning. We are told that Mary is greeted by the angel Gabriel. Mary does not recognize Gabriel; he is a stranger. Regardless, scandolously, she lets a male into her house at night. She receives him with open arms. Mary is open to the other, to God as stranger (Gabriel is just the messenger, a stranger for a stranger). It is only because of this openness that the potential before Mary's eyes is born. Christ has been conceived within a moment. The impossible has become possible. The impossible has always been the art of the stranger.

Somewhat ironically, Gabriel has become the modern icon for law-driven justiciars. When we read the story of Mary carefully, the stranger before Mary is a very different figure. Gabriel's last words to Mary before he departs are: "For nothing will be impossible with God." Gabriel is not the angel of law. Gabriel is the angel of hope. Hope amidst the tragedy of the world. An impossible event that breaks in upon our fragile visions.

So, our story brings us back to the beginning. The rest of the story has yet to come, shepherds, magi, tale of ancestry. The end told, we still remain in the beginning. In the beginning we find a stranger and Mary. In the beginning we find the other, a promise and a determined mother. With tragedy before her, tragedy behind her, Mary sings. The mother-potential opens herself to the impossible becoming possible. Or perhaps, I should say that on this Easter day, in the end, we do have our songs. And there our potential lies.

Music and Separation

I remember Margaret asking me a question once: "What would it be like if our lives had soundtracks?"

More and more lately, I have seen Gen Y criticized as being overly optimistic and idealistic, even while being disengaged from the surrounding community. The symbol held up to berate these "failings" is the iPod, often called the me-Pod, the individual cut off in a pod. I remember hearing this metaphor the first time during my time at Trinity Lutheran Church.

While this is a bit of a break from my heavier philosophical/theological posts, I felt that this symbolized criticism demanded at least a few thoughts. Is the use of the iPod as a symbol for our generation fair? Is asking that question even fair?

I actually do believe that the iPod as a possible symbol for our generation might be redeemable. However, I object to what many think it symbolizes. As such, the question is not "is the use of the iPod fair as a symbol for our generation" but rather "what does the iPod symbolize for us as a generation?"

I will grant that on one hand Gen Y is very idealistic and hopeful. We want more than is promised by the moment we live in. We believe that hope can be actualized. However, we are not that simple. Within that idealism I often discover a bitter skepticism in myself and others. Institutions have failed us. Individuals have failed us. We have failed ourselves. There is an apparent grand disconnect between our hope and our locality.

Many have claimed that this disconnect carries over to a disconnect between ourselves and the reality that surrounds us. We hide in our "me-pod." We cannot bear reality. So we hide in our shield of individualism.

I think there is some truth in these claims, but not where the claimants believe it lies. I agree that we cannot bear reality. We cannot bear the tragedy of the world. How unstable our world is. The pluralism that surrounds us. The lack of a singular meaning. The thousands of roles we play. The lack of a common thread. The lack of values we can stand up. We cannot bear the a-thematic nature of the reality before us.

As such, the iPod does not designate our separation from reality, but rather designates the tragedy of living in our reality. If we were separate from reality, from the absurdity of existence, we would be able to live without angst, without skepticism, without the nihilistic, a-thematic void that constantly threatens to devour our hope. Our hope does not arise because we are disconnected from the world. Our hope and tragedy paradoxically exist because of our reality - because we refuse to separate ourselves from our a-thematic realities. We hope because we must.

Which brings us back to Margaret's question. iPods are not emblematic of our separation from the world, a hiding in a false shell. Rather, iPods are emblematic of our desperate attempts to give our lives themes, structure and meaning. Music allows us to construct those themes, structure and meaning. We live in a world of creation. Music allows us to hope. My answer to Margaret's question is another question: "What would it be like if our lives did not have soundtracks?"

I cannot speak for an entire generation. But I can speak for myself. I do not listen to my iPod to escape. I listen to music so I can continue to hope. I listen to music so I can continue to live in our tragic world. I listen to music to continue to live within the paradox of tragic hope. Creation, music, art all allow us to engage. Praxis (faith-based action) follows the soundtracks we listen to. Our acts gain meaning in a world of music. So, what are you listening to?

The Veil Is Thin (Individuals/Communities)

Relatively short post today; I mostly wanted to set out something briefly that will end up being crucial later on. Rather than delay such a topic until later, I decided it would make the most sense to present it now. It will also allow us to test my momentary theopoetic up to this point.

Who are we? Earlier, I explored this topic somewhat, and presented a few images. Let us consider those images once again. What does it mean to be conscious?

We are our values. If we are anything at all, we are the values, the ghosts that pull us forward. We are the potential we see in the world. But not just that...

We are walking values. We are values in movement, values in flux. Our values one moment are not our values the next. We are never haunted by the same ghosts; we are never the same ghosts.

We are local, walking values. We are values in motion. We are never apart from our locality, from our incarnation. Our values are inseparable from our time, our being, our non-being. Potential is born of the moment. We are momentary ghosts.

We are unstable, local, walking values. Despite the fact that our values are local, they have no firm ground, no structural support. Our values are unstable. Our values hold no justification. There is no such thing as a meta-value. We have no mathematical formula to follow to resolve which values we should live into. We walk on unstable ground.

We are contradictory, unstable, local, walking values. There is no unity to our ghosts, no thread that holds us together. Our values pull us in multiple, contradictory directions. We must choose. We can only act(ualize) once. The potential we envision is not whole, not singular, not one. We are pulled apart. We are not a synthesis. We are just thesis and antithesis. Our contradictions lead to our responsibility.

No doubt the images could continue. We are also tragic, hopeful values. There is much contained within our hearts. However, at this point, before we continue painting the picture, let us pull the brush back and study our painting.

It can probably be assumed that I am describing, painting individuals here. But am I? Do tragic, hopeful, contradictory, unstable, local, walking values describe just individuals, just the self? Perhaps our brush has painted communities as well...

Consider it - communities consist of contradictory values. The values of a community constantly shift, ebb and flow, are always in movement. Communities are defined by tragedy and hope. Communities are unstable and groundless, just as unjustified as the individual, as the ghosts that haunt them both. Communities too are local, as they live in extended, and yet still limited, moments of being and non-being.

The veil between the individual and the community is thin (if it is anything but a ghost at all). The self is nothing but a community; the community is nothing but a self. Communities make up part of the locality, part of the potential individuals live within. Individuals make up part of the locality, part of the potential communities live within. Both ghosts are conscious. Both are tragic, hopeful, contradictory, unstable, local, walking values. Both share in a haunting. Both are the potential we see in the world. The veil is thin...

Motivation, or what does "the cat is on the mat" have to do with our values?

As I mentioned in my post "A Modal World," my entire narrative project is dependent on the claim that all beliefs and statements (even descriptive statements) are supported/undergirded by our values. The stories we tell will assume that we have a fundamental choice to make as we live - ghostly meaning or the void. In order to set up this contrast, however, I need to establish that there are no other alternatives. Our values are unstable, foundationless, ghostly. My claim up to this point had been that everything we construct, utter, write is built upon the foundation of our values. Those values are ghosts. And so, everything that enters and leaves our minds is supported by our ghosts, our foundationless foundation. Imagine a building, complete with foundation, with no ground below it, floating in the sky. In that place, we are strangers at home. Or, imagine we are lost in the desert, surrounded by a blinding dust storm with nothing to guide us beyond our limited vision before us and our footsteps quickly vanishing into the sand behind us. The dunes are shifting beneath our feet.

Still, particularly in our culture, one might object that ethics is dependent on metaphysics, not the other way around. Or perhaps our values are completely distinct from our beliefs "about" the world. After all, it seems deeply counterintuitive that a typical descriptive statement such as "the cat is on the mat" has anything to do with values, emotions or ethics. If descriptive statements have nothing to do with our unstable values, perhaps we can escape our subjectivity and succeed in describing objectively the "world out there." If this happened to be true, we would have stable ground to stand upon. We would have exorcised our dilemma. No void or ghosts.

I have told a few stories up to this point why I believe that descriptive statements are dependent on our values. However, more than anything, I merely made the gesture. It was critical to establish what the question was before we attempted to answer it.

Every belief arises from a cause. I don't believe that claim to be controversial. If I believe that "the cat is on the mat" I have some reason (however poor) for believing it. There are two kinds of causes one might consider here. The first is how we typically think of causes in modern day, scientific language - Aristotle's efficient cause. What brought something about? If someone gives money to the poor, for example, and another person asked for the efficient cause of the act, a proper response might be "I pulled money out of my pocket, and transferred the possession of that money to an individual who was poor." An efficient cause for the belief that "the cat is on the mat" might be "my visual experience displayed a cat on a mat actually in the world." For efficient causes, think "how did something happen?"

However, an account of belief is not nearly so simple. After all, the question of why remains - "why did I come to believe that the cat is on the mat?" What was my motivation to accept such a belief? Why did I wish to give money to the poor? After all, belief indicates a level of commitment while the word "statement" does not. What was the motivation to commit oneself to a belief? It appears as though there are two possible answers to this question.

The first possible answer is to consider other kinds of causes - Aristotle's formal and final causes (the difference between the two does not matter for the moment). One's particular values motivated the acceptance of the belief. Consider an obvious case - say that someone believes abortion is wrong. Say that someone also encounters a study that claims "abortion causes breast cancer." That person's ethical value (abortion is wrong) will almost certainly provide the motivation to accept the claim "abortion causes breast cancer" as a belief. This will be the case unless other values interfere. After all, our values are not in individual vacuums - our decisions are always the result of an interplay between all of our relevant values. Perhaps that said person also deeply values a friend who provides reasons for not believing that "abortion causes breast cancer" is true. In such a case, that person will exist within a moment of value conflict. Which value is more important to the individual (and more directly connected to the belief)? The resolution to our value conflicts (when we act/come to believe something) is rarely simple. Regardless, values clearly provide motivation (since we act toward our values all the time), so it would seem plausible that our beliefs are motivated (and therefore supported) by our values.

The second possible answer is that the efficient cause is the answer to the why question, i.e. we come to believe it because that is how the world is. Certainly, many individuals seem fairly driven to be able to describe the world as it is. A challenge to the claimed objectivity behind some beliefs is bound to find resistance. However, consider the claim for a moment. Let us ask a metaquestion. Why do individuals believe that "we come to believe beliefs because that is how the world is?" The same two answers present themselves - individuals either gain their motivation for the belief because of formal/final causes or because of efficient causes. Notice, however, that the second possibility immediately eliminates itself - the statement "we come to believe the belief that we believe beliefs because that is how the world is because that is how the world is" is complete gibberish. However, a formal/final explanation seems more plausible. Strictly speaking, we will find no psychological motivation in efficient causes unless we first value efficient causes. If we come to value the traditional methods of "discovering" how the "world is," we will respect those methods, we will accept the belief that those methods are reliable at discovering how the "world is." If we don't accept that value, then we will not accept the belief. But notice that we are no longer talking about how the world is, about efficient causes as the source for our beliefs. As long as our values provide our motivation, our beliefs (descriptive or otherwise) will always be built upon specters. Our envisioned potential will always shape what we believe. As Heidegger might say, there is no belief about the world that escapes our intentionality. We come to believe because we value what we believe (or what lies behind our beliefs).

One might still object - this might appear sound in theory, but also appears deeply counterintuitive in practice. After all, what does "the cat is on the mat" have to do with our values? After all, our typically critical values (life, love, equality, freedom, etc.) appear to have nothing to do with such a belief. So why have so many people in our world come to believe such "trivial" beliefs?

We have not hidden from our ghosts. There are many things that we traditionally value that were not listed above because they are typically taken for granted, particularly in our modern era. Just as our values do not come in a vacuum, so too, our beliefs are not isolated from each other. Imagine what would be entailed in rejecting the belief "the cat is on the mat" "because my sense data gave me that experience." We would no longer be able to trust our sense experience. And yet, in our scientific world, nothing is more important, more valued than our sense experience. Our sense of order, of structure to our world, of our ability to predict the results of our actions would come crumbling down around us. There are haunting ghosts hidden within our descriptive statements. Our horizons depend upon the ability to state that "I believe the cat is on the mat because my sense data gave me that experience." And yet, those very horizons are supported by ghosts, by our unstable values.

We believe because we ought to. And yet, even in our search to escape our dilemma, we have discovered it again. We have walked in a circle in our desert dust storm. As we live our lives we are presented with one question, one choice - should we, or should we not? Should we live a life of specters or should we vanish into the void? Metaphysics, physics, science will not save us. All we have is our values, our potential, our ghosts. Perhaps that is not enough to continue walking, weary in our journey of shifting sands. Or, perhaps, that is enough, just enough, to take one more step.

Dreamt of in Philosophy

[This is my response to Emily's post below. Please read her post in its entirety before you read my response. This post is dedicated to Emily Rains. Your patience, encouragement and critiques have been a blessing to me throughout our friendship. I look forward to our continued dialogue and my conversations with a treasured friend.]

Hamlet:
"And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hamlet Act 1, Scene 5, 165-167.

Yes. As I read Emily's essay, that was my first response. Absolutely. You understand. But what do you understand?

At first glance, much of your essay is set up in such a way as to assert my story as being an idol, an object of my own construction. You write: "God IS. We simply have to deal with that fact," that God is "infinite transcendence" and "only idols are constructed." I am open that the story I tell is a construction. Questions remain though - is the story merely my construction alone? AND is there room in my philosophical approach to be able to both assert the value of the story I tell as well as assert that it does not exhaust the meaning of God?

I believe the answer to the first question is "no," just as is the case with any story. The story I tell is just as much an extension of the communities and the localities I am a part of as it extends itself from me. Our stories extend beyond ourselves. Of course, this does nothing to counter your claim that such a story is still an idol. After all, whole localities and communities can be deceived.

I believe the answer to the second question is "yes." Consider the quote from Hamlet above. There is always a surplus of meaning beyond the stories we dream. My stories never claim to exhaust the nature of God. God is certainly transcendent over and beyond my stories. Life is more than a solipsistic hell. Life is more than just what our individual stories share. Our stories might glimpse the meaning of the "stranger," and in that they have value. Still, God is beyond our individual stories. It does us all well to remember that.

This is the difference between an idol and an eikon for me. Eikon is a popular word in greek, both amongst philosophers and in the Bible. An idol claims to be exhaustive of God. An eikon is an image of the prism of God, a glance at the stranger beyond our dreams.

The problem, of course, lies in the fact that I don't have access to that exhaustive, transcendent story. Emily also acknowledges she does not have access to the complete story - "we have not yet exhausted the task." So what are we supposed to do? We work with what we have. There is a different form of realism at work here - the acknowledgement on my part that we don't have all the answers. Do we give up? My answer is an emphatic "no." We must work with what we have. And so we story-tell.

You might notice that on first glance there is a real shift in the mode of the storyteller between Emily's story and mine. To Emily, the storyteller is God. For the story I tell, the nexus of the individual is the storyteller. My unusual realism creates this shift in emphasis - even if the "storyteller" of the world is God/potential, ultimately we simply cannot tell the story from God's perspective. We don't know what God's perspective might be like. It is like attempting to share in the perspective of another - I have known my brother, for example, for my whole life, and yet, still, (luckily for him, perhaps) I cannot always get into his head. Consider the stranger. "There are more things..."

As such, for both of us God/potential might be the storyteller of creation as a whole, but Emily and I are the storytellers here. The majority of Emily's essay (my post isn't mentioned for five pages after the introduction) is Emily presenting a counter-story to mine. That is what she understands, for me. If you don't like a story, (re)tell a new one.

Of course, there is much possible overlap between our stories. "This Christmas Day" never claimed to be exhaustive, and as Emily rightly points out, it is possible for the story to extend before the birth of Jesus (and after his death). There is much I will not mention in her story that I would be happy to embrace with my story(s).

As I read Emily's story, a theme seemed present to me - even if we are the storytellers of our human stories, God should always be seen as the center, THE storyteller. Emily does give room for human creation, but it is in a very specific role - that of reaction within relationship. Consider, a small list of a few subject/verbs in your essay - "Man rebelled," "Abraham obeyed," "He [Isaac] dreamt." Emily writes that we are in "awe" of God as a "soul-shaking experience" and that "only God could save." And yet within that experience of salvation (within God's domain) we are supposed to "hope in you [God]." "And thus man is faced with a choice."

Absolutely - we are faced with choice(s), choice(s) born in a (re)action toward God. What story will we tell? But it is not a matter of simply choosing God's story or choosing a story of our own. After all, the moment words leave our lips, to a certain degree, we have already made it our own (no matter the story). That is the blessing and curse of choice. Within our lack of knowledge we have a terrible (and liberating/creative) freedom. That freedom is responsibility. What story would we tell?

Emily, you understand - tell a story to counter another story. The question, of course, remains as to whether your story does successfully challenge mine. What is the authority, the values behind your story? Do they successfully pull the story I tell apart?

As far as I read it, your argument, Emily, is this - the story you tell is the story of tradition, while my story is not. For example you say that "He [God] has not changed," and "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is still the Holy One of Israel." You extend the story of Christ so that your story gains authority for being rooted in tradition.

There are several problems within this argument, however. First, it is difficult for me to understand why "substitutionary atonement" and David's response to God are related. The story you tell does not necessarily hold together. I, too, value trust, Emily. Acting with trust toward God (as stranger), trust that tragedy will not consume us, trust that our individual stories are not the final words is critically important. However, what does that have to do with God murdering his son for a cruel and vindictive sense of absurd honor?

Secondly, which tradition? There is no unitary whole that holds the world of Christian tradition together. In fact, there had already been several interpretations of the crucifixion before Anselm told the story of substitutionary atonement. Which tradition should we choose? And why? We need to know what traditions to hold as authoritative before we respond with "meek obedience." Who is the stranger that is God? Who is the stranger we have relationship with?

The choices keep revealing themselves. We all have choices to make. You write that it is my "arrogance to make [my] own god and tell [my] own story." You then write that it is "this arrogance [that] lies hidden throughout much of [my] story as [I] cover the safe and unthreatening parts of God's story." I sense poetry - for you what I hide is exactly what I reveal. I reveal safety, the security-blanket God for what it is - a falsehood. It is a falsehood because it keeps us from owning up to our responsibility - the impossible responsibility we have, that we are burdened with. We have choice.

What you see as arrogance, Emily, I see as responsibility. We, as humans, must own up to the fact that we have choices to make, that we have responsibility. That responsibility is not something I take pride in, nor is it something that I am happy to be "arrogant" about. It is a burden we must all live into. We don't have the answers. It isn't in our capacity to know. And so we act and story-tell with what we have. All with the hope that our (re)actions and stories hint toward the stranger that is God. You understand Emily, because your act of storytelling in your essay is exactly that - a grasping in the dark toward God. We grasp together.

To you, "[I] have had the arrogance to tell God who he is and what he wrote." I don't believe that for one moment. Every day, I pray to God for the courage to (re)act toward God, to meet God as stranger. It is that or the void. The void can be tempting at times. Grasping in the dark is exhausting. But the courage God gives me does not allow me to give up. We must not give up simply because we are stuck within our own finite perspectives as storytellers. We must not give up. I cannot give up, because I too "worship... a God who was [is/will be] bigger than any of [my] stories."

And within that grasping, Emily, let it be known that I am not afraid of power. I am afraid of meaninglessness. Call it stubbornness, but even if a omnipotent being that could eliminate me without a trace told me to do an evil act, I would not. Emily, if Satan had set the rules, would you worship him? All we can speak of is "what ought to be." If that condemns us, so be it. At least we will have lived a life of meaning rather than power. Considering that Paul writes that God is a God of the ta me onta, of the powerless and the foolish, of the outcasts, I have to believe that God works with us in our search for meaning (rather than against it). After all, our search for meaning is filled with enough tragedy already.

Ultimately, you write: "Perhaps it would be more accurate to draw a picture of a mighty warrior holding a hollering infant in his firm grasp, his mother left without breath, eyes glued to her child." Call it an idol, call it an eikon, but that mighty warrior is not God, even if that mighty warrior "is." The mighty warrior, militaristic and consumed by power (and nothing else) is the meaningless void. Gripped by it, we struggle on. Our struggling might be futile. And yet, we must not give into the void, into meaningless. Meanwhile, the mother is God, sharing in our suffering, "left without breath, eyes glued to her child." The mother is God, horrified by the death of her son on the cross. That God might not have the coercive power that the mighty warrior has, the dangerously fascinating, crippling pull of the void. Ultimately, though, as you point out, we have choices to make. And I will continue to pray to God for the courage to choose the mother every single time. And as we pray to God for what ought to be, like Job, and find no voice come out of the whirlwind, it is not because God is not there, or because God is the warrior. Instead, it is because God is breathless.

A Response to “This Christmas Day”

[Below you will find a very well-written and thoughtful response to my post "This Christmas Day" by a close friend of mine, Emily Rains. After reading it, I asked Emily if I could post it here, and she gladly agreed. Shortly after posting this, I will post my response above. What you see below is her response in its entirety, minus slight edits to her citation (since my blog does not support footnotes). Any errors in citation are mine. I have always desired this blog to be a dialogue, and I am incredibly grateful to Emily for sharing her thoughts.]

Christmas. Christ Mass. Saturnalia. The birthday of Mithra. Jolly old St. Nick? It certainly doesn’t seem we have added much to the rich traditions surrounding the 25th of December. But though it is, indeed, highly unlikely that Jesus was born on this day, history and more importantly, the church has established this day to honor his birth, whenever it occurred. And that cloud of uncertainty in no way diminishes the hope we receive on account of that event. But as you argued, Drew, this story of a beginning is not complete with out the end. For in the end, the significance of the beginning is understood. If there had been no Good Friday, and no Easter, there would be no Christmas Day, for there would be nothing to celebrate. But Christ did die and rise again and so we celebrate, the day of his birth. Anyone who sees God’s hand in this event is compelled to look beyond the consumerism and religious triteness to seek what God was communicating in Christ’s birth and life and death. And thus, not only is the Christmas story not complete without the Passion story, the real beginning to the whole story came much, much earlier.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” (Ge 1:1). And so begins the story. “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork,” (Ps. 19:1). And now the story is complete. We have the craftsman and his creation, the artist and his masterpiece, the man and his lover. The story might have ended there. But it didn’t. The Storyteller just kept telling and the heavens grew silent and listened. And God spoke man out of the earth, and in a flourish of creative extravagance the Storyteller gave this creature the opportunity to communicate with Him. The same voice that said, “Let there be light” spoke to the man and man understood. And man spoke to God and knew he was understood. God gave the man honor and distinction among his creation and a mandate to rule and subdue the creation (Ge. 1:27,28). So man stood in a relationship of beautiful communion with God, his maker, and the world, his fellow creation and God-given home. And it was good.

The history of man continued but it was no longer good. Man rebelled and destroyed the natural harmony of the creation and rent his perfect relationship with God. But God did not abandon man nor wipe out his creation. “For his steadfast love endures forever,” (Ps 136:1). God continued to interact with his creation, with mankind, and reveal himself to man. He spoke to Abram, who lived in Ur and called him out into the wilderness and promised him a son and descendents who would out number the stars (Ge 12:1, 2). Three strangers came upon Abram one day at his tents and Abram extended his hospitality to them. This unannounced guest was none other than God himself and over dinner he repeated this promise of a son (Ge 18:1-10). God? Visiting a man at a tent? Eating a meal? Promising a son? The Storyteller must have been really enjoying this moment, to be in his story, a fantastical embellishment to an already improbable storyline. But it just gets better. God is on his way to Sodom and Gomorrah to destroy them for their great sin. And a short time later, after removing Lot and his daughters from the doomed towns, God destroys the town with fire and sulpher leaving barren ground behind (Ge 19:23-26). This God of creation and amazing promises and cruel destruction brings life out of dead bodies and Isaac is born to Sarah and Abraham (Ge 21:1,2). But then comes the crisis and the point of decision. All creation holds its breath as the God of life and death demands the life of the promised son. In a testimony that speaks as powerfully today as it did when recited by the ancient Hebrews, Abraham obeyed and prepared to sacrifice his only, promised son of his old age to the God who had called him out of Ur and into the wilderness, walked and talked with him, blessed him and tested him. But in a dramatic twist echoing the eternal theme of redemption, God intervened before the fatal stroke and a ram was killed in Isaac’s stead (Ge. 22:1-19). What a story! What a Storyteller!

Abraham’s grandson must have known the stories of his grandfather’s eventful life and powerful God. But none of those stories prepared him for the night he slept under the stars, with only a stone for a pillow and estranged from family and home. For as he slept he dreamt he saw a ladder ascending up into heaven and God, the Lord stood at the top of it and he said, “I am the Lord, God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac,” (Ge. 28:13). God promised Jacob that he would bless him and be with him and bring him back again to his homeland (Ge 28:1-22). Once again the Storyteller reached in to his own story and spoke to his creature. And as always, it was a soul-shaking experience. Jacob, whether he had taken his father’s God seriously in the past, now stood in humble awe of him, recognizing the authority of his maker to do what he wills in the affairs of man. He saw that this God had the power to create and to destroy, and to him was due honor, fear and humble obedience.

As the story continued to be told, there were many men who honored God. They understood his authority over man and if perhaps they did not understand Him, they knew that theirs was to fear and to trust this great God of their fathers. David, the shepherd, warrior, king and poet, recognized the fearsomeness of the God who created him, and all the world, who brought the plans of the nations to naught, who saw all mankind and knew all their deeds. This God was the only true hope available to man. All other hope, in kings and horses and idols and even in one’s self, were vain. Only God could save (Ps 33: 1-19). And in light of all that David knew about his God, he concluded, “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you,” (Ps 33:20-22).

The story continued, Christ came and died and rose again. Men from around the known world acknowledged God and Christ his son and gave God the same awe-inspired fear and honor and obedience that had characterized the people of God from the beginning of the story. For God was no simpler, nor any safer, after the coming of the promised son. If possible, he was more enigmatic than ever. For now, the nation of Israel was set aside for a time while God called all men unto himself in the church. Paul felt the power of this mystery and the grandeur of the Storyteller behind it and burst forth in adoration and honor. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has know the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodes as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship,” (Ro 11:33-12:1). What other response can there be to a holy and all-powerful God, to whom we owe our lives, our world and without whose communication our world and existence would not hold together in a functional and cohesive whole?

This is the God who holds our lives in his hands today and who knows our hearts and our deeds. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is still the Holy One of Israel. He has not changed. And thus man is faced with a choice. He can respond in humble acknowledgement of the majesty of his maker, or he can ignore the burning bush and make his own god out of wood or stone, or money, or things, or people, or words. The challenge is being honest about what you are doing. In recognizing when you are being humble before God and when you are only being humble before man. I know you to be a very humble man, Drew. You are careful to avoid pushing your claims about the world on others, careful to avoid a worldview that tramples on the claims of others. You are self-effacing and open about the deficiencies of your beliefs and claims. In your post, you repeatedly deny any claim to literal truth in your retelling of the story of Jesus. But your attempt to be humble only serves to mask an intrinsic arrogance: the arrogance to make your own god and tell your own story. This arrogance lies hidden throughout much of your story as you cover the safe and unthreatening parts of God’s story. But it still springs to the surface when you arrive at the crux of the story: the crucifixion. You take God’s story into your own hands and rip out its guts. As you write, “there was no magical vindication in Christ’s death (or anyone else’s death) on the cross. No substitutionary atonement. Any God that needs to be appeased for the sin of the world by death (of any sort) is no God. No one (including God) did anything to vindicate Christ’s death. There was no magic in the moment, only tragedy. Christ’s death was like all the others, totally unremarkable and absolutely tragic.” And their stands your idol. You have taken the knife into your own hand and made yourself a graven image. You have been faced with the power of God and his story and you have defaced it. You have had the arrogance to tell God who he is and what he wrote.

What ever this self-made religion may be, it does not honor the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of David, and of Paul. They knew and worshipped a God who was bigger than any of their stories, who was bigger than any of their constructs, who wrote the terms and who demanded the consequences. They knew from experience that God never fit in any box you tried to make and that just when you thought you had him figured out, he surprised you. Theirs was a God who created worlds and created man, who thundered out of heavens and joined Abraham for a dinner, who demanded the life of a promised son and promised his own. A God who knows each sparrow and in whose hand the nations are but a tool. A God who chooses men and nations but who is impartial. A God who burns in almighty hatred of sin and yet His mercy endures forever. A God who created life and ordered death. A God who is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:21). The “I am who I am,” (Ex. 3:14). To a God like this, how do godly men respond? They respond like Abraham with humble trust and meek obedience. They respond like Jacob with reverential awe. They respond like David with a cup running over and a testimony before the congregation. Humility is undeniably a part of this response. Recognizing that God has written the rules, he has written the story and He has written us. There is nothing we can do to change the rules. The difficulty lies only in coming to know our God and to understand his rules and this most important pursuit has taken the human race several millennia, and we have not yet exhausted the task. But this pursuit must be governed by humility and honor toward God and cannot ever become the art of God construction. For only idols are constructed.

We simply must come to terms with who God is as we experience him ourselves and reflect on the experiences of others. It is futile to deny the testimony of this experience and say that such a God is not worthy to be a God. Such words are like the slap of an angry infant on his father’s face. It changes nothing about the nature of God and it only underlines the frailty of man in relation to God. Perhaps it would be more accurate to draw a picture of a mighty warrior holding a hollering infant in his firm grasp, his mother left without breath, eyes glued to her child. The infant, seemingly oblivious of the possible consequence, vents his fury on the face of his captor. It is futile; it would be laughable if it were not for the fate of the child trembling in the balance. In that moment, the infant’s protestations against the one who can kill or save him are more than futile; they are dangerously condemning. And although our God has a love for his creatures that is not captured in this picture, he is even more powerful in relation to us and holds our fate even more utterly in his hands.

If this God makes you uncomfortable, Drew, then you have truly seen him as he is. For he does not condescend to fit our guidelines, he soars above and beyond the mores and bounds of this created world and asserts his infinite transcendence in our lives. It is hardly surprising that when he acts, we are left shaking in our shoes and scratching our heads. God IS. We simply have to deal with that fact.

And if you don’t like the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, if you hold fast to your assertion that a God like this is not one you can respect, then go, meet God face to face. Challenge the Author of History with your objections. Demand that the Father of the stars defend his intentions. Tell the one who can kill both the body and the soul what the terms ought to be.
And although there may be no voice out of the whirlwind, you will find that the answer hasn’t changed much since Job demanded justice from God.

A Modal World

In my last post, we were presented with three rather clear problems. Since I feel all the three problems are interrelated, I will be story-telling over the next several posts about all three problems, shifting from problem to problem. This is because none of my individual posts will claim to definitively solve any of the problems by themselves. Instead, each post will attempt to give some more credibility to my stance.

In order to make such credibility more clear, however, let us consider our options in more clear detail. Most of the arguments I have deployed up to this point have attempted not just to give a positive argument for my potentialist approach, but it has constantly been in the context of what other possible stances are possible and not possible. Since the very beginning of my theological attempts on this blog, I have rested my case in part on a strong emotivism - all of our knowledge claims rest upon our values/ethics. I have also argued that once we accept this claim, our values and ethics are clearly without any foundation. One is free to disagree with either of these claims (obviously, I realize that the first claim is more controversial than the second). In our modern scientific world, many would agree with me that ethics/values are foundationless. However, that all of our "knowledge" including descriptive statements are driven at heart by our values and ethics seems counter-intuitive to our scientific sensibilities. After all, what does my statement "the cat is on the mat" have to do with my ethical values?

However, it is critical that I establish that we have good reasons for believing such is the case. Early on, I presented several arguments that ethical primacy was indeed true (such as the possible world where descriptive knowledge of the "world" led to an increased likelihood of ethically wrong actions). However, we will need to revisit my argument for ethical primacy again and again since it presents us with the problem my story has brought us to.

Our story telling has brought us to the point of rejecting any form of moral realism. Ultimately, we are left with a choice, an either/or choice (in the spirit of Kierkegaard). We can choose to tell an aesthetic-ethical story with our conscious awareness that any such story has no foundation. To put it more simply, we can make the gesture against the void. Or we can give into meaningless, into nihilism. I want to stand with the first possibility. What kind of story can we build upon the void, upon a ghost? Of course, my dilemma proves to be false if there truly are other possibilities. To those that feel that there are other possibilities, clearly my gesture is on the brink of nihilism, grasping toward a ghost. Now that the possibility of this dilemma has been presented, however, let us put aside for the moment whether the dilemma is true.

If the dilemma is true, ultimately, it is an unrealizable burden to give an unarguable case why someone should end up on one side of the void (or the other). After all, if our ethics are without foundation, even our choice of standing against the void (or within it) holds no grounds. As Canada Bill Jones said once "I know it's crooked. But it is the only game in town." However, ultimately, if we have to roll the dice, what should we bet on? What story would we tell?

After all, the guides we have discovered thus far have left us with a fairly stark ethical system. To some degree our ethical choices are limited by the dialogue between our locality and our envisioned potential. On the other hand, we do have freedom and we do have choice. We envision multiple possibilities, multiple potentials, in each moment. How can we choose in the face of the void?

Since several posts ago I rejected the realism/idealism distinction, we have made some space within our ethical system that typically does not exist. Traditionally, ethics does function in the modal sense, but only in the should/could/ought sense. What should I do? What could I do? What ought I to do? But because ethics is primary, whether it has a foundation or not, would it not make sense to ask one more modal question? What would I do? What would I say? Or ultimately, what would the ideal story be? In a sense, we have the question of u-topia on our hands, the perfect place - but not a perfect place, but instead a perfect story. What would I will my story to be (apart from constraints)? After all, in a foundationless world, the only constraints are our vision and our locality. Otherwise, the sky is the limit. So what would we tell?

Utopias are criticized a lot for being idealistic and having nothing to do with our world, the place and time we live in right now, the locality that surrounds us. However, what if utopia stories were grounded in the moment we live in? If utopia stories are stories of potential we see, and potential is born of the moment that surrounds us, utopia stories are deeply realistic. Utopias are born of and serve the moment. We should not limit ourselves by false "materialistic" limits. Instead, we are free to allow our ethics to pull us forward. What world would we act(ualize) apart from constraints? "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall."

So what does the recognition of modality give us? Perhaps it gives us some weight for standing against the void, for remaining on the brink of nihilism instead of within it. If we were to tell any story born from our moment, would it really be a story of purposelessness? meaninglessness? of the void and nothing else? If we are to be haunted, would we not still will ourselves to live? to love? to value? And while we walk within the moment, and we struggle within undecidability, with a potential overload, should we not ask what we would do?

The Birth of Potential

With much of the unstable foundation set, perhaps it is the right time to address the drive behind my project more directly. This post will attempt to pull several threads together and hopefully will present some new particulars as well. Welcome to a world of possibility (although perhaps not potential!).

So far the narrative threads we have followed have attempted to show that 1) our foundation is our values 2) our values have no foundation, and as such are incredibly unstable 3) our values are incarnated and informed by our locality (in the broad location/time sense of the word 4) our values are envisioned as the potential in each moment (contained within all the possibilities we also envision) 5) potential is on the future-side of each moment, as potential is what pulls us forward, what calls us to act(ualize).

This provides us with an fascinating image. While temporality (change from moment to moment) is a given, let us focus in on a particular locality, which we will call a moment. Recall that each locality is not simply location/time but also the unique perspective given from the particular sentience within that locality (which we might call the ghost of an individual). In other words, the moment is inseparable from the ghost (of the individual). There is always perspective within the moment.

Now, let us consider what the moment consists of. On one hand, we have the "past" end of the moment, i.e. the context/locality of the moment. A traditionalist would claim here that the "past" end of the moment is made up of "what is" leading into the moment, or in other words, the "being" of the moment. However, now that we have rejected the prominence of "being" it would be wiser to recognize that the "past" end of the moment is a flow of non-being and being, of what-is and what-is-not (since neither is reducible to other). This interchange between what-is and what-is-not in turn forms what I have referred to as our "locality-" the unique flux of non-being and being we all (as particular ghosts) live within.

In turn, as we continue to move from the "past" end of the moment to the "future" end of the moment, we discover that the locality in every moment (the "past") informs what possibilities and potential we see. If a kid is not about to be run over in the street, I cannot envision nor actualize saving a child from being run over in the street. It is also this forward-moving element of the moment which helps shape our ever-developing values. Consider that in each moment a "future" becomes a "past" for the next moment, and through this movement, we experience. Those experiences in turn shape our values, gradually changing what we value. Experiences certainly are not a foundation for what we value, but they certainly create/mold/form our values. Needless to say, because of this, as our constant pool of experience shifts, so too do our values shift.

This is not a particularly controversial view of the moment (past-to-future). However, we have also discovered that the "future" end informs how we see the past. That which we envision, grounded on our values, that remains to be actualized (potential) is the "future" end of the moment because it does not "exist" in the strictest sense of the word yet in each present moment - potential awaits act(ualization). The potential we envision may or may not be act(ualized) in the moment or not, and yet regardless it is the future we see at any given moment (and isn't that exactly what the future is... the subjective future?). Potential, as the "future" end of the moment isn't simply informed by the past end of the moment (our locality) for it also informs our locality. As was pointed out previously, our values shape how we see the world. Our potential informs our surroundings in each given moment. As such, there is also a counterintuitive part of each moment that moves from future-to-past. As an image, an easy way to imagine the flow of each moment, both future-to-past and past-to-future is a figure eight - the moment itself is the point where both circles of the eight intersect, and yet, there are two lines leaving the point in each direction - toward the future, away from the future, toward the past, and away from the past.

One of the reasons I really like the image of a figure-eight is that it presents us with a picture of the moment apart from many of the common images. Each moment is, in a sense, a self-contained entity, a past/future instant that flows within itself. There is no sense of progress (since the moment flows within itself in a circular fashion, not as a line off in some direction). Constant progress simply does not make sense here - as long as our values shift, our definition of progress will shift as well, and as such become nonsensical. We can (and should) act toward our envisioned potential, but any actualized potential will become a locality for the next moment, a past that will both help to shape the potential in the next moment and vanish as time passes as well. The thing about the past is that it disappears. Even ghosts cannot persist.

A number of new avenues now present themselves. Consider the possibility that the potential we envision in each moment might overlap a great deal with god-language. What might it mean to talk about God as potential?

Or, consider the possibility of ethics in a momentary world. What motivation do we have for acting toward our potential if there is no such thing as persistence? If everything eventually fades away, washes out, can we still find the drive to be Sisyphus and push uphill? Should we?

Or consider our plurality of values. Don't we envision multiple potentials in each moment? How should we decide which to move toward, which to act(ualize) if our values have no foundation? Is there room in a momentary theology for more than a rigid determinism, albeit a two-way determinism? If we cannot select between our envisioned potentials in each moment, isn't an ethics of choice impossible? And if we have freedom within the moment, how can we possibly choose between potentials with no foundation?

These are the three questions that I will hope to wrestle with over the next month or so. Eventually, I hope to present stories for each problem. Mixed stories of answers and questions. Ghostly stories - stories that have a call toward form. Ultimately, stories, potential, and we, ourselves, all have that ghostly vocation before us - a volition toward act(ualization). A ghost toward haunting.

Nothingness

Heidegger once made the astute observation that the history of western metaphysics could be defined by the search for being. What does it mean to be? Much could be said why such a question has defined western history. In part, the primacy of being within the west probably rests upon the popularity of Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle (instead of Heraclitus). With that triad, the western world chose being. Certainly, Parmenides' arguments against the existence of nothingness (or voids) drastically influenced how the concept of nothingness is viewed in the west. While some later Greek philosophers would be less radical, and would not deny the existence of nothingness, they would often argue that not-being was merely derived from being. Nothingness is merely the absence of being. Cold is absence of heat, etc.

Of course, this isn't the full story. After all, western metaphysics is not just Greek, for the influx of Judeo-Christianian worldviews from 50-500 CE significantly altered how the west considered metaphysical questions. While associations between ethics and being had already been made in Plato and Aristotle, Augustine would take a step further by creating an ethics of being, ontological ethics. Good was ontos, and evil was merely the absence of good. A new approach to theodicy was born - the derivative nature of evil would allow for God not to be guilty of it, since God was completely presence, completely being. The ontological God was good because He [sic] was pure being. Ontotheology would go far beyond Augustine. Tillich's God as the ground of being would be the crowning achievement of ontotheology.

Of course, told from a position of power, the God of being is comforting. Consider my claim that God-language and value-language are inseparable. When we talk about (our) God(s) we are also asserting our values as well. Since our values are incarnated in times and places, potential is born from within the moment we live in. We wish to act(ualize) that potential in our world. Those who have power typically want to preserve that power. The powerful wish to preserve what-is (ontos, being). It is not enough that the powerful have power in a particular moment - what-is must be preserved so that power is preserved. Being is valued because being and power are inseparable, and for the powerful that is a blessing. It, of course, follows that an empowered individual's (or community's) myths would assert the value of being over everything else. Being must be preserved, must live beyond the moment.

The opposite of being, what-is-not, nothingness, ta me onta, must be devalued in order to affirm the value of being. What better way to assert such a hierarchy than to associate being, God and goodness with each other, and to associate nothingness and evil with each other? To the powerful, the power structure must be preserved. It comes as no surprise that ontotheologians typically distrust change - for change is a destruction of the current ontos, of presence. Parmenides' view against the existence of change coexist with his view against the existence of nothingess. Holding on to ontotheology has effects that travel well beyond being, power, and change, however.

John Caputo does a masterful job at illustrating how nothingness language often is associated with the oppressed, the fringe, the "nuisances and nobodies" as Crossan so eloquently put it. If the powerful hold the power of being in their hands, hearts and minds, the powerless become nothing, those-who-are-not, the ta me onta - after all, what does it matter if the powerful need to oppress the nobodies in order to preserve being? Nothingness holds no value to ontotheologians, since it is merely devoid of value, of goodness. The problem with nothingness, according to the ontotheologian, is that it holds no being. What-is is clearly good for everyone. Those who suffer simply must be mistaken.

One of the interesting byproducts of the narrative threads we have followed thus far, is that ontotheology has no foundation. Of course, the dominant threads within western metaphysics that have effected us all make such a statement seem contradictory - how could being not be sturdy? How could being be unstable?

If, however, being-language is value-language, the veil has been removed. Being is unstable as nothingness is. Our values rest upon uncertain, unstable ground, regardless of what we value. We should resist the temptation to claim that being-language is more "real" while language that does not deal with being is "imaginary." Rather than attempt to deceive ourselves with illusions of "real" stories and "fake" stories, perhaps it would be better to evaluate whether we can be proud of our stories, regardless of whatever reality they rest upon.

If all of this has dis-stabilized the priority of being, perhaps we should reject the derivative notion of nothingness. Much of the world is not as it should be - and ontological language misses such nuance. Power often should not be perpetuated endlessly, nor should it often be legitimized.

So what, then is nothingness as concerns humans? What if reality was a matter of what-is and what-is-not, in play? Neither derivative from the other, with nothingness and being making up the mixture of the world we live in. Up to this point, I have been needlessly deceptive when I speak of localities as the being and time we live in. The localities we live in that shape our envisioned potential are not just a matter of being and time - equally the localities we live in are shaped by what-is-not, of the nothingness that surrounds us. This nothingness is not merely an absence of being - the void is a fundamental part of reality. We would do well to remember that what-is-not, who-is-not, ta me onta plays an equal (if not more important) role in creating the potential we see in the world. We would do well to remember that when we act(ualize) toward our envisioned potential, we affirm just as much about what-is-not, as what-is. We would do well to remember that we live in one world - a world of nothingness and being. Before we say "I am," perhaps we should say "I am not." Or perhaps we should say "I see."

Identity: "We are the potential we see in the world"

With the rather complex network of questions revealed that hint towards the nature of identity and the self, perhaps we can move within our questions to discover hints toward answers. After all, in the beginning, I promised positive theology, and as much as questions are a critical part of the search here, they are not the only critical part. Momentary theopoetics is not a pleasant sounding, broad skepticism. At least, I hope it is not.

After so many unstabilities had been revealed within the nature of the self, one might be tempted to give up on the search completely. It is tempting to simply claim that there must be no self, no individuality, and be done with the search completely. We grow tired of the haunting. We grow tired of questions with incomplete answers.

However, if these narrative threads held up so far have any tension in them at all, they will refuse to snap under such weight, under such unstabilities. After all, if ghostly values are all we have to build upon, if we give up on our narrative threads established thus far, it is hard to imagine what will be holding back the tides of nihilism, the darkness of the void.

So if we don't give up on the search for the individual, what has our hunt revealed to us thus far? Within the mutuality shared between the questions "who are you?" and "what do you want?" it has been revealed that, like what we eat, we are what we value. As such, it becomes quite clear that if we give up on the search for us as individuals, we give up our values (and nihilism awaits). There is an important distinction in Buddhism to note here: Zen Buddhists often claim the self is empty (but they rarely claim that it is nothing). Even as we have revealed the unstable, fluxing nature of the self, the "empty" nature of the self, so to speak (as there is nothing "essential" to the self) the self is not nothing. If we assert the self is nothing, our values our nothing. (Although it is important to note here that nothingness, the typically understood opposite of being, of actuality has a critical role to play here. Too often nothingness as a concept has taken a back seat to being. Think Plato. Or Augustine. Or Aquinas. Or Tillich. Or even Heidegger. Such a privileging of being has resulted in grave consequences. More on that later.).

The interesting tie between our values and who we are extends even further than merely just drawing a line between us and nihilism. As was mentioned before, our values are pluralistic (that is they expose us to multiple, contradictory desires). We never have a singular desire that is made up of all our values united toward one cause. An interesting product of this is we see multiple possibilities, we envision multiple (valued) futures in each moment. For example, if I hold two loved individuals by each hand on the edge of a cliff side, I can envision two future possibilities, one in which I pull up one, another in which I save the other. Emphasis must be stressed on the fact that our values open up certain possibilities to us - after all, if I didn't value either person on the cliff side, an action to save either of them would become meaningless. As such, it becomes clear that our meaning, our values are not (at least not completely) exterior to us. The statement "I envision such-and-such as possible" cannot be stated without the "I," or the locality expressed with the verb "envision." After all, we see from a particular focal point.

Of course, there is an exterior interaction with our values that creates our possibilities as well. For example, if I am not at a cliff side with two loved ones the statement "I envision the possibility of saving such-and-such loved one from falling off the cliff," doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Possibilities are born within our local moment, but find focus within our individuality. And each focus is naturally different, since, each local moment (time, location, past experiences, etc) is different for each individuality. One individual on a cliff side will see different possibilities than another individual.

(At this point, it is important to note a critical part of momentary possibility that has been left unsaid, and will probably remain mostly hidden for a while. The kind of possibility that is critical here is identity possibility, i.e. envisioned possibility. In other words, what is possible is only what I can see as "possible" because of my locality, my values, my experiences, etc. However, in order to preserve the undecidability, and the possibility of possibility there also must be possibility contained within the exterior world, i.e. chance must exist even in our world apart from humans. Here I stand with the majority of quantum physicists that at the heart of physical existence lies a certain amount of chance, of undecidability on the quantum level. As such, all the possibilities we envision are possibly actualized (even if such an event is incredibly unlikely), even as there are always possibilities that are possible in the world apart from our envisioning them. For example, perhaps there is a possibility in the "world" that if I drop my two loved ones both will magically appear behind me safe and sound. However, if I have not encountered experiences that will increase my likelihood of believing such an occurrence will happen, I will probably not envision it as a possibility even though in the "world" it is a possibility to happen. Hence why we can be surprised all the time. That said, I am fairly skeptical of a self/world distinction and will have some words about such a topic at a later point. For now, this footnote on chance and possibility at two levels will have to function).

Of course, on the subjective level, our values will pull us to prefer certain possibilities in a given moment. In a more clear cut case, if I merely like one individual on the cliff side and love the other, I'll probably value saving the second individual more. Here we have discovered the slippage between could and should, between possibility and potential. My values and my own subjectivity determine what I see as possible within my local moment, within my identity, and yet even within those possibilities, my values and my own subjectivity pull me even further into my preferred actualities, my potential. Ethics is revealed as not only our guide for what we believe we should do, but also what we could do. Of course as the sands that we stand upon shift, so too do we change, and the should/coulds we see, the potential/possibilities we envision shift as well. A possible answer to our identity question has (re)presented itself - "We are the potential we see in the world." That potential (and the possibilities behind it) are ghostly, not actually yet in existence, simply on the brink of our minds. And yet that brink is who we are, who we become. Before we give up on the search for the self and/or our values, we would do well to remember that. And as we evaluate ourselves, we must ask - are we proud of what we see?

Identity: Who are you? What do you want?

As my theophilosophy has progressed, it has not pretended to be comprehensive. While comprehensiveness is a goal of mine here, it will clearly remain an unreachable goal. However, one of the critical nexuses for the network I am constructing has yet to even be hinted at. Who are these creatures that hold values? What does it mean to say "I am"?

One of the disastrous problems for much of existentialism and postmodern philosophy/theology is that it centers the foundation upon the individual. As though reaching back toward Descartes, it is often assumed that the individual, at least, can be assumed and be taken as common and obvious truth. The individual is sacrosanct.

However, what is the individual? Do individuals have essences that are distinct and self-foundational? Is there such a thing as an independent individual? Process Philosophy (as well as a lot of New Age philosophy) has pressed the importance of our relationships for who we are as individuals. Ask yourself who you are, and you will find yourself describing yourself in relationships (a son, a friend, a philosopher, etc.) It is difficult to find a firm foundation for the "I" as individual. Individualism is primarily a product of the Enlightenment and the birth of capitalism - before the notion of the free market, the notion of just self-interest made little sense. There was no such thing as self-interest, no such thing as a foundational end for any particular individual apart from relationship. Those very relationships destabilize any self-foundation. After all, our relationships are always changing, always in flux. We are never the same.

Of course, prior to the Enlightenment, philosophers had attempted to give a derivative notion to the self based off of other foundational concepts. Perhaps the most famous is Aristotle's attempt to derive the nature of the individual from the nature of humankind as a whole. One of the severe problems with Aristotle's biology is that it assumed a given teleology, a given end, a given goal for humans as a species. To Aristotle, humans had a nature that was a distinct part of their biological essence which, if unimpeded, would lead them in the direction of the good. What it meant to be an individual was to be a part of the human species as it sought its biological end. That foundational teleology would be the source of the soul, the source of the individual.

Despite a recent disinterring of Aristotle's ethics, Aristotle's ethics and biology were rightly rejected. Most of the reasons for this have already been implicitly laid out in prior posts. While we may reach for a unitary whole, a unitary value, as humans we are a pluralistic jumble of contradictory values. Our values do not pull us toward one singular end. Our values change all the time. While tragedy and hope might be rightly described as being part of the human condition, they do not make a unitary whole. After all, our tragedies and hopes are nothing if they hold nothing - my hope matters because I hope about certain ends, that I hope about an actualization and my tragedy matters because my values remain unfulfilled (or broken). Just as we cannot find foundational meaning for the individual in individuality itself, we cannot derive meaning for the individual from a concept like humankind.

Which, of course, brings us back to the original question - who am I? Perhaps, after recognizing the insight of process philosophy, we should first rephrase the question - who do I become? We are nothing apart from the locality we exist in, after all, since we are (at least in part) relationships. The localities we exist in, that we are part of, are defined by change. We stand on shifting sands, looking out into blinding dust storms. Following such - who do I become - is also, in part - where am I (or where do I go?) - and - when am I (or when do I become?).

Proceeding from the insights about localities and potential from previous posts, it has become clear that our location is inseparable from the potential we envision. The teleology we have, the potential we see, the values we have, are all part of where and when we are/become. Because of this, it is impossible to ask our previous questions without asking - what do I want? For what we desire and value has been presented as our unstable foundation, and while it might be unstable, it has become clear that we simply cannot exist apart from our values. Contra Aristotle, our values, our teleology might have no foundation, might be completely unstable, but ultimately it is all we have. We live upon ethics.

Of course, asking all these questions brings us to an important precipice. If the questions "Who are you?" and "What do you want" are inseparable, the portrait we must paint of identity must be broader than any flat painting. I am reminded of a contrast in the science fiction show "Babylon 5." Through out the show, two powerful, godlike alien species ask their defining questions to different characters in the show. The Vorlons, the paragons of order ask "Who are you?" The Shadows, the agents of chaos ask "What do you want?" The questions are designed to reveal the essence of each character, to help the viewer discover what the identity, the role of each character is on the show. The show clearly favors the question "who are you?" as the defining question of identity and value, and echoes traditional sentiments from the Enlightenment, through Existentialism to Postmodernism (and beyond). Western history can be seen as the eternal return, the eternal acting/asking of the question "who are you?" If there is any truth in what has been presented up to this point, however, that question has been needlessly shallow. Living behind the Vorlon in each of us is a Shadow - "what do you want?" Living behind our identity is a ghost. Vorlons and Shadows reveals themselves to be two sides of the same coin. A coin with no substance.

Babylon 5 ends with a character (Lorien) asking Sheridan four questions. Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here? Where are you going? If we are to find any value in individuality, we will find it here, in pluralistic/unitary/inseperable questions like these. The questions are not rhetorical, and yet they have no answer. We are ghosts living with ghostly values. Whatever we are, we are haunted. Let us live in that haunting.

This Christmas Day

One could say that much of what has occurred below has been an interesting thought experiment up to this point and nothing more. After all, a lot of it is incredibly speculative - what does it actually have to do with theology? Does it have anything to do with the "real" world? On one hand, hopefully my comments about realism/idealism have at least hinted about what I think about "realism" talk. However, on the other hand, Christmas is about Christ becoming human, according to traditional Christianity, right? An incarnation, a materialization of divinity, an image of God finding substance. On this day, amidst rabid consumerism and wide-spread depression, I'm not sure this is what a traditional Christian interpretation of the incarnation was supposed to be. Certainly, this is a form of materialism, of depressed values meeting flesh, but it is not an image of God finding substance. Or perhaps we are revealing who our real God(s) are.

On this day, as we celebrate the traditional day of Christ's birth, ironies abound. We celebrate a birth on a day it almost certainly did not happen. We pay homage to our religious symbols even while our symbolized values lie elsewhere (capitalism? nationalism? individualism?). Allow such ironies to stretch our literalism on this story just a bit. If Jesus was not born on December 25th, perhaps there is room for more threads to the story. Perhaps there is space to (re)tell the story. After all, haven't we retold the story several times already? For better or worse, Santa Claus was not part of the original story. Allow me to (re)tell a version of this story. I do not claim any more literal authority for this story than any other. This story has some familiar elements to it - a Messiah-prophet was born in the land of Israel, preached and worked miracles amongst the oppressed, took a stand against an Empire and was killed partly because of it. After the Messiah-prophet's death, resurrection. Movements (a plural here is key) spawned to follow this Messiah-prophet. And the world was never the same.

All of this began on one day, in one moment - the tragedy and hope of the world had called out. The world could suffer under an Empire no longer. The ontos prayed for hope. People starved, people died of thirst, people were murdered. An empire stands upon the marginalized. Values were broken. Tragedy abounded. But people could not give up.

I do not pretend to know anything about the Messiah-prophet's birth. Historically, any number of locations and days could have held the Messiah-prophet's birth. Perhaps shepherds were there. Perhaps foreign wise individuals were there. Perhaps it really was in a stable. Historically, I cannot say. But that birth is important - because that birth is a symbol. When we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate a day we do not know, and yet it gives us hope. Hope breaks in on us like an event, we cannot anticipate it (even from the past). The birth of hope is mysterious. This is no weak mystery, a veil to hide behind. This is the kind of mystery that gives hope its character, that gives hope the ability to reach in from the future and build from our tragedy.

All the symbols, however, are inextricably linked. The birth is inseparable from the life, the prophetic work, the miracles, the death and the resurrection. Most (all?) were not aware of the hope given them until after the end (beginning?) of story had been completed. We find meaning only in narrative form - individual symbols and events cannot function apart from a story.

With this network of symbols in mind, let us turn the story on its head. Instead of starting with the "beginning" on Christmas day, let us start with the "end" on Christmas day. My hope is that on Easter I will write about the "beginning" in full form. After all, if a story is tied together, we should find the beginning in the end, and the end in the beginning. But do not mistake - this does not mean that I think Christ was destined to die at his birth-bed. On the contrary - Christ's death only has meaning to me if it was a choice, an undecidable responsibility. As we look for the beginning in the ending, we should keep this radical choice(s) in mind.

The scene is an all too familiar one - Christ on a cross. In many ways, this familiarity has bred complacency. Has the cross become a whitewashed symbol? Perhaps, perhaps not.

The tragedy of the moment was insurmountable. With a life of radical choice(s), Christ had stood for the marginalized, the oppressed, those which-are-not, against structures of power and oppression. Empire stood in the way of the Kingdom of God. The Empire had no compassion, no mercy. With Christ's radical choice(s), the structures of power moved to remove the nuisance. And make no mistake, to a world of empires, Christ and his small band of disciples was a nuisance at best.

One of the problems with the familiar scene of Christ on a cross is that it is always singular. The Empire had no patience for criminals, revolutionaries and nuisances, however, and typically crucified them all, with thousands being crucified in a day being common-place. Christ was one among thousands, one tragedy among many. The tragedy of the moment only increases from this - one lost voice, bound to be forgotten like all the others. A lost voice...

The death would not have been pretty. Crucifixion was brutal enough by itself. However, carrion birds would typically swoop overhead waiting (sometimes) for the moment of death. Burial simply was not allowed. Dogs would wait at the base of the cross ready to feast on the corpse. The Empire was thorough - it would remove all traces of its enemies from this earth. Keep in mind that burial and death rites were incredibly important in ancient societies - to be denied either was seen as pure dishonor and tragedy (think Antigone).

Absent from this death was any magic of any sort. By magic, I do not mean parlor tricks - there was no magical vindication in Christ's death (or anyone else's death) on the cross. No substitutionary atonement. Any God that needs to be appeased for the sin of the world by death (of any sort) is no God. No one (including God) did anything to vindicate Christ's death. There was no magic in the moment, only tragedy. Christ's death was like all the others, totally unremarkable and absolutely tragic.

Can a storyteller stop the story there? Can the narrative end there? No. We must be open to God's in(ter)vention. The story cannot end there because we cannot let it end there. We hope because we must. Christ was resurrected in the gospels because tragedy is no ending. We cannot live in absolute tragedy. Zizek once wrote that if the crucifixion should have taught Christians anything, it is that God does not use magic to save us on the brink of disaster. We only have ourselves, our own act(ualizations). Zizek was only partially right, we have our own act(ualizations) and we cannot pray for magic, but in the end we do have our stories. Or perhaps, I should say that on this Christmas day, in the beginning, we do have our stories. And there our hope lies.

May hope find you all on this Christmas day,
Drew

Value Images: Hope

The last value image I presented was of tragedy. Tragedy has a twin sibling, however, which is always chasing after (and before) it. Where there is tragedy, there is hope. The tragedy of our world gives us a gift - live your life in the imperative. The world is not as it should be. No one's values match what occurs. This is partly the case because of what was discussed last time - our values are always contradictory, and as such we are always pulled in separate directions by our conflicting values. Such contradictory moments are particularly tragic when two (or more) of our most important values crash into each other. The cliff scene is a perfect example of this, although there are countless situations which are of a less artificial nature which happen all the time. Should an American Christian be loyal to his faith or his religion? What should an individual caught in-between family and a loved one do? We simply cannot escape these contradictions.

However, there is another element within our tragic horizons. The world (ontos) changes. Our values simply cannot keep up. This prevents our values matching up with how the world is consistently. An American Marxist's values clearly do not match up with what American politics results in. When our values are not incarnated in reality, we find tragedy. When I value everyone being provided with food, housing and healthcare and those values do not match up with what-is (ontos) I am confronted with tragedy. However, notice that even if someone were to match his values to the world as what-is (ontos), the moment the world changes from those values (which of course will happen in our mutable world) my values will not match up with what-is (ontos) and I will be confronted with tragedy. For those that value what-is, what-is does not persist and we are confronted with tragedy. For those do not value what-is, what-is often does persist and we are confronted with tragedy. What a complicated way of stating that we don't always get what we want! :)

It is important to note a particular byproduct of this view - our values are incarnated in our time, in our locality. The tragedy of our situation will always, to some degree, depend on how our values match up with what-is (ontos). Notice however, that this value-incarnation is driven by our tragedy. When we confront a world where our values do not match what-is (ontos) we are driven by our determination to act towards vindication - praxis. If we do not slip into terror, the tragedy of our present situation drives us to actualize our values. If I value everyone being provided with food, housing and healthcare and those values do not match up with what-is (ontos) I will act towards the act(ualization) of my values. I will hope because I need to hope. I will believe my values are possible because the tragedy of my situation demands that tragedy is not the only essence of reality. Tragedy does not let us give up. We hope because we must. Thus, our values pull us both towards tragedy and hope simultaneously.

Interestingly, this relationship between our values and our tragedy/hope is not monodimensional. Our values shape what our tragic/hopeful situations are, but our tragic/hopeful situations in turn shape our values. After all, our values are nonsensical apart from our moments. What would the statement "I feel it is right to feed the starving" even mean apart from what it means in its locality? However, our values are not simply determined by our context, they are created by our contexts. My past has played a significant role in what I value. It has not determined what I will decide (since, as mentioned in the last post, every decision is undecidable) but it has given birth to what I value. I value family, for example, because of my multitudinous tragic/hopeful experiences of family. It would be otherwise if I had a different locality.

Our particular locality does not simply shape our values, however. In turn with our values, it allows us to see what-is-preferable from what-is (ontos). An act of vision. Let us call such what-is-preferable, potential. Again and again, I will return to this notion of potential. However, for now it is simply important to note that what we see (potential) both informs and is informed by what-is (ontos). This image will become more vivid with time.

Let's notice that a number of traditional interpretations of certain concepts break down at this point. The distinction between realism/idealism breaks down. No matter what our potential is, our potential is both grounded in what-is (ontos) and is also reaching towards the future as an ideal. We all have realistic image-inations. The realism/idealism distinction is a polemical tool generally designed to privilege one's own image-inations over another's. Even when such a distinction is used without an intent to harm, the designation effectively just presents the distance between the two individuals. When someone who identifies themselves as a realist designates someone else as an idealist, what is primarily expressed is a significant gap between not only their envisioned potentials, but also between their localities of what-is (ontos). We have fallen into an individualistic trap if we assume that someone else is somehow detached from reality if their envisioned potential (or locality) is different from ours. We all live in world(s).

The powerful element within the interaction between potential and what-is (ontos) is that every moment is a blend of hope and tragedy. To some degree our potential always remains unfulfilled, and so we hope because we must hope. Tragedy gives us no other choice. The tragedy of a past moment(s) gives us the push to act out of hope in the present moment. We act because we see. We hope because we are presented with images of tragedy. As long as hope and tragedy are united, hope is an active verb. We act because we hope for a better world. We hope because we must.