Beyond the Narrative? Part 1: The Problem of Joining Hands
by Christian
When I was in seminary I began a thesis that I never finished. It was going to be on the nature of the socio-linguistic boundary(ies) between the Church and the World specifically within the theology of Stanley Hauerwas. The central question of the thesis was how it was that we communicate the gospel with people outside of our tradition. Put simply, the thesis was on a Haurwasian understanding of evangelism. The problem goes like this: If communication of Christian truth claims requires participation the socio-linguistic tradition of the church (which, among other things, would include significant epistemic assumptions about the reality of God, sin, and redemption) — and if the gospel is something radically different from the ways of the world (meaning, it would seem like foolishness to those who do not share the aforementioned assumptions) — then how can it be communicated? Here is the issue put in Hauerwas’ own words:
Rather than disavowing politics, the pacifist must be the most political of animals exactly because politics understood as the process of discovering the goods we have in common is the only alternative to violence (Against the Nations, p. 7).
It is true that I do not think there is in principle any way to ensure that the Gospel can be made intelligible to someone who is not a Christian, but that does not mean that there is nothing we have to say to each other (Wilderness Wanderings, p. 6).
So my question was simply this: How? If we must work together with those outside of our narrative tradition to find the goods we have in common, and if there is no way in principle to intelligibly communicate the truth of the gospel with such a person, and if we further presuppose that the gospel is integral to our conception of the good, then how do we do find these goods we have in common? If Hauerwas is right, how can we work to build a better world with people who are not Christians?
In the end, and for several good reasons, I abandoned the thesis, but I am again visiting the question due to my reading of Eugene McCarraher. In a couple of different places (here and here) McCarraher argues that “we shouldn’t be chary about joining hands with the disembedded of other traditions.” While I appreciate and want to be enthusiastic about what McCarraher is calling us to here, my Hauerwasian tendencies trigger misgivings about jumping on board. In Resident Aliens Hauerwas (and Will Willimon) assert that,
Big words like “peace” and “justice,” slogans the church adopts under the presumption that, even if people do not know what “Jesus Christ is Lord” means, they will know what peace and justice means, are words awaiting content. The church really does not know what these words mean apart from the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.
So the question is, if when taking McCarraher’s cue we begin to join hands with those of other traditions who also want to build a world not made in the image of mammon, how do “we” provide content to our use of words like labor, economy, and justice?
Now it needs to be understood that Hauerwas is primarily concerned with liberal Christians and their desire to work with others in a way that mutes or works to translate Christian distinctiveness. In this sense Jesus Christ and the church become, at best, secondary signifiers for what a word like “justice” means. This, of course, should not at all be the concern with McCarraher. McCarraher is no liberal. He maintains that a particular and radical form of Christianity should inform all that we do in building a better world. But this is precisely where the problem becomes so confused. Because he is not a liberal — because he assumes that the Body of Christ is the center and hope of the world — the question must be asked how it is that he assumes we can work together with people of other traditions to build a better world without muting or translating our distinctly Christian grammar.
For example, McCarraher is very optimistic about the work of intellectuals like Slovoj Zizek. McCarraher, along with Milbank and other members of the Radical Orthodoxy movement, are eager to work with the an atheist like Zizek because Zizek argues that Christian theology holds the key to counter a world devoted to capitalist production. Of course, Zizek wants to use the “perverse logic” of Christianity without becoming a Christian himself, which is a problem because he has to reconfigure Christianity along hetrodox lines to make that “perverse logic” fit within the epistemic confines of his tradition: post-Marxist, Lacanian social analysis. (Along these lines Frederiek Depoortere has written a helpful analysis of Zizek’s reconstruction of Christian soteriology in the October 2007 Modern Theology titled, “The End of God’s Transcendence? On Incarnation in the Work of Slovoj Zizek.”)
What confuses me the most about McCarraher’s optimism for collaborating with folks like Zizek is that McCarraher’s vision for a new world — wherein a true, good, and beautiful ordering of the political economy must be fundamentally sacramental — requires a foundation distincly particular to Christian theology. Take, for example, these two passage from his “The Enchantments of Mammon”:
Indeed, if, as Marx rightly implies in his discussion of commodity fetishism, religion works like an economy, then it forms an alternative community of ontology, goods, and desires. And if Marx wrongly implies that fetishism is merely an ideological distortion of some more “basic” social practice, then we can say that Christianity constitutes the ontological and historical truth of enchantment, a sacramental materialism which affirms the divine presence in the material world.
Just as Chesterton knew that the ads in the skies were the tokens of a counterfeit paradise, we must see, in the history of capitalism, a celestial aspiration, and in the hunger for riches, a sacramental longing. Even in the fretful dreamlands of late capitalism, the world remains, as Gerard Manley Hopkins knew, charged with the grandeur of God, even as “all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil”. Any renewal of political hope must rest in the sacraments of the triune God, in what Hopkins, the poet of sacrament, called “the dearest freshness deep down things.”
Zizek may very well “appreciate” McCarraher’s talk of sacrament, and he could even understand how it is useful for the creation of alternatives to our current economic/political configurations. But this would be similar to my “appreciation” for a poet’s use of iambic pentameter (which I don’t understand) or my “appreciation” for a pagan’s reverence for the earth (which I fundamentally don’t agree with). While I can certainly appreciate things I either don’t really understand or don’t really agree with, such a limited appreciation would certainly complicate my participation if a poet friend (I went to Regent College) were to ask me to pen a verse with her or if a neo-pagan neighbor (I live in Portland) asked me to join him for a celebration of the Spring Equinox.
The former of these can be overcome through education: if I were to really learn about poetic meter I could eventually become a serviceable poetic collaborator (at least it is possible). However, no matter how much I read about neo-pagan worship and no matter how many lovely neo-pagans I befriend, my participation in the practices of neo-pagan worship will always be superficial. It will never really be worship because I don’t share the foundational assumptions of that tradition. I’m not a believer.
Therefore, I’m wondering what sort of world McCarrher (a Christian believer) and Zizek (not a Christian believer) could work together to build, being that for McCarraher a true political economy would require the worship of the triune God, whilst for Zizek it would not. In other words, how do we work together with those of other traditions who share our impulse for revolution? Do we need a theory to talk to people beyond our traditioned Christian narrative? If we move beyond the narrative, what happens? And when we do move beyond our narrative framework, what is the basis for communication and a shared common good? What do we share in common with people of other traditions that even makes communication possible?
Do you think it might be possible that the problem here is what is meant by “grammar”? I often think that Anglo-American thinkers tend to distort Wittgenstein’s use of the term “grammar” for what makes up meaning in language. The ordinary language philosophers (and the Yale postliberal school) seem to think that philosophical grammar is what makes up the meaning in a belief, and I don’t think thats what the Witt by “forms of life”. Lebensformen is essentially political in nature. It is praxis that gives our beliefs (or theory) meaning. Therefore, as the Witt loved to say, we should not “say” how to live amongst the unconverted, but “show” it. Thats why we have the gospel narrative, because it “shows” us how to live with others – how to be political – in Hauerwas’s sense. I guess I am just personally unconformable with understanding theological grammar as pure “theory”. Just a thought.
Troy,
I agree that it is erroneous to discuss theological grammar as pure theory and can see how my phrasing of the questions would lead to your concern in this regard. I also agree with you that our grammar is best shown and not explained. But what I’m trying to get at is what is it that allows people to communicate between narratives? Within the narrative, or Lebensformen, we can understand one another because we share the same grammar. If I am communicating with someone outside my narrative, which means that our praxis is shaped by different language, practices, and therefore logic, what serves as the basis of communication?
It seems that this is a matter of natural theology. And this is the direction this conversation will take in the next post.
– Christian
Interesting post. I found your article via Halden. I think the only commonality we have with “other traditions”, so-called, is sin — and our subsequent need for Jesus. I obviously am not in favor of natural theology as a legitimate starting point for dialogue. How does one married to Christ collaborate with a prostitute?
Or:
Obviously I think ontology has everything to do with epistemology; and until someone receives a new heart (see second Corinthians 3) they will not value what God values — or are incapable of even starting. In the end I suppose the question you are dealing with is not one that Scripture is asking. Except for commonality in the Gospel, from the negative side or the positive. Christ is the center, if as Zizek supposes to gut the Christian message of its content, i.e. the cross, then in the end he will be no different than the Corinthians in Chapter 1 or the Romans in Chapter 1. It appears, Christian, that we probably agree.
Anyway, good probing article.
Bobby,
Thanks for commenting. I am glad you think we agree, but I’m not entirely sure what we are agreeing on. It seems that you see Scripture as drawing a hard ontological line between those with old and new hearts, and therefore, those who value what God values and those who do not. It also seems by what you have written that we cannot work (and should not work) with non-Christians to make the world better for two reasons: 1) you are saying that we ought not defile ourselves through intermingling with outsiders (“How can one married to Christ collaborate with a Prostitute?”); and 2) you are arguing that the ontological (and therefore epistemological) difference between a Christian and non-Christian makes it impossible for us to share goods in common.
This was not the point I was trying to make in my post, although this position does represent one side of the question. My question, however, assumes that we can and ought to work with those outside of the Christian faith (tradition) to find a common good, or at least to live together in shalom. I find Scriptural precedent for this in Jeremiah 29:4-6. I would also take precedent from reason and experience (as well as the traditions of the church). It just seems true of God that we ought to work with others for good, even if those others are not believers in Christ. Of course, things get tricky. I can work to plant a garden with a non-believer in order to better my community, but sitting with that person on city counsel is a different matter as our conception of the good will be different based upon the difference of what Troy called our “forms of life” or narrative traditions.
So, I think we agree inasmuch as we both see that it is complicated, but I don’t know that we totally agree because it seems that you are more certain that there is an ontological as well as epistemological difference that not only makes communication difficult, but obligates us to keep to ourselves.
If, in fact, this is what you were saying (and I could totally be reading you wrong), then I am wondering how it is that anyone can come to understand the Gospel. One of the primary rules of learning is that all new knowledge must build upon old knowledge. If the truth of the Gospel represents new knowledge, then there must be something that non-Christians already poses within them that allows this new knowledge to be intelligible and therefore attractive. If the line is ontological, then how can it be crossed? How does the message of the Gospel — communicated both through word and deed — make enough sense to someone that they would want to repent, believe, and be baptized?
In order for something to be compelling it must, to at least some degree, make sense.
– Christian
Do we want to say that the incommensurability between the Christian world/narrative is essentially different from the incommensurability that exists between other worlds?
Some worlds are thin enough that they are by necessity incommensurable. Football and baseball are so thin that though both are sports/games, there is no room for overlap, no way to sensibly (from either perspective) play both at the same time.
When it comes to Christianity and other worlds/narratives I have a few ideas.
1. Those of us that inhabit the Christian narrative also inhabit other narratives. While our primary allegiance may be to Jesus and his story, we are also always immersed in other stories, our broader culture in particular. Because of this we, at the very least, jostle up against those whose primary allegiance lies in a story other than Jesus’.
2. God is a participant in the ongoing Christian story. As that story impinges on other stories through those of us who embody it, our jostling with participants in other stories is more than just us. Through us God is invading their territory.
3. There is no guarantee that the sense God might make to the inhabitants of other narratives through us will make any sense to us. It’s also likely that what God does won’t make sense to the inhabitants of those other traditions. BUT – and I think this is important – the non-sense that God’s work through us makes can serve as a crowbar to pry open their eyes (I speak figuratively) and arouse questions that can draw them to Christ.
4. One of the chief forms of jostling that we see in Scripture is suffering. Thinking of 1 Peter, we see the admonition to always be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have. While I was long taught that this meant (roughly), “Study the Josh McDowell books so you can quote their argumenets to non-believers,” the context is actually critically different. Rather than assuming the issues are primarily intellectual, Peter’s assumption is that by following Jesus we’ll run smack into the world and suffer for doing so. But the Christian way of embracing suffering will be so non-sensical and strange to outsiders that they’ll be compelled to ask questions. THAT’S when our answers come in.
5. Finally, I’m not a Barthian. I think God as creator plays a role in every culture or narrative out there. The role may be deeply hidden, hard to find, unpredictable. But some how, in some way, God will be there pointing the way to Christ. So when we come along – whether in strength or weakness (if the NT picture is normative and not merely descriptive, weakness will be more common than strength) – and impinge on or jostle with their narrative/world, then it can be an occasion for God saying, “See! This is what I was trying to tell you about!”
Christian,
How do you define “good”? This’ll help me understand where you’re coming from.
As far as ontology/epistemology goes, why aren’t you certain that there is an integral reciprocity between those two realities? The first Corinthians 2 passage I quoted seems to imply that there is an integral relationship between ontology/epistemology. My assumption is based within the long-standing Augustinian tradition.
Afterthought: when Jesus said that there is no one good, but God alone; then how can one posit “doing good” apart from Union with God — without positing a separate ontology of good?
one more point, I forgot to mention. I did note that there was a point of commonality between non-Christians and Christians; and that is that we are all sinners in need of Jesus.
As far as the Jeremiah passage you mention, I guess this illustrates maybe “your” point on working together. But again how you define good will make much more clear for me if in fact this Jeremiah passage actually provides a framework for a viable trajectory and model for us to follow today.
Hey Christian,
I’ve always secretly harbored the desire that you would one day finish this project in full.
Your general issue is clear enough. However, I think there is still a latent separation between nature and grace lurking within your question. I suspect that this arises from Hauerwas’ Barthian tendencies coupled by Wittgenstein’s residual anthropomorphism.
I mention this because I think if you begin with a sacramental world view, and then discuss how we are to witness to those who have no desire to join us at the table, the issue becomes less of a tension and is allowed to be the paradox that it needs to be – the both/and of the natural desire for the supernatural. The orthodox tradition recognized this in typological ‘readings,’ not only of the biblical text but being itself. There could always be found traces of the cross in events, the book of nature and in the bible (de Certeau).
So, to follow your example, when we join hands with neo-pagans to worship wood sprites, especially if the people who really believe in wood sprites are anti-capitalists, then we are already witnessing the scattered seeds of the logos yearning to be gathered again into the one Logos. A sacramental world view, as I understand it, is not limited to the accidents of bread and wine, but encompasses the whole creation yearning for redemption. This is particularly evident in the way the early church recapitulated the pagan feast days to reflect the Christian calendar and the transformation of the old into the new.
It seems to me that the same holds true today. That this transformation from old to new – which is the definition of sacrament according to Alexander Schmemann – is always happening as creation longs for its redemption. Milbank sums this up nicely in Being Reconciled when he talks about the “the gospel of affinity.” He argues that we need to “counterpose Augustine’s counter-empire, the city of God” and that “we may do this alongside many secular co-workers: socialist, communist and anarchists. We should not refuse their co-operation, yet we should insist that they have little grasp of the counter empire” (210).
Along with the typological tradition writ large, Milbank advocates what he sees happening in John Henry Newman in that the Church “has always been…itself the taking up and inter-mingling of many human traditions. It even consists from the outset in seeing how the diverse might cohere, and continues to enact this analogical mingling” (122). It seems that it is here where Wittgenstein’s “grammar” is properly understood and practiced, at least according to Troy’s post.
Bobby,
I don’t know that I have a stock definition of “good.” I think that we define the good within the church, but I think that it carries over into the world. I mean, if God is redeeming the world then we ought to be concerned with the good of he world. If we develop an ‘us’ verses ‘them’ mentality I am not sure how well we will be serving anyone, including God.
With that said, it is important that when we do serve the world we do it on the terms set by our narrative and not based upon the narrative of the world. For example, McCarraher argues from the Augustinian tradition to say that one aspect of our narrative is that we live in a world of abundance, whereas the world’s narrative is one of scarcity. This has huge socio/economic implications and ought to have a deep impact on how we work for economic good in the world.
So I guess in this regard I would argue that one aspect of the good would be to seek socio/economic/political justice that reflects the abundance of God’s provision and grace.
Can we do this with people who aren’t Christians? Well, that is the question.
hi Christian,
I wonder if you have looked at any of Hauerwas’ more recent interactions with Rom Coles (poli sci department at Duke). I hate to make Rom my token non-Christian interlocutor, but he’s set himself up. One of the best Yoder essays I’ve ever read comes from his “Beyond Gated Politics.” In that book Coles takes Rawls notion of “public reason” to town as a poisonous form of bland ecumenism which is intolerant of dialogue. In other words, he too is no liberal.
What I think Rom and Stanley find mesmerizing in Yoder is the patience to pursue the questions you are asking: “he combines bearing evangelical witnes to his confessedly provinvcial tradition with vulnerable and receptive dialogical practices with others.” I think Stanley is learning this only must later in life (in other words, much later than the rhetoric we find in Resident Aliens, et al).
I strongly recommend Coles book. He and Hauerwas also co-authored a new one, “Christianity, Democracy and the Radical Ordinary” which I haven’t read. That Coles is a political scientist and not a philosopher, rhetorician or theologian and that his tradition is Radical Demoracy is a very important exercise in encounter. It means hearing an Other who does not use words like “ontology” or “epistemology” as his primary language.
Richard,
Can you help me understand how you are using “thin” in the claim, “Some worlds are thin enough that they are by necessity incommensurable.” Are you talking about the boundary between the worlds or the richness of the world itself? I’m confused.
In regards to your five points, I heartily agree with most everything you had to say. We certainly inhabit more than one story. It would be quite remarkable to find a person who only and completely inhabited the Christian narrative. I just can’t imagine such a person. So it can safely be maintained that we also have more than one narrative, more than one language. Hauerwas calls this having a second first langauge, and I think this is a fruitful avenue of inquiry.
I certainly agree suffering is our most compelling form of witness. It is also our most truthful form of witness. There is something compelling about someone willingly taking on suffering or obediently complying with an authority even when that obedience leads one into a place of suffering. I think we as Protestants struggle with this because we are so inundated with an ideology of self-interest and personal liberty.
Question: If there is something compelling about our witness through suffering, does suffering then function as sort of a natural common ground between Christians and non-Christians?
Bobby,
You stressed that we share sin in common with non-Christians, but do we not also share the imago dei? Isn’t our being made in God’s image more primary than sin? It seems from your argument that through the fall we lost the imago dei. If that is the case then I am not sure how you could be arguing your position from within the Augustinian tradition. As far as I’ve read, Augustine does not think our nature is changed due to sin, but our desires are disordered and our capacity to act upon our true nature is impaired. Thus the distinction between a Christian and non-Christian would be that of vision and restored capacity to act upon our true selves and live in harmony with the image in which we’ve been made. In other words, our sin cannot undo what God has made good in us. Our sin is only a privation or perversion of that good.
In this regard I would agree with Richard that God speaks through us, often in ways that are unintelligible to ourselves, in order to pry open the eyes of others (and ourselves!) to the reality of God’s kingdom. But I’m still curious to understand how this happens, if it’s possible.
I believe Charles Marsh suggest something along the lines in “God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights” that the Civil Rights Movement was must effective when it stayed true to its theological inspirations and most ineffective when it became muddled with secular discourse (at least in terms of the SCLC).
Even someone like Jurgen Habermas now argues that in terms of the public sphere, religious discourses would lose their identity if the were to open themselves up to a type of interpretation which no longer allows the religious experiences to be valid as religious experiences.
I think the place to look for a possible answer or at least for someone who is trying to work this out is the Jewish scholar Peter W. Ochs (University of Virginia) who has written a lot lately on scriptural reasoning. He has two books I believe that are still forthcoming in which he tries to work out the issues discussed here:
1. Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Brazos Press: expected 2007)
2. Come, Study! Teaching and Learning Scriptural Reasoning (Eerdmans: expected 2007)
Of course Ochs is a buddy of Hauerwas.
One particular Christian theologian who is influenced by Ochs and places himself somewhat in the Radical Orthodoxy tradition is Nicholas Adams at Edinburgh (supposedly Catherine Pickstock beat Adams out for a readership in theology and philosophy at Cambridge). He has written an article published in Modern Theology with the title:
“‘Making Deep Reasoning Public’ the abstract of which can be found at:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0025.2006.00322.x
Actually this entire issue of Modern Theology is devoted to the topic of scriptural reasoning and I would suggests it might provide a possible avenue to get behind some of the apparent impasses that Christian mentioned. Also, it seems to me that readers of this blog might be more comfortable with this approach than say with someone like Jeffrey Stout who relies on a pragmatist conversational motif instead of a theological narrative.
Danny,
I haven’t yet read the article you mentioned by Nick Adams, but I have really enjoyed his work. And I’ll keep an eye out for those books by Ochs. I’ve never read his stuff, but my prof. at Warner did his PhD with him at UVA… so he’s come up a bit.
Cheers!
Christian,
I responded to your question on Augustine and the image of God over at Halden’s site.
As far as suffering, this was my point on our commonality in sin. I.e. the effect of sin equals suffering in general. I think this was Luther’s point on the theology of the cross.
A few quick (and incomplete) thoughts:
(1) I think a great deal of this comes down to performance. This is increasingly where I have gone in my own thinking and doing related to this topic.
(2) An, as far as I can tell, mostly unexplored line would be to attempt to engage in the type of “transcoding” that Fredric Jameson describes. I’m not sure if it is possible, but it could be worth a shot.
(3) Developing the notion of solidarity is also helpful (this also relates back to performance, and recalls Zizek’s assertion that Christians and Marxists should be ‘fighting’ on the same side of the barricade). Michael Hardt has some good comments about solidarity in a lecture he gave at EGS (you can find it on youtube).
(4) Come to Vancouver again. We’ll go for beer and figure all this shit out.
Peace.
Dan,
Thanks for the tip on the Hardt speech. Tell me more about what you mean by performance…
Oh, and next time I’m up there we’ll get that beer.
- Christian
Well, I hate to refer you to something I’ve written but, well, I’m going to do that. I had an article published in Stimulus a few years ago that explored this issue — you can find it online here — http://www.stimulus.org.nz/index_files/STIM%2014_1%20Babel.pdf) so that lays out some of my initial thoughts. I followed that up with another (unpublished) paper that you can find here — http://poserorprophet.livejournal.com/65044.html.
So, between the two of those, you should have a good idea of what I mean by ‘performance.’
Peace.