Kahn’s political theology

Paul Kahn’s new book Political Theology is a fascinating riff on Schmitt’s earlier volume. It’s very interesting on the differences between the US and Europe, as well as on its critique of liberal political theory.

Kahn aims to show how much political theory, and especially its liberal form, fails to appreciate the way in which the state has become the site of the sacred for many citizens; that politics is not only a matter of reason and discussion but also of decision, will, faith and imagination; and that the modern political imaginary is still related to theological notions of faith, creation and sacrifice. Kahn uses Schmitt to pursue the question of freedom in politics: the sovereign’s freedom in deciding on the exception; the judge’s freedom in applying the legal norm; the philosophical freedom of thinking. In each case the decision is related to but not decided by norms. This last point has interesting similarities with Lloyd’s philosophy of norms and practices I’ve been blogging about recently.

Also recommended, Anthony Bash has an excellent article on forgiveness, in the new edition of Studies in Christian Ethics, as do Thomas Brudholm and Arne Grøn.

Lloyd’s Problem with Grace (5)

Lloyd’s conclusion speaks of a politics of the middle. ‘There are two kinds of politics’ that of law and grace and that of the middle. The politics of the middle refuses transcendent authority, whether from beyond the world or inside the person – what matters is reasoning and negotiation. The point is to stay with the everyday instead of going beyond it; explanations just occlude. There is no secret, all-encompassing explanation. ‘But sometimes things do need to be said.’ It is not that there is no normativity and only practices. Against the beautiful soul and against quietism we must commit ourselves, we must act. The alternative to quietism is ‘to represent the ordinary rhetorically.’ To be aware of and speak to one’s audience. This must be done strategically, at certain times. It cannot be done all the time because it is trying to make the audience aware that how they live needs to be changed. This politics will use various strategies to represent the ordinary (the ordinary ‘cannot be accessed directly. It can only be represented.’) This representation is somewhat free of enchantment and so needs protecting. ‘This deliberative, Socratic moment must be separated from the political moment, the moment when politics is packaged in the language of enchantment in order to persuade.’ We shouldn’t neglect this moment altogether, nor try to use it too often. It requires faith and love.

Is this elitist? How does the rhetorical packaging of politics work? If we know it is rhetorical persuasion doesn’t that make us less likely to be persuaded? Who is the audience here? The original socratic philosophers were clear that they were a class above the polloi but I think Lloyd would be uncomfortable with this. I think Lloyd imagines that the moments of critique can only be sporadic because we have to get on with the everyday running of politics, but equally that the institutions generating critique and the political class’ ability to hear critique need to be nurtured.

The appendix on ‘political theology as a rigorous science’ grapples with the problem of how political philosophy can be both thorough and efficacious. It needs to go beyond the ordinary and yet rooted in the ordinary in order to persuade most people. The key move is to refuse any transcendent source of normativity so that norms and practices are open to change. Here’s the difference Lloyd’s approach could make. To advance a political goal people normally think of the actors and their motivations and how they could be persuaded to change their minds or do a deal. But this precludes other options, it precludes surprise. It operates only within the normal logic. Political philosophy as a ‘rigorous science’ is a way of calling forth ‘the invisible unpredictable possibilities. It is political theology.’ So political philosophy is especially important in moments of deadlock or impasse. But political science and political theory don’t really allow for this.

This seems to suggest that political philosophy needs practitioners who practice the philosophical virtues and strategies Lloyd has named so that they can be ready with imagination and discernment when moments of impasse happen. If this suggests more dialogue between politicians and political philosophers that’s probably a good thing. But are political philosophers the best people for moving past an impasse? Perhaps NGO workers or the equivalent are better at coming up with practical solutions.

Political philosophy is the root of political theology. Done rightly political philosophy makes visible the invisible, and it does so through rhetoric. A particularly efficacious rhetorical technique is to use the language of religion, a language that has wide cultural resonance in the contemporary context. It is, after all, the quintessential language of enchantment. The language of theology can be used sophistically or philosophically; almost always it is used sophistically.

But political philosophy can use theological language as its own rhetoric to achieve its own ends. This is not an attempt to fool people but speaking to them with reasons that anyone can assess in order to persuade them to change. It is representing the ordinary to side-step the enchantment of the obvious. In other words, it is representing the everyday in a way that puts it under question whilst suggesting another possibility. This is partly a please for political theologians and philosophers to use religious concepts more flexibly and widely. Is this also a call for politicians to use religious rhetoric to mobilise sections of the population? The former seems wise, the latter dangerous.

Throughout the book there’s a focus on the political actor. This is partly due to the focus on political virtues and partly the importance given to the Roseian phenomenological method, which is existential as well as intellectual. Lloyd is not writing about political strategies in the sense of policy mechanisms or electioneering. He is writing about forming political agents through the virtues and practices, e.g., forgiveness, attention, dispossession, etc. but this is also about a type of political discourse, one that remains in the middle rather than speaking with a supersessionist accent. Is this sort of discourse only able to find a home in civil society or could governments work this way too? Lloyd seems to suggest that only at certain Socratic moments could governments enact a Roseian phenomenology; otherwise they must depend more on their usual logic and rhetoric. This is not a critique so much as a fact.

This is a fascinating book that deserves wide debate. Tune in next month for one more post: a response from Lloyd himself.

Lloyd’s Problem with grace (4)

Section II of The Problem with Grace is about theopolitical strategies, the main aim of which is to thin out our enchantment, which means to make us aware of the necessary gap between practices and norms. Tradition is used as a strategy when the mismatch between norms and practices is taken as a chance to interpret and develop the tradition, perhaps in surprising directions, or even ‘a direction inexplicable by analysis of practices alone.’ Here the person (rhetorician, novelist, politician) plays with norms to reconfigure them, they don’t just refer them to/from practices.  There is no one account that will explain everything and make sense of all our practices. When we accept this, i.e. that norms are only fictions to live by, then both norms and practices lose a sense of mystifying authority and we become free to change them.

Liturgy should be distinguished from ritual. Ritual must follow precisely the set norms; liturgy (as understood by Vatican II thinkers) is primary and it is the job of theological norms to catch up. Lloyd argues that liturgy is, in one sense, self-authorizing, if its practices are taken as primary and the norms of theology have to catch up with it. This means that it can be treated, at least for a while, as practices free from norms. This leaves space for play and experimentation, even if only in putting the norms and practices back together again. The result may be something unexpected. Liturgy can function this way without the ‘rhetorical flourish’ of calling it a foretaste of the world to come. More recent enthusiasts for liturgy who suggest it opens the way to ontological peace are hiding the violence we always enact because of the intrinsic gap between norms and practices. Simone Weil’s concept of attention offers ways of becoming aware of our own violence and our institutions’ violences.

Lloyd also turns to Weil in discussing sanctity. He understands sanctity as another strategy for loosening our normal understanding of the obvious. Sanctity acts ‘as if there are no norms’ so that ‘new practices can be born that are unpredictable from the perspective of norms.’  How can we gain the leverage on ourselves to create this new perspective? Through some of Weil’s disciplines: attention, dispossession, affliction, forgiveness, abandonment of reward. These are not things we do all the time (that would be to instate a new norm). They are strategies employed from time to time in order to question the link between practices and norms and develop practical wisdom in the light of that. This helps when we encounter practices without norms and have to develop them.

Encountering a practice without a norm is an ‘event’, a way of understanding revelation. Not revelation as a conversation stopper because of its authority and transparency, nor a Badiouian event requiring a total Gestalt switch, but a more hermeneutic event that requires re-thinking norms and creating new ones. Excellent writing can also help here because it works through tensions instead of giving answers; it is ‘equivocal all the way down.’ James Baldwin serves as the example for this, and for prophecy. Prophecy is rhetoric that attempts to name and highlight the meeting of the ordinary and the invisible: it tries to make us aware of what we do and how that doesn’t quite fit our normative schemes, so that we may change them. The prophet is interested in the ‘systematic violence of norms’. Another of Lloyd’s exemplars here is Foucault who both questions anchorage points (e.g. ‘sex’) and underlines the tensions between norms and practices (through genealogical critique). The prophet does not speak from some otherworldly realm but is persuasive because she gives reasons and arguments; hers is public speech. The prophet wants to change things, she calls for faith, a ‘total commitment never fully justified.’

Lloyd takes a series of religious practices and loosens them from their traditional, theological context without reducing them to secular terms. Some of them could be re-described in secular terms, I think, but some of them not (say, revelation and sanctity respectively). The point for Lloyd is to avoid equating religion with transcendence and the secular with immanence, so that a range of (suitably defined) religious concepts and practices can be used to shed light on politics.

Lloyd’s Problem with Grace (3)

The first section of the book is called ‘theopolitical virtues’ and covers love, faith and hope. Love and faith are interpreted as virtues (always beneficial) and hope as a rhetorical strategy (ambiguous). Love is interpreted as an embodiment of the Hegelian speculative identity, a learning to live in and by negotiation. This is most obvious between two lovers but it helps us understand love as a political virtue (it says something about the state of the agent). Loving political actors are willing to stake themselves in their political negotiations; they accept the constant pulling and pushing required by common life, that we cannot always get what we want, that we must make room for others. This has parallels with William Connolly’s work. Faith is the virtue of carrying on in engaging the ordinary world after the realisation that all normative worlds fail. (For more on this see the introduction to Secular Faith edited by Lloyd and Elliot Ratzman).

In the first two chapters, Lloyd takes an understanding of a religious concept and, by freeing it from being overburdened by thick traditional description, enables it to cast light on politics. First, the whole idea of virtues in politics is marginal in current discourse. Second, the virtues chosen come from the Jewish and Christian traditions rather than secular political analysis, and it speaks both ways through its use in this new context. This is how Lloyd fleshes out the middle way he refers to in his introduction (see part (2)). We can also see this in his use of hope as a strategic, rhetorical tool, used to generate political momentum. Hope is certainly important in politics and probably deserves more discussion that it receives, but it shouldn’t be handled in a naive fashion, and this is what Lloyd avoids.

Lloyd’s Problem with Grace (2)

I can finally start to blog about Lloyd’s new book The Problem with Grace. It helps to outline an important part of Lloyd’s thinking first. Lloyd thinks there are only practices and norms (‘Law’ is the symbol for this). What else could there be? Norms are related to practices but are always mismatched. We can’t help but give reasons, arguments and justifications for our norms – in other words, get involved in metaphysics and ethics. Norms have no ontological ground in an ultimate sense, but they are they are real and have social force: they are fictions we live. There is no principle or scheme that would make everything make perfect sense, that could ground all morality and from which everything could be derived (‘Grace’ is something like this). If we assume this then we distract from our own violence and prevent ourselves from changing it [e.g. assuming the church or America is the paradigmatic society]. When we attempt to redeem the world as a whole through some scheme, we refuse to accept its tragic and messy nature. We need to accept and mourn this, not get fixated on it in melancholia. We need to focus on what we actually do, not some ideal scheme of ‘if only everyone would…’ Supersessionism is replacing one thing with another: dismissing the actual world for some hoped-for melancholic object. Lloyd is against utopian thinking, in favour of dialectical thinking that starts in the middle of the messiness and works to improve it. (For more on norms and practices see his Law and Transcendence).

The subtitle of the book is Reconfiguring Political Theology and this is about removing a supersessionist logic from political theology and philosophy, by which Lloyd means that the ‘world is amiss, fallen; some redemptive force, with its origins both inside and outside the world, is needed to make it right.’ One way Lloyd will go about this is broadening the number and scope of theological ideas used to understand politics and political philosophy. Rather than simply relating political structures to transcendence and immanence he draws on the theological virtues and some practices such as tradition, liturgy and sanctity. A major claim is worth quoting in full.

I take religious language seriously, and I do so in a way that retains the rich legacy of Jewish and Christian reflection on and refinement of religious concepts without subordinating those concepts to an overarching theological narrative. We gain something of value when concepts like tradition, liturgy, and sanctity are made available for political theorizing, but we lose something of value when such concepts are stripped of their religious heritage. We also lose something of value when every mention of concepts like tradition, liturgy, and sanctity brings with it unwarranted commitments that are specifically theological. Some middle path must be possible: it is precisely the task of this book to identify and traverse that path.

On key question, then, will be how well these concepts function outside of their larger theological context and how much of their ‘rich legacy’ can be maintained without it. This is what the following chapters must display. This is intended to be a ‘postsectarian, postsecular political theology’. Each chapter focuses on a religious practice but tries to understand it in relation to social norms and practices, ‘detaching it from an overarching theological narrative’, in order to help us understand the political and social norms and practices, rather than to mobilize the affect of these concepts for apologetic purposes.

kirwan’s Political Theology: a potted summary

Michael Kirwan, Political Theology: An Introduction. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009.

This text is very good as an introduction to the field in that it covers the main authors, areas of thought and history with which political theology is concerned, including philosophers and more recent continental thinkers. It also explains most terms and jargon; it assumes very little and is easy to read. This makes it an ideal text for undergraduates or those without any theological training. Those who’ve been around for a while will probably know a lot of this but if political theology is not one’s main area then it will probably help fill some gaps. The table of contents gives a good idea of what’s going on but I’ve included a very potted summary below.

Part 1. The parameters

1. What is political theology?
2. Witness against the beast: ‘Leviathan’ versus ‘Covenant’ theologies
3. ‘Love of the World’: is political theology possible

Part 2. The history

1. ‘the doctrine of the two’: political theology’s high tradition
2. ‘a stormy pilgrimage’: political theologies of the reformation
3. ‘still born gods’: the enlightenment roots of political theology

Part 3. The crisis

1. theology in a land of screams: the crisis of national socialism
2. ‘we who come after’: critical theory and the theologian
3. ‘from despair to where?’: Habermas and communicative theology

Part 4. The gift

1. the political word of God: political theology and scripture
2. ‘Friday’s children’: political theology and the church

What is political theology?

1)    ‘politics is seen as a ‘given’, with its own secular autonomy’

2)    ‘theology is critical reflection on the political. Theology is related as superstructure to the materialist politico-economic base, and therefore reflects and reinforces just or unjust political arrangements.’

3)    ‘theology and politics are essentially similar activities: both are constituted in the production of metaphysical images around which communities are organised.’

Witness against the state

The question of the place of violence in politics: founding (Girard), point it outwards to avoid civil strife?

The idea of the katëchon: ‘to hold back, hold fast, to bind’: politics as holding back chaos and disorder (Carl Schmitt).

Two anthropologies: Leviathan (a katëchon view), or Covenant (humanity able to make covenant with God and one another). Jesus barely figures in the former.

‘Love of the World’: is political theology possible

Hannah Arendt thinks Christians are unable to properly participate in politics because (a) their focus is on the afterlife rather than this world; (b) love is a ‘stranger’ to politics but the focus of Christianity; (c) its idea of absolute truth (because of revelation) is unworkable for human institutions. Christians often over-value virtues and moral outrage rather than getting on with the compromise that politics requires.

Notes the ambiguities in early Christianity and its response to its Roman context: ‘revolutionary theory, conservative practice’ (43) (Frend, martyrdom and persecution in the early church). It was because of the context of the Roman Empire that a lot of political theory focused on questions of kingship, empire rather than democracy from the Greek tradition.

Current question: ‘Is the attempt to think politically, without religious categories, itself a mistake?’ (47)

‘the doctrine of the two’: political theology’s high tradition

56 idea that church had to resist political powers because they were sinful and also endorse them because they were ordained by god. O’Donovan: the political powers have an ‘indirect testimony’. Augustine: earthly city is neither holy nor diabolical, depends on how it’s used.

Briefly considers the investiture and conciliar controversies. The former was about whether the emperor or pope had more authority; the latter about how to deal with the claims of multiple popes – where does authority lie? In the end, it was decided that a council could depose a pope. In this medieval context, the work of Aristotle having been rediscovered, the idea of political communities as created and good rather than as a result of the fall became popular (famously in Aquinas).

‘a stormy pilgrimage’: political theologies of the reformation

covers the radical and magisterial reformers (Müntzer, Luther, Calvin), and then Cavanaugh’s work on the history of the emergence of the state and wars of religion (basically: we condemn religion done from violence but not that done by the state = double standards; and that the idea that the state emerged to save us from religious violence is false because the violence was the emergence of the state form and ran across Protestant/Catholic lines).

‘still born gods’: the enlightenment roots of political theology

Rousseau (we need the affective dimension of religious belief to sustain the social contract); Kant (postulates of practical reason: in order to be able to function morally we must posit that God exists, there is an afterlife, and that we are free); Hegel (how to move from a false to authentic consciousness).

Kirwan notes that Metz, Moltmann and liberation theologians make a similar move to Kant’s postulates of practical reason: if we have only ‘rational’ politics we will succumb to despair.

theology in a land of screams: the crisis of national socialism

looks at the ‘ineffectiveness of the Christian churches in resisting the ‘political religion’ of the Nazis’. It overviews Jewish responses to the Shoah, then at problems with Luther’s ‘two kingdoms’ doctrine (he criticises Barth for not paying enough attention to facts on the ground and focusing ‘a theological, rather than a political or sociological collapse.’ He then mentions George Steiner, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel and Paul Celan, and names Metz as the theologian ‘foremost in ‘facing the Jews after Auschwitz’.’ According to Metz, the church’s credibility depends on whether it repents for and owns up to its role in the Shoah (the ‘theological enmity’ over the centuries). He does not think this has yet happened.

‘We who come after’

This chapter deals with the Frankfurt school, Metz and Soelle. Metz’s project is to save the subject from the modernity that undermines it (and creates it), from the apathy and immaturity to which we tend, from the forgetting of suffering.

‘from despair to where?’

discusses Habermas, theological responses to and appropriations of, and dialogue between theologians and Habermas.

the political word of God: political theology and scripture

deals with how scripture may be used responsibly in politics, taking note especially of O’Donovan’s insistence that Israel and its history must no longer be ignore but become the context for reading Scripture. It also discusses the eschatological reserve and whether only negative critique is enough.

Friday’s children

Lists some models of church in recent public theology

i.      the church in continuity with the people of Israel and with Christ

ii.     the church as an instance of socio-critical freedom and dangerous memory

iii.   the church as an ideal speech community

iv.   the church as a public agent in civil society

v.     the church as the city on a hill

Transforming Atonement, Jennings: A review

Theodore W. Jennings Jr. Transforming Atonement. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009.

I liked this book. I agreed with Jennings almost the whole time, but I felt it was flawed by a persistently one-sided analysis. This may be due to his audience. One suspects he is trying to win over people in the church who will find his views difficult, and that is to be applauded. It can be a bit frustrating to read though. For instance, his discussion of asceticism is a good warning about how it has been misconstrued and can be put to work against the heart of the Christian faith but there’s no indication of how it can be used to further our love and compassion for other people. Another example would be his handling of the gospel material on repentance. He points out that Jesus is happy to be with ‘sinners’ and include them in God’s kingdom without prior conditions. He suggests this is perhaps what repentance means for Luke (87). But he doesn’t reckon with the stories when Jesus tells sinners not to sin any more, or calls them unrighteous, or the implicit narrative approval when (for instance) Levi stops cheating people. (Here the continuity between John the Baptist’s calls to repentance and Jesus’ own are instructive). Nor does he attend to Jesus’ more conservative moments, for instance, his pronouncements on marriage. That is not to say I disagree with his central thrust on the indiscriminate welcome of God and the over-riding importance of mercy. I realise this could come across as some sort of arch-conservative moralising and that really isn’t my intention. It’s just that the biblical material is a bit more varied than I think he allows for. Maybe this is because he feels his audience knows that side of the story well enough.

Jennings takes seriously the problems that have come from atonement theory, especially for Jews, women and other marginalized or oppressed people. He takes seriously the need to try to understand the process of reconciliation that Jesus’ death and resurrection are meant to effect. For instance, so often one hears recourse to language of sacrifice, but no explanation of the underlying metaphysics that are supposed to make this intelligible. Does God want Jesus to die? How does that help anything? If there’s a flaw here it is perhaps that Jennings dismisses the traditional theories too quickly, and that some of us may want to take more from them than he allows.

Jennings is often close to Girard and Girardian theology, which is all to the good, I think. It is important to make clear, as he does, that God does not will the death of Jesus. But God isn’t stupid, and God, like Jesus, would have been expecting Jesus to be killed, and God, like Jesus, thought that Jesus should allow this to happen in order to expose the violence and scapegoating on which we construct our communities (I speak in shorthand). So there is a sense in which God does require Jesus’ death, the sense of martyrdom. Of course, God would have preferred people to follow Christ and begin a new politics, but this is naïve. So statements such as ‘the divine will is in every case opposed to human suffering as such’ (40) are perhaps a little careless, especially in light of Jennings’ own talk of solidarity with the suffering, which involves suffering with them.

Jennings seems to think all power is bad: ‘the opposition between the messianic force and the structures of power is itself complete.’ (215) It’s as if any institutions or community structure is automatically bad. That seems to be going too far. I’m not convinced we can live without such institutions and structures, and I think they can be good and helpful. They are not always good and we should always have a critical and especially self-critical attitude, which is what Jennings has. That alertness to institutional injustice, and to the church betraying the messianic vision, is very important. But simply affirming that justice, mercy and peace are more important than anything else, though true, is not enough. Now this is not a work about how to keep communities together or how to build good and just institutions, so it is not entirely fair to criticise Jennings for failing to do that, but one suspects he would be uninterested or uncomfortable with such work because it always involves compromise, pragmatism, making do. That may be unfair, he may be very interested in that, it’s just a nagging suspicion. His observation that secular movements may be ‘historical effects’ of the message of the cross is a good example of where this critical emphasis bears fruit.

One difficulty is how would put into practice the refusal of ‘ideological privilege of one group relative to another.’ (64) I liked this idea but wonder how it would work in practice. How can communities be shaped towards justice and peace without criticising those who deny justice and peace? This is what Jennings thinks Jesus was really criticising the Pharisees for, and I tend to agree. But isn’t this an example of ideological privileging? (Jennings says that Jesus is always against the accuser (94) and the quotes him as accusing the Pharisees of a lot of bad things). Jennings seems to want us to abandon the importance of (and need for, presumably) baptism and church membership (82), but without addressing how the message of Christ will then be transmitted as a form of life. It’s one thing to say the church often gets it horribly wrong, which is true enough; it’s another to say we should get rid of it. It’s not clear if this is what Jennings imagines, but it would be really interesting to know just what he does think about this. There’s a hint on p.154: ‘In these defenses of the “rationality” of the message concerning the cross, a constant feature will be an appeal to the form of life of hose who came to be called Christians.’ Especially their communal life. Diversity is to be welcomed, taken seriously, not allowed to be a cause of division. We should renounce the ‘sense of religious security, the reassurance that is provided by adherence to a religious institution or tradition.’ (182) I think this is probably right, but difficult to do; to try to take one’s beliefs seriously, and live them consistently, but recognising you may be mistaken about them, and therefore not assuming you alone have access to truth or God. ‘What is involved here is a withdrawal of a certain kind of belief, belief in the ultimacy of these structures, their permanence of self-evidence. What it is that binds us to these structures loses its hold or claim. We engage them, but without being determined by them.’ (189) But does this underplay how much we need structures, how influential they are on us?

In the end, Jennings advocates breaking with and leaving behind the atonement theories of the past to emphasise the politics of the cross. The desired result is the view that ‘justice and mercy are always more important than any religious practices whatsoever, and that religious practices and places are often no more than an attempt to evade the call and claim of God to enact justice and mercy.’ (145) Hard to disagree with the latter, whatever you think of the former.