the question of of encounter theological truth ... example in case is the posthumous publication of...

OF ENCOUNTER ON THE CONTACT BETWEEN

AND OTHER RELIGIONS BELIEFS, AND CULTURES I

VOL.46

GENERAL EDITORS

Hans De Wit Jerald D. Gort Henry Jansen

Lourens Minnema W.L. VanDer Merwe Hendrik M. Vroom

Anton Wessels

ADVISORY BOARD

Leonard Fernando (Delhi) James Haire (Canberra)

James W. Heisig (Nagoya) Mechteld M. Jansen (Amsterdam)

Kang Phee Seng (Hong Kong) Oddbj0rn Leirvik (Oslo)

F~ancis Anekwe Oborji (Rome) Jayakiran Sebastian (Philadelphia, PA) Nelly Van Doom-Harder (Valparaiso)

Ulrich Winkler (Salzburg)

The Question of Theological Truth

Philosophical and Interreligious Perspectives

Edited by Frederiek Depoortere and Magdalen Lambkin

Amsterdam- New York, NY 2012

Theological Truth in the Context of

Contemporary Continental Thought

The Turn to Religion and the Contamination of Language

Lieven Boeve

Introduction

For some years now, within the framework of several collaborative and individual research projects, questions concerning hermeneutics, negative theology, theological truth, the interpretation of Christianity, and so on have been major subjects of enquiry within the Research Group Theology in a Postmodem Context (Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium).1 My own trajectory in these investigations has been motivated from a fundamental-theological angle. From a perspective on tradition development as recontextualisation (see Boeve 2009b ), I have been dealing with questions on how developments in current philosophical movements both challenge and yet may assist a contemporary theological account of the Christian faith and its truth claims, something that in tum could attain both contextual plausibility and theological legitimacy. This has resulted in a critical-constructive dialogue with so-called continental philosophy and especially with those thinkers of difference in the phenomenological, hermeneutical,

1 To mention but the most elaborate research projects: "Orthodoxy: Process and Product" (2003-08), "The Normativity of History" (2009-13), both funded by the KU Leuven Research Fund, and "The Particularity of Theological Truth Claims," funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). Many projects by individuals, both on a doctoral and postdoctoral level, have been added to these. For more information, see: http:/ /theo.kuleuven.be/en/research/rgtpc/. One of the most recent results of these projects is Boeve and Brabant 2010.

78 THEOLOGICAL TRUTH

and deconstructionist traditions.2 I have been challenged by the editors of the present volume to offer some of the observations and conclusions I have arrived at in order to introduce from this perspective a discussion on the theme of hermeneutics and theological truth in a multireligious world.

This essay proceeds by pointing out several steps of an argument that both summarise and assess my previous philosophical-theological dealings with the so-called turn to religion in contemporary continental philosophy. This is done, moreover, by seeking to clarify what kinds of questions, criticisms, and contributions may come from this so-called turn to assist us with the question of Christian theological truth.3 In the course of outlining this argument, the link between philosophical reflections on theological truth and the theological discussion of the plurality of religions and interreligious dialogue will become manifestly clear. In the following, I will first present each step of the argument by way of a thesis, after which I will expand on it. As a complement to the nine steps, in the conclusion I will briefly indicate in what way a Christian theological critical-constructive appraisal could go.

An Argument in Nine Steps

Step 1: In contemporary continental philosophy, religion and religious language serve strictly philosophical purposes first of all: they are linguistic tools to express the structure of language. Through such a procedure, a decentring of the modern subject is elaborated upon, resulting in a "postmodern" philosophical anthropology of the 'fractured subject."

2 In this essay, I will refer to some of the publications resulting from these engagements, which at the same time constitute further elaborations and background information of the argument outlined.

3 In this discussion I was able to profit from the research of and discussions with many scholars engaged in the discussion of continental thought, who, at one stage or another, were part of the research group mentioned: J. Bloechl, S. Van den Bossche, C. Brabant, J. Schrijvers, F. Depoortere, K. Justaert, M.Y. Cheung, S. Stofanik, C. Dickinson, P. Davis, P. Cooper.

IN THE CONTEXT OF CONTEMPORARY CONTINENTAL THOUGHT 79

From the outset, it should be clear that the so-called turn to religion that c~aracterises the various strands of phenomenology, deconstruction, and hermeneutics is multifaceted and difficult to grasp in its totality. Specifically, its attention to otherness and difference have led to a re-entry of religion and religious themes int~ the phil~sophical agenda, and this is apparently because of Its evocative and metaphorical qualities-or, as in th~ case of negative theology, its epistemological strategies. In this sense, we witness religious vocabularies and their accompany~ng thinking patterns as they initially serve a strictly philosoph_Ical purpose. Religion and religious language are therefore considered to be linguistic tools that are utilised to express either the structure of language or to point at structures "before" or "beyond" language. Through such procedures, a decentring of the modern subject is elaborated upon, resulting in a "postmodern" philosophical anthropology. Instead of the modern Cartesian cogito or the Kantian-Husserlian transcendental subject, the "postmodern religious subject" is analysed as a frac~red subject, at whose kernel a structural otherness is recogmsed. Only by acknowledging this original fracture can identity be authentically constructed.

An example in case is the posthumous publication of JeanFran<;ois Lyotard's dealings with Augustine's Confessions (Lyotard 2000; see also Boeve 2009a and Boeve 2011b). According to Lyotard, Augustine's Confessions constitutes a long testimony of the never-ending struggle with the disturbance of being visited by the other (read by Lyotard as "the sexual"). The "I" never succeeds in coinciding with itself; there will always remain an original distance that cannot be surpassed or overcome. In this regard, the confession always comes too late, and what has passed cannot be caught up with. The cleavage is not to be overcome; the breach is original:

You, the Other, pure verb in act, life without remainder, you are silent. If he [Augustine] encounters you, the I explodes, time also, without trace. He calls that "god" because that is the custom of the day, theology also being a work of custom .... Who can take the common measure of something incommensurable? A form of knowledge that vaunts that it can do so, in bestriding the abyss, forgets the abyss and relapses. The cut is primal. (Lyotard 2000: 36)


Such knowing according to Lyotard, forgets "the grand forgetting," the always already being forgotten of the breach, the differend, the visit of irreducible otherness. And, for Lyotard, a too quick and easy appeal to God in order to name this breach is again guilty of such a forgetting.

From a theological perspective, two initial remarks are to be made. First of all, as it will also become clear through the issue of negative theology (Step 6), one should warn against an all too easy recuperation of the philosophical retrieval of core resources from the Christian tradition. Second, the question arises if we are really obliged to accept that Lyotard's "postmodern confession" might constitute a more radical confession than Augustine's simply due to Lyotard's refusal to "name" the visit of the other in the self, and his relegating the name of God to the "custom of the day, theology also being a work of custom." We will come back to this issue below (Step 3).

Step 2: For some protagonists of the turn to religion, the postmodern decentring of the modern subject coincides with an attempt to unfold the structure of religion itself; and stimulates some even to develop a kind of philosophical religiosity.

For Jacques Derrida, and especially in the Anglo-Saxon reception of his work, the turn to religion not only serves to enhance the postmodern decentring of the modern subject by pointing to the structure of language, but also appears to coincide with it (see Boeve 2005 for an elaboration of this). The re-entry of religion thus concerns the attempt to unfold the structure of religion itself. This results, according to John Caputo (Caputo 1997, 2000, 2001), in a "radical hermeneutics of religion" that seeks to determine the "religious" in terms of a "religion without religion," or "pure religion." Such a hermeneutics reduces religion to a "quasi-universal" structure of religious desire, conceived as residing at the unreachable "other side" of language. Expressed in another way, this structure of religious desire is said to be the "messianic structure" recognised in, but at the same time distinguished from, the various particular messianisms. What is at stake here, according to Caputo, is a desire for the "impossible as impossible," the impossible attempt to keep the openness for otherness radically open, to


hold on to the irreducible-but ever slipping away-moment of undecidability as the condition of any decision.

Eventually, this may even result in a kind of philosophical piety. At least in Caputo's reception, such a radical hermeneutics implies a kind of religious subject that, beyond any concrete discourse and particularity, finds itself related to that which lies at the "origin" of every particular religious discourse. This is well illustrated by Caputo's attempt to uncover the structure of "pure prayer" (see Caputo 2002). Concerned with retrieving a form of spirituality uncontaminated with particularity and narrativity, he comes to the point of dropping (reducing) the presupposition that there is a "You" to whom or to which the prayer is directed. Pure prayer is praying "etsi Deus daretur," not knowing if there is a God "at the other side" of the prayer's address. On other occasions, I have called this movement a kind of "committed agnosticism" (see Boeve 2003).4

At this point, both the philosopher of religion and the theologian may legitimately ask if such a "religion without religion," living from-what one could call-a "relation without relation," is appropriate for conceiving of the religious subject. Any positing of the "other" can apparently be deconstructed as already filling in a structure that is, in principle, open, and that, although impossible, should remain open. "Pure religion" then strives to cherish that moment of undecidability that is both underlying and forgotten in concrete religions. We will elaborate on this in the next step in our argument.

Step 3: The "relationality" of the religious subject in philosophy's turn to religion is often limited to its never-ending dealings with, and awareness of, an immanent, internal otherness. Any (linguistic) determination of this internal otherness in terms of (divine) transcendence (and definitely the Christian God) is conceived of as a betrayal of this open structure of the subject.

4 This "committed agnosticism" distinguishes itself from classical agnosticism, which in practice often seems to turn into a practical atheism because it wants to retain the form of a God-oriented relationship without, nevertheless and paradoxically, adhering to the "God" of this relationship.


This brings us, so to speak, to a first interim conclusion: no matter whether religion is used to evoke the postmodern, fractured subject as well as the breach that is to be found in all identity construction or if it is called on to design ways to deal with the undecidability that is in the background of any decision, the "relationality" of the invoked "religious subject" is limited to its never-ending dealings with, and awareness of, an immanent, internal otherness. This otherness henceforth fundamentally characterises the human subject, without reference to a religious transcendent to which the religious subject would stand in a relationship ("relation without relation"). Moreover, any determination of the internal otherness in terms of such transcendence, in terms of God, and definitely the Christian God, is conceived of as an-at least ambiguous-filling in, or even outright betrayal of this open structure of the subject. Only a thinking that attempts to bear witness to the fracture in the subject can claim any legitimacy, and it is in the service of such thinking then that a religious vocabulary is used. As already mentioned, particular religions are at best contaminating instantiations, and at worst guilty of forgetting this more original structure.

Despite this position, however, we have already posed the question if such a "religious" structuring of the subject indeed can claim to be more original. In this regard, it is worthwhile to refer to the criticism of the American patrologist Robert Dodaro (Dodaro 2005), who originally directed his criticisms against Derrida' s deconstructionist reading of Augustine's Confessions. But they are applicable to Lyotard's view of Augustine as well. For Dodaro, the postmodern deconstruction of Augustine's confessions should be complemented with a deconstruction of the postmodern Augustine. According to Dodaro, Augustine's search for God, too, is never complete, and is marked by a provisionality and contingency, testifying to the continuing character of one's conversion to God. It is therefore definitely worth inquiring if, in line with Lyotard's criticism, Augustine does indeed fail, in his naming of God, to keep open the breach in the self or if he nevertheless succeeds in doing so in his own irreducible way and precisely because of God. Moreover, it would seem that the question can also be returned: one of the problems of such a "not naming" the otherness at the kernel of


the self is that, as Richard Kearney has argued, such an otherness may as well manifest itself as a monstrous power to which the subject is condemned-an inhospitable otherness that causes trauma and leaves the subject without escape, without mercy, and without redemption. This point will also be taken up later on.

Step 4: In potentially more genuine religious attempts to think the religious subject from the dative or accusative case, the subject is portrayed as being wholly passive, the transcendent as radically other and distant, and the relationship between both as completely asymmetrical.

Another way to decentre the Cartesian and Kantian-Husserlian subject starts from the criticism that this subject is stated in the nominative case: the able ego of ego cogito. Thinking after Heidegger, French phenomenologists such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion have come to substitute the nominative ego with the accusative and dative cases.5 Their attempts would seem to constitute potentially more genuine religious accounts, as they safeguard the religious relationship between the self and the Other. In the end, however, it would seem that, in these accounts, the religious subject is portrayed as too passive, the transcendent as too other, too distant, and the relationship between both as too asymmetrical to dare to speak of a real relationship.6

In order to trace back the fundamental disposition of the subject, Levinas turns to the encounter with the other.7 Subjec-

5 One could also refer here to Jean-Yves Lacoste who conceives of the religious subject from within a liturgical relation. For Lacoste, the religious subject is, in his or her liturgical experience, forced into a position where his or her autonomy is broken in a brutal and almost violent manner, and where he or she can only receive his or her being from God, to deliver his or her being "into God's hands" and receive it as a gift. For this, see Lacoste 2004: 156-57. For a commentary, see Schrijvers 2006: 224-25.

6 For a further elaboration of the present and following section (steps 4-5), see Boeve 2011d.

7 For this section, I refer, in gratitude for his suggestions, to the work of my postdoctoral collaborator Joeri Schrijvers and, among oth-


tivity for Levinas has to do fundamentally with proximity, with becoming the one-for-the-other. One is not first a subject who, in a second move, can decide to engage in proximity; on the contrary, from the very start, it is proximity that qualifies and enables such a commitment. The subject, thus, is not "an ego set up in the nominative in its identity, but ... as it were in the accusative form, from the first responsible and not being able to slip away" (Levinas 1981: 85). And this condition of accusation is irreducible, not to be declined. The subject in the accusative is characterised by a fundamental, anarchical passivity, which precludes a self-possessing subject being stated in the nominative.

The recurrence of the self in responsibility for others, a persecuting obsession, goes against intentionality, such that responsibility for others could never mean altruistic will, instinct of "natural benevolence", or love. It is in the passivity of obsession, or incarnated passivity, that an identity individuates itself .... (Levinas 1981: 111-12)

Similar to Levinas' subject in the accusative, Marion's subject in the dative is characterised by an original passivity: it is affected by or feels the impact of what is given to it (Marion 2002a; see also Van den Bossche 2004). In the case of the "saturated phenomenon," the subject undergoes an appeal (although, contrary to Levinas, this does not happen simply on an interpersonal level). The subject in both Levinas and Marion thus arises from a more original and asymmetrical relation, in the response given to a prior appeal-and despite itself. Although claiming to remain strictly phenomenological, both also turn to religion to develop their points further. For Levinas, it is in the claim of the other upon the subject that a trace of the Other, of the Good, and of God, is revealed.8 For Marion, the ultimate

er things, to his published doctoral dissertation. Cf. Schrijvers 2011. 8 In his early critique of Levinas, in a text titled "Violence and

Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas," Derrida states that Levinas' philosophical reflections rely heavily on a theological framework, without which it would collapse (Derrida 1978: 103).


saturated phenomenon is "revelation" (and he uses the biblical account of revelation in Christ to illustrate his point).9

Placing the subject in the accusative case (Levinas) or the dative case (Marion) has important consequences for the status of hermeneutics, here a hermeneutics of religion. Regarding Levinas, and Marion especially, this original passivity would se~~ to turn ~n.to an absolutised passivity, placing the subject Within a totahsmg asymmetrical relationship. Such a relationship therefore precedes language, including religious language, and turns a h~rmeneutics of this language into a structurally secondary affau. Any hermeneutics is, in principle, thereby preceded with a phenomenological account of the more original structures o~ absolute passivity and asymmetry. Language serves then first and foremost as the recognition of this structure. This brings us to our second interim conclusion.

Step 5: In all philosophical appeals to religion and the religious subject thus far, language appears to be a contamination that is to be overc~me in order to reach, or to hint at, a more original structure of religzon: Rath:r than considering language as a mediating space, discusszon of zt now concerns the question if the attempts to go beyond language are in the end futile (because we cannot escape language).

In one way or another, all authors and approaches mentioned so far consider the "original" structure of religion or of the religious subject as "before" or ''beyond" language. For some, language determines the undeterminable, names the unnameable, forgets what never should be forgotten, decides about the undecideable; in short, it particularises and thus contaminates any conceivable "pure religion" or "religion without religion." It turns the structure of the messianic into concrete messianism~, thus closing it .and domesticating its radical-critical potential. For others, hke Levinas and Marion, language only

9 ':"ith regard to the broadening of the phenomenological scope by Manon (by the inversion of intentionality}, Schrijvers (2011: 67 and 147) states that Marion's theological tum is therefore a transposition of a theological figure to the whole of phenomenality. Every given phenomenon gives itself as if it were a revelation.


functions formally, pragmatically, and no longer predicatively in anyway.

For instance, Marion argues that it is in the saturated phenomenon that the subject is bedazzled in and through the overwhelming intuition and is therefore incapable of signifying and interpreting the phenomenon. At this point, language no longer functions descriptively but is reduced to its pragmatic function, merely pointing to the anterior, ineffable givenness: it is not "what is being said" that is of real importance, but "that something is said." For Marion, this is also the structure of divine revelation and the answer of faith. Rather than a hermeneutical approach to religious language, therefore, only a radicalised phenomenological approach is fit to reduce particularity and language to this anterior structure (Marion 1999). Is it discovered to be meaningful only insofar as a particular religious discourse expresses this structure. Furthermore, the same holds true for Levinas' view on language, which is characterised by a similar structure: le dire is more important than le dit; language only matters insofar as it expresses the structure of responsibility-meaning thus, when it is stripped of its empirical and descriptive features (Levinas 1981: 5-8, 45-48, 134-35).

Deconstructionist thinkers such as Caputo are less confident that attempts to overcome language or to hint at an original structure before language, can ever be successful. Although engaging in a radical hermeneutics that aims at this, Caputo simultaneously acknowledges that he cannot escape linguistic contamination. The distinction between the "messianic" and the diverse messianisms

cannot be rigorously maintained .... We are always involved with structures whose historical pedigree we can trace if we read them carefully enough .... That is no less true of deconstruction itself .... If we search it carefully enough, we discover that it, too, is another concrete messianism, which is the only thing livable. (Putt 2001: 165)

As for his own position, Caputo would concede that he practises a Christian deconstruction, but one that "is very closely tied to Jesus the Jew, the Judaism of Jesus" -before its integration in Christianity (Putt 2001: 165).


We might yet ask, however: Is it legitimate to conflate language, and especially in its predicative aspects, only with contamination? Since language seems to be our condition, does the irreducible particularity of religion necessarily contaminate the s~riving for religious purity? Is religious truth therefore impossible-or, to put it in the appropriate jargon: Has religious truth essentially to do with clinging to "the impossibility of its possibility"? Or, in the case of Marion and Levinas, has it to do with a mere recognition of the "being given of the subject" or the anteriority of its responsibility? These questions, at the very least, and from a fundamental theological perspective, challenge the importance of "incarnation" as the theological-epistemological category par excellence to name God and to think of the religious subject in a concrete historical-narrative relationship with this God. We will come back to this in the last step of this argument (Step 9). We will now first look into some further consequences of what has been said so far. In this regard, we will deal consecutively with the issues of negative theology (Step 6), method (Step 7), and religious plurality (Step 8).

Step 6: Because of the assumption that language contaminates, many philosophical thinking patterns develop their argument as a (philosophical) negative theology and often do so in reference to Christian negative theologies, from which they either want to distinguish themselves or claim to realise (more) fully.

Derrida, for example, explicitly affirms certain associations between his deconstructionism and the traditions of negative theology while at the same time refusing to identify them with each other.l0 He points out that in the very act of negating God one actually negates one's negation of God. Derrida calls this a denegation: even the most negative discourse always contains a predicative moment, one that qualifies the trace of the other (and thus contaminates). For Lyotard, the prime analogy when

10 Cf. Derrida's "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials" (Derrida 2008: 143-45) and his "Sauf le nom" (Derrida 1995: 35-88). Derrida's first reference to the similarity and difference between deconstruction and negative theology dates back to a text written in 1968 titled "Differance" and published in Derrida 1982. The reference is on p. 6.


referring to religious apophasis, is-~h~t. he ca~ls-':Jewish thinking," itself originating in the prohibition agm_nst Images. "Jewish thinking" is concerned with asking questions, not_ to receive an answer but to remain questioning. For the Jewish tradition according to Lyotard, all reality is a dark message from an ~nknown, unnamed addressor (Lyotard 1991: 74).11

Marion on the other hand, profiles his own approach as the realisatlon of negative-or, better yet, mystical (Mario~ 2002b: 68)-theology's fullest reach: Christian God-language IS not grasped between the "saying" _and the "ur:saying" of what is proper to God, but involves a thud way, gomg beyond kataphasis and apophasis. This third way is "radically di~ferent and hyperbolic. Because it does not double th_e neg~tiOn. of awhether disguised or acknowledged -supenor affirmation, but tears the discourse loose from predication" (Marion 2002b: 68). Every form of prayer and praise is reduced to a radically pragmatic and performative speaking regarding the God who IS beyond being and discourse. In a~d~tion to th~s, Levinas' 0/other, because of its absolute extenonty, remams wholly other-"beyond" naming and language. .

From the philosophical side, it is Kearney especia_lly who has criticised tendencies to conquer onto-theology With negative theologies, because these conceive of God eit~er as too transcendent, above all imagination and interpretaho~, or as "beneath the grid of symbolic or imaginary expression, unnameable, indeterminate" (Kearney 2001: 7). Inspired by Paul Ricoeur, Kearney criticises the "short-cut" approaches of both phenomenology and deconstruction: they in effect reduce the narrative thickness of religious reality to the rather meagre results of an unknowable and untouchable transcendence utilised to describe the depth-structure of religious realities (cf. Kearney 2003: 9). The other _ap~ears a_s _completely alien, inaccessible-up to the point of mdifferenhation, and may thus just as well be a god or a monster. To Marion, for example, Kearney asks the question:

n For a broader reflection on "Jewish thinking," d. Lyotard 1990 and 1997: 103-12.


If the saturated phenomenon is really as bedazzling as Marion suggests, how can we tell the difference between the divine and its opposites? How are we to distinguish between enabling and disabling revelations ... how can we discriminate between excess and defect? (Kearney 2001: 33)

Against the "negative" philosophies of the sublime introduced by Lyotard, and Slavoj Zizek, he argues that the sublime God has become so indeterminate and alien that it can be anything, monstrous, trauma, stranger, horrific.12 And vis-a-vis Derrida and Caputo he states: "If every other is wholly other, does it still matter who or what exactly the other is?" How are we then still able to discriminate between what is God and not-God? For-according to Kearney-to know "that it is God we desire (and not some idol, simulacrum, or false prophet)," the God of desire needs to be recognised in identifiable signs and stories (Kearney 2001: 73-75).

From the theological side (see Boeve 2002), and for the same reasons, a too easy identification of such philosophical strategies with a form of Christian negative theology has been warned against. Many a theologian indeed has been tempted to indulge in those too hasty patterns of reflection in which the evocations of otherness, transcendence, and exteriority are treated as a sort of crypto-theology. Moreover, negative theology does not teach us about the failure of religious language or its deficiency but rather about its structure. In the apophatic tradition, negative theology is not only a supplement to positive theology-a sort of complementary relativisation-but rather the ongoing and requisite background of every positive statement about God.13 This is well illustrated by Marion in God Without Being. By crossing out God, Marion creates a mode of speaking that simultaneously abolishes speech-conceptual idolatry-in order to point to the God who gazes upon us in the icon (Marion 1991: 104-07). But such "hyperphasis," as prag-

12 Kearney refers to Zizek's "The Unconscious Law: Towards an Ethics Beyond the Good," published in Zizek 1997: 213-41.

13 See in this regard, Kevin Hart's constructive engagement with Derrida in Hart 1989. Second edition in 2000.


matic as it is, is also irreducibly conditioned by contexts and narratives and does not escape its predicative aspects. It is the word "God" (with a capital letter) that is crossed out. In its transformation to "hyperphasis," the kataphatic has changed in genre but has not lost its particular setting. Particularity, language, is not an obstacle in our relation to God, but the very condition of it.

Step 7: The methodological consequence of the presumption of the contamination of language is that it leads authors to go beyond hermeneutics to heuristics, or to ethics, or it drives them to radicalise hermeneutics to such a degree that any concrete particularity, or concrete narrativity is, in the end, reduced to the structure of religious desire.

Apart from negative theological thinking strategies, we pointed above already to a further methodological consequence of the presumption of the contamination of language: rather than engaging in the hermeneutics of texts, action, or histories, most approaches wish to go beyond hermeneutics and prefer becoming a form of, for example, heuristics (Marion) or ethics (Levinas). Deconstructionists such as Caputo choose to radicalise hermeneutics to such a degree that any concrete particularity, or concrete narrativity is, in the end, reduced to the structure of religious desire, a "pure" religion and the like.

We have already mentioned Kearney's criticism of the "short-cut" approaches of both phenomenology and deconstruction. But he also seems to fall prey ultimately to a reduction of our concrete particularity and narrativity, precisely because of a fear of contamination. In the end, he will thus propose a kind of messianism without incarnation as the sought-after outcome of the hermeneutics of religion (see Boeve 2005). In fact, what he does is reduce religion to a quasi-universal ethicoreligious structure: a longing for peace and justice that he sees present in all religious traditions. By doing so, he places his very starting point at risk: that only a hermeneutical detour through the narrative thickness of particular religious traditions can lead to a better understanding of religion and its dealings with God. This reduction becomes clear when he answers the question: "Where do you speak from?" Kearney first acknowledges his allegiance to the Catholic tradition, but with a clear proviso:


Where Catholicism offends love and justice, I prefer to call myself a Judeo-Christian; and where this tradition so offends, I prefer to call myself religious in the sense of seeking God in a way that neither excludes other religions nor purports to possess the final truth. And where the religious so offends, I would call myself a seeker of love and justice tout court. (Kearney 2001: 6)

Step. 8: Althou?h very different in approach, the turn to religion in contmental phzlosophy would seem to share the idea that it is the "same" structure underlying all religions, and/or which is contaminate~ ~y the plural!ty .of religions. From the perspective of a theology of relzgwns such thmkmg patterns favour a "pluralist stance" on religious plurality.

This brings us straightforwardly to the next step in this argument. In passing, we have mentioned several times that in the thinking patterns presented, a formal religious structur~ is disp~ay~d that needs to be kept open. Because of its incurable pre~Icativ: natu~e, language-and thus particular religious traditiOns-Is considered a contamination, and sometimes even a betrayal of the structure of a "pure religion." The difference between the approaches mentioned, therefore, consists in the answer to the question if a hermeneutics of religious vocabularies and traditions is still needed, or even useful, to point beyond their very particularity.

. Not surprisin~l~, afte~ what we said in the previous section (Step 7), this IS well Illustrated through Kearney's view of the plurality of religions. In the end, for Kearney, all religious traditions, in one way or another, share the "same" concern for justice and peace, as well as for human wholeness and fulfilment, and they all convey narrative wisdom in order to realise this fulfilment. An exchange of readings of the different religio~s tr~ditions, framed within a hermeneutics of religious tol~ration (I.e., a hermeneutics of tolerant and pluralist interpretations) may result in "suggestive intersections between the different w.is.dom tradi~ons, given the insights of so many of the great spmtual mystics that God is ultimately one even as the ways to God are many" (Kearney 2010b: 199). Kearney's "God ~ho may be" is revealed in and witnessed to in many traditions, of which the insights may well be analogous or comple-


rnentary.14 Therefore, interreligious communication should lead beyond (although not without) differences in languages and histories and to a communal understanding of the transcendent, a peaceful and tolerant living together.

This is the reason why Kearney opposes the rather explicit "confessionally partisan" truth claims of religions (Kearney 2003: 41); and, for Kearney, the uniqueness and definitiveness of the fullness of God's revelation in the Incarnation in Jesus Christ qualifies as such a claim.

Step 9: Authors who define their approach to being Christian, or at least those who are conversant with the Christian tradition, draw very selectively upon a Christianity without a conception of incarnation. The messianic is to be distinguished from particular messianisms, and the Christological claims of Christianity, in this regard, are always already too confessionally partisan.

From the preceding, our final step no longer comes as a surprise, and immediately invites a theological response. Protagonists who define their approach to being Christian, or at least those who are conversant with the Christian tradition, as are Caputo and Kearney, very selectively draw upon a Christianity without any conception of incarnation. For others, such as Marion and Levinas, the religious relation is conceived of so formally that a concrete incarnation of it in history and narrative is not fundamental to its signification. For all of them, so to speak, the messianic structure of the anteriority of otherness is to be distinguished from any particular rnessianisrns. Therefore, the Christological claims of Christianity, in this regard, are always already too confessionally partisan.

From this perspective, the question then becomes: Is Christianity, with its Christocentric and thus incarnational approach, not doomed to be always too particular, too contingent,

14 Cf. Kearney 2010b: 198, with hints in this direction as regards Buddhism and Christianity (in reference to Bede Griffith); Kearney 2001: 6 (with reference to Charles Taylor); Kearney 2003: 45 (in reference to Thomas Merton); and, in relation to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, again Kearney 2010b: 202, and to all religions Kearney 2010b: 203.


too historical, and too positive? The messianic in Christianity is not an open structure of expectation. Christians believe that the messiah has come-that God has revealed Godself fully in the concrete history of Jesus Christ. If there is still an open structure of expectation, then it is the expectation of the eschatological "second corning," which is both determined by the first corning, while at the same time keeping our interpretations of it open (eschatological proviso).

In this respect, however, we might again ask: Is language necessarily contamination or-on the contrary-is it precisely the very possibility of the religious relationship to God? Does language, from within a Christian incarnational approach, precisely not constitute a contamination of religious truth but becomes, in fact, the latter's very condition for existence? Is the "truth of the Incarnation" then not that theological truth is always already inscribed in language, and not available without its particularity, narrativity, history? Without language there is no religion, and no religious subject in relation to the transcendent. In this regard, Kearney's sound insight into the necessity of a hermeneutical approach should not only be maintained but radicalised by conceiving of religion (and its irreducible link to the particularity of language) in terms of incarnation. Taking incarnation seriously presupposes a radical and neverending hermeneutics that deals with the very particularity of religious language, religious traditions and their ongoing interpretations, and that does not aspire to overcome particularity (whether or not one is determined to succeed in such an attempt).

This is at least what I would consider to be the epistemological kernel of the theological doctrine of the Incarnation. Contrary to some philosophical criticisms, the Incarnation, as the anchor point of a constitutive Christology, is not the end but the motor of a radical hermeneutics. The "all too particular" is not an obstacle for the revelation of God or the subject's relationship to God but its very condition. Is

15 A radical hermeneutical retrieval of the Chalcedonian dogma supports such a view. Cf. Boeve 2000.


Conclusion: Some Further Theological Annotations

Let me now very briefly present some further theological conclusions on the basis of the argumentative steps we have outlined.lwill, however, proceed in the reverse order.

Ad 9: The Dangerous Memory of a Christian Hermeneutics

The truth of the Incarnation is indeed the incarnation of the truth. This could be the contribution of a theological assessment of the turn to religion in continental philosophy, all the way to its contemporary philosophical debate on religion. A hermeneutic of religion does not lead "beyond," let alone "behind," language, but to language itself, to the concrete stories, practices, texts and traditions in which religious truth is lived and experienced. Only in these can one find both the ground and the content of religious truth claims. Within Christianity, this insight is even radicalised through the concept of kenosis and the preferential option for the poor and the marginalised: not only in concrete histories and narratives does God reveal Godself but also in the histories and narratives of suffering-the dangerous memory of the suffering, cross and resurrection standing at the heart of a Christian hermeneutics.16

Ad 8: A Reflective Participant's Perspective in an Interreligious Context It is only from an awareness of the entanglement of religious truth with concrete particularity that religious believers can become more conscious of their being positioned in a context of religious plurality. As participants in interreligious conversations, they venture, together with others, toward religious truth claims, each of which comes from their own particular religious narratives and practices. The hermeneutics of religious plurality, then, starts from respecting the difference between (religious) traditions and should not lead to the attempt to overcome it by pointing to a more fundamental difference "behind," "beyond" or "before" traditions. Such hermeneutics should

16 See in this regard, of course, the works of Johann Baptist Metz (e.g., Metz 2009 and Metz 2006). For a start at theologically recontextualising some of Metz' intuitions, see Boeve 201la.


hold to the reflective participant's perspective, being aware of the temptation to withdraw into a self-proclaimed observer's position.

Ad 7: Needing a "More" Radical Hermeneutics

This calls for a renewed, radical hermeneutics of religion, one different from the methodological options of Caputo, Marion, etc. Such a radical hermeneutics takes particularity fully as its point of departure, its "radix," and, in order not to fall prey to the pitfalls of a closed particularism or fundamentalism, should develop a critical consciousness precisely from within particularity.

Ad 6: Negative Theology Fosters a Critical Consciousness from within Particularity

In this respect, negative theology does not constitute an attempt at escaping from the linguistic character of religion but assists in taking it maximally into account. Its aim then is no longer to take leave from the narrativity of religious discourse but rather to raise one's awareness of this narrativity to the utmost, and to stimulate a critical-constructive hermeneutical dealing with it.

Ad 5: Language Is Not Contamination but a Mediating Space

All of this implies that language does not need to be considered a contamination or a fall that would make any religious concept of truth in the end impossible and compel hermeneutics to leave its entanglement with particularity behind in the direction of a pure, but nonetheless untenable, religious truth claim.

Ad 4: The Vocative Case

Instead of thinking the religious subject in the dative (Marion) or accusative case (Levinas), perhaps the vocative case should be considered in order to describe the religious structure of call and answer more appropriately. Language would thus again become the mediating space, just as history becomes the meeting place for the subject's relation to God. I think that Paul Ricoeur' s approach , in particular, could prove fruitful to assert this link-not only to think the religious subject, but also to conceive of the radical hermeneutics already asked for (see Boeve 201lc).


Ad 3: The Conversation with Contemporary Philosophy Makes a Difference for Theology

Conversing with a contemporary postmodern critical consciousness in this regard should not only lead to respect for the open structure of language and identity formation, but also to a respect for the irreducible and thus particular nature of doing so. For Christian theology, drawing these lessons from the conversation with contemporary philosophy not only makes a difference in considering religious plurality and its conversation with it; it also stirs an internal critical consciousness, creating an awareness of the differential structures at work within itself, and preventing it from withdrawing into particularism and fundamentalism-or in Lyotard's words, a master narrative (see on this Boeve 1995).

Ad 2. Both a Critical Impulse to the Christian "Position" and an Alternative "Position"

What has been said so far also sheds light on the question if the postmodern philosophical readings of the religious subject and religious truth should be interpreted as accounts "preceding" a Christian theological one. With reference to Dodaro (Step 3) as well as Kearney's wager for theism or, more recently, "ana theism" (Kearney 2010a) as it differs, for example, from Caputo's committed agnosticism, one could hold here that, apart from their valuable contributions to stimulate critical consciousness within particularity, these accounts also represent particular positions in the current religious scene and, as such, do not "precede" the Christian position but at least constitute an alternative to it (or an alternative version of it).

Ad 1. The Embarrassment by/of Christian Particularity As a matter of fact, this might be a conclusion coming forth from my work in cultural theology in which I have dealt with the post-secular and post-Christian European religious scene as well as the so-called upsurge of religion displayed in it today. Looking at the postmodern philosophical hermeneutics of religion, I have been wondering if these are not reflective expressions of the culturally widespread vague (post-)Christian religiosity, a kind of cultural negative theology. The detraditionalisation and pluralisation of religion did not extinguish re-


ligion in Europe but seem rather to have resulted in its transformation int~ "a culturally diffuse pattern" (Cox 1999: 139). S~me have COI~ed this a "something-ism": a longing for somethmg more, Without being able or willing to determine what this something is (Boeve 2007; especially Chapter 7). It would seem that an embarrassment with Christian particularity can be heard from it, that is, an embarrassment with a faith in God "":ho reveal~ Godself in the contingencies and particularities of history. It IS perhaps this same embarrassment that haunts a great many contemporary treatments of religion in current philosophy.

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