Risking Proclamation, Respecting Difference. Chris Boesel

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СКАЧАТЬ from the sectarian-particular. Because of this utter dependence, the Church, if faithful (admittedly, a huge qualification), can never understand itself to possess so as to impose that reality to which it can only bear witness in its life and confession amidst its neighbors; it can only inhabit an interpretive imperialism “without weapons.”25 This is the theological logic of an ad hoc apologetic: faith seeking the ethical; or better, perhaps, faith seeking the neighbor.26

      Barth and Ruether: Problem as Remedy, Remedy as Problem

      My critical analysis of the problem of Christian faith’s endangerment of the Jewish neighbor proceeds by way of two theological exemplars. I read Karl Barth as a contemporary representative of the problem—a theological understanding of Christian faith constituting an interpretive imperialism in relation to the Jewish neighbor resonant with traditional supersessionism and anti-Judaism. I read Ruether as a representative of contemporary remedies of the problem—attempting to make Christian faith safe for the Jewish neighbor by leaving room for Jewish self-understanding and self-definition.

I use Barth for several reasons. First, he does indeed represent the problem.27 His robust affirmation of the Good News of Jesus Christ for all the world inescapably and unapologetically constitutes interpretive imperialism in relation to the Jewish neighbor. As such, Barth is a likely candidate for what contemporary remedies of Christian faith take to be the interpretive (and material) violence of the sectarian-particular. Second, his theological acuity allows a clear assessment of the precise theological grounds and stakes of this interpretive imperialism and the doctrinal positions and relations they entail. Third, as representative of the problem of traditional Christian faith, he represents that problem in a distinctive way, such that the bad news of interpretive imperialism entailed in his fundamental theological assumptions may be distinguishable from the bad news of the sectarian-particular. The distinctive, yet traditional, way Barth inhabits the problem of Christian faith lies in the way he believes the Good News of Jesus Christ to be good precisely as news (which, as we will see, means precisely as a form of interpretive imperialism). That is, Barth’s fundamental theological assumption is that Christian faith and theology are determined by God’s free and unaccountable decision to get inappropriately (from a philosophical perspective) involved in the particular. God has shown up within history as a part of history, entangling Herself in all the problematic particularity of an historical event—the event that is Jesus Christ. There is, then, news—to be reported and heard. Furthermore, God has done this strange, particular thing for the blessing of all the nations. The news, then, is not only good, but is to be published abroad—proclaimed, born witness.

      The distinctive way that Barth theologically inhabits the problem of traditional Christian faith, then, can be aptly characterized as evangelical—evangelical, that is, in the broad, ecumenical sense of the word: because God has acted in a particular, historical way on the world’s behalf, there is good news to be told and so witness to be given. And it is this distinctively (albeit broadly) evangelical character of Barth’s fundamental theological assumptions regarding the nature of Christian faith (and the character of its speech) that I believe constitutes the possibility, theological and ethical, of distinguishing the interpretive imperialism of the particular-elsewhere from the sectarian-particular.

      Consequently, given Barth’s representational function in my argument, as both problem and possible remedy, I will be using the descriptive, “evangelical,” rather than the more general and ambiguous, “traditional,” in referring to the problem of Christian faith for the Jewish neighbor, and for all neighbors. This will allow greater clarity as to the precise theological issues and ethical risks at stake. And given that I take the evangelical character of Barth’s theology to constitute its possibility of representing not only the problem of Christian faith, but the problem as remedy, my employment of the term also affords the more general opportunity to contribute in a small way to the recovery and rehabilitation of its rich, albeit always risky, theological and ethical resources. In the context of the United States, at any rate, the term has fallen on hard times, having been severely restricted and reified in meaning. And in current public discourse it is identified with a particular conservative, nationalist political activism that, as we shall see, can only be descried as idolatry by a truly evangelical faith as resourced and employed by a theologian like Barth.

      There are also several reasons for using Ruether. I believe she represents the most compelling contemporary efforts to radically remedy the interpretive imperialism of traditional—that is, evangelical—Christian faith represented by Barth. Her historical analysis of the roots of Christian antisemitism and supersessionism is powerful and thoroughgoing, and rightly traces those roots to the heart of the biblical witness itself. As with Barth, the theological and ethical issues at stake are cast in stark relief. But also as with Barth, her analysis and remedy exemplifies certain fundamental assumptions that open the possibility of a complication.

      I read Ruether, against the grain of her own statements, as seeking to remedy the interpretive imperialism of Christian faith by reference to a perspective above (or below, e.g., Tillich’s “depth dimension”) the difference between traditional Christian confessions and Jewish religious self-understanding, indeed, above all particular religious self-understanding. Her theological remedy thereby assumes the governance of particular religious discourse by an ethical-philosophical determination of what is appropriately universal and comprehensive, a determination made and legislated from outside any and every particular religious tradition—i.e., from the universal-elsewhere. As such, it may constitute an interpretive imperialism of its own in relation to the Jewish neighbor.

      This problematic complication is made explicit in the title of the book central to my reading: Faith and Fratricide. If it can be shown that Ruether’s analysis of and remedy for Christian faith is funded by certain modern assumptions that take Abraham to be the source of its imperialistic violence, then the unintended implication of Ruether’s title would seem to be that the imperialism of Christian faith is fratricidal (a brother-killer) because the father of Christian faith is filicidal (a child- or offspring-killer); the brother and the child are one and the same: Isaac, the seed of Abraham and the “elder brother” of Christianity. Again, it appears difficult for Ruether’s remedy to avoid the assumption that Christian faith is dangerous for the Jewish neighbor to the extent that it is formed in the likeness of the Jewish patriarch.

      Layout of Chapters

      Chapter 2 fills out the introductory background to the argument. Its gives concrete content to the contours of the modern context that I am arguing determines much of the contemporary analyses of and remedies for the interpretive imperialism of Christian faith in relation to the Jewish neighbor. I give a reading of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling as evidence of the extent to which the three inter-related dimensions constitutive of these analyses and remedies—the nature of imperialistic discourse, the relation of faith to the ethical, and the relation of particularity to universality—are rooted in fundamental assumptions with regard to Christian faith and to “religion” more generally that are constitutive of the context of modernity. I hope to show how this modern context determines (and undermines) contemporary analyses of the particular problem of Christian faith and the Jewish neighbor precisely to the extent to which the context itself emerges as a consequence of—and so as determined by—this very problem in its irreducible particularity.

      In Parts II and III, my presentation of Barth and Ruether as theological exemplars follows the most common contours of the contemporary discourse about the apparent violent logic of Christian faith toward the Jewish neighbor. Barth represents the traditional problem, and Ruether the diagnosis and remedy.

Chapters 3 and 4 give a reading of the particular ways in which Barth’s pivotal theological assumptions constitute an understanding of Christian faith that, borrowing a phrase from Merold Westphal, takes Abraham as a model.28 СКАЧАТЬ