CR
Spicer
14 December 2012
Dr. Richard Lennan
Foundational Theology
Boston College
[open for revision]
“Fundamental
theology seeks to explicate the faith in a manner corresponding to the present
historical modes of human understanding. It does this, not in order to submit
itself to the ruling modes of thought, but in order to enter into a fruitful
conflict with these modes of thought.”—Johann Baptist Metz, Theology of the World, 82
IS THE PARABLE OF THE
WEDDING BANQUET (MT. 22:1-14) CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGY?
A Response to Metz
For theology
after Aushwitz the paradigm is not
how to escape the river before the waterfall, but after falling, it is to brace
ourselves for the impact we have coming.
I adjust
this claim to contend that “the incarnation is continued” in contextual
theology, drawing from Steven Bevans
(‘Community as Source and Parameter of Theology, An Introduction to Theology in Global Perspective (Maryknoll NY:
Orbis, 2009), 89-108) Johann Baptist Metz
(‘On the Way to a Postidealist Theology’ A
Passion For God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity (New
York: Paulist, 1998) 30-53) Vincent Miller
(‘The Body Globalized: Problems for a Sacramental Imagination in an Age of
Global Commodity Chains” in Relgion,
Economics, and Culture in Conflict and Conversation, ed. Laurie Cassidy
& Maureen O’Connell (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2011), 108-20), Francis Schussler Fiorenza (‘The Cosmopolitanism of Roman
Catholic Theology and the Challenge of Cultural Particularity’ Horizons 35/2
(2008):298-320) Karl Rahner (&
Karl-Heing Weger Our Christian Faith:
Answers for the Future. Tr. F. McDonagh (New York: Crossroad, 1981) 1-16), Robert Schreiter (‘Globalization and the
Contexts of Theology, The New
Catholicity: Theology Between the Global and the Local Maryknoll: Orbis,
1997), and Karen Teel (‘Christianity
as Closed Monotheism? A contemporary Catholic Approach to Interreligious
Dialogue’ in Religion, Economics, and
Culture in Conflict and Conversation, ed. Laurie Cassidy & Maureen
O’Connell (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2011), 255-75)
“Hope
without faith would be blind. … It would tend to imagine the future looking
like a mere repetition or copy of the
present.”—Anthony Kelly, Eschatology
and Hope, 17 (emphasis added)
We cannot forget who we are. The lacuna of
our bodies in socio-economic location is named by Vincent Miller as the result
of making no use of our phenomenological resources. With these we take up the
sacramental work of the church and in effect “the incarnation is continued”
(Miller 2011, 111). The choice before us is spelled out by German theologian
Siegfried Widenhoffer: “to live in and from traditions, to have traditions, to
criticize traditions, to abandon traditions, to create traditions, to let
traditions grow or decline, to be committed to traditions, to hate traditions,
etc--…to being a human being” because it is a false dilemma to live with or
without what had ‘always been’ (Bevens 2009,
91, 105). To come back into our bodies means remembering the momentum
our personal history has (though remembering our reliance on Greek thought would
ground us too (Teel 2011, 266)) so that we draw up the inertial force of Christ
with us who is our integral hope. If we are engaged in history, we soon know inserción requires the discourses of
1)liberation, 2)feminism, 3) ecology, and 4) human rights (Schreiter 1997, 16).
When we draw upon Christ from the inertial Gospel of the poor we are a wire
touching a surging outlet; we need conduction: Life touches us in contingency
but community insulates us. On the contrary, fundamentalism: 1)the inerrancy of
the Scriptures, 2) the virginal conception of Jesus, 3) substitionary
atonement, 4) the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and 5)his bodily return in the
Second Coming (Schreiter 1997,22) calculated the formal elements of faith,
attempting a theocentric project. Yet ‘calculation never made a hero’ says
Cardinal John Henry Newman…
The Parable of the Wedding Banquet
(Matthew 22:1-14)
Jesus
replied: “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding
feast for his son…some ignored the invitation and…the rest laid hold of his
servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged…
…Heroic engagement with the world is our
response to the force of Christ born within us in our “reflexive” being.
Because “our subjectivity is achieved … in everyday life” (Miller 2011, 113) we
are not “mere repetition” or copies of our self; for one moment erupts and up
from within it emerges --our potential—another moment—“the ethnification that
lives in changed social circumstances” (Schreiter 1997, 24), other shores declare the Atantic Ocean the ‘Black
Atlantic’ (Schreiter 1997, 16) and so on as the ground beneath our feet
continues to be ‘deterritorialized’ (Schreiter 1997, 26). Elsewhere a ‘Fichtean’ approach prevails while here
in the United States “the communitarian, particularist and pragmatic traditions
have come to dominate” (Fiorenza 2008, 299). When incarnation is misplaced,
this trend is made the problematic.
On the principle that hope is intelligible
we cannot ground ourselves with nostalgia. Robert Schreiter is critical of a proposal by Archbishop Lefebvre to reissue Syllabus of Errors (Schreiter 1997, x). The bulk of the critique seems to be that the method of teaching in propositions is antiquated, yet Schreiter indicates that the aim of Lefebvre's proposal is to stear the Church back on course, a course derailed by Vatican II. On the one hand, the proposition method would reduce faith into a Rorschach ink-blot; on the other is the idea that issuing Syllabus of Errors 2.0 would deny
the incarnation of Vatican II. At the very least, the proposal is evidence that in Catholic memory a Christendom remains fashioned imperial, imposing
and stoic. Was the reality of Church ever so? Dogma is observed in nostalgia as
ex-nihilo but we remember that “the
dogma of Mary’s assumption was not made official until 1950, both the Eastern
and Western church celebrated the feast for centuries” (Bevans 2009, 97). The
anathemas of Vatican I were confirmed in the promises of Vatican II “so that
there be no division” (1 Cor. 12:25). The true fault is to misplace the
incarnation and on the one hand to create a painting titled ‘mother Dogma’
imagining mother church as the barren Sarah without child. The ‘one who
laughed’ was born! On the other hand we misplace the incarnation when we create
a painting titled ‘the Vision’ imagining church dogmas as the blindness of ten
who could not see. Luke tells us Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed?”
…The king was enraged…
What is the context in which the incarnation
is left out? The direction of the question is important, (where are the other
nine?), giving us ‘eyes to see’ to use Clovis Boff’s words (Brown 2004, 23),
eyes necessary because this physique of obdurate formalism has resulted in
piety that disinherited the poor and oppressed from the economy of salvation,
e.g. the metaphor of Carl Schmitt’s political theology used by Fiorenza. His
first sentence of Political
Theology reads “The sovereign is the one who decides about the state of
exception” (Fiorenza 2008, 310). This sovereign decides he is sui-generis,
forgets his roots, leaves his parents to ‘cleave’ with power.
Historical reality is romantic: Our
potential resists us but it cannot escape, and so on. But we leave out the
incarnation if the reality of the United States Patriot Act has made us forget
the internationalization of principles of human rights; a contextual theology
must at least create the memorial. Johann
Baptist Metz says fundamental theology pursues the inevitable confrontation. “It
seeks … corresponding to the present historical modes of human understanding”
(Metz 82). It seeks… what? Modes of thought arrive (!) cataclysms of ‘it does
this’ and then the ‘to me’ attaches; the grace: ‘it does this to me’ arriving redolent
in reflective ‘ordering’, thus by grace we cannot forget who we are. David
Tracy calls grace “a power erupting in one’s life as a gift revealing that
Ultimate Reality can be trusted…” (Tracy 73). The incarnation is to be
remembered. Explication begins here, delving his Santa Claus bag for gifts. He
lets us correspond in history.
A second time he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those
invited: “Behold, I have prepared my banquet…come to the feast.”
…Some ignored [them]…others took hold and mistreated them…
“Can
one ever really be indifferent to eternal life?” (Rahner and Weger 1981, 7). To dwell on the cumbersome bonds that issue
our arrest and captivate our being, for this, fundamental theology. To know
that faith may intelligibly correspond in love and in history, for this,
fundamental theology. Our integral hope means that even in suffering the
categories give way; this is how fruitful conflict happens; birth by birth. We
can forget that division of moments and separations do, finally, amount from
longings we share deep down. If again the seam of reality parts way, ‘rise’
thusly: what for! How dare! Forget not such disturbances. Surely the tortured
do not; David Hicks has not.[1]
Allow despondence in momento mori
when a record raises up a ghost. Our moment is after Guantánamo ; like Auschwitz
“it cannot be ideationally explained and interpreted, but only remembered
with a practical intent” (Metz 1998, 39). This way and inside this way (Jn
14:6), the moment-of-next-our-hope- is: realizing us. Merry Christmas! Professor Lennan.
[1]
Coopes, Amy. “Australia drops Guantanamo memoirs case” Jul 24, 2012 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gcFQMLqbV0h_oQOsvRUh8qUlXAuw?docId=CNG.7831f02b3a629db126c3145ea2acef7a.371
(accessed December 13, 2012).
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