Book Notice: Scharen & Vigen

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I’d be the first to admit it. I’m a big Clifford Geertz fan. I can’t think of many others who match his fluency in so broad a range of disciplines. That being the case, it may come as no surprise that anthropology’s significance for theological inquiry is a question I have a fair bit of patience for. We already know that theology and philosophy, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, are singularly bound to one another; this is so tired a tale that it doesn’t need further rehearsing here. Elsewhere I’ve tried to give some attention to the ties between theology and literature, which I don’t think many would consider all that great an imaginative leap either. But now I’d like to put the spotlight on theologians building bridges with anthropology. The connections between these disciplines may be less obvious. To help bring their affinities into sharper focus, Continuum released this title in 2011: Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics edited by Christian Scharen (Luther Seminary) and Aana Marie Vigen (Loyola University Chicago). The volume is divided into three parts: the first presents the theoretical vision grounding their proposal, the second collects seven examples of the sort of theologically conscious ethnographic work the editors are calling for, and the third is a concluding essay offering advice on how one may proceed as a theologian equipped with ethnographic sensibilities. Though in its execution the volume foregrounds its revisionist sensitivities to an extent that threatens to eclipse its primary purpose of showcasing the powers of ethnographic discourse, you needn’t hesitate to give this volume a hearing on that account. The project still succeeds in alerting us to a neglected perspective (and its accompanying limits), and that much remains logically separable from some of its proffered conclusions. Nevertheless, a few more words on the theological warrants motivating the juxtaposition of these disciplines may be in order.

All scholarly disciplines, and theology is no exception here, will inevitably face the question of whether and how distinct fields of study hang together. One answer to this question takes its cue from the tautological axiom that “knowledge is knowledge,” consequently authorizing a vision of the gamut of intellectual inquiry as a cooperative venture in a shared enterprise. In this paradigm, theologians would be duty-bound to consult with natural and social scientists, philosophers and historians, and so on, revising their truth-claims in the process, because they supposedly share canons of judgment and verification that transcend the differences between their discipline-specific objects of study. The prospect of talking past one another isn’t a live fear here. Since all inquiry registers in the same key of discourse, there’s nothing to worry about.

A second answer to the question of how disciplines hang together rejects the defining axiom of the first. Here inquiry starts instead with the premise that “knowledge for you isn’t necessarily knowledge for me.” This paradigm just can’t shake its perception that greater significance needs to be accorded to the discontinuities between disciplines and their respective deliverances. Scholars, they’ll say, aren’t simply schooled into a general competency for “intellectual inquiry” — there’s no such thing. Rather, they’re enculturated into discipline-specific memories, idioms, and procedures of discourse, etc., all of which contribute to generating distinctive imaginative capacities. Here theology’s autonomous and non-foundational character is celebrated, sometimes even touted as the safeguard of its orthodoxy. (The Tertullians we’ll always have with us.)

Of course in reality we don’t face so stark a disjunction, as these two answers are really only two poles on a spectrum broad enough to accommodate a variety of more nuanced positions. Hans Frei, for example, once contemplated five possible answers. I, however, have painted the picture in this fashion so as to motivate this question, what does theology stand to gain from increasing its circle of interlocutors? Which are its closest cognate disciplines? What I see as at stake in this question is the formation of our theological imaginations. Let’s face it — theologians are impressionable. Who they choose to converse with will shape their sense of theology’s tasks and audiences. Why I find ethnography particularly worth heeding, finally getting back to the matter at hand, is its capacity to recover theology’s ecclesial roots and responsibilities. Among the throng of theology’s potential conversation partners, ethnographers stand in a unique position to amplify the voices and attend to the practices of actual Christians. You may find yourself surprised by how much mere description can uncover. As the editors put it, “Ethnography is a way to take particularity seriously — to discover truth revealed through embodied habits, relations, practices, narratives, and struggles.” These are touchstones theologians would do well not to neglect. I’ll leave it to Scharen and Vigen to unpack ethnography’s significance for theology further.

You might also consider:

  • Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography, edited by Peter Ward, (Eerdmans, 2012), which includes contributions from Paul Fiddes, Alister McGrath, John Webster, and Richard Osmer. (This volume would have served just as well for this notice.)
  • Nicholas Adams and Charles Elliott, “Ethnography is Dogmatics: Making Description Central to Systematic Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology, vol. 53, no. 3, (2000), 339-364.

(Maybe you’re wondering what discipline I’ll try putting theology in dialogue with next? Well I won’t leave you in the dark. There’s no question that it will be historiography. Theologians, this is a field pleading for theological attention.)

Book Notice: Taylor & Waller

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There is taking place within a niche of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy something of a turn to literature. Now I don’t mean by this to draw attention to the resurgence of interest in the philosophy of literature per se, into philosophical accounts of literature’s powers, devices, aims, etc., though this is also taking place. I mean instead to bring to view philosophical projects that attend to literature as an aid for treating properly philosophical vexations. Of course philosophy and literature are old sparring partners, making attempts at their cross-fertilization nothing new, but it seems that Stanley Cavell and more than a few of his interlocutors (it’s not a coincidence) have been producing a steady stream of work marked by its bi-disciplinary imagination and agenda. Consider, for a small sampling, works like

  • Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (OUP, 1992)
  • Walter Jost, Ed., Ordinary Language Criticism: Literary Thinking after Cavell after Wittgenstein (Northwestern, 2003)
  • Stephen Mulhall, The Wounded Animal: J.M. Coetzee and the Difficulty of Reality in Literature and Philosophy, (Princeton, 2008)
  • —, The Self and its Shadows: Essays on Individuality as Negation in Philosophy and the Arts, (OUP, 2013)
  • Richard Eldridge, Ed., Stanley Cavell and Literary Studies (Bloomsbury, 2011)
  • —, Ed., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature (OUP, 2013)

These philosophers at least are finding in literature a rich and ready resource that the currently reigning conventions of philosophy would otherwise train its students to overlook.

Because this is a set of philosophers whose work I regard highly, I can’t help but ask whether theology has contributions to make to this pocket of inquiry (or lessons to learn from it). This is why I was pleased to learn of this 2011 Ashgate title: Christian Theology and Tragedy: Theologians, Tragic Literature and Tragic Theory edited by Kevin Taylor (Pfeiffer University) and Giles Waller (Cambridge). The collection is divided into three sections: the first on tragic narratives in biblical and theological literature; the second on theologians who deployed tragedy as a theological category (namely, Balthasar, MacKinnon, Simone Weil, and C.S. Lewis); and a final section on theological assessments of tragic theory. Contributors include, among others, Ben Quash, Michael Ward, David S. Cunningham, and David F. Ford.

Now you might be asking, why tragedy? Is tragedy really a category in pressing need of theological attention? Should we put much stock in its promise to increase theology’s imaginative reach, explanatory power, and patience with the harder-to-assimilate stories of the human lot? These are fair questions. But, so as not to lose your interest too soon, perhaps this bread crumb will entice you to stay tuned — theologians of no less stature than Hans Urs von Balthasar and Donald MacKinnon, the volume points out, both reflected on how theology’s original preference for Greek philosophy, to the neglect of the Greek corpus of tragedies, had a mis-shaping influence on theology’s ability to articulate its own gospel. Maybe a storyline like that piques your interest as much as it does mine? Or maybe the editors’ own articulation of their aims will do the trick:

“The chapters in this volume show that, far from there being an inherent antagonism between Christian theology and tragedy, they share at the very least areas of profound mutual concern: the experience of suffering, death and loss, questions over fate, freedom and agency, sacrifice, guilt, innocence, the limits of human understanding, redemption, catharsis. We might even press this further, and maintain with MacKinnon that an attentiveness to tragedy is vital to a properly disciplined Christian theology and that, by the same token, Christian theology can be a way of vouchsafing the true significance of tragedy.”

I for one would care to see what inquiry along these lines will turn up.

Book Notice: James K A Smith

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I’m just now getting to a 2009 Baker title that I’d been neglecting: Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation by the Calvin College philosopher James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova). It’s the first of a projected three volume series in “Cultural Liturgies.” The second volume is also already available — Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Baker, 2013) — but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The first volume offers enough material to occupy our attention for the present moment. To give you a sense for its flavor and aims, here’s a longish quote from the introduction:

“Being a disciple of Jesus is not primarily a matter of getting the right ideas and doctrines and beliefs into your head in order to guarantee proper behavior; rather, it’s a matter of being the kind of person who loves rightly — who loves God and neighbor and is oriented to the world by the primacy of that love. We are made to be such people by our immersion in the material practices of Christian worship — through affective impact, over time, of sights and smell in water and wine.

“The liturgy is a ‘hearts and minds’ strategy, a pedagogy that trains us as disciples precisely by putting our bodies through a regimen of repeated practices that get hold of our heart and ‘aim’ our love toward the kingdom of God. Before we articulate a worldview, we worship. Before we put into words the lineaments of an ontology or an epistemology, we pray for God’s healing and illumination. Before we theorize the nature of God, we sing his praises. Before we express moral principles, we receive forgiveness. Before we codify the doctrine of Christ’s two natures, we receive the body of Christ in the Eucharist. Before we think, we pray. That’s the kind of animals we are, first and foremost: loving, desiring, affective, liturgical animals who, for the most part, don’t inhabit the world as thinkers or cognitive machines. […]

“This, I’m going to argue, should make a difference for how we think about the nature and task of Christian education — and thus what’s at stake at a Christian college. … In short, the Christian college is a formative institution that constitutes part of the teaching mission of the church.

“This vision of the mission of Christian education requires a correlate pedagogy that honors the formative role of material practices. Thus, … education at Christian colleges must be understood as liturgical in more than an analogical or metaphorical sense. Or perhaps to put it more starkly, … we need to move from the model of ‘Christian universities,’ identified as sites for transmitting Christian ideas, to ‘ecclesial colleges,’ understood to be institutions intimately linked to the church and thus an extension of its practices. If Christian learning is nourished by a Christian worldview, and if that worldview is first and foremost embedded in the understanding that is implicit in the practices of Christian worship, then the Christian college classroom is parasitic upon the worship of the church — it lives off the capital of Christian worship.” (32-4)

Not at all a bad start! My first impressions have been largely affirmative. I’ve got quite a bit of patience for a project like this. So far I’m liking these dimensions in particular: (1) its impatience with tired rationalist accounts of human nature; (2) its counter-anthropology that promotes instead human agency — brought to view in the objects and quality of our loves — as the saner entry point for thinking the human animal; and finally (3) its eye for the implications this whole discussion bears for Christian tertiary education (and, arguably, the Church’s catechesis and evangelism, though Smith doesn’t press this). The textbooks would call this a work in philosophical anthropology. Whatever the label, I’m looking forward to reading what else Smith has to say.