Theological Paradigms and Self-Reflection
January 6, 2010
The other day I suddenly became aware of “sedimentation” in my own pre-theoritical experience. By sedimentation I refer to what Paul Ricoeur identified as the influence modern philosophy came to hold over popular culture. Ultimately sedimentation refers to theory entering the process of unexamined knowing in a subtle and pervasive way. The effect is that a person operates with or internalizes certain theory with its epistemological or interpretative convictions, often without her awareness.
However, I did not suddenly become aware of the sedimentation of modern philosophy (such an awareness is for more commonplace and unfortunately such an influence is probably far more entrenched). Rather, I suddenly became aware that I had operated, in my pre-theoritical life, with an uncomfortable duality of two theological concepts which can alternately claim exclusivity. The result is a very unhappy existence.
The first concept, which came to form for me a pre-theoritical paradigm of reality, was shalom. Shalom here refers to peace in the most profound and meaningful sense. I came to internalize expectations of shalom in my life through the claims of Reformed philosophy and theology. Both of which are predicated upon the restoration of creation after the resurrection. From this perspective, the implication of resurrection is that heaven-on-earth is available now. Shalom, the primary experience of pre-fall, or sinless reality, is possible. Another implication is that when shalom is not experienced sin is present.
The second paradigmatic theological concept: cruciform. Due to my reading and the influence of individuals outside of the hegemonic borders at the institution I attend, the role of suffering/witness or cross/liberation became a just-as influential operative reading of reality.
However easily the two could be acclimated to each other in systematics (and they can), in lived reality the two have a difficult time operating in the same time and space. One causes expectation of contentment and peace. The other creates expectation of persecution, suffering, and misery. No eschatological formula can adequately address the discontinuity between the experience of the two. Just as no theology, philosophy, sociology… can adequately address the human condition.
It was with a chuckle of resignation that I realized these two influences had been the source of much disharmony in my understanding of reality through the past few years – there is no resolution, I do not believe the Christian experience could be mediated without these two indissoluble expressions of expectation and experience. Without exile and restoration, without Crucifixion and Resurrection there is no Christianity.
January 7, 2010 at 9:21 am
What a penetrating bit of self-analysis. The real systematic crux of the problem, as you presented it, seems to be the combination of “when shalom is not experienced sin is present” with your emphasis on suffering. Does shalom contradict suffering? A very complex and profound question that I’ll have to think about now…
January 8, 2010 at 2:15 am
To muddy the waters further… Over time I have come to identify two forms of suffering in my own experience. The first is the obvious martyr-like cruciform suffering. The second is much more ignoble. This type of suffering is more akin to ennui – the Pascalian suffering which begets craving for diversion. I believe this suffering is more common in folks like myself – whose real needs are met and have the opportunity to realize the fulfillment of their desires do not result in satiation. This is a suffering that results from empowerment and is synonymous with numbness.
As for shalom contradicting suffering – I have no ready reply. In many ways I believe that’s the very question I have embodied for some time now. If you arrive at a resolution I would love to hear it.
January 9, 2010 at 4:01 am
EVERY minute fraction of our “culture”, and hence of our individual body-minds too, is patterned by the now long dominant paradigm of scientific materialism.
This includes all of what is usually called religion too.
This all pervasive paradigm is the invisible unconscious “sea” or medium in which we swim or float–just as water is the medium in which fish swim.
And there is absolutely nothing you can do to extricate yourself from this steel-hard trap (or put in another way the immense power of the dominant world-machine)
Put in another way we are like minute stick figures running around on the tip of an iceberg pretending that we know and comprehend things (or mumbling about “Jesus”). And yet the vast bulk of the iceberg is below the water and hence invisible to our dreadfully sane socially conditioned awareness.
This vast unconscious bulk, or really force, is what is really patterning our individual and collective lives, and the world-process altogether.
And it is completely indifferent to the well-being or survival of any and every born biological being.
As is the universe altogether– 250,000 human beings were snuffed by a Tsunami.
The human created “world” has become a kind of insane sporting event. It is a TV created collective madness. The human world of nowtime is a lunatic asylum, a psychotic soap opera. That psychotic soap opera actually controls the destiny and experience of the total world of human beings. And that world psychosis is, in its root disposition, totally indifferent to human life, and to the world altogether.
But then again prior to “falling” into identification and hence entanglement with all of this meat-body horror we are always in a state of “shalom” or Indivisible Unity with what IS.
January 9, 2010 at 8:01 pm
I feel as if I am reading Blaise Pascal…
These effusive and challenging paragraphs seem to capture what I would identify as the biblically-affinitive concept of chaos.
“But then again prior to “falling” into identification and hence entanglement with all of this meat-body horror we are always in a state of “shalom” or Indivisible Unity with what IS.”
John, are you saying that there is a perpetual and indissoluble shalom-like connection in all? Or are you pointing to a sort of “ground-of-being” available in reality that contrasts the more available example of constant descent into nothingness?
January 10, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Your last paragraph is a delight. The ever-present tension is the answer (for now). Also, what is your theological response to ennui? It seems to be the bane of the modern individual who has everything yet nothing. What would liberation from ennui look like? Perhaps such liberation is a reversal of that self-empowerment, a self-weakening. How would this look in practical terms for an individual? How do you see it playing out in your own life?
January 11, 2010 at 8:20 pm
I think you are onto something. Liberation from ennui must necessarily be a (de)liberation. Or a return from self-empowerment to an heteronomous existence. For an individual – and for myself – it begins by not running away from ennui to diversion. Which in itself is a radical suggestion – to allow yourself to be bored. It’s in this situation that the human condition, that of dependence upon the Other, becomes apparent.