Reclaiming the poeticality
of theology Denying the idolatry of methodology[1]
The language of theology cannot be, and
should not attempt to be, clear and
precise, since such technical language always
misses a part of that which it attempts to disclose. Raimon Panikkar
Raimon Panikkar alludes to a poetic
language of theology. For Panikkar, theology is not a systematic, scientific,
methodological treatise; rather it is aesthetical, liturgical and imaginative.[2]
However, the theologians like Karl Barth who define theology as dogmatics and a
‘guild discipline’ provide theology a systematic methodological framework. As
Panikkar denotes, theology as a scientific, methodological and technical
language loses its spontaneity and poeticality. The over emphasize on
methodology in recent times, delimits theological engagement to a scientific
program and thereby theology becomes a ‘closed discipline’ of the ‘ghettoized
communities’—the seminaries and divinity schools. Theology has to be liberated from the
idolatry of methodology and the fixity of its dogmatics. Its esthetical,
liturgical and imaginative style of language is to be retained and reclaimed in
order to make it more public and social. This essay offers a discussion on the
poetic language of theology as it tries to re-locate itself in the
post-foundational epistemological context.
It was the Enlightenment epistemology
in the modern period that demanded Christian theology to have a systematic
foundation of knowledge and methodology of articulation. The problem with this
methodological sensitivity is that theology becomes yet another scientific
discipline and thereby it loses its creative and imaginative content. Another
important criticism aroused against the methodological ‘disciplinization’ of
theology was that the modern Christian theology had never been the language of
the non-European life-worlds. Thus, Christian theology or theologies in the
post-Enlightenment / post-Western context has to be post-foundationalist and
post-colonial in content. It needs to de-dogmatize itself and re-place itself
with the aesthetical articulations of the suffering people in the postcolonial
world. In order to re-define theology as a creative, critical and imaginative poetical
engagement in the post-foundationalist/ postcolonial context, this essay initiates
some discussions on the contemporary methodological contentions and theological
significations.
1. Theology as Theopoiesis
To locate theology in a
post-foundational epistemological context, the antidogmatic contemporary
theologians who follow the panentheistic tradition such as Roland Faber,
Catherine Keller, Luke B. Higgins, Sharon D. Welch and so on define theology as
theopoiesis. The Greek word poiesis which originally means ‘to
create’ or ‘to make’ signifies ‘an action that transforms and continues the
world’. The theologians who follow the theopoetic
tradition locate theology in two foci: poetry and multiplicity. Here, theology
becomes independent and polyphonic. It is well explained in the following
sentence:
The rediscovery of
Continental roots of the philosophical criticism of theological language and
its new embrace, respectively became another source of the claim of theology to
be essentially not a dogmatic system of certain knowledge of God or ultimate
reality and the human response to it, but either a response of infinite
variability in face of the divine mystery or, in a different adaptation of
postmodern stances, a bulwark against a nihilism with the rediscovery of old
knowledges of the divine enshrined in the divers traditions of religious
communities and their written witnesses.[3]
Theology in this theopoetic sense becomes more creative (spontaneous, organic and
aesthetical), critical (encounter, interrogation and prophetic), and
imaginative (alluric, enigmatic and apocalyptic). Theopoiesis is a process of being and becoming to be a part of the
social ontology of salvation. Thus doing theology in this theopoetic tradition
is ontological in content as it invokes us to be part of the common ontology of
redemption which is inherent within. The salvific experience is defined here as
common, multiple and potential within.
In theopoiesis,
God is named as poet by which it is refrained from defining God as a person, a
force, a substance, a cosmic law or not even as a fixed concept. On the other
hand, God is considered as a creative process of becoming of the creation from
within. God is understood here as the ultimate novelty of creation or as the
organic potentiality of creativity. According to this tradition, theologians are
participants of the creative process of becoming and belonging. For them,
theological is always epistemological and ontological. Thus, Sharon D. Welch
exhorts theologians: “Let us be artisans, artisans of hope, artisans of wonder,
working with human longing for generosity, courage, forgiveness, and
resilience. As artisans, let us craft together flourishing communities of
honesty, inclusion, justice, self-critique and hope.”
2. Theology
as Theopolitic
Mark Lewis Taylor, in his well-read book The Theological and the Political: On the
Weight of the World’ distinguishes between ‘Theology’ and ‘theological.’ For Taylor, ‘Theology’ is a ‘guild
discipline,’ ‘a credentialed profession in the ‘Christian West’ that typically
reflects on doctrines of a religious tradition and fosters an ethos of
transcendence.’[4] Taylor defines ‘Theology’ as a strict
discipline in terms of its dogmatic rigidity and doctrinal fixity. The ‘theological,’ on the other hand, is a
“spectral haunting Theology, which is already unsettling it, perhaps dissolving
it, disseminating it anew among other languages and other disciplinary
discourses—on the way to revealing something much more significant than
Theology’s doctrinally structured ethos of transcendence.”[5]
Taylor proposes ‘theological,’ in contrast
to ‘Theology,’ as a dimension of agonistic political thought and practice. Unlike the dominant ethos of Theology,
which is transcendental and dogmatic, Taylor’s theological finds its fullest
expression in the ‘prodigious force of artful signs deployed in spectral
practice, and it is born of the struggle of those bearing, resisting, and finding
life under “the weight of the world,” particularly that weight as shifted, or
concentrated, in structures of imposed social suffering.’[6] Taylor argues that the projection of a
transcendent outside as a sustaining precondition, ‘Theology’ always shows its
“imperio-colonial sense.”[7] He locates his political theorization of the
theological in the political philosophies of immanent transcendence such as
that of Spivak, Zizek, Badiou, Ranciere and Nancy.
Catherine Keller, the prominent postcolonial theologian, in a similar
way of thought, defines contemporary theological engagement as theopolic since it is aesthetical and
eschatological rather than doctrinal and dogmatic. According to Keller,
theology in the contemporary context would uphold a “rhizomatic radicality”
which is founded on a “polydoxic” philosophical/ theoretical inheritance. Keller
contends that “such rhizomatic radicality is not about uprooting our traditions
but about exposing them to our confounding togetherness—as species, peoples,
genders, sexualities, races, religions, even—Lord help us—our Christianities.”[8] The Christianity, not only theology, is
invited here to validate the multiplicity of its being, becoming, and belonging
in this planet earth. For John D.
Caputo, theological is an act of theopolitic
as it re-examines our theological presuppositions.[9] For Caputo, theopolitic is nothing but thinking theology differently, which
means to think about God otherwise, to reimagine God as a de-ontological
de-Other. In short, the theopolitical
tradition de-dogmatize and de-doctrinize theology and evokes us to look at the
artistic imaginations of the tortured people as they envision theology on the
weight of the world.
3.
Contemporary Methodological Significations
The contemporary epistemological
context demands certain methodological focuses that are so significant not only
for theological researches but also for all the social researches.
3.1 Postcoloniality
Testimony 1
The
African human expereince constantly appears in the discourse of our times as an
experience that can only be understood through a ‘negative
interpretation.’ Africa is never seen as
possesing things and attributes properly part of “human nature.” Or, when it
is, its things and attributes are generally of lesser value, little importance,
and poor qulity. It is this elementariness and primitiveness that makes Africa
the world par excellence of all that is incomplete, mutilated, and unfinished,
its history reduced to a series of setbacks of nature in its quest for
humankind.[10]
In his ground breaking work On the Postcolony, Achille Mbembe, the
African theoretician, problematizes the power involved in the construction of
the African subjectivity. He argues that the colonial interpretation of Africa
has always been negative. He writes: “Africa is never seen as possessing things
and attributes properly part of human nature.”[11]
Mbembe brings out the crucial inadequacy of the Western methodological
imaginary to accept the idea of a common
human nature, a humanity shared with others. In this crucial
epistemological juncture, Mbembe demands a methodological shift in social
researches—the postcolonial turn—in order to de-other the other and to de-self
the self. Mbembe contends that the flesh
and blood of the ‘African other’ is not just a ‘thing’ as it was conceived by
the Western colonial thinking; rather it is ‘something’ that interrogates both
the Western colonial imagination and its politics of death (necropolitics). Here, Mbembe interrogates the settled
conviction about the epistemological normativity of the researcher. Researcher
has to de-self him/her self and de-other the other. This process of
‘de-essentialization’ (Roland Faber) is termed by Mbembe as postcoloniality. Postcoloniality,
for Mbembe, is not just a counter space of cultural re-imagination of de-othering
of the colonized other; rather it is something political on the flesh and blood
of the tortured other that envision a common human ontology. Here, the research
methodology meets epistemology and ontology and research becomes a process of
becoming and belonging in the planet earth.
3.2
Planetarity
Testimony 2
Kallel Pokudan, a dalit
activist, explains how he has become an eco-political activist. Kallel Pokkudan
says it was his search for a de-casteist identity that led to him to a
planetary agency. He had three specific options before him to reject his caste
identity: one is to embrace communism and to become a Pulaya-communist. Later
he came to the understanding that communist party can never understand the life
of a dalit. Second option was to embrace
Christianity and to become a Pulaya-Christian. Accepting the fact that a Pulayan
can never be an integral part of the church in Kerala, he rejected that
possibility. The third option was to become an activist for his Pulaya-community.
But he realized that at that time Pulaya community was not capable enough to
accommodate a self reflexive-communist activist. He writes: “For a long time I
didn’t do anything. Then I slowly started to preserve the kandal [mangrove
plants] nearby my house. It is how I become kandal Pokkudan.”[12]
(Kandal pokkudan is not
just a name; rather it is his life, politics, and becoming/ belonging
himself—of course a political ontology of planetarity).
Planetarity is a methodological
contention offered by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. With planetarity, Spivak
envisions a de-othered space that invokes us to see ourselves through the eyes
of the others. It is an invitation to live in an enigmatic relationship with
the other, God and the earth. It is not
one of romantic imagination but one that reflects the ethical practice of human
beings as planetary subjects.
Planetarity informs us about the interconnectivity between humanity and
non-humanity. It is to re-imagine our identity and agency as a multiple site of
the process of our becoming and belonging. While constructing a materialist
political ontology, Jane Bennett contends that “human agency is always an
assemblage of microbes, animals, plants, metals, chemicals, word-sounds, and
the like—indeed, that is an agentic assemblage.” Planetary reminds us our
intersubjectivity, biohistorical agency, and political ontology of becoming. Planetarity
takes us beyond the binary thinking and the idolatry of identity. Theological research is not just a scientific
program to prove something for the academia; rather to become something. It is
to affirm our common belonging in this planet earth and to reassure our
biohistorical agency. Becoming
planetary agents is to deny the binary thinking and fixity of identity. Here,
identity becomes fluid, relational and eschatological which can never be the
same—the original.
3.3
Polydoxy
Testimony 3
Christian tradition does not refer to a singular lineage, nor do
Christians speak with one voice even when they attend to the same line of
scripture. In this sense, the Christian tradition is always polydox; it is
irreducible to any one voice or lineage that may claim exhaustively to
represent Christian faith, thought, and practice. This characteristic
complexity is wrought of interweaving cultures and stories, of shifting
agonisms and political pressures, of myriad communal practices, artistic media,
and philosophical schools. Thus multiplicity becomes a source of richness and
revelatory possibility for supple theologies that remain open to the ongoing
participation of divinity in the world.[13]
Polydoxy
is a methodological position offered by Catherine Keller and Laurel C.
Schneider to address the reductive or overarching tendencies of Christian
Theology and to suggest the multiple forms of right belief (orthodoxy) in the
contemporary multi-religious context. It is intended to locate Christian
Theology in the post-Christendom era in its inherent multiplicity and relationality
over against its epistemological enclosure.
According to Keller and Schneider, Christian theology has to retain its
polydoxical inheritances in order to re-imagine it in the post-Western era. Methodologically speaking, polydoxy
offers a radical methodology of doing theology of religion in the contemporary post-religion/
post-secular context. It helps Christian Theology to go beyond the imagined
dichotomies of theism and atheism; monotheism and polytheism; sacred and
secular; spirituality and materiality, and religion and politics. Polydoxy
demands Christian Theology to nullify its ‘transcendental ethos’—the
legitimizing point outside that renders Christianity as the epitome of religion
and to re-locate itself in a theological framework of the crucified God/
religiosity.
Conclusion
Christian Theology has to be liberated
from the idolatry of methodology. Doing theology is to participate in the
process of transforming the world. It is to participate in the act of theopoiesis which is organic, spontaneous
and creative within. Methodology of theology, thus, is epistemological and
ontological in the process of becoming an act of love and life in this planet
earth. Here, the act of doing theology becomes embodied, enmattered and immanent.
The contemporary theological methodology
envisages a polydoxical ground through which it overcomes the binaries of
secular/ sacred, religion/ politics, theism/ atheism, spirit and matter, God
and the world. The methodological contentions offered by the postcolonial life-worlds
invoke Christian Theology to be a planetary theology as it overcomes the binary
thinking and the idolatry of identity. Planetarity helps Christian theology to
de-other the other and to deconstruct the textuality of the con-text. The
contemporary methodological contentions demand Indian Christian Theology to
take a new turn, a radical turn, of course, a postcolonial turn where nothing
is absolute, fixed, and the original; but everything is fluid, relational, polydoxical
and eschatological.
Article published in SATHRI JOURNAL Vol.XI No.1 April 2017
[1] Lecture given at the methodological
seminar organized by South Asia Theological Research Institute (SATHRI) at
United Theological College, Bangalore on 3rd June 2016.
[2] Raimon Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being: The Gifford Lectures (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbs
Books, 2009), 200.
[3] Roland Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal, “The Manifold
of Theopoetics” Introduction, Theopoetic
Folds: Philosophizing Multifariousness (New York: Fordham University Press,
2013), 3.
[4] Mark Lewis Taylor, The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), xi.
[5] Ibid.
[6]Ibid., xii.
[7]Ibid., 49.
[8] John D. Caputo and Catherine Keller, Crosscurrents, Winter 2007, 105-11 at
108.
[9]Ibid., 106.
[10] Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2001), 1.
[11] Ibid, 2.
[12] Pokkudan, Kandalkadukalkidayil Ente Jeevitham (My Life among Kandal
plants)(Kottayam: DC Books, 2002),65.
[13] Catherine Keller and Laurel C. Schneider,
Introduction in Polydoxy: Theology of
Multiplicity and Relation, Catherine Keller and Laurel C. Schneider, eds.
(London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 2.
