Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 19:50:49 -0500 (EST)
From: Howard Hastings <hhasting-AT-osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Cultural studies (Was Henry Miller...)


On Mon, 5 Jan 1998, David Langston wrote:

> >    The position of theology... can in no wise be exalted ABOVE that
> >    of the biblical witnesses.
> > 
> > This seems to me to preserve quite clearly the model of a text 
> > related to an "outside" which stabilizes and norms interpretation
> > without itself being stabilized and normed by interpretation.  The
> > granting of human errancy becomes a means not so much of recognizing
> > "textuality" at the origin, but of preserving that origin from such
> > errancy.
> 
> Well, Howard, I respect your readings in almost every case, but may I
> respectfully suggest that here you are wide of the mark.  In the texts you
> quote, Barth specifically says that theology can never have an immediate
> relation to "the truth."  Its relationship will always be "human": 
> contingent, mediated by word and act, historical and mutable, flawed and
> partial.  It will never be timeless and perfect and a-historical. 

I understand that.  But that is not a new position in theology, and not
one which necessarilty takes God, the Word, or early witnesses as "text."
My point is that theology, however much its representatives may
acknowledge its subjection to the material world, nevertheless has a
referent which IS timeless and ahistorical (in Barth's view).
> 
> Second it will always be parasitic on another text, the biblical text -- 
> a text which stands as a supreme fiction for self, world and community.

yet this supreme fiction will also be parasitical, from the perspective of
an anti-foudnationalist, right?

> Why is it the supreme fiction?  Not because we FIRST say it is the 
> expression of the "transcendental signified" but FIRST because we give it 
> authority.

careful, these gestures are not always and necessarily distinct.  ANd in
the case of Barth, he makes it pretty clear that he does want some
authority out there which doesn't ultimately rest upon humans.  That is
his beef with Feuerbach.

  Then, second, because we see the text's authority we say, 
> after the fact, that God must have said it because it has authority.  
> Barth is very clear on this in his commentary on Romans.  Our knowledge 
> of God's authority is a derived category, not an original one.
> 
But the issue here is not whether Barth thinks the texts we deal with
are human constructions, or whether authority is grounded in a leap of
of faith or rests upon a human construction.  The issue is whether, when
all that is said and done, there is a God who has given us his word- a
Word which precedes the Text.

If there is a God who has given us his Word, and that word is the Bible,
then the Bible cannot be a "supreme fiction." Ultimately, the Bible is
a work which can help us see what is real and what is merely idolatrous
in human thought.  How can such belief in God be anti-foundational,
however, "negative" or "dialectic"?

> Sounds pretty anti-foundational to me.  Now, it is certainly NOT the
> American version of deconstructive anti-foundationalism because that
> version of anti-foundationalism makes the mistake of dwelling only on the
> glissando of "difference" and forgetting the Heideggerian idea that
> difference is always in dialogue with identity.  Identity is
> "constructed," but it is the necessary counterpart to difference. 
> 
One can't have identity without difference, certainly. And the identity of
a thing will depend upon what it is differentiated from. But I am not sure
how to take your formulation of a "dialogue" between difference and
identity.  There aren't separate entities which enter into a dialogue with
one another in this case.  
> 
> > Also, by an interesting chance, I find that Barth wrote the introductory
> > essay to my English translation of Feuerbachs Essence of Christianity,
> > in which he anxiously criticizes Feuerbach's "insolence" in treating
> > God as a projection of Man.  God, for Barth, is precisely the trans-
> > cendent truth which allows us to distinguish idolatry from true 
> > worship, etc.
> 
> Barth is criticizing Feuerbach for taking a "human essence" (an
> a-historical essence) and fashioning a divinity out of whatever happens to
> be the passing fashion of the Zeitgeist.  By contrast, Barth wants God to
> be known through a text which stands in a counterpoint to "what already
> is."  God's word is not a-historical, but it is known as an "ought" that 
> stands in contrast to the "is" of the present moment. That "ought" (I 
> think Barth is echoing Kant here on the "is/ought" dichotomy) will 
> inaugurate a new history.
>  
The question is, how can God's word be "known"?  Either some bit of the
divine and beyond human is peeping through the text or the thing is of
wholly human construction, as Feuerbach thinks.  I don't really see how
Barth moves beyond Feuerbach's critique, though he is more careful about
risking positive pronouncements about God than previouis theologians.

> Barth's theology is called "dialectical" because it arises in dialogue 
> with other theological and philosophical positions.  It develops, changes 
> its nuances with the opponent it takes on as its dialogical partner.
> 
> Sounds pretty anti-foundational to me.

Not if God stabilizes the dialectic.
> 
> > There is a sense in which both [Barth and Wallace Stevens] ARE alike, 
> > however, in that neither is
> > what I would call an anti-foundationalist.  Stevens might maintain that
> > a "mythology reflects its region,"  but he consistently, in idealist
> > fashion, sees literature as a new center, a subsitute for theology.
> 
> We may have reached the nub of the issue.  "Anti-foundational" for me
> means that we can make no appeals to an a-historical essence or substance
> which stands apart from the historical development of thought and
> practice. It does NOT mean that there are no moments when we claim an
> authority for our actions.

I agree fully with your statement above.  I still just don't see how
Barth's conception of God doesn't place Him in a space outside the
historical devleopment of thought and practice (while leaving theology
inside that development, of course).
> 
> That authority is a text, for Stevens and Barth.  It is not an "essential
> unity"  which stands aside from process and temporality.  It is a
> launching pad for generating another chapter in the temporal process. 
> 
Then what is all that talk of the man being one with the style?  This sort
of assertion does not seem to rest upon a conception of
identity-in-relation-to-difference.  (I am trying to think of what de Man
might say about the relation of romantic theory and Steven's fiction
making. If there is anyone who could see the "underside" of the unity
Stevens speaks of it is surely him.)

I know these posts are getting long, but I do see me (us?) groping towards
two possibly interesting issues:

   1.  Perhaps our discussion is a disagreement about the nature of 
       foundationalism, especiallly as formulated by American pragmatists.              

   2.  When do views of "radical imminence" of textual meaning question
       foundations and when do they do they secure them. Or which such
       views do this and which do not.  

hh



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