Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Interstitial Exigency: Theology and Philosophy

"...They complete each other, and together they bring about a new type of philosopher or theologian, situated between theology and philosophy."
Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption

For Rosenzweig it is a matter of symmetrical structures of lack: philosophy lacks an adequate basis (subject) to retain the status of a science; theology lacks an adequate basis (truth) to ground its experience.

Philosophy’s totalizing ambitions under German idealism has produced it’s other in the form of the “point-of-view philosopher” (Nietzsche); aphorism replaces a totalizing system. But how can the philosophizing subject, having fled the totality of knowledge/being, acquire an adequate “objectivity” to still be philosophy? A “bridge” is needed to bind this subjectivity – “a deaf, blind ipseity” – to the “luminous clarity of an unlimited objectivity.” (116) This luminous clarity is Revelation – divine self-disclosure in the present, to the subject – the bridge to arrive at this unlimited objectivity is provided by theology.

Theology, on the other hand, has, at least in modern German “liberal” theology, focused so much on Revelation (present, faith) and Redemption (future, hope) that it abandoned its connection to the past, its auctoritas. But this break with the past – due primarily to an judgment about the lack of credulity of witnesses and martyrs and thus the miracles they bore witness to – was effectively a break with truth. Revelation without Creation (past) floats groundlessly and points aimlessly.

How is this interstitial exigency energized today? How is the co-dependency or co-implication of philosophy and theology productively deployed in our moment?