The Theological Death Drive

Lent 3: Romans 5:1-11
5:1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
5:2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
5:3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
5:4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
5:5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
5:6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
5:7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.
5:8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
5:9 Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.
5:10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.
5:11 But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

The Lectionary doubles back and returns to Romans 5, 2 weeks later and 11 verses earlier. The excess of grace is again (or already) given in comparative terms: “much more surely…” The limit between abundance and superabundance, between grace as gift and grace as gratuitousness is the limit between death and life. This limit is doubly significant. It is significant eschatologically: As proleptic, Christ’s death and resurrection is the possibility of our resurrection – death is already our “ownmost possibility” (according to Heidegger) – death will ultimately loose its grasp. But it is significant also in terms of historical action. Participation in the eschatological resurrection is deferred by a temporal interval and a historical demand. Death is no mere natural fact. If Christ’s death is the paradigm, then death is a political act. But, of course, death can only be understood as a political act if resurrection is considered a possibility. Further, the historical iteration of the death of Christ takes “symbolic” form. Both in terms of a certain withdrawal from the symbolic order (from the demands of the big other) and in terms of the liturgical (re)citation.

Iterability and the Christ Event

Lent 1: Romans 5:12-19

5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned-
5:13 sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law.
5:14 Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.
5:15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.
5:16 And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.
5:17 If, because of the one man's trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
5:18 Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.
5:19 For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

Why is the Christ here figured as a type, as the iteration (which means a repetition that includes both difference and deferral, that is, the general structure of differance) of someone who has come before? The Christ event is here still just that – an event – but it is not absolutely singular, it is not without precedent. Does this thereby diminish the eventfulness of the event? Does it mean that Christ is somehow just the provisional name of an archetypal form? Or, is this a purely hermeneutical/rhetorical move?

A certain principle of iterability does seem to be at work here. Derrida implores: “Let us not forget that ‘iterability’ does not signify simply…repeatability of the same, but rather alterability of this same idealized in the singularity of the event…” (Limited Inc, 119) The event is not diffused in the light of the revelation of its iterability, it is simply re-imagined. The singularity of the Christ event does not lie in its purely arbitrary divine origin, but in its adherence to and, at the same time, divergence from a previous moment. The grace that the second Adam unleashes is gratuitous. But gratuitousness is still a measure: it is “more than…” it is “in excess of…” The singularity of the grace inaugurating Christ event is here thematized in terms of small displacements – “much more surely.” In this way the aphorism – a condensed Talmudic image – that claims that when the Messiah comes there will be only a “slight difference.” But, this is a small difference that makes all the difference.

The Production of a Mourning Machine

Lent 1: Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:1-2, 12-172:1
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming, it is near-
2:2 a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.
2:12 Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
2:13 rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.
2:14 Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD, your God?
2:15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly;
2:16 gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.
2:17 Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep. Let them say, "Spare your people, O LORD, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"

I find two things interesting in this text. The first is a not so surprising surprise, as it is a kind of tradition in its own right: it concerns the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord, here as in Amos, is not the day of redemption, but the day of judgment – and the prospects for a positive judgment are grim. This is not a day to be awaited with hope, but the day to be anticipated with dread.

The second issue is the universalism that this judgment occasions. There is a call to public worship that does not discriminate; and there are no exceptions that would exempt one from service. All are called and instrumentalized, to some degree, in that call. It is something like military conscription: the nation is at war against an enemy too great to be defeated by normal means, a volunteer army will not do. Each is called to do their part, but the equality is absolute. The part of each is the same as every other: they are all to weep and plead for mercy. This “state of exception” has occasioned a universal interpellation of each individual into a national mourning machine. The prospects are not as dark as they look, however. The universal conscription in the face of universal judgment will result, soon enough, in a universal redemption: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.” (2.28)

An analogy: The scandal of having my 1 year old daughter marked with ashes – a mark that signifies both transience and penitence, a feeling all too obvious (in the former) and altogether inappropriate, or better, inappropriable, for an infant (in the latter) to warrant its physical inscription. “You’re the youngest person I’ve ever put ashes on” said my priest to my daughter (i.e. to me). In other words, “how could you do that to an innocent child?” How could I conscript her in an act that was not hers to appropriate? But after the ashes came the bread of heaven – the sign of eternity and redemption, a sign both inappropriable and obvious to my daughter and to me.

The repetition of a cycle, now, that institutes another practice of time, the inscription of another temporal order. If the fiction of individual agency is betrayed, the truer fiction of eternity is commemorated.

Lenten Reflection 5b: Philippians 3:4b-14

Philippians 3:4b-14
3:4b If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more:
3:5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;
3:6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
3:7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.
3:8 More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
3:9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.
3:10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,
3:11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
3:12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
3:13 Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
3:14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Comment:
Paul here sets up a series of oppositions: between life according to the law and life according to faith, and he himself is the test case. The structure is not symmetrical, however. Paul’s list of credentials with respect to the “flesh” (sarx) are extensive: Circumcised, Israelite, Tribe of Benjamin, Pharisee, Zealous, Righteous. Yet on the other side, his achievements under Christ, we find only “the loss of all things” the greatest possible attainment: to become like Christ in his death. The shift from law to faith, from flesh to Christ (or spirit) represents a kind of emptying or hollowing out, a negation. (There is almost a hint of resentment here -- “look what I had, look what I have given up!”). This experience is not, for Paul, an exchanging of one religious content for another, it is the undoing of all religious content, the subjective appropriation, not of a ritual, but of a singular – indeed the most singular – act: death. But this total emptying, this taking up of death stops short of a Heideggerian “being-towards-death” insofar as there remains, for Paul, a life beyond death – the most proper or authentic possibility is not, as it is for Heidegger, the possibility of one’s own impossibility. There is a need to go through this impossible possibility but there is a possibility in excess of this: resurrection. A resurrection, not guaranteed, but hoped for, “strained towards.” The life of faith is a life negated, emptied. Thus, a kind of lack remains in place of religious content, a lack that induces desire for “what lies ahead.”

Lenten Reflection 5a: Isaiah 43:16-21

Isaiah 43:16-21
43:16 Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters,
43:17 who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
43:18 Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
43:19 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
43:20 The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,
43:21 the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

Comment:
The possibility of novelty, of the utterly new, is a consistent theme of emancipatory political thinking, but, before that, it is the concern of an ancient people and a more ancient God. If there were a common thread that could unite all of the failings of biblical people it would be the incapacity to imagine the new, the temptation to settle for what “is” as opposed to being attuned to what “happens” – this is Badiou’s distinction between the order of being and the order of the event.

The “new thing” that is about to happen concerns another repetition: Israel has gone from desert to promised land and now returned to the “desert,” this time in the form of exile. But just as the desert, a place of lack and scarcity became the site of sustaining abundance, the new “desert,” a place of political subservience and religious compromise, is a place which will not remain hidden from divine generosity. Water will cover the dryness of the desert, justice will bisect the sovereignty of empire (Amos 5:24 But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.).

Lenten Reflection 4b: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

2 Corinthians 5:16-21
5:16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.
5:17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
5:18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;
5:19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
5:20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Comment
I spoke earlier of Paul’s biopolitics – such that the passage to redemption is corporal. Here is yet another perspective on this biopolitics. Agamben argues, at the conclusion of Homo Sacer, contra Foucault, that there is no escape from the biopolitical predicament: every body is always already a biopolitical body. Thus, the “new economy of bodies and pleasures” that Foucault gestures towards at the end of History of Sexuality 1 is not really conceivable. Foucault, as far as Agamben is concerned, is not critical enough with his concepts. It is not merely a new relation between body and pleasure that is necessary but a, in some sense, a new body, a new corporal destiny. Further, this new body cannot be the return to an old body, there can be no nostalgia for a pre-biopolitical existence -- “There is no return from the camps to classical politics” (187).

In Paul we find something like the possibility of a new corporal destiny, not in terms of an escape from bodily existence – as it sometimes sounds in 2 Corinthians – but in terms of a participation in another future for the body: “we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who died and was raised for him” – these are the words that immediately precede our text. These are the conditions under which Paul can claim that “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” There is here the possibility of not just a new relation between body and world, but the possibility of a new body, of a new site for a biopolitical resistance to biopolitics. In this way Paul represents a possible completion of Agamben’s project to found a new politics which would be a zoe which is its own bios – this, by the way, is not a possibility that Agamben names in his Paul book.

Lenten Reflection 4a: Joshua 5:9-12

Joshua 5:9-12
5:9 The LORD said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt." And so that place is called Gilgal to this day.
5:10 While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho.
5:11 On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain.
5:12 The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.

Comment
Rosenzweig describes Jewish liturgical practice as a circular repetition – the Torah scroll is unrolled, rolled, read, re-read the same way, year by year – this is what situates Jews already in eternity. Eternity is brought into the moment, an infinite now, by this repetition. But how? "There is only one way out," says Rosenzweig, "the moment we are seeking must, since it has flown away, begin again already at the same moment, in the sinking away it must already begin again; its perishing must be at the same time its beginning again (307).

In the text from Joshua, Israel, finally on the far side of the Jordan, undertakes the first repetition of the Passover. The initial meal was not yet liturgical, it was singular, the (violent) act of divine liberation: the manifestation of God’s unrivaled power and deep solidarity. It was the event that finally lead Pharoh to (provisionally) concede and release Israel from bondage. Now, in this first repetition the experience of Egypt is both maintained and erased – we might even say it undergoes a sort of Aufhebung or sublation. Such a repetition is enacted in order to serve as a reminder to this generation and those that follow: “And when your children ask you, 'What do you mean by this observance?' you shall say, 'It is the passover sacrifice to the LORD, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.'" (Exodus 12.26) the memory is retained in the practice of repetition. But, it is retained in a particular form: not as the melancholic reliving of the trauma of slavery, but as the perpetual announcement of liberation. The event is repeated, but the “disgrace of Egypt” effaced in the very reenactment.

There is another shift that is named here and it too has to do with food and a different temporal existence. Much like the liturgical practice of Passover is a movement from singularity to repetition – which is its own form of singularity – the shift from manna to the produce of the land is a change from the miraculous, singular, appearance of manna each morning – which is its own form of repetition – to the repeated cycles of agricultural practice. In each case the life of this community is bound up with a certain type of temporal existence. We have two models of time here, two modes of faithful existence. What Derrida says with respect to the spatiality of the desert and the promised land – that they are both aporetic places – applies, it seems to me, temporally as well -- they are both aporetic times. That is, both times -- the time of repetition (which is its own singularity) and the time of sigularity (which is its own repetition) -- are not the coincident with chronological time: the one breaks regular time open in its aleatory irruption, the other exceeds common time in its junction with eternity.

Lenten Reflection 3b: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 / Messianic Politics iv: Contraction

1 Corinthians 10:1-13
10:1 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea,
10:2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,
10:3 and all ate the same spiritual food,
10:4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.
10:5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.
10:6 Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.
10:7 Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play."
10:8 We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.
10:9 We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents.
10:10 And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.
10:11 These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.
10:12 So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.
10:13 No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

Comment
Paul establishes a relation between Israel of the Mosaic era and the church of the messianic era by way of a bizarre – but not unprecedented – form of interpretation: a typological interpretation (each occurrence of the word “example” [vv. 6 & 11] is a translation of a form of the Greek typos). Agamben is helpful here because he takes seriously Paul’s method in both its historical and normative aspects. He does not shy away in embarrassment from the method, nor does he allow it to evolve into the, now discredited, medieval mode of allegorical interpretation. What he does is examine this relation in terms of its role in shaping messianic temporality – the theme of his book. “What matters to us here,” he says,

Is not the fact that each event of the past – once it becomes figure [typos] – announces a future event and is fulfilled in it, but is the transformation of time implied by the typological relation. The problem here does not simply concern the biunivocal correspondence that binds typos to antitypos together in an exclusively hermeneutic relationship, according to the paradigm that prevailed in medieval culture; rather, it concerns a tension that clasps together and transforms past and future, typos and antitypos, in a inseparable constellation. The messianic is not just one of the two terms in this typological relation, it is the relation itself. This si the meaning of the Pauline expression “for us, upon whom the ends of the ages [aionon, the olamim] are come to face each other.” The two ends of the olam hazzeh and the olam babba contract into each other without coinciding; this face to face, this
contraction, is messianic time, and nothing else. Once again, for Paul, the messianic is not a third eon situated between two times; but rather, it is a caesura that divides the division between times and introduces a remnant, a zone of undecidablity, in which the past is dislocated into the present and the present is extended into the past. (74)

For Agamben Paul’s method does not negate the initial Israelite experience, it does not co-opt it for Christian purposes. Instead Paul discloses something of the structure of messianic time where the past does not relate to the present and the future according to a linear movement, where one event follows another in a determinate manner, “like the beads on a rosary.” The messianic event – which is for Paul, if not for Agamben, the resurrection of Jesus and the calling into existence of the ekklesia under the power of the Holy Spirit – inaugurates a rupture in the structure of time and renders its relationship to itself and our relationship to it substantially different. Agamben sees this realization in Benjamin’s description of messianic time as a “monstrous abbreviation” (as in the epigraph to this blog). Benjamin’s “now time” (Jetztzeit) and Paul’s “present time” (ho nyn kairos) both name, not a moment that follows chronologically from an earlier moment, but the possibility of past and future forming a “constellation” in an unpredictable, revolutionary moment.

Lenten Reflection 3a: Isaiah 55:1-9

Isaiah 55:1-9
55:1 Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
55:2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.
55:3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
55:4 See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.
55:5 See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.
55:6 Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;
55:7 let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Comment
There is a paradigmatic text, which occurs in various forms, that condenses the whole of divine activity into a single formulation:

"The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." (Exodus 34.6-7)

In a single figure of the divine resides the impulse to mercy and to punishment. The book of Isaiah can be seen as an extended meditation on this tension between retribution and forgiveness. However, in Isaiah it happens in reverse: anger precedes forgiveness – the liturgical formulation, prefers the softer side of God and thus presents it first, warning, nevertheless, that this is not the whole picture. In practice –an intra-textual “practice” – anger comes first, mercy and forgiveness come to substitute for anger. This difference is so apparent in Isaiah that scholars divide the book into two parts: “first Isaiah” where anger and punishment (i.e. exile) takes precedent and “second Isaiah” where mercy reigns. The shift can be seen in the following:

For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the LORD, your Redeemer. This is like the days of Noah to me: Just as I swore that the waters of Noah would never again go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the LORD, who has compassion on you. (Isa 54.7-9)

Today’s text, well into “second Isaiah,” further articulates the compassion that God longs to show to Israel. What is interesting here is the “materialist” cadence. The promise of a new covenant is bound to a new economy. This is an economy that is not administered by (the Babylonian) empire, not ruled by the market, not driven by scarcity: it is an economy of abundance where, like the divine compassion that manifests in rhetorical excesses, the things of human need become, in there excess, the things of human enjoyment: “eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food”. This is an abundance that destroys, in exceeding, a calculable exchange: “you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Under the new covenant, a new regime of enjoyment, an abundance dispensed from a source, itself in excess of the calculable: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” This is the utopian hope offered to a people in exile.

Lenten Reflection 2b: Philippians 3:17-4:1

Philippians 3:17-4:1
3:17 Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.
3:18 For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears.
3:19 Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.
3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
3:21 He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.
4:1 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

Comment
Paul is speaking here of a politics – citizenship is a political category – that is “otherworldly.” But at the very moment when he says that “our citizenship is in heaven,” he limits access to this other world by deferring its arrival: we are still “expecting” the arrival/return of the Messiah. Furthermore, in the next verse he shifts from the present to the future tense: “He will transform…” It is important to keep in mind here that Philippi is a Roman colony and this is not a broad condemnation of worldly political involvement, it is a call for the followers of Jesus to withdraw their loyalty – if not their bodies – from empire.

Paul is speaking here of a biopolitics. Not in terms of the more recent phenomena of governmentality and medicalization that Foucault identified, but in terms of the locus of political struggle being essentially corporal. Both the preset order of the world and the order that is to come concern a bodily disposition. The “enemies of the cross,” as Paul says earlier in the passage, are those who are corporally disposed to the present order alone: “their god is their belly…their minds are set on earthly things.” There is no sign of Gnosticism here: the fault that Paul finds with these enemies is only the lack of a supplement to the immanent arrangement. These bodies of “humiliation” are the bodies that we are, there is no escape from them. But these bodies will “conform,” in the future, to another corporality: they will take the form of “glory.” The glorified body, the body of Christ, the resurrected body that still bears the marks of its permeability, is not completely other than the humiliated body, it is its supplement. There is no room here for a hyper-eschatological escapism: the content of the form of the glorified body is the humiliated body. The passage to redemption is corporal.

Lenten Reflection 2a: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
15:1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great."
15:2 But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?"
15:3 And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir."
15:4 But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir."
15:5 He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be."
15:6 And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.
15:7 Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess."
15:8 But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?"
15:9 He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon."
15:10 He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two.
15:11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
15:12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
15:17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
15:18 On that day the LORD made [literally, ”cut”] a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates...."

Comment
Apart from containing the Pauline proof text for the possible inclusion of the Gentiles or goyim into the people of God – the faith of Abram that was “credited to him has righteousness” –this text is about the promise of (1) offspring and (2) land; and it is about the making, the cutting, of a covenant. The first promise takes place in the evening (how else could Abram count the stars?); it involves a dialogue between God and Abram; it concerns the material extension of Abram’s seed and it concludes with a word of promise: the deal is sealed with a word made in good faith. The second promise begins in the evening and concludes in the “terrifying darkness” of a deep sleep; it begins with dialogue and concludes with an opaque, nocturnal manifestation of divine presence; it concerns the material territory which Abram’s offspring should populate and the deal is sealed with a covenant, with a highly symbolic ritual which translates a promise in good faith to an externalized and binding obligation – the cutting of the covenant corresponds to the cutting of the animals; the passing of the divine between the cuts obligates, through threat of being cut in half himself, God to follow through.

Lenten Reflection 1b: Romans 10.8b-13

Romans 10:8b-13
10:8b "The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
10:9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
10:10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.
10:11 The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame."
10:12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.
10:13 For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

Comment
Jacob Taubes makes much of the connection between Paul and Moses: the deepest connection concerns their mutual willingness to be “blotted out” or “accursed,” with respect to God, for the sake of the people of Israel (Moses in order that God not destroy them after the golden calf incident, Paul in order that God would save more than a remnant). Here is another example of a Pauline repetition of Moses. Paul reads Deut 30 and inserts “faith” where Moses says “commandment,” turning Moses’ assurance to Israel of the closeness of the law into the Gentile’s immanent potential for salvation. (It is only a hermeneutical depravity that would read v.9 as an isolatable formula for salvation.) The demands of the law are not as much mitigated as displaced. The fact that, as Paul says earlier in the chapter, “Christ is the telos of the law,” should not be read only as cessation, but also as a fulfillment. Agamben takes the ambiguity of telos as the key to the Pauline reading of the law; as a kind of fulfillment in cessation.

The political significance of confession should also not be missed. Paul rereads Jewish law in light of its messianic transformation and, in this same gesture, undermines Roman law. To name as sovereign anyone other than Caesar would be treasonous; especially a Jewish peasant whom this same empire had executed. (Jesus would, in this way, fulfill the political function of the empty signifier as Laclau understands it: as that signifier which “empties itself” [cf. Phil 2.7] of content, or dies, in order that disparate demands and desires cohere – i.e. become universal – under a particular name.) In the text of Deuteronomy that Paul is glossing, the exhortation to keep the law turns quickly to the prohibition of idolatry: “But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish”. Turning to law is also a turning away from idolatry – an idolatry exemplified in the religious practices of the Canaanites. The turning to faith carries over this prohibition of idolatry – exemplified in the theologico-political practices of the Romans.

Lenten Reflection 1a: Deut 26.1-11

In an effort at Lenten discipline I have decided to try to offer reflections on the readings from the revised common lectionary. I have attempted this for several years in a row and rarely make it past the second Sunday in Lent. We'll see what happens this year.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
26:1 When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it,
26:2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.
26:3 You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us."
26:4 When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God,
26:5 you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.
26:6 When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us,
26:7 we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.
26:8 The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders;
26:9 and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
26:10 So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me." You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God.
26:11 Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.

Comment
1.The first thing: abundance is not something to be spurned or denounced, but received and used in a certain way – abundance is a gift. The abundance that Israel experiences in Canaan is an inheritance, a gift from God; not a gift received in symmetry to an act – like produce to labour – but a gift that exceeds calculable reciprocity. There is a proportionality characteristic of covenant: an act of faithfulness was required of each party – this is the fundamental nature of a covenant (theological or juridical). However, this is a radically disproportionate proportionality. Israel’s obedience to the word of God, as difficult as it is, does not approximate the gift that is received in return: a new life in a new land as a great nation.

2. In order that historical memory not fail and the gratuitousness of a gift not be confused with what is due, a liturgical act is instituted. In this act the economy of the gift is continued: Israel gives back to God. In this gesture the excess of God’s initial gift is symbolically reciprocated: the first fruits are given. Before Israel can enjoy the produce of the land they must sacrifice it; offer it up to the one who has given it to them. Materially the sacrifice does not diminish the abundance, enjoyment is allowed, even if it is deferred. The scriptural significance of offering what is first has a precedent in the story of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4). It seems that the preference God shows to Abel has to do with the fact that he offered the “firstlings of his flock” (v.4) while Cain simply brought “an offering of the fruit of the ground” (v.3). Cain did not offer the premier fruit, his offering was not primordial or originary enough – the exigency of “fundamental ontology”—the demand for the more originary – is here prefigured as a theological exigency (is ontotheology overcome?)

3. The instituted liturgical act is fundamentally a repetition. It is the perpetual reiteration of the founding gesture of divine gift – as an exodus from Egypt (and a violence inflicted) and an entrance into the land of the Canaanites (and a violence inflicted) – in the form of autobiography or etiology: “a wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” Israel lives the new as the constant iteration of the old. Life in Canaan is a double life: it is lived in both the promised land and the desert at the same time. The comfort and abundance of life in the promised land is perforated by the memory of the privation of the desert – perhaps this is why Derrida calls both the desert and the promised land “aporetic places.”

4. The identity of this people does not coincide with itself. First of all Israel qua Israel is only constituted in this liturgical repetition. It is this practice that prevents the people of God from becoming “like the other nations.” This will be the recurring problem for Israel in Canaan, primarily in terms of its desire for a King (cf. Deut 17.14). Israel is distinguished from the Canaanites not by virtue of ethnicity but by way of its relation to it itself by way of its relation to God. Second, the story that is repeated – “a wandering Aramean…” – points to a heterogeneous origin in terms of ethnicity, but more importantly in terms of the indefiniteness of wandering. Finally, even Israel present in the land, bound together through a collective subjectivation, is not permitted to settle into a fixed identity: the “alien among you” will be a full participant in the liturgical life of this people – and in this way be an originary “member” of the community.