Beyond Monotheism — 1. Introduction: Incarnation… Again

Beyond Monotheism — 1. Introduction: incarnation… again [Here begins our inaugural book event on Laurel Schneider's Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity. This post may be longer than most of the rest, but it seemed necessary to go into more detail since she's laying out the whole project here.] I’ll begin by quoting Schneider’s paragraph, which is an excellent summary of the argument of the book (or at least the first half of the book): The logic of the One, which has governed the era of European expansion, has tendrils stretching back as far as thirty-five centuries into the reign of Akhenaten in Egypt, though it did not become dominant and flourish until much later in Persia, Israel, and Greece. The logic of the One–only very lately dubbed monotheism–has functioned powerfully on behalf of exiles and emperors alike, and it has framed a whole scientific methodology. For all of its success, however, the logic of the One simply doesn’t work well enough any more to satisfy far-reaching questions about either divinity or the world. The logic of the One is not wrong, except, ironically, when it is taken to be the whole story. Rather than false, it is incomplete. The logic of the One (and the concept of God that falls within it) is simply not One. There is always less, and more, to the story. (1) Schneider positions the book as an attempt to think a divinity “which is not One” (Irigaray), which entails thinking about divine “being” and “presence.” Those two concepts have caused major headaches for other theologians, but Schneider is not afraid of impasses, believing that sometimes they “are the best way to move forward.” Her key claim “is that divinity beyond the logic of the One, beyond monotheism, occurs” (1), a claim that contradicts notions of divine eternity and immutability as well as the concept of a clear linear progress toward some goal or telos. Her focus will be on divine incarnation, which means facing up to the inherent multiplicity and complexity of bodies. This focus is what makes her project a feminist one. Her project also arises out of the contemporary context of increasingly complex global conflicts that draw on notions of monotheism at the same time as they defy well-defined boundaries such as the “nation.” Though theologians have all been shaped by the logic of the One and are therefore complicit with the defenses of empire it entails, she believes it is possible to glimpse another divinity if we move beyond a focus on church authority and become open to a divinity that can actually “dwell among us” (2). Bread and stones: tools for the journey Schneider acknowledges that she does not “travel this road alone or without help” (3). The very traditions of monotheism often include indications of their own unraveling, and she draws on a wide range of contemporary thinkers as well: for example, Catherine Keller, Marcella Althaus-Reid, Kwok Pui-lan, Wohnee Anne Joh, James W. Perkinson, A. Okechukwu Ogbonnaya, Kathryn Tanner, Delores Williams, Ellen Armour, Shron Welch, Gilles Deleuze, and Thomas King. She is also aware that even the most liberationist of theologies cannot totally neutralize the tendencies toward oppressiveness that inhere in even the most thoroughly-vetted theological tools. Nevertheless, she finds many promising resources in the Christian tradition, which was never solely about the logic of the One. On a practical level, since the defense of empire is so often theological, resistence needs to fight on the same terrain — recognizing that the theological resources that helped people overcome situations of oppression often allow them to forget their own origins when the battle is one. Broadly considered, however, “Christian monotheism is empire theology” — a true first brought forward by Erik Peterson and subsequently followed up by Moltmann and Boff, who saw the Trinity as a way out of this. Schneider believes that a more promising route is to go directly to the question of incarnation, which, when “taken seriously, voids all numerical reckonings” (4). Her focus on bodies challenges empire with a gospel conceived “as a mobile and always contextualized message of good news to the poor and disenfranchized,” so that incarnation “therefore becomes a kind of shorthand for the undoing of imperial pretensions to totality and final solutions” (5). Theology always seeks to “articulate understandings of the divine… in light of the needs of the day,” avoiding conceptions of the divine that are so foreign to our experience as to be unintelligible (5). This focus on context constrains Schneider to trace out the sources and history of Christian theology in order to begin again, since (following Keller) it is impossible to begin ex nihilo. Beginning again requires humility, humor, patience, and a willingness to begin yet again after the inevitable missteps. Since Schneider’s investigation is focused specifically on the incarnation of Christ, it means coming to terms with the cultural heritage of Israel and Greece, as well as the long-neglected contribution of Africa. It means taking seriously the scriptural texts of the great monotheisms as well as the “text” of the world. Christian theology has focused specifically on one particular incarnation, proclaiming that God has become fully human in Jesus Christ — and the meaning of that incarnation has continued to be a point of contention for theologians as well as an object of fascination for laypeople, as evidenced by the success of movies based on Christ. Perhaps the best in Schneider’s opinion is Monty Python’s Life of Brian, whose humor allows it to get at the all too human elements of faith. Humor is conspicuously absent in Christian theology (though not in the Talmud), but it is a necessary opening toward multiplicity, insofar as it acknowledges uncertainty. Uncertainty has been growing in modern theology, not unlike the “uncertainty principle” of physics — another example of humor, insofar as the scientist observing the atom finds the atom apparently looking back. “If humor departs when the divine enters, then we have to wonder if it is divinity at all that we are considering” (8). A theology of multiplicity can have neither “clean starts” nor “tidy finishes”–it can only begin in the middle (8). This is the case even though Schneider will spend part I tracing the genealogy of Christian monotheism, following it all the way up to the development of modern science and then delving into Dante’s Inferno, a piece of protest literature that Schneider found (perhaps improbably) resonant when she took it up in the middle of an impasse of writing. The Inferno “became, for me, a lyrical stepping stone toward clarity about the devestating void at the center of the logic of the One” (editorial note: a reading that she establishes in what is perhaps the best part of the book, a true tour de force of creative interpretation)–the fact that her interpretation goes against Dante’s apologetic purpose goes to show that theology always carries unintended consequences. Part II begins with a meditation on the nature of story, which then exchanges the task of genealogy for an “experimental plunge” searching for a way to speak of multiplicity. Part III then deals with some of the ethical implications of multiplicity, focusing on nationalism, love, and the question of unity. About words In this section, Schneider explains her choice of the terms “Divinity” and “the Divine” over against other possibilities like God, because she believes that the choice of terminology brings up the broader question of why she would write about the divine at all. She answers this question in a way that deserves another blockquote: There is something about the idea of divinity, and the reality to which the word gestures, that pulls humanity, over and over again, toward itself. By this I mean that what attracts people continually to the fact-idea-suspicion-faith-experience-possibility of deep connection to a reality that far transcends whatever they create for themselves, is indeed a reality that intentionally tends toward them and the world. Beyond psychology, bio- chemistry, and the social constructions of culture, the divine draws human beings out of themselves over and over again. (11) The question of what the divine is has haunted every human culture; Schneider uses the term “the divine” because it seems to her not to be as pre-loaded with a monotheistic answer. All possible terms are merely metaphors and therefore inadequate, but theology isn’t all about names — it also presupposes the existence of the divine, and so is caught in a tension between affirmation and negation. Though she acknowledges that divinity’s existence cannot be proved, she argues that it is “nonetheless experienced. The real presence of divinity is hoped for, sought after, renounced, feared, flirted with, despaired of, unexpectedly encountered, and embodied every day all over the world” (12). Asking about the divine requires recourse to religious tradition, to philosophy, to sociology and anthropology, to pscyhology — basically every way that human beings come to construct meaning. Yet it also goes beyond those fields of study, trying to reach the divine itself: “Theology is desire. The beauty and even endearing madness of it is that it begins with the folly of attempting to speak of the divinity itself that comes into human consciousness and recognition” (13). Christian theology, based as it is on a particular incarnation, starts from a stance of openness toward the divine coming — even if theologians immediately tried to close off that openness, people formed by Christianity kept trying to bring the body back into focus; “the body–bodies–always return to disrupt theological attempts at containment” (14).

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