Theology As Improvisation: Using the Musical Metaphor of Attunement to Think Theologically
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Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2011 Theology as Improvisation: Using the Musical Metaphor of Attunement to Think Theologically Nathan Crawford Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Crawford, Nathan, "Theology as Improvisation: Using the Musical Metaphor of Attunement to Think Theologically" (2011). Dissertations. 280. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/280 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2011 Nathan Crawford LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO THEOLOGY AS IMPROVISATION: USING THE MUSICAL METAPHOR OF ATTUNEMENT TO THINK THEOLOGICALLY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN THEOLOGY BY NATHAN CRAWFORD CHICAGO, IL AUGUST 2011 Copyright by Nathan Crawford, 2011 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the large debt that I owe to many who helped make this dissertation possible. To give credit to everyone would be impossible, but let me try to give credit where it is due. First, I would like to thank the Department of Theology at Loyola University of Chicago. The time spent in the department, whether in class, conversation, or over coffee, gave me the resources to be able to complete this project. I would like to thank Dr. John McCarthy for his help in supervising my dissertation research. His guidance proved invaluable even when I was not sure that I needed guiding. I also want to thank my other readers from the department, Dr. Susan Ross and Dr. Andrew Radde-Gallwitz. Dr. Ross’ course on the History of Christian Thought after the Reformation allowed many of the ideas in this dissertation to germinate. Dr. Radde- Gallwitz spent good time talking both Augustine patristic theology and music. I would also like to thank Dr. Mark McIntosh whose courses and conversations went far toward shaping the way that I pursued the research presented here. Catherine Wolf and Marianne Wolfe have also been invaluable to me, with their quick responses to emails, their help with paperwork, and their continued encouragement. I would also like to thank some professors from other institutions who have been guiding voices in my research. First, I would like to thank Dr. David Smith, my advisor in my undergraduate program. He continued to encourage me and to offer the advice to iii finish constantly long after I had graduated. I also want to thank Dr. Laurence Wood and Dr. Michael Pasquarello from Asbury Theological Seminary. These two have been great mentors in my academic life through encouragement and critique. I continue to enjoy their friendship. I also want to thank Dr. Bruce Ellis Benson for serving as an outside reader on this project as well as being a rich resource in both continental philosophy and studies in improvisation. I also appreciate the time he has spent in conversation with me over any number of topics. I would like to acknowledge and thank Loyola University of Chicago for the funds necessary to finish a project such as this. I was awarded a fellowship in 2008. This fellowship helped with my initial research for this project. I also received the Schmitt Dissertation Fellowship for 2010-2011. This award helped me focus strictly on writing and revising this project. The number of people who have contributed to this through general, casual conversation is too large to list. However, some people have consistently engaged in conversation over this project. I would like to thank them for the time and energy they expended on a project that was not really their own. These people would include Andrea Hollingsworth, Bill Myatt, Brock Bingaman, Andrea Berger, Adam Hankins, and Seth Harshman. There are many others who have also commented and suggested resources—I thank you as well. Lastly, but most importantly, I would like to thank my family. My parents Mark and Sallie Crawford have been helpful and encouraging to me throughout this process, whether it was watching my children or telling me to finish the “paper.” I also thank my iv in-laws Gary and Robin Neidig for being like a second set of parents. I want to acknowledge the contribution of my oldest son, Broderick, who gave up “daddy days” so that I could finish my dissertation. I also want to thank my second son, Camden, for being so generous and loving while giving up special time with me. Most of all I want to thank my wife, Trisha Crawford. Without her love and support I could not have finished this. Her encouragement, whether explicit or subtle, has benefited me in ways that I will never know. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABSTRACT viii INTRODUCTION: THINKING THE THINKING OF GOD 1 A. The Theological Task in the Christian Tradition 6 B. Post-Barthian Descriptive Approaches to Theology 27 C. The Prescriptive Approach of this Project 47 D. Conclusion: The Outline of the Argument 58 CHAPTER ONE: HEIDEGGER AND THE QUESTION OF THINKING 63 A. Pursuing the Path of Thinking 65 B. “Step Back”—Opening the Path to Being 73 C. Thinking as Attunement 83 D. Conclusion 104 CHAPTER TWO: DERRIDA AND ATTUNEMENT: USING DECONSTRUCTION TO FURTHER THE IMPROVISATIONAL NATURE OF THINKING 108 A. Deconstruction as Attunement 109 B. Hospitality as Attunement 127 C. Risking Interpretation—The Example of Translation 140 D. Concluding Remarks 150 CHAPTER THREE: SKETCHING ATTUNEMENT AS A WAY OF THINKING IN IMPROVISATIONAL MUSIC 154 A. The Centrality of Listening for Attunement in Music 160 B. The Place of Attunement in Improvisation 166 C. Improvisation as Transformation: Breaking the Musical Form 190 D. Conclusion 201 CHAPTER FOUR: ATTUNEMENT AND THEOLOGY: RESONATIONS WITH DAVID TRACY 205 A. Theology as Conversation: The Problem of Totality and the Task of Theology 208 B. Naming God: The Turn to Form through the Fragment 229 C. The Gathering: Rethinking the “System” of Theology 249 D. An Ethics of Resistance 256 E. Conclusion 263 CHAPTER FIVE: THE THEOLOGICAL EXAMPLE: AUGUSTINE’S UNSTRUCTURING OF THEOLOGICAL FORM 266 A. The Basis of Theology: An Examination of De Musica 271 vi B. Finding the Groove: Rhetoric as Form in De Doctrina Christiana 283 C. Improvising Freely: The Form of the Confessions 298 D. Conclusion 320 CONCLUSION 323 A. Rehearsing the Argument 323 B. Constructive Conclusions 328 BIBLIOGRAPHY 339 VITA 381 vii ABSTRACT This project places itself within the tradition of Christian theology which has sought to think about its thinking of God. In so doing, the tradition has seen it necessary to do this thinking in light of one’s contemporary situation. Thus, this project carries this line of thought through by thinking the thinking of God within the contemporary context. The thesis of the project is that theology is improvisation. This thesis is advanced through an analysis of the idea of attunement in both theology and improvisation. The project articulates the nature of theology as improvisation by analyzing the nature of attunement within theological thinking and how this opens certain possibilities for theology. There are three broad steps. The first is a philosophical step that accomplishes two things: first, an articulation of the current situation of theology within a post-metaphysical world and, second, a sketch of the idea of attunement through an analysis of the work of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. The second step in the project’s argument is an examination of improvisational music and the way that attunement works within the thinking that takes place within this musical form. Third, the project makes an explicitly theological turn by proposing a way of thinking for theology in light of the analysis of attunement in the first two steps. The result is twofold. First, the project takes up the work of David Tracy on theological fragments viii and uses this to show the multiplicity of forms available within theological thinking. This leads, second, to an analysis of St. Augustine of Hippo and his unstructuring of theological form. He does this through a hermeneutic of love which resulted in a plurality of forms used to think theologically because the object of theology—God— necessitated this plurality. The end goal of the project is a proposal for a way of thinking in theology that is attuned to the multiplicity of forms necessary for thinking God. ix INTRODUCTION: THINKING THE THINKING OF GOD The following project places itself within the broader Christian tradition by attempting to think about how it is that theology thinks God. The goal is to do what a myriad of thinkers before has done—from Origen, Pseudo-Dyonisius, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Martin Luther, Freidrich Schleiermacher, Soren Kierkegaard, etc.— which is to think the thinking of God within one’s contextual milieu. The Christian theological tradition has consistently attempted to think God in light of one’s historical and cultural context. When thinking God, theology has used the metaphors and ways of thinking available in one’s world. The goal of this dissertation is to find an idiom in the contemporary world that allows for a thinking that is part of the cultural milieu while also being faithful to the broader Christian tradition. The way that this is done in the following is through an analysis of what form(s) shows itself to be able to think God in the contemporary, postmodern world, where plurality, multiplicity, instability, and fragmentation are markers of the current context.