Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2020 Sabbath and Ecological Crisis: Inoperativity in Political Theology Andrew John Blosser 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 Blosser, Andrew John, "Sabbath and Ecological Crisis: Inoperativity in Political Theology" (2020). Dissertations. 3773. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3773 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 © 2020 Andrew John Blosser LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO SABBATH AND ECOLOGICAL CRISIS INOPERATIVITY IN POLITICAL THEOLOGY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN THEOLOGY BY ANDREW BLOSSER CHICAGO, IL AUGUST 2020 Copyright by Andrew Blosser, 2020 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A great throng of supporters contributed to the successful completion of this work. First, I must express my gratitude to my professor, mentor, and dissertation director, Dr. Miguel Díaz. Over the last five years he has provided me with countless insights, intellectual stimulation, emotional support, and great humor. To learn from a mind like his is an unbelievable privilege. Also, his Cuban beans are to die for. Moreover, the additional readers on my committee have been an astounding blessing. Dr. Devorah Schoenfeld went far beyond the call of duty in giving me pointers for my research and writing, drawn from her own immense scholarship. Dr. Colby Dickinson’s caring guidance and brilliant research direction was a Godsend. I am beholden to you both. Numerous past mentors have created the intellectual formation necessary for this project. These brilliant thinkers include Dr. Lael Caesar, Dr. Erhard Gallos, Dr. Ante Jerončić, Dr. Glenn Russell, Dr. Duane Covrig, Dr. Martin Hanna, Dr. Nicholas Miller, Dr. Denis Fortin, and Dr. Emily Cain. I cannot fail to mention my church family here in Chicago, particularly the members of the Elk Grove Seventh-day Adventist church. Many of them somehow stayed awake during many boring sermons in which not a few of the ideas written in this dissertation were foisted upon them from the pulpit. Eternal rewards are theirs. My extended family and friends, consisting of Linda Pitts, Monna Bianca, the Rev. James Parks, James Wooster, Vedran Beogradljia, Kirsty and Andy Rosendo, Melissa Bikichky, Sandra Gutierrez, Pierre Nostain, and Jeri Tocco, are also greatly to be thanked. Jeri had the patience to iii sit beside me while parts of this dissertation were written, bring me food, and keep me from pulling my hair out. She deserves more thanks than I can give. Last and not least I thank my biological family, particularly my parents Stephen Blosser and Nancy Blosser, and my brother Nathan Blosser, who have been supportive and encouraging throughout this process. It is beyond obvious that without their help I would never have completed this task. iv To Shirley Hamilton, grandmother and spiritual legend. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABSTRACT vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I: BIBLICAL TRADITIONS AND INOPERATIVITY: JÜRGEN MOLTMANN AND ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL 7 CHAPTER II: INOPERATIVITY IN PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES: JEAN-YVES LACOSTE AND GIORGIO AGAMBEN 49 CHAPTER III: INOPERATIVITY AS PRACTICE: RAV KOOK AND ROBERTO GOIZUETA 98 CHAPTER IV: THE CLIMATE-HEALING SABBATH: A POLITICAL ETHIC OF INOPERATIVITY 144 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION: THE CLIMATE HEALING SABBATH 194 BIBLIOGRAPHY 216 VITA 241 vi ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the significance of ritual inoperativity for political theology. Drawing from representative interpreters of biblical/traditional sources, contemporary philosophical reflection, and practical analysis of rituals, this study argues that rituals such as Sabbath, vigil, shmita, and fiesta paint a unique image of human identity and authority in the world. This image is starkly opposed to the common political-theological framework in which God is defined through action, and human beings are similarly defined as action-producing beings. In contrast, ritual inoperativity depicts God’s identity and authority as one who gives rest or “lets be.” For this reason, human identity and authority should follow a similar model. This study argues that this perspective of political power could be enormously important for addressing the most significant political challenge in the contemporary world: climate change. It concludes by suggesting how a climate-healing Sabbath ritual could function vii INTRODUCTION What is the value of doing nothing? Tersely put, that is the question this dissertation seeks to answer. Of course, “doing nothing” is a bit of an over-simplification. My focus is not on sloth, mindless wandering, or the various types of unproductive diversion that occupy human attention in all cultures. Naturally, anthropologists have a rightful interest in investigating such matters, and they are significant in their own way.1 But my interest is in what I will call “ritual inoperativity,” specifically the kind that emerges in Jewish and Christian traditions, usually in the form of the Sabbath day (and similar and related phenomena such as the shmita or sabbatical year, night vigils and fiestas).2 To be more specific, what follows will focus on the value of such rituals for political theory. This could seem counterintuitive. To some, Sabbath is a private practice, interesting to researchers because of its “high cost” as a religious activity, but hardly overtly relevant to the political world.3 Although many theologians have recently paid attention to the influence of 1 Such investigations usually fall into the category of “leisure studies.” For an overview of this field see Ken Roberts, Leisure in Contemporary Society (Oxfordshire: CABI, 2006). See also John T. Haworth, Work, Leisure, and Well-Being (London: Routledge, 1997). 2 I will use the term “ritual inoperativity” or just “inoperativity” frequently in this dissertation, even though most of the time I will be talking about Sabbath in particular. The reason for this term is that I want to emphasize that the ritual qualities of Sabbath are not limited to Sabbath alone, but extend into other rituals. Furthermore, it is possible that the investigation of inoperativity developed here could be applicable to other religious rituals with which I am less familiar, such as those found in Hinduism, Buddhism, or Shinto. 3 On the significance of Sabbath as a “high cost” religious activity (that is, one which take up a large amount of time and commitment) see Karl G. D. Bailey and Arian C. B. Timoti, “Delight or Distraction: An Exploratory Analysis of Sabbath-Keeping Internalization,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 43, no. 3 (2015): 192-203. 1 2 doctrines on political paradigms,4 fewer have focused on how doctrines interact with rituals and practices that together correlate with political worldviews. This dissertation seeks to partly fill that void by offering a political theology of a unique category of religious activity, inoperativity. The following chapters will show how Christian and Jewish practices of inoperativity unveil a perception of God’s relationship to humans and humans’ relationship to each other that is politically weighted. By “politically weighted” I refer to the fact that when we engage in particular religious practices oriented to God (or, as philosopher Jean-Yves Lacoste puts it, “the Absolute”) we are saying something about how divine authority functions (because the origin of the ritual is grounded in some kind of liturgy, or “service” to divine authority). We are also at the same time saying something about human identity, because rituals model how humans are supposed to exist in the world.5 4 I refer here to the burgeoning field known as “political theology.” Although there is extensive debate as to the precise definition of political theology, most theologians functioning in this area frame their work as a reaction to mid-twentieth century theorist Carl Schmitt’s claim that “all the modern concepts of the state are secularized theological concepts.” See Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 36. This seems to imply that ways of thinking about God have direct impact on political concepts, and therefore that theological/ritual ideas are not isolated from political affairs but are the “code” underwriting them, even if covertly. Reflection on Schmitt’s work has led to recent developments of this idea from a variety of thinkers. See, for example, Hent De Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan, eds., Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006); Paul W. Kahn, Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); Saul Newman, Political Theology: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), and Catherine Keller, Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Republic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). 5 The idea that attention to ritual is