I'll ask Therese to join x-mca, then these turbulences will straighten
themselves out easily, automatically. -- Arne.
>Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 16:41:32
>To: Jay Lemke <JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.bitnet>
>From: Therese Foote <T_Foote who-is-at public.uni-hamburg.de>
>Subject: Re: dialectics today
>Cc: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
>
>>Therese offers us an interesting historical-cultural comparison
>>to a tradition that values preservation and nurturance as
>>enshrined in the community's covenant with its God. In contrast
>>to some modernist emphases (see earlier postings in this thread)
>>on only creation and destruction.
>>
>>What is particularly interesting to me here is the view Therese
>>brings us from its theology that while eternal, the covenant
>>and the faith that rests on it, are not static and outside
>>history, but dynamic, dialectic, and bound into history.
>>
>>It is this aspect I'd like to hear more about. How does the
>>faith in this community ground itself in something seen as
>>necessarily changing in interaction with history?
>>Dominant models of Christian theology (probably with important
>>recent exceptions) identify faith with unchanging revealed
>>truths that stand outside history in themselves (though
>>inside in their applications). What is Faith like when it is
>>dialectical? What can such a view tell us about the missing
>>element of dialectics: the Power that Preserves? JAY.
Jay asks how faith in the community of ancient Israel grounds itself in
something seen as necessarily changing in interaction with history.
This happens in that faithfulness becomes manifest through time. God's
faithfulness to his covenant with Israel becomes manifest in historical
acts, acts that become preserved in the collective memory of the nation - as
the aging Abraham and Sariah are miraculously granted a son, as the captive
Israelite slaves are led out of Egypt, are fed by manna in the desert, as
Moses calls forth water from the rock, and so on. On the other hand, Israel
must prove its reciprocal faithfulness to God in time also, for example, as
the nation is tested and made to wander for forty years in the wilderness.
Such faithfulness cannot be presupposed like belief in a proposition (God
exists, ergo blablabla), or grasped in a moment of intuition like a concept
or a logical proof (cf. Anselm's ontological argument), but must *happen* in
time, must be *experienced*, must be repeated, must grow or diminish, must
be continually renewed, must be nourished and kept alive like a living
being. As a tool proves itself reliable in the course of much use, a hidden
inwardness, a quality of reliability, becomes gradually manifest as God and
Israel experience one another in the context of promise and fulfillment, and
as they develop a common history with one another.
This reliability or faithfulness does not merely bring forth trust or faith
in it as a result, but can only come to being in the first place if one
party is willing to risk trust in the other, if Israel is willing to put
trust in God and follow God's instructions. Thus, this faith is always
conditioned by a lack of security, an element of the unknown, a risk of
betrayal. Its knowledge (a knowledge of the other party's faithfulness, for
example) is never complete but is ever growing or waning, is fragile and can
be destroyed - unlike the 'eternal' truths of mathematics and logic. Faith
does not 'rest' on the covenant, but struggles over it, progresses, gains
ground, loses strength, renews itself in ritual and remembrance and in
turning anew to its source.
Even the ends that this type of faith has are dynamic: If the covenantal
relationship is nourished by mutual faithfulness and trust, growth and an
eternal source of life are promised rewards. The man whose delight is in
the Torah, the faithful teaching of God, is said to be like a tree that
flourishes through nearness to a sure souce of water, that bears fruit in
its season, that does not wither (Psalm 1). This contrasts to the
hellenized Christianity of later centuries where anti-Judaism had taken
hold, where the reward of faith is conceived of as a one-way ticket to a
static paradisiacal state on a plane of existence reached only after a
miserable earthly life has come to a merciful end. The psalmist speaks not
of a lifeless, growthless eternality, but of an eternal source of aliveness
and existential prosperity.
In a certain sense, faith is ultimately life itself -- not a single arduous
intellectual leap into an absurd belief, as the young Kierkegaard feared --
but every moment's small step into an unknown future existence. Faith is in
a certain sense simply that which doesn't give up in the face of doubt,
suffering, failure, sickness; something that always leaves a door open for
the possibility of healing and reconciliation, something that continues to
seek for wisdom and does not give up on dialogue and the search for
understanding -- like Job, who trusts in God's goodness, but is suddenly
faced with a suffering that lets him doubt of that goodness, that puts his
relationship with God into question. Told to curse God and die, Job does
not simply give up his faithfulness, but rather exactly at this point begins
a dialogue that seeks to understand the nature of this being that transcends
his understanding. When God then speaks out of the whirlwind, Job learns
that his faith was justified. He is healed and restored to properity,
reconciled to his God. Such an ending was in no way assured by the presence
of faith, but would not have been possible without Job's taking the risk and
going forward in darkness and uncertainty.
Faith does not get a very high billing these days, as doubt is supposed to
be something more progressive and less boring. The exciting elements of
dialectics are things like Absolute Knowledge or the fun of watching snotty
deconstructionists take it all apart. But all these elements of dialectic
are really subserviant to faith, without which the dialogue would not
continue. In many places faith has unfortunately been so forgotten that
dialogue has really been stopped, our philosophers, artists, writers, are so
in love with unbelief that they speak only nonsense. But faith is something
that can withstand and outlast such despair, in truth, something stronger
than any other power on earth, stronger than all creating and destroying,
something that no Holocaust can wipe out, for it makes the impossible
possible; and it is that which -- I believe -- alone has the power to heal
the sicknesses of our modern age.
Therese