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in freedom despite its slavery this is not to say that what we have witnessed today is honor peace and freedom but it has displayed itself as such this is a spectacle no doubt but it is a spectacle that in some oblique way hopefully points to promises that which exceeds its own immanent progress and escapes its ineffaceable violence labels hope obama politics posted by jason at 2 15 pm 11 comments thursday august 14 2008 de dialectizing proper 15 20 year a romans 11 1 2a 29 32 11 1 i ask then has god rejected his people by no means i myself am an israelite a descendant of abraham a member of the tribe of benjamin 11 2a god has not rejected his people whom he foreknew do you not know what the scripture says of elijah how he pleads with god against israel 11 29 for the gifts and the calling of god are irrevocable 11 30 just as you were once disobedient to god but have now received mercy because of their disobedience 11 31 so they have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they too may now receive mercy 11 32 for god has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all strange choice to break up a section of text leaving a rhetorical question hanging thus making it cease to be rhetorical and to become a question of knowing or not knowing so do you not know whether or not one knows what will be clear to the hearers of this week s text is that of the total irrevocability of a promise the final verses are dialectical in their reasoning the total negation of innocence in order that this negation of innocence might be negated mercy is the result nothing it seems is outside the totality no innocence in guilt no guilt in innocence no remainder no remnant but the remainder or the remnant is precisely the trope that sustains the argument paul is developing here in the occluded verses it is not a totalizing or dialectical co implication of guilt and mercy total guilt is thwarted by a remnant of the just and mercy is possible because of the minimal continuity of this thin thread of justice this reasoning is not dialectical and the totalizing that does emerge is a totalizing that is absolute it is that which absolves itself from any dialectical movements of history if the eschaton is history s telos it is from the perspective of the historical the profane in benjamin s terms not its completion or its supplement but its catastrophic end posted by jason at 3 38 pm 2 comments monday february 18 2008 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 labels lenten reflection liturgy st paul time posted by jason at 12 06 pm 3 comments wednesday february 13 2008 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 labels derrida iterability lenten reflection st paul posted by jason at 10 27 am 35 comments thursday february 07 2008 the production of a mourning machine lent 1 ash wednesday joel 2 1 2 12 17 2 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 labels lenten reflection time posted by jason at 10 38 am 4 comments thursday january 24 2008 on the promise epiphany 3 isaiah 9 1 4 9 1 but there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish in the former time he brought into contempt the land of zebulun and the land of naphtali but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea the land beyond the jordan galilee of the nations 9 2 the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined 9 3 you have multiplied the nation you have increased its joy they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest as people exult when dividing plunder 9 4 for the yoke of their burden and the bar across their shoulders the rod of their oppressor you have broken as on the day of midian the promise of a new tomorrow a new and better future this is not a utopia a no place or an abstract wish this glimmer of new life shines among the concrete ruins of a historicized and thoroughly geopolitical reality assyrian conquest of the southern kingdom of judah and this divine future represents no escape from the geopolitical context assyria is not pure enemy but also an instrument of divine judgment ah assyria the rod of my anger the staff of my fury the shards of the promise of a messianic future are interspersed amongst a decaying present and do not represent a clean break from it such that the present would not be somehow essential to the future hope what happens is that promise as promise is set to work in the present opening it up to a new future and thus a new configuration and a promise as derrida says in specters of marx must promise to be kept that is not to remain spiritual or abstract but to produce events new effective forms of action practice organization and so forth 112 promise that of a divine future or even the dialectical becoming of a classless society lodges a device within the present that is charged with explosive possibility the present cannot remain simply given it becomes and remains fractured and haunted by the future that it cannot contain the liturgical rehearsal of the promise the repetition of its potentialities in forms of life are conducive of an energy that charges this device to the breaking point in which case there would not be simply the present but a performatively multiplied series of presents the present therefore would not be captured by the indicative mood it is how it is but by the subjunctive every assertion about the way things are is read under the sign of the conditional or the contingent rosenzweig names the imperative as the mood characteristic of the present in the sense that it is bound to the moment of revelation of the commandment to love but in either case subjunctive or imperative the present is put into question this questionablness of the present and of humanity s place in it is illuminated by jurgen moltmann in his theology of hope christian theology has one way in which it can prove its truth by reference to the reality of man and the reality of the world that concerns man namely by accepting the questionableness of human existence and the questionableness of reality as a whole and taking them up into that eschatological questionableness of human nature and the world which is disclosed by the event of promise 94 promise is the possibility of the future and the condition of the present labels derrida epiphany reflections messianic moltmann rosenzweig time posted by jason at 11 26 am 2 comments monday december 17 2007 a...