On Faith

Faith, being that which names an Object and thus obliterates it in the name of following, is that thing which no one can seem to speak clearly about. Mostly since faith eludes naming, at least true faith eludes naming. As Critchley argues in Very Little...Almost Nothing (paraphrased), "Adam was the first serial killer." Why? Because he named things. Faith does this all the while being unnameable itself.

I claim faith is unnameable (undefinable) because in any attempt to define it becomes simplified and therefore, most times, meaningless. Faith kills that which it has as an Object since it tries to grasp and name that Object. But at the same time faith is oddly needed.

Maybe the beauty of Christianity is that it requires a faith which, in naming as its Object the person of Jesus, can kill God because God has already died. In so doing, then, we find life.

Being God Equals Loneliness

How horrid it must be to be God, to be alone, to be utterly alone. God, who is the ultimate "something" there is (admittedly, that idea might be a linguistic creation) is in a state of ultimate loneliness. There are no others like God. 

(Yes, I know, we have the Trinity in Christianity. Yes, it is three persons in one (which, is again, important but often practically meaningless language) and all three are equally God and individual, yeah, I'm not going into the discussion of Trinity, suffice it to say: useful but at time impractical because of the language used.) 

But God, as unified whole, the most complete whole, is alone. God is the only one like, similar to, in any way comparable to, God. It seems God needed a mission - unless of course the idea that God has himself to entertain and find joy in is true then I am wrong - to provide himself something to do, to be less lonely. Maybe that's why humanity exists. 

We exist to glorify God and our glorification of him lets him know he is wanted (because everyone wants to be wanted). God created us to teach himself he is wanted. Maybe the courage of Nietzsche is letting God know he is unwanted. Maybe the courage of Christians is recognizing in Jesus that God doesn't want himself but rather wants us. 

Part One of a Series on Death of God Theology: Eucharist as God's Perpetual Death

"You are sacrificing Christ all over again," or so the objection to real-presence in the Eucharist goes.

  The objection states that we continue to re-sacrifice Christ on the cross. Guess what? It's true, we do. In fact, we do so in many ways. But the taking of the Eucharist is an important, institutional, global and very visceral way in which we declare God is dead. God is no longer out there. God's death, if it means anything, means that God is no longer Other. God is not the Object but the Subject. As Heidegger states:

“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself. ” 

By the eating of God, if you will, we face God's death and free ourselves. We take his death into ourselves in a very real sense. By re-sacrificing Christ we continually destroy the Other. We continually embrace the world we have all around us (yes, that is a reference to The Orphans) and live in a Spirit inhabited world. Thus, the common evangelical complaint gets turned on its head and can be embraced.

This is part one of an ongoing series as I read more about death of God theology/radical theology.
 

Oddity

Christianity is not lived on Good Friday and Easter but rather is more often lived on Holy Saturday, the in between. In fact to state the following is not an extreme: life generally is lived on Saturday. The oddity of the death of Jesus is the sorrow and the abandonment that comes because there is now nothing. Nothing to do but weep with God. No one to follow but the emotions that come with the death of a loved one. There is absolutely nothing because Jesus is in the tomb.
   But there is something rather curious about this death, this nothingness, because of it we now see a God who wants us to live on and follow him despite the absence. In the nothingness of death there is a call.