The Post-modern Universal: An Incarnational View
This paper outlines some suggestions for how
the idea of the universal might be retrieved and rethought in the light of the
contemporary experience of pluralism It will do so by drawing upon the work of a
diversity of thinkers, post-modern and modern, from philosophers such as G.W.F.
Hegel, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, through to theologians such as
Louis-Marie Chauvet, Bernard Lonergan, Raimon Panikkar and especially Edward
Schillebeeckx. The latter part of the paper will explore the universality of
human rights and discuss some of the possibilities for rethinking Christian
universality in relation to sacramentality, inter-religious dialogue, and the
priority of the poor.
A common complaint against what is often
called “post-modernism” is that it has done away with universals. This paper
will explore the contention that, on the contrary, there is within post modern
thought a concern to recover the universal not so much as a limit upon humanity
but a call to transcendence in which the nature of the universal is one of
mediation. The contention that post-modernism might seek to retrieve the idea
of the universal may surprise some people so I will need to be a little more
specific. Before offering some suggestions as to what a post-modern universal
might look like using the resources of both post-modern and modern thinkers[1],
I will first need to explore briefly what is generally understood by the terms
post-modernism and universal.
The post-modern condition is supposed to be
characterised by an incredulity towards meta-narratives; a hostility towards
totalisation; a rejection of the abstract universalism of Enlightenment
rationality, and a priority given to the other that the same meta-narratives,
and totalising and abstract universality are alleged to have marginalised. I
accept this definition, but it needs some nuance. The problem with the whole
post-modern discussion is, I feel, one of simplification and generalisation,
and the totalisation of a wide diversity of post-modernisms that have varying
degrees of merit.
Post-modernism is often understood simply
to be a reversal of the many over the one. And although that may be the case
with many post-modern thinkers this is simply modernity in another guise. Both
Luce Irigaray and Raimon Panikkar have observed that the hegemony of the one
can also take the guise of a multiplicity of
private or relative truths.[2]
For Irigaray especially, breaking the hegemony of the one does not entail an
abandonment of the idea of the universal but rather a recovery of a concept of
the universal freed from its metaphysical pretensions.
It is the critique
of metaphysics that I consider to be the post-modernism’s most significant
contribution. But once more, some nuance is needed. To cite Piet Schoonenberg:
It depends on what one understands by metaphysics. If one means the projection of an ideal world behind or above the one in which we live — a sort of rationalized mythology — then metaphysics is indeed an unreal discussion, having not even the revealing character of myth. If one means the rationalizing of mystery, then it is even less serviceable for theology. Metaphysics can, however, also be the expression of the mystery that our real world does not conceal behind it, but is itself.[3]
Although
Schoonenberg tries to rehabilitate the idea of metaphysics he does signal a
break with the approach taken by classical metaphysics in refusing its founding
gesture, the distinction between the concealed ideal world and the world of
appearances. Schoonenberg applies the term “metaphysics” broadly, but I will
reserve the term “metaphysics” for both the broad Hellenistic tradition that is
founded upon the distinction between the two worlds and what Heidegger
describes as metaphysics’ inquiry “beyond or over beings, which aims to recover
them as such and as a whole for our grasp”.[4]
One could protest that the best of
metaphysicians were aware of the limits of their metaphysics and even reflected
upon the disparity between their own thought and the real. Louis Marie Chauvet
suggests however that:
to ponder such a disparity is one thing; to take this disparity as a point of departure and as a framework for one’s thought is another. This lack of interest in exploring the bias of their unconscious assumptions is what gives these thinkers a ‘family resemblance’ and allows us to speak of the ‘Metaphysics’ or, better still, the metaphysical.[5]
I have described this shift in broad terms
as a movement from the “metaphysical to the symbolic” where the “symbolic”
designates a process or approach never fully achieved, thus a transition to be
done again and again.[6]
The symbolic process can be appropriately compared to an ongoing conversation.
Metaphysics, on the other hand, looks to a final truth that will render further
conversation redundant. The symbol confounds the distinction between the two
worlds because the symbol not only participates in that reality to which it
refers but also helps bring that world into being. The human world is, as
Lonergan expresses, a “world mediated by meaning”.[7]
Louis Marie Chauvet argues that it is consent to mediation that is the
fundamental human task.[8]
Such an approach understands the contingent mediation of a language, a culture
and a history as the very place where the subject comes to its truth.[9]
Another distinctive, and surprising,
characteristic of thinkers like Derrida and Irigaray is their concern to
capture what one might call the eschatological imagination with its agitation
for the possibility of the impossible. At the heart of this concern is a
passion for justice and a suspicion of any claims to the realisation of justice
in the present. Irigaray, for example, claims that she is a “political militant
for the impossible, which is not to say a utopian. Rather, I want what is yet
to be as the only possibility of a future.”[10]
Deconstruction is often misunderstood to be
a sort of relativistic anarchy, but it would perhaps be better to understand
deconstruction also as agitating for the impossible. Derrida even goes so far
as to equate deconstruction with justice.[11]
Justice is not the law, but is that which gives us the impulse to change and
improve the law.[12] It is the
condition of the possibility of the challenge and critique of the law, the
laws, society as it is currently ordered. Justice for Derrida is that which
spurs us on. It is a messianic concept that disappears when we attempt to tie
it to a this worldly order.[13]
Both Irigaray[14]and
Derrida distinguish between the determinate content of particular messianic
promises and the messianic form of the promise itself. As John Caputo explains:
Once the messianic is given determinate content, it is restricted
within a determinable and determining horizon, but the very idea of the
messianic, of messianicity, is to shatter horizons, to let the promise of
something tout autre shock the horizon of the same and the foreseeable.
Messianicity is not a horizon but the disruption or opening up of the horizon.[15]
For Irigaray the ethical consists in the encounter
with the other as other and not simply as one reduced to the parameters of
one’s own understanding or ego projections. What is at issue could be described
in terms of the experience of someone as a revelation. In such a moment we see
the other in their startling particularity outside of all the boxes and
presuppositions according to which we have mentally catalogued that person.
Such an encounter Irigaray describes in terms of parousia, as it is no
less an encounter with the divine in the other that makes it possible to
imagine that things could and should be otherwise.
Irigaray argues that the encounter with
limits that the other represents establishes the necessary condition for any
transcendence. This is one of the functions of sexual difference in Irigaray’s
thought. Being sexed means that I am not everything. Limits are the negative
condition of transcendence.[16]
The importance of limits for Irigaray draws upon what Hegel calls negativity[17],
but which Schillebeeckx calls the “negative experience of contrast” where the lack of congruence between our
understanding of the world and our experience of the world is a spur to both
theoretical and ethical reflection.[18]
In the light of the above, I identify two
characteristics of the post-modern recovery of the universal. The first
characteristic of the post-modern universal is that it is understood in terms
of its mediatory function. The second characteristic of the post-modern
universal is that it is understood to be an eschatological rather than metaphysical
reality.
I will return to the second point at the
end of this paper. First I will discuss the idea of the universal as mediation
that Irigaray describes “as a real, not merely a formal, mediation” that is
related to the particularities of social functions.[19]
It is precisely because the universal has been associated with the formalism of
human law, Irigaray suggests, that we have found it difficult to think of the
universal in terms of mediation,[20]
the modulatory effects of which, “both on the individual and the collective
levels, will be such as to make a unique imperialism impossible”.[21]
The universal is often confused I feel with
what Hegel called the “parochial universality” of the first stage of
recognition in which the self is really only exclusive particular with
presumptions of universality. From such a position the self is unable to
recognise the other as other, and so finds only itself in the other; the other
is reduced to the same. Truth according to Hegel requires the confrontation
with an independent object, with another certainty.[22]
The result of the confrontation with the other is an abrupt self-transcendence
as the self plunges into an otherness that challenges the immediacy of the self
in its naïve and parochial certitude.
The second phase of recognition involves
the loss of self that results from the discovery that the self is not universal
but a particular faced by another particular. This bears some resemblance to
the normal characterisation of the post-modern condition. But according to
Hegel the self needs and looks to the other to recognize and confirm its
parochial universality, which is why the elimination of the other proves to be
self-defeating. The self can only return out of its othered state by winning
itself back in recognition. The other is needed to confirm its identity. It is
this asymmetry of recognition that characterises the master-slave relation.
Reciprocal recognition that transcends the
relation of domination involves a joint mediation in which each releases the
other in turn and allows the other to go free. It is from this mutual
recognition and release that Geist emerges. Being with the other then
becomes an effective enhancement and concrete actualization of freedom. It is
significant that the first explicit mention of reciprocal recognition in the Phenomenology
of Spirit occurs in Hegel’s discussion of forgiveness,[23]
which suggests that only an act of grace enables one to escape the relationship
of domination and totalisation and enables the Spirit as an event of
intersubjectivity to emerge.
The second significant aspect of Hegel’s
thought for our discussion is his rediscovery of the doctrine of the Trinity
through which he described the universal entering into particularity, the unity
of the universal and particular being the realm of the Spirit. Hegel defines
God “as the living process of positing His other, the world, which,
comprehended in its divine form is His Son”.[24]
The Son is the principle of both creation and the incarnation — “through him
all things came to be” (John 1:3) — the finite particularisation of the
universal, who is in his own person being for others. From the side of humanity
the incarnation is redemption as the infinite enters the finite. The Spirit is
the unity of the universal and the particular. The (Holy) Spirit is the origin
of community, in which “individual human subjects are, as it were,
‘essentialized’ in the transfigured intersubjectivity of the spiritual
community”.[25] Hegel takes
the Trinity as the paradigm of the impossibility of any unmediated identity and
relates these three forms directly to the structure of “subjective
consciousness”. God exemplifies the structure of spirit as self-recognition in
the other and secures the worth of human freedom and personality.
The doctrine of the Trinity understood as
being-in-the-other along with the structure of recognition provide important
resources for thinking through the relation between the universal and the
particular. Just as the identity of the subject is enhanced through the
recognition of the other, so the universal brings about an effective
enhancement and concrete actualisation of the freedom of the particular. Philip
Blond argues that
it is a modernist flaw to uphold a universal over any particular . .
. the kenotic nature of Christ and
Christian universality means that a theological universal does not give or show
itself except through the singularised beings that it brings into being, for
Christian universals do not negate that which they inform, but seek to bring
them to their highest shapes.[26]
The incarnation of the second person of the
Trinity, who came “so that they may have life and have it to the full”, is
exemplary of this mediation despite Michel de Certeau’s claim that the
universal has operated within Christianity as a covert Platonism as “a
compensation against the fact of Christian particularity”.[27]
It may seem incongruous to some to invoke Hegel’s support for the post-modern project as the status of the Hegel’s universal has also been cast as the high water mark of speculative modernity. Hegel’s thought is profoundly ambiguous because on the one hand he insists on the importance of maintaining the alterity of the other in recognition, while on the other hand he attempts to incorporate every alterity and contradiction into an ultimate unity. The importance of mutual recognition in his thought constitutes his dialectic as a dialogue. Meanwhile, the drive towards unity constitutes his dialectic as appropriation. The most common criticism of Hegel’s dialectic is that the other is overcome in the unity of the absolute. [28]
Hegel’s inconsistencies do not undermine his potential contribution. Irigaray, for instance, uses Hegel to go beyond Hegel, arguing that “his theory, without a doubt the most powerful of Western philosophies, can itself be subject to dialectic . . . The spirit Hegel speaks of turns out to be less absolute than he thought.”[29] Irigaray remains intrigued by Hegel as “the only Western philosopher to have approached the question of love as labour”,[30] Irigaray’s analysis, however, focuses on the base of the dialectical structure which she argues remains unthought by Hegel in that he conceives of the family as an undifferentiated unit. This means that in the place where the personal and the political, the particular and the universal, converge, no genuine dialectic is able to emerge. For Irigaray, this means that the whole dialectical structure is crippled. Consequently, Irigaray attempts to rehabilitate the dialectical method through an ethics of the couple.
Irigaray is not alone is suggesting that Hegel’s dialectic of cognition could fruitfully be supplemented by a “dialectic of love” such as was explored by the young Hegel himself.[31] It is Robert Williams’ argument that this dialectic of love also finds expression in Hegel’s more mature writings. In Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel explicates the idea that “God is love” to describe the achievement of self-consciousness. “I have my self-consciousness not in myself but in the other.” For Hegel love is both “a distinguishing and the sublation of the distinction”.[32] Genuine recognition transcends the relation of domination and can only be received from the other that is not at the disposal of the self.
Ethical life, love, means precisely the giving up of particularity, of
private personality, and its extension — so too, with ‘friendship.’ In
friendship and love I give up my abstract personality and thereby win it back
as concrete. The truth of personality is found precisely in winning it back
through this immersion, this being immersed in the other.[33]
Before I look more closely at a
specifically Christian idea of the universal it will be worthwhile to pursue the
issue from another perspective. Early in Method in Theology Bernard
Lonergan discusses the relationship between transcendental notions and
transcendental concepts. The distinction is a significant one. Lonergan
suggests that the two are often confused, explaining that “quite distinct from
such transcendental concepts, which can be misconceived and often are, there
are the prior transcendental notions that constitute the very dynamism of our
conscious intending”.[34]
Lonergan explains that transcendentals are
the radical intending that moves us from ignorance to knowledge. They
are a priori because they go beyond what we know to seek what we do not
know yet. They are unrestricted because answers are never complete and so only
give rise to further questions. They are comprehensive because they intend the
unknown whole or totality of which our answers reveal only part.[35]
I like to interpret this comprehensiveness
in terms of the aspiration towards catholicity since it seeks kath ‘holou. So, Lonergan continues
if we objectify the content of intelligent intending, we form the
transcendental concept of the intelligible. If we objectify the content of
reasonable intending, we form the transcendental concepts of the true and the
real, if we objectify the content of responsible intending, we get the
transcendental concept of value, or the truly good.[36]
These objectifications of the
transcendental are not the transcendentals themselves. They do, however,
mediate the notion of the transcendental and orient us towards the horizon of
our intending. I am associating Lonergan’s transcendental concepts with
universals in that they mediate and orient us towards transcendence and
transcendent value. As such they are not denials of particularity but are
constituted and nourished by it and symbolise the drive towards transcendence
in terms derived from the particular.
What I am suggesting is that the universal is a
projection from our particularity of our intentionality towards the
transcendent horizon of our becoming. Take for instance the idea of humanity.
Humanity is not merely the collectivity of men and women. Humanity represents
an ideal by which we understand our essence as oriented towards infinity and as
such transcending the limits of each of our individual particularities.
Humanity is the horizon of possibility of what it is possible for women and men
to become. It is the symbol through which the particular enters a world of
possibility.
The theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, goes
furthest, I believe, not only in outlining the contours of a post-metaphysical
theology, but of demonstrating its necessity. Rejecting positivistic and
pre-existing definitions of human nature, Schillebeeckx proposes a theology of
human existence based upon what he calls “anthropological constants”. These
constants point towards certain “human impulses and orientations, values and
spheres of value, but at the same time do not provide us with directly
specific norms or ethical imperatives”.[37]
Schillebeeckx argues that this is because “we do not have a pre-existing
definition of humanity — indeed for Christians it is not only a future, but an
eschatological reality”.[38]
John Macquarrie similarly argues, “humanity is something unfinished, even now
coming into being”.[39]
In the light of this we can say that for
Christians, Jesus Christ is of universal significance precisely because in him
men and women find their fulfilment and completion. Christ is “firstborn of the
dead” (Col. 1:18), the head of the new creation. In baptism we are buried with
him in the hope that we may also share in the fullness of his resurrection
(Rom. 6: 4-10). In the Eucharist we share in Christ, the first fruits of the
new creation and so are nourished in our divinisation and growth in Christ,
towards God our destination. It is in the resurrection that the fullness of
humanity is revealed. The fulfilment of humanity is the divine life itself. As
Rahner has expressed the matter, God, “does not originally cause and produce
something different from himself in the creature, but rather that he
communicates his own divine nature and makes it a constitutive element in the
fulfilment of the creature”.[40]
The fulfilment of the human person lies in his or her divinisation which is the
proper end of the Christian life. This divinisation or theÇsis is that which Catherine LaCugna defines as “being
conformed in our personal existence to God’s personal existence, achieving
right relationship and genuine communion in every respect, at every level”.[41]
This Christian universal is unable to be
circumscribed or contained precisely because God is both its origin and its
end. And so when the New Testament writers attempt to give expression to this
ultimate reality they utilise a plurality of symbols, none of which is able to
be totalised. In fact, the history of Christianity demonstrates that once the
eschatological plenitude of the reign of God becomes identified with any one
expression of it, when it becomes identified with the status quo or when it
becomes a metaphysical entity that we can grasp as a whole with our intellect,
the prophetic and eschatological dimensions of the reign of God are undermined.
“Definitive salvation”, Schillebeeckx reminds us, “remains an indefinable
horizon in our history in which both the hidden God and the sought-for, yet
hidden, humanum disappear.”[42]
Of course the reign of God is still a
reality that needs to be symbolised in order for it to be realised and
incarnated in the here and now. But we should not confuse the symbol with the
reality. It is this confusion that I think underlies so much frustration and
despair with the post-modern condition. When the symbols no longer work, when
the limits of our expression of transcendental value are revealed, we throw up
our hands in horror at the loss of values as such. The challenge however is to
reconnect with the source of those expressions. For Christians, their source is
sacramental. And this is why the sacraments are the “source and summit” of
Christian life. So then if the Christian universal is revealed in the risen
Christ and realised in the reign of God, how should we express that today?
Unfortunately there is no consensus on what shape liturgical renewal and
expression should take. This is not surprising given its fundamental
importance.
Sacraments, Schillebeeckx reminds us, “are
anticipatory, mediating signs of salvation”.[43]
The indeterminacy of our historical condition means that we live in the between
times, between what has already been accomplished in Christ but which is yet to
be fully realised. However, the sacraments also serve to point out all those
aspects of human existence which continue to fall short of what they should be
in Christ. Reminding us of this they orient us towards the ultimate horizon in
which the reign of God will be fully realised. In continuing the work of Jesus
in proclaiming the reign of God the sacraments remain a prophetic protest
against all that is yet to be reconciled with the peace and justice of God. “As
long as there is still a real history of suffering among us, we cannot do
without the sacramental liturgy: to abolish it or neglect it would be to stifle
the firm hope in universal peace and general reconciliation”.[44]
This hope can only be nourished through
anticipatory symbols. The liturgy summons us to liberating action in the world.
Any attempt at totality which does not recognise the failures, fragmentation
and lack of reconciliation, that is to say the “not yet” or our salvation,
leads to illusion, alienation and betrays the twin signs of the paschal
mystery, the reality of the cross and the hope of the resurrection.
If indeed humanity is something unfinished,
what then is the status of universal? We are left with the practical and the
political question of our need for universals but we should proceed with
caution. But the pragmatic approach can blind us to the fact that for
Christians.
the crucifixion of Jesus shows that any attempt at liberating
redemption which is concerned with humanity is valid in and of itself
and not subsequently as a result of any success which may follow . . . we are shown the true face of both God and
[humanity] in the ‘vain’ love of Jesus which knows that its criterion does not
lie in success.[45]
The universality of human rights is often
upheld against the fear of moral relativism. Human rights are indeed universal
but not absolute in that they are conditioned by the context out of which they
arose. Such rights, therefore, should not be a matter of imposing an abstract
and foreign template onto a situation, but should be an effective enhancement
of the genuinely human in the situation. It remains the case that it is far
easier to say what is not worthy of humanity and the reign of God than
it is to prescribe exactly what the state of affairs should be. This is the
principle of negativity. So yes, we can judge an unjust situation in other
cultures; it is only when it comes to prescribing a remedy that the
difficulties emerge, at least for an outsider.
The limitations of human rights become
clearer when we look for other ways of expressing the transcendent values that
they symbolise. There is no necessary reason why the enlightenment ideal of
universal human rights should be able to express that which is worthy of the humanum,
or the reign of God, any more adequately than could, to take one possible
example, the Indian notion of dharma.
Raimon Panikkar in his essay, “Is the
Notion of Human Rights a Western Concept?” suggests the idea of dharma as a “homeomorphic
equivalent” in the Indian context to what the notion of human rights attempts
to express out of a Western context. Panikkar questions whether there is “only
one particular way of expressing – or saving – the humanum?”[46]
In the process Panikkar uncovers some of the limitations of the presuppositions
of the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights. Firstly, the Declaration
assumes that human nature must be knowable. Secondly, it assumes that “the
human being is fundamentally the individual. Society is a kind of
superstructure” and “the Cosmos is a kind of understructure.”[47]
Furthermore, “the individualisation does not stop at the individual, but
divides this segregated entity even further into separated freedoms”.[48]
Dharma, on the other hand, starts not with “the individual, but the whole
complex concatenation of the Real”.[49]
Its emphasis is upon the harmony and reconciliation of the whole revealing some
of the limitations of the rhetoric of human rights.
Aloysius Pieris argues that human rights language
is a discourse appropriate in addressing the powerful of the first-world, but
that third-world theologians have other concerns, being more concerned with the
liberation of the poor and the oppressed. The problem as Pieris sees it is that
this difference is not respected and that “certain first-world theologians tend
to universalise and absolutise their paradigm, unmindful of its contextual
particularity and ideological limitation”.[50]
Similarly, Schillebeeckx argues that
abstract universalism only serves to make an alliance with the powerful of this
earth[51].
The universality of the Christian message, Schillebeeckx argues, is not to be
found in an abstract idea, “but by the power of its cognitive, critical and
liberating character in and through a consistent praxis of the kingdom of God”.[52]
Schillebeeckx considers that an essential part of the universality of Christian
faith is that it should aim for the “transformation of the world to a higher
humanity”.[53] A catholic universality,
if it is to be truly inclusive, cannot be neutral. The universal must, when
seen in social and political terms, be in practice partisan.[54]
One of the ways in which this universality is realised is in what is called the
“option for the poor”, which is not simply preferential, but as liberation
theology has convincingly argued is a “datum of revelation”.[55]
This universality needs to be partisan
precisely because the poor are those who are necessarily excluded structurally
by social and economic forces. The Christian universal needs to be
non-discriminatory. That the good news be preached to the poor is at the heart
of the Christian gospel exemplified by Jesus in his identification with and
mission amongst the marginalised of Jewish society. The option for the poor is
a partisan, free choice of the God of Jesus of Nazareth as it is also an option
for all those who are marginalized and made non-persons, socio-culturally,
psychologically and religiously. The incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth is
not simply a becoming human, but an identification of God in Jesus with the
poor, oppressed, and finally executed innocent individual, for whom Jesus
stands as a model.
To sideline or ignore Jesus’ particularity
is in itself a form of docetism in that Jesus only appears human.[56]
One could also suggest that the other side of the definitiveness of the
Revelation of who God is in Christ is also its necessary limitation. The divine
kenosis in the incarnation weds the universal to the contingency of the
particular, in the unity of the Spirit. Because the Christian revelation is the
revelation of the universal in the particular, we Christians, more than any
other religious group, should take our limitations seriously. “Post-modern”
thinkers like Derrida and Irigaray have attempted to demonstrate that the value
of such limitation ultimately is openness to the Spirit and to the genuinely
new. It involves a recognition that we live in the between times, between the
resurrection and the parousia in which the mission of the Church is to work for
the realisation of the reign of God while remembering that it is yet to be
fully realised and as such is unable to be identified with any of our
achievements, no matter how worthy.
[1] Of the authors I will discuss, only Derrida, Irigaray and Chauvet could be classified as post-modern. Although I would describe Schillebeeckx as a post-metaphysical theologian. The fact that the other thinkers that I will discuss are actually moderns does not disqualify their contributions to the post-modern project. Post-modernism, after all, grows out of modernism.
[2]Luce Irigaray, “The Question of the Other”, Yale French Studies 87. (1995) 11. Raimon Panikkar, “Religious Pluralism: The Metaphysical Challenge”, Interculture, vol. 23. 3. (Montreal: 1990) 25 - 44. especially 29-34.
[3] Piet Schoonenberg, The Christ. (London: Sheed and Ward, 1972) 13.
[4] Martin Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?” Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed.), (London: Routledge, 1993) 106.
[5] Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence. (Collegeville, MN.: The Liturgical Press, 1995) 8-9.
[6] See my “Luce Irigaray and the Advent of the Divine: from the metaphysical to the symbolic to the eschatological.” Pacifica, 12. 1. (Feb, 1999) 27-54.
[7] Bernard Lonergan, A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan S.J. Frederick E. Crowe (ed.), (New York: Paulist Press, 1985) 179.
[8]Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 145.
[9] Cyril of Alexandria wrote the following in the lead up to Chalcedon: “we have admired his goodness in that for love of us he has not refused to descend to such a low position as to bear all that belongs to our nature, included in which is ignorance.” It all depends upon whether one considers limitations to be part of humanity’s sinfulness or simply part of the human condition. Cyril of Alexandria considered ignorance to be a limiting rather than a perjorative term.
[10] Luce Irigaray, I Love to You: Sketch for a Felicity Within History, translated by Alison Martin, (New York and London: Routledge, 1996) 10.
[11] “Justice in itself, if such a thing exists, outside or beyond the law, is not deconstructible. No more than deconstruction itself, if such a thing exists. Deconstruction is justice”. Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, Drucilla Cornell et al. (eds.), (New York: Routledge, 1992) 14-15.
[12] Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell. A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, John Caputo (ed.), (New York: Fordham University Press, 1991) 16.
[13] For Derrida, the promise of the messianic “prohibits the gathering of Being in presence, being even its condition. The condition of the possibility and impossibility of eschatology, the ironic allegory of messianism”. Jacques Derrida, Memoires: For Paul de Man, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) 145.
[14] See Luce Irigaray, “Belief Itself”, in Sexes and Genealogies, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) 25-53.
[15] John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. Religion without Religion, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997) 118. Gerard Hall has described the function of religious discourse in terms of its potential to “break-through the monotony of the mundane and the pathology of evil that destroy the human capacity to be scandalized by the imaginative vision of a radically different future.” Gerard Hall, Raimon Panikkar’s Hermeneutics of Religious Pluralism. (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1994) 329.
[16] The positive condition is the universal by which the particular is oriented towards the infinite.
[17] Luce Irigaray, I Love to You: Sketch for a Felicity Within History, 12-16.
[18] Schillebeeckx considers these “negative experiences of contrast” to be fundamental pre-religious experiences. They express that “the principle for the interpretation of reality is not what we take for granted, but the ‘stumbling block’ of a reality that resists us”. Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroad, 1991) 28. See also Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord (New York: Crossroad, 1980) 35.
[19] Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, 147.
[20] Ibid., 128.
[21] Ibid., 147.
[22] G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977) 113, para. 186.
[23] Ibid., 407-8, para. 670.
[24] Hegel: The essential writings, F.G. Weiss (ed.), (New York: Harper Collins, 1993) 209.
[25] Peter C. Hodgson, “Editorial Introduction”, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Volume 3: The Consummate Religion, Peter C. Hodgson (ed.), translated by R. F. Brown, P.C. Hodgson, and J.M Steward with the assistance of H.S. Harris. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985) 45.
[26] Philip Blond, “Introduction: Theology before philosophy”, Post-secular Philosophy. Between Philosophy and Theology. Philip Blond (ed.), (London and New York: Routledge, 1998) 37.
[27] Michel de Certeau, “How is Christianity Thinkable Today?” in The Post-modern God: A Theological Reader, Graham Ward (ed.), (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) 150.
[28] It is the sublation or aufgehoben of the other that is the sticking point when it comes to evaluating the adequacy of Hegel’s treatment of the other. Seyla Benhabib argues: “there is no way to disentangle the march of the dialectic in Hegel’s system from the body of the victims on which it treads. . . The vision of Hegelian reconciliation has long ceased to convince.” Seyla Benhabib, “On Hegel, Women, and Irony in Feminist interpretations of G. W. F. Hegel, Patricia Jagentowicz Mills (ed.), (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996) 41.
[29] Irigaray, I Love to You, 55.
[30] Ibid., 19.
[31] Hans Khng, Does God Exist? (London: Collins, 1980). 164. See also Robert R. Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992) 74 - 89.
[32] Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. 3. The Consummate Religion, Peter C. Hodgson. (ed.), (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1985) 276.
[33] Ibid., 285-286.
[34] Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 12.
[35] Ibid., 11.
[36] Ibid., 11-12.
[37] Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord. (New York: Crossroad, 1980) 733.
[38] Ibid., 731.
[39] John Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought. (London: SCM, 1990), 384.
[40] Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, translated by William V. Dych. (New York: Crossroad, 1994) 121.
[41] Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. (San Francisco: Harper, 1991) 284.
[42] Schillebeeckx, Christ, 837.
[43] Ibid., 836.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Schillebeeckx, Christ, 837.
[46] Raimon Panikkar, “Is the Notion of Human Rights a Western Concept”, Invisible Harmony. Essays on Contemplation and Responsibility, Jarry James Cargas (ed.), (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) 113.
[47] Ibid., 117.
[48] Ibid., 118.
[49] Ibid., 128.
[50] Aloysius Pieris, “Human Rights Language and Liberation Theology”, Fire and Water. Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity, (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994) 113.
[51] Schillebeeckx, Christ, 178.
[52] Ibid., 176.
[53] Schillebeeckx, Church, 170.
[54] Ibid., 178.
[55] Edward Schillebeeckx, “The Religious and the Human Ecumene”, 186, The Future of Liberation Theology, Marc H. Ellis and Otto Maduro (eds.), (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989) 177-188.
[56] Ibid., 183.