the gift: christ & derrida
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
One question which has been circling in my head lately is the possibility of a universal salvation, in the sense that Christ really did die for everyone and through that every has been/will be justified before God now and also on that future judgment.
What has spurred this conversation with myself is reading Romans 5. In this chapter Paul uses Adam as a contrasting figure for Christ. There are a series of contrasts which point to how sin & death have come into the world through Adam and how through Christ sin & death have been conquered.
The hang up comes for me in this, that I supposedly don’t have a free will into my sinful nature, I have a state of “thrown-ness” (to use Heideggerian speak) into a sin filled world. But for me to get justification I have to take on the faith of Christ. It is this difference of being in the state of one without my own doing but having to choose to take on the other that really gets me.
When you read Romans, Paul works to express how Christ’s work is greater than what Adam did. If it is so great then why do you have to choose it.
These thoughts have lead me to thinking about the nature of the gift, ala Derrida. So the question for me becomes, can God’s gift of Christ’s sacrifice have a power over my sin if I don’t accept the gift? If Jesus’ work on the cross was against all sin & death then why do I have to accept it before it can work in my life?
I don’t know enough about Derrida’s writing on the gift, to give any insight on his part. I have read one essay on it, but it is definitely not enough to understand the fullness of his idea. I simply know enough to know how much I don’t know.
Does anyone have any philosophic or theologic insight into this topic?
In one sense, one has to believe in Christ’s work for his transformation to occur. Any transformation in the here and now, this life time, has to be focused on Christ’s work and the hope that is derived from it. My question is really focused on the eschatological question about the final judgment.
No. 1 — February 19th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Hello. I’m not well versed in Derrida. But I do know my piece view of the “final judgment.” Universalism is acceptable to me in so far that I see everyone receiving Christ’s gift(salvation, rebirth, new creation, whatever you want to call it). However, I think Christianity hinges on the posture towards the gift. A gift that is seen as a curse is no gift at all. A gift that is thought non-existent is no gift at all. The gift needs be noticed and accepted as a gift that will illuminate the rest of reality and unless it is noticed, seen as good, and utilized reality will continue to seem bleak at its ultimate core.
I don’t think much of judgment for I think the logos, the logic behind the world works as a judge for itself. And if you live in ways contrary to the logos, you are going to be missing the beauty and goodness of reality. But all this also depends on your theology of hell. What is hell? Can it be experience here and now? Why does one go to hell? How does freewill play in your theology of hell? Is hell a place that can be “overcome”? Why or why not?
Grace and Peace,
Andrew
No. 2 — February 19th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Andrew thanks for that comment, I definitely like what you have to say. I am not exactly clear on what you mean by the gift being seen as a curse, could you explain?
Also I do agree with the logos of the world, but I wonder how/what do you do with the language of the ‘final judgment’ which you find in the Bible? There seems to be a moment when everything is judged and put back into right relationship and then the new heaven and new earth come, with this all evil is gone. If you are going to believe in this future ‘heaven’ whatever that might be, evil being wiped away, then what do you do with a man who has spent his whole life denying the gift? Is it that the gift is so powerful that it is able to wash over and change even one’s denial of the gift?
I guess it is easy for me to understand someone’s denial of Christ in this life–how that affects their life today. But the difficulty comes when you bring in the murky all too unclear conceptions of the ‘afterlife’. I really want to believe that Christ’s work on the cross was enough to wash away everyone’s sins. Even Christ says on the cross to forgive them for they know not what they do. So is the denial simply a lack of knowledge so that afterwards(Christ having ‘saved’ them) they will fully know and believe and everyone can be happy together in heaven?
I want God’s love to be enough to satisfy his wrath of judgment, no matter the person; I just don’t know if this is exactly Biblical.
No. 3 — February 19th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
The cursed: I’ve encountered a fair number of people who consider the Christian life the burdensome life. To them it’s exactly the opposite of Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress. They see the cross as the point when they pick up a burden. There is a song by Clem Snide called Jews for Jesus Blues where they moan continually “Now that I’m found I miss being lost.” Or perhaps they’re more like the Christian who focuses on death/resurrection and gates himself off from life more abundant in the present. Or perhaps it’s me on a bad morning, any suicidal though, the psalmist, a damp night for Paul in jail . . .
The more general curse: The cursed (in my mind, of course) are those who don’t use “the gift,” the peculiar hope and way of viewing the world Jesus spoke of and ratified as coherent through his death, burial, and resurrection. The deniers of the gift are one form of those who view it as a curse. The gift of Jesus is working when it allows us to see the larger gift of creation and when it allows us to confront creation, the powers that be, and evil properly.
The final judgment: I don’t know what happens to those who step onto a damning path. Could the final judgment be the point where they will put themselves into the continued, steadfast preference of evil over good, ugliness over beauty (or the saved perhaps on the path constantly preferring the good)? And what happens then? Can those people be around in the restored creation? Part of me thinks I should hope so. We ought love our enemies. I think that may mean hoping they’re around even if they make things sucky. Part of me thinks they would hate that creation. NT Wright talks about the damned turning entirely from their human state. Do they turn from the image of God so much that they aren’t human? Could they grow to incompatibility with creation? Can they become a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit with the rest of the puzzle (is the puzzle then missing a piece)? The afterlife by necessity is murky and I don’t claim to reconcile that. If I did, I think that would be intellectually dishonest. And I don’t think the text warrant clarity.
But honestly, I’m just not very heaven/hell minded. I look forward with hope at the ideal state of creation, creation restored. And I try (rather pathetically) to help pave the way to that reality following the example of sacrificial love. And the more and more I do that, the more I find is lovable in the here and now.
No. 4 — February 19th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I, for the past, agree whole-heartedly w/ Andrew.
I’d be curious to hear more about this whole Derrida/gift connection though, particularly your original question, Jonathan, about not accepting the gift.
Of course, the gift is tied w/ ideas of Other(ness), which is certainly applicable in this situation–God giving the gift (ie. love/himself) to the most Other possible.
Did you listen to those podcasts a while ago on the emergent podcast w/ Jack Caputo? That and Caputo’s book, What Would Jesus Deconstruct get at a lot of this (although I don’t remember what he had to say about what you’re asking).
No. 5 — February 25th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
i posted on this same topic (even called it “derrida and the gift”) a while back
http://taddelay.wordpress.com/2007/09/15/derrida-and-the-gift/