Risking Proclamation, Respecting Difference. Chris Boesel
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neighbor. For, as Katherine Sonderegger agrees in her critique of Karl Barth’s theological imperialism in relation to rabbinic Judaism, “there is no hearing of the ecumenical partner, no full dignity and autonomy, without self-definition and self-recognition in its [rabbinic Judaism’s] own idiom, institution and practice.”11
And if, while one is reading these Christian theologians’ analyses of the interpretive logic of Christian faith, one happens also to have one’s ear to the ground with regard to contemporary currents both in and outside of academic discourse such that one might be inclined to pick up Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism, one would be struck by the shared categories of analysis and critique. Said defines Orientalism as the cultural discourse of the West in which the East, the Orient and the oriental, are reduced to objects by the West for its own knowledge and interests. Within this discourse, the Orient does not represent itself; the oriental does not represent herself. They are silent, and silenced, represented objects rather than speaking subjects.12 The identity, subjectivity—the very self—of the oriental is colonized by and made to serve the interests of an external, outside, alien discourse; a discourse that, in Said’s words, constitutes a “nexus of knowledge and power” in which the oriental is, “in a sense, obliterate[d] . . . as a human being.”13
Said goes on to argue that this cultural discourse of domination not only provides justification for the Western imperialist project—the real, material, economic, geographical, political occupations, dominations, and oppressions of other peoples, their lands, and resources. It is more far-reaching than that. It renders Western imperialism’s vastness, endurance, and strength possible in the first place. I will eventually question the extent to which this link between imperialistic discourse and the material realities and damages of imperialism holds for all forms of Christian interpretive imperialism. But for now, it is important to note that the nature of the connection Said makes between cultural discourse and material realities is assumed also by the consensus of analyses shared by the Christian theologians cited above. These analyses critique the traditional discourse of Christian faith precisely as an imperialistic discourse of cultural domination with a complex relation to a very long history of very real, material, economic, geographical and political occupations, dominations and oppressions of Jewish people in Christian Europe and beyond. This relation of theological discourse to material damages will require careful analysis, and may ultimately demand critical distinctions. But for the moment, there is good reason to suggest that the theological consensus before us concerning Christian faith and the Jewish neighbor understands traditional Christian theological discourse to be very much like a cultural “nexus of knowledge and power” in which the Jew has come very close to being “obliterated . . . as a human being,” and not only “in a sense,” but in fact. The Christian Good News for the world, then, would appear to render the world a very dangerous place for Jews precisely as the kind of imperialistic discourse that Said describes.
It is interesting to note that in the course of his own research, Said recognized this connection between Orientalism and the imperialistic discourse of the West in relation to the Jewish neighbor. He concludes his introduction by relating the discovery wherein, “by an almost inescapable logic,” he found himself “writing the history of a strange, secret sharer of Western antisemitism.”14 This recognition has a couple of implications. On the one hand, it opens up the fact that antisemitism is not only Christian, but Western and modern—given that the ecclesial discourse of Christian faith is not absolutely reducible to the cultural discourse of the modern West. (This is a contested assumption, I realize. It is an assumption made by the argument of this book, but one the argument also attempts to demonstrate.) On the other hand, given that the discourse of Christian faith has, historically, indeed been a featured player within the discourse of the West, the consequence of this connection between the relation of the Church to the Jewish neighbor and the Church’s relation to other neighbors, e.g., to various Arab and Asian neighbors (the “objects” of Orientalism), would appear to be that Jews are not the only ones endangered by the traditional discourse of Christian faith.
So again, it seems clear that we cannot adequately address, analyze or attempt to remedy the problem of the imperialistic dangers of Christian faith for the Jewish neighbor apart from a consideration of how those dangers are seen to threaten other neighbors as well. And, of course, in Said’s analysis of the discourse of the modern West, the Arab is the particular other neighbor that is endangered by Christian discourse in as much as the latter is historically an integral part of the discourse of the West in Said’s analysis of Orientalism. And this raises an interesting, albeit tragic, complication. As is all too clear in the newspapers today, neither Christian discourse nor the discourse of the West more generally constitute the only danger to Jews and Arabs; for their own discourses have become eminently dangerous to one another. And, regardless of the degree to which it is reducible to the discourse of the modern West, what is the discourse of Christian faith to do in relation to these two neighbors who appear locked in mortal combat and who seem unwilling to relent until the other is “in a sense, obliterated”?15 To anticipate our engagement with Emmanuel Levinas: which neighbor passes before the other? Whose claim upon us as neighbor has priority? We encounter this particular political issue again at the end of the book, but it is important to note that it is already with us here at the beginning.
And further complicating matters, the claim (made either by Jews themselves or by the Church and its transformational theologians, and/or by the West more generally) that the Jewish neighbor is especially victimized by Christian faith and the West and, so, is due a unique ethical obligation of priority, is seen by many neighbors of the Jewish neighbor as part and parcel of what is assumed to be the Jews’ own ancient imperialistic dynamic of self-understanding and self-definition. This is, of course, the age-old ethical conundrum—though experienced with a heightened intensity in the modern West—of Abrahamic election.16 And here we start to run into the real crux of the troubling complexity of the Church’s relation to the Jewish neighbor in relation to the neighbor more generally that lies at the heart of the argument: which imperialistic discourse comes first? The imperialistic discourse of Christian faith in relation to the Jewish neighbor, or that in relation to the neighbors of the Jewish neighbor—that is, anti-Judaism and antisemitism, or Orientalism? Or, is it the imperialistic dynamic entailed in the Jewish claim to election—their distinctive religious and/or cultural “genius”—that lies at the source of both? But then, how to remedy Christian imperialism in relation to the self-understanding and self-definition of the Jewish neighbor, if it is the imperialism of Jewish self-understanding and self-definition that lies at its root in the first place?
This latter question constitutes an irresolvable conundrum that I believe plagues contemporary theological analyses of and remedies for Christian faith for the sake of the Jewish neighbor. The failure to fully account for this irresolvable complexity results in good ethical intentions and efforts being undermined by unexamined assumptions. But I am getting ahead of myself.
For now, I simply want to note how it is impossible today to deal with the question of the endangering of Jews by Christian faith without considering the way in which that question is related to the wider discussion today of imperialistic discourse as such; and additionally, to suggest that this wider discussion is often grounded in certain assumptions, fundamental to the context of the modern West, that take Abraham (and the Abrahamic tradition carried forward by his descendents) to be the source of religio-cultural imperialistic discourse and its material violences rather than simply just another of its many victims. The consequence being that contemporary remedies applied to the imperialism of Christian faith for the sake of the children of Abraham—that is, for the sake of the Jewish neighbor—often seem to entail the assumption (for contemporary remedies, usually unstated) that Christian faith is imperialistic in the first place precisely to the extent that it is too Abrahamic.
The Universal and the Particular