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- Theology through FilmToday
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It looks as if I’m going to be teaching a course entitled Theology through Film. I’ve worked up a bit of a syllabus, but will spend the next two weeks or so reading through the important material before I set it in stone. Since this will be the first course I’ve ever taught on my own I thought looking to the learned readers of AUFS would serve me well. So, dear readers, what do you suggest in terms of films and articles?
Posted in boredom - Agamben’s system, in its barest outlinesYesterday
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Things are structured a certain way. In different historical periods, sometimes that structure gets skewed in weird ways. Instead of reforming the structure, we need to suspend it entirely, and that’s the task of messianism.
Posted in Agamben
- Toscano Review in New JCRTDecember 2
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There is a new issue of JCRT that appears to be clearing house of all their extra reviews. Included among them is my review of Alberto Toscano’s Theatre of Production: Individuation Between Kant and Deleuze. It is a favorable review of a very learned and interesting book that I think could open some really interesting lines of inquiry for other philosophers. Also see the review of Philip Goodchild’s Theology of Money by sometime-commenter Clayton Crockett. I think it captures the book rather well and hopefully it will convince you to buy the book (though that will largely depend on it coming out in America).
Posted in boredom - “The Church”November 30
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It seems clear to me that at least some interpretations of the Christian message imply forms of human community that many would find to be desirable. It also seems clear to me that Christian communities have traditionally been called “churches.” Hence, to talk about the normative Christian community as “the church” and to list off its desirable and appealling characteristics makes perfect sense.
What bothers me is that so many contemporary theologians seem to be taking the illogical next step of saying that since the normative church that we imagine to be the natural consequence of the Christian message is desirable, it is therefore imperative that those wishing to actualize the Christian message be loyal to some or other actual existing organization putting itself forward as a church. Even worse is claiming that since the imagined normative church has certain properties, therefore the actual existing things that call themselves churches tend to have such properties as well.
In place of this very typical move, I propose that we put forward the normative form of community as desirable, then make an objective assessment of whether any given community is approaching actualizing that normative form, or even making a good-faith effort toward doing so. Surely some churches are, but a frank observer would most likely conclude that the vast majority are not. Furthermore, it seems likely that such an investigation would reveal that those that
- Zizek as immanent threatNovember 29
