Klem, Rhetoric of a Postmodern Theology

7/27/2019 Klem, Rhetoric of a Postmodern Theology

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/klem-rhetoric-of-a-postmodern-theology 1/28



Journal of the AmericanAcademy of Religion. LV/3

TOWARDA RHETORIC OF POSTMODERN

THEOLOGY:

THROUGH BARTH AND HEIDEGGER

DAVID E. KLEMM

THEOLOGYAND RHETORIC

Rhetoricis once againon the curriculumfor the study of theology.

Perhaps the latest in a series of renewed approachesto artfulforms of

thinking, the current project in rhetoric uncovers new lines of readingthat tie

upwith the classicaltradition. But in its most recent version,

rhetoric no longer presents itself as merely reflection on the role of

style in the art of persuasion. More global theories abound under the

head of rhetoric of inquiry (Nelson; Megill; McCloskey). Throughthem we see rhetoric as theoretical inquiry into our communicative

practices. Specifically,it reflects on the art of projecting and perform-

ing the meaning of some domain of reality through speaking and writ-

ing. Thus rhetoric is the counterpartof hermeneutics taken as inquiryinto the art of understanding and appropriatingmeaning.

The rhetoric of inquiryhas three central concerns. None of themis new. Consequently,its originalitylies in its ability to open fresh per-

spectives on our abiding interests. It focuses on (1) figurativeand nar-

rative means of projecting meaning to persuade audiences, (2) therelation of argumentativeprocesses to notions of interest and ideology,and (3) the power of discursivepractices in forming or disruptingcom-munal solidarity. In all cases, however, rhetoric remainsa discourseonthe margins of thought and action (Hariman: 51). The marginalityof

rhetoric means that it alwayslives in deference to an independent sub-ject matter, which it brings to speech and thought. Rhetoric aims at

transparencyfor its subject matter through artisticdensity along with

rigorousthinking. Thus,good rhetoric serves the quest for truth and isnot its distortion. Yet rhetorical criticism is not merely a means of

speaking about how a self-constituting subject puts objective matters

David E. Klemm is Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Iowa, Iowa City,

Iowa, 52242.



Journalof the American Academy of Religion

into discourse. Its interest follows the ways discoursepresents both theself and the

subjectmatter of

inquiry.And

despitethe

importanceof

its concern with the life of discourse, rhetoric occupies the marginbecause it is always listening in on itself and never exercising directcontrol over the matter.

Theology is eminently rhetorical-and in need of new rhetoric.

Following the death of the God of theism, theology seems not so muchto lack a subjectmatter as to need new and persuasive ways of disclos-

ing it. Theology reflects critically on the meaning of our talk aboutGod and its relation to experience. Its subject matter is the radical

otherness of the reality that grounds, judges, and graciouslycalls ourlinguistic being in the world. If God is God, God cannot appear eitheras an object or a subject within the subject-objectstructure of knowl-

edge and perceptual experience, although anything could and hascome to symbolize God. Hence theology must rely on figurativeusesof language to speak about, to, or from God. This drawstheology intothe domain of rhetoric, for doubleness of meaning is at the heart ofboth. How can rhetoric serve theological thinking today? How are we

persuasively to speak of God?Clearly, we can no longer think the reality traditionally named

God as a self-sufficientbeing or an absolute synthesis. The rational cri-

tiques of Kant,Hume, and others block the passesto the highest beingof metaphysics. Semler, Strauss,and other textual critics disclose ahuman face behind the living images of deity in the Bible. Even more

striking,calamities of the twentieth century from the trenches of theFirstEuropeanWar to the firesof Auschwitz and Hiroshimahave shat-

tered the claims of critical reason and calculative thinking to replacethe God of premodern life and thought. No wonder the postmoderntheologian, as interpreter of text and existence, feels an uneasiness in

acknowledging the finitude of human understanding of the divine.

Despite our anxiety before a broken tradition, we continue tounderstand existence theologically. This is possible because the word

"God,"or some other word, can and does break into the linguisticalityof human existence as Word of God. When understood, the word"God" names, clarifies, and sometimes provokes the experience ofGod-the advent of radical otherness. "God" thus signals infinite

interpretation; it is a sign of the overturning of the ways we under-stand existence by what is finally other than ourselves and other thanour world. And the experience of God calls forth the word "God,"orother words, which open us to the source of meaning and enablingnorms of action. But given the double critique of the premodern bythe modern and of the modern by the postmodern, theology must con-

444



Klemm: Rhetoric of Postmodern Theology

tinue seriously to ask which words-"God" or others?- can so sound

today in our world? And how should they be spoken?This is a

problemfor hermeneutics-and rhetoric. We

widelyrec-

ognize theology as hermeneutical today, because it moves within the

linguisticalityand temporality of our being in the world and respondsto the advent of radicalotherness with interpretive thought. But these

are reasonsthat we should also pay attention to theology as rhetorical,as persuasively giving voice to this depth. Postmoderntheologiansare

postmodernrhetoricians; o understandthem, we shouldinterpret therhetoric of their theologies. Postmodern theology is rhetorical; to

practice it, we should think rhetorically.

A PROPOSAL

In this paper, I articulate a rhetorical vocabulary for speakingabout postmodern theology by analyzing the use of tropes in

postmodern theological inquiry. I begin by focusing on the two reli-

gious thinkers I deem most influential in the twentieth century: KarlBarth and MartinHeidegger. Both Barth and Heidegger responded to

the postwar crisis of European culture. In the 1920s, Heidegger andBarth seemed to present religiouslyseriousthinkers with forkingpathsinto new worlds of meaning: Barthgave new voice to a Christianlan-

guage of the Word of God;Heidegger spoke an ontologicallanguage ofthe meaning of being. Each gave new life to the theological subjectmatter under postmodern conditions. Yet, two distinct communitiesof discourse tended to appropriate the preaching of Barth and the

teaching of Heidegger: the evangelical Christiancommunity and the

existentialist community. Then and now, these two camps shape thelife and thought of many people, but they do not understand eachother. Then and now, they disdain to listen or speak to each other. In

addition, a third revisionist group projected a theological vision

beyond and through the opposition of Barth and Heidegger, not as a

synthesis but as an open standpoint capable of orchestratingthe two.It is accessible only in the interplay between the two primaryvoices,or ones like them, is the position that offers the most genuine theolo-

gizingin the late twentieth century.

My thesis is that the lines of reception pointing from the earlyBarth and Heidegger enter a changed rhetorical situation today.Recent theology is not prefigured by historicalcrisis but by the situa-tion of openness to the other. Focusing on the use of tropes in recent

discussions, I distinguish three types of postmodern theology stem-

ming from the early reception of Barth and Heidegger: the confes-

sional, deconstructive, and hermeneutical modes. Using the rhetoricof tropes as a diagnostictool, I argue that all postmodern theologies are

445



Journal of the American Academy of Religion

not equal: serious problems that attend the confessional and decon-

structive types do not afflict the hermeneutical approach. Yet even

the hermeneutical version oftheology

faces a postmodern predica-ment that is in part a rhetorical problem.

I concentrate my analysis on the four master tropes of thought and

discourse: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. The four

tropes were shaped into a unity by Vico (129-31) and declared the

"four master tropes" by Kenneth Burke (503-17). More recently, Hay-den White has written extensively on the four master tropes (see espe-

cially 1-26). Paul Ricoeur has incorporated the four master tropes into

his discussion of time and narrative (219-27). Why focus on the tropes

of rhetoric? Analysis of these traditional figures best serves my inten-tion to understand postmodern theological thinking. I mean this in

the technical sense in which we distinguish understanding from both

conceptual thinking and prereflective experience: understanding is

the temporal, linguistic practice of mediating between them. It pro-ceeds by forming images that connect abstract thought with concrete

experience. Grasped rhetorically, the images of understanding are the

tropes of discourse.

I begin by considering the central texts of emergent postmodern-ism in theology: Barth's The Epistle to the Romans (1921) and Heideg-

ger's Being and Time (1927). I do not impose the tropes on either

thinker. Neither can be understood purely propositionally or as a cata-

logue of facts, although both formulate theories and appeal to experi-ence. Hence the tropes of mediation loom important. In fact, theybear on fundamental theological decisions: tropes of thought conveythe subject matter of theological thinking, disclose the ground and

abyssof

existence,and

placea self in

responseto it.

THE RHETORIC OF EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS

AND BEING AND TIME

Hayden White most clearly grasps the insight behind Vico's order-

ing of the four master tropes. He writes,

The archetypal plot of discursive formationsappears to requirethat the narrative"I" of the discourse move from an originalmet-

aphorical characterizationof a domain of experience, throughmetonymic deconstructionof its elements, to synecdochic repre-sentations of the relations between its superficialattributes andits presumed essence, to, finally, a representation of whatevercontrastsor oppositionscan legitimately be discerned in the total-ities identified in the thirdphase of discursiverepresentation. (5)

The pattern moves from an initial (metaphorical) perspective on real-

ity, through a reductive (metonymic) analysis of the situation, to a (syn-

ecdochic) reconstitution of the elements into a new figure, and finally

446




to a reflexive or dialectical (ironic)comprehension of it (Vico: 129-31;Burke:503; White: 12; Ricoeur:219-27). White claims for this pattern

onlythe force of a convention in the discourse about consciousness and

the discourseabout discourseitself. Clearlyit is a pattern lodged deepin the conventions of biblical narrative and the theologies constructedfrom it-but not without its tensions, especially at the moment of syn-ecdochic summation. For in theological thinking, synecdoche marks

the inbreaking of God from outside the linguistic structure. Let meturn now to the rhetoric of Barth and Heidegger, bracketingthe ques-tion whether one's God is the other's being.

Metaphor

Metaphor figures our speaking about one thing in terms sugges-tive of another (Soskice: 15). Among the four master tropes, meta-

phoric characterizationof the situation opens the tropologicaldomainand initiates the movement from the most naive apprehension to themost reflexive (irony) (Ricoeur: 222). Both Barth's and Heidegger'stexts appealed to the profoundsense of spiritualcrisis after World War

I. Each of them invites the reader to understand the crisismetaphori-cally. Barthfigured the human situation as the crisis of human sinful-ness before God. Heidegger understood the human situation as thecrisis of inauthentic being in the world. In each text, the crisis meta-

phor lends power and urgency to the whole. Let me now consider the

appearence and function of the crisismetaphor firstin Barth and thenin Heidegger.

As the dominant voice of dialectical theology, or "theology of cri-

sis," Barth played a revolutionary role. His early theology not onlyexpressed the widespread and profound unrest in Germany after theFirst World War but also disclosed and interpreted the crisis experi-ence to his contemporaries(Rendtorff:173-79;Fahler:171-75). Beforethe war, Barth was filled with an evolutionary optimism stemmingfrom a conviction in the essential connectedness of God and humans.But Barth was shattered by the war's outbreak and saw no future

beyond it for the liberal theology of his own recent past (Barth, 1957:

14). Facing the collapse of the nineteenth century, Barth asked themost basic questionsfor one charged with preaching the gospel: Whatfor us is divinity? How do we think it?

Throughhis reading of St. Paul and Franz Overbeck (1837-1905),Barth became convinced that theology as positive knowledge of God,even as the Whence of the feeling of absolute dependence, is impossi-ble. After all, if all thinking objectifies, and God cannot be an objectfor humans to judge, then theological thinking is impossible. Barth'sconclusion was radical: the only possible speakingof God is God's own

447




speaking. And fortunately for Barth, God does speak to us throughbiblical preaching. The task for theologians is to foster openness forrevelation into which God

maychoose to

speak.In Barth's

view,his-

torical criticismis not sufficientfor this task. Accordingto Barth,genu-ine criticism uncovers the Word in the words, presenting the referentof thought in and through the words. Barth's aim was not to retrievethe historical Paul but to let Paul's text speak again by collapsing thebarriersbetween the first and the twentieth centuries (6-8).

Barth himself did this by rethinking St. Paul's theme that God is inheaven and humans are on earth, and no necessary connection joinsthem. Barth acknowledged that philosophy and theology share this

theme. Philosophy names God the prime cause or one truth (10),which is presupposed by rational inquiry but elusive for knowledge;for it, God is absent. Theology beholds this one truth or prime cause inthe figure of Jesus Christ, who makes God present to humans; for it,God is present. What knowledge does theology receive? The preach-ing of Jesus Christ reveals the unknowability of God. Theology thusreceives a negative knowledge of God: theology knows God as whollyother than reason or unreason, language or silence, subjectivity or

objectivity, and wholly other than the mediation of any of these. Thewholly other is beyond all categories and their negation, but it appearsin the event of appropriatingthe Gospel story. Once we reflect on theevent of disclosure,however, we fragment its eventful character. Likea bird in flight, revelation cannot be caught by reflection. Once lost,we can only anticipate and remain open to its possible advent.

How, then, did Barthgive a theological reading of the human situ-ation figuredas the crisisof sin? In Romans, he wrote, "Westandhere

before an irresistible and all-embracingdissolution of the world of timeand things and men, before a penetrating and ultimate KRISIS,beforethe supremacy of a negation by which all existence is rolled up" (91).In the crisisof this encounter God brings us and everything temporalunder divine judgment: mortal humans forget the absolute distancebetween God and themselves. Barth demanded repentence withoutexcuse as the only appropriateresponse to the crisis.

This was no summons to a straying Europe to escape God'sjudg-ment by coming back into the religious fold. On the contrary, inBarth'swords,

No undertaking subjects men to so severe a judgment as the

undertakingof religion. The whole rich abundance of the wor-ship of God, from the grossest superstition to the most delicatespirituality, rom naked rationalism to the most subtle mysticismof the metaphysician, is under suspicion both from above andfrombelow. God treats it asarrogance,and men as illusion. (136)

Thus Barth suggests that theologians warn people against the illusion

448




that religion is closer to God than no religion. Barth uses the crisis

metaphor to deflate human pretensions-both theological and reli-

gious.Let us turn now to the

guiding metaphorof crisisin

Heidegger.As the historianAllanMegill points out, the notion of total culturalcrisis permeates all of Heidegger's writings. Moreover, Heidegger'senormous impact was in part due to his powerful expression of thisnotion (Megill: 111). But Heidegger did not express himself directlyabout a cultural crisis so much as to speak about it indirectly, throughthe metaphor of human situation as crisis of pervasive inauthenticity.

Reflecting on the crisis mentality that accompanied the postwar

years, Hans-GeorgGadamer affirms,"The existential seriousness thatcharacterized Heidegger in his lectures seemed to suggest that the

rejection of inauthenticity and embracing of authenticity was the

meaning of his doctrine" (1963a:141). But Heidegger's philosophicalconcern was differentfrom the moral impact of his rhetoric. Gadamer

adds, "Todayit is clear that the inner and indissoluable connection ofthe authenticity and inauthenticity of Dasein, of unconcealedness and

concealment, of truth and error, indicated the real dimension of the

Heideggerian inquiry" (1963a:141). How, then,did the theme of

inauthenticity, which was heard as invective, enter his philosophy?

Heidegger's philosophical inquiry followed a single question:What does it mean to be? He opened Being and Time with an argu-ment for the necessity of retrieving this question,which held Plato andAristotle in awe while evoking their efforts. Once the systems ofGreek metaphysics were in place, however, subsequent thinkers for-

got the question from which the systems emerged. Presently, the

questionhas been trivialized to the

pointwhere we do not know what

it means, much less why it held the Greeks spellbound (20). Yet,

Heidegger asked, if being is the most universal concept, from which

nothing is excluded, what is the relationship between being as beingand the categories of being? If being stands above all determinationsof genus and species, and is thus not a being, what does it mean thatwe nonetheless understand its meaning well enough to use it? Doesnot that contradiction hide a great mystery? Heidegger was con-vinced of the importance of his question;his problem was how to for-

mulate it properly, how to rethink fundamental ontology.

Heidegger's solution involves referring the question about the

meaning of being to the formalstructureof inquiry. Questioningpre-supposes(1) an activity of inquiring(Fragen),which is guided by whatis sought, (2) that about which we inquire (ein Gefragtes),investigatedthrough (3) some concrete reality (ein Befragtes), in order to yield(4) some theoretical result (ein Erfragtes). In posing the question"Whatdoes it mean to be?"some interesting connections appear. The

449




activity of inquiring is (1) a mode of being of the inquirer, whichreflects (2) being as that which we inquire about, which intends (4) the

meaning of beingas theoretical result.

By choosingthe

being ofthe

questioner as (3) the concrete reality investigated, all four elementsreflect being. Heidegger delighted in the result: a postmetaphysicalontology is possible as the existential analysisof the being that is therein its questioning. Philosophyproperly pursues the meaning of beingthrough deciphering the meaning of Dasein's being, a being which

already understandswhat it means to be.

In Heidegger's analysis, Dasein's essence is Existenz: Daseinanswers to "Who are you?"not "Whatis this?" This means the beingof Dasein is in each case my own thrown project of a possibilityto be(67). Dasein projects possibilitiesfrom within situations and thus opensthe existential space and time for concrete concerns. From the struc-ture of being in the world as always my own, Heidegger derived two

primary modes of Dasein's being. Here we reach the crucial notionfor his metaphor of crisis as inauthenticity: I can exist in forgetfulnessof myself, by losing myself in the world and ceasing to be myself-suchexistence is inauthentic (uneigentlich); or by contrast, I can exist in

awarenessof my own timing or actualizing of possibilitiesto be-suchexistence is authentic (eigentlich) (68). This distinction can be appliedto any of our human activities to show its meaning as either coveringup one's being or revealing it. In each case, what is covered up orrevealed is my own act of being in the world as the meaning of being.

Heidegger's descriptions of inauthenticity in everyday existenceare ontological rather than moral;they describe possibilitiesfor beingoneself by not being oneself. They do not declare that we are all

inauthentic and should not be. But the force of Heidegger's rhetoricdrives the reader to moral self-scrutiny: Do I see myself in these

descriptions? In the 1920s, Heidegger's "severe style of lecturing"andthe "bitteracrimony"of his references to inauthentic existence, addedthe moral dimension of meaning to the crisis situation.

Metonymy

The second master trope, metonymy, prefiguresthe dispersionofthe leading metaphor into its linked elements. As Kenneth Burkeputsit, metonymy performs the "reduction of some higher or more com-

plex realm of being to the terms of a lower or less complex realm of

being" (506). It places some intangible state of being in tangible termsand therefore traces the abstract back into real life. Karl Barth

employs metonymy when he represents human sinfulness as the fallfrom God. Likewise, Martin Heidegger employs this trope when hereduces inauthenticity to the self's falling from itself into the world.

450




The image of falling appearsin two quite different senses in Barth and

Heidegger. How does each of them metonymically spell out the fal-lenness in sin or

inauthenticity?Barth gave theological voice to the biblical image of the fall ofman in Adam. Following Anselm, Barth figured sin as a robbery ofGod:

a robberywhichbecomesapparentnourarrogantndeavour ocross he line of deathbywhichwe arebounded;n our drunkenblurring f the distancewhichseparates sfromGod; n ourfor-getfulnessof His invisibility;n our investingof men with theformof God,and of Godwiththe formof man;and in ourdevo-

tion to some romantic nfinity,some 'No-God'of this world,which we havecreated orourselves.168)

Sin plunders God of God's divinity; it is a thievery from which noreturn is possible save by God'sforgiveness. For it is markedby death,the trace of the broken relationshipand the fall from God. The agentof this fall was Adam,who is no more a historicalfigure than the origi-nal event of sin was a historicalevent. Adam existsonly as the old mandissolvedby Christ;his sin is "the characteristicmarkof human nature

as such;it is not a lapse or a series of lapses in a man's life; it is the Fallwhich occurred with the emergence of human life" (173). The basicelements to which Barth reduces sin include the important image of

robbing God, the casting of sin as a positive power in the world, and

placing sin alongside its companion, death.

Heidegger's existential analysisalso makes use of the image of fall-

ing, but not in the biblical sense of breaking trust with God. For

Heidegger, falling (Verfallens) is the ontological-existentialstructure

of everyday life making possible loss of self and forgetfulness of themeaning of being. Heidegger speaks of falling as "absorption in"

(aufgehen bei) a group of people. Inauthentic existence is concretelymanifest in the idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity by which peopleevade themselves and cover up the meaning of their existence (220).He also uses the image of "being lost" (223) in the publicness of the

"they,"which means letting the "I" fall out of Dasein's grasp into the

anonymous "they" of average everydayness. In such inauthenticity,we forget ourselves as open centers of the timing of being and let das

Man time our desires: "We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as theytake pleasure;we read, see, andjudge about literature and art as theysee and judge; likewise we shrink back from the 'great mass' as theyshrinkback;we find 'shocking'what they find shocking"(164).

As a structure of human being, falling represents the temptingpossibility of submitting to an apparent certainty, tranquillity, and

security which is in fact alienating. Offered illusory release from the

anxiety of being oneself, Dasein "driftsalong toward an alienation in

451




which its ownmost potentiality-for-Beingis hidden from it," until tak-

ing a "downwardplunge" (Absturz) into the groundlessnessand nul-

lityof inauthentic

everydayness (223).But the lure of

tranquillityis

really a masquerade of turbulence (Wirbel), the restlessness of theheart that has lost itself.

Like Barth's treatment of the original sinfulness of humans as"timeless and transcendental"(171),Heidegger assertsthat his existen-

tial-ontologicalanalysisis of a condition priorto any actualized corrup-tion. Falling figuresthe possibilityof inauthenticity as a kind of motion

downward, an eternal forgetting of what it means to be the one "Iam."

Synecdoche

Classically,synecdoche involves either using a genus term to standfor a species which participates in it or a species term to stand for the

genus, a part for the whole. In Hayden White's dynamic understand-

ing of the sequence of tropes, synecdoche reassembles the elements ofthe metonymic deconstruction of a domain of reality, showing the

relation between them and the "presumed essence" of that domain(5). The movement from metonymy to synecdoche, in other words, isa return from the many to the one or a shift from dispersalto integra-tion within the domain of reality. In the discourse of Barth and

Heidegger, the synecdochic move is crucial, for it figures the openingof the human sphere to the reality transcending it. And in each case,the language of genus and species, or even part and whole, fails. The"presumedessence" of the domain of human reality in its sinfulness or

inauthenticitylies

beyondthat domain and must break into it in a

transformativeevent. For Barth'sEpistle to the Romans, the synec-dochic figure is the inbreaking of the wholly other God; for Heideg-ger's Being and Time, it is the irruption of being into everydayexistence. In each case the event transforms: it opens the possibilityof eschatological existence (Barth)or authentic existence (Heidegger).Consider the synecdochic transformations,first in Barth and then in

Heidegger.In Barth's view, crisis, as the undergoing of God's judgment, is

never a sheer negation but is alwaysdeterminate negation. The nega-tion posits something new; the No conceals a Yes. The judgment isheard as inbreaking grace. We hear this in the preaching that thecross leads to eternal life. According to Barth, the inbreakingword ofGod can overturn our attachments to life and death. A new personmay appear, radically oriented in faith to the continual approach ofGod.

Barth said the name Jesus Christ marks the place where God's

452




breaksinto inauthentic existence through the call of being as nothing.

Heidegger wrote, "Indeed the call is precisely something which we

ourselves have neitherplanned

norprepared

for norvoluntarily per-formed, nor have we ever done so. 'It' calls, against our expectations

and even against our will" (320). But who or what breaks in? "In its

'who,' the caller is definable in a 'worldly' way by nothing at all. The

caller is Dasein in its uncanniness: primordial, through being in theworld as the 'not at home'-the bare 'that it is' in the 'nothing' of theworld" (321). The nothing here signifies something positive, namely,the structure and content of guilt as a mode of Dasein's self-under-

standing. Grasping what I am not but could and should be, Dasein

responds with resoluteness. In resoluteness, Dasein takes hold of itsauthentic being in the world. Resoluteness projects the genuine pos-sibilities for which the situation calls.

Irony

Irony, the final master trope, displays the oppositions and rever-sals in the third phase of synecdochic integration (White: 5). Burke

connects it with recognition of dialectic at the heart of the matter, adialectic manifest in the dramatic pattern of the sequence of tropes.His ironic formulais "whatgoes forth as A returns as non-A"(517). In

Barth, the meaning of "God" is ironic: it goes out as "the one and

only" and it comes back as "no one and nothing." In Heidegger,"being"is ironic: it goes out as the unity of beings and comes back as

nothing. Because the words God and being are the central words ofthe texts, irony colors the whole of each text.

Barth'stheology

circumambulatesthe word God. Butany

utter-ance of this name is ironic. On one hand, God names the divine sourceand goal of everything, the first and final cause, the one truth of all

being. Yet whatever we so name God necessarily is not God. On theother hand, the unknowable God reveals God's being: the death of

Jesus manifests the unknowability of God. We see God only in the

negation of God (278). Thus, ironicallyit is God who is not-Godin our

naming of God-the God named in the Bible as the one and only.

Heidegger's philosophy raises the question of the meaning of

being. His inquiryis likewise thoroughlyironic. For Heidegger, beingsignifiesat once the one connecting process through which things areand the connectedness of everything that is. But we have no direct

apprehension of being, because being is not something which is (23).Hence anything we name "being" and not "a being" is not being.Being cannot be defined because there is nothing with which to com-

pare and contrastit. And the existential interpretation of the meaningof being as we always already understand it tails off into the unthink-

454




able region of Dasein's temporalizing of time. Heidegger showed the

systematic elusiveness of a single explicit meaning of being as time

(P6ggeler: 63-66). Being disappearsinto the

constantly hidingsource

of temporality that is the openness of Dasein. We encounter thisabsence or nothingness in the experience of anxiety, but we cannotthink it. The word being names nothingness;nothing manifestsbeing.The search for being ends with nothing; nothingness reveals being.

In sum, although they employ different languages, Barth and

Heidegger each present us with a rhetoric of redemption through theuse of the four master tropes. In each case we find a metaphor of cri-

sis, a metonymic dispersal of the metaphor, a synecdochic figurebreaking into the disruption and gathering the crisis into a higherunity, and finallyan ironic view of the whole. In each case, the figureof irony opens the discourse to its opposite and divests it of importancewith respect to the divine reality it bespeaks. The languages of Godand being both affirmand negate themselves throughirony. But whatabout more recent theology? Granted that Barth and Heidegger func-tion as patron saints for so much contemporary thought, what hasbecome of their rhetorical strategies?

FROM CRISISTO OTHERNESS: A REFLEXIVETURN

In recent theology, the rhetorical situation has changed. The

urgent sense of historical crisisno longer determines the metaphoricalperspective of theological reflection. Instead, acknowledgement ofhuman otherness prefigures the domain of theology. Good reasons,and not simply a shift of style, supportthis transformationof the meta-

phoric starting point for the rhetoric of postmodern theology. Let meindicate why the crisismetaphor fails today and why the metaphor ofotherness is more appropriate. I proceed in two steps. First,historical

consciousness, which initially gave rise to the crisis metaphor, has

deepened its reflexive posture, and this in turn has unravelled that

metaphor. Second, the same reflexive posture that dismantled the cri-sis metaphor brings otherness out of concealment. I take these two

steps in turn.

The notion of historicalcrisispresupposeshistorical self-conscious-

ness, by which I mean initially the awarenessof temporal distance sep-arating the subject of inquiry from the voice of the past. Suchhistoricalconsciousness,which dates back at least to Herder and Ger-man romanticism,entails a reflexive view on all that is handed down

by tradition(Gadamer,1963b:11). Following Hans Wagner,I call thisconsciousness "noematic reflexivity,"for it is aware that the content ofreflection is thoroughlyconditioned by history (Wagner:43). This his-torical sense demands that the inquirer place any document within its

455




proper context in order to understand its own meaning and signifi-cance and that the inquirer assignsome directionalityto historyinsofar

as it leads from thatpast

context to thepresent

one. We find this his-

torical consciousness in modern hermeneutics from Schleiermacher

through Dilthey, which assumes the privilege and burden of what

Gadamer calls the "most important revolution among those we have

undergone since the beginning of the modern epoch" (1963b:109). It

addressesthis taskby the programof reconstructinghistoricalcontexts

and imaginatively re-experiencing meanings within them.

But historical consciousness,by virtue of its noematic reflexivity,has the

interestingtelos of dismantling teleology in history. The reflex-

ive awareness of the self encountering the historicallyother leads in

the nature of the case to awareness of the temporality and historical

situatednessof its own here and now act of reflecting. In other words,noematic reflexivity entails "noetic reflexivity" (Wagner: 35). In

postmodern hermeneutics, of which Barth and Heidegger are the

harbingers,we already find such a deepening of historical conscious-

ness coupled with the crisis metaphor which it will cancel. With

noetic reflexivity, the dream of simply reconstructing a past (as if the

"I"were a neutral onlooker)ends. The new image is that of the eventof understanding-a "fusion of horizons" in which past and presentare temporally mediated. The reflexive play of understanding aban-dons the historicistassumptionof a unifying grand narrative(Lyotard:xxiv). But with its loss, the notion of a crisisin history-a rupturein the

grand narrative-also drops away. The crisis metaphor deconstructsitself.

Moreover, the deepened reflexive recognition of the temporality

of both the subject and the object of history exposes us to a more fun-damental problem than the notion of crisis-the situation of con-

fronting otherness. I do not now refer to the "wholly other" of the

early Barth or the "ontological difference" of Heidegger but to the

sphere of human otherness-the presence of the free subject whothinks and acts other than "I"do. Otherness,of course, surfaces withinthe self when, in encountering the other, "my own" prejudicesbecome "other" and new convictions become "my own." And under

pluralistic social conditions, increasingly we encounter othernessexternal to the self. Today we are much more overwhelmed by theotherness inscribed on everyday experiences than we are by images ofcrisis. The challenge for understandingis no longer to reconstruct his-toricalmeanings or to address the crisisof historybut to uncover whatis questionable and what is genuine in self and other, while openingself to other and allowing the other to remain other.

Interestingly, neither Barth nor Heidegger satisfactorilyaccounts

456




ing now to the situation of encountering the other, it fails in this newcontext to play out the irony in Barth's use of the name of God:whatever we name as God

is, strictly speaking,not-God.

Indeed,con-

sciousness of irony is reduced, not extended to apply even to the

synecdoche of Jesus Christ. Consequently the confessional positionpossesses a figure of God while suppressing the awareness that the

symbol of God is just that-a symbol of God that manifests God but

strictlyspeakingis not God. This loss of irony and reflexivitycloses the

openness of the symbol of God to the other. In fact, this type tends tosee the presence of otherness as threatening to the health and con-

tinuity of the particularChristiancommunity it represents. The cen-

tral interest of this type is to preserve Christianidentity in the churchover against the other by stablizing theology and ethics around the

synecdochic symbol of God as Jesus Christ.

For the confessional type, the Bible presents the transcendent

God, preeminently through the synecdoche of Jesus Christ. Sacred

scripture provides a clear map for formation of character,beliefs, andaction: theology becomes biblical theology; ethics becomes divinecommand ethics. The church community seals off its self-understand-

ing from that of the world. Viewing the world as chaos, the churchprovides distinct criteria for formationof identity, meaning, and value

through the synecdochic symbol. The presence of the other is

begrudgingly tolerated by the community but endowed with no voice;the self walls itself off from the genuine other. Time is understood asthe time of solidificationby return to the past.

Within confessional communities, theology can reach extraordi-

nary levels of sophisticationand learning. Philosophicalbacking maybe sought in theory of narrative (legitimating the Bible as our story),Wittgenstein'sthought (legitimatingbiblical theology and ethics as our

language game), cultural anthropology(legitimating our religious tra-dition as a given and unquestionable scheme), and sociology of knowl-

edge (legitimating theological knowledge-claimsas appropriateto oursocial context). But nonetheless theology becomes a ghetto-language,not answerable to the general rules of discourse of the world and notaddressed to the other as other. Heidegger, as the other of Barth, is

ignored (if not despised).Certainof these tendencies come out in the later writings of Barth

himself. But Barth preserved the irony of his theology throughout.Recalling that the God we name is not God preserves a healthy senseof humility; the Church is one with the other in its tendency to lieabout God. Barthconsidered reflexivityas a sinfulposture before God,but God's own Word in Christ is reflexive in the extreme: Jesus isaware of manifesting God as unknowable and of choosing himself for

458




reprobation while choosing individual humans for salvation (Barth,1942: 163). But confessionalappropriationsof Barth'stheology tend to

lose thereflexivity

in Barth's own accountby eliminating

the ironicdimension of theology.

The confessional alternative is wrongheaded on a number ofcounts. It assumes the possibility and desirabilityof isolating a Chris-tian community within the encompassing world, whereas in fact weare all exposed to and participatein a vast arrayof ways of interpretingthe world, its final ground and goal, and the genuine ends of human

practices. Individuals and communities cannot segregate themselvesfrom the effective-history of the larger social world by treating the

others as outsiders. As James M. Gustafsonsays, "To suppose that inour time the Christiancommunity could become a tribal culture iso-lated from others is certainlyfalse"(91). By the same token, philosoph-ical and theological isolationismsurely fails. The synecdochic symbolof Jesusas God shouldbe discussedas a symbol of God within an openinquiry concerning discourse and interpretation. Claims that the

synecdoche of JesusChristtrulymanifest God should be demonstratedwith reference to general theories of truth in language. In the absence

of these, confessionalapproachescannot enter into dialogue with theother.

Althoughthe task of placing individual theologies within this typeis a separateproblem from the construction of types, I take the work of

George Lindbeck, Paul Holmer, John Howard Yoder, and StanleyHauerwas,among others, to fall under this heading.'

DECONSTRUCTIVERESPONSE

The deconstructive type of postmodern theology appropriates n aradicalway the Heideggerian synecdoche of the inbreakingof being as

nothing through the uncanniness of Dasein. But it tends to lose

Heidegger's irony in thinking about being: just as being escapes con-

ceptual grasp and shows itself as nothing, so nothing makes presentbeing. Opposing the claims of language to signify being and its pre-tense to make present, the deconstructive position denies the divineself-manifestion in symbol. Frequently it does this by carrying the

motif of kenosis to its extreme: the divine self-emptying in the symbolof Christ completes itself with the negation of the symbol. But withthis move, deconstruction forfeits as well Heidegger's sense of the pri-mordial presence of being through nothing. Consequently, it is leftwith the activity of negating presences while forgetting the sense inwhich that very activity of negating also makes being present. The

1 My placement of these texts in the confessional type ought not to substitute for a

careful consideration of their claims and purposes that I do not give here.

459




radicalundercutting of symbolic presences closes itself to the other. In

fact, this type sees the openness of the secularized and dehistoricized

world not so much aspresenting

the positive possibilityof encounter-

ing the other as that of breaking away from constrictingreligious-theo-

logical traditions. The motivating interest of this type is to sever tiesbetween theological thinking and church communities once and for alland to render theological language free from a transcendental signi-fied. Theology negates itself as theology; ethics become impossible.

For the deconstructive type, the biblical texts present an endlessmaze or Penelopean fabricthat is constantlyunwoven and rewoven in

the play of deconstruction. Each text fits into an infinite web of shift-

ing contexts, referringin the round to other interrelated threads,criss-crossing in a perpetual process of interweaving that is centerless-a

play of signifiers over the abyss. The mazing Scripture cannot be

mapped: "In the absence of complete presence, secure foundation,authoritative orgin, and ultimate end, there is nothing other than

erring" (Taylor:179). Worldno longer encompasses selves or commu-nities nor is that to which texts refer; world is knit into the play of

signifers. There is nothing outside the text, because world (like text) is

an unstable and transitoryprocess of the displayand removal of mean-ing. There is nothing other than appearances (Taylor:172); nothingappears in and through appearances. The other is privileged as thevoice of decentering and dislocation, but denied the potentiality of

recentering and relocating. Time is understood as the time of futuraltransition is which the old is undone and the new is unnameable

nothingness.Deconstructive theology unifies the metonymic elements of self,

other, world, and time not by a positive synecdoche but by the sny-ecdochic deferral of any unifying symbol: nothing unifies or centersthe play of intertextuality. Support for deconstructive theology is

sought above all in the texts of Jacques Derrida, which lives off whatMaurice Blanchot calls "the amazing power of the negative" (Bruns:14) that existsbetween sign and signifiedas well as texts and contexts.The power of the negative is the power of temporality, undoing anyfixity or presence of meaning and subverting the unity of truth-andthus God-into errantwandering as the living death of God. Theologyis always the hidden target of deconstruction, which indiscriminatelycalls into question and casts into doubt'sshadowwhatever comes in its

way. For any standing meaning, which deconstruction forces into

exile, purports to offer a true account of something and Truth is the

philosophicalfigure of God. Deconstruction is committed to showingthe nothingness behind, before, and within all standingmeanings thatclaim to participate in Truth-in God-and in so doing perpetrate alie. Thus for deconstruction, traditionaldiscourse is alwaystheological

460




discourse in the West-its logocentrism and claim to truth reveal that.

And all deconstructive moves against pretenses of abiding logos maybe called

theologicalin the

postmodern,deconstructive

sense;its truth

is the untruth of language and life in appealing beyond itself.

Again, certain of these tendencies unfold in Heidegger's own later

corpus. But Heidegger throughout retained the ironic relation

between being and nothing. Being is unthinkable for Heidegger; con-

ceptually it is equivalent to nothing. Nonetheless we encounter noth-

ingness in anxiety and overcome it in courage. The nothingness of

being as time is manifest for Heidegger preeminently in the figure of

authentic timing-the "I" of authenticity. Heidegger's intention

always was to glimpse being through becoming oneself authentically

by claiming one's own mortal freedom. Authenticity is not a represen-tation of a transcendental signified but the self's recovery of its own

mortality. Moreover, truth for Heidegger is no longer merely the cor-

respondence between what is said and what is so; it is the prior

enabling structure of unveiling (aletheia) that makes possible anythinglike correspondence. Thus Heidegger preserves ironic presencing of

the primordial in the withdrawal of being from thought: Nothing is a

symbol of the self's encounter with its own truth for Heidegger, notmerely a power from which to derive a technique of undercutting as

in Derrida. Heidegger, in other words, has a synecdoche of reflexivity

through which being is ironically present. Derrida self-consciouslydefers synecdoche, because the free play of reflexivity for him must

deny all claims of primordial presence.The deconstructive type errs in its extreme appropriation of

Heidegger. By giving free reign to reflexivity while deferring its figur-

ation in synecdoche, deconstruction turns the Heideggerian"primordiality of absence" into the "absence of primordiality"

(Caputo: 191-200). As a negative theology, it fails to disclose the divine

or the authentically human. Moreover, deconstruction gives the

impression of championing the other-the marginal, the outsider, the

feminine, and any others. But in fact it abuses the other by denyingthe possibility of dialogue. Deconstruction does not enter into conver-

sation with the other; it does not inquire with the other about what

concerns the other. Deconstruction endsdialogue

by refusing to lis-

ten to the other so that the other can answer back. The negative swirl

of "erring" dissolves both subject matter and dialogue partner in nar-

cissistic monologue in which the cleverness of one's own mind and the

wit of one's own tongue compensate for the absence of a discussion

partner. In its inaccessibility to dialogue, it is unresponsive and irre-

sponsible (Bruns: 15). Finally, deconstruction is morally and ethically

impoverished. Deferral of synecdoche and refusal to listen means no

call of conscience, no voice of silence urges the "I" back to authentic-

461




ity. The decision to become oneself authentically is deferred alongwith the disclaimer of presence.

Onceagain,my problem

is not to place actual texts within types of

postmodern theology, but merely to construct the types on rhetorical

grounds. But I consider the listed texts by Mark C. Taylor and Carl

Raschketo fall under this heading.2

HERMENEUTICALRESPONSE

The confessional type of theology accepts its traditional synec-dochic representation of God as God's own (exclusive?)self-presenta-

tion;it

intolerablynarrows the

gapbetween

symbolof God and God.

The deconstructive type rejects any and all synecdochic representa-tions of God on the groundsthat makingpresent is alwaysdeferral; ustas intolerably, it follows the death of God into abyssfulnamelessness.

Hermeneutics playsthe mercurial role of mediating between presenceand absence in the synecdoche of God. It allies itself neither with

merely handing on the faith of the community nor with subverting it;hermeneutics wishes to understand what the tradition has to saywithin a new situation, and this always means to enter into dialogue

with it. What would it mean, hermeneutics asksboth the Barthian andHeideggerian wings of tradition, for a synecdochic figure to show usthe hidden wholeness of our situation of encountering otherness?

Hermeneutics begins by appropriating the ironic dimension ofdiscourse: it does not need deconstruction to inform it that whateveris said or shown can never completely succeed or fail at achievingpresence. Hermeneutics understands that whatever is said or shownas it is also manifests what it is not. Recall Burke's "ironic formula":

what goes forth as A returns as non-A (517). The hermeneutical con-sciousness neither retreats from the nonbeing irony presents, norrushes forth to lose itself in its mazes, but rather seeks to understandthe tradition in the temporal movement irony manifests. Irony dis-closes the temporality of our linguistic being in the world and with it,our openness to the other. The confessional response to human mor-

tality as evident in temporality is to retreat to our time and thus to

give it a familiar face. The deconstructive response to time's power of

negationis to dance in aberrant

carnival, therebyto shake the dust of

the past from its feet. The hermeneutical response to temporal exist-ence is to mediate the tradition into the future, to project the future

by interpreting tradition. After all, "It is that to which we belong andwhich we are, and it is that which we seek to understand"(Bruns:22).

Accordingly, the hermeneutical type receives and hands on the

2 Again, my placement of these texts within the deconstructive response calls for close

reading and discussion of these texts. It ought not to be taken as a dismissal.

462




Barthiansynecdoche of JesusChrist as symbol of God. But it mediates

the meaning of this symbol into the new situation in which encounterwith the other

figuresso

importantly.From the

standpointof herme-

neutics, the symbol itself calls forresponse by displayinga thoroughgo-ing openness to the other, an openness that reflects authentic

acceptance of temporality and finitude. Since Heidegger functions

paradigmatically as Barth's other, hermeneutics can mediate Barth

through Heidegger and the reverse. In either direction, the synecdo-che displaysthe divine in a symbol of the self's ability to become itself

through what is not itself but is other than itself. Moreover, the her-meneutical type accepts the reflexive trope of irony.

For hermeneutics, to be attentive to irony means that to under-stand anything at all we must engage in dialogue with it, listening and

responding to the multiple versions of what is coming to language.And reflexivity means that in listening and responding hermeneuticsstrives for two things: on one hand, to resist reducing the other to thesame by drawing the other into my world of meaning; on the other, tolisten to what is questionable in my own voice while realizing that no

party to dialogue occupies the atemporalseat of neutral spectatorship.As mortals we are finitely situated within the give and take of dialogue,where we find matters of common concern refracting in an open-ended play of language. The central interest of this type of theology isto open itself both to the otherness of tradition in its temporality andto the encounter with the human other through the tradition. Let menow indicate how the hermeneutical type of theology might interpretthe synecdochic and ironic moments of tropology.

Interpreting the Christiansymbolism of Karl Barth, hermeneuti-

cal theology can understand the figure of Jesus in the gospels as thesynecdochic inbreakingof the divine that gathers together self, other,world, and time. In actual existence, the self is estranged from itself,the other, the world, and God. Under conditions of estrangement, bythe power of God'sgrace in Christ,the self may encounter itself and itsGod in what is other than itself and God. In the drama of redemption,I-the sinner-may exhaust myself in the effort to be righteous inGod's eyes and hear only God'sjudgment. But the No of judgment

may become the Yes of grace, if throughthe preached gospel I findmytrue self in what is not me but the other I that I am not. This comeswith the recognition of Jesus Christ as my own genuine "I." Barthwrote: "He is the man who has passed from death to life. He is-whatI am not-my existential I-I-the I which in God, in the freedom ofGod-I am!(269)." These crucialwords record the recognition of the Iin the other and return of the I to itself in a new God-centered

subjectivity.

463




How does this image speak to the situation of encounter with oth-erness? For the Barthian,Jesuspresents a synecdoche of existence in

faith enablinga transformation of the self in its relatedness to

self,other, and world. The redeemed self is shaped by the images of the

life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Hegel can help us understandBarth: through hearing the gospel story, the self reenacts the stages oftransformationthrough blind estrangement (Jesus is first outside as

not-I, the other),recognition of estrangement (I findmy own authenticself in Jesus as other; I see his being as my own otherness),and finallythe overturning of estrangement (the I found in the otherness ofJesusreturns throughhis death and resurrection as my own, an I reoriented

to self, world, and God through Christ).Understood hermeneutically, this synecdochic inbreaking of oth-

erness means three things. First, the figure of Jesus presents not onlythe meaning of authentic human being in faith but also the being ofGod. How so? The symbol not only presents me with the "I"of faithas my own otherness but also discloses what it means for God to be

God-namely, not to be aloof, impersonaldeity but to be approachingeach I with its own otherness (Scharlemann:134-41). Jesus, symbol of

authentic faith, is symbol of God only through the cross of Christ-throughJesus'own denial that Jesusis God (Tillich:123-25). The sym-bol of God denies that it literally is God and thus affirms tself as sym-bol of God. Second, the synecdoche permits the unbeliever to remainother than the believer. Jesus denies that he is God and yet performsthe being of God. But in denying his own divinity, he grants truth tothose others who also deny him special status and do not see him as

symbol of God. The crossof Christallows the person who sees nothing

special in the figure of Jesus to remain other (Scharlemann:177-82).Third, the synecdoche allows for multiple appearances of the same

meaning in other figures. Barth, of course, would violently disagree,but we are looking only at the synecdoche of Jesus as appearance ofauthentic faith and symbol of God. How might this occur?

Consider Heidegger's account of the overturning of estrange-ment. For Heidegger also, the self encounters the genuine "I"exter-nal to itself, as other, where "I" should not be. This encounter is

possible because "For the mostpart

Imyself

am not the 'who' of

Dasein; the they-self is the 'who' "(312). In the mood of anxiety,antici-

pating my own death, Dasein firstrecognizes its lostness in the "they"and hears the voice of conscience as nothing at all-the nothingness ofauthentic subjectivity. The otherness of the nothing reveals itself as

my own otherness-my own authentic selfhood encountered outsideme in anxiety. The "I"returns, transformingrelations to self, other,world, and time, through Dasein's wanting to have a conscience and

resolutely setting the will.

464




For Barth, the "I"shows itself only in the person of Jesus Christ,whose being is grace. For Heidegger, the "I"appearsas the presenceof

nothingness,to which the will

respondswith resoluteness. The two

primaryexperiences seem to be irreconcilablydifferent. But the her-meneutical consciousness can understand these two experiences as

separate manifestations of the same event. I can understand myselfencountering my own otherness-the otherness of authentic life-atone time under the particular description of hearing the story of Jesusand at another time under the different description of anticipatingmyown death. In each case the "I" appears in what is not-I and then

triggers the overturning of otherness. Moreover, the reflexivity of the

hermeneutical consciousness can reconcile the passivity of Barth'saccount of receiving grace with the activity of Heidegger's account of

willing to have a conscience by seeing these as two phases of a singlestruggle in which my most genuine effort is met by an enabling power(Buber, 1923: 62). The crucial feature of the hermeneutical dialogueof self and other is the ability to understand the same meaning of

being-the authentic "I"-in differentappearances. Thispermits us toretain religious symbols as the presence/absence of the signified real-

ity. And it permits us to understand how other symbols than our ownmight manifest the "I"of authentic being in the world. How does thisbear on the formulation of God by hermeneutical theology? I refer

again to the irony in the rhetorics of Barth and Heidegger.For Barth, God signifies both the one final agent and no one or

nothing; for Heidegger, being signifies both the one connecting pro-cess and nothing. For Barth,God is not being; for Heidegger, being isnot God. But the hermeneutical consciousness understands the

doubleness in one language to connect with the doubleness in theother. Barth's language of God as one and only, the numinous pres-ence of God, finds its counterpartin Heidegger's language of the with-drawal of being in anxiety. Heidegger's language of the presence of

nothing finds its counterpart in Barth's language of God as not-Godand no one. The names God and being each point to the other forfullness of meaning, and that mutual pointing reminds us that the fullcontent of religious experience is caught only in the back and forthmovement of reflexivityas it responds to God (who is not God) on one

side and opens itself to being (which is nothing) on the other side. Theironic formula for the being of God suggested for hermeneutics is"God is God in the play of identity and difference between God and

being." This formula appropriates both the language of the whollyother God and the language of the meaning of being, while respectingdifferences.

The strength of hermeneutics to avoid the difficultiesof confes-sional and deconstructive theologies should be clear. By entering into

465




dialogue with symbols, it avoids either reifying or dispelling them. By

understanding the relation between self and symbol, it preserves the

openness of the symbolto the other and the other's

symbols.But

byadopting the reflexive posture of hermeneutical consciousness, herme-

neutics exposes its own fragility. Hermeneutics focuses on the primary

religious relations established between selves and symbols in texts and

existence. It demands a feeling for and a memory of what it means to

enter into those primary relations. But to reflect on the relation is dif-

ferent than to enter into it.

This poses the postmodern predicament for hermeneutical theol-

ogy: Can the second naivete of hermeneutics, which can orchestrate

various primary languages without eliding differences, recover the

vitality and power of the primary relations these languages express?Or does the reflexive posture, so rich in interpreted meaning, find

itself poor in religious experience? Its own relation to the religious

reality is always indirect, mediated through its understanding of the

meaning of primary symbols. Its gain of a reflexive stance and a reflex-

ive dimension of the religious reality seems offset by loss of primary

immediacy. This, it seems to me, is the price of hermeneutical con-

sciousness: to be and not to be in the presence of religious reality. Thejoy and anxiety of hermeneutics live in that tension, which defines the

postmodern predicament.

REFERENCES

Barth,Karl1921 [1933] TheEpistle to the Romans. Trans.by Edwyn C. Hoskyns.

London: OxfordUniversity Press.1942 [1957] Church Dogmatics. Volume 11/2. The Doctrine of God.

Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.1957 [1968] "Evangelical Theology in the 19th Century." In TheHu-

manity of God. Trans. by Thomas Wieser. Richmond,

Virginia: John Knox Press.

Bruns,Gerald L.1984

Buber, Martin

"Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Hermeneutics."Diacritics 1984: 12-24.

1923 [1970] 1 and Thou. Trans. by Walter Kaufmann. New York:Charles Scribner'sSons.

1938 [1965] "What Is Man?" In Between Man and Man, pp. 118-205.Trans.by Maurice Freedman. New York: Collier Books.

466




Burke, Kenneth

1947 [1962]

Caputo,John D.

1985

Faihler,Jochen1979

Grammarof Motives. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univer-

sityof CaliforniaPress.

"From the Primordialityof Absence to the Absence of

Primordiality." In Hermeneutics & Deconstruction. Ed.

by Hugh J. Silvermanand Don Ihde. Albany: State Uni-

versity of New YorkPress.

DerAusbruch des 1. Weltkriegesn Karl BarthsPredigten1913-1915. Bern, Frankfurt am Main, Las Vegas: Peter

Lang.

Gadamer,Hans-Georg1963a [1976] "The Phenomenological Movement." In Philosophical

Hermeneutics. Trans. and ed. David E. Linge. Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress.

1963b [1979] "The Problem of Historical Consciousness." In Interpre-tive Social Science: A Reader

pp.103-60. Ed.

byPaul

Rabinow and WilliamM. Sullivan. Berkeley and Los An-

geles: University of CaliforniaPress.

Gustafson,James M.

1985 "The SectarianTemptation: Reflections on Theology, theChurchand the University." CatholicTheological Societyof America Proceedings40: 83-94.

Hariman,Robert

1986 "Status,Marginality,and Rhetorical Theory." QuarterlyJournal of Speech 72: 38-54.

Hauerwas,Stanley1981 A Community of Character. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre

Dame University Press.

Heidegger, Martin

1927 [1962] Being and Time. Trans.by John Macquarrieand Edward

Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.

Holmer, Paul

1978 A Grammarof Faith. San Francisco: Harper and Row,Publishers.

Lindbeck, George A.

1984 The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in aPostliberalAge. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.

467




Lyotard,Jean Francois

1979 [1983] The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.Trans.by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minne-

apolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Megill, Allan

1985 Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault,Derrida. Berkeley and LosAngeles: Universityof Califor-nia Press.

Nelson, John S., Megill, Allan, and McCloskey,Donald N., eds.

1986

Poggeler, Otto

1963

Raschke,Carl

1982

Rendtorff,Trutz

1966

Ricoeur,Paul

1985

TheRhetoricof the Human Sciences. Madison,Wisconsin:

University of Wisconsin Press.

Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers. Pfullingen: GiintherNeske.

"The Deconstruction of God." In Deconstruction and

Theology. Ed. by ThomasJ. J. Altizer, et al. New York:CrossroadBooks.

Kirche und Theologie. Giitersloh: Gerd Mohn.

Tempset recit. Volume III: Le tempsraconte. Paris: Edi-tions du Seuil.

Scharlemann,Robert P.

1981 TheBeing of God: Theologyand the Experienceof Truth.New York: The SeaburyPress.

Soskice,Janet Martin

1985 Metaphorand Religious Language. London and Oxford:OxfordUniversity Press.

Taylor,MarkC.

1984 Erring: A PostmodernA/theology. Chicago: Universityof

ChicagoPress.

Theunissen,Michael1965 [1986] The Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl,

Heidegger,Sartre,and Buber. Trans.by ChristopherMc-Cann. Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press.

Tillich, Paul

1957 Systematic Theology. Volume Two: Existence and theChrist. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.

468




Vico, Giambattista1744 [1968]

Wagner,Hans1967

White, Hayden1978

TheNew Scienceof GiambattistaVico. Trans.by Thomas

Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch. Ithaca, New

York: Cornell University Press.

Philosophie und Reflexion. Munich, Basel: Ernst Rein-hardt.

Tropicsof Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Balti-more: The JohnsHopkins University Press.

469

Klem, Rhetoric of a Postmodern Theology

Documents

Transcript of Klem, Rhetoric of a Postmodern Theology