The Economy of the Gift: Paul Ricoeur's Significance for Theological Ethics

Paul Ricoeur's understanding of the relations of faith, love, and hope suggests a unique approach to theological ethics, one that holds fresh promise for bringing together considerations of the good (teleology) and the right (deontology) around the notion of an "economy of the gift." The economy of the gift articulates Ricoeur's distinctively dialectical understanding of the relation of the human and the divine, and the resulting dialectical moral relation of the self and the other. Despite our fallen condition, Ricoeur suggests, we are called by the divine to embrace the radical possibility of the reconciliation of human goods under the requirement of accountability to human diversity and otherness.     

THE HOLY & WHOLLY OTHER: KIERKEGAARD ON THE ALTERITY OF GOD

In response to prevailing perceptions, I contend that Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) conceives of the wholly otherness of God via his dialectical category of the ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between the human and the divine, initially through the self's consciousness of sin and ultimately through the self's acceptance of the gift of forgiveness. Therefore, I claim that while the common designation of Kierkegaard's God as ‘Wholly Other’ may initially evoke the alterity of sin; it is not ultimately sufficient to describe the divine alterity which Kierkegaard regards as more faithfully manifest in the ‘impossible possibility’ of forgiveness. Through this reading, I finally suggest that the ‘Wholly Other’ is not ultimately representative of God in Kierkegaard's writings and might be more faithfully supplemented by the appellation of the Holy Other.     

JOHN MILBANK's THEOLOGY OF THE "GIFT" AND CALVIN's THEOLOGY OF GRACE: A CRITICAL COMPARISON1

In his theology of the Gift, John Milbank advocates a theology of “reciprocity” between God and humanity, involving “active” rather than “passive” reception of the divine gift. Calvin and other Reformation theologians are criticized by Milbank as demeaning the role of the human partner by advocating “passivity” in the reception of grace. This essay compares Milbank's theology of the Gift with Calvin's theology of grace, showing how Calvin overcomes the schematic options of “passivity” or “reciprocity” in the divine‐human relation, all the while holding much more in common with Milbank's concerns about sanctification and participation than has generally been recognized.     

Suffering the Promise of God: Engaging Oswald Bayer

This article examines Oswald Bayer's wide‐ranging constructive appropriation and application of Luther's theology of the Word. Bayer grounds theology in the divine word of promise, understanding theology and the Christian life as a vita receptiva in which human action is, from first to last, responsive. He pits Luther against modern theological evasions of the Word in his insistence on the distinctively Christian pathos of existence, and his ethic of categorical gift reflects this. I conclude with a commendation of Bayer's theology of the Word, a question about the relation between God's revelation and hiddenness and a concern that he may at times compromise the definitive self‐revelation of God in Christ.     

SEXUAL DIFFERENCE AND TRINITARIAN DEATH: CROSS,KENOSIS, AND HIERARCHY IN THE THEO‐DRAMA

Hans Urs von Balthasar's “Theo‐Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory” exhibits a mutual funding of a hierarchical ordering of the relation between “man” and “woman” and a hierarchical ordering of the relation between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The two hierarchies explain, illustrate, and support one another. Von Balthasar's oscillation between hierarchy and equality, particularly in the divine case, results in a tortured understanding of personhood where being in relation means handing oneself over to another with the threat of death always present. Von Balthasar's understanding of personhood turns out to be fundamentally masochistic. Further, difference collapses into hierarchy and thus turns out to be no more than repetition in the mode of reception, which then poses a serious challenge to Balthasar's account of divine and human being. Since the point of connection between the two is found in his account of the way inner‐trinitarian relations of origin are extended into the world in the sending of the Son, this is the thesis which needs problematizing. For von Balthasar, the kenotic nature of the inner‐trinitarian processions explains what in the life of God makes the cross possible, but this move ascribes something like suffering and death to the inner life of God in a way that undercuts the fullness of divine love while undergirding a hierarchical understanding of divine relationality.     

Pure grace?

Paul's theology of grace has been “perfected” (drawn to an end-of-the-line extreme) in many different ways during its history of reception, as super-abundant gift, prior gift, gift to the unworthy, gift without return, etc., often with the consequence that Judaism is figured as a grace-less religion. If we distinguish and disaggregate the many possible meanings of “grace,” we find in Second Temple Judaism not a single or simple concept, but a variety of distinct voices, and even debate, concerning the construal of divine beneficence. Paul does not stand apart from Judaism, but in the midst of this debate. The hallmark of his theology is the interpretation of the Christ-event as an incongruous divine gift (given without regard for worth) – a notion developed in and for his mission to the Gentiles. Judging from experience that the Torah is not how God evaluates worth, Paul locates the believers' symbolic capital only in Christ, with socially radical consequences from which we could still take inspiration today.     

AN EASTERN ORTHODOX CRITIQUE OF THE SCIENCE–THEOLOGY DIALOGUE

On the basis of both philosophical arguments and the theological perspectives of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, a critique of two beliefs that are common within the mainstream science–theology dialogue is outlined. These relate to critical realism in understanding language usage and to naturalistic perspectives in relation to divine action. While the naturalistic perspectives on the history of the cosmos that are predominant within the dialogue are seen as generally acceptable from an Orthodox perspective, it is argued that they require theological expansion. This expansion suggests an understanding other than the “causal joint” model commonly adopted in relation to “special” divine action. This alternative model renders the distinction between “special” and “general” divine action redundant, and is based on what has been called a “teleological‐Christological” understanding of the cosmos, rooted in the fourth gospel's notion of the divine Logos. The relevance of this critique to scholars outside of the Orthodox community is urged.     

THE QUEST FOR SELF-IDENTITY: TIME,NARRATIVE, AND THE LATE PROSE OF SAMUEL BECKETT

The long-standing problem of understanding self-identity has been most recently addressed as a matter of narrative form. Paul Ricoeur (1985a), as well as others, has examined how the discordant experience of time is structured by narrative form and can constitute an identity. This article attempts to extend his analysis to a reading of the late prose work of Samuel Beckett. While Beckett's approach to narrative identity shares similarity with Ricoeur's analysis, there are important distinctions. In contrast to Ricoeur's emphasis on the way narrative can order temporal experience, an examination of the works Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967) and How It Is (1964) serve to illustrate Beckett's experimentation with the generative power of the narrative voice. For Beckett, it seems that the very act of narration through time can give rise to problematic ambiguity and semantic multiplicity. It is argued that the literary works of Beckett complement that of Ricoeur's by attacking order and meaning; his texts show how narrating in time can distend, pull, and fragment in unexpected and generative ways. It is suggested that an appreciation of both the affirmative and negative aspects of narration are necessary for a complete understanding of self-identity.     

REVEALING THE INVISIBLE: GREGORY OF NYSSA ON THE GIFT OF REVELATION

In this essay, Gregory of Nyssa is used as a foil against both John Milbank and Jean‐Luc Marion in order to take a fresh approach to the debate on the “gift” and the theological ramifications for the structure of giving. There is a complexity to Gregory's thought on gift which has not been adequately captured by either contemporary thinkers. With an understanding of giving which both enables and nullifies human generosity and calculation, and a construal of revelation as God's gift to creation by which one both receives and simultaneously endlessly seeks out a vision of the invisible, Gregory holds together in creative tension the very aspects which mark the difference between Milbank and Marion: economy and gratuitousness, participation and passive receptivity.     

The Responsiveness of Pure Actuality: Unmediated Agency,Linguistic Potentiality and the Divine Accommodation of Speech Acts

This article builds upon the trinitarian theology of Thomas Weinandy, applying his elaboration of Aquinas' notion of God's pure actuality to the matter of linguistic agency. In particular, the seemingly contradictory claim will be made that God is more responsive to us (properly understood) precisely because he cannot perform the act of response. Rather, God reveals the pure act that is himself through what the article terms notional responses. These are the epistemological accommodations of his pure actuality to finite human persons in the form of speech acts as humans change in their relation to God. In understanding God's communicative agency as such, divine transcendence will be shown to establish divine immanence rather than to stand at odds with it.     

Stoic and Epicurean? Calvin's Dialectical Account of Providence in the Institute

Abstract: Calvin's account of providence demonstrates an awareness of the widely differing views of classical philosophers, particularly Stoics and Epicureans, on the subject. His own presentation stresses divine transcendence even more than Epicurean teaching had, whilst simultaneously asserting a more intimate involvement of God in the created order than any Stoic managed. The hypostatic union of the divine and the human natures in Christ offers Calvin a way of holding together the two sides of this dialectical teaching.     

ECONOMY OF THE GIFT: RETHINKING THE ROLE OF LAND ENCLOSURE IN POLITICAL ECONOMY*

The theological revivification of the concept of gift and gift exchange in the last two decades has provoked questions on how notions of divine superabundance can be translated into economics. In this article, I relate the thinking of Paul Ricoeur, John Milbank, Philip Goodchild and Albino Barrera to a specific economic reform that entails seeing land enclosure as inimical to the stability and fairness of an economy. I refer to the political economy of Henry George (1839–97) which takes land value taxation to be its centrally defining principle for a just economy.     

A PANENTHEIST READING OF JOHN MILBANK

John Milbank contends that modernity's attempt to establish an autonomous and secular realm for finite reality derives from a theological error originating primarily in the thought of Duns Scotus. Here both divine and finite reality share in a transcendental univocal Being that understands the divine as merely an extrinsic presence. Addressing this error, Milbank seeks to return to a participatory orthodoxy. This article will argue that in such a return Milbank qualifies in important ways the classical understanding of God's relation to creation and the divine attributes, allowing for a panentheist reading of his work that is both asymmetrical and dipolar in character.     

Law‐Gospel theologies of a state of exception

We address contemporary concerns with fascism by critically assessing the classic law/gospel relation in Lutheran theology. Karl Holl, founder of the Luther Renaissance in the early twentieth century, develops Luther's experience of the self under the divine wrath in terms that have affinity to what Carl Schmitt calls the “state of exception.” We examine similar non‐dialectical ways of relating law/gospel that nourish fascist tendencies on the right or left in North America.     

TELESCOPE + MIRROR = REFLECTIONS ON THE COSMOS: UMBERTO ECO AND THE IMAGE OF RELIGION

Umberto Eco argues that a mirror image is not a sign. At best it is a double, a thing that ceases to be once the reflected object is removed. Harry Mulisch narratively suggests that mirror images function metaphorically as gateways between human suffering and the divine. And interestingly, science employs mirrors and mirror images both to turn our gaze upwards and to show us reflections of our place in the cosmos. Tying together Eco's notion of the double, Mulisch's insistence that mirror images reflect humanity's construction of the divine, and the Giant Magellan Telescope Project's cosmic images, it is my contention that modern, telescopic mirror images are much more than snapshots of the cosmos. They are constructions of human and divine meaning that—signifying—pose the question, what is reflected: the cosmos or humanity?     

Cultural Meanings of Money in Medieval Ashkenaz: On Gift,Profit, and Value in Medieval Judaism and Christianity

This article explores the cultural history of money in medieval Judaism and Christianity. In doing so, it reassesses a historical narrative describing the emergence of a “new money economy” in the High Middle Ages. In the prevailing narrative, money is positioned as a causal agent: it is said to effect and symbolize the “profit motive,” becoming a locus for anxiety about the new money economy. But a close reading of moral literature suggests that money per se was not a locus of anxiety. Moralists had a sophisticated understanding of economic value and its relation to moral economy. Anxiety among Jewish and Christian moralists focused on the possible disjuncture between moral and economic values, not on economic value per se. Through close readings of medieval exempla, this article demonstrates that moralists regarded the economic act of acquisition as creating a moral value. When “bad” moral value adhered to coins, they sought to devise means for redeeming that value through penitential acts. This ideology, which was shared by Jewish and Christian authors, suggests that cultural assumptions about money were more sophisticated than a straightforward fear of the profit economy and profit motive and that the narrative of European economic development as a shift from gift economy to profit economy ought to be problematized. Binary oppositions between gift and profit and between an altruistic Christianity (linked to a gift economy) and a modernizing Judaism (linked to a profit economy) ought to be broken down.     

Gender and individualistic vs. collectivist bases for notions about the self

This article provides a critique of traditional psychological theories of the self that emphasize autonomy, separation, and independence, and ignore the inherently social character of the self Evidence from an empirical investigation of selected experiences of 84 white adult women and men who evidence two different notions of the self (autonomous individualism and social individuality) suggest that the culturally dominant notion of the self, rooted in assumptions of autonomy, independence, and separation, is but one orientation to the self A contrasting notion, social individuality, reflects a dialectical understanding of individuality and sociality grounded in an experience of social relations characterized by inequalities of power Preliminary research suggests that differences between women's and men's notions of the self are grounded in their different experiences of power These findings support a larger argument that research on the self in psychology must be grounded in an analysis of material social reality and reflect the dialectical relation of individuality and sociality     

Conspiracies of immanence: Paul Tillich,Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and C.G. Jung

Jung's psychology proffers a sustained reflection on the traditional religious question of the relation of divine transcendence to immanence. On this issue his psychology affirms a position of radical immanence in its contention that the experience of divinity is initially wholly from within. Though this position remains on the periphery of religious and theological orthodoxy Jung is not alone in holding it among moderns. Paul Tillich adopts a similar stance with his controlling symbols of the divine as ‘Ground of Being’ and ‘Depth of Reason’. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin understands divinity as the experiential energy of evolution itself working within nature and humanity toward greater configurations of universal communion as the basis of community. All of Jung's master symbols of individuation assume such an understanding of immanence uniting individual and totality. His psychology strongly suggests and contributes to the current emergence of a new religious sensitivity based on the awareness of the intra‐psychic origin of all religions. In his later writings he held out such a position as a significant alternative to genocide.     

Impassibility and revelation

What is the relation between divine unchangeability and the reality of change as implied in ideas of creation and redemption? Western Trinitarian theology in the 20^th century tended toward emphasizing the significance of change above divine unchangeability, giving it a modalist and Hegelian flavour that questioned the continuity with the church fathers. For this reason, it has been criticized by Orthodox theologians like Vladimir Lossky and David Bentley Hart. Newer scholarship has shown the significance of Luther's appropriation of the doctrine of divine unknowability and his insistence on the difference between revelation and divine essence for his understanding of the Trinity, which thus may appear to be much closer to the position of the Orthodox critics than to the Lutheran theologians criticized by them. There thus seems to be an unused potential in Luther's doctrine of the Trinity that should be of interest both for systematic and ecumenical theology.