The Image of Fish

Pingback from Tweets that mention The Image of Fish » Is Humanity Certainty? — Topsy.com @ 2010.07.12 - 11:02

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by THEOPOETICS(dot)NET. THEOPOETICS(dot)NET said: Is certainty a fundamental human value? New vid: http://ht.ly/2afw7 [...]

Comment from Blake Huggins @ 2010.07.12 - 13:54

Thanks for this.  I love Derr's piece.  It's nice to see this kind of thought getting some play on a popular site like HuffPo.

About the comments.  I agree that those are some important points, still I tend to get frustrated at the sort positivistic rancor toward religion that rears its head on posts like these.  Just for fun, though, I'm tempted to say that those commenters worried about there being "nothing there there" aren't taking that thought seriously enough!  Or, as Zizek might put it, those are right steps in the wrong direction.

It reminds me of that intriguing line from Deleuze's The Logic of Sense, "Theology is now the science of nonexisting entities, the manner in which these entities…animate language and make for it this glorious body which is divided into disjunctions."  Now, I would want to add a highly eschatological gloss to this and say, of course theology is about inexisting — I like this better than nonexisting — things!  Theology is about the exigency of calling those things into existence, of not being satisfied with what "merely exists," and allowing the possibility of those things to animate our language and our imagination such that we are open to the incoming event of the future, of the possibility that lies within but is still beyond what exists, demanding its irruption.  It seems to me that if theology is only about what exists, only about the boring, predictable state of things that are immediately knowable, then it is a disappointingly reductionistic — I daresay nihilistic — discourse that can only ever offer justification for the way things are rather than casting a vision of hope.  I am unapologetically Moltmannian here: whatever theology is, it's heart and soul must be decidedly eschatological.

Comment from Jesse Turri @ 2010.07.12 - 14:13

Callid, what a timely post. I just happened to be reading an old essay from John Cobb where he discusses what Whitehead says about this issue of subjective vs. objective reality:

"Whitehead showed that causality, natural law, and temporality are given, or derivative from what is given, in our subjective experience. So are novelty and freedom, and also the sense of better and worse. He shows that we have nonsensory perception that is more basic than that which is mediated by sense organs. It is in the analysis of this subjective world, excluded by science, that God plays an important role."

This quote from your buddy Tripp Fuller also came to mind:

"grasping at the ungraspable may be the beauty & irony of the religiously committed person"

What a beautiful, poetic sentiment

Pingback from Theology is not about what exists: a Deleuzian meditation at (Ir)religiosity @ 2010.07.13 - 08:39

[...] posted a comment yesterday on Callid Keefe-Perry’s latest vlog over at The Image of Fish that I think bears [...]

Comment from Matthew Gallion @ 2010.07.13 - 16:44

While we're sharing pertinent quotes, I'll share a quote from a man who loved to share quotes: Walter Benjamin.
Villemessant, the founder of Le Figaro, characterized the nature of information in a famous formulation. 'To my readers,' he used to say, 'an attic fire in the Latin Quarter is more important than a revolution in Madrid.' This makes strikingly clear that it is no longer intelligence coming from afar, but the information which supplies a handle for what is nearest that gets the readiest hearing. The intelligence that came from afar–whether the spatial kind from foreign countries or the temporal kind of tradition–possessed an authority which gave it validity, even when it was not subject to verification. Information, however, lays claim to prompt verifiability. The prime requirement is that it appear 'understandable in itself.' Often it is no more exact than the intelligence of earlier centuries was. But while the latter was inclined to borrow from the miraculous, it is indispensible for information to sound plausible. Because of this it proves incompatible with the spirit of storytelling. If the art of storytelling has become rare, the dissemination of information has had a decisive share in this state of affairs" (from "The Storyteller" in Illuminations).
I hope my theological endeavors are always something more of "the art of storytelling" than just the "dissemination of information."

Pingback from The Image of Fish » The Impossible Kingdom @ 2010.07.15 - 07:31

[...] direct response to anything other folks said, it is certainly prompted by the thinking going on in the comments (and Blake Huggins' post) responding to the vid I posted earlier this [...]

Comment from Callid @ 2010.07.15 - 07:58

Alright all, I've got another related set of thoughts on that here: http://theimageoffish.com/2010/07/15/the-impossible-kingdom/

Pingback from » Manifesting Desires – Tips to Attract More Money and Anything Else! @ 2010.07.24 - 10:05

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