Giles Fraser has a superb column in today's Guardian exploring the implications of the incarnation. He begins with the American theologian Thomas JJ Altizer's work on Christian atheism:
'Altizer’s account of the Christian God being in a gradual process of divesting himself of His God-ness is a pretty good way of recapturing some of the puzzlement and shock value of the original Christmas story. “He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,” is how St Paul described the incarnation in a letter to new Christians at Philippi ...
the astonishing assertion of the Christmas story is that the God who comes as a pathetic child is all the more God-like for the total evacuation of power. It’s a birth story at one with what would become the central message of His teaching: the first will be last and the last first. It sounds like a phrase from the French revolution, with the mighty being pulled off their thrones and the weak being held up high. But it’s the buried message of Christianity, extravagantly heralded in the festival we know as Christmas. At Christmas, God becomes a child. Power is divested. Might and right no longer nestle comfortably together.'
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Bruce Cockburn - Cry Of A Tiny Baby.
Showing posts with label altizer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label altizer. Show all posts
Saturday, 20 December 2014
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
Searching for a post postmodern theology in art and literature
Interesting reflections on art and spirituality from David Jasper can be found here. Among those whose work is considered are Paul Celan, Le Corbusier, Ding Fang, Anselm Kiefer, Stanley Spencer and Bill Viola.
Some of these reflections recur in Jasper's The Sacred Community, part of a trilogy using art, literature and theology to explore themes of desert, body and community. In this book, Jasper draws upon a rich variety of texts and images from literature, art, and religious tradition to explore the liturgical community gathered around - and most fully constituted by - the moment of the Sanctus in the Eucharistic liturgy.
Jasper has written of the series that, with:
"The Sacred Desert ... my research has ranged from some of the earliest of Christian theologians - the Fathers of the desert such as St. Anthony - to writers on the 'deserts' of the modern world, both geographical and interior ... I have worked with art historians and artists including the prominent video artist Bill Viola, whose installations capture both the fertility of the desert for the human spirit, and the desolations of the desert of the modern cityscape. My work now continues this project, exploring the aesthetics of asceticism in the Christian tradition and in art and literature.
One colleague has described my work as a search for a post postmodern theology. I am concerned to ask where we might begin to find and articulate a theology as the Christian churches and their traditions in the West at least fall into decay. The canvas of my thought is therefore broad and eclectic, from medieval mystics like Meister Eckhart to contemporary radical theologians like Thomas J J Altizer. I have learnt much from the great 'desert' texts of the twentieth century in various disciplines - from Karl Barth's Römerbrief and Heidegger's Sein und Zeit to T S Eliot's Wasteland and Arnold Schoenberg's unfinished opera Moses und Aron. My work is therefore deeply interdisciplinary though at the same time thoroughly theological, asking questions in the spaces and interstices between disciplines and ideas. The aim is to write a new kind of (un) systematic theology."
Some of these reflections recur in Jasper's The Sacred Community, part of a trilogy using art, literature and theology to explore themes of desert, body and community. In this book, Jasper draws upon a rich variety of texts and images from literature, art, and religious tradition to explore the liturgical community gathered around - and most fully constituted by - the moment of the Sanctus in the Eucharistic liturgy.
Jasper has written of the series that, with:
"The Sacred Desert ... my research has ranged from some of the earliest of Christian theologians - the Fathers of the desert such as St. Anthony - to writers on the 'deserts' of the modern world, both geographical and interior ... I have worked with art historians and artists including the prominent video artist Bill Viola, whose installations capture both the fertility of the desert for the human spirit, and the desolations of the desert of the modern cityscape. My work now continues this project, exploring the aesthetics of asceticism in the Christian tradition and in art and literature.
One colleague has described my work as a search for a post postmodern theology. I am concerned to ask where we might begin to find and articulate a theology as the Christian churches and their traditions in the West at least fall into decay. The canvas of my thought is therefore broad and eclectic, from medieval mystics like Meister Eckhart to contemporary radical theologians like Thomas J J Altizer. I have learnt much from the great 'desert' texts of the twentieth century in various disciplines - from Karl Barth's Römerbrief and Heidegger's Sein und Zeit to T S Eliot's Wasteland and Arnold Schoenberg's unfinished opera Moses und Aron. My work is therefore deeply interdisciplinary though at the same time thoroughly theological, asking questions in the spaces and interstices between disciplines and ideas. The aim is to write a new kind of (un) systematic theology."
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Arnold Schoenberg - Moses und Aron.
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