Graham Ward: A Minor Annotated Bibliography IV
July 31, 2010
Be it the gripping Torture and Eucharist, the insightful Mystical Theology or the symphonic On Christian Theology, books in the Blackwell series “Challenges in Contemporary Theology” have yet to not drastically shift my worldview after reading, and Graham Ward’s Christ and Culture is no exception (I can’t wait to read the rest in the series).
Despite the fact that this is a collection of previously released and delivered essays, there is a certain deep similarity in theme, style and content between them. These pick up on all the collective themes of Christology; “incarnation, atonement, the economics of the Trinity what it is to be human [and] the Church” (23) but do so in a manner steeped in discourses very distant to the sort of christology of predication that I’m used to reading such as hermeneutics, metaphysics and cultural theory. Topics like embodiment and the operation of desire also play a large role. (23)
Yet all revolve around very close readings of Scripture. Ward pays particular attention to St. Mark’s Gospel but Scripture is used thoroughly and uniquely all throughout this book. Even if one were to disagree with all of Ward’s conclusions, many of which are controversial, this book is hugely important as I see it for its christological and exegetical method(s).
Ward builds off Aquinas where in the Summa he says, “God is not known to us in His nature, but is made known to us in His operations. (Summa Theologiae, I.Q13.8). Therefore Ward asks not “who is the Christ or what is the Christ [but] where is the Christ” (1) … and I might add, “what is Christ doing?”
The introduction alone is worth the price which not only concisely lays out his own vision but offers a substantive and wide ranging critique of Karl Barth, especially his christological dialectics which as Ward sees it, makes of Christ “either the absolute subject or the absolute object.” (12) (This seems not too unlike to some of Rowan Williams’ critique of Barth, cf. – “Barth on the Triune God,” Wrestling With Angels, pp.106-149) Briefly summing it up, Ward lays it out like this:
“Barth’s dogmatic approach to Christology (a) all too thinly defines the economies of salvation in which the gracious love of Christ finds a responding desire; (b) this finds expression in the thinness of his account of mediations (c) such that his mediating christology remains tied to specific cultural assumptions about the subject and nature; (d) this binds christology to the logic of dualism, itself a product of a certain cultural heritage in modernity; (e) this logic and these assumptions, on the basis of which we develops his dialectical method, render him unable to reflect upon his own cultural production of christology. The world is so lost, so secularized, so ignorant of God that both Christ and subsequently a theology of Christ operate above and beyond such a world, in contradistinction to it.” (14-15)
Of the Ward books I’ve read, this and his Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice were the ones that really captured my imagination. It is important in its own right (or seems like it to me at least) but also in that it renders such criticisms as “RO doesn’t deal with Christ or the Bible or discipleship seriously enough” in need of more evidence. And it also disrupts the all too common saying I hear, that Ward is some sort of exception to RO, “Ward I can take, Milbank I can’t.” Nevertheless, Ward would not want to be holed up on a “side” in contemporary theology.
I can’t wait to reread this one…hopefully I’ll make more strides toward comprehending the details.
Graham Ward: A Minor Annotated Bibliography II
June 16, 2010
See part I here. Also, I hope to make all of these into a PDF at the end so you should be able to download it.
I hope I did not seem to be too sure of myself when I said that Ward ‘saw weaknesses’ in Cities of God, as if somehow I am a fit enough mind to make such a judgement. This conclusion becomes clear in the second book in Ward’s Cities Trilogy, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice.
Whereas I found Cities to be unsystematic and somewhat obscure, this book was a beacon of rigorous and focused thinking. This must be in part because he asks three questions in this book and focuses exclusively on them:
“From What Place Does Theology Speak?”
“How Do Cultures Change?” and
“What Is The Relationship Between Religious Practices and Cultural Transformation?”
To examine the first question, Ward (who is no novice with respect to the theology of Barth) examines the relationship between Barth’s theology and his biographical context. How do various and specific pressures on Barth work themselves out in his theology? The answer, unsurprisingly, is that Barth’s work was profoundly shaped by the various situations and motivations that worked on him and directed his mind. This is might be a controversial thing to say for those Barthinians who really think Barth explicated a “pure dogmatics of the Word,” but there is simply no “pure” anything so they’ll just have to get over it.
In examining how cultures change, Ward draws often on the work of Paul Ricoeur, as he does in his third section, to yield some sweet fruit. This second chapter pays particular attention to the cultural structures and poetics that affect our praxis. Within this he draws out how to understand the thinking “subject,” argues for “standpoint epistemology” and much besides. He corrects the passive and impotent subject of Foucault and shows how intentionality and imagination enable people not to be content with being merely acted upon yet also how we don’t come up with ideas ex nihilo but draw and pro-ject from available resources.
The third chapter more clearly examines cultural change with reference to the practices of small groups with particular attention to Christian practice. In order to do this Ward explains Benedict Anderson’s understanding of relationships as “imaginary” and moves on to talk about “authority” and “rhetoric” and even how the public sphere is created.
This book was concise, tightly and well argued, and made for exciting possibilities in how to think about many topics from doctrinal change to the situatedness of all discourses. I would recommend it to any Barthinian and to anyone doing or thinking about theology or any academic practice for that matter; not only because it complexifies the “assured results of modern scholarship” and also of any “pure dogmatics” but also, it’s just a tintilating read.
Graham Ward: A Minor Annotated Bibliography, Part I
June 14, 2010
This last semester, in order to fulfill some of my Liberal Arts requirements, I took a sociology class on “Cities and Social Change.” A large part of the class is dedicated to a substantive final paper. As I look for chances to combine my schooling with my theological interests, not formally studying theology at this time, I decided to write my paper on the work of Church of England theologian Graham Ward; more specifically his three volume work on Cities. These three are Cities of God, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice, and The Politics of Discipleship.
I drew on several other sources as well including the two volumes that he edited and which I reviewed on this blog, The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader and The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology. Especially useful was the introduction to The Postmodern God which engages with a theology of cyberspace. Additionally I read through portions of Christ and Culture and Theology and Contemporary Critical Theory.
It was my original intention to compose a roughly 30 page systematic summary of his cities work but found out (later than I should have liked) that the paper was to be much shorter so I had to completely redo it. In the end I focused specifically on the “Disappearance of the Body in the Postmodern City and the Theological Difference.” Even here I had only space and time to interact mostly with Cities of God, though I also took a fair amount from Discipleship and skipped nearly entirely over Cultural Transformation. I certainly learned a lot about paper writing as I tried to make this my first “real” academic paper. I think I did pretty poorly to be honest.
But what I can do is give a couple notes about approaching Ward and a bit about those books which I was able to work through. We’ll start with his Cities ‘Trilogy.’
Cities of God is a work in the (in)famous Radical Orthodoxy Series published on Routledge. It is divided in three parts. In part one Ward gives genealogies of both “The Modern City – Cities of Eternal Aspiration,” and “The Postmodern City – Cities of Eternal Desire.” In them he traces the fragmentation and social atomism of the body and, if you tie in a future chapter (as I think he should have) – “Communities of Desire” – with this part it ends up making what is to me a persuasive case for Ward’s reading of both cities.
In part two Ward proceeds to outline an “Analogical Worldview” which he thinks that Christian theology can offer. This analogical worldview heals atomism and fragmentation by a sketch of how we are made whole in the Body of Christ. It is here that he also outlines a theological account of the body, drawing in surprising ways on Karl Barth, and a Christian picture of desire.
In Part three, by examining several contemporary ‘angelologies,’ Ward reframes his previous discussion with reference to “Theology and the Practices of Contemporary Living.”
I was surprised to have mixed feelings about this book. I came into it quite sympathetic but I felt at the end as if he opened up more problems and unexplored rabbit holes than he did provide what seemed to me to be sufficient answers. He didn’t maintain a coherent argument throughout; for instance at least one chapter had already been released as an independent essay. Ward was his strongest when he was describing the cultural maladies that beset us in our contemporary urban context.
If one was to approach Ward’s work on cities I would first direct them to The Politics of Discipleship where he plays on many of the same themes as Cities but has obviously spent more time reflecting on weaknesses inherent in this book. I will give a few more critiques after the next two books in the series.
Review: “The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology”
March 28, 2010
- “The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology”
- Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell (November 30, 2004)
- ISBN-10: 1405127198
- ISBN-13: 978-1405127196
My thanks to Blackwell for the review copy!
Church of England clergyman Graham Ward, professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics at the University of Manchester is most notably (notoriously?) known in academic circles as being heavily involved in the so-called “Radical Orthodoxy” movement. But what isn’t often noticed is that Ward has also over the years invested much scholarly energy in bringing continental critical theory into conversation with theology. As I mentioned previously he has written an introductory book of sorts well worth the cost (the book is unjustifiably expensive). That book provides a solid foundation to build on from which one cannot go wrong by then investing time and energy in the collection of essays which he edited, ‘The Postmodern God,” that I reviewed here.
Ward considers “The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology” a continuation of that work and I believe it is best read in conversation with the Postmodern God. Postmodern Theology is another collection of essays dealing in many and various ways with the perceived shift in theological method and exploration in lieu of the demise of the Western narrative of cultural, intellectual and moral progress. This Companion extends the second part of the Postmodern God creating an even more comprehensive picture of how contemporary theology is creating new vistas and destroying old hegemonies.
The Companion is organized into seven categories or parts. In his introduction Ward notes that he was having a difficult time knowing how to organize the essays and had all but decided to simply put them in alphabetical order according to author but at the prodding of Robert Gibbs he reconsidered and came up with seven categories with which to organize the work. The categories are able to allow for the different emphasis’ and approaches of each author to rub up against each other, fill out or critique potential weaknesses, expand potential insights and create overall a more coherent picture of this branch of contemporary theology most in touch with continental thought. The organization can therefore be only a pointer and should not be thought to determine the essays prematurely. As with my previous review, given the nature of the collection and the sheer volume of the book, I will refrain from summarizing each essay but will point to the general structure of the book and its content.
Part I deals with “Aesthetics.” The reader is lucky enough to be presented with the thoughts of some who are not widely known in anglo-american circles, not least among them Mieke Bal, an academic from the Netherlands who has an insanely wide field of research from unique biblical readings to reflections on the paintings of Rembrandt, but also well known figures like Gerard Loughlin. Most of these essays reflect on art, be it paintings, movies or texts.
Part II moves into “Ethics” and features much material that most explicitly deals with traditional dogmatic themes (not that such themes are absent in the other essays, but most in this section will be most clearly understood by even those not familiar with continental thought). Given my own interests this proved to be my favorite section and is alone good enough recommend the book. The authors are well known in Christian circles and feature mostly “postliberal” and “radical orthodox” voices. Stanley Hauerwas and William Placher make appearances as do Milbank, Pickstock and Ward; Gavin D’ Costa and Mark I. Wallace fill out this part.
Part III relates to “Gender.” Several American women mark this section such as Mary McClintock Fulkerson and Serene Jones. The whole part is filled with female voices and the essays are excellent. Among the pieces, Virginia Burrus contributes a splendid essay which deals with the figure of Macrina in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Dialogue on the Soul and Resurrection and Jones examines what feminist theorists can gain from feminist theologians.
Part IV, with only three essays, is among the shorter sections but contains distinctly Jewish voices such as Peter Ochs and Edith Wyschogrod (I would have loved an audio companion telling me how to pronounce her last name). Ochs essay is helpful for someone like me in that it elucidates the larger Jewish theological spectrum about which I know nothing. I have a theory that that John Piper might have a different opinion than me of Wyschogrod’s essay “Intending Transcendence: Desiring God.”
Part V is concerned with phenomenology and is a phenomenal section of this volume (I’m willing to bet I’m the first to make the semantic connection between these two words). Most of the authors are French Roman Catholics well schooled in Husserl, Heideggar and Derrida. The most famous is Jean-Luc Marion (see especially his “God Without Being”) but there is a brief essay by the largely untranslated Jean-Yves LaCoste and a biblical essay by Richard Kearney, being one of several essays in this book dealing with the Transfiguration. Marion’s essay considers the “Formal Reason for the Infinite” and posits that the very conditions for knowing are themselves Christological. Joseph S. O’Leary’s essay on religious pluralism is also worth an explicit mention. Again, really good.
Parts VI and VII represent what has been called the “postmodern liberalism.” VI entitled “Heideggarians” and VII “Derrideans.” Thomas J. J. Altizer of “Death of God” fame makes an appearance followed immediately by Laurence Paul Hemming on prayer, a more stark difference in product and approach I cannot think, but this goes to show how loose these categories are. The famous hermeneuticist Gianni Vattimo closes this part with an appropriately themed essay on how the Christian message dissolves metaphysics.
The “Derrideans” finish out the book. John D. Caputo is at the top of his game in his “The Poetics of the Impossible and the Kingdom of God” and the remaining essays by Walter Lowe (Is there a Postmodern Gospel?) and Carl Raschke, both widely regarded contemporary theologians, bring the party out with a bang. There is unfortunately also an essay by Don Cuppitt, a “radical” theologian whose influence thankfully was as small as it was short lived, being consigned mostly to the annals of British oddity.
As with it’s sister volume, Ward contributes an introductory essay to the whole edition and all the authors are introduced with brief bio’s, though considering the number of authors the bio’s are justifiably shorter yet surprisingly packed with vital and concise information.
All things considered this book’s greatest strength is also it’s greatest weakness. The material covered, the methods used, the insights gathered, are all so broad as to render the book frustrating when considering the implications in any depth. But it has so many great little essays I cannot but recommend this book. One potential use is as a reference book. A person would have to scrounge around a lot of journals, books and original language material to gather some of these essays. It makes for great “bathroom” reading material, an essay here and essay there for fun, challenge and edification.
But it works best I think as it was designed; as a “Companion” to the Postmodern God Reader. If you consume all or even most of the essays in these two books you’ve set yourself a very broad foundational understanding in the varied braches of contemporary critical theology from which you can go anywhere. This would be especially useful for upper (upper) undergraduate and graduate level readers who are still trying to figure out what the hell they want to study for the rest of their lives.
Review: “The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader”
March 2, 2010
“The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader, ed. Graham Ward”
- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell (January 13, 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0631201416
- ISBN-13: 978-0631201410
Thanks to Blackwell for the review copy!
I know, I know. We’re all sick to death of the term “Postmodern.” I’ve found the term to be drastically decreasing in it’s utility. I think that it can still carry meaning in reference to particular genealogies of “the modern” but I think we’ve all heard one too many people spout off about “postmodern” philosophy that haven’t but read a book by Tony Jones: Perhaps the daring may have read some Peter Rollins but generally the word has been tossed around ad nauseum both for attack and dismissal and uncritical acceptance.
It is for this very reason that this book is very useful. The Postmodern God is a reader in “postmodern theology” edited by Graham Ward, professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics at Manchester University.
The book is roughly divided into two parts. The first being a collection of essays by various influential and authoritative authors loosely identified as “postmodern,” relating to specifically “theological” topics; the second part is another collection of essays by more recent theologians who build in diverse ways off of the foundational works of authors featured in the first part.
There is a short biographical preface to each of the essays by the “primary” authors which not only introduces the author’s bio but gives a concise sketch of the larger “projects” which they undertook. I found these introductions to be spectacularly useful as I approached this book in self-study. If I had read just the essays I would have had a rough time knowing which authors works to pursue more for my own interests. Piecing these introductions together one gets a loose historical narrative of the development of early “postmodern” thought and how each author fits into the intellectual spectrum. In this way I was able to see for myself how, for instance, the work of Roland Barthes will be important for me as one who wishes to train in historical theology.
In addition to this, Graham Ward has written an introductory essay which is worth the price of the whole volume. In it he gives shape to what “postmodern” means (to him) and gives a vision for what he believes are necessary correctives to “liberal” and “nihilistic” postmodernities. Ward sees the information age as the logical and nihilistic pinnacle of the “modern” obsession with making men into gods. The internet eliminates all boundaries of time and space thereby creating a false omnipotence: On can access chat rooms in Argentina, databanks in Saudi Arabia, images of every place including a picture of the very house one is in. Everything and everybody is immediately and unmediatedly present to the cogito who controls and manipulates all according to h/er whim. Ward goes on to trace how postmodernity manifests itself in culture and gives a concise historical intro to the entire volume from Nietzsche to Cupitt.
It think that it would be rather laborious to sum up each of the essays but I will list the contents so that you can understand how wide the net is cast in this fine collection:
Part I
Georges Bateille: From Theory of Religion
Jacques Lacan: The Death of God
Emmanuel Levinas: God and Philosophy
Roland Barthes: Wrestling with the Angel: Textual Analysis of Gen 32.23-32
Rene’ Girard: The God of Victims
Michel Foucault: From The History of Sexuality
Michel de Certeau: How is Christianity Thinkable Today? & White Ecstasy
Jacques Derrida: From How to Avoid Speaking – think Peter Rollins
Luce Irigaray: Equal to Whom?
Julia Kristeva: From In the Beginning was Love
As you can see this features a wonderfully diverse crew: Feminists like Irigaray and Kristeva; philosophers like Levinas, Derrida and Foucault; and Catholic thinkers like Girard and de Certeau. Each of the essays are filled with potential insight and sparring material. They relate to everything from epistemology to “thick descriptions” of phenomenon. A veritable cornocopia of critical thought.
The second part features essays by John Milbank, Jean-Luc Marion, Catherine Pickstock, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Rebecca S. Chopp, Gilian Rose and Edith Wyschogrod. Notable among them for me were Wyschogorod’s essay from her excellent book “Saints and Postmodernism” and also Milbank’s “Postmodern Critical Augustinianism: A Short Summa in Forty-two Responses to Unasked Questions” originally published in Modern Theology- is an absolute must-read introduction to his larger “project.” It’s as clear as you’re ever going to get him to be, his language is much less obtuse and abstract than it normally is and it is a joy to read.
This volume is an outstanding introduction to “postmodern theology” that is both well conceived and well executed. It can stand alone, but it can also be coupled with another Blackwell collection of essays that I will be reviewing very soon, the Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology. I will also tip my hat to another Ward book that is very helpful, aptly entitled Theology and Contemporary Critical Theory. Though expensive I’ve found it the easiest to read of any “intro” book to these sorts of topics.
In passing I should also mention that Graham Ward is a priest in the Church of England and a prize for us Anglicans. I am currently composing a comprehensive essay examining his erotic ecclesiology through his “Cities Project.” Expect that at the beginning of the summer.
Greatest Living Christian Rhetoritician?
July 16, 2009
In many circles of scholastic theology, the theological discourse can take on an entirely dry and mathmatical flavor. As if, in perfect neutrality and impartiality, one is disclosing the secrets of the world. However ‘true’ some of these types of treatise’s might be, it can be understandable that I might lose interest. I’m certain of the fact that had I been tested as a child I would have been diagnosed with ADD.
I myself enjoy bombastic rhetoric. Rhetoric need not imply sophistry or veiled-falsehood. It can be coupled with precise argumentation and imagination and it can put joy into reading scholarly works. This is why Gordon D Fee can be much more enjoyable to read than many other exegetes. The man doesn’t pull any punches.
In the theological/philosophical world of today we have been blessed with a movement bravely entitled “Radical Orthodoxy.” Feasting as they do on modern Continental thought and mocking the false safety of analytical philosophy, RO, and many who could broadly fall under its banner, have given us royal treats in John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, Stanley Hauerwas and David Bentley Hart (among others).
But who among them can claim to reign supreme as lord of language?
There is of course Stanley Hauerwas. A feisty Texan-high church methodist (though I do believe he is Episcopalian these days) known for his powerful testimony against liberalism and for the Church. He has given us such treasures as
(in reference to “Atonement theories”)“If you need a theory to worship Jesus go worship your fucking theory” and
“Fighting violence with bombs is like screwing for virginity”
But I don’t think he can take the cake.
We might also point to the honorable ‘high-church Anglican’ John Milbank, student of the ABC Rowan Williams. Turning randomly into his “Theology and Social Theory” (an absolute must read) we can see him at work.
“Parsonian sociology attempts to conjoin the ‘liberal Protestant meta-narrative’ as articulated by Weber and Troeltsch. . . with the evolution of Herbert Spencer which was part of his English adaptation of Comtean positivism. In the Parsonian niew, society evolves through a process of gradual differentiation into separate social sub-systems: gradually art is distinguished from religion, religion from politics, economics from private ethical behaviour and so forth. The upshot of this process is (as for Weber) that it is now possible for something to be beautiful without being good or true, and possible for there to be a valid exercise of power without it having a bearing on either goodness or truth. At the same time, a realm of ‘pure’ science emerges which (as in Spinoza’s ideal of intellectual freedom) can pursue truth independently of coercive pressure, or of practical consequences.” TST, 2nd ed, Blackwell p128
But still he cannot out-maneuver the Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart. From his stunning “The Beauty of the Infinite” to his devestating “Atheist Delusions,” Hart, it is often complained, cannot be read without the Oxford English Dictionary as his vocabulary is composed of so many odd and normally unused words (not counting his own neo-logisms) that it takes ages just to get through a book. Be that as it may, he is never shy on vitrolic attacks on bad ideas and unbounded praise of the God who is God-in-Trinity. Here are two quotes taken at random from his “The Beauty of the Infinite”
“But Nietzsche also reminds theology how great is its rhetorical burden. The story of being that Christianity tells, of creation as a word of peace whose ultimate promise is also peace, looks so very frail standing alongside the imposing figures of “history” and “nature,” in their blood-dyed robes, trailing their clouds of contingency, cruelty, and ambiguity; the protological and eschatalogical tensions within the Christian story leave it vulnerable to the accusation of irresponsible idealism, or of an unwillingness to rein its narrative in when its messianic horizon threatens to engulf the clarity of “realist” thinking in a night of mythical abstraction (theology, not always unaware of this, even occasionally attempts to construct one or another kind of political “realism” of its own, even though this can be accomplished only through a series of tactical apostasies).127 – please note that that is one single sentence!
“What is truth?” – “If Christ, the eternal Word, is the Father’s “supreme rhetoric,” then the truth of his evangel is of a very particular kind. As soon as one ventures appreciably past the bounds of logic’s unadorned and uncontroversial claims (and sometimes before one gets that far), one finds that what is called truth is usually a consensus wrested from diversity amid a war of persuasions, the victor’s crown of laurels laid upon the brow of whichever dialectical antagonist has better (for the time being) succeeded in rendering invisible his argument’s own ambiguities and contradictions (has better, that is, concealed the more purely rhetorical moments of his argument in the folds of his apparently unanswerable “logic”); and into the tumult of history Christ comes as a persuasion among persuasions, a Word made entirely flesh, entirely form, whose appeal lies wholly at the surface…”331
Take up and read.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
