Colby Dickinson’s Theological Poverty in Continental Philosophy: After Christian Theology assembles a fascinating group of disparate continental thinkers to explore “a number of critical forays into subjects that refocus our understanding of the nature of political theology” (4). A reader well-versed in continental thought might view the word “after” in the subtitle as an indication of the challenges associated with a project like Dickinson’s. The author arranges his chapters around recurrent themes in the continental philosophical-theological tradition to unify disparate concepts—“Paradox,” “Negation,” “Grace,” “History,” and “Violence”—to assess what comes after one takes stock of what has been, and after one brings disparate poles of thought into conversation with each other. Historically, these opposing sides have repelled and discredited each other; here, the reader is asked to consider them anew, from several vantage points.
Both the Introduction and the first chapter, “Paradox,” serve as helpful springboards into these examinations and offer important points of orientation. As Dickinson writes, “If the poverty of theology is to become the primary manner through which theology demonstrates its relevance to our contemporary secular world, then it is only through its willingness to weaken its own identity that we might, paradoxically, perceive its greatest strength—something that was actually part of the initial theological deposit all along” (4). Thus, this section attempts to address the challenges that identity poses for any understanding of a political theology. By bringing a diverse set of continental thinkers—such as Theodor Adorno, Giorgio Agamben, Tomáš Halík, Jean-Luc Marion, and Slavoj Žižek—into conversation with an earlier generation of formative thinkers– Søren Kierkegaard (on faith as an embodied paradox), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (on the frequently misunderstood “negation of negation”), and Jacques Derrida (deconstruction)—the preliminary political implications of paradox are explored. As a result, Dickinson arrives at a fascinating insight into the paradox of identity, namely that the fractures that exist between the seemingly opposing frameworks of identity are false dichotomies. “Rather than opt for one over the other, the real challenge before humanity is to see how both can be divided from within, revealing a much more fragile sense of identity that might be more profitably deconstructed as well” (38).
The second chapter, “Negation”, Dickinson incorporates other key aspects of a theological poverty by invoking philosopher Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectics (Continuum, 1973). Here Dickinson attempts to examine “the relationship between transcendence and immanence, as well as between the sacred and the secular . . . to deduce the dialectics of negation as they provide another way to perceive how negative dialectics might aid theological reflection” (40). Engaging with Julia Kristeva’s This Incredible Need to Believe (Columbia University Press, 2011) and Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (Belknap, 2007), specifically, but also with important concepts developed by John D. Caputo, Giorgio Agamben, and John Milbank, Dickinson argues that “the possibility of access to a form of love, manifest as grace, that exceeds any human relation” (66) is what the aforementioned thinkers (especially Taylor) have attempted to articulate, but by focusing on just the secular or just the transcendent have been, up to now, unable to bridge the void.
In the third chapter, “Grace”, Dickinson traces Immanuel Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement (Cambridge University Press, 1991) and develops a new understanding of the poverty of grace. Two insights draw the reader closer to a fuller understanding of why Dickinson thinks the breach between the secular and the transcendent is not as wide as traditionally thought; his answer rests on how one understands theological discourse itself. First, following John D. Caputo, Johann Baptist Metz, and St. Paul, Dickinson suggests “we are called by Christ’s own kenosis (i.e., God’s poverty) to embrace the apparent ‘nothingness’ (or nihilism, a form of ‘infinite poverty’) of our being in order to find our truest self, thus only in and through our human fragility and poverty” (94). This will lead the believer (at least the Christian believer) to subsequently recognize that “it is only through the renunciation of the paradoxical relationship between life and death that one can find new life” (95). Here, Dickenson looks to these thinkers to address what René Girard and his interpreters—especially James Alison in The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes (Crossroad, 1998)—have attempted to explain; namely, that a radical inversion of the human understanding of death occurs through the event of Jesus’ crucifixion.
The final two chapters, “History” and “Violence”, directly correlate to what others have attempted to discern regarding the challenge of life and death. Dickinson considers memory and violence, themes recurrent in the work of both Paul Ricoeur and René Girard in order to demonstrate that his consideration of a theological poverty in continental philosophy in another way of examining the crucial differences between the temporal and the divine. Leaning on thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt, Dickinson lands on the intriguing observation that “the true poverty of theology must consistently search for ways other than through sovereign gestures of authority and autonomy to embody the double negation that typifies the basis of Christian thought.” (149) In short, a true theological poverty must look beyond the concerns of the temporal and the associations one would like to draw to lived experience and instead attempt to make the eternal manifest and present in the here and now.
While there is much to be praised in Dickinson’s efforts, I offer one point of critique. For the reader uninitiated in continental thought, Dickinson’s book will be challenging, and perhaps unintelligible for a beginner. Even those modestly well-read in political theology or continental thought may struggle. However, for those who have advanced interest in one or more of the thinkers noted above, this text will prove rewarding and insightful (I found myself saying “yes” much more than “no”).
Theological Poverty in Continental Philosophy presents a welcome challenge to those who work in political theology or continental philosophy of religion, and this study is an original contribution that captures, in exceptional detail, new intersections of thought. A parting call to action which sums up the essence of this text is offered by Dickinson in the conclusion, where he writes “it is time that Christianity, among other faiths within our world, acknowledges the profound transformations possible for itself, and only then for others, always however within the context of embracing its own poverty” (160). As an original contribution in the attempt to expand continental philosophy into the zone of political theology, this monograph is a welcome addition, one that will uproot settled positions and open new possibilities for thinking about political theology in our time.
Joseph D. Strubeck is a part-time instructor in philosophy at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Joseph D. Strubeck
Date Of Review:
September 30, 2022