C. O. Schrag, God as Otherwise than Being

Jacob Riley
Phenomenology
Dr. Davis
10/22/08

Beyond postmodern theology: A brief analysis of Schrag’s God as Otherwise Than Being

In this book, Calvin O. Schrag points to a way of solving the problem of how to talk about God. Schrag first lays out the problem as it has been formulated throughout the history of philosophy. By situating the problem within the tradition , Schrag’s position is relatively easy to read and understand. He also frequently situates his position in terms of other works he has produced throughout his career. Therefore, one should not be surprised that, apropos of his very first interest in Kierkegaard and Heidegger (in Existence and Freedom), it is important for Schrag to point out especially the contributions of Kierkegaard to his current thought. Thus, not only does Schrag very clearly make his main argument, but it also draws the reader’s attention to the insights of Kierkegaard (and many other thinkers) that are still relevant to contemporary philosophical discourse.
Schrag begins by laying out the problem of being as formulated by the ancients. Using Heidegger in order to distinguish between the ontic and ontological, he points out that traditional theology has been of the ontic order. This means that it has been concerned with beings not Being. He claims that even the medieval tradition of negative theology does not escape metaphysics: “Negative theology lays claim to a superabundance or excess of Being by attesting in a quite serendipitous manner to a “being beyond Being…even the denials within negative theology are unable to escape the strictures of a metaphysical grammar” (Schrag, 12). After the medieval period, an “epistemological” shift in thinking in the modern period of philosophy resulting in a narrowed the definition of “reason” different from the ancient concept of logos: “The disposition of the modern mind was to emancipate logic from the logos and restrict the reach of knowledge to objectifiable data” (Schrag, 18). Following the modern period was a linguistic turn toward structuralism that bracketed the referent and ignoring the problem of the naming of a real God. Finally a reformulation of the question came about through the ordinary language movement. It seems that the question of the names of God in the medieval tradition has come back to haunt us but affected by the modern project. “What is learned from these shifts and transitions, however, is that God-talk is a language game that exhibits certain linguistic oddities” (Schrag, 26). Schrag wants to know in what way we may be able to transcend mere linguistic games.
However, it would be a mistake to think that Schrag is talking about either postmodern pluralism or traditional atheism. Indeed, these are for Schrag only the next steps in our move toward transcendence theological discourse of the past. Theology, as a quintessential grand narrative, has undergone the postmodern critique like every other discipline because postmodernity’s main target is such meta-narratives: “The postmodern ethos would have us opt for local narratives (petit recits) and be done with quests for unification and totalization as we busy ourselves with a celebration of difference and multiplicity” (Schrag, 37). Schrag cites Habermas as a thinker who is bold enough to try and salvage some notion of unity, identity and totality against the postmodern thinkers. Schrag, as admirable arbiter, thinks there is a position in between the two, which he calls transversal communication: “

Across the various disciplines, the concept of transversality exhibits the
interrelated senses of lying across, extending over, contact without absorption, convergence without coincidence, and unity without strict identity. The play of meaning allows one to speak of commonalities and conjunctions that do not violate the integrity of differences (Schrag, 40).

Schrag admits that this is more difficult when it comes to religious discourse, but points toward narrative as a possible opening space: “it soon becomes evident that the use and abuse of narrative is very much in the eye of the storm that has occasioned the postmodern challenge” (Schrag, 41). The question is—is there a narrative that may replace the grand narrative of traditional theology?
Before getting to a possible answer, Schrag returns to what he considers as the birth of postmodernity: Nietzsche’s writing of the death of God[1]. Schrag defines this type of atheism as essentially reactive: “it calls for a negation of the concept of a supernatural being in classical theism as well as a negation of the God of cultural Christianity” (Schrag, 46). Nietzsche criticizes the weakness and pitiful nature of the God of classical theism who is devoid of power. For Schrag, Nietzsche’s will to power signifies a call to creativity, but devoid of any moral import: “What is required is a creation of the self informed by aesthetic possibilities rather than ethical imperatives” ( Schrag, 49). Another form of reactive atheism is found in Freud. Whatever the truth to his entire theory of religion as mass neurosis, Schrag thinks that Freud has pointed to the problem in classical theism of our tendency to anthropomorphize God. Jean-Paul Sartre is another reactive atheist who radically demonstrates within his own metaphysical dualism that the concept of God itself is a contradiction. God is the being-for-itself-in-itself. However, this is an impossible unity because such a being would stop being a for-itself because the definition of the for-itself is concerned with a becoming of what it is not yet.
Yet the problem is that atheism is stuck in the space of God as a being. What about God as otherwise than being? Returning to the tradition of the via negativa, Schrag reads a text of Plato in order to understand negation in a fascinating way: “negation, in the guise of nonbeing, should be understood specifically with the help of the superform of difference…Nonbeing retains an unbroken liason with being” (Schrag, 60). With a few steps in between, this points toward alterity and otherness. This leads away from God as a being to Levinas’ concept of God as Wholly Other; from ontology to ethics; and eventually to a semantics of the gift.
In their efforts to move away from the metaphysics of presence, both Derrida and Heidegger seem to move toward the ethical realm through Derrida’s emphasis on responsibility and Heidegger’s on Ereignis, or, event of appropriation. Levinas also critiques traditional metaphysics of presence through his engagement with Husserl. For Levinas, the problem with Husserl is that he continued to “think about the relationship between me and the other in terms of knowledge” (Schrag, 80). Instead, Levinas radicalizes and reformulates the notion of the subject and insists that the ethical realm be the locus of transcendence. It is in the concrete face of the neighbor that God becomes present, not through ontology or metaphysics. But how does God become present? Schrag locates this in the grammar of the Derridean trace. However, at this point the trace only helps him to formulate the question: “In what manner does the infinite ‘come to me’ as a trace in the face of my neighbor?” (Schrag, 82).
Schrag begins this investigation within the conflict between the priestly and the prophetic; the ethical and the sacramental. In the prophetic or ethical realm, temporality in Kierkegaard’s and Heidegger’s sense offers a new sense of presence. The coming to presence is not one isolated moment of time, but rather an “opportune moment” which is located between the past and the future. Time in this sense is defined not as a passing of moments, but as lived time. The emphasis on temporality marks a shift from the name of God to a focus on narrative: “The meaning of presence of the Deity cannot be captured in an exercise of trying to find the right name. It requires a broader context of considerations of narrative as a form of life” (Schrag, 88). Yet, presence still needs to be conceived also in the sacramental realm. Schrag suggests Jean-Luc Marion’s theory of the Eucharist as a possible answer to the outmoded theory of transubstantiation: Marion thinks the Eucharist in terms of a gift of charity. Even though Schrag takes issue with this because it is only works under particular authority and thus may still be subject to idolatry of the secular, he thinks Marion’s theory of the gift is useful.
However, it is this word “theory” that Schrag wants to get away from and instead replace it with praxis: “It is both linguistic and behavioral, text and texture, at once a narrative and a lived history” (Schrag, 95). In short, Schrag emphasizes the whole of lived experience: facticity, potentiality-for-being, embodiment, nature, culture—all of these are part of life as praxis. Praxis breaks down the distinctions of the sacramental and the ethical; discourse and action, etc. Kierkegaard’s “stages of existence” are useful to help formulate a possible transcendence: the sacramental and the ethical are lower than the religious. For Schrag, the “ethico-religious” stage is somehow related to the region of the gift.
At the beginning of the last section of the book, Schrag points to Derrida for his problematizing of the gift. Derrida thinks that when a gift is within a network of exchange relations, the giving of a gift negates itself as a gift. Thus, for Derrida, a true gift is impossible. However, gift giving is only impossible within a consumer based network of exchange relations. Schrag wants to see whether there is a gift that is located outside of our ethical and social life, which is stuck in this system of economic exchange. He finds this type of gift in caritas: a charitable and unconditional love as a gift that asks for nothing in return. Against Derrida, the gift is not necessarily negated as soon as it is given, if we focus on the aspect of acknowledgement instead of recognition. For example, “One acknowledges a former mentor by thanking him or her for the gift of knowledge…by becoming a mentor for others within a centrifugal space of reaching out to the other” (Schrag, 120). Acknowledgement thus sets off a chain of reactions toward others originally outside of the gift-giving, instead of puts a burden on the receiver to the gift giver. At the risk of oversimplifying, it sounds like Schrag has philosophically justified the ethic of the film Pay it Forward. However, Schrag does not want to remain in the space of the ethical. Instead, the gift transcends the ethical and, ultimately, anticipates the Kingdom of God: “although the Kingdom of God has not yet come, it has already begun to come, and it is always beginning to come” (Schrag, 135). For Schrag, this thinking is already contained in Kierkegaard’s philosophy: “To love is to hope, to be projected into the future, to exist as possibility. And it is as possibility that the eternal becomes incarnate in the temporal” (Schrag, 136). The gift is a manifestation of the event that is always to-come within the temporal realm. Schrag even gives specific instances of aneconomic gifts that point toward completed justice such as the saving of thousands of Jews from death camps in the town of La Chambon.
For such a short book, Schrag packs in a ton of ideas difficult to summarize. However, while reading the book Schrag never leaves you without a full explanation of where he is and where he is going. I think this book is a great way for understanding how theology got to the point where it is at now through the shift from being to becoming; essence to event.






Works Cited

Schrag, Calvin, O. God as Otherwise Than Being: Toward a Semantics of the Gift.
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002.
[1] Interestingly enough, Schrag does not mention the rest of this statement: “and we have killed him.” Perhaps it is because he sees it as tangential to his argument, but I beg to differ. It is the killing of the mystery of God in the metaphysical tradition that brought God down to our level. Nietzsche may be simulatenously announcing the death of the Onto-theological God and the death of God that was brought about by this onto-theology.