Thinking Sacramental Presence in a Postmodern Context

1. Postmodernity and the Withdrawal of the Divine: a Challenge for Theology

Georges de Schrijver (p39)

A Hegelian process introduced religiosity into secularist institutions (p41). The holy invoked by Hitler (p41). WE must never forget our complicity (Moltmann etc); we must pursue justice; enter liberation theology (p42.. God's justice superior to human justice; modernity says society is fabricated, liberation theologians say oppression is fabricated; enter Lyotard (p43). In modernity' Deviants' must be assimilated or annihilated. Modernity collapsed with the Berlin  Wall (p44).

Heidegger: Aristotle (or was it Plato?): "to reach self-transparency and full presence to oneself becomes the grand ideal of philosophers and contemplative monkis alike. Translucency towards their inner core and towards the ultimate ground of being makes them participate in the deity's bliss of self-possession" there is a mirror image of the divinity's self possession and humanity's awakening to self identity which requires God's self transparency; and then, with Descartes, the ego requires God, so God under-writes human logic (p45); but this leads to the absolute rule of  instrumental reason. Two obstacles: the priority of permanence over becoming; and the tyranny of sameness over difference. Descartes (and Kant) lose their coherence if time is taken seriously; the "hic et nunc" is fugitive (Husserl). Heidegger: temporality bereft of a clear teleology ... plunges one into a sphere of anxiety from which only a poetics of awe and wonder may save us; the gap between being and beings smashes the modern (p46). The reciprocity of communicative "being" and the receptive mind (cf Rahner - KC) (p47).

Derrida: wants to go beyond the difference (difference) of Heidegger between being and beings (p48); our notion of presence is shot through with bullets of absence; Khoora is a place of negativity meant to keep us within the confines of ambivalence (p49). Our finitude is expressed not in either/or but in neither/nor (p50). Further considerations of Khoora (p51). Difference as total presence deferred (p52).

Bauman: Echoes Freud's idea that civilisation brings gains and losses; modernity offered security but not happiness; post modernity offers happiness but not necessarily security (questionable whether consumerism offers happiness - KC) (p52). The replacement of reciprocal labour and welfare with pleasure seekers and sensation gatherers, not building identity but avoiding being fixed; this applies equally to philosophers (p55). from the pilgrim to the tourist or stroller (p55); tourists threatened by vagabonds (p56) which leads to police states. Will existential insecurity prompt people to return to religion? This depends on people seeing intrinsic incompleteness in humanity rather than clinging to the grand narrative of omnipotence (p57).

Fundamentalism is a postmodern phenomenon because it feeds on insecurities, freed from choice, rife among the discontented 'imperfect' consumer (p58).

Schrijver on Marion: "... only those who are drawn into a radical receptivity to God's donation find themselves in a right relation to God" (p59). his view that life is a gift from God contrasted with Derrida's view that Khoora gives nothing except the disturbances and ambiguities we have to cope with, or Heidegger's neo-paganism (p60). While Marion (and Millbank) provide their own negative theology alongside postmodern nihilism, pushes towards the mystical and bounds sacramentality in sacred places and sacred times, away from the social context (p61). Sacramental light obscured by exclusion and excess which is an open wound where the presence of God shows its disfigured appearance: "I can scarcely imagine an abundance of sacramental presence in a world ... in which ... excessive glamour neutralises God's light, and dire misery ... calls out for mercy."

Conclusion: The vertical obscures antagonisms which the horizontal confronts (p62); suggests a "praxis of liberation" inspired by a non-truncated sacramentality of life, not easy after the collapse of the grand stories, attaching to postmodern theories which take asymmetrical reactions seriously (p63). "Sacramental contact with an asymmetrical God prompts one to take seriously asymmetrical relations in society and to act accordingly" (p64).