Luther after Derrida: The Deconstructive Drive of Theology 9781978713925, 9781978713932, 1978713924

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations of Works Cited
Tremors
Reading Luther after Derrida
A Certain Strategy
On Metaphysics
Deconstructive Readings
Subversion and Displacement
Knowing Otherwise
The Posteriora Dei
Otherwise than Knowing
The Deus absconditus
Four Deconstructive Gaps
Sola Scriptura
Sola Fide
Sola Gratia
Solus Christus
The Deconstructive Drive of Luther’s Theology
A Happy Exchange
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

Luther after Derrida

Luther after Derrida The Deconstructive Drive of Theology Marisa Strizzi

L E X I N G T O N B O O K S / F O RT R E S S A C A D E M I C

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-9787-1392-5 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-9787-1393-2 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Abbreviations of Works Cited

ix

PART I: TREMORS

1



1: Reading Luther after Derrida 2: A Certain Strategy ‌‌3: On Metaphysics



3



11



21

4: Deconstructive Readings



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PART II: SUBVERSION AND DISPLACEMENT 5: Knowing Otherwise 6: The Posteriora Dei



65



85 105



PART III: FOUR DECONSTRUCTIVE GAPS 9: Sola Scriptura: Nothing Outside the Text? 10: Sola Fide: “Yes, yes”

41 43

7: Otherwise than Knowing 8: The Deus absconditus







137 139



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11: Sola Gratia: The Aneconomy of the Gift 12: Solus Christus: Something Happens to God

v



189

215

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Contents

PART IV: THE DECONSTRUCTIVE DRIVE OF LUTHER’S THEOLOGY

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13: A Happy Exchange

241

Bibliography Index



245

259

About the Author



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Acknowledgments

This work would not have been possible without the committed guidance, wise advice, and constant encouragement of Henk Vroom (1945–2014), who stimulated and nourished my shy early thoughts. Many people have directly or indirectly contributed to the realization of this book: to all of them I express my whole-hearted gratitude. In particular, I would like to extend my thanks to Guillermo Hansen for sharing with me his passion for Luther’s theology and for his creative and engaging theological insights. I would like to thank Heike Walz and Annewieke Vroom, who were there to welcome me, support me and ease my anxieties—because, indeed, the process of writing a book requires companionship, long conversations and, sometimes, hospitality. My thanks also to Katie Griffin, who patiently polished my English. And to Daniela Boyajián, who skillfully guided me to unleash my possibilities. I want to extend my recognition to Gayla Freeman of Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, Catherine Herman of Rowman & Littlefield, as well as to their staff, for their expert editing work. Most especially, I thank Hugo Quinterno, my loving life partner, who made sure that I could rest from everyday worries during the long time I spent on this book. This included thousands of household arrangements, tireless ears, clever advice, and countless reassuring hugs. Hugo, gracias de todo corazón.

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Abbreviations of Works Cited

WORKS OF MARTIN LUTHER BOW

The Bondage of the Will. A New Translation of the De servo arbitrio (1525), Martin Luther’s Reply to Erasmus of Rotterdam. Translated by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston. London: James Clarke, 1957. DDHC Luther’s Disputation Concerning the Divinity and Humanity of Christ. Edited and translated by Mitchell Tolpingrud. Lutheran Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1996), 151–78. LC “The Large Catechism.” In The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, edited and translated by Theodore G. Tappert, 357–461. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959. LW Luther’s Works. General eds. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1955–2018. SA “The Smalcald Articles.” In The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, edited and translated by Theodore G. Tappert, 287–318. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959. SC “The Small Catechism.” In The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Edited and translated by Theodore G. Tappert, 337–56. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959. Ser Sermons by Martin Luther. Edited and translated by Nicholas Lenker. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000. WA D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–2009.

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WML

Abbreviations of Works Cited

Works of Martin Luther. With introductions and notes. Edited by Adolph Spaeth, L. D. Reed, Henry Eyster Jacobs, et al. Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1915–[c1932]

‌‌ Since the works of Martin Luther are not completely translated into English, quotations of texts lacking a published English version are translated by the author unless stated differently. Citations from previously published English translations may be modified by the author in order to incorporate inclusive language, when doing so does not compromise the structure of the original translation. WORKS OF JACQUES DERRIDA Animal The Animal That Therefore I Am. Translated by David Wills. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. AEL Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. Translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. AT “On a Newly Arisen Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy.” In Raising the Tone of Philosophy: Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative Critique, edited by Peter Fenves, 117–71. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993. D Dissemination. Translated by B. Johnson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. DA “Deconstruction in America: An Interview with Jacques Derrida.” By James Creech, Peggy Kamuf and Jane Todd. Critical Exchange 17 ‌‌‌‌(Winter, 1985): 1–33. DO “Deconstruction and the Other.” In Richard Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, 107–26. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. DTB “Des tours de Babel.” In Acts of Religion, edited by Gil Anidjar, 102–34. London: Routledge, 2002. EF “Epoché and Faith: An Interview with Jacques Derrida.” With John D. Caputo, Kevin Hart, and Yvonne Sherwood. In Derrida and Religion. Other Testaments, edited by Yvonne Sherwood and Kevin Hart, 27–50. London: Routledge, 2005. EM “The Ends of Man.” In Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass, 109–36. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. EW “Eating Well.” In Points . . . Interviews, 1974–94, translated by Peggy Kamuf et al., 255–87. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

Abbreviations of Works Cited

FK FW GD Glas GT How

Khōra LI MoP N NY OG OrG OS OT PF Points

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“Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ within the Limits of Reason Alone.” In Acts of Religion, edited by Gil Anidjar, 42–101. London: Routledge, 2002. For What Tomorrow . . . A Dialogue. With Elizabeth Roudinesco. Translated by Jeff Fort. ‌‌‌‌Stanford: University Press, 2004. The Gift of Death. Translated by David Wills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Glas. Translated by Richard Rand and John Leaavy, Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Given Time: Counterfait Money. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials.” In Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory, edited by Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser, 3–70. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Khora. In On the Name, edited by Thomas Dutoit, 87–127. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. Limited Inc. Translated by Samuel Weber and Alan Bass. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988. Margins of Philosophy. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews, 1971–2001. Translated by Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. “A Number of Yes.” In Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Volume II, edited by Peggy Kamuff and Elizabeth Rottenberg, 231–40. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An Introduction. Translated by John P. Leavy. Stony Brook, NY: N. Hays. 1978. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy. Translated by Christine Irizarry. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Politics of Friendship. Translated by George Collins. London ; New York: Verso, 1997. Points . . . Interviews, 1974–94. Translated by Peggy Kamuf et al. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

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Pos PR R Sauf SoM SeP SP VR

WD

Abbreviations of Works Cited

Positions. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. “The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils.” Translated by Catherine Porter and Edward Morris. Diacritics 13 (1983): 3–20. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. “Sauf le nom (Post-Scriptum).” In On the Name, edited by Thomas Dutoit, 33–85. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. London: Routledge, 1994. Signéponge/Signsponge. Translated by Richard Rand. New York: Columbia University, 1984. Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Translated by David Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. “The Villanova Roundtable: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida.” In Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, edited by John D. Caputo, 3–28. New York: Fordham University Press, 1997. Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. [Taylor and Francis E-Book edition 2005].

PART I

Tremors

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1

Reading Luther after Derrida

MARTIN LUTHER AND JACQUES DERRIDA Luther and Derrida? Although it may sound strange, these two names may appear together—especially, when scholars wonder about the origin of deconstruction. Indeed, some contemporary thinkers embracing deconstruction, at the time of identifying their own work, evoke a certain tradition— actually, a “counter-tradition”—which, among its recognized bearers, holds Paul, Augustine, Luther, and Kierkegaard (Caputo 2002, 3). Derrida himself has acknowledged their legacy to deconstruction and specifically that of Luther’s. For instance, when asked about John Caputo’s work in an interview, Derrida remarked: “ . . . his book [Caputo’s] The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida helps me to understand how deconstruction is indebted, on the one hand, to Heidegger, and, on the other hand, to the Lutheran tradition” (Dooley 2003, 22; emphasis added). A couple of years later, he asserted as well that “ . . . the word ‘deconstruction’ is more closely related to Christianity than to Judaism or Islam. It refers to Heidegger’s Destruktion and to Luther’s destruuntur” (EF, 33). Hence, in the light of this evidence, the strangeness of this association of names could perhaps start to decrease. However, Derrida also made it clear that his work was not “Lutheran,” although in the same paragraph he stated that deconstruction was not alien to Christian and Abrahamic possibilities, and, because of this, deconstruction is “the memory of this tradition” and “affects this tradition in unpredictable ways” (EF, 33). The truth is that the relation of deconstruction with Christianity is a wide sea in which a number of contemporary thinkers are swimming—most of them, philosophers.1 Yet, the spirit of their works fades in the background of the interest of this work because here the focus is set on a small pond with an immensity of its own. This present book dives into what a “Master Deconstructor” in his own right set loose with his theological 3

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perceptions some five hundred years ago. Among the treasures the small pond keeps, there are specific aspects of Martin Luther’s theology, recovering the deconstructive drive of Christian theology. And to this, Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction may provide a mirror, at other times an echoing surface, and always a challenging conversational partner. DECONSTRUCTION, THEOLOGY, AND LUTHER When I started reading Derrida, as a student of theology, I found my thoughts reaching toward Luther over and again. At that time, I discovered different works approaching deconstruction from the fields of philosophy of religion and theology. Deconstruction was beginning to be received and critiqued by various authors, among them Mark C. Taylor, Jean-Luc Marion, Richard Kearny, John D. Caputo, Graham Ward, John Milbank, and Catherine Pickstock.2 However, in most of their works, the issue of deconstruction and religion is considered from a philosophical point of view, and Luther’s theology is not a main subject. Besides, among them, those with more theological interest are inscribed either in Roman Catholic theology or in radical orthodoxy.3 Altogether, up to now, I have not found a systematic theological work engaging Luther’s theology and Derrida’s deconstruction. Within this framework, Caputo’s work deserves a special mention. In some of his earliest works on the subject, he acknowledges Luther’s attempt toward the destructio of scholastic metaphysics (Caputo 1993a, 34; 1993b, 61; 1997a, 5) and even alludes to him in an article on a certain “postmodern theology of the cross.”4 In a later work, he reads a brief selection of Luther’s writings together with some pieces of Luther scholarship specifically on the issue of the theologia crucis, and also refers to Luther with regard to the deus absconditus (Caputo 2019). From a deconstructive stand, Caputo proposes a radical theology of the cross, one that can be freed from any orthodoxy be it that of Luther’s, of the Lutherans, Christian, or theological in general. In effect, Caputo reads Luther as a philosopher and “writes theology” as a philosopher as well. This may not be problematic for some traditions, yet it is somehow testing when considered from a tradition inspired by Luther’s theology. (As we shall see, the issue of the place of philosophy in theological knowledge represents an important turning point in Luther.) Thus, Caputo’s book on Luther and this book have little in common. They share an interest on three topics: deconstruction (as it appears in Derrida’s work), Luther’s theology of the cross, and Luther’s conception of the hidden God. Because of this, some textual references and quotations—both by and about Luther and Derrida—coincide; nevertheless, objectives, presuppositions, approach, treatment, scope, and general conclusions differ.

Reading Luther after Derrida

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With regard to Derrida’s own work, it was considered a form of negative theology from its very beginning—a claim that the philosopher obliged and disobliged with his readings and musings on the apophatic traditions. Later on, his elaborations on negative theology were accompanied by an interest in the messianic tradition as well, and theological concerns started to appear in his later discussions more explicitly than before. However, with reference to the interest of this book, there is not any direct exploration into Luther’s theology in his works. Surprisingly, Derrida and many of the mentioned authors have indeed worked on the reformer’s theological predecessor, Augustine of Hippo, and a successor, Søren Kierkegaard—both members of the above cited “counter-tradition.”5 The reason why they skipped Luther may have different causes that I do not engage here, but, all the same, the very detail is an enticement for this book. I find it nevertheless opportune to notice this: when in later works, especially reading Jean-Luc Nancy, Derrida started to distinguish among different “deconstructions,” he introduced an alignment between Luther and Heidegger that had previously appeared in Caputo’s work. As Caputo explains, this association is drawn from John van Buren’s book on Heidegger (van Buren 1994), in which Luther’s influence on the young Heidegger is traced specifically with regard to the philosopher’s task of Destruktion of the western ontological tradition (Caputo 1999, 224, n.3). It is in this context that addressing the topic of the deconstruction of Christianity, Derrida expressed that “if it is ever possible, [such deconstruction] should therefore begin by untying itself from a Christian tradition of destructio” (OT 60). As stated, firsthand reading on Luther is never reported. The point this book makes indirectly marks a stand on this sense: Firstly, because Luther’s theology carries an important deconstructive drive that deserves to be read and valued theologically. Secondly, because Luther’s destructio can be read some other way than through strictly Heideggerian eyes and—besides the literal use of the term—what is “deconstructive” in Luther’s theology exceeds this reference. Finally, it is my suspicion that, when Derrida acknowledged the debt that deconstruction has with both Heidegger and Luther, he was not completely aware of how much “his deconstruction” is actually imbued by some of Luther’s theological motifs. As observed, different authors refer to this debt—moreover, one of them tracing Derrida back to Luther even affirms that “Derrida’s work is ‘protestant’” (Schad 1999, 96–97). All this said, this work was inspired by the 500th anniversary of the sixteenth century reformation of the church. This commemoration invited the production of numerous projects of critical research around the issue and, most especially, around Martin Luther. In effect, the “Luther event,” which exceeds the historical persona, has been approached from a broad range of fields and interests, especially theology. The works of critique and historical

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review of Luther’s theological impact are accompanied with numerous contemporary theological reappraisals.6 In this wide context, a few Luther scholars refer to aspects of deconstruction and Derrida’s work in some of their writings, most particularly among them, Vítor Westhelle, whose motivating analyses I read and engage in different passages of this book.7 INTERACTIONS In any case, this book pays heed to the suggestion that the premodern prefigures the postmodern in certain ways and, in this sense, the thought of some premodern theologians is interactive with that of some postmodern authors (Caputo 2006b, 12; 2001, 57–58, pass.).8 This idea is complemented by the assertion that the postmodern just might help us to rediscover and rethink things premodern (Westphal 2002, 267).9 And I understand that this proposals may sound far-fetched in this context. Yet, provided that Luther is considered in some aspects a “modern” man and Jacques Derrida would not describe himself as a “postmodern” thinker, I use these terms as loose historical markers—thus placing Luther in premodernity and Derrida in postmodernity. Therefore, I set out to recognize the interaction that in certain ways refers from Luther’s theology to Derrida’s work and back—both of them placed at the periphery of modernity, although at different edges. My statement here is that Martin Luther’s confrontation with the hegemonic scholastic theology and the institutions of the late medieval church was indeed a deconstructive operation, a premodern example of what some thinkers delineated in postmodern times—particularly, Jacques Derrida. The ways in which Derrida elaborates upon deconstruction do not necessarily coincide with those followed by the theological perceptions of Luther; in many itineraries they just journey in parallel, but there are nevertheless some intersections. In this work I consider two important meeting points for their thought: a certain strategy and the delimitation of western metaphysics. These intersections, with their different emphases, relate to the deconstructive drive that traverses the work of both thinkers and open the gateway to productive conversations on a number of shared matters and motifs. As a result, I propose an exercise in reading and discovery. The general scope is regulated by the issue of how to think theology in postmodern times within a given tradition, and the focal lens is set on discovering how deconstruction is at work in particular theological elaborations. Martin Luther’s theological thought has left traces that we can still detect in our journeys and some aspects of this are evident in deconstruction as elucidated in the work of Jacques Derrida. At this point thoughts like “everything is fine but why should we care” might have popped up more than once in the readers. My response is that

Reading Luther after Derrida

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readings of Luther’s theological developments in light of and in interaction with features of Derrida’s work have the potential to revitalize and challenge contemporary theological thought. UNTAMABLE THOUGHTS A reader of Luther and Derrida will soon notice in their writings that they both strolled outside the methodos that the disciplines they practiced would have prescribed for them in their respective times. Throughout their works, customary arrangement of topics and understanding of concepts were challenged and dislocated while the usage of language was defied to express new possibilities. Luther wrote out of the urgency of his time, and facing debate or for pedagogical and pastoral ends sometimes he recurred to systematization. The richness and complexity of his production is evident: Bible translation, exegesis and commentary, disputations and treatises, sermons, classes, letters, even (recovered) informal table talk. What to say of Derrida’s work in this sense? His writings, including copious published material from lectures and conferences, can be considered within the frame of a predominant historical contextual genesis. If in a first moment his works witnessed to the operations of deconstruction within an academic corpus—readings on classic texts of philosophy, literature, social sciences, politics, and theology. Later, the political implications of deconstruction already present in those first writings found a more direct and contextual treatment addressing particular issues of current concern. Facing this immensity, the topics under consideration guided me in the selection of texts by both Luther and Derrida, together with the scholarly debate around them. Aware of the different schools of Luther scholarship, this book acknowledges a plurivocity of interpreters, recognizing authors of different European traditions along with more recent North and Latin American receptions. The same occurs with Derrida’s corpus: critical works continuously proliferate in these last years to the point of impeding comprehensive covering. Thus, besides the work of John D. Caputo, reference to other critical texts are included along this study, especially those that may shed light on the discussions. Since the interest of this book is to discover deconstruction at work in theology, it focuses on some philosophy and on a lot of theology. For this reason, different kinds of dogmatic and doctrinal formulations together with scriptural texts are quoted and considered—for they are, in fact, the raw material of theological work.

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A DECONSTRUCTIVE DRIVE The core affirmation of this book is that there is a strong deconstructive drive in Luther’s theology. My effort is set on illustrating how this occurs by means of an exercise in theological reading informed by Derrida’s work. The purpose of my task is to contribute to the critical contemporary reception of a tradition. Therefore, the general questions guiding this search are: In which aspects is Luther’s theology deconstructive? How do these aspects interact with Derrida’s deconstruction? How can this be read theologically in present times? The specific answers to these questions produce the parts and chapters of this work. Part I announces the tremors this work will assess. Thus, chapters 1 to 4 delineate a certain strategy that both Derrida’s deconstruction and Luther’s theology met at work within a given tradition. They introduce the main traits of western metaphysics and a model description of how Derrida’s deconstructive strategy delimits one distinct aspect of metaphysics: the supremacy of speech over writing. Part II deals with the subversion and displacement that Derrida’s deconstruction and Luther’s theology bring about, focusing on their epistemological implications. Chapters 5 to 8 focus on Derrida’s and Luther’s ways of “knowing otherwise” and as well their relation with that which works “otherwise than knowing.” Part III follows closely the deconstructive gaps that appear after the previous displacement, which have theological repercussions. Thus, chapters 9 to 12 approach the ways in which the work of the two authors produce a hermeneutical dislocation, introduce discourteous anthropological notions, make offensive ethical declarations, and imply a different understanding of transcendence. Each one of those four chapters reflects on one of the “four solae” of the Reformation. Part IV asserts the deconstructive drive of Luther’s theology. Chapter 13 sums up the findings and implications of this work; and as a small contribution to keep traditions open to the future, it briefly gathers what has become visible in this regard throughout this search. FOR THE LOVE OF TRADITION(S) Since Luther was a theologian and Derrida a philosopher, both separated by a five-hundred-year gap, some transdisciplinarity and time-traveling are done here, with all their benefits and risks. I underline as well that this work assumes that Luther is part of a tradition, therefore many of the terms and conceptions that his thought emphasized have a history. Nevertheless, the point I intend to make is that the theological

Reading Luther after Derrida

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ways in which he confronted such heritage subverted and displaced all those theological notions in a manner that—read in postmodern times—can only be understood as a deconstructive operation. It is in this sense precisely that sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, and solus Christus appear as motifs in the last chapters. In light of the postmodern philosopher’s writings, we will clearly see that deconstruction is in motion within traditions, and its operations search to honor and not to destroy them. Yet, as Derrida observed, we inherit because we are finite mortal beings and for this reason we are always obliged “to receive what is larger and older and more powerful and more durable” than us (FW, 5). The task is thus contradictory, and honoring a tradition involves some betrayal. Nevertheless, this work proceeds with the conviction that the reading and rereading of the texts arise always from an amorous commitment. Here I propose to revise some aspects of Martin Luther’s theology after the work of Jacques Derrida in order to illustrate how the reformer’s thought perceived and prefigured important issues that relate to our present concerns and on which the philosopher’s works may shed a provoking light. Findings are not expected just as corroborations but rather as a small contribution to keep traditions receptive to facing life anew. “Reading Luther after Derrida”: the italics want to emphasize the various possibilities of “after.” Does the reading of Luther come later in time, or does it follow, act in accordance with, or emulate Derrida? Or, actually, does it track Derrida with the intention to catch him? (For we may choose to read Luther after Derrida, but we are always—inevitably—reading Derrida after Luther.) NOTES 1. In his book on the deconstruction of Christianity, Jean-Luc Nancy expresses that “the ground of dis-enclosure is inscribed at the heart of the Christian tradition” and, because of this, the deconstruction of this tradition would be a task in and of itself (Nancy 2008, 11). Caputo considers as well that the project of deconstruction is an old religious project coinciding with the dehellenization of Christianity that goes back to Luther, to the first chapter of First Corinthians and, even further back, to the prophets (Caputo 1997a, 5). 2. See Taylor (1982; 1984; 1987), Marion (1982; 1997; 2008), Kearny (2001; 2002), Caputo (1987; 1993a; 1997a; 2006a), Ward (1995; 1996; 1999; 2001), Milbank (1990; 1997; 1999), and Pickstock (1997; 1999). 3. This is the case of Marion’s critical work in the Roman Catholic context; however, the works of Ward, Milbank, and Pickstock, which are part of the project of radical orthodoxy, leave aside Reformation theology—including that of Luther’s—as a sort of digression for their initiative of orthodox retrieval.

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4. I was rather happy to find an article by Caputo on the “theology of the cross,” but I was disappointed already by its subtitle: “Toward a Postmodern Theology of the Cross: Augustine, Heidegger, Derrida”—Luther was not included (Caputo 1999, 202–225)! As I read it, I found that the point was not Luther’s theologia crucis but Heidegger’s and Derrida’s divergent readings of Augustine on the issue of suffering. The reference to Luther’s theology of the cross was not direct but through Alister McGrath’s work on the subject, and although the book includes a whole chapter on the logos tou staurou, there are no elaborations on Luther’s theologia crucis (Caputo 2006a, 42–54). 5. Let us not forget that Luther was an Augustinian friar, and Kierkegaard was raised as a Lutheran (and commemorated as a teacher in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church). 6. Among those materials, the volumes of the series “Radicalizing Reformation” witness to a scholarly project of broad critical reassessment and prospective analysis about the sixteenth century Reformation and the impact of Martin Luther’s theology (Duchrow et al. 2015). 7. Among other Reformation and/or Luther scholars referring to deconstruction in their work are Bo Christian Holm (2017), Ingolf U. Dalferth (2016), and Steven Paulson (2003). Marcella Althaus-Reid deserves a particular reference. Her theological work—of Protestant character although not inscribed in this particular field— assumes methodologically Derrida’s deconstruction (2000; 2003; 2005). 8. The idea is implicit in some of his other works (see Caputo 1993a; 1997a; 2000); although Caputo had in mind some other premodern authors, mainly Augustine and those mystics over whom Derrida mused in different writings. 9. It should be noticed that this premodern/postmodern interaction is assumed as well by other theological projects, for instance, by radical orthodoxy. This work will not elaborate on this, but adopts from the beginning a different approach, specifically in what relates to radical orthodoxy’s reception of Platonism and Neo-Platonism (see Hankey 2005).

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A Certain Strategy

WARNERS, PITFALLS, AND UNPREDICTABLE EARTHQUAKES We are inhabitants of an age roughly identified with an accumulation of the “post”: postmodern, postsecular, postfoundational, postmetaphysical, posthuman. It seems that everything is affected in such a way that any definite idea the western civilization held dear became “post” (and the post-post is now under way). Nevertheless, this condition is not necessarily one of overcoming but alludes to a significant awareness of our limits. The processes of the “post” are not produced out of thin air; they are developments that accompany the global, economic, and political configuration of the world that spells crisis as it functions and implies as well the inadequacy of long-cherished cultural symbols of security. Our efforts in explaining those changes do not necessarily smooth things out. We are placed in an atmosphere of multiplicity and uncertainty: it is great to be “post” so many things but, at the same time, it is still distressing. As usual, the new assumes the form of a blessing and a threat, a tension always hard to bear. We strive to continue making sense of our lives when, in fact, the challenge comes from a situation marked by the consciousness that our vision will always be blurry, there are no precise maps, and the data the information office is delivering as certain are much too provisional. Going back to tradition and holding tight seems securing for some. Facing what comes with an important amount of cynicism and hardiness appears as the right attitude for others. Perhaps there is some truth in both reactions, but as we learn from history, fundamentalisms of any kind are dangerous, and nihilism seems just a path for the strong. Yet, we are always inside some tradition and setting it aside is almost impossible, and perhaps not the best decision; besides, standing on shifting grounds requires good doses of realistic 11

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consideration, which does not necessarily imply nihilistic cynicism either. If an exercise to search for some paths is to be made by a theologian always already inside a tradition, there should be ways of honoring tradition without relapsing into fanaticism or fundamentalism. At the same time, she will need to consider the circumstances under which such an effort is made. Western Christian theology has undergone many challenges since last century as its white male Eurocentric features were confronted with the mirrors placed before them by the peripheral, colonized, different, ignored, and suppressed. The many forms of “the other” have made themselves manifest in the female, the poor, the dark, the foreigner, the queer, the animal. And those defying disruptions continue carving many of the “post” signs that hung outside the academy’s doors, taking theology into new paths and old aporias renewed, always guided by the hope of unsuspected glades and openings. In this wide realm of contemporary thought, deconstructionists have been depicted as “warners” spotting the pitfalls of metaphysics (Smith 2003, 20), and deconstruction apprised as “a kind of salutary description of the conditions under which we act” (Olthuis 2002, 164). In this sense, I envisage deconstruction as a challenging companion when reading a given tradition— especially when its heritage is one to which deconstruction itself is indebted.1 Heritage In effect, Christian theology has been read and reread nonstop since its beginnings, and here I am particularly drawn by the reading laboriously made by a friar who, in order to honor the tradition, had to confront the official guardians of his time. His being able to utter (and perform) his “hier stehe ich” before Church and Empire can be perceived five hundred years later as an act fueled neither by fanaticism nor cynicism but by faith and with fear and trembling. Although recent critical reassessment provides an important amount of material for warnings and disclaimers regarding this heritage and its reception throughout time, the incommensurability of the event of the Reformation still keeps the inheritors at work. All things considered, current readers of Luther’s legacy, claim a “reforming dynamic” operating in this theology (Rasmussen and Moe-Lobeda 1998). And they relate such dynamic to the versatility of a “code” conforming a “compelling and flexible web of belief” that keeps this tradition—born in the periphery of a declining empire—open and rehearsing a constant plurality of interpretations (Hansen 2009, 25–26). Moreover, they think that features of this legacy “are resources well suited to engage pressing contemporary questions” (Solberg 1997, 10), affirm that this tradition “in the twenty-first century is vibrant and multifaceted” (Streufert 2010, 2), and detect that Reformation and reformer actually work as “catalysts for momentous occasions and

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characters in other times and other places” (Westhelle 2016, 3). This work upholds that dynamics, versatility, vibrancy, and catalyst power refer to the deconstructive drive expressed through Luther’s theology, which operates in spite of itself and the ankylosing processes of human structural limitations. It is in this sense that aspects of the premodern and the postmodern can meet in the conversations generated around one tradition. By the second half of the twentieth century, when the criticism of modernity had already drafted many itineraries, Jacques Derrida started to delineate in his work the operation that later would be tagged “deconstruction.” The name has a history and the relations closer in time are Husserl’s Abbau and Heidegger’s Destruktion,2 but centuries before—as some authors observe— an Augustinian friar facing the scholastic theology of his age had pronounced it and prefigured it in Latin: destructio.3 I have already referred to this inheritance, and to the fact that Derrida recognizes it, but at the same time distances himself from it. And this is a gesture pointing out the responsibility that the faithful reader of tradition always faces: the challenge of keeping the memory and at the very same time, the chance of exposing it to the future. What different forms might Christianity take in the course of the 21st century? We cannot foresee—nevertheless, Derrida asserts that Christianity is perhaps “the religion that is more prepared, more apt, to transform itself,” and closes his remark with the feeling that, in this sense, some “unpredictable earthquake” is happening to Christianity (EF, 33). In which ways can this encounter enlighten our present condition? One of my claims is that Luther’s theology describes a “certain strategy” that Derrida spells out in his works on deconstruction—and this is, in fact, one meeting point for these two thinkers. As a way to start the reading of Luther after Derrida, let’s go over some of the basics of both deconstruction and the sixteenth century reformation. A GENERAL STRATEGY OF DECONSTRUCTION Delineating Earthquakes Reading and rereading different texts of the western tradition, Derrida focused on the peculiarities that western thought drags from its inception and the restrictions that its ways impose on our portrayal of reality. Exposing the contingency of the institutions, beliefs, and practices that structure our world, his work affirms the “deconstructibility” of those historical constructions— that is, how such structures are built up and how they can be built down and rebuilt. What Derrida uncovered is a process at work inside the metaphysical principles grounding the traditions and institutions that shape reality as it is

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conceived and spread by the dominant western culture. And, in spite of the fact that those foundations appear unchallengeable and everlasting, he perceived how they are continuously defied by what he described as a “general strategy of deconstruction” (Pos, 41; MoP, 329–30). This strategy shows that deconstruction is not a method or some tool that can be used on things from the outside, but rather something that happens and which happens inside. Besides, it is something that occurs within any given structure (VR, 9). Thus, the strategy implies that, on the one hand, every construction is deconstructible; on the other hand, deconstruction cannot be conducted or monitored from a privileged external vantage point. In effect, this operation’s movements are only feasible because they inhabit the structures; they are a part of the unthought syntax of their configuration (OG, 24). In effect, any particular metaphysical system is created by a complicated network of opposing forces that are continually in conflict, and, no matter how balanced it may appear, it is always predisposed to build up violence. Thus, in traditional conceptual oppositions, “we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-vis, but with a violent hierarchy” (Pos, 41). Within the western metaphysical articulation, one of the terms of opposition always exercises greater control over the other, and the worst violence consists of dominance and control systematically aimed toward the erasure of difference. One possibility of changing this state of things has historically been represented by the path of subversion, that is, upturning the opposition, making what is up go down and allowing what is down be up. And this is considered a necessary step within the strategy: “To deconstruct the opposition is first, at a given moment, to overthrow the hierarchy. To neglect this phase of inversion is to forget the conflictual and subordinating structure of the opposition” (Pos, 41). However, observing what happens at the conceptual and nonconceptual orders in this regard, the fact is that when oppositions are only subverted, hierarchy is overthrown but immediately re-created. In effect, hierarchy is not a fixed cast but a dynamic of structuration. Consequently, there is no real change in a succession of enthronements and dethronements for this ends in “more of the same.” What, according to the strategy, keeps deconstruction at work is the possibility of producing a general displacement of the system. It is only on this condition, Derrida describes, “that deconstruction will provide itself the means with which to intervene in the field of oppositions that it criticizes” (MoP, 329). Since the oppositions supporting any created structure are constantly reproducing relations of hierarchy, the dismantling of such oppositions could only come from overturning and displacement (MoP, 329–30). The deconstructive strategy displaces the idealizing hierarchy of conceptions not by canceling the oppositions but by allowing the emergence of something new, something that could never have been understood in the

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previous order. If we try to map this rationally, we perceive that such an irruption of the new does not come through a total resolution or sublation of difference as happens in the syllogistic process of speculative dialectics: it is not Hegelian Aufhebung. As Derrida affirms, the deconstructive strategy is not for the sake of “appeasement or reconciliation” (Pos, 44); what emerges is something “other,” which never constitutes a synthetic third term but inhabits the opposition, resisting it and disorganizing it, being dissonant with the current order. Such an unpredicted emergence defies conceptualization and haunts constantly the ideal organization of metaphysical constructions. Derrida refers to this with terms such as “disconcerting simul” (D, 6), “undecidable” (D, 229; SeP, 64), and “double bind” (SeP, 64).4 The resistance of the strategy to follow the path of classical dialectics exposes the modus operandi of metaphysical thought. As Rodolphe Gasché, echoing Levinas, observes: “Western philosophy is in essence the attempt to domesticate Otherness” (Gasché 1986, 101). In fact, the dialectical sublation of contradiction operates with the purpose of keeping meaning and knowledge secure. Contrariwise, deconstruction longs for the coming of what is other, which cannot be appropriated by the syntax of metaphysical conceptualization, and remains heterogeneous both to dialectics and to what is calculable. This irreducible alterity upsets the very production of concepts generating a “no way out” that destabilizes the grounding of thought. As a result, language and linguistics implode in their effort to offer a rational account of that which escapes knowledge. This is what Derrida means by displacement: the structure is no longer the same because something unexpected emerges dislocating the whole field of relations that configure it. In sum, the strategy of deconstruction happens within established notions disrupting the peaceful harmony of their functioning—for harmony is, more often than not, another name for violence. In fact, the tremors of deconstruction are indefatigable reminders that something is always wrong with our conceptualizations, all of them inclined to close their structures in self-security, building mechanisms of exclusion and rejection of the different. Yet, this strategy understands that grabbing the scepter out of the tyrant’s hand is not enough, since this would just re-create the same old violent order once and again. It proposes instead the difficult task of displacing structures in order to make room for justice, which always comes as the unthought-of. Since opposition, hierarchy, and dominion are continuously being built up in our conceptions and constructions, the strategy engages an ongoing process. In this sense, deconstruction harbors what Derrida would express as a “desire for the impossible” (Dooley 2003, 29). This animates everyday life in the search for justice. As inhabitants of traditions, we are always challenged to prevent the suffocation of structures by looking for the fissures and gaps that the earthquake opens. It is a way of keeping both the desire for memory and

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the exposure to the future, of inhabiting the tension between memory and chance (PR, 20). The Onset of an Earthquake Considering the reformation of the church in the sixteenth century, Luther’s Ninety-five Theses (1517) are broadly regarded as the first act of contestation, the beginning of “subversion,” so to speak. In reality, these Theses were arguments facing the dynamics displayed around the selling of indulgences in the Brandenburg area under the responsibility of the archbishop of Mainz,5 and they were issued by a faithful religious man whose intentions were to hold a theological discussion on what he perceived as a source of confusion and danger for the believers. At that time, Luther was unaware of the fact that he was moving in a powerful arena and the circumstance that he himself became a factor in such an arena exceeded the religious and theological causes. As Martin Brecht states, “When Luther appeared, speaking and acting independently, his involvement in a concrete political and social context also became inevitable” (Brecht 1985, 113). Later on, the processes that started to take place around the Theses affair at the institutional level would appear deeply articulated with the theological openings that Luther was discovering. The penitential cannons of the church had evolved throughout time, and the dynamics implied by the teachings on justification added aspects of pecuniary character to its economy. Private penance became public and started to enhance papal power and wealth. Indulgence meant the commutation of penance. The right to grant indulgences was originally used within congregations, but it started to be exercised by the popes who granted them to the crusaders and, later on, to those visiting shrines at Rome during jubilee years. Yet, in all cases, those who contributed money instead of actual participation were granted indulgence as well; by the end of the fourteenth century, payment to the papacy was enough. The theory of indulgences was fully developed by Thomas Aquinas: the surplus of merits of Christ and saints, which had done more than God required, constituted the “treasury of merits” stored by the church, and the pope—successor of Peter, holder of the keys—could draw indulgences upon such treasury. However, doctrinal distinctions regarding conceptions such as constriction and attrition, temporal sin and eternal sin, temporal punishment and eternal punishment were not so clear for the common people, neither was the way in which absolution was granted nor what power indulgences had in this regard. In the specific case of the indulgences reissued for the building of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome, the papal bull of 1515 clarified those matters, but such information was obscured by the time it reached the plain parishioners (LW 31:19–20).6

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Martin Luther was very much worried about human justification before God, a distress referred more to a shared cultural religious background than to an individual psychological frame (Ozment 1980, 223). He had been for some time already immersed in a process of scrutinizing the scriptures and texts of his tradition in the search for answers to excruciating fears and doubts. When the selling of indulgences was recast by Pope Leo X, and Albrecht Hohenzollern was persuaded to allow the hawking in his church provinces and Brandenburg, Luther’s main concern regarding the issue was that of indulgence efficacy. Beyond existential anxiety, Luther’s doubts answered to the question of the theological grounds of indulgences and were accompanied by pastoral concern (Wriedt 2003, 94). Part of his fears were caused by the confusion that the mercenary approach to the matter by the indulgence hawkers produced to his parishioners, which crossed over the border from Wittenberg to Brandenburg in order to buy pardons. The Ninety-five Theses— that is, the Disputation on the Power and the Efficacy of the Indulgences— were penned in this context, and on the same day he made them public Luther sent a copy to the archbishop of Mainz with a letter beseeching him to consider those concerns. What he expressed in his letter illustrates what was happening and his apprehensions: The unhappy souls believe that if they have purchased letters of indulgence they are sure of their salvation; again, that so soon as they cast their contributions into the money-box, souls fly out of purgatory . . . For this reason I have no longer been able to keep quiet about this matter, for it is by no gift of a bishop that one becomes sure of salvation. (WML 1:26)

Luther’s Theses reacted to the instructions of the archbishop and the procedures of the hawkers, but were not an intended confrontation with the papacy. Nevertheless, from the very beginning, his assertions turned subversive. While Luther’s main worry was the theological grounding of indulgences, it was not perceived as such. Actually, by that time, disputations criticizing incongruence in scholastic theology or revising unresolved questions on the sacrament of penance were not a scandal—especially at a new university founded on a spirit of reform in Electoral Saxony (Wriedt 2003, 93).7 Yet, although the purpose for his Theses was opening an academic debate, in reality, that never happened. Theological debate was not the sore spot: the obscure marginal friar was found guilty of questioning papal authority. However, thinking theologically, Luther’s arguments were far more alarming. For instance, the first thesis was already a subversive jolt: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ [penitentiam agite] (Matt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance” (LW 31: 25). Such interpretation of scripture envisaged penance as a permanent attitude

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instead of a punctual transaction. And thesis 36 provided reason enough to upturn the penitential order upon which the whole machinery of the indulgence business was built: “Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without indulgence letters” (LW 31: 28). The fact that penance could be commuted at a price was the vicious completion of a doctrine of justification resting on merits. If good works were prompted by satisfaction, at some point, those who could afford it would rather pay than make any other effort. If the complete penitential process could not easily be started by contrition—out of love for God—it could proceed fueled by attrition—out of fear of punishment—and then, a transaction like indulgence selling and buying could turn into a remedy for the inner distress of believers. Earlier, in September 1517, Luther had manifested his new theological perceptions about God’s grace in the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology. Through a scrupulous reading of scripture and tradition, he had confronted the current scholastic teachings and their philosophical assumptions about grace and salvation, and they had passed unnoticed. Now, his theses questioning indulgences had promptly generated a storm of protest, accusations of heresy, and a papal request to “silence the man” (LW 31: xv-xvi). Since then on, the theological ground of his actions started to be under the spotlight. The Theses event with its implications at the level of the political, social arena precipitated the developments. The unsuspected consequences of Luther’s search involved him in a conflict with ecclesiastical and secular authorities and forced him to clarify and make his findings open. As we know, the confrontation escalated for a period of four years to the point of reaching Luther’s excommunication by the pope. We are here beginning to trace the deconstructive drive that inhabits a tradition. It is important to notice that Luther’s existential theological concerns led him to search into the texts of his own heritage. In this sense, his going public was an act of fidelity. His theology, sprung from inside the very tradition, and the developments that started to unfold were not steered by him. Actually, by that time, the young Luther was struggling with the consequences of a rediscovery of the gospel, which he perceived as liberating (Wriedt 2003, 91). Those findings implied the questioning of the hierarchical authority at the very tangible institutional level, and the dismantling of layers of philosophic and theological concrete at a conceptual level. The process that was at work within the order of the late medieval system of the church appears evident when we analyze the historical assessments of the events and read Luther’s theological elaborations. Something new was opening a path as some actions were being taken at the fringes of the huge structure of Christendom, which was supported by a stiffened theological scaffolding. At the visible institutional level, the result was rejection and expulsion; at the

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level of the theological rereading, overturning was starting to give room to displacement. The political and social implications—unsuspected at the time of that peripheral act of subversion—turned those small first cracks into the onset of an earthquake. A SINGULAR STRATEGY OF CONSTRUCTION? Deconstruction as portrayed in Derrida’s work is mainly a way of detecting the constrictions under which we act. It assumes the structural complexities and, at the same time, the contingency of our assumptions and the constructions articulated with them. Yet, above all, deconstruction has to do with the realization of how our human institutions are constitutively related to what they intend to oppose and criticize (WD, 354). Nevertheless, if deconstruction works a general strategy that cannot be called to a halt, we are at the same time summoned to live in the world, to make our steps, to contribute to wellness, to develop institutions, to see communities prosper, to seek justice. Then, how do we construct? If hierarchy, exclusion, and violence build up in our conceptions, institutions, and communities, how do we avoid erecting a “tower of Babel”? Or, well aware of this inclination, how do we avoid confessing that “anything goes”? What sort of strategy should construction have, if any? Admitting that the strategies of construction have their limitations does not mean that construction is impossible. In fact, it constitutes the very step that frees us from the heavy burden of fitting the impositions of metaphysical ideals. Thus, paying heed to Derrida’s repeated assertion about the affirmative character of deconstruction, and that “it never proceeds without love” (Points 83), this work proceeds with the thought that the very strategy of deconstruction engages construction. And this could be, actually, a “singular strategy of construction” some sort of “deconstructive construction” recognizable in the chosen theological heritage. Next Steps I have pictured how Luther’s search inside his tradition started a process that resembles what Derrida describes as a “certain strategy of deconstruction.” We have observed how from Luther’s theological perceptions the first tremors of an earthquake emerged. This is just an overture to what continues, that is, the exploring of the epicenter of the earthquake, the actual displacement following the upturning and the promissory gaps opened by Luther’s theological discoveries. Reading after Derrida, a deconstructive appraisal bears

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possibility out of disruption, and those who recognize a heritage are faced with new concerns that lead them to reread, to unbuild and rebuild. If we think of metaphysics as the “worldview that provides us sense of orientation” (Smith 2003, 18), then we should admit that somehow, metaphysics manages to hold together a whole world. As I stated, Luther’s thought and that of Derrida’s have a double, simultaneous meeting point: a certain strategy, and a delimitation of western metaphysics. I have just introduced the first; to begin with the second, I shall now review some issues related to the metaphysical order of the world. NOTES 1. See chapter 1 under “Martin Luther and Jacques Derrida.” 2. In his critical reading of Derrida’s work, Rodolphe Gasché introduced these two preceding concepts “to which deconstruction can and must be retraced” (Gasché 1986, 109). 3. Among those noticing this fact is John D. Caputo (Caputo 1993a, 34; 1993b, 61; 1997a, 5), Kevin Hart, and Derrida himself (EF 32–33; Dooley 2003, 22). 4. As we shall observe, the simul emerges constantly in Luther’s theology. It is interesting that Derrida used the very term in relation to deconstruction in his early works. 5. Albrecht, archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, and bishop of Halberstadt, was indebted with the banking house of the Fuggers from whom he had borrowed money to pay the papacy for his see in Mainz. He was commissioned by Leo X to sell indulgences in his church provinces and Brandenburg. Half of the money was to go to the Fuggers in payment of Albrecht’s debts, and the rest to the papacy on behalf of the project of building the basilica of St. Peter in Rome. It is thought that Luther ignored the details of those economic arrangements between bishop and pope at the time he issued his Ninety-five Theses (Brecht 1985, 178–79). 6. Besides meeting those points, Leo X’s bull of indulgence Sacrosancti salvatoris et redemptoris nostri, issued on March 31, 1515, “openly displayed the connection between pastoral and financial interest from the outset”: all other indulgences were discontinued for the time and all other sermons suspended in order to preach this indulgence. The plenary indulgence was extended to almost all sins and offered dispensation for almost all offenses. Moreover, any interference with the indulgence was forbidden under penalty of punishment (Brecht 1985, 179–80). 7. By this time Luther was a professor at the University of Wittenberg, which had been founded by Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, in 1502.

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On Metaphysics

BEING, REASON, AND THE SACRED ORDER OF LOGOS Martin Heidegger equals western rationality to metaphysics (Heidegger 1977, 242), and so does Jacques Derrida. However, on his way to overcoming metaphysics, Heidegger rescues the Presocratics as the “definitive thinkers” for the retrieval of the origin “before philosophy,” leading toward a new beginning of thinking (Heidegger 2000, 132). It is not so with Derrida. In his readings on western thought, he places the Presocratics within the history of metaphysics as well (OG, 3). Along this line, we can picture how by the fifth century BCE, when the Eleatics linked truth to the rational thought of being, the bases for western thought started to take shape. Since everyday experience shows how ephemeral the world is, how everything is subject to corruption and change, Parmenides and his fellow thinkers considered that the grounding of reality is to be found beyond those deceiving material experiences. In this sense, they affirmed the oneness and rejected the diversity of being, holding pure being as real and the merely phenomenal as illusive. In this system of thought the realm of truth is that of one, atemporal, immutable Being. However, the access to this realm was comprehended in an epistemological key, and reason honored as the only instrument in tune.1 Heraclitus, on his side, made no minor contribution to the tradition of western thought: the conception of logos.2 Throughout history, the fields of ontology and epistemology have proven to be hard to set apart, and there we may find an early liaison that allows us to trace back their overlapping: as the reason that expresses the universal law of the cosmos, and articulates at the same time the order of human thought, the logos came to unify the metaphysical with the epistemic (Peters 1967, 110–112). The logos gathers in itself the common reason of cosmic and human behavior, and in this union it appears 21

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as Being expressed in language. In fact, trying to embrace the richness of the concept, the Latin philosophical translation of logos is ratio, and, in theology, it is rendered as verbum. As remote as this lucubration seems, it is not foreign to anyone immersed in western culture; actually, something that Derrida underlines from the beginning of his work is precisely the endurance of this ancient order throughout the history of western thought. He observes that “the history of metaphysics . . . from Plato to Hegel . . . also from the pre-Socratics to Heidegger, always assigned the origin of truth to the logos” (OG, 3). “Logocentrism” is the term he uses to name this phenomenon, and the distinct trait that he underlines of this logocentric metaphysics is “the determination of Being as presence in all senses of this word” (WD, 353; Derrida’s emphasis). The Highest Being and His Faithful Knight One important aspect of this tradition, which flourished in the Mediterranean antiquity and was scattered later throughout the western (and further) world, is its own religious perceptions and a distinct idea of God. Indeed, the divinity is welcome within this pattern of thinking in very specific terms. Merold Westphal explains how Heidegger reviews the movement by which Greek metaphysics meets theology: In a first moment philosophy started as ontology—the theory of being as being—later, in the pursuit of its own achievement, it needed to establish a Highest Being—Aristotle’s “Prime Mover”—in so doing, it became ontotheology (Westphal 2002, 259).3 The point is that in this ontotheological constitution of metaphysics, as Heidegger observes, “the deity can come into philosophy only insofar as philosophy, on its own accord and by its own nature, requires and determines that and how the deity enters into it” (Heidegger 1957, 70). The god that enters Greek philosophy is God as the Highest Being, and, as such, it is conceived as the epitome of the metaphysical realm. This fact has consequences, and two very important ones imply each other: on the one side, God becomes the foundation of all metaphysical truth; on the other, the features of Being—designed to meet the wishful thinking of metaphysics—shapes the full character of God. This dominating idea of God as the Highest—one, atemporal, immutable— Being permeated the Hellenized world in which Christian theology started to take shape. It is for such reason that the early Christian theologians faced the tremendous challenge of speaking of God incarnated in a human being. The conception of God that pervaded the world of the first centuries of Christianity was hard to harmonize with the Christian proclamation about Jesus of Nazareth, who being God, was born, suffered, and died. If God is conceived as immune to time, to suffering, and to change, the point is precisely how to speak theologically of God being faithful to the gospel and, at the same time,

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keeping the divinity safe from the “contamination” that humanity introduces. This challenge, far from being resolved in the formulas of the first ecumenical councils, accompanies Christian theology up to our day.4 Similarly, and besides the divergent opinions and positions held throughout history, the Heraclitean conception of logos remained strong and present within Hellenistic thought. Around the first century CE, the logos was received into Alexandrian Judaism as portrayed in the works of Philo; and later, it appeared in the texts of the Christian scriptures, as in Revelation and the first chapter of the Gospel of John (Miller 1981). Although different answers have been given to the question as to whether the Christian logos is the very same Greek logos, the Gospel affirms that “the logos was God” and that “the logos became flesh,” asseverations that, put together, constituted quite an abhorrence for the widespread Hellenistic ideas of that age. Nevertheless, already by the end of the second century, Justin Martyr proclaimed Heraclitus worthy of being called a Christian, and Clement of Alexandria found antecedents for his “logos Christology” in Heraclitus as well (Miller 1981, 173). Hence, Christianity is linked to the logos of metaphysical stock from its beginnings, and it may be said that the western perseverance of this strong notion very much rests on this liaison.5 Despite the fact that the affirmation of the incarnated logos meant a deep confrontation with the conceptions of a Hellenized milieu, the history of Christian theology shows how the order enforced by logos from its inception continues to be a constant defiance down to our days. In different times throughout the history of Christian thought, there have been efforts to face this predicament; as we shall see, the displacing perception emerging from the tension between the “theology of glory” and the “theology of the cross,” was Luther’s refusal to be lured away.6 In sum, the Highest Being is related to the buildup of western understanding as, for instance, Aristotle’s “Prime Mover”—of which Thomas Aquinas asserts that “everyone understands to be God”—or, the associated ancient notions of the One, the Truth, the Good and the Beautiful, which accompany us up to the present day.7 All this is made evident by Derrida, who rereading meticulously the texts of different disciplines and sciences of this corpus, notices how all of them are “theologically” grounded, even those that—by principle—would deny such fact.8 In line with this, he detects that metaphysics holds from its beginning the integrated loyalty of an order that guides and rules our approach to reality within the coherent sense of language as transparent to the demands of human reason. Although very far in time from old Greek beginnings, and quite far as well from late medieval Christian speculations, our quests within these patterns of thought are explicitly or implicitly guided by that primordial model of Being that aligns our defective efforts in order to reach a safe port. Such alignment follows the rule of

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logos, which, as a “faithful knight,” enrolls reason and language compelling them into the perfect syntax of western conceptualization. While our human existence is marked by interruption, discrepancy, and incompleteness; unity, coherence, full presence, and completion are at the origin and end of the metaphysical ideal. Here we may start sensing the connection between Luther’s theology and Derrida’s works, for while the theologian finds this way deceitful for theology, the philosopher discovers how problematic it is for philosophy and knowledge in general. Within this exercise in perceiving how a premodern theologian and a postmodern philosopher delimit metaphysics, I underline some perceptions that can be worded as follows: Derrida’s work shows how philosophy, against its own rational principles, has historically recurred to some grounding that belongs to what it identifies as the order of the “theological.” Luther’s work denounces how theology, in its legitimate recourse to divinity, has frequently welcomed an idea of God, which it understands as “philosophical.” Consequently, Derrida’s readings uncover how western thought, as a last recourse, drops anchor into ontotheology, while Luther’s readings denounce how Christian theology easily weighs anchor as ontotheology. PERIPHERAL NUISANCES The previous description depicts briefly some features of a complex setting. The focus is set on what some readings uncover, that is, how the dominant western way of understanding lets the world rest on firm universal principles providing a transcendental support to our ephemeral categorizations and efforts to make sense. Our texts, institutions, and traditions show how this thought is prone to follow a primordial order that keeps us anchored to the presence of Being associated to ideals of perfection and completeness. Even when a Highest Being, or God, is left outside the picture because of secular reasons, some other strong notion is unavoidably invoked: transcendentality, or conscience, or the human being. As Derrida would describe it, any of those concepts mark the constant of a “presence” producing certitude and “mastering anxiety” (WD, 351–353). Hence, the question appears to be: What is wrong with this implicit ordering of the world? After all, this could be the best way to make sense out of the flux of existence. If our daily life is affected by movement and change and—in spite of all efforts—we end up meeting frailty and contingency, if we are constantly facing the menace of fragmentation, chaos, and disintegration, why not get hold of a presence whose wholeness, immutability, and timelessness promise a firm grip? I

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propose that Luther—the theologian—and Derrida—the philosopher—pose some good motives to defy this order. We have noticed that the dominant western tradition rests on metaphysics. Metaphysics trusts only one safe instrument to move around, which is reason, and reason orders the world through conceptualization. Nevertheless, this does not mean that delimiting the mechanisms of metaphysics refers only to abstract elucidations: all those abstractions have tangible, material correlates that amount to important matters. As we shall observe throughout this work, this approach presupposes determinate conceptions about God, human beings, and human agency: the way we perceive transcendence, the way we stand in the world, and the way we act are interrelated and always exceed rational metaphysical conceptualization. Therefore, such particular alignment guarantees that those good motives will surely have to do with matters of life and death. Luther’s theology and Derrida’s deconstruction stand in contradiction with the modus operandi of dominant patterns of judgment running the western ordering of the world. Both thinkers can be counted as “peripheral nuisances” to the system, a defiance to the structures. In their own times and milieus and in spite of themselves, theologian and philosopher found motives and dealt with matters that did not fit the frame. In the light of their works, in the name of that which escapes reason, we can spot some disrupting aspects regarding our ways of making sense. METAPHYSICAL DEALINGS According to the “strategy of deconstruction” detected by Derrida, metaphysical conceptions are structured on a logic of oppositions and such oppositions are not peaceful—actually, they are construed on violent hierarchy. Western understanding rests on this type of rational logocentric order, and this order constantly re-creates itself. To picture such inclination, we could, for instance, envisage Heidegger, who focusing on the Greek primordial logos, reads Heraclitus and observes: “Being as logos is basic gathering, not mass and turmoil in which everything has as much or as little value as everything else, rank and domination are implicit in being” (Heidegger 1959, 133). Furthermore, “If being is to disclose itself, it must itself have and maintain rank” (Heidegger 1959, 133). Metaphysical conceptualization does obey this array of things; its operations imply ranking and always some type of violence. Metaphysical logic makes order out of “the mass and turmoil” because particulars can only fit in its structure after being normalized according to a universal transcendental classification, and, later on, identified in agreement to the place they are assigned with reference to a grading. To be sure of the character of this structure, Heidegger also remarks that “what has the higher

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rank is the stronger” and for this reason reminds us that “[t]he truth is not for every man but only for the strong” (Heidegger 1959, 133). Thus, Heidegger himself makes the equation; starting with metaphysical abstractions about the logos, he immediately moves to its implications upon concrete human life: the business of truth is just for the strong. Those remarks let us perceive how this structure has historically worked its way. As Derrida synthetizes about this “subordinating hierarchical axiology”: All metaphysicians, from Plato to Rousseau, Descartes to Husserl, have proceeded in this way . . . And this is not just one metaphysical gesture among others, it is the metaphysical exigency, that which has been the most constant, most profound and most potent. (LI, 93; Derrida’s emphasis)

Consequently, if we admit that from its outset the metaphysical scaffolding rests on a Highest Being supporting and legitimizing the structure, we may infer that such Being holds the superlative condensation of strength and domination, enforcing “ranking” on the “mass and turmoil.” In this context, it is possible to visualize how, throughout the centuries, the hegemonic institutional pattern of the Christian church mirrors this order of the One, engorging with power a strongly hierarchical structure. Reading the scriptures over against the traditions of his time, Luther had theological suspicions about those metaphysical versions of “God,” “church,” and “human being.” In this regard, he opposed the scholastic theological elaborations around Aristotle’s ideas and its Neoplatonic inheritance as well. As we shall see, when Luther describes the theologian of glory as one who prefers “strength to weakness,” and insists that instead of following a “flighty thought” it is necessary to recognize God in suffering and shame (LW 31:53), he is making a stand against the metaphysical ordering imbedded in the theologies of his time. Hence, the order of logos imposes hierarchy, and hierarchy is construed upon participation of an essence that is recognized as ideal, such as Oneness, Truth, Good, and Beauty (and other uppercased counterparts). Nevertheless, throughout history the ideal has always mirrored hegemonic cultural values, which in the process were naturalized acquiring ontological status; essentializations are, in fact, the universalization of particular views.9 For instance, dominant ideas about gender, sexuality, ethnicity, skin color, language, religion, species, and so on structure the way in which “universal” notions are portrayed, and how “the mass and turmoil” is to be ordered. By the end of the Middle Ages, Luther became aware of those mechanisms as they operated within the church, its theology, and institutions. He perceived how hard it was “to struggle out of and emerge from errors which become fixed by universal standard and changed by time-honored custom into nature” (LW 34:333–34).

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Yet, what is most peculiar about this pattern of understanding is that it actually camouflages the import of its operations. Derrida’s readings of the great thinkers of the West show how metaphysical desire conceals the inconsistencies within an order, which works by leaving outside that which does not fit. For example, the exercise he makes in his work Glas where, in columns of opposed texts, he lets Hegel’s writings speak for themselves as they are confronted by Jean Genet’s. Among the many things that are made visible in this clash of texts, we may observe that while the Hegelian system operates by sublating the dialectical tensions of history, the absolute realization of knowledge cannot stop to consider “collateral damage.”10 In fact, damage is euphemized in its perfect conceptualization: in Hegel’s discussion of Antigone, or the Jews, for instance, a deconstructive reading makes perceptible how women, foreigners, and “the ugly” are left at the margins of nation, ethics, religion, and history. The same happens when Derrida in his Politics of Friendship unwinds the logic by which virtue is virile, and friends are always brothers (men, fathers, sons) and, consequently, “sisters” (women, mothers, daughters) are left aside of friendship and politics. The homo-fraternal “phallogocentric” constructions solidified through centuries of western thought are read from side to side in Aristotle, Cicero, Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, Schmitt, and, of course, in the ideal of “Christian fraternity.”11 In those readings, Derrida finds out how exclusion is masked, because when women appear as included, they are nevertheless “neutralized” (PF, viii). In “Choreographies,” however, considering Heidegger’s analysis of Nietzsche on sexuality, he extricates how the “apparently least sexual neutrality” is highly sexual and never neutral, hiding phallocentric (and, rarely, gynocentric) mastery. And, at the same time, he points out how the binary logic of the sexual order—which “immures everything in life in the figure 2”—carries out the “merciless closure” that impedes the thought of sexuality otherwise (Points, 108). Such logic appears once again when Derrida traces how humans—because of our need for “eating well”—assume that we can cleanly “cut up a subject” delimiting the difference between “human” and “animal.” Once this borderline is traced, we use it not only as a way to demarcate the edible, but in order to justify the perverse, massive “genocidal torture” inflicted on other species (FW, 67). In different works Derrida points out how metaphysics provides rational support to the hierarchical ordination of “the living” and the delimitation of who is the neighbor to the “human subject.” And then, the rank appears clearly again: “Authority and autonomy . . . are . . . attributed to the man (homo and vir) rather than to the woman, and to the woman, rather than to the animal” (EW, 280–81). Then, the oppositional structure naturalizes the scheme “human—infra-human” and covers up what should be problematic for the ethics and the politics of the living.12

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In sum, such cloaked operations appease oppositions into a resolution that, actually, re-creates repeating the old structure again: violence finds its way in hierarchy, hierarchy has theological support, and both hierarchy and violence are metaphysically legitimized and conveyed. The way in which this process is naturalized via metaphysical discourse is deceitful at heart. Transcendental ideals are endowed with the attribute of infinite presence supporting our finite transactions. Hence, when we invoke an original, universal Truth we are actually taking for granted a network of highly complex relations that we receive and assume as necessary. Since in our culture this has theological connotations, there is always at the end some inevitable recourse to the presence of God grounding the structure. But, if modern thought renounced God as the Highest Being in the name of objectivism, it filled the highest place left vacant with something else such as “Man” or “Science.” Our metaphysically formatted notions feed a ranking of violence: the uppercased ideals we invoke are but particular dominant conceptions informing the taming and homogenization of what is other. WITHOUT RELIGION AND AGAINST THEOLOGY These brief references illustrate the way in which our dominant way of understanding makes sense of the world; however, there is still one big concern in this sense. While Derrida would see in this incidence the “metaphysical closure,” Luther would consider it “creatureliness” associated with “sin,” and both philosopher and theologian would agree with the fact that anything they “discovered” was in spite of themselves. This is a saddle we cannot get rid of; there are structural limitations that accompany us and we are always constitutively involved. For instance, it is possible to see that Luther could not follow the complete import of his own theology in the broad structural social and political dimension and, in this sense, he remained within the patriarchal medieval mindset (Thompson 2004, 48–66; Bayer 2007b, 79–80; Hansen 2010, 74–75; Westhelle 2016, 131–32). Consequently, some questions remain: When this is all our part and parcel, is there any possibility of eschewing this logic? How could a “delimitation of metaphysics” take place within such a dilemma? In spite of the reservations mentioned in the introduction of this work, the ways in which Luther’s theology and Derrida’s philosophy deal with the metaphysical configuration of western system of thought are related. Theologian and philosopher search their traditions from the margins, and in so doing they upset the functioning of mighty institutional constructions. They question central principles disturbing the very notion of centrality and marginality. Furthermore, they pursue the traces of what is tamed, suppressed,

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or erased by the metaphysical logic detecting the paradoxical fix they are facing. Because of this, it can be said that Luther’s and Derrida’s confrontation with metaphysics relates in aspects that go right into the main interest of this work. I shall formulate it in this way: the postmodern philosopher, facing the (onto)theological hindrances of western metaphysical order, rereads the tradition and runs into an operation structured as a religion without religion.13 The premodern theologian, facing the religious oppression of late medieval Christendom, rereads the tradition and encounters a theology that operates against theology.14 Next Steps This work affirms that Luther’s thought and that of Derrida’s have a double meeting point: a certain strategy and a delimitation of western metaphysics. I have first introduced how the strategy works, and here I have sketched some features of the metaphysical way of ordering the world. Now it is time to start analyzing how the delimitation of metaphysics occurs. Hence, I shall review a basic model description of how Derrida’s deconstructive strategy delimits one distinct aspect of metaphysics: the supremacy of logos over writing. This will furnish some terminology, tools, and themes that will accompany the rest of this book. NOTES 1. As portrayed in Parmenides’ poem, the way to the “well rounded truth” should be differentiated from the way of mere “opinion” and undertaken as an epistemological quest (Freeman 1948, 42). 2. As portrayed in Heraclitus’ extant fragments (Freeman 1948, 24–34). 3. Westphal (2002) refers to this process as he elaborates an answer to the question: “Who comes after the God of metaphysics?” 4. I resume this issue specially in chapter 12, where I elaborate on Luther’s christology. 5. Liberal theologians were of the idea that the Hellenization of Christianity started there; Adolf von Harnack, for instance, asserted that through the acceptance of the Logos-Christology the Church doctrine was “firmly rooted in the soil of Hellenism” (von Harnack 1957, 194). However, the creative theological work of the early Christian apologists in their effort to translate and protect the gospel in a Hellenistic milieu is underlined by others. For example, Johannes Quasten stated in his Patrology: “We can speak therefore of a Christianization of Hellenism but hardly, of a Hellenization of Christianity” (Quasten 1949, 1.187). 6. I elaborate on this especially in chapter 6.

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7. As scholastics liked to affirm, transcendentals—those properties by which being is communicated to the entities—are oneness, truth, good, and beauty (ens est unum, verum, bonum et pulchrum); they are mutually convertible and participate in God’s transcendence, being essential and not accidental. Transcendentals—although not under this name—are already found in Plato and Aristotle as initial forms of being (Hofmeister 1986). In western thought we still continue defining what is in terms of its oneness, goodness, truth, and beauty. For instance, mathematicians and physicists speak on the criterion of elegance and beauty for their theories; they actually perceive a relationship between beauty and scientific truth. As Bertrand Russell, who asserts that “mathematics . . . possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty” (Russell 1917, 60), and Nobel prize winner Steven Weinberg, who assumes in his Dreams of a Final Theory that “the beauty in our present theories may be ‘but a dream’ of the kind of beauty that awaits us in the final theory” (Weinberg 1992, 17). 8. From the beginning, Derrida’s work has been a thorough register of his numerous deconstructive readings on Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Freud, Lacan, Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Austin, Mallarmé, Valéry, Joyce, among many others. 9. In his Prison Notebooks, referring to the formation of the intellectuals, Antonio Gramsci affirms that “the whole of idealist philosophy can easily be connected with this position” (Gramsci 1971, 7–8). In fact, Gramsci’s theory of “cultural hegemony” elaborated upon the Ancient Greek concept of hegemonia and refers to aspects of this mechanism. Exceeding the field of Marxist philosophy, criticized and reworked, this theoretical instrument is applied since last century by different currents of criticism, thus exposing the modus operandi of “naturalization” as deployed in racism, sexism, cultural relativism, colonialism, religious fundamentalism, human supremacy, etc. 10. In this sense, in the book Hegel after Derrida, Simon Crichtley, Heinz Kimmerle, Kevin Thompson, and Henry Sussman offer varied readings of Derrida’s Glas (Barnett 1998, 197–292). 11. The expression “phallogocentrism” was coined by Derrida as a conjunction of “phallocentrism” and “logocentrism”; these terms refer to the supremacy that western philosophy has always granted to the logos and to the central importance that was placed on the phallus by Freudian psychoanalysis (according to which there would be only one libido, and this would be masculine). See for instance the conversation held between Christie V. McDonald and Derrida (Points, 89–108). 12. These issues around humanity and animality, and the implications, are examined by Derrida especially in three of his works: “‘Eating Well,’ or the Calculation of the Subject” (EW); his dialogue with Elizabeth Roudinesco, For What Tomorrow (FW); and The Animal that therefore I am (Animal). 13. I am following here the suggestion of John D. Caputo (1997a); I elaborate upon this issue in chapter 7. 14. I elaborate upon this in chapters 6 and 8.

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Deconstructive Readings

OF BEGGARS AND RAG-PICKERS Being reared in the theological traditions of the time, having very well learned and taught his Aristotle and practiced the monastic discipline to the utmost, the constant question of the justice of God haunts Luther. He is confronted by a God who asks from humanity what it is impossible to achieve. And through the not so luminous experience of anguish and temptation—Anfechtung is the word he uses for it—the Augustinian friar reads and rereads looking for answers.1 In his longing to grasp something foreign to his understanding, it is granted him to find in the scripture the persistence of a promise. By the end of his life, in some last scribbling, he reaffirms his unspent wonder, “Do not assail this divine Aeneid, rather prostrate revere its traces,”2 and closes the note recognizing our poverty before the unending text: “We are beggars. This is true” (WATR 5:168,2–3).3 Derrida asserts: “However old I am, I am at the threshold of reading Plato and Aristotle” and confesses, “I love them and I feel I have to start again and again and again” (VR, 9). Nevertheless, in the same breath, he declares that the fashion in which he reads those authors (and others) is not the repetition of classical readings but more a way of sensing the tensions and incoherencies within the corpus. In fact, he searches and looks into the traces left in the texts of the western tradition, and perceives how the “order of logos” functions, or actually, disfunctions. As he sensibly explores the huge textual map of metaphysics, Derrida tracks down some alternative itineraries impossible to chart because this exercise consists in checking out vestiges so as to detect the undetectable. In this sense we could say that instead of being dazzled by the perfect well-functioning of the system, Derrida’s search for justice is—as Drucilla Cornell affirmed—a persistent scraping through the debris, and this turns him into the “ultimate chiffoniere [rag-picker]” (Cornell 1992, 63).4 31

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Both the beggar and the rag-picker know of the importance of the text, and this work will elaborate extensively on their perceptions about this specific issue.5 Yet, at this point, this sample of deconstructive reading will provide a model of how a certain strategy—at work within texts and traditions—effects a delimitation of metaphysics. WHAT DERRIDA FINDS The postmodern philosopher’s task consists in the careful readings of texts, for when we talk about philosophy and theology—as when we talk about any other discipline, tradition, or institution—we assume that we are always inside a language and always inside some text. Part of our “post” condition is the awareness that there is not such a thing as a prelinguistic or extralinguistic situation; we are always inside language.6 Now, following Derrida, we shall become aware of further facts: Firstly, that what we have of our traditions is not “firsthand information” but texts which refer to texts. Secondly, that we move around in structures of signification and our lives take place and are constituted in a web of relationships—which is what a text is, if we think of etymologies and word families: texture, textile, tissue, weaving. Therefore, and finally, that we are always inside a text that is part of a context: historical, social, political, sexual, linguistic, etc. It is precisely in this direction—far beyond the common conceptions of language as a human device employed for representing things and of texts restricted to the content of books—that Derrida starts to depict a delimitation of the metaphysical order. Here I shall go over one of his most important findings and some of its implications. The outcome of this appraisal will be assumed, revisited, and expanded as we read Luther and Derrida along this work. ÉCRITURE “The Sacred Order of Logos,” which keeps running the perfect association between the metaphysical and the epistemic realms, provides the assurance of direct access through language.7 And language is from the beginning tied to the voice: if truth leans on the rational thought of being, it is connected to the utterance of words whose immediate enunciation rests on the correspondence between mind and reality. Yet, this apparently smooth description implies at least two assumptions: first, the conception about a realm of ideal presence, some “transcendental signified” to which language refers; second, the fact that through the immediacy of speech a self-present subject has access to such presence by uncontaminated, unbroken signification. Furthermore, these

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suppositions involve another aspect: if speech accounts for an original experience, writing is just a secondary, delayed report. As Aristotle expresses it, “Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience, written words are just the symbols of the spoken words” (Aristotle 1938‌‌‌‌, 1).8 From there, writing is judged as a detour that hampers the proximity that speech supposedly enjoys with the presence of being. The early work of Derrida delineating deconstruction starts with those realizations. In fact, among the many issues arising from his book Of Grammatology, the crucial one is the unveiling of “phonologocentrism” as a metaphysical trait, which rests on the denigration of writing.9 (It is precisely in confronting the privileged position of speech—phōnē—that he elaborates on a new science of the unit of writing—grammē—that is, a “grammatology.”) In this work Derrida observes how within the western tradition, as Aristotle, Rousseau, and Hegel would sustain, “writing would always be derivative, accidental, particular, exterior, doubling the signifier” just the “sign of a sign” (OG, 29). Also in his “Plato’s Pharmacy,” through a careful reading of Phaedrus, Derrida focuses on this early assumed superiority of speech over writing (D, 67–186). And searching closer to our time, he shows how even Saussure, the father of modern linguistics, considers writing as an auxiliary notation and tries to keep it this way in order not to “contaminate” the “scientific purity” of the new discipline (OG, 30–44). Derrida vividly describes how the linguist judges writing as “a garment of perversion and debauchery, a dress of corruption and disguise, a festival mask that must be exorcised” (OG, 35). However, there are in this direction some other findings that Derrida makes. His work allows us to see not only that there is no immediate, uncontaminated approach to reality—not even in the (apparent) immediacy of speech—but that any human access to the world, to oneself, or to the other is mediated by and produced through some kind of writing. In his readings on Husserl, going to the limits of phenomenology, Derrida underlines the impossibility of an immediate presentation to a self-present mind—not even within “solitary mental life.” He observes that any presentation is, in fact, a re-presentation never wholly present but split in time, pulled by both past and future.10 Thus, what speech reproduces has already gone through a process of writing, that is, some code allowing repetition and differentiation in order to be grasped by any act of perception or intuition, and even the relation to self is produced and affected by such process. Not in vain Derrida affirms that the final intention for the book Of Grammatology is “[t]o make enigmatic what one thinks one understands by the words ‘proximity,’ ‘immediacy,’ ‘presence’” (OG, 70). For this reason, he proposes that some kind of writing is the condition of possibility for any language—be it graphic or phonic—and not a derivative, secondary device; and language itself is just one privileged example of how

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this “writing in general” works (see OG, 27–44). He names this sort of structure “archi-écriture” (arché-writing) or just “écriture” (writing).11 Hence, we may detect how the “strategy” is at work: in a scenario where speech enjoys privilege over writing as a reinforcement of the ideal order of logos (phono-logo-centrism), a careful deconstructive reading knocks off balance the classical understanding of the speech/writing opposition. There is a movement of overturning and, in spite of common belief, writing reveals to be crucial for speech to the point that there would be no speech without writing. There is as well a movement of displacement, and no matter the oppositional forces of the classical pair, some sort of “writing in general” appears as the possibility for both speech and writing. This movement of overturning and displacement shifts the ground and alters the landscapes. Thus, écriture opens important and unexpected gaps in the metaphysical ways of making sense and, as we shall observe, this gives away what the order of metaphysical logos endeavors to hide: that is, how sense and meaning are built up from difference and deferral and how oneness, completion, and pure presence are not only the worst violence but an impossible desire. Some motifs related to this exercise, which I choose from the many arising from deconstruction, will let us appreciate the implications of such displacement: différance, supplement, text, promise, and death. Différance It is with the neographism “différance” that Derrida accounts for what occurs in écriture.12 Both differing and deferring, in space and time, are implied by this term giving us a hint of what writing implies: differing, because it is a constant movement of differences within a network of signs; deferring, because the reference of the inscribed code is never wholly met but always postponed. Meaning occurs through a play of differences within a structure, and because of this, “there is no reference without difference” (VR, 80). In sustaining this, Derrida is following the linguistic principles of Saussure. Yet, he parts ways with the linguist. While Saussure retains the sign—the association of a signifier with its signified—as that which takes the place of a presence in its absence, Derrida, contrariwise, unveils that différance makes the movement of signification possible by upsetting this very economy. When the sign remits to the relation signifier-signified, he observes that the signified of any signifier is another signifier: signs always refer to other signs, infinitely. In this movement, any element that is thought to be present is, in fact, always within a play of differences in a changing relation with something other than itself and, therefore, never completely “present” or “absent” but divided upon itself. And this is so because in the play every element is constituted and marked by past and future possible relations within a weave of relations; then,

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what we have in writing is a re-presentation of what is always already past and still to come. Furthermore, Derrida extends this way of functioning “to all ‘experience’ in general” since “there is no experience consisting of pure presence but only of chains of differential marks” (LI, 10). But how does it work, this constant play of difference and deferral? Most precisely, how does it ever begin? Where/what is its origin? Metaphysical thinking works within a cause-effect linearity giving for granted that at the end of signification there is some originary presence to which the sign refers in its absence. Within this logic there is always a last referent—“the Thing itself”—which originates and holds the structure of writing. But the operation of différance thwarts such logic because it gives away an originary lack: a lack of origin. With “écriture” Derrida aims to name the work of some radical difference that launches the structure of inscription in which the referent is not a whole presence. Derrida describes it as a “trace” that opens space and time for all other traces, all other differences, initiating appearance and signification (OG, 65). However, écriture is not another type of origin; it is more like a virtuality that is not previous to any actuality, and allows writing to take place once and again, opening history. Because if inscription—which is the possibility of the repetition of a code—produces space and time as an effect, we could say that writing inaugurates history as it opens the field of historical becoming (OG, 27). In this scenario of différance, where an “originary presence” is missing, Derrida speaks about a “supplement of origin.” Supplement Reading Rousseau’s Emile, Derrida makes some interesting observations on the character of writing. Writing has always been considered the sign of spoken words, a secondary device, and, in this sense, writing is a “supplement” that represents and replaces substituting a lack in presence of that which cannot be totally present. However, as a supplement, writing bears some ambiguity (simul, “undecidability” or “double bind” dilemma): Is the supplement a plenitude enriching another plenitude? Or, is it what fills a lack re-presenting, making an image, in the place of an emptiness? Derrida thinks that, in fact, a supplement is both simultaneously: an addition and a substitution—and such ambiguity is not resolvable (OG, 144). The motif of the supplement is indeed most contradictory because while it appears supporting presence adding something to it, at the same time, it draws attention to a lack in presence that needs to be supplemented! Moreover, the contradiction deepens: on the one hand, the supplement constitutes “a terrifying menace”—because it gives away a (terrifying) lack of originary presence; on the other, the supplement is also the “surest protection” that we would never meet such presence face to face (OG, 154). As Derrida senses, originary presence is at the same time

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desired and feared. If there were no supplement (sign, inscription, writing), that which would give us pure presence itself “would be only another name for death” (OG, 155). Although it is hard to fathom, writing both adds and substitutes for the lack of presence, of “the possible that is presently impossible” (SP, 129, emphasis added). These observations about writing refer to a historically constituted supplement, and they depict the way “writing in general” occurs. Écriture points toward a special structure of supplementarity: the “quasi-transcendental” operation that fills in for the origin that “is” not. In this sense, the supplement lets us consider some other aspects of what deconstruction exposes as, for instance, the complexity of that which we assume as present, along with its proximity and immediacy. As Derrida describes it, the supplement gives away how “[s]omething promises itself as it escapes, gives itself as it moves away, and strictly speaking it cannot even be called presence” (OG, 154). Originary presence and immediacy are a mirage produced within the infinite chain of mediations taking the place of “the Thing itself.” And, since “the Thing itself” has “always already escaped,” it is writing—as the disappearance of presence—that opens meaning and language (OG, 159). Supplementary mediations “produce the sense of the very thing they defer” and, because of this, it can be said that “immediacy is derived”; as inconceivable as it sounds, “[it] all begins through the intermediary” (OG, 157; emphases added). It is important to stress that the intermediary is textual. It is because of this that Derrida pronounces his notorious assertion: “There is nothing outside of the text” (OG, 158; Derrida’s emphasis). By this he implies that there is neither a “transcendental signified” whose whole presence holds up our interpretative claims nor is there a direct bond linking reason and language to such a realm. All we can grasp is mediation, and mediation is at play. Text Textuality, a close relative of écriture, alludes to what happens in texts and in the “text in general.” Textuality names the work of différance that allows the play of differences and deferrals to take place “weaving” the text. In this sense, it is significant to remember that for Derrida, “the text” is not just “the book” or any discourse found in books, but rather “everything is text” (DA, 19–20, emphasis added). As he affirms, “‘text’ implies all the structures called ‘real,’ ‘economic,’ ‘historical,’ ‘socio-institutional,’ in short: all possible references” (LI, 148). Reading the western philosophical corpus, Derrida discovers how, in the very act of allowing the text to be woven, otherness effaces itself from the scene although leaving its marks behind. As I shall later develop, Derrida’s quasi-religious motifs of khōra and “the messianic”—both akin to

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différance—name the utter difference that in its passivity renders possible the taking place of all other differences as the aperture toward a promissory unreachable memory and to any possible future to come.13 Early in his elaborations about these matters, Derrida reflects on the fact that this general possibility of writing, this play of textuality, is not just about “the human adventure” but “rather . . . a stage or an articulation in the history of life” (OG, 84; emphasis added).14 Hence, some originary alterity would allow the occurrence of differentiation, iterability, and writing. That, which is irreducible to knowledge, continuously permits the inscription of anything and everything we know while letting the text bear the promise of all its unknown possibilities. Thus, from DNA to literature, philosophy, science, or theology, “the text” is always inhabited by promise. Promise Hence, we do not have immediate access to what is “other,” since it is always mediated by inscription: a re-presentation of what is never totally present or absent. An utter difference, which has always already left its trace in writing as it opens the possibility of writing itself, allows the taking place of all other differences in a movement that is an effect without a cause. This play is what releases meaning, while meaning reveals itself always imperfect and unfinished. Because of writing, the expectation for what is to come is renewed continuously; the texts in which we are woven in bear both memory and future keeping, thus, an open promise. Therefore, what we can have of otherness is always its promise: if we could actually lay hand on it, it would either cease to be other or annihilate us in its absolute presence. In effect, in the reading of texts there is “something which can be totally new at every moment” (VR, 21). Futurity is part of the structure of textuality, and this is the aspect of the messianic implied in différance, what Derrida describes as a “universal structure of the promise.” It is because we do not have access to “the Thing itself” that there is room for a promise, and the promise dwells in inscription, in the text. The text always heralds what is impossible—that is, a “terminal point for all reference” (OG, 266)—and it is there where the promise resides since the possibility for it rests in its very (im)possibility.15 Promise is constitutive deferral: if sign and reference finally met, if “the Thing itself” were trapped, there would be no need for the play and there would be no text; space and time would collapse and life would be arrested. Yet, there is some death involved here—somehow this promise is a promise of death.

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Death When in a conference Derrida introduces “différance,” he speaks about the “a” replacing the second “e” of the French word “différence” and he explains it with a reference to Hegel’s Encyclopedia, where Hegel compares the body of the letter “A” with the Egyptian pyramid.16 Derrida maintains that this silent and discreet “a” accounts precisely for the importance of writing— because in speech the variation between “différence” and “différance” goes unnoticed. In this sense, the “a” is, in effect, like a tomb (oikesis) remitting to the economy (oikonomia) of death produced by différance. The “A” in différAnce, this sort of “Egyptian pyramid”—which is the mortuary monument of the Pharaoh—is then highly suggestive. As Derrida asserts: “This stone—provided that one knows how to decipher its inscription—is not far from announcing the death of the tyrant” (MoP, 4). As the enabler of writing, différance is the reminder about what happens in writing: the impossibility of the sameness of the One. Oneness is always already split with the launching of a system of classification or differentiation—which is what writing is. Difference and deferral at the very engine of writing are the impossibility of the presence of the present. Even when the reference is “oneself,” the sign that promises us “oneself” takes a detour of differentiation among so many other signs that always, unavoidably, otherness has interrupted the desired union-to-self. Hence, oneness, self-identity, sameness could only belong to a world without différance, a world “outside the text” (as it were). In fact, the metaphor of the Egyptian pyramid takes us close to the announcement inscribed in différance: the death of the big One, God as the Highest Being, “the tyrant” whose whole and originary presence rules the “Sacred Order of Logos” from outside and above. The fact is that, for any human act of comprehension, the intermediation of a play of signs is our daily bread, meaning that the tyranny of the alleged “pure presence” is contested by différance. When philosophy drops anchor into ontotheology, différance constantly reminds her that arresting the play equals death—and that, anyway, the seabed is not as firm as it seems. And, as we shall detect, when theology weighs anchor as ontotheology, différance is as a constant beacon cautioning her to curb her glorious enthusiasm—lest she crash against the metaphysical rocks of idolatry. In unveiling the unavoidability of writing, différance allows us to think that the death of all transcendental signified is at hand. Transcendence is no longer about a whole presence granting meaning from “outside the text”—neither a summum ens nor a causa sui—but it is about traces of a memory and a promise of future, which, in the present possibility of the text questions the unicity of the One, the outside, and the inside.

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DELIMITATIONS In sum, we could say that what goes on in écriture, archi-écriture, the trace, différance, etc. performs—as Simon Lumsden suggests—an “alternative to the metaphysical order” (Lumsden 2007, 37). In fact, what transpires in différance is rather a “disorder” or, in a positive expression, a “free play” that upsets the order. Considering the motifs previously used when thinking about western metaphysics, différance suggests that the rule emanating from Being and enforced by logos is just one more rule and summons with a constantly undermined call. Yet, besides this conspiratorial imagery that I deploy in order to grasp the character of these operations, différance is for Derrida an affirmative term. And there we find a constant delimitation of metaphysics: what Derrida finds in écriture stands for the utter difference that renders possible all other differences and allows the text to bear the disruptive traces of all its unnamed possibilities. In spite of all metaphysical closure, the text opens an unending promise. It is in the light of the topics introduced in this exemplary reading that we shall be able to approach important subjects of Derrida’s work and establish a dialogue with Luther’s theology. Besides the motif of écriture itself, we shall also meet “khōra and the messianic,” “justice,” “faith,” and “the gift.” Next Steps Following this depiction of how a delimitation of metaphysics appears in one paradigmatic theme of Derrida and the announcement that this will meet Luther’s theological findings, I shall turn now to the second part of this book. Guided by the interest of discovering how and to what extent the premodern theologian prefigures and rehearses some of the findings of the postmodern philosopher, the following chapters are intended to fill in what has been sketched so far. I shall start focusing on the disruptive epistemological force at work in the perceptions of both Luther’s theology and Derrida’s work. NOTES 1. In chapter 8 I refer to the anthropo-theological implications of “Anfechtung,” a German concept used by Luther, which lacks accurate translation into English. Luther himself utilized three Latin terms to translate it: tentatio (temptation), impugnatio (assault), and probatio (proof) (McGrath 1985, 170). 2. “Hanc tu ne divinam Aeneida tenta, Sed vestigia pronus adora.” Kellerman translates: “Do not assail this divine Aeneid; nay, rather prostrate revere the ground

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that it treads” (Kellerman 1999); honoring the history of the term in deconstruction, I choose a more verbatim rendition of vestigia as “traces.” 3. “Wir sind bettler. Hoc est verum.” 4. I was led to this work of Cornell by John Caputo (Caputo 1993a, 21). Cornell applies the term chiffoniere (rag-picker) to Derrida who in Glas searches through the leftovers expelled by Hegel’s dialectical machine. 5. Although present throughout this whole work, the interactive reading of both authors on this topic is particularly resumed in chapter 9. 6. As Caputo proposes, the linguistic turn is a part of the “postmodern turn” together with the hermeneutical and the revolutionary turn. An aspect of the “post” situation is that we think after Heidegger, after Kuhn, and after Wittgenstein and, therefore, we move among shifting perspectives, paradigms, vocabularies (Caputo 2006b, 44–50). 7. I am referring back to the motif used in chapter 3, see under “Being, Reason and the Sacred Order of Logos” 8. Derrida explains: “It is because the voice . . . has a relationship of essential and immediate proximity with the mind . . . Between being and mind, things and feelings, there would be a relationship of translation or natural signification; between mind and logos, a relationship of conventional symbolization. And the first convention, which would relate immediately to the order of natural and universal signification, would be produced as spoken language. Written language would establish the conventions, inter-linking other conventions with them” (OG, 11, Derrida’s emphasis). 9. As observed in chapter 3, Derrida points out that the western metaphysical thought is consistently wrought around the logos, i.e., “logocentrism,” but he also specifies another aspect, which I refer to here: the tight liaison between speech and the logos, i.e., “phonologocentrism.” 10. In 1967 Derrida publishes three works that delineate the character of deconstruction: De la grammatologie, La voix et le phénomène, and L’Ecriture et la différence. In what follows here I refer to some of his readings in these books: on Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics and on Rousseau’s Emile, both part of the first one, and those on Husserl’s Logical Investigations, in the second. 11. Along with “archi-écriture” or “écriture,” Derrida also uses in this sense “the trace,” “différance,” “or in fact quite a few other words” (OG, xv). 12. Since, when uttered in French, “différance” is indistinguishable from “différence,” the former is described as a “neographism” and not a “neologism” because it indicates only a graphical modification; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak uses the term in her Translator’s Preface in Of Grammatology (OG, xliv). 13. I introduce the issue of khōra and “the messianic” in chapter 7. 14. Derrida comments here on the work of the French anthropologist and paleoanthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan. 15. From here the use of the expression “(im)possible” as an effort to convey the irresolvable tension in the opposition possible-impossible. 16. The public introduction of “différance” was made by Derrida in a Conference of the French Society for Philosophy in January 1968.

PART II

Subversion and Displacement

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Knowing Otherwise

FOLLOWING THE DRIVE FOR KNOWLEDGE As Derrida recalls, the first line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics states that “all men, by nature, have the desire to know” (PR, 4). Some two millennia later, the spirit of modernity—very well expressed in Kant’s motto, “sapere aude!”—displayed the most breathtaking achievements in the trail of such an entreaty. Placed at the center of the production of knowledge and meaning, human reason endeavored to fulfill the task. Yet, throughout these last centuries, reason showed more than ever its eagerness for control while everything was subdued and mapped as knowledgeable territory. In effect, in a postmodern milieu, immersed in a globalizing culture and after many decades of suspicion, criticism, and assessment, we are now able to outline this drive. As Derrida observes after considering closely the history of reason, western civilization has applied the principle of reason with a peculiar emphasis. Rational knowledge outside metaphysics is impossible, any thinking is constitutively caught into its mesh. Because of this Derrida writes that we are always “consorting with a code to which metaphysics is tied irreducibly, such that every transgressive gesture re-encloses us—precisely by giving us a hold on the closure of metaphysics—within this closure” (Pos,12). However, although we cannot get off, nor step out, nor place ourselves above this complex configuration of thinking, the strategy of deconstruction promises that we can trace the dislocating forces that inhabit its structure. Retaining here the image of deconstructors as “warners about pitfalls” (Smith 2003, 20), I propose to focus on some issues that Derrida notices when tracking those pitfalls that metaphysics is reluctant to give away in the land of knowledge: reason and the peculiarities of a certain reception of the principle of reason, the demarcation of a dominant conception of the subject of knowledge, and 43

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the thought about that which escapes knowledge. This exercise in delimiting metaphysics will offer some hints about a possibility of “knowing otherwise.”1 THE PRINCIPLES OF REASON As Derrida would assert, to trace the history of reason and its concepts is to follow a long way of “puzzling translation” through logos to ratio to raison, reason, Grund, ground, Vernunf (PR, 7). It was at the very beginning of the eighteenth century that Leibnitz formulated the “principle of reason” and enounced that “nothing is without a reason”;2 however, this demand was present since the dawn of western philosophy and science. To respond to the principle of reason is to explain effects through their causes rationally, and it is also to ground and justify on the basis of principles; in this sense, the modern urge was a response to old Aristotelian requirements, those of metaphysics searching for roots, principles, and causes (PR, 8). Yet the accent that such response acquired in western culture—as Derrida allows to see—is one with problematic implications. Some aspects permit us to visualize this matter and they are related to reason’s grounding, reason’s dreams, reason’s subduing sight, and reason’s eagerness for mastery and might. Circling Above an Abyss Why is reason reliable? What grounds reason? Moreover, what grounds the grounding? When we try to answer these questions rationally, we face trouble because to hear the summons of reason with reference to reason implies to account for it, to be responsible for reason itself. The fact is that we need reason in order to put our questions about the grounding of reason, and we also need reason in order to answer the questions about the ground beneath its feet. As Derrida observes that Heidegger observes, this implies at least two things: First, a circle consisting in “seeking to account for reason by reason”; second, an abyss, a hole, “a most peculiar void” resulting from the impossibility for a principle of grounding to ground itself (PR, 9). In sum, the circularity of reason grounded on the “principle of reason” leaves us suspended over an abyss. With this in view, the two philosophers share in the thought that such principle can retain its dominion only by avoiding the question about its foundation. However, deconstruction is not afraid of abysses neither does it search for fixed foundations; on the contrary, it makes its task to put principles and foundations into question.

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Dreams and Desires In need of grounding, reason desires an absolute unconditioned principle that, transcendent to the world, may support its empirical order. Arché is, for instance, one of the privileged names for this ideal as it gathers in itself two etymological senses: firstly, it refers to a founding originary principle; and, secondly, to the government of one controlling principle. Hence, we could say that reason in want of causes, grounding, and order feeds a longing for arché, the principium. Actually, the very syntax of rational thought is marked by this desire for origin and, in this sense, reason easily turns archaeological. Reaching the origin endows certainty and security, which come along with a claim of authority. Power and dominion easily build up when we claim to know and keep the “principles,” especially when a respectable rational method warrants the procedure. However, deconstruction unveils that the point of origin is ungraspable (OG, 36). Absolute origin as the foundation for thought and reason is irretrievable; it is always the interpretation of some inscription, an unending detour to take. As Derrida elaborates, pure thought is always delay (OrG, 153), and the consciousness of such delay is the awareness of différance. Reason searching for true knowledge insists in starting with the origin and avoids realizing that we are already late for the arché: we cannot get “the Thing itself,” all we have left is tied to the vicissitudes of interpretation, inhabiting the tension between arché and anarchy (PR, 19). Furthermore, the desire for the arché—in the sense of the ruling of one controlling principle—has always associated reason to architectural organization and deployed all its metaphors. The very project of an “architectonic system of reason” is a modern form of this concern (R, 171, n.4). To be sure, Derrida reminds us about Kant who affirms that “human reason is by nature architectonic,” implying a systemic and unifying interest (R, 120). Yet, in order to fulfill this vocation of reason, thought cannot afford inner conflict. For instance, antinomies and contradictions are interpreted as a threat and handled as such: Kant’s thought would rather privilege the moment of the thesis over against that of the antithesis lest it introduce disturbances in the “systemic edifice” of knowledge (R, 120). Hegel’s Aufhebung, as well, would resolve the contradiction within the dialectical tension into a higher rational unity, leaving no problematic remainder loose (Pos, 40–41). In effect, the avoidance of “problems” in the house of reason is as old as metaphysics. Let’s just think about Aristotle and his logical principles, for instance, the principles of identity, noncontradiction and excluded middle, which order rational thought while rendering it unable to account for any singularity that falls outside them. This refusal to make room for aporia is the greatest limitation of western thought: the order of reason insists in bending singularities to make them fit into a dominant programmed design (R, 120–21).

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Conversely, the craving for origins has a counterpart, which is a desire for ends. Reason is also in need of purpose and destination, and, while it longs for the arché (that is, principles and architectural organization), it is as well eager for a telos  (that is, finality and achievement). Since these two drives entail order and calculation, here again the desire of reason annuls that which falls outside of its plan preventing the breakthrough of that which is other. As Derrida asserts, whenever a telos runs the operation, it neutralizes the singularity and the exceptional alterity of what or who comes—and without them, “nothing happens or arrives” (R, 128). If reason is regulated and oriented according to one end, it only gets what its horizon can hold; there is no room left for the unforeseeable and incalculable. In sum, reason dreams and desires, and one urge that pops up when reason goes to sleep is the search for a firm beginning and a secured end. A little more than two centuries ago, taking sides with the Enlightenment, Francisco Goya created an etching entitled “The sleep of reason produces monsters”; more recently, Derrida observed that Aufklärung is “what imposes itself as the enigmatic desire for vigilance, for the lucid vigil, for elucidation, for critique and truth” (AT, 148; emphasis added). Indeed, Derrida’s interest in a new Enlightenment—“the Enlightenment to come”—pleads that it should keep reason awake, for “the vigilance of reason must be without respite, courageous and upright, determined not to give in to any dogmatic intimidation” (R, 148; emphasis added). It appears that during the old Enlightenment, something went awry and reason dozed quite frequently. Reason’s sleep showed her unconscious wishes to turn knowledge into the worst violence: the programming and calculability of all knowledge. This recurrent dream of an eternal landscape of the same is an actual nightmare. Mastery Under the impulse of the Enlightenment, knowledge was bound to “the government of reason” so as to build a system to support and favor reason’s essential aims. Derrida portrays Kant guarding philosophy’s place as an autonomous discipline, which he thought ought to be kept “unavailable to any utilitarian purpose and to the orders of any power whatsoever in its search for truth” (PR, 12). According to this, the only concern of such a field should be knowledge and truth, the disinterested exercise of reason under the exclusive authority of the principle of reason. But during modernity, reason mutated becoming a powerful instrument in the development of technoscience, and the faithful service of reason to the processes of theoria turned to be completely useful in the development of modern techne. Because of this, at the present time, the principle of reason can no longer be dissociated from the very idea of technology. By means of applied knowledge, reason produces

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our technoscientific present, which is considered by Heidegger as the metaphysical culmination of the western world.3 Following this relation between technology and reason throughout modernity, it is possible to detect the machine-like deployment of rationality. In speculative dialectics, for instance, Hegel’s dialectical machine works converting the negative “into industry and power” and, as Lisa Campolo remarks, Derrida criticizes this effort “to contain and control death, chance and loss.” This machinal operation serves the teleological drive of a dominant rationality in order “to sublate negativity, to advance history, or to assure self-mastery” (Campolo 1985, 437). In effect, as Derrida sees, the speculative system of absolute Reason cannot think meaningless loss, its “machine” can only work under an order of calculus and control, a complete reappropriation that would not tolerate otherness in its yield (MoP, 107; Glas, 133a). It appears that Hegel emphasized only one aspect of Leibniz’s considerations on the principle of reason: its teleological explanation (Inwood 1992, 116). Therefore, in this system, the machine-like routine of absolute Reason gobbles up everything on its way to fulfill its desire of realization. The development of technoscience repeats the teleological drive of modern dialectical reason; while working toward the ends of progress and the sublation of difference, it represents an investment pursuing a return. Evidently, Derrida’s work is not against the application of rational knowledge to the development of technoscience; the philosopher’s concern is instead about a dominant interpretation of the principle of reason and its implications. He refers to this matter as “a certain emphasis in the way we heed its summons” (PR, 14). The search for a desired telos took reason from serving disinterested knowledge to configure oriented knowledge, which for some time was somehow shielded from power, the pressure of the State, or capital interests. Yet, throughout its modern journey, oriented knowledge becomes “programmed, focused, organized in an authoritarian fashion in view of its utilization” (PR, 11). This aspect refers no longer to the context of nation-states but to international techno military networks of multi- or transnational form (PR, 11). In this framework, oriented research in view of military power applies to all—technology, economy, medicine, psychosociology, and so on. And this goes together with the rational and the technological integrated in the concept of informatization. Computer technology, data banks, and artificial intelligence produce an ultra-sophisticated system of information, and, in this way, the principle of reason supports a principle of integral calculability, which does not just inform but gives form: “It installs man [sic] in a form that permits him to ensure his mastery on earth and beyond” (PR, 14; emphasis added). This mastery undoubtedly reflects the dominant way in which the call of reason is met.

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Sight, Light, Might There is a constant trait of western rationalization that is particularly related to mastery: the association of knowledge with light and might. As Derrida points out, the analogy of the Sun and the Good linked to the ultimate sovereign power of reason is present throughout the history of western philosophy (R, 138–140). In this context, it is possible to understand the importance of beholding and contemplation—the theorein of Plato and Aristotle. Derrida observes that in his Metaphysics, Aristotle holds that the natural human desire to know is present just for the sake of knowing, and he relates it to the pleasure of sensation—sight above all (PR, 4). And, in De Anima, Aristotle observes that there are animals with “hard, dry eyes,” those without eyelids, which cannot close their eyes for inner thought or sleep or in order to listen, remember, and learn, as humans can do (PR, 5). Continuing with the Aristotelian imagery, Derrida finally describes how a modern depiction of the subject could appear in Heideggerian critique: “With hard eyes permanently open to a nature that he is to dominate, to rape if necessary, by fixing it in front of himself, or by swooping down on it like a bird of prey” (PR, 10). In effect, in late modernity, it is possible to trace how theoria in alliance with techne contributed to a metaphysics of (the hu)man as “sovereign seer” unfurling the might of sight. Derrida also approaches Levinas’s “philosophical discourse against light” tracing the imperialism of theoria within the western philosophical tradition. Levinas perceives that the knowing subject leaning on vision reduces the other into plastic form—which is a Greek realization and, as such, inclined toward an aesthetics of luminosity. Because of this, throughout the history of philosophy—from Plato to Heidegger—the concepts of vision, sun, light, and truth have worked together in order to abolish the otherness of the other. This consideration of sight in relation to knowledge reveals the epistemological violence of a gaze that assimilates otherness, reducing difference into sameness (WD, 113). Derrida underlines the aspects involved: “To see and to know, to have and to will [voir et savoir, avoir et pouvoir], unfold only within the oppressive and luminous identity of the same” (WD, 113–14). This reading suggests that within this tradition, as Chloé Taylor underlines, “we never see without knowing . . . We never respond to what we see rather than imposing our knowledge on it” (Taylor 2006, §8). Hence, there is no room for passive sight; we inflict our gaze and see according to what we expect to see, taming the difference of the other to fit our frame. Honoring the Hebrew tradition over against the Greek, Levinas’s ethical position claims that the encounter with the other should occur in language rather than in vision. For even when discourse would attempt to enclose the others’ otherness, the latter can evade epistemological dominion by engaging

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in language, even if in silence; it is not so with vision, whose assimilation cannot be answered back. Yet, Derrida would displace Levinas’s reading; for him, this metaphysical way of seeing is, actually, given to us in language. There is no history without language, and language is elementally metaphorical.4 Thus, the old metaphor associating sun, light, vision, and sovereignty is one example of the several metaphors belonging to the language of the western tradition. As such, it works as an alibi for the historical violence of vision, distracting us and making us turn our gaze away—because metaphors are believed to exculpate and make things and acts lighter (WD, 114). In effect, we are trained to see by the Greek metaphysical tradition, and thus follow the order of its logos. The way we see and do not see, “is not intrinsic to the sense of sight but rather embedded in metaphysical discourse . . . for sight only comes to us through its discursive constructions” (Taylor 2006, §15). Within the metaphor of sun and light, seeing is, on the one hand, the dominion we impose upon the other trying to reduce their otherness to sameness; on the other hand, as Derrida points out, it is actually not seeing the other—an exculpatory turning of our gazes away. After modern western consummation, the historical connection between vision and reason, vision and power, and vision and ethics transpires in scientific methodology, hermeneutics, and politics. The gaze of the accomplished human subject of the end of modernity equals the sight of Aristotle’s permanently open “hard dry eyes.” And Derrida ponders, “What is terrifying about an animal with hard eyes and a dry glance is that it always sees” (PR, 6; emphasis added). It sees under the protection of the metaphor of light; sweeping otherness and turning away for self-assurance, seeing and turning the gaze away in the very same gesture. In fact, western technoscience applied to military-industrial development gives away its metaphysical underpinnings with regard to this way of seeing and not seeing. For instance, Judith Butler analyzes this phenomenon describing the predecessors of drones: “smart bombs.” Bombs with imbedded cameras that record their targets as they move in to destroy them; devices that allow anyone to follow the actions of war on a television screen. Viewers then identify with bomber and bomb, but since the camera is destroyed as the bomb enacts its destruction, they cannot see its destructiveness (Butler 2001, 637).5 With an all-encompassing bomber’s sight, those on command can target the other, destroy their difference, and avert their gaze in order not to see the suffering. A disembodied enactment of a killing that produces no blood and lets the dominant party keep their hands clean. Butler scrutinizes the power and control of the western male subject in the context of western warfare in the Middle East. Yet, this particular example provides for a rich illustration of what deconstruction gives away: the association of the metaphysical topics of light and vision, the empire of

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reason, sovereignty, power politics, subjectivity, the reduction and assimilation of otherness, and the animal with “hard dry eyes” that always sees, but does not listen in order to remember and learn. What Derrida names “the basileo-patro-elio-theological dictum” keeps on; some form of a “sovereignfather-sun-god” has to be invoked to keep us safe, even when this amounts to unleash the worst violence (D, 134). The Ends of the Principle of Reason Following the principle of reason, privileging “teleology and architectonic,” knowledge has been turned into a system serving the machine-like production of achievement and progress that shapes the dominant features of late modernity.6 Trying to eliminate internal contradictions, this structure strives to make sure that nothing happens outside calculation and control, immunizing itself against the coming of different rationalities. Besides—as Derrida traces—calculation, control, and mastery are tied to the right of the strongest.7 The reason that imposes itself is the reason of the powerful, and in present late capitalism, this relates to a certain association of transnational market economy and national states. Scientific research and development are subject to the control and conditioning of political, military, techno-economic, and capitalist powers or institutions (R, 144). Indeed, the mastery provided by a dominant modern reception of the principle of reason goes together with sovereignty: The compulsion or auto-positioning of sovereignty (which is nothing less than that of ipseity itself, of the selfsame of the oneself, . . . an ipseity that includes within itself, as the etymology would also confirm, the androcentric positioning of power in the master or head of the household, the sovereign mastery of the lord or seigneur, of the father or husband, the power of the same, of ipse as the selfsame self). (R, 142; Derrida’s emphases)

In this sense, as we shall observe, throughout modernity “the ends of the principle of reason” very much coincided with “the ends of (the hu)man.” THE KNOWING SUBJECT In order to prosper, in order that reason be rendered before the principle of reason, the modern principle needed the distinction between a “knowing subject” and a “known object.” It is so that modernity saw the human being installed as subject in a world that turned into a world of objects for a free and self-conscious “I.” As Derrida rereads Heidegger, he highlights how this

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modern process rests on a relation of representation: the interpretation of the essence of beings as objects; an object present and positioned before a subject that assures itself of its own present existence (PR, 9). Thus, under the dominance of the principle of reason, knowledge has to do with subject and object, and there is a modern record of autonomy and overpowering of the former in relation to the latter. The Human as Subject The notion of the subject in its “official history”—be it the Greek hypokéimenon, the Cartesian res cogitans, or the Kantian ultimum subjectum—has been that of a metaphysical entity. The subject is what persists through changes, a foundation, a basis for knowledge—as Simon Critchley expresses, “the very element of metaphysical thinking” (Critchley 1999b, 52).8 For such reason, since they represented the final grounding in order to understand all entities, the central conceptions of metaphysics such as eidos, ousia, or causa sui were once considered as “subjects.” However, during modernity, starting with Cartesianism, this metaphysical groundwork was no longer understood as located outside the human intellect in some form, substance, or deity, but as residing in the human being (Critchley 1999b, 52). Reflecting on this, Critchley follows how Heidegger’s critique precisely underlined that the human being became the subject, and therefore, the human subject—as self, ego, conscious thinking thing—turned to be the ultimate foundation upon which things are made intelligible (Critchley 1999b, 53). As Derrida observes as well, for Heidegger, such ideal rested on “a man who says ‘I,’ an ego certain of itself” who acts as master “over the totality of what is” (PR, 10). In this sense, the human subject fitted perfectly the summons of the principle of reason in a fusion of grounding, identity, and reassurance.9 The metaphysical prototype of “the subject” was thus embodied by the anthropos, which placed at the center of the universe differentiated itself from its—actually “his”—others. For authority and autonomy are attributed, as Derrida notes, to “[t]he virile strength of the adult male, the father, husband or brother,” rather than to the woman or the animal (EW, 280–81).10 Indeed, the subject became an exclusive denomination appropriated by specimens combining specific traits: Homo sapiens, male, white, heterosexual, inhabiting a perfectly functional physical body, with access to property, certain standards of education, and political participation and representation. This dominant “format” of the human subject, turned into the master of knowledge and, as such, the origin of truth claims, the guarantor of meaning, and an autonomous agent. Consequently, this subject easily assumed the role of interpreter, administrator, and/or owner of all “others.” This illustrates, all in all, “the dominant schema of subjectivity itself”; a schema in which “the common

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denominator of the dominant” belongs to “the order of the political, the State, right, or morality”—as Derrida summarizes (EW, 281). Facing Fabulations Nevertheless, a deconstructive reading of the alleged official discourse of the subject implies an exercise in reviewing old renderings. In his works, Derrida unveils hidden aspects of this rounded conception displacing cherished metaphysical narratives. Non-Identity to Self In Derrida’s earlier writings, which introduce “grammatology” along with the terms related to it—such as écriture, the trace, and différance—there is already a dismantling of the very ideas that make up “the subject.” In those works, Derrida analyzes how difference and deferral, at the very engine of écriture, entail the impossibility of the presence of the present, problematizing the conditions of possibility for experience in general.11 This perturbs the simple conception of an immediate presentation of any phenomena to a “self-present” mind. Even when the reference of thought is “oneself,” the weave of interactions that promises us “oneself” implies a constant detour into a chain of separation and differentiation: the desired “union-to-self” is always already interrupted by otherness. Hence, in tracing the constitutive role of spacing and temporality in the historical formation of anything like a human subject, deconstruction exposes how oneness, sameness, and selfidentity are always problematic aspirations. Later on, Derrida envisages that any re-conception of the subject after deconstruction would leave aside the figure of self-mastery and adequation to self. Any idea of a “who” will always be “besieged by the problematic of the trace and of différance, of affirmation, of the signature and of the so-called proper name” (EW, 260). Thus, if a form of the subject could be considered, it would be one who bears “the finite experience of non-identity to self” (EW, 266). Furthermore, introducing the motif of “autoimmunity,” he ascertains that any self-identity is continuously exposed to its undoing: “The living ego is autoimmune” (SoM, 141).12 Deconstruction lets us peek into a scenery in which the heteronomy of the operations involved in the constitution of an “I” and the unfeasibility of the fullness and completion of any “individual entity” by itself conspire against the metaphysical idea of the human subject as the autonomous foundation for knowledge and agency.

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The Subject Is a Fable In spite of a dominant standardized version, the making of the conception of the subject is a little more nuanced than what it seems. Closely read, the history of western thought gives away the heterogeneity of notions about this construct and shows what Derrida identifies as some “aporia, fictions and fabrications” about the issue; as he affirms: “There has never been The Subject for anyone . . . The Subject is a fable” (EW, 264). Moreover, it is possible to perceive that both, those who contribute to the making and empowerment of such conception, and those who pretend to undermine or liquidate it, produce those fictions: they equally operate as if “The Subject” actually existed. With reference to the thinkers in the latter group, Derrida reviews how the metaphysical discourse on the human being as subject, which in the western world was translated as “man as subject,” appears to be stuck to those who announce its end. Besides, even when some of those thinkers took part in a declaration of the effacement of the figure of “man,” they would not definitely declare the liquidation of “the subject.” In “The Ends of Man,” Derrida rereads Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger outlining how their works revolve around what remains essentially anthropic, anthropocentric. Derrida observes that Hegel’s phenomenology continues to be “a science of man.” Hegel pursues a teleological conception of “man” leaning on a discourse of mastery, identity, and self-knowledge achieved in the unity of a “we” in which natural and philosophical consciousness merge. Derrida summarizes: “The unity of absolute knowledge and anthropology, of God and man, of onto-theo-teleo-logy and humanism” (EM, 121). Husserl’s work contributes, as well, to this construction as its critique of empiric anthropologism turns to be, according to Derrida, “the affirmation of transcendental humanism” (EM, 123). As to Heidegger’s critique, if it very well unveils the complicity of metaphysics and humanism, it cannot escape the fable and makes its strong contribution to this narrative. Derrida underlines how “Dasein though not man, is nevertheless nothing other than man” (EM, 127; Derrida’s emphasis). Heidegger delimits humanism and metaphysics in the name of the “thinking of Being,” but such thinking remains a “thinking of man” (EM, 128). Conversely, in “Eating Well,” Derrida observes how the conception of the subject is still needed by those who—following Lacan, Althusser, or Foucault—seek to dismantle the centrality of “man.” He detects how the subject can be “re-interpreted, restored, re-inscribed” but, as the thought of those authors shows, it is not definitely “liquidated” (EW, 257).

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How to Cut Up a Subject? Derrida allows us to perceive that the arbitrary demarcation of the concept of the subject by means of its “auto-affirmation” against “its others” is a deceitful strategy. This demarcation draws upon—and contributes to—a phallogocentric order,13 which Derrida also discovers as carno-phallogocentric, thus revealing that the “sacred order of logos” relates to phallic power and feeds on flesh.14 In other words, the metaphysical binary logic that builds the dominant schema of subjectivity turns specially vicious when it comes to the consideration of women, non-hegemonic sexualities, and the collective of “animals” in general (EW, 280–81).15 In fact, such metaphysical logic delimits otherness by means of a violent hierarchy supported by a naturalized ontological grading. In this sense, Derrida discusses the biased rationality by which western culture answers the question about who is “a living subject,” and considers the ethical decisions about what is human and what infra-human, who eats and who is eaten, and to whom the “thou shalt not kill” applies. Here, the issue about who is the subject includes the question about who is the neighbor (EW, 281–82). In light of this problematic, which Derrida refers to as “the ethics and the politics of the living,” he concludes: “We never know, and never have known, how to cut up a subject” (EW, 285; Derrida’s emphasis). In effect, the borders around otherness appear anything but clear-cut. In sum, as we follow these arguments it becomes evident that the principle of reason has been interpreted with a certain emphasis and, as Derrida observes, the effect of this is that “man” has been positioned in a form that allows him to ensure his mastery on earth and beyond (PR, 14). Reason and its drives following the “metaphysical order of logos,” searching to program and calculate knowledge set the human being as master, that is, as “The Subject.” Equated with the human being, the subject of knowledge turned into far more than an epistemological entity: it became a solid rock grounding huge philosophical and cultural constructions. Thus, the metaphysical discourse about the rational subject legitimizes the combined privilege of species, gender, ethnicity, skin color, religion, nationality, class, sexual orientation, and so forth. After those considerations, the previous suggestion that “the ends of the principle of reason very much coincide with the ends of (the hu)man” makes some sense. Since the status that the anthropos reached has received an important support from the affirmation of “(the hu)man” as the only “rational” animal,16 it is realistic to assume that the ends of both “(the hu) man” and “reason” coincide. And this becomes manifest in the rational human programmed achievements (ends) and their unforeseen results (ends)—as, for instance, the possibility of human extinction (end) and the parallel destruction

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(end) of a certain world. “Beware of ends, ” Derrida warns while debating the principle of reason (PR, 19). The implications of this dominant interpretation pose, however, a threat and a blessing. Reason can become threatening; a power threatening itself, losing the meaning and humanity of the world (R, 123). But, because of this, the deconstruction of the metaphysical claims about reason and the human being as subject emerges as a promissory task. THAT WHICH ESCAPES KNOWLEDGE Evidencing the cracks in the solid rock of the rational human subject is a bold undertaking; as Simon Lumsden well notes, “an edifice of concepts and method has (rightly or wrongly) grown around it” (Lumsden 2007, 32). Since the displacement of the foundation for knowledge puts at risk discernment and agency, the impact upon this edifice appears as a total collapse. Principles and ends, calculation and program shelter a certain configuration of the world. Because of this, questioning the ways in which the principle of reason is interpreted and applied by a dominant globalized culture is easily perceived as an “irrational” project. When the attributes of the human subject, such as self-presence, identity, and autonomy are challenged, important problems arise—for instance, as Jean-Luc Nancy enquires in his interview with Derrida: What happens with the responsibilities of the subject of ethical, juridical, and political responsibility? (EW, 285).17 This is not a minor question; as we shall observe, responsibility is a most important issue facing a possibility of knowing otherwise. Under the principle of reason, modern reason developed a particular eagerness for “teleology and architectonic,” and, because of this, the thought of what is other is constantly excluded for the benefit and protection of the stable edifice of knowledge. Within the structure of this sort of knowledge “being responsible” means to meet the prescribed logic of the metaphysical order. Consequently, responsibility is thought as the duty of the rational human subject and the dismantling of this cornerstone conception unearths elements previously concealed. In this scenario, one aspect that surfaces is the possibility to discern a form of subjectivity, which, displacing the modern project of knowledge as mastery, responds to a different articulation. It is in this sense that, mussing on his readings of Levinas and Heidegger, Derrida explores a fruitful notion about a subject that is put together in response to the other. Thus, while focusing on responsibility we are able to ponder on the subject, reason, and knowledge in a different way.

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ANOTHER RESPONSIBILITY The ethical thought of Levinas is a confrontation to the history of western philosophy, which has systematically excluded alterity in what he refers to as “the imperialism of the same” (Levinas 1969, 87). His ethics is woven around the relationship between the “Other” and the “I.” And, for him, the demand or call of this “Other” is what constitutes the “I” as that being who is responsible for the other (Critchley 1999a, 17–18; Roffe 2004, 40). Thinking along with Levinas, Derrida detects that the way western metaphysics deals with alterity is by doing violence to it; that is, trying to reduce it into sameness, fitting it into a horizon of expectations.18 Yet, as observed, after the deconstruction of the dominant notion of the rational subject, the very discourse about its sameness is thwarted giving away how oneness, sameness, and self-identity are always problematic aspirations. In fact, self-identity cannot be affirmed facing the play of différance because in this play it becomes evident how “that which is other” is always already inscribed in the structure of subjectivity. In this sense, Derrida—as Levinas—thinks that the call of the other is previous to any configuration of the subject.19 However, otherness interrupting the closure of the same is not necessarily a re-creation of a new hierarchy. Differing with Levinas, who envisages the relation between other and self as a “transcendent asymmetry,” keeping hierarchy in so doing, Derrida finds this asymmetry as not hierarchic. Jonathan Roffe elaborates on Derrida’s interpretation, and explains, “There is not asymmetry between self and other in either direction: hierarchy is undone . . . all sameness is dissolved into a web of otherness” (Roffe 2004, 41). The deconstructive perception is that the tension between sameness and otherness pertains to a play where no term is one with itself. Thus, old conceptions of subjectivity and responsibility are displaced. As Heidegger considers it, and Derrida elaborates upon, language “is” there before “we” are.20 We are summoned by language into language before anything like an ego or a rational subject can be assembled. Derrida discovers that, although Heidegger sustains that Glaube (belief, faith) has no place in thinking, “Zusage”—the term Heidegger uses—is for him what constitutes the most proper movement of thinking.21 Heidegger deploys this word with reference to “a confident acceptance . . . a yes . . . a sort of pre-engagement presupposed by every language and by every speech” (NY, 237). Derrida explains this term as one gathering the meaning of “promise, agreement or consent, originary abandonment to what is given in the promise itself” (OS, 130). Furthermore, he underlines the fact that Zusage comprehends a sort of faith, which comes before all questioning, all knowledge, and all philosophy (FK, 95). Reading against the grain, Derrida observes some deconstruction at work in the late work of the German philosopher. He perceives that any

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uttered word is already an answer originated by “the pledge of Zusage” and is engaged by this promise “in a responsibility it has not chosen”; then, we are linked to this originary event “by a faith which defeats any narrative” (OS,130; emphasis added). Derrida underlines this response toward the other, which calls always before an “I” is “put together” as an entity. Before reason is possible, before the “question of Being” can be posed, there has already been an answer to that which is beyond reason and escapes knowledge. Thus, when the dismantling of the powerful notion of the subject sets up a distressing scenario where the question about the grounding of responsibility is crucial, Derrida’s readings in Levinas and Heidegger present us with the possibility of different scenes. For instance, one in which reason and subject are not destroyed but questioned in their assumed roles and then perceived in a different way. In a displaced scenario, uncertainties turn promissory, for it is a duty, an ethical and political duty, to take into account this impossibility of being one with oneself. It is because I am not one with myself that I can speak with the other and address the other. That is not a way of avoiding responsibility. On the contrary, it is the only way for me to take responsibility and to make decisions. (VR, 14)

Thus, “responsibility” can be thought as openness to what is other, and “the subject” as the one that can only respond because of the interruption of its self-identity. In this context, responsibility is not a programmed, calculated task for a self-identical, autonomous agent subject; it is rather what puts together an always interrupted subjectivity. The subversion of identity and mastery dislocates the whole setting showing the paradoxes, and here is the deconstructive trick: “The subject,” which seems to be origin and support for responsibility, turns out to be its child since the very constitution of subjectivity occurs in responsibility. “The other”—usually a prey to the knowing subject—appears as what/who preys on the subject’s safeguarding efforts, because the call of otherness is always disrupting the realization of self-sameness. In sum, responsibility implies that the other is always “between me and me.”22 And the dismantling of hierarchy between “other” and “me” posed by Derrida adds a pinch of deconstructive dynamite to the landscape (while it lends a fruitful topic that this work will resume later on).23 There is here the opportunity for a different understanding: responsibility as inhabiting the tension between calculation and the impossibility of calculating, between program and the impossibility of programming. Responsibility meaning the interruption of ipseity, as a challenge to the hardening of the principle of reason tied to a conception of a dominant, master subject. Responsibility meaning unavoidable openness to what is other, escaping knowledge. Responsibility as deeply related to faith.

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On Faith (and Autoimmunity) Derrida proposes that the call of the other summons singularity as it comes always before the consolidation of an “I,” a “self,” an “ego,” or even the “who” who poses the questions. He detects that any of those overlapping instantiations of subjectivity are disjointed and pulled together again in response to a compelling summon: The singularity of the “who” is not the individuality of a thing that would be identical to itself, it is not an atom. It is a singularity that dislocates or divides itself in gathering itself together to answer to the other, whose call somehow precedes its own identification with itself, for to this call I can only answer, have already answered, even if I think I am answering “no.” (EW, 261; Derrida’s emphasis)

Against this background, as Derrida envisages pondering on Heidegger’s Zusage, the “act of responsibility” toward the call of the other is an “act of faith.”24 Yet, in the realm of sameness—where the master rational subject needs to protect itself and the edifice of reason by rejecting what is “foreign”—a real operation of immunity is at work. Like a living organism, this structure activates its own defenses as a mechanism of protection that resists any break in, and adapts facing new challenges. Following this motif, the i(nte)rruption of the other hampering the realization of the same can only be pictured as the result of autoimmunity. It is by lowering its immunitarian defense that the same can make room for otherness: The living ego is autoimmune . . . To protect its life, to constitute itself as unique living ego, to relate, as the same, to itself, it is necessarily led to welcome the other within . . . it must therefore take the immune defenses apparently meant for the non-ego, the enemy, the opposite, the adversary and direct them at once for itself and against itself. (SoM, 141; Derrida’s emphasis)

Autoimmunity, a kindred term of deconstruction (a cousin from the biological realm), has a later entrance into Derrida’s world of tropes and motifs, helping us to visualize what goes on in the constitution of any autonomous self-identity. It explains how “the self, the ipse, the autos” (R, 109) is affected by its own undoing—a fact that paradoxically guarantees its doing. Since total sameness would equal total death, openness to otherness is indispensable. Then, being open to alterity means the lowering of the defense system, losing immunity—actually, allowing the launching of some sort of autoimmunity. Derrida’s work takes us to think subjectivity as constituted in an “act of responsibility,” which is an “act of faith” toward the call of the other. In

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this light, I underline a perception that can be worded as follows: Derrida’s work inspires us to consider that faith is a unique marker for autoimmunity. In sum, receiving the other means to upset the power of autonomy, mastery, or sovereignty. It is the disruption of an index that Derrida specifies: “the ipseity of the One, the autos of autonomy, symmetry, homogeneity, the same, the like, the semblable or the similar, and even, finally, God” (R, 14). And this may be perceived as “cruelty itself”—that is, the “autoinfection of all autoaffection” (R, 109). In the introduction of Rogues, Derrida announces that for anything other to happen, an a priori unconditional renunciation of sovereignty is required; something like “a weak force.” And he explains, “[t]his vulnerable force, this force without power, opens up unconditionally to what or who comes and comes to affect it” (R, xiv; Derrida’s emphasis). However, otherness is constitutive of identity, not only of the human subject, but of all structures as institutions, traditions, religions, or nation states. In spite of the alleged immunity of so many sovereign claims, it is important to bear in mind that “a sort of general logic of auto-immunization” is continuously at work (FK, 80, n 27).25 On Faith (and Knowledge) After these considerations, we notice faith returning to a scenery from where it had been expelled by the lights of Enlightenment and its dominant reception of the principle of reason. Like Derrida points out, there are plenty of references, “before and after all the Enlightenments in the world,” to the believed “independence of critical reason . . . with respect to religion and even to all faith” (FK, 94). However, as we have observed, he detects in the western philosophical tradition indicators of some faith evoked before all questioning, all knowledge, and all philosophy. This pre-engagement, assumed by every language and speech, discloses an originary and elementary experience without which there would neither be “social bond” nor address of the other, nor any performativity in general: neither convention, nor institution, nor constitution, nor sovereign state, nor law, nor above all . . . that structural performativity . . . that binds from its very inception the knowledge of the scientific community to doing, and science to technics. (FK, 80)

Consequently, it is possible to think that reason, science, and technoscience in the wake of knowledge do require—as religion does—some faith.26 The deconstructive reading allows us here to realize how the strong architectural system of rational knowledge actually rests on what it excludes: the fact that “the ‘lights’ and Enlightenment of tele-technoscientific critique

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and reason . . . are obliged to put into play an irreducible ‘faith’” (FK, 80). Reason—conceived as grounded on the sovereignty of the One—is affected by autoimmunity from its very constitution. Autoimmunity is the secretion of reason’s immune system that rebels against itself giving away the “act of faith” that weakens its very structure. Under a dominant globalized reception of the principle of reason, faith has no place in any rational knowledge worth its name, and nothing “other” is welcome into its edifice. In fact, knowledge hides its autoinfection, investing all efforts on building up immunity. Contrariwise, the thought of an “Enlightenment to come” thinks of reason acknowledging the vulnerability of its constitution: a reason with a weak force resulting from autoimmunity. In this sense, there is a possibility of knowing otherwise; a kind of knowing in which calculation, program, fixed origins, and ends are always already fissured by that which escapes knowledge. KNOWING OTHERWISE Under the auspice of an “Enlightenment to come,” Derrida considers the idea of saving the honor of reason: “What if . . . in these times of danger or distress, these tempestuous times of loss, [we] had to save the honor of reason?” (R, 119). By means of an account of the history of reason, following some specific features as they appear in western philosophy, Derrida underlines the occurrence of two inseparable poles of rationality: sovereignty and unconditionality. And he points at one consistent trait: teleology. He suggests that the knack would be to stand rationally against the tricks of reason in order for reason to have a future. And, as we have followed to this point, such a turn involves questioning the historical ways of classical reason in the name of the future to come. The architectonic and teleological desire of reason is to unify rationality into a “world” that—according to Kant—works as the “regulative Idea of reason,” that is, according to the eidos, the ideal, the same, the telos (R, 135). Being programmed in advance, such a world would not have room for what or who comes outside the metaphysical blueprint. Contrariwise, the “world of the Enlightenment to come”—which would be Derrida’s dis-regulative idea—is one that cracks the edifice of reason with plural rationalities. Saving the honor of reason by weakening reason’s sovereignty would thus imply a receptive openness before what is most feared: “Namely, the truth of the other, heterogeneity, the heteronomic and the dissymmetric, disseminal multiplicity, the anonymous ‘anyone,’ the ‘no matter who,’ the in-determinate ‘each one’” (R, 14–15).

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Derrida’s perception of another responsibility facing the summons of the principle of reason opens the door to another thought, aware that faith and the pledge of otherness have been there before “[e]ven before the act of a decision” (R, xiv). In this sense, the reason of this knowledge is a reason that tears its unicity and auto-delimits its sovereignty in the name of its unconditionality. Yet, the reception of otherness—the yes, the confident acceptance—involves the possibility of the coming of both the best and the worst—for there cannot be one without the other. As Derrida wisely explains: ‌‌‌‌“‘Thought’ requires both the principle of reason and what is beyond the principle of reason . . . decision is always risky; it always risks the worst. To claim to eliminate that risk by an institutional program is quite simply to erect a barricade against a future” (PR, 18–19).27 This way of knowing otherwise needs the vigilance of a reason that doesn’t go to sleep. Actually, such reason is kept wide awake by the non-resolution of internal tensions: calculation and incalculability, program and un-programmability, plus a decentered subjectivity. This is a way of knowing that occurs within the aporia, the double bind, in the realm of undecidability, accompanied by the paradoxical blessing of autoimmunity. In fact, deconstruction just offers a description of the limitations of our thinking and knowing—for at this point, we have already noticed that the description of these things as they should be is the stuff of metaphysics and ontotheology. However, this is not the overcoming of metaphysics, it is not the destruction of reason nor the destruction of the subject; it is rather the awareness that they are not what they say they are. The possibility of knowing otherwise is mindful of limitations. Next Steps Derrida’s deconstructive reading problematizes the still persistent modern credo about knowledge resting on reason as a matter of principles and grounding, about knowledge resting on the idea of an autonomous and self-identical subject, and about knowledge following a logos of vision aiming to fulfill the desire of a rational subject. Consequently, the modern conceptions of responsibility and the relation of reason and faith need to be reconsidered. The work of the philosopher rehearses journeys that stride on open paths toward a knowing that works otherwise. The question about how all this echoes in Luther’s theology will guide the following chapter.

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NOTES 1. With a different emphasis, the challenge of “knowing other-wise” has been considered by a volume whose authors explore nonrational ways of knowing which are wise in reference to the “other” (Olthuis 1997). I discovered the book at the time I was editing this work, and I want to recognize the use of the motif, which endows a wider sense to my perceptions in this regard. 2. In the Monadology §31–32, Lebniz states: “Our reasonings are based on two great principles, that of contradiction . . . [and] that of sufficient reason” (Leibniz 1898,7–8). The second one, “nihil est sine ratione,” was considered by Leibnitz “one of the greatest and most fruitful of all human knowledge, for upon it is built a great part of metaphysics, physics, and moral science” (Leibniz 1976, 227). In 1955–1956 Martin Heidegger gave an influential lecture course taking Leibniz’s “principle of reason” as its focal point, it was published as Der Satz von Grund (1957). Derrida referred to this lecture of Heidegger’s in different occasions, for instance, in his “The Principle of Reason” (PR) and Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (R). 3. Heidegger developed this view especially in a lecture delivered in Munich, in 1953, “Die Frage nach der Technik” [“The Question Concerning Technology”] (Heidegger 1954). 4. Derrida quotes Jorge Luis Borges who, in “The Fearful Sphere of Pascal” writes: “Perhaps universal history is but the history of several metaphors,” and again, “perhaps universal history is but the history of the diverse intonations of several metaphors” (WD, 114). 5. In a more recent analysis, Rosi Braidotti elaborates in this sense about drones and other sophisticated killing devices against the general background of technoscience, power, and necro-politics in the late capitalist era (Braidotti 2013, 125–27, 142). 6. “Teleology and Architectonic: The Neutralization of the Event” is precisely the title of one of the chapters of Derrida’s Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (R,118–40). 7. “The strong are always best at proving they’re right”; Derrida quotes La Fontaine’s fable about the wolf and the lamb in the preface of his two essays on reason (R, x–xi). 8. I use here the idea of “official history” referring to some dominant retrospective account of this conception; a rendering that is problematized by different authors (see Critchley 1999b, 59–60) and, especially, by Derrida—as I shall introduce below. 9. I take up again the issue of the human subject in chapter 10. 10. It is precisely because of this dominant prototype of the human subject as male that, in this section, I use the noun “man” and I do it between quotations marks. In the original text, Derrida uses “l’homme,” which is rendered as “man” in the English version that I quote verbatim. 11. See chapter 4. 12. I resume the trope of immunity and autoimmunity under “On Faith (and Autoimmunity).” 13. See chapter 3. 14. Derrida explains: “The subject does not want just to master and possess nature actively. In our cultures, he accepts sacrifice and eats flesh” (EW, 281). In

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the previous page, he had anticipated: “People are going to object: there are ethical, juridical, and political subjects (recognized only quite recently, as you well know), full (almost full) citizens who are also women and/or vegetarians! But this has been admitted in principle, and in rights, only recently and precisely at the moment when the concept of subject enters into deconstruction” (EW, 280). 15. In this sense Derrida continues: “I would ask you: in our countries who would stand any chance of becoming a chef d’Etat (a head of State) and thereby acceding ‘to the head,’ by publicly, and therefore exemplarily, declaring him- or herself to be a vegetarian. The chef must be an eater of flesh . . . To say nothing of celibacy, of homosexuality, and even of femininity (which for the moment, and so rarely, is only admitted to the head of whatever it might be . . . if it lets itself be translated into a virile and heroic schema . . . )” (EW, 281). 16. I take up this issue in chapter 10. 17. The text of “‘Eating Well,’ or the Calculation of the Subject” reproduces this interview. The conversation focuses exclusively on the issue of the subject in the age of its so called “annihilation” (EW). 18. We have followed some aspects of Derrida’s reading of Levinas on the issue of “violence and metaphysics”; see above under “Sight, Light, Might.” 19. Derrida underlines the ambiguity between the subjective and objective possibilities of the genitive in this “of” (see AEL, 24). I pick up this issue in chapter 10. 20. I resume this issue in chapter 7. 21. Derrida considers “Zusage” in different works, for instance in Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question (1989 [1987]), “A Number of Yes” (2008 [1987]), and “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ within the Limits of Reason Alone” (1998 [1996]). 22. I borrow this (theological) image from Eberhard Jüngel (Jüngel 1988, 26). 23. I take up this issue again in chapter 10. 24. The term “act” may denote some sort of strong agency; however, as the thread of this discussion shows, these “acts” do not belong with a self-present, autonomous agent subject. 25. I resume the motif of autoimmunity with reference to the sovereignty of God in chapter 12. 26. I elaborate further on the relationship between religion and knowledge in chapter 7. 27. I further explore this issue on both Derrida and Luther in chapters 7 and 8, respectively.

6

The Posteriora Dei

ON THEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE If for Aristotle the deep drive of human beings toward knowledge is— proudly—part of “our nature,” the old myth of the fall in the text of Genesis lets us gather something different. In brief, while eagerness for knowledge is the raison d’être of philosophy, there has been “from the beginning” deep religious mistrusts about this inclination, and such fact may have carried some weight on theology. The history of this implication is complex and vast, but here I shall focus on one specific development of paramount importance for western theological thought. We know that with Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle put his throne in the land of theology, and, in so doing, knowledge—in a very specific rational way—was warmly welcomed.1 This was still the predominant pattern in theological education by the time Luther was a student, and later a professor.2 Yet, new winds blew at the University in Wittenberg where Luther was teaching and he was deeply imbued by them;3 this fact was, undoubtedly, of great importance for his theological breakthrough.4 In Luther’s commentary of the narrative of the fall in Genesis 3, we can appreciate that Aristotelian statements about reason are welcome by the reformer “when they are applied to matters that are subject to reason,” yet, for him, knowledge of God is not one of those matters. Actually, later in the commentary, he observes that those who are the ablest and are endowed with a better reason “will hate the Gospel all the more bitterly” and, because of this, in theology we should maintain that “reason in human beings is most hostile to God” (LW 1:143). The argument behind this affirmation is that while the Philosopher affirms that desire for knowledge is in human nature and “human reason pleads for the best,” Luther very early in his career underlines that what really is in the nature of human beings is the desire to be God (LW 31:10). 65

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After some considerations about deconstruction and the main features of the western approach to knowledge, having spotted some of the metaphysical pitfalls that Jacques Derrida notices, I shall focus on Martin Luther’s theological perceptions on the issue. I shall follow how Luther’s rediscovery of the theology of the cross meets a way of knowing that also works otherwise, since it conveys a disruptive epistemological force. After this, I shall trace how Derrida’s findings and Luther’s theological discoveries with regard to knowledge echo on each other. Knowledge of God One first observation shows that Luther’s discoveries take him away from any “architectonic system” of theology. Reading through his work we can appreciate that he does not develop any system comparable with those present in the theological trends of his age (Lohse 1999, 196). In fact, Luther’s theology is wrought over against the pattern of scholastic theology, specifically against its metaphysical assumptions set on a structured philosophical method. In this sense, while late scholastic theologians and their systems of thought mostly treat the knowledge of God leaving aside matters related to the anguish of sin, guilt, suffering, and the meaning of the cross (Lohse1999, 40), those issues become vital for Luther. His interest in theology is marked by utter existential concerns and that is the reason why any consideration about knowledge in theology becomes for him inextricable from those neglected topics. The closest idea to a definition of theology found in Luther depicts this interest: Knowledge of God and the human being is divine wisdom, and in the real sense theological. It is such knowledge of God and the human as is related to the justifying God and to sinful human being, so that in the real sense the subject of theology is guilty and lost human being and the justifying and redeeming God. What is inquired into, apart from this question and subject, is error and vanity in theology. (LW 12:311–12)5

In fact, one thing clear in these restrictive words is that, for Luther, theological knowledge is not about some applied speculative method or intellectual exercise, but it has to do with a peculiar relationship between God and the human. And, I shall advance here, this issue reflects Luther’s reformational discovery as captured in the expression justification by grace through faith alone. For Luther, the approach to this form of knowledge that we call “theology” is deeply marked by an encounter with the justice of God in a completely different way. Consequently, following Luther, the object of theology is not the knowledge of God; at least, not what the main theological trends of Luther’s time

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understood by that, and absolutely not what the classic western tradition has trained us to understand. The object of theology is the perception of how a relationship works dismantling those available models. It is not that we sit at our desks, draw a layout for our research paper “God,” and set out to execute it, following some clever method as life transpires somewhere outside our windows. As we shortly shall see, for Luther, the idea is more that we have no control. We are seized by what we are trying to grasp, and in such a way that we cannot see it coming nor appraise it completely: we are hit by what it allows us to perceive. This “divine wisdom” is, in fact, something completely outrageous; it is not what we imagine, it is not where we look for it, and we do not like its hows. In sum, for Luther, the object of theology does not usher a pleasant venture. And as humans that we are—“naturally” eager for knowledge—we are left clueless. ON BEING TAUGHT TO UNDERSTAND “PHILOSOPHICALLY” There are two philosophical elements that accompany Christian thought from its early Eastern origins in a Hellenized milieu, and they became very important for the development of the doctrine of justification in the western tradition. One of those features is anthropological: the idea of a “human free will”; the other one is of ethical and juridical character: the conception of divine justice as “distributive justice.” Alister McGrath explains that justification was not an issue in the pre-Augustinian theological tradition and, given the fact that there was almost no Pauline influence in the early church, soteriological interest was then elaborated in non-biblical terms (McGrath 2005, 33).6 In reality, the theologies of the first four centuries were practically homogeneous in affirming the freedom of the human will. The Platonic philosophical notion of autexousia—rendered in Latin by Tertullian as liberum arbitrium—had become central to the discussion of the status of humanity before God. Conversely, the conception of the “justice” or “righteousness” of God underwent a long process of translation and use: from the Hebrew notion of sedaqa to that of the Greek dikaiosyne in the Septuagint, to the Latin iustitia in the Vulgata. However, by the second century CE, the term had already acquired well-established juristic connotations and the Ciceronian definition of iustitia as “giving someone their due” had become normative. Thus, the salvific, restorative overtone of Hebrew sedaqa—well known to Paul—had mutated into an Aristotelian idea of distributive justice, a term with legal implications. Augustine is the first theologian to alter in some way the theological reception of those philosophical notions toward a more Pauline direction;7 however, this is not the course that theology followed in the Middle

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Ages. As the focus turned to justification, the theological teachings of the different medieval schools continued carrying those central philosophical notions albeit reinforced, after the thirteenth century, by the western recovery of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Hence, in Luther’s day, the meaning of the justice of God was interpreted via Aristotle. According to the teachings of scholastic theology, in both its via antiqua and its via moderna,8 “divine justice” toward human beings was understood as the virtue of rendering to each one their due. In turn, this scheme matched a nominalist proposition with anthropological assumptions: “God will not deny grace to those who do their best.” However, although the nominalist covenantal theology of the via moderna sustained those teachings, Gabriel Biel—one of its masters—would teach that individuals cannot know for sure whether they have done their best (McGrath 2005, 219). One year before his death, in 1545, on the occasion of the Latin edition of his works at Wittenberg, Luther reflects upon his early career (LW 34:336). Contributing the preface for the first volume of such publication, he includes an autobiographical segment describing his early anguish and contradictory feelings regarding the justice of God as portrayed in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans: “I did not love yes, I hated the righteous God who punished sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly. ” There, he explains that he had learned about “the righteousness of God . . . according to the use and custom of all the teachers” and that he “had been taught to understand philosophically” (emphasis added). It is in such context where the justice of God, which terrorized his days and nights, met him as a sheer gift. In the same autobiographic passage, he narrates how he finally understood that the “justice of God” is that by which human beings are justified. The fact is that, as he explains in his Lectures on Galatians (1519), he had found: “A wonderful, new definition of justice! This is usually described thus: ‘justice is a virtue which renders to each their due.’ Here it truly says: ‘justice is faith in Jesus Christ’” (WA 57:a69.15–17).9 In effect, the works that accompanied Luther’s early career allow us to appreciate how Luther begins to question openly the current dominant interpretations and teachings that he had received and upon which the institution of the late medieval church rested. One important point that Luther makes is, precisely, that theology is not philosophy—especially, not Aristotelian logic or ethics—because theology is impelled by different concerns. For Luther, the scholastics had gone way too far in their use of Aristotle when the issue of God in relation with human beings was at stake. In his Disputation against Scholastic Theology (1517) he concludes, “No one can become a theologian unless they become one without Aristotle” (LW 31:12). Some months later, in his “philosophical theses”—the second part of the Heidelberg Disputation (1518)—he rounds up his position regarding the use of “the Philosopher”

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and philosophical speculation in general: “That who wishes to philosophize by using Aristotle without danger must first become thoroughly foolish in Christ . . . no person philosophizes well unless they are a fool, that is a Christian” (LW 31:41). In effect, according to Luther, theology does not rest on the free disposition of a rational human being searching for logical principles and grounding. Thus, with regard to the meaning of being a Christian and a fool, his readings of the tradition start to unravel a dynamic that will put the scholastic walls to tremble. The seismic activity around those dislocating readings will become alarmingly high. THEOLOGICAL PARADOXES On April 26, 1518, Luther presents a disputation prepared for the general chapter of the Augustinians of Germany gathered in Heidelberg. Due to the affair of the Ninety-five Theses that had taken place some months before, word had come from Pope Leo X to silence Luther through regular channels, and the request was passed down to Johann Staupitz, vicar of the German congregation of the order. Following the suggestion of his vicar of not provoking controversial debates, the young friar formulates for the occasion twenty-eight theological theses and twelve philosophical ones. What he shares with his brethren that day encloses the kernel of Luther’s richest theological elaboration, which we identify as theologia crucis. Remarkably, those theses are humbly presented and submitted to the judgment of those in attendance as “theological paradoxes” deduced from St. Paul and St. Augustine (LW 31:39). In the text of the Heidelberg Disputation, we follow the depiction of the tricky dynamics of law and righteousness, the works of human beings and the works of God, free will and grace, theology of glory and theology of the cross. And the “trickiness” is patently clear in the paradoxical character of the propositions. Common theological affirmations appear as inhabited by an unsettling principle that renders them unstable: the law of God does not advance, but actually hinders human beings on their way to righteousness; what appears to be an attractive and good work is prone to turn into mortal sin; free will is not free; human beings do not do the best by doing their best (LW 31:39–40). The last pair of terms in paradox is considered in theses 19 to 21, and in them Luther seems to be reflecting on the authenticity of the theological vocation. They read: [19] The person who looks upon the invisible things of God as they are perceived in created things does not deserve to be called a theologian. [20] The person who perceives the visible rearward parts of God as seen in suffering and

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the cross does, however, deserve to be called a theologian. [21] A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is. (LW 31:40; WA 1:354, 17–22)10

In line with the previous contradictions, Luther asserts—before his peers— that whoever honors the ABC of scholastic theology, following the teachings of “the Philosopher,” does not deserve the title. A theologian is the person who realizes that the knowledge human beings can have of God comes from God exposed in suffering and the cross. A theologian does not speculate about the invisible things of God by applying reason to the natural vestigia, but perceives God’s revelation in the posteriora Dei, God’s “rearward parts.” The way of analogy, ascending from nature in search of the universal truth of God through abstraction, does not make a theologian. The person who deserves the name is the one who stays below, not climbing out of but staying in the muddy ground of reality. In thesis 21, Luther identifies two kinds of theologians by name: If there is a theologian who does not deserve to be referred to as such, it is the one who follows the speculative way, which is tied up with a theology that confounds good and evil. Such an undeserving theologian is a “theologian of glory.” To the contrary, the person who deserves the name is the one that gives theological testimony of what things actually are, and this is the “theologian of the cross.” In the proofs of the theses, Luther further explains what is behind those sharp formulations. Rereading Paul he observes that “the invisible things of God” that the theologian of glory perceives in created things, “are virtue, godliness, wisdom, justice, goodness, and so forth” but they are in opposition to God’s “human nature, weakness, foolishness.” Since humans misused and did not honor God in knowledge through works, then God wished to be recognized and honored “hidden in suffering.” If human wisdom is not enough to know God, God is to be known in folly: the humility and shame of the cross (LW 31:52–53). Thus, for Luther, the locus for the discussion about the knowledge of God is revelation and not creation. For creation does not refer to God in a symmetric analogical way but only by asymmetric paradox. As Vítor Westhelle explicates: “It is asymmetrical in that what appears to be the case in one set of categories is not simply reflected in the other, but is shaped in the other in unexpected ways” (Westhelle 2016, 126, emphases added). In this sense, Luther was asserting that knowledge of God, even when it rests on revelation, should not be taken for granted: God is hidden in his revelation and such revelation appears abscondita sub contrario, “hidden under its opposite”—at least under what human reason would consider as the opposite of divine revelation. In the same way, Luther illustrates how epistemology and ethics are related: the way humans know goes together with the way they act. Those

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who do not know God hidden in suffering, prefer “works to suffering . . . they hate the cross and suffering, and love works and the glory of works” (LW 31:53). Because who has not been brought low, reduced to nothing by the cross, and takes credit for works and wisdom; because of this, the wisdom that perceives the invisible things of God in works turns to be “completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened” (LW 31:40–41). The set appears to be complete: there is an “ethics of glory” which belongs with a glorious theology as expressed by a glorious theologian.11 In the light of this, we start to appreciate how all the paradoxes go together displacing awkwardly the “logic” of a dominant theological pattern. A theology fueled by a human “natural” desire to know (Aristotle) is marked by a human “natural” desire to be God (Luther). Then, fulfillment of the law, achievement of good works, the efforts of the will, and our best performances fit our human delusions of grandeur, blinding us completely with regard to our human structural limitations. Yet, Luther is not introducing some kind of a heroic new profile for theologians. Discerning God through suffering and the cross is not a brave step taken within a certain logic, or a programmed echelon of spiritual ascension.12 Actually, for him, it was a sign of having reached in this regard the status of a real fool, of being “thoroughly foolish in Christ” (LW 31:41). Thus, glorious delusions are perceived as such only at the point where human beings are confronted with their sinfulness and “utterly despair of [their] own ability” (LW 31:40; WA 1:354, 15–16). In perceiving God in the crucified Christ, through the experience of being visited by the anguish of finite, fallen existence, a new understanding emerges, one that owes everything to grace. It is significant to notice that the topic of destructio (destrunctuur—destructus—destruitur) is used here by Luther with reference to the process through which the individual undergoes when facing the reality of suffering and the cross (LW 31:55; WA 1:362, 29–31; 363, 28–34).13 The prefiguration of the name “deconstruction” appears in Luther with relation to the autonomy of the “knowing subject” and operates directly over against the epistemological and ethical principles of metaphysics. The self-assurance of great deeds and rational achievement is brought to crumbs, and hearts are open to perceive that “they are not righteous who do much, but they who, without work, believe much in Christ” (LW 31:41). CALLING THE THING WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS All this said, we should realize that the theology of the cross so explicitly exposed in the occasion of a meeting of a chapter of the Augustinian order is inscribed in both a wider and a narrower context. It emerges in the wider context of late medieval Christendom: the overarching power of the church, the

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papal sovereignty within it, the corruption of the curia, and the rejection of reform. And, as well, within the narrower context of Luther’s life and pastoral work: his new perception of the justice of God, and his daily experience of the abandonment and neglect of the simple people and the poor by the ecclesiastical institution. Walter Altmann calls attention to the wider setting as he refers to the “intricate chain of tax collection and exploitation,” which involved the medieval church, whose dignitaries were also feudal lords who held political power (Altmann 2015 [1994], 7–8). And, in this sense, Philip Ruge-Jones explores the complex framework of the theological social critique entailed by the theology of the cross, reminding us that the Heidelberg Disputation is not an isolated piece of Luther’s work. It is important to have in mind that the Ninety-five Theses of 1517 were issued in Latin envisaging an audience of learned theologians, but the concern they expressed to the leaders of the church had deep implications for the common people. Luther writes them as a scholar and as a pastor worried over the exploitation of his parishioners by the indulgence hawkers, and wants to expose the specific theology related to this apparatus. In fact, Luther refers to this in the confrontation of the theologia crucis with the theologia gloriae before the larger audience of the Theses in the same year that the disputation in Heidelberg is introduced to the brethren of his order. This occurs in the Explanations of the ninety-five theses, published after his return from Heidelberg in August, 1518. In those Explanations, the criticism of concrete, historic power relationships appears already in the heart of the theology of the cross (Ruge-Jones 2008, 83). Luther depicts the operations of the sellers of indulgences who want to make God a “usurer” or a “dealer” (LW 31:117), and relates this to the abrogation of the theology of the cross by scholastic theology—“the deceiving theology”—through which “everything has been completely turned upside down” (LW 31:225–27).14 In his perception about the theology of the cross we observe how Luther, a theologian and a priest, rereads the corpus of the tradition: he introduces his discernment on Augustine and Paul, and accompanies his findings with passionate scriptural scrutiny. His views run into paradoxes, which dismantle contemporary ways of theological understanding and open the possibility for something different that belongs to the power of the gospel. At the same time, following the reconstruction of historical developments, we may appreciate how “the onset of an earthquake” is taking shape at the level of theological formulations, which have tangible, material implications. In this displacing framework, the theology of the cross—at the heart of Luther’s reformational discovery of “justification by grace through faith alone”—starts to open a number of gaps in the theological ground of late medieval Christendom.

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ECHOES Reading Luther after Derrida, we can perceive how—delimiting the metaphysical side of late medieval theology—the theology of the cross conveys a disruptive epistemological force. The logic of this theology belongs with the logos of the cross and this problematizes knowledge in theology and, as prefiguration, knowledge in general.15 In many aspects, the postmodern deconstructive thinking and this premodern theological finding echo in each other. From the Bottom As we have observed when considering the strategies of deconstruction, Derrida describes its operations as happening inside a given structure, there is no possibility of standing outside, or flying above in order to have a complete and neutral vision extricated from our historical constrictions.16 “We must begin wherever we are. Wherever we are: in a text we already believe ourselves to be . . . subject to a certain historical necessity”—Derrida affirms (OG, 162). Elaborating on this matter and showing how the temptation of starting from outside and from above is a constant in metaphysical thought, Caputo repeatedly alludes to the “soaring eagle” of German philosophy that Derrida spotted in the left column of his work Glas (Caputo 1993a, 20, 43, pass; 2000, 91).17 Flying with Hegel, Heidegger, and Nietzsche, the eagle— with keen eye—patrols from above the perfect realization of absolute Reason (Glas, 1, 54–55, pass). Yet, the German reformer ran into a less majestic path, one that refuses the soaring flight. The dynamic of “starting from the bottom” is present in his theological perception and in a peculiar mode. In fact, starting from the bottom was not a new epistemological trend in Luther’s age. Scholastic epistemology—informed by the Philosopher— departed from the rational abstraction of the natural world ascending toward the knowledge of the divine. Besides, most mystical traditions would begin from experience and move toward the ascension or rapture.18 Both theological paths would then agree with starting “from the bottom,” but their way would be “from the bottom up.” Then, the issue would be what fuels the ascension. In these two cases the progress seems allured by the metaphysical siren song against which the theology of the cross stands: On the one hand, the ascent has already a definite idea of the “up” it is pursuing—as for instance, the Summum bonum or the Being beyond being. On the other, as Luther observed, the urgency to get past the “bottom experience” in order to hold some hyper-transcendent reality, rejects life as it occurs on the ground, evading the materiality of incarnation. In this sense, knowledge of God as achievement—a process steered by human desire—implies a programmed

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sketch of the world, a calculated conception of justice and a predetermined idea of God. Such “starting from the bottom” is, in reality, a desire to master what is placed “up above.” Nevertheless, sharing the table with friends and discussing theology, Luther identified himself as Terminista modernus (WATrV: 6419; McGrath 1985, 36),19 and this means that he had a nominalist approach to knowledge.20 The imprint of nominalism on epistemology is mainly represented by the idea of contingency. Contingency implies that our world is “not an ontologically necessary outflow or reflection of eternal structures of being” (Oberman 1986, 27) and, for this reason, human reality is not the imperfect expression of a higher reality. The nominalist approach considers that we are not placed at the lowest rung of a hierarchical ladder that ascends toward God, consequently, knowledge cannot be supported by abstract reason and speculation without relying on experience (Oberman 1986, 27–28). Going along with these epistemological aspects of nominalism, Luther called Ockham “Magister meus” (WATr II:2544a; Oberman 1986, 57).21 And in this sense, for Luther, theological knowledge does not seek for a highest reality detached from the world, but is related to God as a devoted participant in the world. We may say that the theology of the cross starts from the bottom, and from there it does not necessarily continue upward. The theology of the cross does not proceed toward a metaphysically coveted up, but actually goes into the complexity of reality. Knowledge starts within experience compelled to perceive the “visible rearward parts of God through suffering and the cross.” Hence, there is no way of avoiding incarnation, and incarnation is a whole counter-metaphysical manifesto: it involves singularity, contingency, change, impurity, corruption, suffering, being born, and dying. Furthermore, the narrative about Jesus Christ crucified reaches the theologian in the word: inscription, text, historicity. This prevents again any temptation of escaping up toward ideality, for transcendence is to be found where life transpires, hidden in the unexpected that takes place in time (as it happens with the text, according to Derrida). Always Already Late The theology of the cross recognizes human epistemological limitations: we cannot know “the Thing itself” and we arrive “always already” late.22 Reason longs and desires to reach the arché because knowing the origin would open the secret and answer all questions. We long for the pure origin that we have construed according to metaphysical wishful thinking, but, in fact, things are not like we dream. In the light of this, it is significant what Luther expresses about the theologian of the cross who “calls the thing what it actually is.” There is, in this regard, a whole point in McGrath’s translation

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of thesis 20—for he considers the traditional translation “seriously inaccurate” (McGrath 1985, 148–49). In this sense, the rendering of “visibilia et posteriora Dei” as “the visible and manifest things of God” instead of, more literally, “the visible rearward parts of God,” misses both the allusion to Exodus 33:23 and Luther’s concept of a “hidden revelation.”23 With this thesis, Luther persists in the biblical tradition: when Moses asks to see God’s glory, he receives a refusal; he is not allowed to see the face of God, “for there shall no one see me, and live.” In passing by, God will cover Moses's eyes with God’s hand and will take it away when it is already late: “And thou shalt see my rearward parts: but my face shall not be seen.”24 A theologian of the cross knows that they get there always already late, the imagined glory—from which the homonymous theology illusorily feeds—is not there; all there is to be seen are the rearward parts. This suggests that the rearward parts are exactly where human beings do not naturally want to look for knowledge. Yet, for Luther, we are always already here, and we learn to know through the cruciform shape of this reality, which does not amount to a cheap shadow of some highest reality that we should strive for. It is just here where the good news of the gospel meets us. Finally, there is one more hint in the impossibility of getting “the Thing itself,” and it is related to Luther’s reference to Exodus. In the divine warning “for there no one shall see me, and live,” death is less a punishment for trespassing than a hermeneutical consequence. Seeing it all, understanding it all, having the whole picture means the closing of all expectation, all search, all future. It actually equals absolute death. Another Way of Seeing The motif of sight is intensively present in the theses portraying the paradox of theologia crucis and theologia gloriae. Actually, alluding to the text of Romans 1, Luther describes the person who does not deserve to be called a theologian actively visualizing the invisible things of God through the wonder of created things. Theologians of glory look for that which is invisible of God through the visible beauty of the works, and are dazzled by their own expectations. This exercise blinds and hardens precluding the perception of the visible “rearward parts.” Fabricating the invisible God, the theologians of glory turn blind to the nonbeauty of the visible: the reality of the suffering other. The relation of sight and knowing is patent in the theology of glory; the effort to envision otherness in order to tame it under a certain “logos of vision” is part of this theological method. As Luther observes, the object of human natural intellect is “being, the truth, and the good” (entis, veri, boni) but cannot be what is not registered into the ontological spectrum, “what is

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nothing” (quod nihil est), that is—he explains—“the poor and the needy” (LW 31:57). As we are prone to search for glory and majesty, the logos tou staurou—the word of the cross—does not depict an enthralling vision. Nevertheless, if the metaphysical logos of vision can be deconstructed, other repressed ways of seeing may surface. Derrida pulls a thread in this direction; he thinks that sometimes we need to adjust our vision, close our eyes briefly, and listen in order to be able to see differently (PR, 4). And this is an issue that Luther’s theology spots in two ways: First, knowledge through speculative reason is associated with sight, while faith is associated with not seeing (and from there the perceptions about revelation as hidden under its opposite, and about a deus revelatus, which is as well a deus absconditus).25 Second, following the scriptures, faith is associated with hearing (Rom 10:17), and the hearing of the word of the cross is precisely what allows the believer to see without being dazzled. Hearing the logos of the cross lets us see without turning the gaze away from the other; in the passive reception of this logos—which stands against the metaphysical logos—one sees the other in suffering and weakness. Luther puts it in this way: the love of the cross “turns in the direction where there is not good that it may enjoy” (LW 31:57). Being presented with the reality of human sinfulness in its proneness to dominion and violence is part of an “operation of the hearing” that turns the eyes away from the luminosity of the metaphysical rehearsals of the visio beatifica. In the passive reception of the word there is a process of destructio that changes the hearer into a passive seer. The scandalon of the cross cannot be tamed by the vision of the sa/voir absolute.26 By Faith Previous to enlightened rationalism and, of course, to any Derridean proposal for an “Enlightenment to come,” we can say that Luther’s theology is not an attack upon rational knowledge. However, facing the word of the cross, reasoning—as guided by the laws of Aristotelian logics—will take the theologian into absurdity. In Heidelberg, Luther humbly introduces his theses as “deduced theological paradoxes,” and so it is; there is no synthesis possible in this dialectic, just unresolved contradiction. That exercise exemplifies Luther’s discovery with regard to the use of reason in theology: if we follow it to the end, it takes us to a place where there is no way out. Reason is blind to the grain of the theological texture woven by the relation between God and the human. Then, as Derrida asserts, endorsing the deconstruction of religion in the name of faith at “The Villanova Roundtable,” it is more the case of “of

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a faith that cannot be simply mastered or domesticated or taught or logically understood, a faith that is paradoxical” (VR, 21–22).27 For the theology of glory, with its built-in commitment to rational metaphysical knowledge, the revelation as perceived in the posteriora Dei is absurd. This theology makes its way very quickly through the passion and the cross in order to render it differently, in a comelier mode, aligned with the beauty of the Summum bonum. The theology of the cross breaks the spell of such logic and puzzles us, since its rupture with the order of logos cannot be rationally solved. In fact, it is with the statement “the Word was made flesh” that Luther responds to the Parisian theologians who affirmed that “what is true in philosophy is true also in theology and vice versa” (LW 38:239).28 Early in his career Luther perceives that the logic of God is contrary to that of humans, “God condemns what men choose and chooses what men condemn . . . this judgment has been shown to us in the cross of Christ” (WA 3:463, 16–18).29 In this sense, natural theological preconceptions about the character of revelation are destroyed by the crucified God, and this can only be grasped by faith. If rational knowledge claims to be a matter of grounding principles, calculation, and program, theological knowledge is rather a matter of broken principles, mistaken calculation, and destroyed programs. Furthermore, as Luther discovers, such knowledge is not acquired through reason, will, or inner convictions, it is related to faith and goes hand in hand with grace. Now, after the deconstruction of western rationality, those aspects seem to be part of the postmodern situation. We have already observed that for Derrida the deconstruction of the principle of reason implies the recognition of an originary and “elementary act of faith,” which is previous to every science and is the quasi-transcendental condition of all knowledge.30 Besides, he is convinced that the most radical deconstructive gesture presupposes not only justice but also faith and the gift (VR, 22). A Gift Deconstruction is about the desire for something impossible and unforeseeable, “the coming of something we did not see coming, that takes us by surprise and tears up our horizon of expectation” (Caputo-Scanlon 1999, 3). The theology of the cross is about the scandalon of the knowledge of God hidden in the unexpected—sub contrario, there where natural human understanding cannot anticipate it. Both the deconstructive longing for the impossible and the theological portrayal of human yearning for justice before God move outside the realm of rational knowledge and turn out to be the involuntary preamble for a gift.

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The theology of the cross assumes that the justice of God is given by grace, and given by grace.31 The first emphasis underlines that such action comes as a gift from outside ourselves; the second, stresses the fact that we receive it without merit or payment. This sheer passivity is quite humiliating. Luther elaborates on this in the Heidelberg Disputation, where he expresses the understanding that human beings are open to receive God’s grace only through the humbling experience of perceiving their limitations with regard to knowing and doing: “It is certain that human beings must utterly despair of their own ability before they are prepared to receive the grace of Christ” (LW 31:40). Years later, he continues affirming this, when discussing free will with Erasmus: “The rest of men resist this humiliation; indeed, they condemn the teaching of self-despair; they want a little something left that they can do for themselves. Secretly they continue proud, and enemies of the grace of God” (BOW, 100). Indeed, the gift, the “given by grace,” is the accompanying motif of the vita passiva, which fuels the passion that Luther recognizes as the paradoxical task of theology: being worked upon by God.32 Then, how does the idea of the gift work with knowledge and specifically with the knowledge of God? In the discussion of the meaning of the gift for Christian theology between Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, the latter proposes a phenomenological elucidation to the issue, the central aspect of which is the conception of “saturated phenomena.”33 For Marion, in religious experience, what is given overwhelms the intention of the receiver; there is an excess of donation, that is, phenomena are of such givenness that there is no intention that can contain them. In this context, Derrida affirms “I doubt that there is a possibility of a phenomenology of the gift” (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 60). In fact, Derrida’s position is that of a thought outside phenomenology, which belongs to a “structure of the impossible.” Only such a structure could allow something like a gift to occur—although, for Derrida, the way in which this works is a dilemma that he considers “his cross” (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 73).34 However, what sort of “phenomenology” is at work in Luther’s theologia crucis? Here the “intentionality” on the side of the receiver is not a part of the process. This theology underlines the complete inappropriateness of human structural capacities to foresee and grasp such “knowledge.” In fact, human capacity is “incapable” not because what is there to be perceived exceeds the threshold of human perception, but rather because it is of so unappealing epistemological momentum that the human radar ignores it. Cross, suffering, and death: the posteriora dei and all the implications that such cognition of God entails are not an overwhelming flow of divine givenness, it is more the type of news we would rather not foresee. While human beings are busy trying to grasp the incomprehensible excess of God, it seems that God is to be met in God’s shortage. Furthermore, when in the proofs of article 24 of the

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Heidelberg Disputation Luther uses the term destructio, he does not seem to have in mind some sort of phenomenological reduction avant la lettre. What is at stake is the experience of “being reduced to nothing”; the ego, along with its configurations of world and divinity, has to undergo destructio. Destructio allows “the receiver” to meet God in suffering and at the cross, and this is a gift that Luther parallels to the process to which the gospel refers as “being born anew,” as “a new life.” Now, what is given is hidden and hardly suits the phenomenological notion of “the thing as such” present in experience. It is indeed an awkward gift, and, because of this, we may say that this way of knowing is a way of “knowing otherwise.” Passio The visible things of God, which are the posteriora, are only realized through passion and not through a process of theorein. We have considered theory placed at the service of knowledge under the order of sight. Yet, there is another aspect of this device to think about: theory, contemplation, is impassive. Luther asserts that the God of Aristotle is the God who cannot perceive mortal suffering; such a God is perfect in the impassivity of his self-contemplation. He pictures for Erasmus the character of this deity: “Aristotle, wishing to set his ‘prime Being’ free from misery, holds that he sees nothing but himself; for Aristotle supposes that it would be very irksome to such a Being to behold so many evils and injustices!” (LW 33:291). Derrida also observes that this God is “the name of indifference itself” (OG, 71). Musing on Levinas, violence, and metaphysics, Derrida underlines how reason at the root of western philosophy disregards the relationship with the other and this amounts to closing oneself within solitude in “a soliloquy of reason and a solitude of light” (WD, 113). Not seeing the other, the soliloquy of self-identity has no time and no history—the very character of the prime Being of metaphysics. God as perceived in suffering and the cross confronts, thus, Aristotle’s metaphysical idea of God. The crucified God is God exposed to the other, to time, entwined in history and undergoing passio—a “God with us” in and through this very pathos. This way of knowing otherwise at the heart of Luther’s theology is impelled by passion. Marked by the pathos (passio) of constant inadequacy before the Law of the righteous God, the pathos of realizing that the best of human will is not taking us to the attainment of justice, and, lastly, the pathos arising from the deceiving experience of being confronted by God as the humiliated, crucified one, breaking our inflated expectations. Unlike a first impression that makes us believe that passion is something that we as individuals grow and breed, passion is passive; it is actually something we undergo and suffer.

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Bayer remarks that the justice of faith is passive because we and “all our power” can do nothing, and explains that Luther received this from Johannes Tauler, the German mystic, who called it “vita passiva” (Bayer 2008, 43).35 In fact, Luther learned theology as the work of God carved on the human. Deconstruction is considered to be driven by a “passion for the impossible.” It is within this tension that life is lived in the undecidable, always open to the “promise of a justice to come.” Philosophy, this self-possessed, virtuous love of wisdom—which throughout western history turned out to be a greedy calculation that feeds knowledge—leaves now, according to Derrida, no other way than a passion that better proceeds sans voir, sans avoir, sans savoir: without sight, without possession, without savvy of what one loves (Caputo 2000, 6). Theology’s indefatigable search for a proper logos about God is constantly tempted by the “metaphysical order of logos” into a greedy rational discourse feeding knowledge as a means for dominion and control. Yet, after the theology of the cross neither theory nor achievement nor know-how stands, only passion remains. Next Steps The difference between a rational, philosophical knowledge of God and a paradoxical, theological one is depicted by Luther in two different kinds of theologies. The “theology of glory” and the “theology of the cross” pertain, respectively, to each one of those approaches. Condensing the main aspects of Luther’s theological breakthrough, the “theology of the cross” brings about a displacement of the dominant theological system of his time with important implications. The epistemological impact, focalized in this chapter, shows how the theologia crucis opens to a knowing that works otherwise. Yet, this perception coexists with that of the “wholly other” and, in the following section, we shall explore how this is something that occurs “otherwise than knowing.” NOTES 1. Nonetheless, as we have already observed, important notions of Greek philosophical thought were embraced by Christian theology already in the first centuries of the CE. See chapter 3. 2. The most significant influences to which Luther was exposed during his studies and teaching are represented by the late scholasticism (with its via antiqua and via moderna), the via mystica, the studia humanitatis, and the schola augustiniana moderna. The importance of those traditions in Luther’s formation is recognized,

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with different names and emphases, by many scholars as, for example, Lohse (1999); Oberman (1986); McGrath (1985); Ozment (1980). 3. “Our theology and Saint Augustine are progressing well, and with God’s help rule at our University. Aristotle is gradually tumbling from his throne” (LW 48, 42). With these words Luther expressed, in a letter of 1517, the developments that were taking place within the context of the reform at the University of Wittenberg (see Lohse 1999, 37). Those changes obeyed the influence of a renewed theology oriented to Augustine, scholarly identified as the schola augustiniana moderna as referred to in the previous note. 4. There are diverse positions with reference to the date and the specific content of Luther’s theological breakthrough. The positions regarding the date vary from signaling the years 1513 to 1520; those regarding the theological content pivot on Luther’s new interpretation of Romans 1:17 and the formulation of his own stand on justification. The different interpretations are based on the examination of Luther’s writings and of his autobiographical assertions. Same scholars agree on the fact that an accurate date cannot be fixed, they rather think of a process along the years through which Luther’s thought matured (Oberman 1986, 39–83; Lohse1999, 85–95). Very specifically, Alister McGrath proposes that over the years 1514–1519 Luther developed his theology as a unitary process that broke from the scholastic matrix, and his position was clearly articulated in his theologia crucis of 1518 (McGrath1985, 99–100). 5. Further elaborations on this definition are found in, among others, Paul Althaus (1966, 9–11), Eberhard Jüngel (1988, 16–17), Bernhard Lohse (1999, 39–40), Oswald Bayer (2007, 17–21; 2008, 37–42), and Carter Lindberg (2003, 165–66). 6. In this paragraph I follow McGrath (2005, 1–54). 7. As introduced in a previous note, Luther’s theological breakthrough was influenced in some aspects by the new Augustinian school (schola augustiniana moderna) of his time (see above under n77). He did mark, however, his differences with the “father” of his order. In fact, when he finds in scripture “a new definition of justice,” Luther is happy to corroborate that Augustine in The Spirit and the Letter had interpreted the subject in a similar way, yet he clarifies: “Although this was heretofore said imperfectly and he [Augustine] did not explain all things concerning imputation clearly” (LW 34:333–34). 8. Further information about the via moderna—the trend in which Luther was instructed at Erfurt—and its nominalist covenantal theology is provided in chapter 8. 9. “Mira et nova diffinitio iusticie, cum usitate sic describatur: ‘Iusticia est virtus reddens unicuique, quod suum est.’ Hic vero dicit: ‘Iusticia est fides Ihesu Christi,’” Scholion to Galatians 2:16. English version from McGrath (2005, 223). I resume his issue is in chapter 10, see under “A New Definition of Justice.” 10. I reproduce here McGrath’s translation of theses 19 and 20 (McGrath 1985, 148), slightly modified. With regard to thesis 21, the rendering of the term “theologus” as “theology” in LW is inaccurate; I have opted for “theologian” instead. 11. Walther von Loewenich (1976 [1929]) and Paul Althaus (1963 [1962]) elaborated on both the epistemological and ethical implications of the theologia crucis. 12. I elaborate further on the issue of suffering in Luther’s theology in chapter 8.

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13. The Latin verb destruo, meaning: demolish, pull/tear down; destroy, ruin; demolish/refute (arguments or evidence). LW translates as “to be destroyed” in the first case and as “to be brought low” in the last two cases. 14. Ruge-Jones offers an analysis of Luther’s explanation to thesis 58, where in the confrontation of theologia crucis to theologia gloriae, the “usurious and exploitative systems” of the institutional church are confronted by “the utter graciousness of God” (Ruge-Jones 2008, 83–85). 15. For instance, the epistemological implications of Luther’s theology of the cross with specific reference to feminist epistemology have been elaborated by Mary Solberg (1997). As noted before, the epistemological significance of the theology of the cross has been earlier underlined by other Luther scholars, most particularly Walter von Loewenich (1929) and Paul Althaus (1962). 16. See chapter 2. 17. In Glas (1974), Derrida arranged in confrontation columns of Hegel’s and Jean Genet’s writings, adding his own side notes; the left column holds the texts of the German philosopher. 18. I elaborate on the issue of Luther’s theology and mysticism in chapter 8. 19. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, “terminism” was a word used for “nominalism” (McGrath 1985, 36). The information of Luther’s self-identification as Terminista is registered in the Tischreden. 20. Among the most significant influences to which Luther was exposed during his study and teaching was the via moderna, which dated from the second half of the fourteenth century and was associated with William of Ockham (1280–1349) and other nominalist theologians as Jean Gerson (1363–1429) and Gabriel Biel (1425–1495). 21. However, Luther would reject the nominalist doctrine of free will, good works, and justification. This is made explicit, for instance, in the Disputation against Scholastic Theology (LW 31:9–16). I elaborate further on Luther’s theology in relation to nominalist teachings in chapter 8. 22. The use of this expression shares into the emphasis that Derrida gives to the “always-already”; for instance, he uses it 39 times in his Of Grammatology (1976 [1967]). J. D. Caputo rereading Derrida uses the term repeatedly in his writings (Caputo 1987; 1993a). As it transpires from those works, the expression has in itself a history of which both Heidegger and Marx participate. 23. This is the case in Luther’s Works (LW 31:40). 24. The Vulgata reads “videbis posteriora mea, faciem autem meam videre non poteris.” 25. I elaborate further on this in chapter 8. 26. In relation to the issue introduced in chapter 5 under “Sight, Light, Might,” both Levinas and Derrida use the family of words: voir, sa/voir, avoir and pouvoir [to see, to know, to have and to will]; “sa” stands for the acronym of savoir absolute (Hegel’s “absolute knowledge”). 27. Derrida was, in that context, referring to Kierkegaard but the assertion very well applies to Luther, a predecessor in the “counter-tradition” into which the Danish philosopher is also included (see Caputo 2002, 3).

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28. I resume this topic in chapter 12. 29. “Iudicium dei, quia contrarium est iudicio hominum, damnat enim ea, que eligunt homines, et eligit ea, que damnant homines. Et hoc iudicium est in cruce Christi nobis ostensum,” Dictata super Psalterium 1513/1515. 30. See chapter 5. 31. I further elaborate on the reformational motive of sola gratia in chapter 11 32. See under “Passio.” 33. Here I am referring to the discussion of Jean-Luc Marion and Derrida (see Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 20–78). 34. I refer to this in chapter 7. 35. I further elaborate on Tauler’s and other mystics’ influence on Luther’s theology in chapter 8.

7

Otherwise than Knowing

DESERT AND HIDDENNESS Derrida’s deconstructive readings are the experience of the impossible, constantly upsetting the logic of rationality and envisaging a way of knowing otherwise. As we have observed, Luther’s theologia crucis rehearses the same deconstructive movement when it comes time to consider what kind of knowledge theology engages. Nevertheless, there is another aspect to consider in relation to Derrida, Luther, and knowledge: it has to do with the fact that both philosopher and theologian also share in a thought that seems to work “otherwise than knowing.” This is related to the way they approach that which escapes knowledge; that is, the wholly other and its unsayability. Following their steps in this direction, we may find that they visit similar territories but are led with dissimilar anxieties; hence, the answers they find repeat some topics but differ in their emphases. My appreciation is that the philosopher’s thought and that of the theologian enter in a mirror play, replicating but in reverse. In such specularity we are allowed to glimpse defiant approaches slipping out of knowledge and addressing transcendence in a peculiar way. The mirror of Derrida’s deconstruction sheds light upon Luther’s deconstructive move. In his work on philosophy’s turn to religion, Hent de Vries holds the view that some contemporary philosophers “show that the citations from religious traditions are more fundamental to the structure of language and experience than the genealogies, critiques, and transcendental reflections of the modern discourse”—discourse which, he observes, “has deemed such citations obsolete and tended to reduce them to what they are not” (de Vries 1999, 2). In this direction, Derrida is, for de Vries, the philosopher who has provided more convincing arguments to this hypothesis. Reading Derrida as well, Caputo expresses the perception that “deconstruction repeats the structure 85

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of religious experience” (Caputo 1997a, xxi). Furthermore, using Caputo’s jeu de mots I have advanced the idea that in facing the (onto)theological hindrances of the western metaphysical order, Derrida rereads the tradition and runs into “an operation structured as a religion without religion.”1 In effect, following Derrida as he faces a time marked by the massive “return of religions,” we may see that there are two aspects of the religious resounding in deconstruction: one is the longing that transpires within negative theology, its desire of the wholly other, and its unending prayer; the other is the promise and the expectancy of justice impelling the messianic tradition. At the same time, we could say that Derrida’s deconstructive work is structured like a religion that delimits the extremes that overbend the bow of religious expression: the apophatic craving for a “hyperessential presence” on one end, and the dogmatism of the “concrete messianisms” on the other. Conversely, facing the overarching religious oppression of his age, Luther rereads the tradition and is overtaken by what I have referred to as a “theology that operates against theology.” This may be perceived in the tension at work within his writings: on one side, the theologia crucis strives against the constant drive of theology in consolidating as ontotheology; on the other, the thought of the deus absconditus, outside of the register of revelation, prevents theological closure. At the same time, we may affirm that Luther’s theology is structured in an eager movement that delimits polarized aspects of the religious experience: the suffocating constriction of idolatric institutionalization on the one hand, and the demonic threat of a hyper-transcendent divinity on the other. I shall proceed now to outline Derrida’s perceptions as he traces the experience of the impossible, something that occurs at the limits of reason and works “otherwise than knowing.” This interest induces him to read closely and explore different traditions, philosophical and theological; Greek, Jewish, and Christian. Against the background of those same traditions, in the following chapter, I shall focus on Luther’s theological perceptions about the deus absconditus delineated in tension with his theologia crucis. As we shall see, Derrida’s “desert” and Luther’s “hiddenness” are, in this sense, the metaphoric resources they leave us to peruse. A DESERT IN THE DESERT In some aspects, religious experience is a desert, and the desert is a motif fully present in the Abrahamic religions. Derrida refers to this as “the desert that we know”; the desert of the historical religions marked with revelations and retreats, lives and deaths of God, figures of kenosis and transcendence (FK, 59). Yet, contributing to the idea that deconstructive desire follows some religious-like itineraries, Derrida thinks of a different, somehow “more

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originary” desert. It is in the Capri seminar, held in 1994 and devoted exclusively to the issue of religion, where he outlines the dilemma he is facing.2 As it appears in “Faith and Knowledge,” he envisions a place of receptivity and openness diverse from the desert of religions, theologies and metaphysical systems. He speaks of “a desert in the desert”; a place that would render possible “precisely what it appears to threaten” (FK, 55). There he names provisionally this other desert with two names that have a history of their own. Those tenuous tracks in the sand are, respectively, of Greek and Judeo-Christian descent: “khōra,” and “the messianic.” What questions ignite the experience of the impossible portrayed by those itineraries in the desert? We should start considering that Derrida is thinking the issue of “religion today” (FK, 75), that is, in our postmodern time and world facing a so called “return of the religious.”3 With reference to this scenario, he is searching for the possibility of a “universal structure of religiosity,” which, without denying faith, could liberate a different rationality (FK, 56–57, 86). Exploring this he finds a constant play of duplicities at work: paralleling the duplicity as to the origins and sources of religion, there is duplicity in the relationship of faith and reason or religion and science; there is duplicity as well at the core of the process of a (religious) globalization and in the discourses of international politics and transnational economy; as there is also duplicity in our conceptions of war and peace and, most importantly, in the manifestation of violence. Furthermore, as suggested, a deconstructive approach allows still another ambiguous twofold aspect to be considered, one that receives and opens the thought of otherness escaping knowledge. In the light of the proposal about deconstruction repeating the structure of religious experience, it is significant to see that Derrida explores such a structure seriously and not by chance. Religio Derrida observes that the “irreducible duality” comprehended by religion is a commonly veiled fact. There are two genealogies: on the one hand, the experience of sacredness—of the unscathed, that which is safe and sound, holy; on the other hand, the experience of belief—confidence, faith, credit accorded in the performance of witnessing (FK, 72). There are as well two Latin etymological associations for religion (religio): One is relegere, bringing together in order to return and begin again; from here, religion is scrupulous attention, respect, patience, even modesty, shame, or piety. Another is religare, referring to a link, ligament, obligation, debt—between human beings, and between human beings and God (FK, 73–74). Thus, we discover an irreducible tension at the very heart of religion: scruple and respect, which keep the sacred immune; belief and witnessing, which bind to the other.

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Derrida suggests that without this unsettled constitution there is no religion (no community, no institution). In fact, we may see that if in saving the sacred from contamination religion would close in on itself at the risk of suffocation, it is the link to the other what would open religion allowing it to breathe. Nevertheless, in order for this to be possible, some mechanisms of immunity have to be challenged, and we have already observed that Derrida deploys this motif to explain how any identity is always already inhabited by otherness.4 Hence, in order to exist, religion needs to make room for otherness, but as a living organism, it activates its own defenses as a mechanism of protection. Yet, otherness is not a graft into religion but a part of its very constitution, then a defensive attack is, in fact, an autoattack. The tension that makes religion possible is, at the same time, the source of its own self-destructive drive. If the sacred, the unscathed, is to be preserved, an immunity of some sort is necessary to deal with openness towards otherness; since both are a necessary part of religion, a mechanism of autoimmunity is launched. In this situation of defensive immunity and necessary autoimmunity, whatever preserves religion causes unwanted side effects: “It conducts a terrible war against that which protects it only by threatening it” (FK, 82). We can plainly perceive that this tension in the constitution of religion becomes tangible in the experience of concrete religions. Religions need organization, institutional structures, norms and rules, admission codes, and many other protective devices, which are set up through history against the challenge of dissolution; they need all this in order to protect and keep what is held sacred. But those protective fences, once built, stiffen in time threatening the link to otherness, the openness to divinity and to the neighbor, which are a part of the very heart of religion. Paradoxically, protecting themselves, religions commit the worst violence, the imposition of the same against what is other. It is only “attacking” the closing drive of their own constitution that religions, along with their institutions and traditions, can thrive. This autoattack would be thus the least violence facing the worst. However, Derrida points out this mechanism in order to understand what is going on in this “return of the religious” in a macro, global scenery. He refers to the multifaceted phenomena associated with religion and modernity, specifically with what we may call the hyper-realization of modernity in technoscience and the development of an economic, political, and cultural globalization. And, around this, it is possible to continue tracing how the different layers of “irreducible duality” revolve around religio. In the title of his Capri lecture, Derrida places religion “at” the limits of reason instead of “within” them.5 As he later explains elsewhere, religion within the limits of reason would be “still so Christian in its ultimate Kantian foundation” (R, xiv). There is about this a double aspect to be noticed.

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Firstly, that in this world—as put together by globalization—“religion” stands, first and foremost, for “Christianity.”6 In this sense, Derrida underlines the fact that one globalized hegemonic vision of religion has constantly imposed itself upon others. He names this phenomenon “globalatinization” meaning that, when we discuss religio, we are always already speaking Christian Latin and, as well, we are speaking Anglo-American (FK, 66). And with this, he refers not only to what one would consider as strictly religious; for globalatinization implies, as well, the capitalistic and political-military dimension engaged in the worldwide imposition of the western conceptual apparatus of political rhetoric. It is here where duplicity unfolds, because this process that Derrida calls a “hyper-imperialist appropriation” has a peculiarity: it articulates its dominion as “a discourse on religion” (FK, 66–67). Hence, globalization poses for being a “secular” process, “free of all religiosity” but it is not so (FK, 63). Underlining this ambiguous relation of religio and imperium, the philosopher expresses: “Religion circulates in the world like an English word that has been to Rome and taken a detour to the United States” (FK, 66). Globalatinization is thus one name for what emerges as the threat of the worst violence: the imposition of the same under the shadow of religion. Secondly, clearly confronting those who strongly affirm an antagonism between faith and reason, Derrida points to the fact that they are constitutively related. Actually, thinking religion “within the limits of reason”—assuming an opposition between reason and faith, science and religion, etc.—misses the ambiguity of what is going on. In this direction, Derrida examines how reason and its unfolding in western culture is unescapably related to Christianity. In so doing, he identifies the struggling drives constituting the religious and how they surface in the ways religion related to the processes of modernity. From there, it is easy to trace an enlightened moral religion giving place to a free individual, which, with a free will and the ability to work his (sic) own salvation, steered the course of modern progress “after the death of God” (FK, 51–52). Because, in this sense, globalatinization stands for the “Christian” death of God in the face of other religions—as Derrida depicts it: “This strange alliance of Christianity, as the experience of the death of God, and tele-technoscientific capitalism” (FK, 52). Consequently, the need to oppose reason and faith appears in two confronted programs: On the one hand, the protection of reason, as is the case of western Christianity having to live and act according to a religion of modern times originated in the stance that “God himself is dead” (FK, 53). On the other hand, the protection of faith, as is the case of conservative Christianity, or the non-Christian and/or non-Western religions reacting to the menace of a hyper-rational Christian imposition. And here again the duplicity, because although it is evident that the conservative or fundamentalist expressions of religion reject the challenges

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that modern reason poses to religious belief, at the very same time, they make use of its developments. Religions profit from all the advances of modern tele-technoscience in order to spread their message massively, and manifest their reaction against modernity and its menace through different devices on the media, the worldwide web, and, in many cases, resorting to sophisticated deleterious weapons. In sum, important factions of the world’s religions perceive modernity and its related processes as threatening, and in order to protect what they hold sacred they lay hand on the very products of a globalized, rational, “Christian” hyper-growth of modernity. But, in those expressions, Derrida also reads a hyper-critical rationality present in the socalled “fundamentalisms” or “integrisms.” Through all the forms of immune response against a techno-economic modernity, those factions develop a radical critique toward western democracy and its link to the market and the tele-technoscientific reason that rules it (FK, 81n28). In contraposition, as I have already introduced, Derrida concludes that reason needs faith—in spite of the alleged “independence of critical reason, of knowledge, technics, philosophy, and thought with respect to religion and even to all faith” (FK, 94).7 Beyond a dominant reception of a Kantian or Hegelian interpretation of faith, reason, and the death of God, Derrida detects in the western philosophical tradition indicators of a faith evoked before all questioning, all knowledge, and all philosophy. It is because of this that he can affirm that “the lights and Enlightenment of tele-technoscientific critique and reason . . . are obliged to put into play an irreducible ‘faith’” (FK, 80). Out of this complex tension of ambiguities emerges a picture of what goes on in religio in general, and in “religion today” in particular. Following Derrida to this point, we are able to understand why, in principle, today, there is no incompatibility, in the said “return of the religious,” between the “fundamentalisms,” the “integrisms” or their “politics” and, on the other hand, rationality, which is to say, the tele-techno-capitalisticoscientific fiduciarity, in all of its mediatic and globalizing dimensions. (FK, 81)

Hence religion supports, accepts, and rejects otherness in immune response and in this direction it is possible to observe that the side effects of immunity turn massive. Since religion is nurtured on language, blood, soil, family, and nation, it is easy to understand the violent outbursts within this complex framework (FK, 91). But at the same time and in such a scenario, it is quite hard to differentiate “the religious” from what it is not; to separate the traits of the religious from the concepts of ethics, of the juridical, of the political, or of the economic. Amid those manifestations, it is hard to tell the “wars of religion” from other wars or “military interventions” launched in the name of the best causes—as for instance, international law, democracy, the sovereignty of

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peoples, nations or states, and humanitarian imperatives. Because, as Derrida ascertains, it is not easy to delimit “the religious” isolating “the political” from it; the concepts we need to use in this purpose always remain religious or, at least, theologico-political (FK, 63). The religious meets us in its every day’s concreteness but is short-circuited. We become trapped in a certain rhetoric of religion that feeds mechanisms producing discursive as well as bodily, physical massive threat. We face complex phenomena in a framework that conspires against life at a planetary scale. Religion has everything to do with the imposition of a certain world through globalization, which as “globalatinization” infiltrates the globe triggering uncontrollable reactions: the simultaneous reception and rejection of the ambiguous offerings of such a “world.” And all of this, for the sake of the most sacred. This is part of the desert we are in—“the desert that we know”— the very context that prompts Derrida’s search for another desert, one that could liberate a “universal rationality” to displace all this. Impossible Pathways Yet, how to think differently the ways of the religious taking reason at its very limits? If the religious as we know it is already tied up into a structure that repeats a suffocating and explosive pattern, could there be another thought beyond this tension at its very heart? Is there a way to understand openness without self-protection and binding without harm? This is the dilemma, because Derrida’s deconstructive readings of religio have taken us to the undecidable, to a double bind condition. Then, how to think the experience of the impossible? And how to speak about it? How to speak about what is “wholly other” without manipulating it, without bringing it into our desert of religions, theologies, and metaphysical systems serving the worst violence? In fact, how not to speak? Derrida goes to the desert for answers, and the desert opens into another desert. Thus, from the analysis of those matters of life and death in a macro display of a global scenery, we turn to the minute reading of texts scrutinizing the heart of our traditions. Derrida’s work ruminates around the religious in different writings and in a gradual itinerary. Facing the early reception of deconstruction, his first explorations belong to the territory of negative theology and its attempts (not) to say the unsayable; there he further traces the apophatic along different paths.8 In this regard, the first almost invisible tracks in the sand that Derrida detects are those of khōra, as it appears in the Greek tradition: Plato’s khōra. This topic is initially treated at length in his lecture about “How to avoid speaking” where he links together three “stages” of apophatics (How, 30): The Greek, as present in Plato; the Christian, as it appears in Pseudo-Dionysius and Meister Eckhart; and the Heideggerian, in

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an ambiguous tension with both the preceding traditions. The second set of tracks Derrida follows take him to the land of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and there his political and ethical concerns find further shelter; he elaborates around those issues mainly in two works, Specters of Marx (1994 [1993]) and his lecture for the Capri seminar, already introduced.9 As we shall see, the motifs of khōra and the messianic considered at the limits of reason when in search of a “universal rationality” are both irreducible to knowledge. They refer in a deconstructive key to the undecidability that inhabits the religious: upsetting it, threatening it, but—in so doing—allowing it to be. I shall summarize some of Derrida’s discoveries along this itinerary in order to perceive the significance of what he finds. Plato: Good and the Khōra Apophatics is an old way to speak about the wholly other; an effort to avoid manipulating it. The Platonic tradition provides, for instance, two different negative discourses: one gravitates around the idea of the “good beyond being and essence” (epekeina tes ousias); the other, runs into the name of an ambiguous place: the khōra. Now, from a deconstructive perspective, are they a safe path to the thought of the impossible, that is, the wholly other? Can these apophatic discourses escape the duplicity of the religious? As we know, the thought of “the Good” is what moves the Neoplatonic and its associated Christian apophatic speech. Those traditions, in spite of denying every predicate applied to the Good, cannot avoid speaking, thus they progress through hyperbole. Their formulas, placing the Good always “beyond,” proceed through superlatives that confirm an ontological hierarchical structure. In fact, those discourses are propelled by that which is beyond Being (hyperousios), indicating a “beyond” that means both “above” and “more than.” In this sense, the Good (God) beyond Being is above Being, and more (being) than Being. Derrida observes that this apophatic movement operates analogically: the Good (God), which is beyond Being and knowledge, holds a continuity with them both. What is beyond Being necessarily maintains a relationship with Being. In this sense, “what exceeds the border” needs to be compared to Being although through the figure of the hyperbole (How, 32–33). Thus the origin of dialectics relates to this continuity: the Good (God), which is neither Being nor knowledge, is then a “third thing” between two others allowing the dialectical intertwining. This is evident in Plato, who affirms that the Good, which is neither Being nor knowledge, gives birth to them both (How, 33). The Neoplatonic apophatic discourse, in its efforts to respect the ineffability of what is wholly other can only make a double movement, comparing it with the intelligible and elevating it through a hyperbolic synthesis.

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In the light of this, the apophatic effort appears not to be any different from the enunciations bound to the metaphysical order of logos. Analogy and dialectics move the rational logic of thought reducing the unknowable into the known and placing it into a hierarchical structure (“above” and “more than”). Then, the pure Good (God) of the Platonic heights is not foreign to the “metaphysical dealings” with its production of hyper-essentialized and universalized principles.10 We may say that the apophatic works like a long amorous courtship, which tries to avoid the unavoidable but is overpowered by the desire to subdue the other. Apophatic discourse culminates by enshrining otherness as an idol of presence. Yet, Plato provides another way of approaching what is “beyond the border,” and this is the discourse about the khōra as it appears in the Timaeus (How, 34). Derrida recognizes it as interior to Platonism and, in this sense, pertaining to ontology, dialectics, and philosophy in general, although impossible to be domesticated by any philosophical maneuver. Plato speaks of the khōra as the “receptacle” of all becoming, using for it the metaphors of “nurse” and “mother.” But he observes that, at the same time that it receives all, the khōra is devoid of all those forms that it receives. While it seems to receive and give place to different types of interpretative translations, khōra “seems never to let itself be reached or touched, much less broached, but above all not exhausted” by any of them (Khōra, 95). Thus, within Plato’s text, emerges the thought of a spacing that accepts all and allows itself to be marked by all that is inscribed in it but, it is “neither a being nor a nothingness,” and results “radically nonhuman and atheological” (How, 36–37). Derrida describes it as “ahistorical” because nothing happens through it nor to it; it does not “give” place, it does not create or produce anything, and it is “impassive”—although “neither passive nor active”—(How, 37–38). What is more, he depicts it as “a sort of abyss” (Khōra, 104). Derrida is indeed drawn by the motif of the khōra, although of khōra not as interpreted by Plato but as interpreted by himself against Plato (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 73). In a later work, he refers to it as another place without age, another “taking-place,” the irreplaceable place or placement of a “desert in the desert,” a spacing from “before” the world, the cosmos, or the globe, from “before” any chronophenomenology, any revelation, any “as such” and any “as if,” any anthropotheological dogmatism or historicity. (R, xiv)

Hence, this destabilizing space that Plato’s text lodges against itself belongs neither to the sensible nor to the intelligible and is not really a dialectical “third thing.” Ungraspable by any rational device, Derrida notes that khōra is like “an injunction” that has always already taken place leaving, however,

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its trace in language. Although impossible of being spoken of, by this very impossibility, khōra obliges speaking and addressing oneself to it. With that in mind, Derrida refers to it as a woman’s name, dropping the article: just khōra (Khōra, 96). Yet, since “[t]here is khōra but the khōra does not exist” (Khōra, 97), khōra is a name with no referent. Thus, speech refers to it in a singular way as to the “wholly other,” which is neither transcendent nor immanent, and alien to the order of presence and absence (How, 38–39). The motif of khōra illustrates an unsayable nothing, which, nevertheless, receives all and allows all becoming, obliging not with an order or a call but out of its very passiveness. In sum, we may say that the tradition of thought which grew around the expression epekeina tes ousias resounds in deconstruction: the apophatic aim of moving beyond being—and specifically beyond being as presence—is also part of the deconstructive desire. Yet, in spite of all its detours, beyond all positive or negative enunciations, beyond being itself, such discourse still favors the metaphysical last resort to a strong presence of Being. It is for this reason, that out of Plato’s tradition, khōra is the inspiring motif that Derrida chooses and deploys. He recognizes in the discourse about khōra the features of what he was looking for: the thought of a desert that upsets the rational logocentric structure. Dionysius and Eckhart We have briefly referred to the discourse of the Christian apophatic traditions in a general manner. Now, how does negative theology work? Besides, how does the Christian apophatic discourse of scruple and respect toward the wholly other—which is wholly unknown—relate to khōra? Granting that there is not only one negative theology, Derrida explores some exemplary attempts of the Christian tradition reading two mystical theologians in this regard: Pseudo-Dionysius and Meister Eckhart.11 He finds that the ways of those theologies, with their own peculiarities, both coincide with and differ from that of khōra. What they have in common is the rich negative discourse deployed by both apophatic theologians on God and Plato on the khōra—and in fact, as Ilse Bulhof observes, even Derrida follows in his discourse this “ritual of denials” that “reminds us of prayer formulas” (Bulhof 2000, 214). What they differ upon is that according to the Timaeus, the khōra is neither a gift, nor a promise, nor an event, and diverges mostly from the hyperessential God of negative theology. In this sense, what happens between khōra and negative theology is precisely “the event,” the “having taken place” of revelation, and this appears to take apophatic discourse more toward the logic of the Good than to the thought of khōra (How, 40). Indeed, Derrida’s readings show how all the negations and de-negations of apophatic theology are just

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a delay in its ascension toward hyperessentiality, as Mary-Jane Rubenstein expresses: “Denying the predicates of God in order to attribute them to him even more strongly” (Rubenstein 2008, 727). In this light, it is possible to discover how the discourses of Dionysius and Eckhart repeat certain patterns that give away such a disposition. I shall focus on this in what follows.12 Promise and Prayer In spite of all its unknowing, the apophatic journey does not go astray: its movement is firmly guided by a promise. As Derrida notes, this is not just any promise, because a common aspect of the discourses of negative theology is that they are prompted by “the promise of a presence given to intuition or vision” (How, 9). In search of the promised presence, the use of prayer is distinct: prayer is the experience that guides the discourse toward excellence not allowing it “to say just anything.” Derrida traces how, despite the constant effort to avoid apprehending in language the otherness of God, in the apophatic theologians, prayer “adjusts discursive asceticism.” They direct the speech to a quite determined addressee who is specifically qualified, described, and prescribed by an encomium (How, 41–42)—as, for instance, Dionysius’s praise addressed to the “hyperessential and more than divine Trinity.” There, prayer expresses both: on one side, the predetermination of the addresser of the promise, who is none other than the addressee of prayer; on the other side, the expression of its foreseen character, being “beyond” and “more.” Nothing is left to chance. As Derrida sums up, it is about “a prayer that recognizes, assigns, or ensures its destination” (How, 29). The order of the metaphysical logos continues at work protecting its desire for arché and telos. Secret, Purity, and Politics Another common element to Christian apophatic discourses is the necessity of the secret as it “gives access to the unknowing beyond knowledge” (How, 20). Derrida affirms that in the works of both Dionysius and Meister Eckhart there is necessity for the secret “to be kept, preserved, shared” (How, 20). Hence, there is a double inscription of the mystical knowledge: one keeping the secret, another one sharing it. Regarding this, Derrida reads two of Meister Eckhart’s sermons detecting how the mystic exemplarily acts as the keeper of a secret holding a constant reserve about a hidden, veiled hyperessentiality.13 He quotes passages where Eckhart uses the metaphor of the nakedness of God that lies under a garment: the secret concealed beneath the visible (How, 44–46). Yet, this secrecy needs as well to be shared, and one important aspect of this sharing is that the divulgation policies be very

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well delimited. There is, in fact, an insistence on separation and purification: a politics of places—a “topolitology”—of the secret (How, 23). Dionysius, for instance, discusses Moses who had to purify himself and separate himself from the many and join “the elite of the priests” in order to ascend to the place where God is (How, 21–23). Therefore, not anybody has access to the secret or is admitted to the initiation. Derrida traces how both Dionysius’s Mystical Theology and his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy show that the places of rhetoric “are also political stratagems”; within them, the figures of discourse are “invented as ‘shields’ against the many” (How, 23). For Dionysius, mystical theology works as another inscription of theology protecting the access to a knowledge that remains in itself inaccessible. The apophatic discourse is a barrier and its rhetorical compositions are instruments in order so that the most sacred mysteries not be open to the profane but only to those who “know how to disentangle sacred symbols from all puerile imagination” (How, 24). Facing this, there are two aspects about the apophatic secret to consider. On the one hand, there is the question that Derrida poses with regard to the economy of the secret: “At the intersection of the secret and the nonsecret, what is the secret?” (How, 26). Apart from all the rhetoric of avoidance and denegation, the symbols of protection and the sacred discourse with its theological bifurcation, can we say that there is a secret? Since we are always inside language, and because a secret undoes itself at the very moment it is mentioned, Derrida would affirm: “There is no secret as such: I deny it” (How, 26). However, as Caputo well notices, the secret is something I constitute as such at the very moment I announce that I know something that you do not know and I will not share it with you (Caputo 1997a, 33–34)—and this holds an important political significance. Silence As he starts to consider apophatics, Derrida advances a provisional hypothesis stating: “nNegative theology consists of considering that every predicative language is inadequate to the essence . . . the hyperessentiality . . . of God” (How, 4). Analyzing Dionysius, he recognizes this effort to get rid of the determinations of language as the mystic develops a certain economy of signs. In fact, Dionysius’s Symbolic Theology is more voluminous than his Mystical Theology because it demands more words; with the elevation beyond the sensible, discourse gains conciseness, and finally, beyond the intelligible itself, the mystical apophatic theologies “aim toward silent union with the ineffable” (How, 10–11). As Shira Wolosky affirms, the attainment of negative theology is to transcend language, because “[t]o be ‘beyond Being’ is in fact the same as to be beyond language” (Wolosky 1998, 266). Validating Derrida’s hypothesis, when all the signs and figures of the sacred

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discourse are left behind in negation (and—we should add—when their use has, as well, warded off all those who are not to participate in “the secret”), then “pure intuition” brings total union with that which is outside language, there “where profane vision ceases and where it is necessary to be silent” (How, 22). In contrast to these aspects of the Christian apophatic and its way of dealing with the wholly other, the mark left in the Greek tradition under the name of khōra requires neither secrecy, nor purification, nor initiation, while its “taking place” has left a trace within language, within the text. The speaking that khōra compels could well be counted as prayer, however, it does not promise anything determined; there is no direction or prescription in it, it is like a wanderer in the desert. Nonetheless, negative theology resembles the discourse about khōra and, somehow, God and khōra appear as two exchangeable names: Christian apophatics is a speech elicited by a wholly other that, with the name of God, calls to language, for “God’s name always names . . . the trace of the singular event that will have rendered speech possible” (How, 29). But in its determinacy, its building up of secrecy and hierarchy, negative theology clings to the presence of this hyper-essence beyond Being, as its longing for silence tries actually to keep it beyond language. Now, the apophatic silence can only exist always already inside language and with regard to a wholly other that calls in language. The discourse of negative theologies illustrates thus an impossible effort of effacing from language a coveted hyperessential transcendental other, whose sacred presence it wants to preserve untouched, uncontaminated by différance, as a presence “outside the text.” . . . And Heidegger We have followed so far some reflections on the Greek and Christian traditions of the apophatic according to Derrida’s readings. Now, what about Heidegger, whose paradigm Derrida considers neither Greek nor Christian, and in whose thought he underlines “the most questioning legacy” to the negative traditions (How, 53). Heidegger, on the one hand, disassociates himself from Greek apophatics. He thinks that Plato missed “the original content of the epekeina tes ousias” and, as well, “fell short of thinking of the place” with reference to khōra (How, 54). On the other hand, he rejects Christian Neoplatonism. As Derrida reminds us, the German philosopher thinks that “a Christian philosophy . . . is a squared circle and a misconception,” because one thing is ontotheology and another thing is genuine theology (How, 55). Then, what sort of negative discourse is that of Heidegger’s, who avoids saying “Being” and uses this word in texts only under erasure (crossed-out)?

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What sort of negative discourse is his, who announces that if he should ever write a theology, the word “being” ought not to appear in it? Heidegger is convinced that faith has no need for the thinking of Being, since Being is neither the foundation nor the essence of God, and, as Derrida remarks, he is often recalling that Christians should allow themselves to be inspired by Luther’s lucidity in this regard (How, 58). Nevertheless, for Heidegger, the dimension of Being opens up access to the arrival of God, and such a dimension of disclosure is for Derrida very much alike to that of the apophatic Christian discourse. For the question would be: What is the difference between writing Being (that is not) and writing God (who is not)? If God, as Heidegger affirms, has nothing to do with Being but—as he affirms as well—God announces Godself to experience in the dimension of Being, what is the difference between writing on Being and writing theology? Although Heidegger’s negative discourse was not a matter of faith—and he did not pray—Derrida thinks that Heidegger did write theology all the same: “with and without the word Being, he wrote a theology with and without God” (How, 60). However, in regard to these issues, Heidegger’s thought inspires Derrida in two ways: one has to do with its specific emphasis on language; the other, with the posing of a question which leads Derrida to move forward to a position that, actually, he regards as “his cross.” I shall consider both aspects soon. KHŌRA AND “THE MESSIANIC” We are back to the desert and to the motifs Derrida chooses as he searches for a thought of otherness. In fact, neither philosophy nor theology can think the wholly other without bringing about the enclosure of its otherness into a logic of presence and sameness—no matter how “super” or “hyper,” “beyond” or “without” their discourses place it. At least, this is what one discovers after Derrida’s considerations on apophatics: its strategy cannot avoid the logocentric bias operating through the building up of hierarchy and exclusion. Nevertheless, we shall resume his tracks and see how he walks around all this. We started with Derrida observing that in the constitution of religion there is duality; the experience of the sacred and of belief, the need for scruple and for openness. We followed him as he signaled a number of other duplicities evolving around this first one, and recognized them in the wider map of a world shaped by a certain understanding of “religion today.” Here, “in the desert that we know,” the tension of those twofold ambiguities turns unbearable and its reduction feeds discourses and practices of a lethal process that relaunches itself once and again. In our everyday lives, we are part of a devastating scenery in which, more often than not, the protection of the sacred

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violates the very scruple it obliges, and the openness to the other closes up betraying the faith it witnesses to. But, for Derrida, another desert opens in this desert from where—perhaps—we are allowed to have a different view. The thought of this desert echoes somehow the duality at the heart of the religious but refuses to go down the path of the worst violence. This “religion without religion” will not accept sublation or reduction, it will not follow into the logics of building up dominion and collapsing horizons. It will instead keep the displacing tension in the wake of two names: khōra and “the messianic.” We have met the impassive khōra, which has left its trace in language. As Derrida describes it, khōra is a spacing without age although more “ancient” than any experiencing or thinking (FK, 58). It has always already taken place “before” any philosophy or religion may occur, allowing them to happen “before” any determination or economy of givenness and debt takes over. For this reason, khōra upsets all securing discourses both philosophical and theological, regardless of how apophatic they may turn. The “taking place” of khōra is a complete receptiveness that we cannot reappropriate, not even by our most primeval memory (FK, 59). This indetermination of khōra is, in fact, most provocative: “an utterly faceless other” (FK, 59). Yet, being a feminine name that Derrida chooses from Plato’s imagery, khōra may suggest a summon “to emptiness, receptivity, motherliness, nurture,” some sort of “anarchy . . . the opposite of the authority at the top, of the full, fatherly, and patriarchal Being” (Bulhof 2000, 216). Indeed, Derrida entices our imagination with this scrupulous motif of otherness. There is still another name, and it brings expectancy into the desert: “the messianic.” What Derrida engages, giving room for hope in our aridity, is the idea of a “messianicity without messianism” that opens the future to the coming of the other. This messianic expectation is related to the desire for justice and belongs to faith as a “general structure of experience” that, because of this, is irreducible to knowledge (FK, 56–57). This faith is not religious strictly speaking. It is faith as an expectation for the future, for the coming of justice, not limited to the known figures of the Messiah in the historical beliefs. Derrida describes it as “absolutely universal,” the sort of faith that is presupposed by every address to the other and, for such reason, it cannot be totally determined by any given religion. What Derrida has in mind is thus a structure of experience that is universal: a “messianic structure” (VR, 22–23). In this sense, faith is not the exclusive property of religions, and the promise that calls on faith is not determined by a delimited figure or a specific name. Perhaps, as Caputo writes, this is the structure that works in opening the future to a promise for “a justice to come, or a democracy to come, or a gift or a hospitality to come, a stranger to come” (Caputo 1997b, 164). Indeed, Derrida keeps us imagining with this motif of openness.14

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Reconsidering the Promise Noticeably, what Derrida envisages allows us to perceive that faith—in this universal form—is inherent to language since language is the lodging of promise. And this is part of the heritage of the Heideggerian thought of “promise and alliance” in relation to language. In this sense, Derrida’s thought is inspired by that of Heidegger’s, which places a special emphasis on language as the vehicle through which the question of Being can be unfolded. Now, Heidegger’s attempt was to repeat the early Greek experience of Being so that the West could begin anew, and Derrida, of course, has a different interest than gathering Being in presence or taking seriously the imperative of a “Greek recommencing” (OS, 131). But, as we have previously observed, the thought of the Heideggerian promise attracts Derrida.15 In spite of Heidegger’s insistence that faith has no place in thinking, Derrida discovers that “Zusage” is for him that which constitutes the most proper movement of thinking. Derrida explains that Zusage reunites the meaning of “promise, agreement or consent, originary abandonment to what is given in the promise itself” (OS, 130). This refers to the condition of being always already committed into language, and means that every speech presupposes a pre-engagement where confidence and acceptance are already at play (NY, 237). The subject, before any conscious speech act, is already in advance engaged in language by “a sort of promise of originary alliance” (OS, 129). Thus, any time we speak, any time we address the other, we have already said “yes” to the promise in language. For Derrida, Zusage is one name for such a field of faith. Going further with Derrida, we can appreciate the impetus of this. We know that we cannot get the “Thing itself,” and that language promises the impossible, that is, a referentiality that it would never fulfill. However, it is this very failing of language that opens language to the future. Language, as any code, is effected and affected by the play of différance and, because of this, the impossible promise of language makes it a language of promise.16 This promise, which is always excessive since it promises the impossible, is what structurally opens up the future. Thus, we have here an echo going in a double direction: Firstly, toward khōra that has always already left its trace in language and, prior to language, summons to language. But khōra is nothing and promises nothing, and is not re-appropriable—not even by our “Greek” memory (FK, 59); therefore, it does not usher a Heideggerian “new beginning” in the gathering of Being in presence (which would start short-circuiting again, launching wars in the name of nation, language, and old gods). Secondly, the echo resounds clearer in the “messianic structure” of a promise to which language itself has said “yes”—before the “I” takes over, before any “monitoring presence of an intentional agent” takes

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over—opening the horizon of expectancy before what comes (Caputo 1997a, 30). For Derrida this expectancy is always linked to the desire for justice; a justice that, unlike the economy of “promise and prayer” of the apophatic theology, is not foreseeable or programmable nor related to the certainty of a knowledge anchored in the safety of arché and telos. “The messianic” is a “universal faith” at the limits of reason, there where the relation to the other is created by an act of faith that testifies to this opening toward justice to which we are already promised (FK, 56). Then khōra, testified by language, and “the messianic” promised in language—both irretrievable and undetermined—are the possibility for any link and for any responsibility, before any subjectivity takes control, before any agency operates. Khōra evokes whatever has always already taken place, allowing everything else to occur (this we cannot trap in language but it incites our speech, like in a prayer). “The messianic” evokes whatever opens the future in promise and has always already engaged us, constituted us in language but without autonomy (this we cannot trap into words but are compelled to bear witness to an alliance toward it). Two tracks in the desert, a certain desert that makes possible this “desert that we know” before the very link of obligation to the other has occurred, before any religio (any community, any institution) is constituted (FK, 55). INDECISION Yet, we are always in the desert, but where do we stand? How does this thought of the impossible work? If we persist within our historical beliefs, the God we know by name, the Good to which we have been taught to aspire, we are easily caught in the inbuilt metaphysical spiral of religio, prone to repeat its cycles of intolerance and violence. Now, could we rest anywhere else—outside history, for instance, where there is no need for scruple or belief? How do these two deserts relate to each other? Aren’t we caught in indecision as to what desert makes the other possible? Are we able to think utter otherness and complete openness because we have already had the experience of the sacred, of the name “God,” of a definite Messiah? Or, is it the other way round? Here Derrida again ruminates over Heidegger’s thought, and we recognize its second contribution to this discussion: beyond ontotheology, Heidegger thinks a revealability (Offenbarkeit) would be necessary that manifests “more originarity” than any revelation (Offenbarung), being thus independent of all religion (FK, 53–54, 59). But can we be sure of that? Here the aporia into which Derrida runs: Is it there a general structure of messianicity in whose “groundless ground” there have been revelations— and because of this the messianic religions have been made possible? Or, is

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it that the events of revelations, of the biblical traditions, have been absolute, irreducible events that have unveiled messianicity? What if the Messiah is the one who let us know that “the messianic” exists? What if khōra—as the radically heterogeneous other—can only be glimpsed by the experience of historicity, an anthropo-theological experience, looking from “this desert” towards the “other”? Where do we stand, what desert is ours? Derrida chooses to keep both options in the indecisive oscillation between revelation and revealability, between the event and the possibility of the event (FK, 57). Those conflictive possibilities keep him “constantly really hesitating” and this is, actually, part of “his cross” (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 73). He ponders that, perhaps, we are posing the question wrongly and what we should do is to displace the question and “think otherwise the possibility of these two possibilities” (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 73). I am convinced that this is an important marker that allows some theologies to continue in conversation with Derrida and deconstruction.17 This oscillation keeps a creative and fructiferous tension. Let us not forget that the desert is in the desert; then, the respect for this “singular indecision” lets us think of a different experience of (what we may call) transcendence; at least, it disrupts the traditional “transcendence/ immanence” opposition. Khōra and the messianic: one is to the other as “the irrecoverable past is to the drive toward the future” (Terada 2007, 246). Before any bind to God and neighbor, khōra obliges with the open possibilities of its receptiveness. Before the defensive, asphyxiating closing up, “the messianic” opens the expectation toward what comes. There is impassibility in khōra, like some innocence that allows everything, anything, to take place: sheer receptivity. There is indeterminacy in “the messianic,” an opening toward absolute surprise by the arrival of what comes: sheer exposure. The experience of the event, of what comes, cannot be reduced by knowledge—be it the best or the worst, one never comes without releasing the possibility for the other. For, as Derrida observes, “the openness of the future is worth more” and every event is always “another event entirely” (‌‌‌‌N, 105, 108). Is this a religious discourse? Yes, and no. Taken to “the desert that we know,” we are in an aporetic place, no way out. Derrida’s thought opens the impossible pathway as a desert in that very desert. His motifs echo the duality at the core of religio: two irreducible motifs of a “religion without religion” that continue, nevertheless, evoking (and haunting) the religious. For, to the theologian’s eye, khōra seems a quasi-prelapsarian protological dimension, and “the messianic,” a quasi-eschatological opening. The two motifs come from traditions that we know, but point toward that which works otherwise than knowing. Thus, with Derrida, we are in the desert, in the half-light of a constant twilight and of a constant dawn. Here the

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utterly other has always already taken place and, paradoxically, is always to come: we inhabit the land of an irreducible tension and our days are those of prayer and testimony. Derrida accepted the cross that deconstructs all metaphysical pretenses: certainty, autonomy, knowledge. Somehow a very premodern cross disrupting our very postmodern thoughts. Next Steps Derrida thinks about all this in a time marked by the “return of the religious” in a world designed by a globalizing appropriation under the shadow of religion. I shall follow Luther now, who moves in a world that coincides with the map of Christendom but is starting to change. As we shall see, he also keeps the tension between two poles of religious manifestation, and he needs to criticize the metaphysical search of a hyper-transcendent divinity by reaffirming concrete revelation. The premodern theologian treads “the desert that we know” and perceives too, painstakingly, another desert. Nevertheless, he does not speak of deserts since hiddenness is the motif for him. We shall observe now, on the other side of the mirror, how Luther’s theology senses the paradox of the wholly other in his experience of the hidden God. NOTES 1. See chapter 3. The subtitle of Caputo’s book on Derrida and religion is precisely “Religion without religion” (Caputo 1997a). 2. Jacques Derrida, Gianni Vattimo, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Maurizio Ferraris, together with other thinkers, met in Capri to address a wide range of questions about religion. Derrida’s contribution to the debate is entitled “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone” (FK). 3. In this writing, Derrida uses both expressions: the “return of religions” and the “return of the religious” (FK, 43; 45 and passim). 4. See chapter 5. 5. Derrida toyed with the fact that Kant treats the issue of a “reflective faith” in the Parerga to his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, hence, not actually “within” the limits of this work but “at” its limits (FK, 52). 6. In this regard, referring to all those engaged in the discussion about religion at the Capri seminar, Derrida observed: “We represent and speak four different languages, but our common ‘culture,’ let’s be frank, is more manifestly Christian, barely even Judaeo Christian. No Muslim is among us, alas, even for this preliminary discussion, just at the moment when it is towards Islam, perhaps, that we ought to begin by turning our attention. No representative of other cults either” (FK, 45). 7. See chapter 5.

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8. When in 1986 Derrida visited Jerusalem for a conference on Absence and Negativity, he addressed the much postponed topic of negative theology. The fact that the theme was to be approached by him rested on some denunciations of deconstruction “as a bastardized resurgence of negative theology” (How, 18–19). The lecture delivered on that occasion is entitled “Comment ne pas parler: Dénégations” [“How to avoid speaking: Denials”]. He later continued his elaborations on negative theology and other aspects of the religious in “Sauf le nom,” “Khōra,” and “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone.” 9. However, once introduced, the motifs of “khōra” and “the messianic” constantly accompany Derrida’s later works. 10. See chapter 3. 11. These readings appear in “How to avoid speaking” (1987), “Khōra” (1995 [1993]), and “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone” (1998 [1996]). In “Sauf le nom” (1995 [1993]), Derrida reads Angelus Silesius as well. Here, I mainly refer to Derrida’s more detailed considerations in the first text. 12. The following elements that appear in Derrida’s reading of the apophatic theologians are noticed in various ways by different authors, I have been informed by some of them but do not necessarily follow or share all their schemes and/or appreciations; see Almond (2000), Rubenstein (2008), Wolosky (1998). 13. Those sermons are “Quasi stella matutina” and “Renovamini spiritu.” 14. I revisit the motif of “the messianic” in chapter 12. 15. I have already referred to this reading of Derrida’s when focusing on responsibility and faith. See chapter 5. 16. See chapter 4. 17. As, for instance, Luther’s theology, which is the interest of this work. I resume this issue in chapter 8, also in chapters 10 and 12.

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The Deus absconditus

HIDDENNESS AND DESERT We have followed Derrida as he approaches the thought of the wholly other as something that works otherwise than knowing. We have found that he explores the religious as a desert, leading us to glimpse khōra and “the messianic,” two irreducible traces left in the Greco-Judeo-Christian traditions. The first evokes utter otherness, which—completely impassive—receives all and allows all to take place; the second is an opening toward the coming of justice related to faith. This is one side of the reflection of a play of mirrors: what Derrida imagined as a “desert in the desert.” Now it is time to start considering the reflection on the other side. I suggest that Luther perceives two irreducible aspects at the heart of theology, which evoke Derrida’s elaboration: the deus revelatus—the messianic motif, which is an opening to the coming of justice through faith—and the deus absconditus—the name for the wholly other, which works all in all. For Luther this paradoxical duality is constitutive of theology, and we cannot understand his theologia crucis without this tension between the revealed and the hidden God. There cannot be one without the other because these two aspects are irreducible into one another, they are not matching opposites and cannot be sublated into some “third thing.” Yet, both the revealed and the hidden God share in some concealment and, for this reason, I shall deploy the expression “hiddenness in hiddenness.” It is only in hiddenness that otherness is given, and from the peculiarities of such hiddenness emerge defiant thoughts about knowledge and transcendence. I shall chart Luther’s symbolic of hiddenness: Ffirstly, by paying attention to Luther’s assertions on the deus absconditus and their reception by scholarship; secondly, contextualizing and recognizing different influences that Luther receives in his formation as a friar and theologian; finally, summing 105

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up my findings as I depict the specular play between Luther’s theology and Derrida’s thought. HIDDENNESS IN HIDDENNESS Alister McGrath expresses that “[i]n the theologia crucis we find Luther’s developing theological insights crystallised into one of the most powerful and radical understandings of the nature of Christian theology which the church has ever known” (McGrath 1985, 1). Yet, as we shall see, the theology of the cross belongs to the wider theological view of Luther, which is not neat and round. For, in effect, if the ordinary is to emphasize the central texts of a tradition, the challenge lies in searching the margins and finding out what they disclose. In this sense, there is one topic that has been present in the Judeo-Christian thought from the beginning and appears as well in Luther’s theology: it is the awareness of the deus absconditus. Testified in the biblical text, referred to by Clement, Origen, and Chrysostom, perceived in different ways in mystical thought from Dionysus to Tauler, the hiddenness of God is a correlate to revelation in Christian theology. All the same, some would assert that it is in Luther where the greatest concern for this concept is found in integral relation to the nature of revelation (Dillenberger 1953, xvii).1 How does Luther express himself about this issue? In different occasions he refers to the assertion in Isaiah 45:15, “truly, you are a God who hides Godself,” as for instance, in the Heidelberg Disputation (WA 1:362, 13–14). We have already observed in this regard that cross and suffering are chosen by God as the place for revelation because God’s revelation, as understood by Luther, happens abscondita sub contrario, “hidden under its opposite.”2 Yet, we can read in Luther another way of thinking of God’s hiddenness, and this is traceable through all his work emerging clearly in his various readings on the Psalms, his Lectures on Genesis (1535–1545), and especially, in The Bondage of the Will (1525). In this last work, in which debates on free will with Erasmus, the following direct reference appears: Wherever God hides himself, and wills to be unknown to us, there we have no concern . . . God in his own nature and majesty is to be left alone; in this regard, we have nothing to do with him, nor does he wish us to deal with him. We have to do with him as clothed and displayed in his word, by which he presents himself to us . . . God preached works to the end that sin and death may be taken away, and we may be saved . . . But God hidden in majesty neither deplores nor takes away death, but works life and death, and all in all; nor has he set bounds to himself by his word, but has kept himself free over all things . . . God does

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many things that he does not show us in his word, and he wills many things which he does not in his word show us that he wills. (BOW, 170–71)

The assertions Luther makes in those lines have provoked quite a number of different interpretations. However, what is most puzzling about this topic is what turns the discussion fruitful. Within the tension that surfaces when we pay heed to this marginal text—that is, between God revealed and God hidden—dwells another tension, vital to his theology: the revealed God is already a hidden God because such revelation is abscondita sub contrario, i.e., suffering and the cross. It seems that Luther takes us to face different aspects of God’s hiddenness and we find a play of “hiddenness in hiddenness” with a variety of impressions about it. Unbearable Tension Although the term “absconditus” as a general rubric could be considered a scholarly device—for Luther uses a more varied language to name this perception of God (Gerrish 1973, 267)—the subject generalized under the expression “deus absconditus” is, nevertheless, problematic.3 Rudolph Otto underlines the fact that this aspect of Luther’s theology was “tacitly expunged” and, by his day, it was “readily dismissed as ‘not the authentic Luther’ or as ‘a residuum of the scholastic speculations of the nominalists’” (Otto 1950, 97). The point is that if the whole development of Luther’s theology of the cross shows that the God who is crucified is the God who is hidden in his revelation, here there is a different reading of God’s hiddenness. As portrayed in his controversy with Erasmus, Luther’s deus absconditus could well let us think that the God who is crucified is the God who is hidden behind his revelation; this meaning that, in addition to the revealed God, there is a “God who will forever remain unknown to us, a mysterious and sinister being whose intentions remain concealed from us” (McGrath 1985, 165). And, in fact, a number of Luther scholars show uneasiness with regard to the topic; the revealed God and the hidden God are in opposition, and this becomes theologically uncomfortable. Some consider this development in Luther’s theology contradictory (Althaus 1963, 274–86; McGrath 1985, 161–75) or, at least, an exaggeration (Lohse 1999, 215). Paul Althaus believes that Luther is not interpreting scripture right, and goes as far as to assert: “We must furthermore ask whether Luther’s doctrine of the hidden God as it is presented in The Bondage of the Will does not abrogate the rest of his theology as we have come to know it” (Althaus 1963, 277–78). McGrath worries that Luther’s statements on the deus absconditus suggest that he has abandoned his principle of deriving theology solely on the basis of the cross, and even more, that “the cross is not the final word of God on anything” (McGrath 1985, 165).

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Nevertheless, Walther von Loewenich accepts this contradiction interpreting those diametrically opposed conceptions of the hiddenness of God as a call for faith. He writes that “the revealed God would be none other than the hidden God” and, if “the former idea of the hidden God means that revelation in principle is possible only under concealment, in the latter it means that also in the revealed God secrets remain”; for von Loewenich, both threads “intercept in the concept of faith” (von Loewenich 1976, 37–38). Recent approaches to the issue continue expanding on this impossibility as part of Luther’s rich theological perception. For instance, Larry Rasmussen develops a whole-embracing understanding of the paradoxical hiddenness of God in Luther’s theology, as he writes: “We only know the creator, redeemer, and sustainer in finite disguises, as the Ineffable One is hidden behind one mask or another” (Rasmussen 1996, 279). The work of Oswald Bayer thoroughly elaborates on the deus absconditus in deep relation to the revealed God over against the horizon of theodicy (Bayer 2003a, 69–80; 2008, 198–206; 2009). In the same sense, Vítor Westhelle considers the influence that Luther’s social context may have had on Luther’s perceptions with regard to the hiddenness of God. With reference to the contradiction between God hidden in revelation and God hidden behind revelation, Westhelle sees that “the temptation is to opt for ‘in’ and shun ‘behind,’” and puts, therefore, the crucial question: “are these really exclusive options?” (Westhelle 2006, 55–58[56]). In sum, scholars perceive the issue in different ways: for some it is paradoxical, and because of that, problematic; for others, it is paradoxical and, because of that, promissory. The former try to resolve the unbearable tension, the latter attempt to inhabit it. Not by chance Otto confesses that the reason he used the expression “mysterium tremendum” in his qualification of the experience of the holy is that he recalled and borrowed Luther’s own words (Otto 1950, 99–100). In fact, Luther perceives this in the experience of a haunted human existence that he renders as “to flee from [God] and find refuge in God against God” (WA 5:204, 26–27).4 In the deus absconditus he meets a God “equivocal and uncertain”; a God who “accomplishes evil as well as good, life as well as death, light as well as darkness, happiness as well as misfortune” (Bayer 2008, 202; author’s emphases). The theological paradox this implies is phrased by Luther when he explains to Erasmus that the incarnate God must find himself reduced to tears when he sees the works of the hidden God (BOW, 176). Yet, Luther’s argument according to which what is true of the revealed God is not necessarily true of the hidden God, is disquieting. McGrath, concerned about this, observes: “This argument inevitably makes theology an irrelevancy” (McGrath 1985, 167; emphasis added). Indeed, Luther’s theology doesn’t make sense. As Oswald Bayer affirms, “Who can comprehend this? No one! God is not consistent and contradicts himself. Here we see God against God!” (Bayer 2007a, 104). Now,

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the paradox prevents theological closure for such a God does not fit correctly into a system and, as Westhelle accurately puts it: “Such is the impossibility that makes theology possible” (Westhelle 2006, 59). I opt to follow this last suggestion in order to attest that it is in those irreducible contradictions where the deconstructive drive of Luther’s theology becomes visible. Yet, keeping in mind the previous interpretations of Luther’s conflicting theological perceptions, I shall consider now how Luther comes to them. SUFFOCATING CONSTRICTIONS AND DEMONIC THREATS What reasons does Luther have for entering in this theological conundrum? Which are the questions igniting the experience of the hiddenness of God? I have advanced that Luther’s theology is structured in an eager movement that delimits polarized aspects of the religious experience: the suffocating constriction of idolatric institutionalization on the one hand, and the demonic threat of a hyper-transcendent divinity on the other.5 Hence, it is important not to lose background. Luther is a friar searching for theological answers to existential questions in a premodern world; nevertheless, the developments of his experiential biography are not just isolated vignettes of a picturesque character. The peripheral friar is one among many struggling in a time of social grievance facing a common religious culture with fiscal, legal, and religious implications (Ozment 1980, 223). Luther’s theological query with its unsuspected outcome is rooted in a vital concern. Within this choking environment of late medieval Christendom, what is at stake is a matter of life or death: the security of salvation. Indeed, the existing atmosphere of fear and anguish is in great part related to the current doctrine of justification because a sensitive believer is never sure of fulfilling the requirements of the sacrament of penance. Luther refers to this fact in his autobiographic narrative.6 For him, the righteous God of the biblical text can only be perceived as a wrathful, despotic judge: nothing that he could achieve would placate the God who punishes the sinner. In his Explanations of the ninety-five theses (1518) commenting on thesis 15, about the fear and horror of those who are about to die without the certainty of possessing proper piety or love, Luther provides an account of his own terrors. They were “so great and so much like hell that no tongue could adequately express them, no pen could describe them.” He explains that in those situations, “God appears terribly angry, along with all creation . . . there is no flight, no comfort—inside or out—only accusation of everything” (LW 31:129).

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In a changing world exuding misery, oppression, plague, and death— worsened by the prospect of possible eternal damnation for self and loved ones—the deus absconditus is not a piece of theological abstraction. Indeed, as Steven Paulson writes, it is God perceived as “opposition, anger, and abandonment that cannot psychologically be distinguished from evil” (Paulson 1999, 365). In his struggles Luther is naked before the naked God in constant battle: God is the enemy. And, in such fight, there is no way to know whether he is fighting God or the devil (Bayer 2007a, 18–19). As we can gather, Luther’s experiences as a young friar took him to live in the daily awareness of such a confrontation.7 In the Europe of late medieval times, answers for such issues could only come from the Roman Church and through its due channels, but corrupted teachings and practices were not helping much. The Church was in a state of spiritual decay and voices of reform had been silenced already, while many others were under way. Luther looked for answers and this brought about the questioning of the theological ideas in which he had been reared. Although responding to personal spiritual turmoil, this process did not mean a parting with scholarly theology to favor a retreat toward inner speculation; actually, it meant a shift in theological thinking. I have already followed some of these aspects of Luther’s path as he confronted the scholasticism of his age with his formulation of the theology of the cross. There, the hiddenness of God appears as a way of revelation, God hidden “under its opposite,” revealed in suffering and the cross. Now, in order to detect further dimensions of this motif, I shall focus on other theological interactions that occurred simultaneously in Luther’s experience. Two influences have a bearing on this issue: one is the nominalist impact of the via moderna; the other is his experience with mysticism in general, but most especially, with what is termed as “German mysticism.” GOD UNBOUND As we have already observed, Luther was trained in the theological ideas of the via moderna.8 This school, mainly associated with William of Ockham, included in its teachings two aspects important to underline here: the first one was its emphasis on the dialectic between the “two powers of God”; the second, its epistemology. The distinction between God’s absolute power (potentia Dei absoluta) and God’s ordained power (potentia Dei ordinata) originated in early scholasticism and suggested that while God is omnipotent—that is, perfectly capable of doing anything—there are some things that God elects not to do (McGrath 1985, 55–56).9 Therefore, by absolute power, God could have created another world, designed some other means of salvation, or established a different order, but, conversely, by ordained power, God

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committed Godself to this world and order. In the context of the doctrine of justification, the via moderna considered this to be a covenant (pactum) between God and human beings about the way in which salvation occurs. The old scholastic theology understood the justice of God as “distributive justice,” that is, the virtue of rendering to each one their due, and the nominalists matched this scheme with the proposition “God will not deny grace to those who do their best.”10 As Ozment observes, this covenantal character of theology produces the “alteration of the boundary situation of the individual believer” (Ozment 1978, 271). This refers to the fact that for the Neoplatonic and Thomist theologies, the great trauma of the religious person is the possible nonexistence of God, but, within the context of the covenantal Ockhamist theology, the distress lies not in the fear that God might not exist, but in the fear that God might not keep God’s word. Therefore, if God is understood to have imposed freely upon Godself certain limitations to which God would remain faithful—up to this point, we are with the via moderna—the fact that humans are met by God’s self-imposed order does not necessarily erase the prospect of an absolute, unrestrained manifestation of the divinity—here, we are with Luther. For some mystics, this last possibility was enticing; as is the case with Dionysius, Eckhart, and Tauler.11 For Luther, this “unbound” God, was threatening. Altogether, to follow Luther up to this point, we need to realize the displacement that his theological breakthrough produced in this regard. He differentiated from the perception of divine power depicted by the via moderna because of his new understanding of justification, and we may detect that in so doing he put the thought of the deus absconditus under an unusual light. The teaching about justification announcing that God will not deny grace to those who do their best, operated within the covenantal framework of the dialectic of the “two powers” of God. By God’s ordained power, God would meet human justification in this way, not because of the intrinsic (ontological) value of human action, but because of divine unilateral agreement. In this sense, God’s absolute power was kept in check within the margins of the order of salvation. As a young theologian Luther shared in this position, but later he rejected this understanding denouncing the doctrine of justification of the via moderna as a new form of Pelagianism (McGrath 1985, 128–36; Oberman 1986, 97ff). The breaking point rested on the fact that Luther’s new understanding of justification by grace and through faith corrected the anthropocentric bias of those teachings by being what the theology of the via moderna was not: categorically christocentric. This brought about a dislocation of the notion of the “two powers.” In his Lectures on Genesis (1535–1545), Luther uses the specific terminology in order to assert it clearly: “God’s ordained power is his incarnate son, we shall embrace him” (LW 3:289; emphasis added). Then, if some limitation to the absolute power of God is to

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be found in Luther’s theology, it is God’s incarnation—something that affects the concrete character of the divinity.12 In The Bondage of the Will—the very same text in which he comments on the deus absconditus—Luther affirms that God’s omnipotence is not that power in which God “omits to do many things that he can do”—as scholastics of the via moderna would support—but it is rather that actual power in which God “works all in all” (BOW, 217).13 In the well-known passage on the deus absconditus quoted at the beginning of this chapter, Luther would claim that this God who “has kept himself free over all things” and who “works life and death and all in all” is not our business because this is the God that “hides himself and wills to be unknown to us.” The God “we have to do with” is God bound by the word: God christologically bound. This uncomfortable, contradictory passage of Luther relates to the very character of his theology; in upsetting the tranquilizing dialectic of absolute and ordained powers, it sets an unresolvable tension between deus revelatus and deus absconditus. In this chapter I suggest that Luther’s theologia crucis rests on such a paradox, displacing, in so doing, some common established conceptions of God. With regard to the epistemological teachings of the via moderna, it is necessary to remember that it rested on nominalism. According to this view, knowledge is not a speculative metaphysics of essences but a matter of terms and verbal conventions connecting links between mind and reality. In rejecting the current view of the world as reflection of the universal and eternal structures of being, nominalism holds that knowledge is basically nonhierarchical and could not be supported by reason and speculation without relying on experience. This has its theological counterpart: firstly, theology is no longer an abstract speculative exercise; secondly, words and promises become the connecting links between the human being and God in matters of salvation. Thus, justification no longer depends upon presumed ontological qualities inherent in the church, the sacraments, or the soul of the believer but on God’s will, on God’s fidelity to God’s promises, on the trustworthiness of the divine word (Ozment 1978, 270). This specific aspect of nominalism played a crucial role in the development of Luther’s theology—as we have already noticed when revising the epistemological implications of the theology of the cross.14 Now, this needs to be detected with reference to the following aspect that I shall consider: the influence of mystical theology on Luther’s perceptions about the deus absconditus. Ozment affirms that Luther’s Reformation “was far more the child of Ockhamism than of German mysticism” since Luther’s nominalist training gave him a very different view of the world than that found in mysticism, and this allowed him to clarify his “highly selective use of mystical writings” (Ozment 1978, 270). In fact, this is noticeable in Luther’s epistemological assumptions. Yet, assessing Luther’s writings and Luther scholarship on the topic, it may be stated conversely that those aspects

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of mystical theology that interact with Luther’s theology had their influence on his critique of Ockhamism. There are, as I shall soon illustrate, various studies underlining the impact that German mystical authors had on the christocentric shift of his theology.15 Furthermore, according to some theological works, it seems that Luther’s perception of God “free over all things” and “working all in all”—which criticized the nominalist doctrine about the two powers of God—is related to mystical spirituality.16 In sum, this brief section has underlined two aspects of Luther’s early interactions with the teachings of the via moderna. A first aspect is the influence of nominalist epistemology on Luther’s theology. One implication of this appears in Luther’s interpretation that theological knowledge is not a rational speculative search for a highest reality detached from the world, and therefore, knowledge of God cannot occur apart from experience. Another implication becomes evident in the crucial importance that Luther’s theology holds on God’s word and promise. A second aspect is the reaction and differentiation of Luther’s theology from the nominalist doctrine of justification that, I suggest, disjoints the dialectic between the two powers of God on which such doctrine rests. The causes of this were: a new comprehension of the dynamics of grace and faith, a consequent displacement from an anthropocentric to a christocentric doctrine of justification and Luther’s theological perception that God is an unrelenting participant in the world—even in ways that contradict some orders assumed to be divinely set. These elements informed Luther’s awareness with regard to the deus absconditus in tension with the deus revelatus. With all this in mind, it is now time to observe how Luther’s “selective use” of mystical authors actually operated. IMPOSSIBLE PASSAGEWAYS Reading Luther after Derrida’s elaborations around the thought of the wholly other sets for us two mystic authors to reflect upon: Dionysius and Eckhart. Besides, there are some German theological examples that Luther kept in high esteem: his Augustinian superior Johann von Staupitz, the sermons of Johannes Tauler, and an anonymous work known as the “Theologia Deutsch.”17 Luther had, in fact, a direct contact with Dionysius’s theology, but his relationship with Eckhart’s appears to have been unaware and indirect.18 Although Eckhart, Tauler, and the Theologia Deutsch are considered part of “German mysticism,” the latter is, as its name asserts, a piece of German “theology” rather than of German “mysticism.”19 Mystical theology accounts for the search of union with the divinity leaving behind the mediation of symbols and going beyond them in order to penetrate the absolute. The “mystical way” applies roughly to a general structure

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of three stages: purgatio, illuminatio, and unio. “Cleansing” is the first stage of prayer and meditation in the pursuance of love, leading to intuition and reaching a state of contemplation; “illumination” is the second stage, in which high mysticism proper starts, when the soul—in total receptivity of the divinely infused contemplation—is transformed into spiritual marriage; and “union” is the final stage, when the soul is absorbed into God (Oberman 1986, 126–30). An important principle underlining this process is that of similitudo or conformitas, that is, likeness to God—meaning that only a soul that has been purified and likened to the divinity could truly know and be one with Godself (Ozment 1980, 117, 242). Nevertheless, in the late middle ages, the expressions of mysticism had overflown those structures into a more complex phenomenon reaching from high mysticism to forms of devotional piety (Oberman 1986, 126). Regarding Luther, a number of scholars agree on the fact that he was not “a mystic,” however, they would endorse the view that his theology cannot be grasped without the awareness of what he took and what he dismissed from mystical theology since aspects of medieval mysticism pervade the tissue of his theological understanding.20 As Oberman refers, the article “Luther und die Mystik” (1937) by Erich Vogelsang introduces a systematization of the mystical authors said to be known by Luther; there, three types of mysticism are identified: “Dionysian,” “Latin,” and “German” (Oberman 1986, 130).21 Vogelsang describes the reformer’s experience as follows: After 1516 Luther clearly rejected “Dionysian mysticism” as a speculative bypassing of the incarnate and crucified Christ; with regard to “Latin mysticism,” he approved its emphasis on the earthly Christ, and its experiential accent, and rejected its bypassing of Anfechtung, aspects of its bridal mysticism, and its goal of spiritual-ecstatic union with the uncreated Word; finally, he enthusiastically endorsed “German mysticism,” as he found in it what he appreciated of Latin mysticism plus the idea of the resignatio ad infernum (“resignation to hell,” i.e., willingness to be damned); moreover, it was representative of a forgotten German theological tradition in his native mother tongue (Oberman 1986, 130). Vogelsang’s classification has been traditionally accepted by scholars, although some questions have been raised about its applicability. Oberman, for instance, does not suggest a different classification, but observes that some authors cannot be fit in its descriptions; he proposes instead to approach the issue examining how Luther read and actually used the different authors and concepts of the mystical tradition (Oberman 1986, 131–54). In order to guide the assessment of Luther’s readings, it is helpful to bear in mind still one more categorization of mysticism. Bernard McGinn distinguishes three forms of “negation” in mystical theology: the negativity of “apophasis,” which is the unsaying of all forms of human speech in relation

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to God; the negativity of “detachment,” which is the cutting away of all attachments to self and world in order to be open to God; and the negativity of “dereliction and suffering” in which anguish, and even damnation, become the way to God (McGinn 2004, 100n30). These modes of negation are not mutually exclusive; individual mystics follow more than one of them in their theology (McGinn 2004, 103). As this exploration moves on, it is important to consider that although some aspects of mystical theology were received and transformed by Luther, he specifically rejected others; as I shall illustrate, some mystical ways were not for him “the passageway” to God (WA 56:300, 7).22 Dionysius: More a Platonist than a Christian Luther’s considerations on Dionysius and negative theology are witnessed throughout his writings; references to the Areopagite and his followers appear from early in his career up to his later works.23 For instance, in his First Lectures on the Psalms (1513/1515) commenting on a verse about the darkness that enwraps God (Psalm 18:12), Luther provides five different interpretations of such hiddenness: First, because God inhabits the enigma and gloom of faith. Second, “because He dwells in an unapproachable light (1 Tim 6:16)”—and here he refers to Dionysius: “Therefore blessed Dionysius teaches that one must enter into anagogical darkness and ascend by way of denials. For thus God is hidden and beyond understanding.” In third place, Luther alludes to the mystery of the incarnation as God is “concealed in humanity, which is his darkness.” The fourth possible interpretation Luther brings is God hidden in the church or in the Virgin. Finally, he speaks of God hidden in the Sacrament of the Eucharist (LW 10:119–20). It is interesting to observe that in this early text the allusion to Dionysius’s negative theology is specifically related to the hiddenness of God, which is beyond understanding, and this—among other interpretations—is placed between the references to two topics that will later become vital for Luther’s theology: hiddenness related to both faith and the incarnation. In the same work, in his notes on Psalm 64:2, Luther also asserts that the affirmative way concerning God is imperfect—both in understanding and in speaking—so, “the negative way is altogether perfect” and mentions Dionysius again: “Therefore a frequent word in Dionysius is ‘hyper,’ for beyond every thought one must simply step into the fog [darkness]” (LW 10:313).24 In his Lectures on Romans (1515/1516), Luther’s emphasis on faith and incarnation already appears. He agrees with Dionysius’s Theologia Mystica observing: “So that faith may have its place in God, who is negative essence and goodness and wisdom and justice, who cannot be possessed or touched except by the negations of all our affirmatives” (LW 25:383). Thus, in some

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very specific aspects the via negativa was indeed a most perfect way for him. Yet, commenting on Romans 5:2, “through whom [Jesus Christ] we have access by faith,” Luther manifests his qualms with reference to some features of the followers of this way. He writes, “This also applies to those who follow the mystical theology and struggle in inner darkness, omitting all pictures of Christ’s suffering,” and he individualizes those who by the anagogical, ascending way wish to hear and contemplate “the uncreated Word” without having first been justified through “the incarnate Word” (LW 25:287). As the Reformation process was under way and Luther’s theology of the cross had already taken shape, differences with regard to the Dionysian theology started to be emphasized.25 Soon, he rejects the new interest on the “Dionysian speculations,” which was quite en vogue at the time, and it is this particular issue that he is discussing when he words the well-known paragraph of his Second Lectures on the Psalms (1519/1521): “One becomes a theologian by living, indeed by dying and being damned, not by understanding, reading, and speculating” (WA 5:163, 28–29).26 Some lines below, Luther makes allusion to the Songs of Songs (5:8) and considering “the bride and her lover,” he quotes: “I am sick with love,” and writes on the soul/bride and Christ: I have been reduced to nothing and know nothing. Entering into darkness and the cloud, I see nothing. I live by faith, hope and love alone, and I am weak (that is, I suffer) for when I am weak then I am stronger. This leading, the mystical theologians call going into the darkness, ascending beyond being and non-being. Truly I do not know whether they understand themselves, if they attribute it to [humanly] elicited acts and do not rather believe that the sufferings of the cross, death and hell are being signified. The CROSS alone is our theology. (WA 5:176, 27–33; Luther’s uppercase)27

Undoubtedly, for Luther, the mystical ascension driven by human will and mere speculation clashed with the cross. Not surprisingly, in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1521), he would pronounce “this Dionysius, whoever he may have been” as “more a Platonist than a Christian,” and judge his theology a misguiding search. There he exhorts to hear Paul, “that we may learn Jesus Christ and him crucified” (LW 36:109). We should notice that in those years Pope Leo X had issued the bull Exsurge Domine (1520) condemning Luther’s errors and, in 1521, pronounced his excommunication; moreover, in the very same year 1521, Luther was summoned by Charles V before the imperial Diet of Worms. Since by this time, Luther’s earliest opponents were making use of Dionysius to defend papal hierarchy, Luther’s rejection of the same makes even more sense in this context (Oberman 1986, 133; Rorem 1997, 298). Luther’s position confronting Rome was consonant with

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the theological confrontation of theologia crucis vs. theologia gloriae, and his disagreement with Dionysian mysticism evidences what the reformer had already discerned: the avoidance of the cross in theological discourse serves a certain “politics of places” generally identified with the highest ranks. Some fifteen years later, the commentary on Psalm 90 of 1534/35 restates Luther’s position and shows how he has subverted and displaced the theological understanding of the issue. We can appreciate that a “deconstructive move” is made explicit: he would hold on to the theologia crucis as the true definition of the theologia negativa. The psalm reads: “For we are consumed by your anger, and by your wrath are we troubled” (90:7), thus Luther reflects on human anguish before God’s wrath—for how can the human creature think about this kind of a God without tears, without murmuring? Indeed, those thoughts, “can be felt . . . but cannot be expressed in words, and they can be learned only through experience . . . They include those ‘sighs too deep for words’ . . . which pierce the clouds.” In the face of this, Luther states that Dionysius deserves to be ridiculed, for he defined affirmative theology as “God is Being” and negative theology as “God is not Being,” while for him, a “true definition of negative theology . . . is the holy cross and the afflictions in which we do not, it is true, discern God, but in which nevertheless those sighs are present” (LW 14:110–11). Following the traces of Luther’s interactions with Dionysian mystical theology it becomes patent that the reformer’s theological elaborations face and oppose most of the aspects of this theological position up to the point of displacing the understanding of theologia negativa. While he keeps the topic of the negative language of darkness and incomprehensibility in relation to the hiddenness of God, he confronts and dismisses the speculations of apophatic unsaying, its ascending method, and its side effects: rejection of materiality, disdain toward experience, and reinforcement of hierarchy. Meister Eckhart: Detached The mystical theology of Eckhart, the German Dominican master, shares aspects of the Dionysian discourse although in a much richer and complex elaboration. There is no evidence that Luther ever had conscious contact with Eckhart’s writings, but he read and commented some of his sermons that were intermingled with those of Tauler’s, which he studied and annotated in the period 1515/1516 (Ozment 1978, 260). Eckhart and Tauler belong to what is referred to generally as “German mysticism” and, although there is a generally acknowledged proximity between them, there are important differences, especially when seen from Luther’s point of view (Oberman 1986, 141). Actually, the question revolves around the fact that Eckhart did influence

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Tauler, and Luther read Tauler . . . then, to what extent was Luther influenced by Eckhart? I shall refer to Tauler some paragraphs ahead, here I just want to note that although some parallels could be recognized between Eckhart and Luther, they mostly differ from each other.28 In a work published in 1936, the historian Heinrich Bornkamm points out ten fundamental differences between the theology of Eckhart and that of Luther; Ozment refers to this list and shares its contents (Ozment 1978, 263–65; 1980, 241–47).29 In truth, the differences highlighted by Bornkamm between Luther’s and Eckhart’s theologies in particular repeat most of Luther’s differences with mystical theologies in general, and they remit to their incompatible epistemologies, anthropologies, and understandings of justification. In brief, Luther’s theology differentiates from the highly speculative method of Neoplatonic epistemology; opposes the idea of synteresis, i.e., the ability of the human soul to incline toward good because of a “spark” or a “ground” of the soul not corrupted by the fall; and, consequently, rejects any teaching of justification resting on human will and/or capacity to do good, be likened, and unite to God. However, in spite of Eckhart being one of the few mystics who uses the specific text of Isaiah 45:15 as scriptural source of divine unknowability, there is no direct reference to the deus absconditus in Bornkamm’s list.30 And, besides this distinctive use of the expression about the hiddenness of God, here there is again a significant difference with Luther. Although sharing much of the Dionysian tradition, in Eckhart’s theology the mystical flight of negative rhetoric is associated and reinforced with the cutting away of all attachment to self and world. Detachment—a condition mentioned by Eckhart as “Abegeschiedenheit”—is for him the driving power through the mystical stages leading to the final breakthrough; and this practice of detachment marks Eckhart’s distance from Luther’s perceptions about the deus absconditus.31 In his treatise On detachment, Eckhart expresses that true detachment is nothing else but “a mind that stands unmoved by all accidents of joy or sorrow, honor, shame, or disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands unmoved by a breath of wind” (Eckhart 2009, 569). Such exercise leads human beings into the greatest equality with God, “[f]or the reason why God is God is because of His immovable detachment, and from this detachment He has His purity, His simplicity, and His immutability” (Eckhart 2009, 569). In this it becomes visible that, in addition to the anthropological assumptions that this negative way involves—that is, pursuing detachment as a means for likening human beings to God, which would imply reliance on human will and capacity to do so—there are two other aspects that clash with Luther’s theology: one is related to its entailed theology of creation; the other, to the matter of suffering. Eckhart’s depiction of God as “detached” from the world, and human beings imitating this divine attitude, implicates a certain theology of creation;

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in fact, Bornkamm’s list expresses the disparity between Eckhart and Luther in this regard.32 Nevertheless, I want to underline here that such difference seems deeply related to their parting perceptions with reference to the deus absconditus. As a Dominican and follower of Thomas Aquinas, Eckhart is genuinely informed by the biblical tradition about the goodness and dignity of creation, and he believes, as well, in the sacramental character of creation as revelation of God as creator. Yet, as Richard Woods observes, this kind of theology was at odds with the Neoplatonic aversion toward matter (Woods 2011, 53–55).33 In many aspects detachment is informed by Neoplatonism, and this influence is clear in Eckhart because for him “corporeality, multiplicity and temporality” are an obstacle in the way to God (Woods 2011, 56). For these reasons, Eckhart’s perceptions are quite divergent from those of Luther’s. As Luther asserts, the deus absconditus is the God who “works life and death, and all in all” and this means divine deep involvement with creation and all its processes. For Luther, God not only created the world but works constantly in it and through it, God is “with all creatures, flowing and pouring into them, filling all things” (LW 22:26). Besides, human creatureliness with its material and temporal constrictions is not something that can be left behind in Luther’s view—just the opposite, the creature needs to be restored and brought back again to its own status that it so easily forgets. For Luther, becoming like God is not the way out of the incomprehensibility of the hidden God. What Luther’s theological passion is able to realize is that before the deus absconditus, the very experience of the human condition, its vulnerability and sinfulness becomes patent; in this situation, a new reality— in which the human participates by faith—can break through. In regard to suffering, Abegeschiedenheit—as the cessation of all the forms of particularized consciousness—implies that for Eckhart, unlike Luther, the hiddenness of God does not induce fear, anxiety, or the torture of the believer facing divine mystery (McGinn 2004, 104). As Luther expresses mocking Dionysius, before the wrath of the hidden God, thoughts “cannot be expressed in words . . . [they] can be learned only through experience” (LW 14:110). And, for him, the lack of words relates not to an apophatic gesture but rather to the excruciating suffering produced by the experience in which “God cannot be perceived”: the believer is thus immerse in “sigh and groaning.” Such is neither an intelligible nor an appeasing, appealing encounter. In reality, if Abegeschiedenheit or Gelâzenheit is the chosen way for Eckhart and his followers, Luther runs into a completely different experience afflicting believers: “Anfechtung”—a condition to undergo and not an occasion to “let go.”34 Up to this point, we may say that Luther’s theological elaborations on the deus absconditus could coincide with apophatic theology exclusively in their use of the symbolic of hiddenness in order to express the incomprehensibility

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of God. Regarding specifically Dionysius and Eckhart, the terminology about God gives away the difference between Luther and both mystical theologians. As representative of a Neoplatonic approach to the union with the divinity, Dionysian search moves in a knowing/not knowing level. Thus, for Dionysius, God is the Wholly Unknown (tó pantelôs de agnôstos) and hiddenness is not for him the issue—actually, he never quotes the text of Isaiah 45:15 in his writings (McGinn 2004, 99). Eckhart shares the speculative way of Dionysius, but he enters as well in the experiential realm of hiddenness. However, the Neoplatonic ballast wins, Eckhart flees such experience via detachment and sinks in the “indistinct nothingness of God” then, for him, God is “niht”—nothing (McGinn 2004, 103). Contrariwise, for Luther, the understanding of the deus absconditus works rather “otherwise than knowing,” and it has a lot more to do with experience than with intelligibility or the numbness of all feeling. ROAD COMPANIONS Having traced those aspects that Luther rejects in the mystical ways of Dionysius, and confronted some specific aspects of Luther’s and Eckhart’s theologies, it can be said that Luther reacts against the negative ways of apophatics and detachment. Now, if we concentrate on what he proposes in opposition to those mysticisms—namely, sighing and groaning, suffering, cross, being damned, death and hell—the unappealing list allows imagining some sort of connection to McGinn’s third aspect of negativity, that is, the way of dereliction and suffering. In the same direction, it is possible to follow up to some point Vogelsang’s conclusions, specifically, when he observes that what Luther finds attractive in “German mysticism” is its emphasis on the earthly Christ, its experiential accent, and the idea of the “resignatio ad infernum.” In a letter to his friend Spalatin in 1516, Luther recommends him to read Tauler’s sermons as “pure and solid theology, closest to that of the fathers,” and admits that he has not seen other theological work in Latin or German more sound and in harmony with the gospel (WABr I:79, 58–64). In the year 1518, in the introduction to his second complete edition of the Theologia Deutsch, he declares that next to the Bible and St. Augustine no other book has taught him more about God, Christ, human beings, and all things (WA 1:378, 21–23).35 Yet, still another influence has enormous effect on Luther’s theological development: that of his Augustinian superior and mentor, Johann von Staupitz. Luther himself recognizes such impact, for instance; one year before his death, in a letter to the Elector John Frederick, he praises Staupitz for “first of all being my father in this doctrine, and having given birth [to me] in Christ” (WABr 11:67, 7ff).36 What is most important in this context is

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the fact that Staupitz is considered, together with Tauler and the Theologia Deutsch, a channel of “German mysticism” at the time of Luther’s theological breakthrough.37 As he himself narrates and historians observe, there is an arduous process in Luther’s search and this can be traced in the copious annotations and commentaries on his readings: the scriptures and Augustine above all, but also some other authors that he discovers and explores. The theological unrest of the time is significant, but he is not a lonely seeker. Staupitz’s Counsel What are Staupitz’s findings that so much inspired Luther? Staupitz’s sermons evidence that his spiritual theology is shaped by the Epistles of Paul and Augustine’s works (Oberman 1989, 43). And it is known that in those days of deep spiritual turmoil Staupitz forbade the desperate young Luther to speculate about God’s wrath, leading him toward a christocentric experience. Luther would recall him saying, “Providence can be comprehended and found in the wounds of Christ—and nowhere else” (WATr 2 no1490:112, 10–14).38 Indeed, Staupitz’s theological stand is remarkably different from the customary teaching of the late medieval mystics, and some of his positions are already a shift toward a different direction that Luther will later radicalize. Some specific differences to underline in Staupitz’s theology relate to the doctrine of justification, which, as David C. Steinmetz observes, is developed over against the experience of ecstasy in medieval mysticism (Steinmetz 1980b, 25). To start with, the christocentric emphasis: for Staupitz, union with Christ is synonymous with justification. Yet, for him, such union does not rest on a long process of spiritual discipline following the mystical way of purgatio and illuminatio toward unio.39 In fact, he completely differentiates from the principle of “likening to God” in order to achieve union; for him, the right candidate for the justifying union is a “real sinner”—meaning that the presupposition for unio is rather “unlikeness” with God. In this sense, his conception of ecstasy—that is, of being placed outside oneself—occurs in two stages: first, the self is alienated, “torn from its old reliance on itself” by the law of God; second, the ecstatic self is married to Christ through love. Because of this, the believer is made just by a righteousness given by Christ, while Christ becomes a sinner assuming the guilt and weakness of the Christian.40 For Staupitz, this righteousness is intrinsic, something that Christ effects in the Christian by his presence and activity, and this union is so intimate as letting the believer say “Christ is I” (Steinmetz 1980b, 30). For this reason, a Christian is only that person who has been alienated from themself and “inserted” into Christ.

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It has been affirmed that Luther cited words and expressions from mystical authors, but he assigned a different meaning to those aspects of the tradition that he used and transformed (Oberman 1986, 145–54). And it is possible to recognize the impact of Staupitz on Luther’s early discoveries as he annotates on his First Lectures on the Psalms (1513–1515). However, those findings evolve, and Luther’s theology differentiates from the dominant traditions. For Luther, “ecstasy” is not a mystical nuptial feast to which only a few aristocrats of the spirit are invited, but the normal state of the justified sinner.41 This “being placed outside of oneself” involves a double work of God manifested through God’s word: God’s strange work (opus alienum) and God’s proper work (opus proprium). For Luther, the strange work of God is God’s wrath, and the word is then the law that kills any self-assurance that the individual has. Only after this occurs, God’s proper, justifying work happens through the word of the gospel. All this does not imply a process of likening to God, but it is actually the perception that the believers have of their situation as sinners in relation to God (coram Deo) with its consequent implications for their relationship to others (coram hominibus). Thus, ecstasy is not only effective for Luther, but also cognitive: it involves the awareness granted through faith and mediated by the word; the perception that what God says is true, even though reason and sense may contradict it. Such stress on justification applying to a “real sinner” and the emphasis on the justifying God as “truthful” are accents found first in Staupitz, and there is every reason to think that he influences Luther in this regard (Steinmetz 1980b, 34–35). Nevertheless, Luther’s theology develops some divergences with Staupitz’s as from most of the spiritual and mystical ways. In this process, the young Luther also separates from the tradition of his religious order leaving aside some of the Augustinian emphases. Firstly, it is the fact that Staupitz’s doctrine of justification inherited the Augustinian stress on the internal quality of grace. For Staupitz, the second stage of ecstasy rests on the intrinsic righteousness operated in the believer, that is, the internal work of God’s grace (iustitia in nobis): being returned to themself, the believer is made able to identify good works and act in contrast to the alienating effects of the law. Contrariwise, breaching the medieval circle of “pious introspection,” Luther understands that Christ’s extrinsic righteousness operates freeing us by grace from the law (iustitia aliena extra nos): the believer is drawn out of and placed outside themself, torn off from their self-reliance and left with no other resource. For Luther, in the “marriage” of justification, Christ’s “dowry” is precisely such liberation (Oberman 1981, 83–86). Secondly, another important divergence is the fact that Staupitz continues Augustine’s emphasis on the priority of love over faith in the process of justification. Luther, however, associates religious ecstasy with faith rather than with love (Steinmetz 1980b, 37). Finally, while Staupitz’s theology of justification rests on predestination,

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Luther’s starting point is God’s promise, a promise grasped by living faith (Steinmetz 1980b, 34). When facing the wrath of the incomprehensible hidden God, Luther heard Staupitz’s pastoral counsel and with it he received a highly elaborated doctrine of justification, rich in late medieval mystical terms and devotional practice. Human sin, God’s grace, and justification through Christ are the emphases that Staupitz’s particular perception of ecstasy brought along. Yet some other readings also accompanied the making of Luther’s theology. Tauler’s Sermons As early as the years 1515–1516, Martin Luther reads and annotates the sermons of Johannes Tauler, the German Dominican priest and monk who had preached in the towns along the Rhine up to his death in 1361. There are some aspects of Tauler’s theology that are reflected in Luther’s, proving thus his praise of this author. For instance, Tauler’s sermons are not intended just for “a select group of contemplatives,” but for all Christians; contemplation is not in his sight an exercise for those who had withdrawn from the world, but rather a means for those who live in the world and for the sake of the world (Stoller 2011, 58–59). While Tauler uses Eckhart’s Neoplatonic apophatic language, his mystic way is not only of ascent. As Timothy T. Stoller underlines, Tauler’s is a “mysticism of ascent and descent” because, for him, an ascending movement toward God corresponds paradoxically a descending movement, marked by humility and self-knowledge as a way to imitate Christ in his human life (Stoller 2011, 58–60). Moreover, Tauler opposes Pelagianism, rejecting the concept of merit (Ozment 1978, 262). In this sense, he speaks against the religious orders of his day; his sermons resist the laxity and pride that he often observes in convents and monasteries filled with people who study and speculate rather than follow the humble example of Christ (Stoller 2011, 66). Nevertheless, scholars agree on the fact that Luther’s encounter with Tauler is crucial for the theological development of the future reformer not only for what he finds in Tauler but also for how he reacts to Tauler. Ozment sustains that Luther’s rupture with the covenantal theology of the via moderna in the period 1515–1516 is at the very least simultaneous with, if not theologically consequent upon, his confrontation of Tauler’s ontological and anthropological presuppositions (Ozment 1970, 306). McGinn points out that Luther’s annotations on Tauler’s sermons let us see his interest for the German theologian as well as his break with the anthropological idea of the “divine ground of the soul” that Tauler had received from Eckhart’s teachings (McGinn 2004, 111).

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With regard to Luther’s perceptions of the deus absconditus, commenting on Psalm 6:2, he refers to those who provide a model of the suffering induced by God’s hiddenness, and says: “Finally, the German theologian, Johannes Tauler, speaks of it in his sermons” (WA 5:203, 16–17).42 Undoubtedly, Luther is drawn by Tauler’s account of “the suffering that strikes the saints in the face of the God who withdraws and hides” (McGinn 2004, 110). As Brecht asserts, Tauler becomes a witness to the hellish experience of Anfechtung unknown to scholastic theologians (Brecht 1985, 139). Indeed, this is an experience through which neither the scholastic theologians nor the Dionysian apophatic mystics can accompany Luther. Yet, Tauler, who combines Eckhart’s language of divine nothingness with the accents of experiential mysticism, becomes one of the major points of contact between Luther and the medieval mystical tradition and, at the same time, an important example of the limits of Luther’s connection to mysticism (McGinn 2004, 110–11). Luther’s annotations on Sermon 45 praise Tauler’s teachings about the “birth of God in the soul”—especially because for Tauler, this happens when one bears suffering to the end and gives up one’s own plans for achieving good. However, for the Dominican this aims to substantive union between God and human beings, going back to dependence upon the “spark in the soul” (McGinn 2004, 111). It is while ruminating about this, that Luther’s anthropological differences with Tauler become clear, breaking with the current theological understanding of synteresis taught by the via moderna. Thus, Luther rejects altogether the doctrine of salvation resting on human inner resources—be it a ground in the soul or an inner conscience of ethical principles. His theological breakthrough leans on the fact that there are no soteriological resources within human beings. It can be said, therefore, that in reading Tauler’s sermons a most important theological shift for the history of western Christianity is recorded: in his marginal notes Luther writes the word “faith” substituting the “spark of the soul” that Tauler had inherited from Eckhart (Ozment 1978, 265). This important theological shift marks a major anthropological dislocation, as Steinmetz states: “The truly spiritual person, as Luther points out in his marginal notes on John Tauler, is the person who relies on faith” (Steinmetz 1980b, 37; see Ozment 1969, 2). The Theologia Deutsch Luther’s affection for this booklet takes him to edit it twice within a period of two years. In 1516 he comes upon a short version of the tract, provides it with a preface, and has it printed in Wittenberg; in 1518, he finds a more extensive version in a monastic library and publishes it with an elaborated introduction. According to him the language of the work is simple but the spiritual guidance that it offers is profound (Hoffman 1980, xv). It is significant that the

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mystical language of dereliction and suffering depicted in the specific motif of resignatio ad infernum is quite present in this writing. The unknown author declares:43 Christ’s soul had to visit hell before it came to heaven. This is also the path for man’s soul. But note in what manner this occurs as far as we are concerned. When a person comes to know and see himself he discovers that he is wicked and unworthy of the goodness and comfort that he has . . . He then feels that he is damned and lost and unworthy even of that . . . He also deems it right that he should be eternally damned and be a footstool for all devils in hell, and again, that he is unworthy even of that. (Hoffman 1980, 72)

Luther very well understands what the author is talking about; he knows the experience of feeling damned. As he comments on the penitential psalms, the plea on Psalm 6:4 “Turn, O Lord, save my life” implies for him that God may actually turn away from believers (McGinn 2004, 97). For Luther, this means “inner rejecting and forsaking” and when this is perceived, “a horrible terror and, as it were, the beginning of damnation is felt” (LW 14:142–43). The young friar has had a taste of the resignatio ad infernum and identifies himself with the mystical way characterized by dereliction, alienation, and suffering because it offers a mirror to his own experiences. Yet, there is a particular aspect of this mystical expression from which he differentiates: for those mystics following this way, afflictions are appealing because they are a stage on the way toward union with God; suffering brings about a sense of divine plenitude. But for Luther, the experience that he refers to as Anfechtung was terrifying. And this is not just a subjective, inner experience of the individual: it implies that fear, anxiety, and doubt has an objective correlation of spiritual assault (McGrath 1985, 170). There are times when the believer experiences that God “conducts himself . . . towards the godly so that it seems that he does not know us at all,” Luther would explain (LW 6:359). God cannot be discerned in what occurs, but, at the very same time, God is perceived to be the ultimate source of that situation. Yet, opposing both scholastics and mystics, Luther understands that this kind of torment is something that a Christian does not avoid rationally, neither seeks willingly, nor confronts triumphantly, but undergoes. Luther recognized Anfechtung not as a stage in spiritual growth but as a constant feature of the Christian life (McGrath 1985, 170–71). In this sense, when human will, strength, and rationality are taken to visit their limits—a condition marked by “sigh and groaning”—despair makes room for faith. Dereliction and suffering, and resignatio ad infernum are “technical” expressions to describe the spiritual motifs of some mystical ways. Luther

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discovered in the writings of those traditions companionship for his experiences and a challenging partner for his theological differentiation and breakthrough. MIRRORS We have followed Derrida and Luther in their approach to the wholly other. As they search for a way, both postmodern philosopher and premodern theologian are attracted by some aspects of mystical theology, but, at the end, mystical theology is not the path they are looking for. In this sense, caught amid a play of mirrors, I shall try to capture some of the reflections which Derrida’s readings and Luther’s theological findings produce upon each other. Divine Regulatory System? Confronting the via moderna, Luther discovers that the hidden God cannot be tackled with some “divine regulatory system” operating in God’s power. He perceives that the experience that human beings face is that of an unbound God (and, if there is any restrain for this, it does not come from some power equilibrium intelligible in the divinity but rather by something that befalls divinity).44 Thus, the experience of the deus absconditus cannot be subdued by fitting it into some prearranged pattern. In this sense, we can see the specularity—repeating but in reverse—between Luther’s perceptions and the Derridean motif of khōra. Khōra is sheer receptivity and passivity allowing everything and anything to take place. The deus absconditus is sheer activity working all in all—what we perceive, and what we ignore. Both of them disrupt any program: what the hidden God works and what khōra allows to take place, even though it involves us, escapes us. One appalling aspect that they share is the fact of being extra-moral: everything and anything takes place in the receptive womb of khōra as the inexhaustible deus absconditus works anything and everything—although for us, it may mean the best or the worst. Now, for Derrida, khōra is complete openness and indetermination, a freeing experience of the impossible, and as such, desirable. Conversely, for Luther, the deus absconditus is impossible to determine and overpowering, and as such, fearsome. Metaphysical Ruse? Luther discovers that mysticism—especially in its ways of apophasis and detachment—cannot help him before the hiddenness of God; he understands that such experience cannot be handled with a “metaphysical ruse.” In this

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sense, he finds that Dionysius’s formulas about “God being and non-being” are a pointless exhibition of knowledge in a situation in which what is at stake are the very restrictions of speculation. For Luther, this is just an example of theologia gloriae. In the same way, Derrida finds out that in spite of all, Dionysian and Eckhartian discourses are a retarding way toward a metaphysical dead end. He follows the traces of khōra, but he cannot find it in the Christian apophatic traditions. Derrida sees that what happens between negative theology and khōra is “the taking place of revelation” and, in the case of Dionysius and Eckhart, the event of revelation is bent by their discourse toward the Platonic Good rather than to the utterly otherness of khōra. This happens firstly, by craving for a hyperessentiality, which by being “beyond Being” is more being than Being; secondly, by reproducing a metaphysical discourse that enforces hierarchy through “political stratagems” supported by zealous administration of the access to “the secret”; and, finally, by imposing silence because such powerful hyperessentiality is, after all, a presence outside language, “outside the text.” For Luther, the “taking place of revelation” confronts the Platonic discourse with the word of the cross. As Paulson expresses, “Plato (the grandfather of negative theology) . . . could think about being, but could not anticipate history where something really new would happen” (Paulson 1999, 364–65). Jesus Christ crucified befalls God—this is God’s “ordained power”—and Luther discovers that this liberating but most paradoxical understanding is not self-evident; it can only be partaken of through faith. Then, believers’ lives occur between the deus absconditus and the word of the cross. We could say that, for Luther, what happens between apophatic theology and the deus absconditus is also revelation yet, a revelation that pronounces the impossibility of escaping inscription and thus confronting apophatics in its metaphysical flight. Inscription With khōra Derrida discovers in Plato’s tradition a possibility of approaching otherness, which, although impossible of being spoken of, by this very impossibility obliges addressing oneself to it as to the wholly other (How, 38–39). For this reason, Derrida peruses the apophatic discourses so similar to those elicited by khōra. Thus, he reads a sermon by Eckhart in which there appears the particular use of the image of God’s hiddenness under a robe. Derrida observes how this hidden, veiled hyperessentiality is reflected in Eckhart’s negative theology as a “discourse of the nakedness of an absence of predicate” and compares it with the veil of a garment that “can at once dissimulate and reveal the very fact that it dissimulates and renders attractive at the same time” (How, 44; emphasis added). In effect, in his tracking

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of khōra, Derrida finds these discursive images appealing. Contrariwise, for Luther, the experience of the hidden, naked God is not appealing but frightening. Besides, “the nakedness of an absence of predicate” is, in fact, the unbound possibility for any predicate. Yet, for him the experience of the very unsayability of the deus absconditus also summons inscription. In his reading and rereading of the tradition, he finds that hope comes from God ensnared into space and time—“into the text”—in the logos of the cross. Although here God is hidden as well—sub contrario, in suffering and the cross. And this time again, hiddenness does not produce an attractive discourse: not all predicates are alluring baits. For Derrida, the receptivity of khōra and the openness of “the messianic” escape determination unlocking hope at the time when the overdetermination of what is expected and welcome closes the horizon of a sustainable future life. He unearths those possibilities in tension within the texts of the tradition and gets hold of them as a promise for a universal religion without religion, without dogmatisms, without holy wars: the propitiation of a new hospitality, of a new democracy to come. As correlate to the closure of late medieval religion with its oppressive dominant institutions and theologies, before the haunting experience of a naked, hidden God, Luther’s theology meets an incarnated God. Luther’s eager search reads with new eyes the theology of a God who suffers human anguish and despair; the narrative of the event of God being identified with a human, Jesus of Nazareth, opens a messianic dimension of promise. His stand against a theologia gloriae is part of his refusal to make use of a “metaphysical ruse” and the theologia crucis rehearses this in a twofold way: First, the motif of revelation is that of God associated to human vulnerability, and specifically with weakness, humiliation, suffering, and death—a refusal to follow the path of the logos as expressed in impassibility, rank, strength, and dominion. Second, the means of revelation is the word: language, text, inscription, contamination, a constant detour from any claim of immediate reaching to a metaphysical realm of Truth. If anything “is” outside inscription, it cannot be registered: predicates imply some determination and delimitation, and a certain structure of knowledge. What we are not able to speak about, but anyway entices our speech, works in some other way than knowledge. Against this background, Luther’s disruptive notion of the deus absconditus illustrates the difficulties of a constant theological tension: the unavoidability of inscription and, simultaneously, the declining of any possibility of closure.

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A Secret? Replying to Erasmus, Luther refers to the hidden God and God’s hidden will, which is a “most awesome secret,” and he affirms about this secret that “He has kept it to himself and forbidden us to know it” (BOW 169). The mirror shows Derrida saying: “There is no secret as such: I deny it,” and Luther’s reflection says: “It is secret and we are not allowed to know it” (full period). It appears that, for Luther, the secret is something that stays secret. Besides, the play of hiddenness in his comprehension of God is not based on an “economy of the secret.” The deus absconditus is not a secret that only some initiated or enlightened individuals can grasp; in fact, it is out of our possibilities—not because we are not purified, separated, or enlightened enough but because it is not knowable: it belongs to an experience that works otherwise than knowing, making us all equal before it. As Derrida notices, negative theologies—Dionysius’s and Eckhart’s, most especially—emphasize initiation and purification delimiting those who have access to the “God beyond and without Being.” In this same sense, Mary-Jane Rubenstein underlines the profound contradiction in the works of Dionysius in which “the soul must prove itself worthy of realizing it is nothing,” meaning that: “Not just anybody can know nothing, and not just anybody can become nobody” (Rubenstein 2008, 738). In effect, it appears that apophatics bets on the secret, operating rather in a play of smoke and mirrors: a few are allowed to know the secret that the many are not permitted to access. (Although the secret may prove to be nothing.) Thus, Luther’s displacement of negative theology toward the theology of the cross, may operate a “democratization” of negative theology marking a complete rupture with the “aristocrats of the spirit.”45 There is nothing to prove and no secret that one could unveil. Painful Accomplishment? Derrida discovers that silence is at the end of apophatic theology because it aims toward union with a hyperessentiality outside language. Facing the terrifying incomprehensibility of the hidden God—which occurs otherwise than knowing—silence is at the beginning of Luther’s theology, but at the end there is the word opening the possibility of faith—which is a way of knowing otherwise. The experiences recorded are in reverse: from an eloquent speech of metaphysical flight toward heavenly rapture and silence; from speechless groans of earthly despair toward faith because of the word of the cross. For Luther, believers do not ascend toward a pure intuition where inscription is not necessary, they are rescued from speechless angst by faith elicited by the word.

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Thus, the deus absconditus imposes silence not because of its fullness and incommensurability but because of the experience of suffering and abandonment that it induces. Yet, this experience is not a road of “painful accomplishment.” When Luther describes Anfechtung he is bringing to light a situation in which human beings meet the limits of regulatory explanations and metaphysical ruses. He finds that in such circumstances we are abandoned by our own devices and by God. Then, suffering is neither a way of ascension toward God’s plenitude nor some training to build up character or to toughen us up in our road of achievement. The experience of suffering occurs because we are human and justice escapes our calculation when we confront the naked God. Only when we are taken to the point of meeting this restraint—undergoing the destructio of the moral and epistemological certainties of the self—we are structurally open to the possibility of faith. At the Brim of the Abyss It is perhaps because of this mise en abyme of “hiddenness in hiddenness” that the motif of the abyss lets us reflect on the deus absconditus. Derrida refers to khōra as “a sort of abyss” (Khōra, 104), and some scholars discern the motif of the abyss as applicable to Luther’s perceptions. In fact, with a rather deconstructive imagery, Lutheran theologians think about it in these ways: For Reinhold Seeberg, the deus absconditus in Luther is an “abysmal ground of possibility” (Seeberg 1953, 156–59).46 And in the words of Paul Tillich, “He who is hidden as the abyss behind everything manifest reveals himself in contrast to everything man can accept” (Dillenberger 1953, viii).47 More recently, considering Luther’s use of metaphors, Vítor Westhelle picked up the same image in order to refer to what cannot be represented: “The deus nudus, the naked God, which is the irresistible abyss” (Westhelle 2006, 99). We have observed that the abyssal khōra names “the opening of a place ‘in’ which everything would, at the same time, come to take place and be reflected” (Khōra, 104), but we should remember that khōra is like an impassive receptacle that does not give, or create, or call. However, as we have many times underlined, Luther used to describe this abyssal God “work[ing] life and death, and all in all.” Then, if the motif of the abyss applies to the deus absconditus, it is in this case an abyss of possibility, from where everything and anything proceeds. This is theologically significant not only with reference to a God who creates but, particularly, to a God who is at work in reality in ways that elicit questions regarding good and evil. Luther refuses to sublate this theologically; the deus absconditus appears not necessarily as “philanthropic” in his rendition. And here there is the uncomfortable aspect of Luther theology: the refusal to speak about the deus absconditus is also the refusal to explain God, to account rationally for God, to justify God. There is

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no room for theodicy in Luther’s theology as there is no room for “khōradicy” in Derrida’s deconstruction. Luther’s theology witnesses to the human experience at the brim of the abyss, the unending free fall of the rational measuring of all possibilities: from the most terrible to the most kind. It is only in the text, in the word of the cross, where the human is met by an event that compels the abyssal God to vibrate in propitious ways toward creation as a whole. Crosses In meeting khōra and the messianic, which he refers to as a desert in a desert, Derrida meets the deconstructive experience of an originary—as well as futural—utter alterity that inhabits and disturbs intransigent dogmatisms in their constant drive to close in on themselves. It is for this reason that he announces that this desert in a desert will render possible “precisely what it appears to threaten” (FK, 55). Undeniably, Derrida faces the experience of the impossible: the desert of the wholly other in tension with the desert of what we know; desert in desert refusing sublation. Yet, along with this, he describes a constant indecision: Is it because something like khōra and “the messianic” open the possibility, that the religions we know and the messiahs we name can take place? Or, is it the other way around and because there is already the name “God” or the experience of a definite Messiah that there can be an opening to utter otherness? He concludes that there is no synthesis for this: there has to be the possibility of thinking together both possibilities (which is the impossible itself!). The customary undecidable, the paradox, the simul, the double-bind. This is the experience that Derrida names as “his cross” (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 73). In specularity with Derrida’s undecidable perceptions, we observe Luther’s realization of the menace that a naked God, the deus absconditus, represents for human existence. Yet, is it not in this abyssal experience that a revelation can break through? Does not this said experience render possible “precisely what it appears to threaten”? I am convinced that here “Derrida’s cross” works also a mirror effect with “Luther’s cross.” Luther faces in the deus absconditus something like the reverse of what Derrida finds in khōra, but the friar’s longing is to escape the possibility of this terrible experience. Derrida’s cross arises when he tries to think something from which Luther tries to escape through the cross. The philosopher wants to get away from a cross—which he knows is inescapable—in order to long for the impossible. The theologian clings to the cross—which he claims indispensable—in order not to be swallowed by the possible. One caresses a “religion without religion”; the other seizes a “theology against theology.” If Derrida’s motif of a

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desert in the desert speaks about what a religion without religion will have rendered possible, that is, “precisely what it appears to threaten,” Luther’s “hiddenness in hiddenness” is the scenery from which his theology against theology would painfully claim what—as he very well experienced—is constantly under threat. SHARED PROMISE Derrida and Luther run into a thought that falls at the limits of reason, where reason reaches its limits before an experience of the impossible, something that works otherwise than knowing. Both philosopher and theologian meet faith as the preconstitutive bond of any relation, whether human or divine. The terror of our present reality takes the philosopher to undo and rethink (deconstruct) the unthought-of possibilities of a metaphysical closing frame: before any link to alterity, and before the mechanisms of protection and rejection are launched, there has always been a “yes” to the other that has left its traces in language, and language bears the promise that whatever comes may come. The terror of his present reality takes the theologian to confront the oppressive closure of religious institutions and their theological scaffolding: there is a yes to the wholly other pronounced before the promise testified in the word of the cross, that is, that the sheer divinity that holds sovereign power somehow got inscribed, affected by the very space and time it effects.48 When analyzing the implications of Derrida’s findings, I introduced the perception that deconstruction puts us at odds with the traditional “transcendence/immanence” opposition.49 From the experience of one arid desert we are allowed to receive another desert where the memory and the expectancy of openness and respect flourish. Derrida experiences that the wholly other could only be glimpsed from a desert in the desert we already are, letting us imagine that something like transcendence relates neither to a different topology—outside or above—nor to one just identical to our world and reality but to some unconditionality in such a location. Underlining Luther’s theological elaborations, which take us to face hiddenness in hiddenness, entices also our imagination to a nontraditional approach to transcendence. From the experience of God’s hiddenness, we are allowed to receive a hidden revelation: suffering flesh is affirmed in the face of the abyss of a deus tremendus because absconditus. For Luther, the uncertain world and reality we are in hide transcendence as an unconditional dimension of immanence.50 And this refers to the possibility that faith opens to partake of a different reality at work in the world. God hidden is disturbing because it is at work in everything that happens, in many things that we cannot explain, and lurks in many others that we ignore. God revealed in cross and suffering is puzzling because it is

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hidden under the opposite of what we can accept. Luther touches the tension that will always be there in the believers’ earthy life, and accounts for it: there is hiddenness in hiddenness and we are left inside a paradox, then, we have to live by faith. Facing what works otherwise than knowing we are taken to know otherwise. It is in the desert where we can glimpse another desert. It is in hiddenness that hiddenness reveals. Next Steps After considering a way of knowing otherwise, we have followed philosopher and theologian as they approach the wholly other and meet an experience of that which occurs otherwise than knowing. Through these previous chapters I have underlined aspects of the subversion and displacement produced by the deconstruction at work in Derrida’s thought and recognized how some of them echo in or enter in a mirror play with Luther’s theology. In the next part, I shall explore four deconstructive gaps opened by the tremors of those displacements. Honoring the tradition, I have named the gaps after the “four sola” of the Reformation: sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus. They respectively represent the topics of hermeneutics, anthropology, ethics, and transcendence. In them I shall engage Luther’s theology and Derrida’s thought in a deconstructive-creative theological conversation. NOTES 1. In his God Hidden and Revealed (1953), John Dillenberger followed thoroughly the elaborations on this topic from the end of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth. 2. See chapter 6. 3. As Gerish mentions, the main variation Luther uses for the deus absconditus is the deus nudus, i.e., the “naked God” (Gerrish 1973, 267). 4. “Ad deum contra deum confugere.” See McGrath (1985, 173), Bayer (2003a, 70), Westhelle (2006, 59). 5. See chapter 7. 6. Luther’s narration about this earlier experience (Rückblick) appears in his preface to the first volume of the Latin edition of his works at Wittenberg written one year before his death (LW 34:336–38; WA 54:185, 12–186, 21). See chapter 6. 7. This is richly elaborated and illustrated in Oberman’s biographical work entitled precisely, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (1989). 8. See chapter 6. 9. Ockham explains it like this: “Sometimes we mean by God’s power those things which he does according to laws he himself has ordained and instituted. These things he is said to do by ordained power [de potentia ordinata]. But sometimes God’s

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power is taken to mean his ability to do anything that does not involve a contradiction, regardless of whether or not he has ordained that he would do it. For God can do many things that he does not choose to do. . . . These things he is said to be able to do by his absolute power [de potentia absoluta],” Quodlibeta VI, q. I. Quoted by Ozment (1980, 38). 10. See chapter 6. 11. The pursuing of union with the divinity without mediations is a general characteristic of mysticism. However, Oberman will divide mysticism into two main types: on one side, “transformational mysticism,” on the other, “penintential” or “effective mysticism”; while, for the former, mystical union is achieved outside the boundaries of the potentia Dei ordinata, for the latter, such union is in volitional conformity with God’s revealed will. This position is not shared by Ozment, for whom mysticism is completely opposed to nominalism, consequently, always transcends the realm of the potentia Dei ordinata. The difference of positions between Oberman and his former student, Ozment, is treated by Werner Packull (1982, 84–86). 12. This is a christological aspect that I resume and develop in chapter 12. 13. Bayer cites this passage elaborating on God’s omnipotence according to Luther (Bayer 2009, 97). 14. See chapter 6. 15. See below under “Road Companions.” 16. See Rasmussen (1996, 270–81; 1997, 22) and Steven Churchill (1999). 17. Or, “Theologia Germanica.” Luther edited it under the title: “Eyn deutsch Theologia.” 18. In an article about Luther’s comments on Tauler’s sermons, Ozment observes that, although there is no evidence that Luther ever had conscious contact with the writings of Eckhart, he read and commented on some of his sermons that were intermingled with Tauler’s (Ozment 1978, 260). Oberman affirms that Luther did not relate to Meister Eckhart in any sense (1986, 141). Nevertheless, based on their works, I understand that both authors would agree on the fact that Luther’s theology is not directly connected to that of Eckhart’s. 19. Oberman quotes Luther’s own observations in this direction, as they appear in the preface of his 1518 edition of the Theologia Deutsch (Oberman 1986, 141). 20. See for instance, Oberman (1986, 127); Ozment (1969, 8, 214–15; 1978, 266; 1980, 239–41); George H. Williams (1974, 276). In his review of twentieth century historiography with regard to this issue, Werner Packull assesses Erich Vogelsang’s position and affirms that “only in a very qualified sense does Vogelsang see Luther as indebted to the medieval mystical tradition” (Packull 1982, 81); with regard to Bengt Hägglund, Packull finds that he grants that “significant conceptual differences existed between Luther and the mystics” yet he “also discovered significant similarities” (Packull 1982, 81). In a similar assessment, David Schmiel affirms: “The majority of scholars have concluded that while Luther utilized the work of the German mystics in his studies, and while this was part of the process that eventuated in his breakthrough, he is by no means to be considered as one of them” (Schmiel 1983, 48); nevertheless, Schmiel reckons that Bengt Hoffmann endorsed a greater dependence than other authors, his hypothesis being that “Martin Luther’s faith-consciousness was

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significantly molded by mystical experience and that western dependence on rationalism has obscured or eclipsed this mystical light” (Schmiel 1983, 45). 21. Oberman records the list of mystical authors named by Vogelsang, it includes: Dionysius Areopagita, Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor, Bernard, Bonaventure, Gerson, Brigit of Sweden, Tauler, and “the Frankfurter” (anonymous author of the Theologia Deutsch) (Oberman 1986, 130). 22. “That [mystical] rapture is not the passageway [to God]” quoted by Oberman (1986, 126). 23. There is clear evidence in Luther’s works that he was familiar with Dionysius; a general view shows that in earlier writings he alludes to the Dionysian corpus less pungently than in later ones. For scholarly positions about his assessment of Dionysian mystical theology, see Oberman (1986, 133); Hoffman (1976, 120); Rorem (1997, 292). 24. The recurrent terms for “darkness” that Luther uses are tenebrae, umbra, or caligo (Oberman 1986, 132). 25. Rorem observes that “[t]he entire development of Luther’s theology of the cross from 1514 to 1520 provides the context for this emphasis and evolving polemic” (Rorem 1997, 296). 26. “Vivendo, immo moriendo et damnando fit theologus, non intelligendo, legendo aut speculando.” 27. English version quoted by Rorem (1997, 297). 28. Scholars underscore such differences with various emphases, for instance Ozment (1978), Oberman (1986, 141–68), Schmiel (1983, 48). Rorem places Eckhart as the utmost example of Dionysian apophatics, and, consequently, rejected by Luther’s theology (2009). 29. It is outside the scope and possibilities of this section to assess Eckhart’s theology as a whole and establish a comparison with Luther’s. Since scholarship accepts the fact that their relationship was, in the best of cases, indirect or otherwise null, I will just make observations based on scholar’s considerations. This will provide elements to my following elaborations on Derrida’s readings about Eckhart vis-à-vis my own readings on Luther. 30. The text is quoted up to eight times in Eckhart’s writings (McGinn 2004, 103). 31. As the glossary of the volume of selected sermons and other writings in English indicates, Eckhart used the Middle High German term “abegeschieden/Abegeschied enheit” with the meaning of “detach, detachment, letting go” indicating the freedom from ties to creatures and all mundane concerns; the term shares entry and meaning with “gelâzen/Gelâzenheit” (Eckhart 1986, 399). 32. Ozment refers to Bornkamm’s appreciation: “Finally, Luther did not share the mystic’s disdain for the world as something unreal and to be given up. The world presented the believer with a special religious task, and in this sense, Bornkamm concluded, perhaps unfairly to Eckhart, ‘the world was more filled with God for Luther than for Eckhart’” (Ozment 1978, 265). 33. In a spirit of genuine recognition of the complexity and richness of Eckhart’s theological work, Woods nevertheless asserts: “It can no longer be seriously doubted

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that Eckhart adopted and adapted a fundamentally Neoplatonic structure for his interpretation of the theological and spiritual mysticism” (Woods 2011, 42). 34. I resume this topic below. 35. Luther had already edited an incomplete version of the text of the Theologia Deutsch in 1516. 36. March 25, 1545, English version quoted from Oberman (1989, 152). 37. See David Steinmetz (1968; 1980a; 1980b), Ozment (1978, 260n4), and Oberman (1989, 130, 139, 152, 179). 38. Quoted by Oberman (1989, 182). 39. I follow here Steinmetz’s article about ecstasy in Staupitz and the young Luther (1980b). 40. This is known as the “commercium admirabile” (marvelous exchange), recognized as a well-established late medieval tradition, particularly associated to Staupitz (Steinmetz 1980a, 106). I resume this tradition as recuperated by Luther in chapters 10, 11, and 12. 41. Luther uses the term “excessus”; as in his expressions “excessu meo” and “excessus mentis” (Oberman 1986, 146–47). 42. “Denique theologus ille germanicus Iohan. Taulerus, non raro eius meminit in suis sermonibus.” English version quoted by McGinn (2004, 110). 43. Since it has been established that the anonymous author lived in Frankfurt (am Main), he is frequently referred to as “the Frankfurter.” 44. This is a christological question that I develop in chapter 12. 45. Oberman expresses: “Luther never based his authority on special revelations or high mystical experiences, nor does he write for the ‘aristocrats of the Spirit’ who are granted a special foretaste of the glory to come” (Oberman1986, 126). Besides, he refers to a “democratization” of mysticism occurring in late medieval devotional literature (Oberman1986, 140); here I opt to use this idea with Luther and his deconstructive understanding that the theology of the cross is the true definition of negative theology. 46. Quoted by Dillenberger (1953, 43). 47. I am referring to Paul Tillich’s foreword to Dillenberger’s book. The motif of the abyss in relation to the mystery of divinity appears at length in Tillich’s works, especially in the first volume of his Systematic Theology (Tillich 1951). 48. I elaborate further on this topic in chapters 9 and 12 49. See chapter 7. 50. I elaborate further on this matter in chapter 12

PART III

Four Deconstructive Gaps

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Sola Scriptura Nothing Outside the Text?

Approaching the thought of the wholly other, Luther’s and Derrida’s perceptions mirror each other in a paradoxical aspect: for them, the thought of otherness—which is in itself an experience of the impossible—although irreducible to knowledge obliges language, inscription, the text. Thus, it is not by chance that scripture is vital to Luther’s theology, and textuality holds enormous importance for Derrida’s deconstruction. The notion of scriptura and écriture are respectively received by theologian and philosopher from previous traditions, but they endow them with a new significance in a way that such conceptions will never be the same, transcending the milieu of their work. Both authors envision there the constancy of a promise prompting a hermeneutical dislocation. As I trail the motif of sola scriptura reading Luther after Derrida, I shall explore with theological interest into this open gap in order to rediscover and value the deconstructive drive. NOTHING OUTSIDE THE TEXT Reading and rereading texts, Derrida repeatedly runs into some tracks, which take him to the impossible thought of an utter otherness. He uses for this various names with diverse emphases: écriture, archi-écriture, the trace, différance. All those names try to explain what is actually nothing: an utter alterity that allows the very launching of the history of the human and of the living in general; some sheer receptivity and openness that inaugurates the possibility of inscription and with it the weaving of the text.1 For this reason, it is vital to emphasize that the concept of text that Derrida is considering “embraces and does not exclude the world, reality, history” and, as he asserts, “the text is not the book, it is not confined in a volume itself confined to the library” (LI, 137). 139

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Indeed, as we have observed, one of Derrida’s most misunderstood assertions is “there is nothing outside the text” (OG, 158; LI, 148); because of this, he makes clear that such observation does not mean that it is all about books or, that “there is nothing beyond language” (DO, 124). Actually, the assertion implies that—no matter our desire to grasp “the Thing itself”—there is nothing outside the systems of representation generated historically for the articulation of comprehension. No effort of signification ever meets its referent as a “pure presence” somewhere outside the weave of those systems. In spite of our most exact attempts for rescuing some territory to immediacy and presence, any approach to reality occurs through mediation: some sort of inscription, a code allowing repetition and differentiation, an unavoidable “contamination” with space and time. And this includes any access to the other, to the world, or to ourselves. There is always a detour preventing direct reach even in what one considers the intimate, the proper—which are, in fact, effects of the weaving. Even if we think about the human self, écriture implies being called “outside oneself” for the sake of one’s very constitution, and, thus, losing unicity, immediacy, and sameness before ever having achieved them. As evoked in “différance,” deferral and difference entwine the warp and the woof knitting the text. Separation and differentiation are at the engine of the play; without them the immobility of sameness would reign. And this is what the text is about: the desire for immediacy and presence is never fulfilled, “[w]e are dispossessed of the longed-for presence in the gesture . . . by which we attempt to seize it” (OG, 141). In this sense, textuality reminds us that we cannot get “the Thing itself” and that we constantly deal with intermediaries. Yet, this is good news since meeting whole presence face to face would amount to something like absolute death (OG, 155). No matter who claims it, no one among us has ever had direct access to any realm of pure presence and, if we give it a thought, this is quite a relief. In effect, it is because of this that something like a promise exists and, as well, that something like faith is possible. Textuality implies a different approach to reality, and for this reason deconstruction involves a displacement of understanding. Interpretation is not an ascent toward some height of ideality, or a descent toward some depth of significance, or the retrieval of some original center of connotation; sense and meaning are continuously woven within a play of differences in the text we are in. Therefore, and in this sense, “there is nothing outside the text” goes together with the declaration “everything is text” (DA, 19–20). If western metaphysics lets us believe that we, as human subjects, are “in control” running the business of interpretation, deconstruction unveils that we are caught in the very play that knits the text. Hence, the play exceeds us; we think that we can arrest it by means of exact conceptualization but in reality we cannot

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extricate ourselves from the complexity of its weaving. We cannot control the interpretation of the text; the experience is rather that we are interpreted in its unending entwining. SOLA SCRIPTURA Luther scholarship of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries argues in diverse although concurrent ways that, in deep relationship with his theological breakthrough, Luther meets a new way of interpreting scripture.2 It is my assumption that, in this sense, the premodern theologian prefigures aspects of the postmodern deconstruction of hermeneutics, and I propose to summarize here some of the manifold implications of such hermeneutical dislocation. I shall proceed from two points of view: first, with regard to Luther’s dissimilarities with the Church of Rome and with his fellow reformers as to the approach and character of scripture; second, with reference to the process of his theological breakthrough. Once I have briefly introduced these two perspectives enumerating and exploring their implications, I shall explore within the gap that becomes visible in order to assess the deconstructive drive at work. Finally, I shall sketch some theological considerations reading Luther after Derrida. Undoubtedly, this scheme is just an effort in pursuing a clearer exposition: elements merge and the richness of the possibilities is vast. Luther, Rome, and Fellow Reformers Starting with the indulgence controversy in 1517, Luther publicly defines his position with regard to scripture: it becomes the privileged critical instrument to contrast the teachings of the church, its councils, and its pope. The scriptural principle—that is, the primacy of scripture as the basis for settling theological questions—is an old tradition present with different accents in the ancient as well as in the medieval church (Oberman 1986, 47; Lohse 1999, 187; Westhelle 2005, 375). However, beyond the historical evidences on this matter, we may see that Luther adopts this principle with a distinctive emphasis differentiating himself from the Church of Rome and from many of his fellow reformers. Firstly, regarding the Church of Rome, Luther’s interpretative shift stresses the principle of sola scriptura as a delimitation of the power of the Roman curia and pope in their claims for the only valid interpretation of the evangelical message.3 Rome’s allegation was that the scriptures are obscure, requiring an external authority to interpret them. This is, for instance, one issue in Luther’s debate with Erasmus: in On the Freedom of the Will, the humanist argues with Luther pointing out the “obscurity of scripture,” and the fact

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that some truths are not for the “common ears” or, for the “common herd” (Erasmus 1969, 38–47; 97). It is probably for this reason that Luther’s rebuke in the Bondage of the Will includes these lines: I have thus far hounded the Pope, in whose kingdom nothing is more commonly said or more widely accepted than this dictum: “the Scriptures are obscure and equivocal; we must seek the interpreting Spirit from the apostolic see of Rome!” (BOW, 124)

As we shall see, to this dominant position on interpretation Luther does not oppose some other human—individual or corporate—authority but the scripture itself, as he expresses it: “The scripture is in itself the interpreter” (scriptura sui ipsius interpres).4 Secondly, associated with Luther’s interpretive argument with the Church of Rome is his confrontation with the “enthusiasts.”5 For Luther, both parties coincide in one sense: they sustain that something is needed in addition to scripture in order to validate its interpretation (see Runia 1984, 134–35). In the case of Rome, it is the gift of the spirit bestowed on the Magisterium of the Church; for the enthusiasts, it is the spirit imparted personally to individual believers. In reference to this, in the Smalcald Articles Luther states, “God gives no one his Spirit or grace except through or with the external Word which comes before.” With such affirmation he antagonizes both, the enthusiasts—who, he considers, “boast that they have the Spirit apart and before the Word”—and the papacy—which, for him, also displays “nothing but enthusiasm” (WA 50:245, 1–4, 12–13; SA III.VIII.3). Thus, Luther’s understanding is that the spirit cannot be claimed apart from scripture itself. In this regard, I want to underline here that this perception of Luther’s shows the taking place of one important turn facing the tradition of interpretation about “spirit and letter.” Thirdly, although there is among the reformers full accord on the centrality of sola scriptura, Luther differentiates from them on subjects of emphasis and use. It is known that a considerable number of law students, such as Karlstadt, Budé, and Calvin, opted for the Reformation and from this fact some aspects of the reformational accent on the scripture can be explained: humanist teaching at the universities called for a return ad fontes, which in the case of these students meant a return ad fontes iurisprudentiae (Oberman 1974, 50). The consequence of this is that many reformers found in the Bible a juridicallegislative source—Zwingli, for instance, educated as well under humanist influence, regards Scripture as the “legislative charter for the Christian magistrate” (Oberman 1986, 47–48). However, the dynamic of law and gospel that Luther discovers in scripture, together with his new accent on the grammatical approach to the text, alters such an emphasis of interpretation. The

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way Luther reads scripture lets us think that scriptura is not the closed system of a legal code; rather, it creates a space with many gaps and empty space to allow freedom (Bayer 2008, 80). For this reason, it can be affirmed that sola scriptura does not mean “by the book.” In the light of what I have just introduced about Luther, Rome, and Luther’s fellow reformers, there are at least three deconstructive aspects to explore: first, interpretation of scripture cannot be claimed by any human authority since “scripture is in itself the interpreter”; second, the classical opposition “spirit-letter” is subverted and displaced; third, although scripture has to do with the law, it is not a juridical code of law. Before we consider these aspects at length, I shall introduce the second viewpoint from which Luther’s hermeneutical shift may be assessed. Theological Breakthrough During the process of his theological breakthrough, Luther reacts to the dominant theological trends, which in diverse ways had influenced him in his religious life and formation. In previous chapters I have already examined two main forms of theological approach identified and confronted by Luther as theologia gloriae: one is the attempt of reaching God through speculative knowledge and justifying moral practices, mainly represented by scholastic theology in both its via antiqua and its via moderna;6 the other, is the attempt to achieve union with God as the wholly-other represented by diverse trends of mysticism.7 Luther’s differentiation with those two theological forms rest on his rediscovery and proclamation of the theologia crucis. As I have previously introduced, one important aspect about the mystical way was its search of similitudo or conformitas, that is, the following of a process of “likening” to God. The reason for that is the conviction that only a soul that has been purified and likened to the divinity can truly know and be one with Godself. The spiritual discipline following the stages of purgatio and illuminatio toward unio strives to leave behind the mediation of symbols, going beyond them in order to penetrate the absolute. In this quest, current mystical trends embrace suffering, detachment, and apophasis pursuing the attainment of absolute silence and absorption into divinity. We have seen the friar Luther fleeing from such prospective. Thus, facing the menacing utter alterity of the abyssal deus absconditus, confronted with the excruciating experience of the nondiscernment of God, Luther undergoes the mortifying pain of being a sinner, that is, of being completely unlike God. Closer to the scripture and the word of the cross, he is overwhelmed with the news that all that is left to grasp is that wretched crucified human being. As we read about this process, we can see that Luther faces a paradox, he perceives that

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the news of salvation rests on the unbearable experience of difference and separation. His experiences and searching take him to consider that unio goes the way of differentiation from, rather than likening to, God (then unio turns into quite a different experience). The hidden God so desired by the mystics is considered by Luther with awe and respect, as he asserts: “There we have no concern.” For him, the God who “works life and death and all in all” cannot not be approached because it is not bound by the word (BOW, 170–71). However, being beyond inscription, the wholly-other summons inscription; in this sense, from an experience that works otherwise than knowing Luther runs into a way of knowing otherwise: facing the unbound nondiscernible God, he meets the word of the cross. Hence, Luther’s theological journeys let us perceive a displacement: the only way to experience unio with God is through the word because the deus absconditus is unapproachable; yet, the word is the announcement of God’s own death. Consequently, unio is not an experience of human beings being absorbed into divinity but the experience of divinity falling into humanity. Luther’s theology is a theology of the cross, and because of this, a theology of the word: verbum crucis. In this sense, we may see that sola scriptura is thriving in Luther’s theological breakthrough. I assume that, in this regard, he encounters a hermeneutical dislocation that involves important ground displacements, which I propose to follow with the backdrop of these lines: Human relation with God as the wholly-other is irreducible to knowledge or affection and such irreducibility calls for mediation. Mediation implies inscription entailing difference and separation, space and time, life and death. However, it is inscription that opens a promise and because there is promise, there can be faith. EXPLORING INTO THE GAP Following the assumption that Luther’s perception of sola scriptura is attuned with the hermeneutical dislocation at work in his theology, I shall resume and explore more closely all the features introduced in the previous section. The Text Is the Interpreter The well-known expression of Luther, scriptura sui ipsius interpres (WA 7:97, 23), has commonly been translated as “scripture interprets itself,” and this rendering suggests that scripture should be used against itself in order to find its correct meaning. As Westhelle observes, this version “although not completely wrong, misses the sharpness of the literal translation,” which he proposes thus: “the scripture is in itself the interpreter” (Westhelle 2005,

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378). Rescuing the Latin noun interpres—the interpreter—Westhelle states that the known assertion “the scripture interprets itself” means, precisely, “that it is not interpreted, but is the interpreter itself” (Westhelle 2005, 378).8 I want to substantiate the idea that this finding of Luther—especially when read in this way—opens, at least, into three disruptive dimensions: firstly, that scripture is the “interpreter” that is, the subject and not the object of interpretation; secondly, that scripture as the “interpreter” is the one which translates; thirdly, that scripture as the “interpreter” is the one which performs. In his article “The Beginnings of Luther’s Hermeneutics,” Gerhard Ebeling observes that what is impressive in Luther more than in any other Christian exegete is that for him the understanding of scripture “means not only an intellectual grasp of the text, but also a coming to be grasped by it” (Ebeling 1993, 130).9 And this aspect of Luther’s interpretive approach, as Ebeling explains, has further meaning: “It means that understanding is something passive and that all activity lies in the text; it means that the text turns into the subject and the understanding reader into the object, a captive of the text” (Ebeling 1993, 130). Ebeling starts his searching for Luther’s hermeneutical metamorphosis as early as the Lectures on Psalms (1513–1516); although at that time Luther still continues with the use of the medieval exegetical rules,10 there are elements that allow thinking that a shift is already under way.11 In the scholium on Psalm 68, he annotates: The excellence of scripture is this, that it is not transformed into the person who studies it, but that it transforms its lover into itself and its virtues . . . Because you will not change me into you . . . but you will be transformed in me. Nor will I be named by you, but you will be named by me. (WA 3:397, 9–11, 15–17)12

Undoubtedly, this aspect of the hermeneutical shift appears already settled when in his reaction to the bull of Pope Leo X, in the Assertio Omnium Articulorum (1520), Luther affirms the well-known “scriptura sui ipsius interpres.”13 Some other contemporary scholars support this understanding of scripture in Luther. For instance, Gerhard Forde restates Ebeling’s position observing that the significance of sola scriptura cannot be fully grasped until the hermeneutical question becomes engaged, because the claim “sui ipsius interpres” presupposes “a quite different hermeneutical model” (Forde 2004, 71). This model is, in effect, the inversion of the traditional way: scripture turns into the subject instead of the object of interpretation. Conversely, although opposing all form of existential approach to the issue, Oswald Bayer advocates for a hermeneutical theology rooted in Luther’s theology, proposing a theory of the text that “vindicates the relative autonomy of the text over against the

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author as well as over against the reader” (Bayer 2003c, 143). For Bayer, this would allow us to understand the genuine meaning of Luther’s “scripture interprets itself”—as he observes: “It is not interpreted by me. Rather, it is capable of interpreting itself, in that it interprets me, inscribes and judges my life history” (Bayer 2003c, 146). In this sense, whatever theology realizes, it realizes it before the text, “to which it can only return . . . but beyond which and behind which it can never go” (Bayer 2003c, 147). Endorsing the understanding of scripture as the subject of interpretation, Westhelle broadens it depicting scripture as an interpreter that “translates” in a very particular way (Westhelle 2005, 377–79). The noun interpres, Westhelle argues, could be related to the figure of the interpreter who acted in the markets of antiquity as translator for the exchanges between merchants that spoke different languages. The market motif very well applies to the term “inter-pres”: that which stands between two values or prices (“inter-prices”). Hence, scripture is the translator, which situated between two values, allows the exchange to occur. In accord with Luther’s understanding of the object of theology, here the exchange happens between the justifying God and the sinful human being. The scripture, the interpreter, makes intelligible a language that for us is foolishness; it tells us that whatever we bring for the settlement—even our very best—is worth nothing, while the other party is giving themself to us in a scandalous exchange: “nothing for all, all for nothing” (Westhelle 2005, 378).14 Scripture, which is itself the interpreter, lets us know that in this “marvelous exchange” we are given a real gift whose sheer reception is faith. There is still another aspect to this shift and this responds to the way in which Luther detects the performing aspect of scripture, and it is Bayer’s work that brings this characteristic of Luther’s hermeneutical dislocation to light. For Bayer, the conception of promissio has a central place in Luther’s theology, and he approaches the promise from the point of view of the performative speech-act theory. Emphasizing the constituting function of a performative statement, Bayer observes that the word of promise does not merely signify a different reality but actually creates that new reality. The gospel, as performative word, touches the one who receives it each time in a new way (see Bayer 2008, 50–58). While for Ebeling the word creates an existential event as the context for the human response of faith, Bayer stresses that faith is created by God; in this sense, the word does not only produce a response that gives meaning to human existence, actually, it brings human existence into being (see Hermann 2009, 386). We could say, therefore, that Bayer discovers that Luther’s theology presents scripture as the subject who interprets a creative performance. These brief descriptions exemplify the way in which some scholars have detected that Luther’s interpretive shift lets us perceive scripture as

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the interpreter, highlighting three implications: first, scripture interprets its reader/hearer and not the opposite; second, as the interpreter, scripture becomes the intermediary of an exchange; third, as the subject of an interpretation, scripture is performative. The Life-Giving Letter The understanding of the opposition spirit-letter portrayed by Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:6, “the letter kills, but the spirit gives life,” constitutes in itself a history of scriptural interpretation. Since very early in the history of Christian exegesis, this opposition was turned into a hermeneutical key: there is a literal, outward meaning corseting a spiritual, inner meaning that requires to be retrieved. Thus, as Forde observes, hermeneutics consisted in finding the right method to access the “life-giving spirit” behind or beyond the “killing letter” (Forde 1983, 243). In the wake of Clement of Alexandria and Origen, most of the tradition interprets this in a Platonizing, dualist sense. For such reason, the letter is understood as limited to the material, sensible world—a sign or “surface manifestation”—while the spirit is associated to the realm of the intelligible eternal truth. To such scheme responds the “spiritual exegesis” according to which the mere literal is to be raised to the spiritually edifying through allegory, tropology, and anagogy (Forde 1983, 243–44). Although in the late Middle Ages, some exegetes start to move away from the spiritualizing pattern toward an appreciation of the literal, historical text, the spiritual exegesis is the method mostly applied in Luther’s time.15 In fact, Luther’s transcription of Hieronymus Emser’s attack during their extended debate illustrates well the traditional interpretation on the matter: “This is what Luther does, who obeys the letter, strikes about with the sheath, and does not teach the Spirit” (LW 39:140).16 What Luther discerns in this regard is a dynamics of the “letter” that leaves behind Neo-Platonist metaphysical assumptions, that is, the letter conceived as inferior, a mere “sheath” for the “blade” of the spirit. He perceives that there can be no spirit outside the letter because letter and spirit are constitutively related; as he affirms in the Assertio Omnium Articulorum, the spirit of scripture “is simply not to be found outside of scripture” (WA 7:97, 8–9).17 Already by 1513, parting with the dominant practices of his time, Luther observes in his Lectures on the Psalms the three stages that later he will identify as the appropriate rule for theological study: oratio, meditatio, tentatio.18 The way he practices these stages represents a different approach to scripture compared to those of the later medieval tradition.19 In that tradition, reading and meditation were understood as two different steps: the reader can discover in scripture, through the virtue of natural wisdom, what to ask properly in prayer (lectio, meditatio, oratio). Letter (lectio) is thus divorced

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from spirit (meditatio), and the interpretation of scripture rests on the intention of the reader: it is a matter of “doing the interpreter’s best.” Hence, while reading and meditation (lectio and meditatio) were traditionally considered two different moments of the study remitting to the opposition letter-spirit, for Luther they merged; meditatio means for him the reading and rereading of scripture, an engagement with the text, neither transcending it nor going behind it. In this practice, instead of pushing the text aside as an obstacle for the proper meaning, the reader is to be detained by the text, residing in close relation to it. Luther discovers that in meditatio the text gives itself to the reader to understand it, yet it is the reader who is understood (see Bayer 2003c, 146). The stage of tentatio—to which Luther refers as Anfechtung—is specifically concerned with faith: when human will, strength, and rationality visit their limits, it is the text that interprets one’s own situation, and the promise in the word creates faith.20 In this sense, the “spirit” does not conquer the “letter” through speculative reflection since both letter and spirit are constitutively related in the word of scripture; this is what Luther considers the very sensus propheticus of the text (Oberman 1966, 12; 1986, 113). In the intercourse with the text represented by meditatio,21 rejecting the metaphysical dualism of considering the “life-giving spirit” separated and opposed to the “killing letter,” Luther is not only subverting the traditional understanding but actually displacing it. Here, the deconstructive strategy in Luther’s theology can be seen in action: when the spirit is considered of highest importance in detriment of the letter, Luther does not propose conversely that the “letter alone” is what matters, but asserts that without letter there is no spirit, because the spirit of scripture is simply not to be found outside of scripture. The import of this is better appreciated if we consider that the deconstruction of the metaphysical interpretation of the opposition “spirit vs. letter” is not only an inversion that would leave us with just “killing-letter” but a displacement that allows us to perceive what was previously buried: the killing-letter is life-giving. Sola Scriptura but Not “By the Book” Luther observes that traditional considerations on “the letter”—such as Emser’s—taught “the harmful misunderstanding of the letter, and the damnable flight from this blessed death” (LW 39:185). Because of this, in trying to render the letter harmless—or, more precisely, in trying to escape the killing—the spiritualizing interpretation produces the opposite of what it searches. The discovery is that there is no point in trying to render the letter harmless in order to avoid the killing for the spirit gives life only when all illusion of autonomy before the letter is destroyed.

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According to Luther, human beings receive the word in scripture both as law and as gospel and, in this sense, the word fulfills different functions: on the one hand, it accuses us, exposing our sinfulness and inability to save ourselves by fulfilling the law; on the other, it delivers a promise of grace. Thus, as he continues the argument with Emser, Luther states that “it is impossible for someone who does not first hear the law and let themself be killed by the letter, to hear the gospel and let the grace of the Spirit bring them to life” (LW 39:185). Both law and gospel coexist in scripture and both work in tensional fashion: the law—the killing letter—is what confronts human beings pointing to our condition as sinners; the gospel does what the law cannot do, namely, to deliver grace, justification, life. This theological use of the law makes manifest the complete impossibility of human justification by works, and has universal validity insofar as everyone is equally sinful before God, and is left before the killing law “with nothing but a promise received in faith, that is, nothing but all” (Westhelle 2005, 388). However, Luther recognizes another use of the law: the civil or political. According to this use—the first proper use according to Luther—the law is a gift that promotes the common good of human beings as members of a civil community and applies to all, Christians and non-Christians, believers and non-believers.22 Examples of the law in its civic use are the Decalogue and all other biblical prescriptions, but also all the laws that adapt natural law to changing circumstances. In this sense, it is the local expression of what Luther, following Paul, considered as written in every human heart (Romans 2:15); and that finds articulation in Moses’s regulations for the Jewish people as much as in the Roman law, the civil code of Luther’s Saxony, or the legislations of modern states (Westhelle 2005, 385–86). Because “time and location change customs and laws,” the expressions of the civil use of the law need a process of translation to different times and places (Westhelle 2005, 386). Indeed, Luther rejects the use of scripture as a literal juridical authority, and it is in this aspect that Luther differs sharply with many of the other reformers. For instance, while Luther is secured at the Wartburg in 1521/22, Karlstadt considers that in the process of reforming church and society the rules of the Law of Moses should be applied literally to the circumstances in Wittenberg (Wriedt 2003, 105).23 However, although Luther well values the Hebrew Bible as part of scripture, he is contrariwise convinced that Old Testament law and prescriptions do not apply for Christians, unless they concur with natural law (Lull 2003, 47). Luther explains this in How Christians Should Regard Moses (1525): “I keep the commandments which Moses has given, not because Moses gave commandments, but because they have been implanted in me by nature, and Moses agrees” (LW 35:168). And again:

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One must deal cleanly with the Scriptures . . . The word in Scripture is of two kinds: the first does not pertain or apply to me, the other kind does. The false prophets pitch in and say, “Dear people, this is the word of God.” This is true, we cannot deny it. But we are not the people. (LW 35:170)

However, in the Christmas Postil of 1522, he also writes “A Brief Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels” (LW 35:113–24). There he observes the bad habit “of regarding the gospels and epistles as law books in which is supposed to be taught what we are to do”; such reading of the gospels and the epistles keep the readers “as pagan as ever” (LW 35:117). Just appealing to an ethical interpretation of scripture, even when it refers to Jesus himself, does not make, for Luther, a person Christian—rather, it makes “Christ into a Moses” (LW 35:119). Furthermore, Luther gives a great importance to the knowledge of the liberal arts for the study and teaching of the text of scripture and most especially the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics (Bayer 2007a, 48, 56, 68; 2008, 27–27; Westhelle 2005, 383). Indeed, Oberman observes that between 1513 and 1519, Luther develops what he calls the “theological grammar” of the scriptures (Oberman 2003, 45).24 In this sense, Westhelle clearly distinguishes how Luther comes to understand scripture through the use of rhetoric and dialectics as different linguistic arts (Westhelle 2005, 382). For this reason, Luther is able to make a distinction between the word, which as law and gospel concerns to all, and words that pertain to only some and under given circumstances. In the sense of rhetoric, scripture delivers law and gospel in the dynamics of the killing that gives life: the narrative about Jesus Christ as gift and promise, which is for all human beings in every place and time. In the sense of dialectics, scripture contains words that require grammatical and historical reading to understand their context and to what they apply (see Westhelle 2005, 379–85). In sum, there are two important lines here. Firstly, although both law and gospel are delivered in scripture, for Luther, they must never be confused: “They who interpret the term ‘gospel’ as something else than ‘the good news’ do not understand the gospel, as those people do who have turned the gospel into a law rather than grace and have made Christ a Moses for us” (LW 25:327). Secondly, for Luther, it is necessary to notice the different ways in which law works: in one sense, law prepares for the reception of the gospel by killing any human presumption of working their own salvation; in the other sense, law restricts and punishes human evildoing assisting peoples in the hard challenge of living as neighbors in a given community. Hence, to Luther’s discovery that the killing-letter is life-giving, it should be added that the principle of sola scriptura does not mean to take scripture “by the book.” According to this, scripture is no longer to be considered a legal code.

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Such a ground shaking claim challenged, and keeps challenging, the ground of many theologies. Bound by the Word We have examined how Luther faces a terrifying unbound God that he cannot approach by following the theological proposals of his time. The indiscernible deus absconditus cannot be rationalized, reduced to thought, defined by language; about this God Luther writes “God has not set bounds to himself by his word” and, “he has kept himself free over all things” (BOW, 171). But paradoxically, this tremendous, abyssal, unbound God summons and yields to inscription. In his reading and rereading of scripture Luther comes across a hermeneutical dislocation that lets him rediscover the word and its promise with a disruptive new understanding. As he writes to Spalatin, “Apart from the word which promises and faith which receives we are not able to enter into any kind of relationship with God” (WABr 1:595, 23–24; emphasis added).25 Promise and faith belong together with the word; a word that, in fact, binds God. Following Luther’s theology in this connection, it is possible to observe that although there are many promises in the text of scripture, the promise that means the very possibility of life is in fact a promise of death. A Promise of Death In his early programmatic work A prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), writing on sacramental theology, Luther reaffirms “For God does not deal, nor has ever dealt, with the human beings otherwise than through a word of promise. We in turn cannot deal with God otherwise than through faith in the word of his promise” (LW 36:42; emphasis added). Just one paragraph above, he manifests that the promise in the word is a peculiar one: it promises the very death of God. Since there is a testament in scripture promising justice to human beings, Luther’s proposal is to inquire about what a testament actually is. And as we know, a testament is in itself a very particular promise: it implies the death of the one who makes it. Clearly, in order that the inheritors receive the promise, the testator has to die. As Luther follows with the inquiry, he comes to the fact that God made a testament and therefore it was necessary that God should die. Luther affirms that both the incarnation and the death of Christ are briefly understood in this very word: “testament” (LW 36:38). Now, we may consider the reading of a will as an event always surrounded with a lot of expectation and, in many occasions, accompanied by some surprises: Who has gained the testator’s favor and gets the biggest slice? Who is the black sheep that gets disinherited? In this sense, what Luther observes

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about this testament exceeds the commonalities of big expectations and extraordinary surprises: we may say that the self-righteous get the sad news that the dying God’s favor is not for sale, and the black sheep get the most amazing news. Putting the medieval theological massif to tremble, Luther reads in scripture that every and anyone is an inheritor to this testament because “it is faith that makes the heirs” (LW 36:38, emphasis added). Luther’s theology touches the deep walls of this gap. Following scripture it runs into the only possibility that humans have to deal with divinity: the outrageous declaration of its death. The mortal God in time and space opens the very time and space in which human beings may live. Scripture bears the mark of the death of God: to be bound by the word means to be defined, limited, restricted but also to be finished, terminated, dead.26 Here again—with a dislocating blow—the killing letter gives life. LUTHER AFTER DERRIDA The previous exploration into the gap opened by the hermeneutical dislocation implied by Derrida’s écriture and Luther’s scriptura lets us perceive aspects of the deconstructive drive at work in Luther’s theology. Some of the features are part of our present theological concerns, especially those related to the reading and interpretation of the sacred texts, which, in the Christian tradition, refer to the biblical text. If we accept the hermeneutical implications evident in the works of Luther in the light of deconstruction, and follow the position of this work in finding a premodern-postmodern interaction on this issue, what could we rediscover? For instance, how can the affirmation about “the scripture is itself the interpreter” be received? Is it not rather abstract and, thus, an open door to manipulation? However, can those late medieval considerations of Luther—such as letter and spirit, law and gospel, the Deus absconditus and the verbum crucis—vis-à-vis Derrida’s deconstructive motifs be communicated into contemporary theological language? I shall sketch here some reflections prompted by these queries. Minding the Deconstructive Strategy The deconstructive strategy would suggest that replacing the human subject (or institution) who claims the interpretation of the sacred text for any other one would just be “more of the same.” Such a substitution could only go as far as an overturning, which would soon re-create the hierarchical structure of interpretative dominion. However, describing the strategy, Derrida observes: “To deconstruct the opposition is first, at a given moment, to overthrow the hierarchy. To neglect this phase of inversion is to forget the conflictual and

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subordinating structure of the opposition” (Pos, 41). Thus, the overturning of hierarchy should never be omitted. This takes us to reconsider the strategy that Luther discovers at work in scripture, turning the text into the interpreter and the human subject into the interpreted. How did it work at that time? If well this shift undoubtedly produced a dramatic displacement of the prevailing approach to the matter—considering especially the authority of the Roman church—we may observe that it did not skip the step of subversion. For instance, the fact that Luther persevered in the way of earlier reformers translating the scriptures to the vernacular, and that he widened this practice producing tracts, pamphlets, sermons, hymns, and the Small Catechism in the language of the “common herd” is not a small detail in this direction. Hence, if under a new understanding the “spirit”—which used to be thought of as the privilege of a See or some few enlightened ones—turned out to be the spirit of the very letter, then the letter—that at the time was to be read and interpreted by those who mastered Latin, or some Greek and Hebrew—became intelligible and life-giving for the common people. In the same sense, Luther’s urging to the parents to send their children to school and the appeal to the rulers to provide schooling in order to educate girls into the gospel can be read as part of this act of subversion of the current social status.27 Then, aware of what is at stake in the act of interpretation, the displacement implied in giving to the scripture the power of interpreting itself as it interprets its interpreters is, at the very same time, an act of overturning that implies that all and everyone are equal before the text. This “all and everyone” continues to be a theological contextual concern and the deconstructive drive still makes visible how hierarchical violence is at work in the privileged readings easily tainted by the evils of the time. We may consider that one can only perceive how racist, classist, sexist, or colonialist an interpretation can be when those who had no access to interpretation start to have it. At the very same time, that the reading subjects or institutions be read as racist, classist, sexist, and colonialist interpreters, and taken to acknowledge so and repent, is the task of the scripture as the interpreter with its dynamic of law and gospel at work. However, we know that Luther could not read with the peasants. In effect, Luther’s role during the Peasants’ War is one of the complex episodes that scholars review in various ways. The fact that the late medieval man could not accompany the subversive implications of the theology he had met, witnesses to the human limitations and the very reality of sin—of which he was deeply aware. Thinking deconstructively, this points to the fact that we are always constitutively involved with the structure against which we struggle. And, because of this, there is the need of a constant deconstruction “minding the strategy.”

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Power and Text Contemporary theologies may regard that the deconstructive motto “scripture is in itself the interpreter” can turn interpretation—which is an act of power— into a disarming operation. Since it is the wholly-other that summons inscription, scriptura turns into a very peculiar interpreter. Scriptura interprets what otherwise would be unintelligible, and it does so in different ways: as a musician interprets an unwritten score; as a translator that interprets a text that has no original version; as the one that summons a response and constitutes the receiver in the very act of responding; as the one that summons a response and at the very same time provides the means for the answer. In fact, in reading Luther after Derrida, the act of interpretation is not to reach the meaning of the text but to be interpreted by the text: the reader/hearer becomes its “captive” (tossed by the dynamic of law and gospel), and this implies that the readers/hearers are, in this sense, constituted by the text in being interpreted. In an age when the limitations of the human species to perceive our own potentiality for misinterpretation and wrongdoing put us into a condition of planetary risk, to be passively interpreted becomes liberating. In this sense, the text exceeds us: it is not ours to weave it and it is not ours to untangle it. The text interprets us in its play: the multiplicity of its possibilities, holding a promise to be received anew every time through faith. Yet, human beings are not free of their duties. Since faith operates a “democratization of the inheritance,” we are all responsible before the text in the continuous task as readers and re-readers of the tradition. This implies also a “democratization of hermeneutics”; we are all equal before the text as law and gospel, and all equal in the task of interpreting and being interpreted by a shared tradition. It is in fact a continuous exercise against authoritarianisms and fundamentalisms: firstly, because when scripture is in itself the interpreter, interpretation does not rest on a few enlightened ones who claim privileged access to the spirit behind the text, or to “the Thing itself”; secondly, because to “deal cleanly with scripture” implies to remember that texts always have contexts and are woven in difference and separation (LI, 137). This involves, as well, an exercise against foundationalism: grace and faith are not founded in some rational grounding “outside the text” but delivered by the promise “in” the text (Westhelle 2005, 373–74). In the light of this hermeneutical dislocation, interpretation is not about a justified belief based on the certainty of the meaning of the text, for what matters is not just what scripture means but actually what it does (Forde 2004, 71).

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A Prefiguration of Textuality Already in the eighteenth century, Johann Georg Hamann, opposing enlightened reason, thinks that culture is the product of language and its comprehension escapes reason and science.28 Peter Meinhold, in his Luthers Sprachphilosophie (1958), identifies Hamann as the fulfiller of Luther’s philosophy of language (Meinhold 1958, 58). Bayer, digging out Hamann’s work on Luther’s discoveries regarding scripture, theology, and language, affirms that “God’s promise is the source of Luther’s new understanding of language and the world” (Bayer 2003b, 75). Oberman rescues Luther’s discovery of a “theological grammar” of scripture and, in his wake, Timothy George writes: “We might say that Luther’s quest for a gracious God coincided with his quest for the grammar of God” (George 2011, 142). These are just some references, which together with what we have reflected on the issue so far, let us essay still another proposal: we could say that the hermeneutical dislocation associated to Luther’s theological breakthrough sketches a “grammatheology.” This proposal, I suspect, would not have surprised Derrida. Inserting God into “grammatology”—his new discipline—would be just a confirmation of his position: this is just more ontotheology.. However, it is important not to forget that Luther gets hold of “grammar” in order to keep the “order of logos” at bay.29 In effect, the hermeneutical dislocation Luther encounters allows us to perceive how a new conception of scripture illustrates and prefigures aspects of textuality. For Luther, scriptura is not equal to the content of the Bible; as his writings show, he surely thinks about scriptura what Derrida expresses about the text: “It embraces and does not exclude the world, reality, history” (LI, 137). This interaction takes us to think that scriptura is in itself an affirmation of textuality insofar as God cannot be met outside the text. In this sense, “God” names not the indifferent, distant “tyrant” of the order of logos, but the “other” that undergoes the violence of writing. In the play of scriptura read together with écriture, we humans are marked by difference and separation, and the Christian God as well. Intermediation is all there is. What can be perceived of God is in the text, in language, in the story and testimony of the life, deeds, death, and resurrection of a certain human being, Jesus. This is so radical that Luther himself states, “Christ is known only through his word; otherwise Christ’s flesh would help me not at all even if it came today” (WA 10 III:210, 11).30 As Caputo puts it, “the coming of the Messiah is not outside the text” (Caputo 2000, 199). Theologians need to be reminded that our task is arduous reading and rereading and our raw material is textual: woven in history, reality, the world.

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The Wrapping Is the Present Thus, in Luther’s theology the letter is neither a secondary device nor an “usurper”—those are, in fact, the descriptions Derrida discovers when tracing the classical interpretation of writing from Plato to Saussure (OG, 70). In effect, Luther finds that the letter is not just the “sheath” for the blade—as Emser argues with him—or, as Derrida says that Saussure says, “a garment of perversion and debauchery, a dress of corruption and disguise, a festival mask that must be exorcised” (OG, 35). What goes on in scriptura frustrates the “Sacred Order of Logos,” which, with its dualistic logic and hierarchical rankings, gives priority to the presence and immediacy of “the Thing itself” denigrating writing, the letter and inscription as mere contamination. Hence, in the context of sola scriptura “the harmful misunderstanding of the letter” would be to look for something other outside the text. Even so, Luther does refer to the word as some sort of clothing, actually, a cover for protection. “We have to do with him as clothed . . . in his word,” he expresses to Erasmus (BOW, 170); and, in his Lectures on Genesis (1535/1538), we read that we cannot grasp the Godhead “uncovered,” thus, for our sake, it is “wrapped” or “covered” with the word (LW 1:13–14). It is clear that Luther understands that the word protects us from deleterious divinity: the verbum crucis keeps us from the abyssal deus absconditus. Perhaps the motif of the word as “wrapping” perceives and accounts for both the abyssal otherness that summons (and acquiesces to) inscription and, at the same time, the word that creates faith at the brim of the bottomless abyss. Our theological efforts facing responsibility before scripture may profit with an image suggesting that “the wrapping is the present.” This textual wrapping is the texture that holds the promise of the presently impossible (and, for now, it is all we are given to grasp). It is also the intermediary, the one that re-presents inscribing the impossible presence of the other within the sense of the present (OG, 71). For the “present”—in any sense of the word—is always an (im)possible gift.31 Lost (and Found) in Translation Scripture is in itself the interpreter, and this peculiar interpreter could be thought as both a translator who interprets a text without an original version and a performer who interprets a play without script. Hence, in performing the play “Of God’s promise,” scriptura translates Godself to humanity. God announces—promises—God’s death, of which we learn about in the story testified in scripture: Jesus Christ crucified happened to God. Thus, the interpreter, the translator, performs the death of the author. As Marcella Althaus-Reid expresses it, “God does not have priority over Godself in its

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own translation in Jesus . . . the translation of God happens at Golgotha” (Althaus-Reid 2005, 402). Derrida devotes one essay to the sacred text as translation, and there he writes: “The sacred surrenders itself to translation . . . The sacred would be nothing without translation, and translation would not take place without the sacred; the one and the other are inseparable” (DTB, 133). We may think that theology is always lost (and found) in translation: God interpreted in the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Deconstruction affirms that writing is violence; the act of being inscribed, “translated” into a system of signs, called out of one’s unicity into difference and deferral, space, and time (OG, 112). And this we can read theologically following Luther in his understanding that the object of theology is about the relation of God and humans: the “word of the cross” performs what happens in écriture, that is, the inscription of the gap, of the disquieting separation between God and human, undergone by God as human. Without difference, without spatial and temporal separation, there could be no relation. It is in the text, where we hearers/readers are interpreted (translated) as we are called outside of ourselves and, in the text, Godself is translated, detached of Godself, disrupted from its indifference. Derrida well observes it, “the name of God, at least as it is pronounced within classical rationalism, is the name of indifference itself” (OG, 71). We may consider, thus, that the relation of God with humans occurs not in cancelling separation and difference, which would be the greatest violence, but by inhabiting the promise that breathes in this space of translation opened by the text. God interpreted in the story of Jesus of Nazareth is not a closed performance: the word of the cross is an unending task of translation and interpretation in the stages of reality, history, the world. The Texture of the Human As we searched into the cracks produced by Luther’s hermeneutical displacement, there were some overlapping discoveries. Although scholars differ in their emphases, they agree on the interpretive passivity of the human agent before scripture. Thus, affirming that the text produces a response from human beings could well go together with the acknowledgment that human beings are passively constituted in their response to the text. Hermeneutical displacements take theology to face the mirror of its anthropological assumptions. A response is always secondary: scripture engages us as it is always already there before us. We may see this pattern as a predecessor of what Derrida finds and describes when deconstructing the concept of “the subject”: “In the text or in writing . . . there is . . . an instance . . . for some ‘who,’ a ‘who’ besieged by the problematic of the trace and of différance, of affirmation, of the signature and of the so-called proper name” (EW, 260). And again,

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as we have seen, when he traces the acquiescence to language of “a singularity that dislocates or divides itself in gathering itself together to answer to the other, whose call somehow precedes its own identification with itself” (EW, 261).32 Luther perceives in his early readings and rereading of the Psalms, that the scripture singularizes us as it reminds us: “You will be named by me” (WA 3:397, 7). And the promise in the text “snatches us from ourselves” as we respond in faith (LW 26:387). Humans inhabit the possibilities of the text for it is in the play of the text where life and death are at stake. The text kills, and the text gives life; there is not one possibility without the other. Sola scriptura and sola fide meet in the texture of the human. Only the word can create faith; and, as in the wake of Paul, Luther perceives: hominem iustificari fidei (the human is justified by faith). NOTES 1. See chapter 4 2. Among others, Gerhard Ebeling (1993 [1951; 1971]), James Samuel Preus (1969), Oswald Bayer (1971; 2003b; 2003c; 2008), Heiko Oberman (2003, 45) give witness to this. 3. In this sense, Luther is emphasizing an aspect already present, in different ways, in the claims of Roger Bacon, John Wyclif, John Hus, Marsilius of Padua, William Ockham, Jean Gerson, and others (see Westhelle 2005, 375). 4. I am opting here for Westhelle’s translation of the well-known motto (see Westhelle 2005, 377–79); I resume this matter under “The Text Is the Interpreter.” 5. Schwärmer (enthusiasts) was the German term that Luther used with reference to the Zwickau Prophets, Thomas Müntzer, and Anabaptists in general. Whether or not this generalization reflected fairly the beliefs and practices of the different members in this group is an issue in itself that I cannot pursue here. 6. See chapter 6. 7. See chapter 8. 8. In his work Theologie (1994), Oswald Bayer makes use of the noun, going from “scripture interprets itself” to “scripture is its own interpreter” (Bayer 2007a, 63). In this sense, Westhelle proposing “the scripture is in itself the interpreter” delivers a freer version of “suis ipsius” as well. 9. The article “Die Anfange von Luthers Hermeneutik” was first published in German in 1951. Ebeling’s hermeneutical theology—influenced by Rudolf Bultman’s existential theology—pioneers in the proposal of the hermeneutic shift of Luther’s breakthrough, and supports the relation between linguistic theory and theology. 10. Although in the Middle Ages there was an important production of work in the field of biblical exposition, the dominant interpretation method turned around the fourfold meaning of Scripture—the literal, the allegorical, the anagogical, and the tropological (see Runia 1984, 123). The so called “quadriga” was summarized in these lines: Litera gesta docet: quid credas allegoria / Moralis quid agis: quo tendas

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anagogia (The letter teaches what has been done, the allegory what you are to believe, the moral what you must do, and the anagogy where you are heading). 11. Ebeling’s proposal in this landmark work is, in fact, that Luther’s theological breakthrough was necessarily preceded by a hermeneutical one (Ebeling 1993, 133–34). 12. “Et nota, quod Scripture virtus est hec, quod non mutatur in eum, qui eam studet, sed transmutat suum amatorem in sese ac suas virtutes . . . Quia non tu me mutabis in te . . . sed tu mutaberis in me. Nec ego a te, sed tu a me denominaberis” (English version extracted and adapted from Ebeling 1993, 130). 13. The Assertio Omnium Articulorum M. Lutheri per Bullam Leonis X. Novissimam Damnatorum, “Assertion of all the articles of M. Luther condemned by the latest Bull of Leo X,” was Luther’s defense and restatement of 41 of his propositions (theses) of 1517, which had been condemned by the bull Exsurge Domine (1520). 14. As Westhelle—who has read Derrida—observes here, a real gift is given without expecting a return and any attempt to recognize a gift starts to cancel it. I resume this issue discussing sola gratia in chapter 11. 15. Two important representatives of the movement toward a grammatical-historical interpretation of scripture were Nicholas of Lyra (d.1349) and Faber Stapulensis (1455–1536); Luther was familiar with their work, and was influenced by them, although never their uncritical disciple (see Forde 1983, 244; Gleason 2000, 475–77; George 2011, 146). 16. Emser, an opponent to Luther since the Leipzig disputation (1519), held with him a controversy over the interpretation of the Scriptures and the authority of the Roman church, which resulted in a series of excerpts written between the years 1519 and 1521. In this context, Luther wrote the treatise from which I am quoting: Answer to the Hyper-Christian, Hyper-spiritual, and Hyper-learned Book by Goat Emser in Leipzig –Including some Thoughts Regarding His Companion, the Fool Murner (LW 39:107ff.). 17. “[spiritum scripturae] qui nisi in scriptura prorsus non invenitur.” 18. In the Preface to the first part of his German writings, in 1539, Luther introduces these rules as a correct way of studying theology (WA:50, 657–61). Bayer notices that the rules set out from the start “one single way of suffering and life, of listening and speaking, of thinking and writing”; they constitute actually “a single rule, a single dynamic movement” in which we can distinguish three facets that are interconnected (Bayer 2007a, 42). 19. Oberman elaborates on this issue tracing how Luther parted with medieval Pelagianism, and differentiates Luther’s approach with that of Gabriel Biel’s that followed the stages of lectio, meditatio, oratio (Oberman 1986, 110–14). 20. This experience of spiritual assault does not only refer to inner tribulation, the “interior darkness” of the mystical theology (about this see II.8); following Luther in his description of the theological rules of oratio, meditatio, tentatio, Bayer observes that Anfechtung is “directed completely outwards to the spiritual and political world, which cannot tolerate God’s word” (Bayer 2007a, 60). 21. Bayer observes that “intercourse” is Luther’s translation of meditatio (Bayer 2003c, 145).

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22. Westhelle explains that, for Luther, the civil use of the law comes first because: “We are all creatures, human beings in God’s continuing creation, before we are believers” (Westhelle 2005, 385). 23. Taking the prohibition of images in the Old Testament literally, Karlstadt set on the iconoclastic fury (Bildersturm) in Wittenberg in 1522. A similar use of the Decalogue in this sense was observed by Zwingli and Calvin. 24. Oberman quotes: “Quae contra omnium hominum sensum, praesertim sapientium, sapiat. Sed primo grammatica videamus, verum ea theologica.” Operationes in Psalmos, Ps. 1:1a (1519); (Oberman 2003, 193n3). 25. “Cum sine verbo promittentis & fide suscipientis nihil possit nobis esse cum Deo negotii,” Letter to Spalatin, 1519. 26. In the original, “he has not set bounds to himself by his word” reads “neque enim tum verbo suo definivit sese.” Some other meanings for definio are: to limit, define, determine; to terminate, finish; to restrict, confine; to finish off, put an end, end the life (see Morwood 2005, 52; Lewis and Short 1897, 530; Whitaker 2017). 27. See “A Sermon on Keeping Children in School” (1530) (LW 46:213–257) and To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Improvement of the Christian Estate (1520) (LW 44:115–217). 28. Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) together with his inheritor Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), and Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) are considered the early precursors of the German “linguistic turn” (see Lafont 1998, 3ff.). 29. To cite another reference in this direction, Joseph O’Leary writes: “But in the reformation breakthrough his [Luther’s] relation to the biblical word takes on a new and more concrete character, one that entails an overcoming of traditional metaphysical conceptions of the nature of language itself” (O’Leary 2006, 3). 30. “Christus wird nicht erkannt, allein durch sein Wort, sonst hülfe mir Christus Fleisch nichts und wenn es gleich heute käme,” Sermon von Gewalt Sanct Peters 1522; English version extracted from O’Leary (2006, 16). 31. I resume this topic, elaborating on sola gratia in chapter 11. 32. See chapter 5.

10

Sola Fide “Yes, yes”

Approaching the thought of the wholly other, Luther’s and Derrida’s perceptions mirror each other in a paradoxical aspect: for them, the thought of otherness—which is in itself an experience of the impossible—although irreducible to knowledge obliges into language, into inscription, into the text. The text, always before us, calls us “outside of ourselves” for the sake of our very constitution, and this response, in acquiescence and engagement, is the evidence of faith.1 In fact, we could say that for both philosopher and theologian, faith refers to a structure of experience that is a preconstitutive bond of any relation to the other, hence, constitutive of the human (although not exclusively). Here, I assume that the anthropological views explicit in Luther’s theology have some continuity with Derrida’s deconstructive work, entailing, in fact, discourteous anthropological notions. As I trail the motif of sola fide reading Luther after Derrida, I shall explore with theological interest into this open gap in order to rediscover and value the deconstructive drive. YES, YES Along with its companion names—such as différance, khōra, and the messianic—écriture evokes the trace that Derrida tracks in the texts of the western corpus: the utter otherness that, as sheer receptivity and complete openness, allows the play to take place. (As we have seen, the play is what weaves the text and accounts for the unavoidable interruption, in space and time, inhabiting any comprehensible construction.) In this sense, écriture implies always the promise embodied in the iteration of a code, as the very structure of language witnesses.2 Actually, écriture assumes a relation in which there is always a “yes,” reaffirmed time and again, engaging an always interrupted subjectivity into language, into inscription, into the text. For this reason and 161

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in order to illustrate this, Derrida uses a repetitive affirmation: “yes, yes”— meaning that there would always be a “yes” presupposed already by any other uttered “yes” (NY, 232). Derrida elaborates about this when rereading Heidegger.3 He discovers how, in those texts, the crucial aspect of language—even before any “question of being” could be posed—is the listening of an originary promise.4 He speaks of an agreement, a pre-engagement presupposed by every language (OS, 130; NY, 237). And this comprehends a sort of faith that occurs before all questioning, all knowledge, and all philosophy (FK, 95). In this sense, previous to any autonomy of the “who” or any instantiation of a “self,” there is an affirmation, a “yes” to the pledge of otherness in language. Hence, according to this, if anything like a self can happen, it is because it is constantly convened by the other. The “who” who says “yes” to an always previous “yes” is never a complete individuality identical to itself. We have observed, as well, how Derrida’s rereading of Levinas in this regard opens the possibility of thinking the response to the call of the other as constitutive of subjectivity.5 A subjectivity that is always interrupted in its drive toward closure and sameness, dislodged and put together in responding to the other—experience that Derrida would call an “act of faith” that will be tied to justice, since for Levinas, “justice is the relation to the other” (VR, 17). With reference to these considerations, we have also focused on the biological motif of “autoimmunity.” Although immune systems are defense systems that protect living organisms from external infectious agents, there are, however, biological processes in which organisms aim a defensive attack against themselves producing, thus, an autoimmune condition. Derrida uses this trope to illustrate what goes on in the formation of any self-identity, ipseity, or sovereignty. He explains that, paradoxically, immune systems always exude autoimmunity—actually, they protect themselves against their self-protection (FK, 80n27). And this happens because every system has a weakness that lowers the guard and opens the door to the stranger, which is crucial for its conformation. In fact, in spite of all efforts toward sameness, there is always already a trace of otherness inscribed in the very constitution of any entity. Ipseity is interrupted in its realization by its vital want of the other; it is always in need of heterogeneity, heteronomy, dissymmetry, and multiplicity (R, 14). Therefore, this image that Derrida deploys explaining how the opening toward alterity is a necessity for the constitution of identity lets us think about faith as a marker for autoimmunity.6 In sum, for Derrida, the performance of écriture implies an originary assertion occurring “before” language and involving a promise of coming to language, in a language (NY, 236). The listening of the grant or pledge of language engages a “yes” both appealing and receiving a response, the “yes” of responsibility. Every act of language, every address of the other, involves

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something irreducible to knowledge: an experience of faith (FK, 56). In this sense, accompanying écriture, Derrida adopts terms and images echoing the religious, such as “khōra” and “the messianic.” They respectively evoke, quite suitably, an originary memory of the always already spoken “yes” and the opening toward the promise of a future to come. In Derrida’s writings, we are invited to consider that this “yes” entails vulnerability, weakness, and some passivity; and in any speech act or social involvement, faith stands for those things. Faith is a condition for relationality. It is interesting to note that the expression Derrida uses to describe all this is “a covenant within life” (EF, 45). The Faith of All Living Things Furthermore, early in his elaborations about those matters, Derrida reflects on the fact that écriture, the play of textuality, is not just about “the human adventure” but “rather . . . a stage or an articulation in the history of life” (OG, 84; emphasis added). Exceeding the human, “[m]ark, gramma, trace, and différance refer differentially to all living things, all the relations between living and nonliving” (Animal, 104; emphasis added). All living things are constituted by the dislocating pledge that snatches them out of themselves before any closing in on themselves may occur. This allows us to contemplate all life as relationally woven, and relationality is made possible by faith: an interruption in the closing drive of sameness, a vulnerable opening before the affirmative call of alterity. Indeed, the covenant within life is intertwined by “a number of yes.”7 We have already examined a dominant conception of the human being, which exceeded that of an epistemological subject. We observed how the claims of self-identity and self-presence of a sovereign ipseity—defined and affirmed as man, father, brother, and anthropos against its “others”—have been questioned and displaced. In that context, the issue about the species other than “(hu)man”—arbitrarily crowded under the tag “animal”—was barely referred to. Nevertheless, this matter is always present in Derrida’s readings and, more intensely, in his later works.8 Derrida notices how the hierarchical ordering of the species rests on the stressing of the opposition human–animal. And how “the animal” has been deprived by the “(hu)man” of a list of attributes without limits: “speech, reason, experience of death, mourning, culture, institutions, technics, clothing, lying, pretense of pretense, covering of tracks, gift, laughter, crying, respect, etc.” (Animal, 135). Most particularly, Derrida refers to the fact that the human being is early described in the philosophical tradition as zōon logon echon—the “animal” endowed with “logos.” In this sense, he argues that metaphysical logocentrism, building on hierarchy and mastery, is in fact “a

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thesis regarding the animal, the animal deprived of the logos, deprived of the can-have-the-logos” (Animal, 27; Derrida’s emphasis). This thesis, Derrida observes, is “maintained from Aristotle to Heidegger, from Descartes to Kant, Levinas, and Lacan” (Animal, 27). However, besides the many discussions about this—and many other assumptions about what is “proper” to humans— there is another question that could be posed: Why should “the logos” be the privileged capacity to draw the line between the human and the rest of the species? In the wake of Jeremy Bentham, Derrida proposes that the matter is not whether the animal can think, reason, or talk: “The first and decisive question will rather be to know whether animals can suffer” (Animal, 27). In fact, the deconstructive readings of a dominant western tradition permit us to ponder that the possibility of suffering, which traverses living species, could guide us to think of our shared condition. Now, going back to the issue about écriture referring differentially to “all living things,” and having in mind the reflection about faith as the foundation for relationality, we should notice a most outstanding affirmation that Derrida makes. On the occasion of an interview, he states that “animals have faith” and explains that this is so because there is faith in any social bond, and there are social bonds in animals (EF, 45). Therefore, we all—as living beings— share in “this trust, this bond, this covenant within life” (EF, 45). The Faith of the Other Envisaging Derrida’s allusion to “the number of yes” weaving the covenant of the living, it is of importance to consider here—and in this regard—the ambiguity of the “of.” Because if most of the time “listening” appears to be “listening to,” with Derrida we can contemplate what goes on in “the listening of.” Thus, thinking about the “listening of the promise”—which is the promise of the other—we may become more and more aware that there is a listening in the promise. There is a “yes” always already for any other uttered yes: The welcoming of the other (objective genitive) will already be a response: the yes to the other will already be a responding to the welcoming of the other (subjective genitive), to the yes of the other . . . This responsible response is surely a yes, but a yes to preceded by the yes of the other. (AEL, 23–24; Derrida’s emphasis)

In this same text, Derrida quotes Levinas who affirms: “It is not I, it is the other that can say yes” (AEL, 24; Derrida’s emphasis). And there he explores another way of thinking responsiveness, that is, the responsible decision:

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Levinas would probably not say it in this way, but could it not be argued that, without exonerating myself in the least, decision and responsibility are always of the other? They always come back or come down to the other, from the other, even if it is the other in me? (AEL, 23–24; Derrida’s emphasis)

Thus, we could consider that the yes of the other, the pledge of the other, works in each and every way: faith as a generalized need, a weakness of the other for the other. There is not asymmetry here but “a web of otherness” (Roffe 2004, 41). We are welcome as we welcome the other, whose welcome was there always already; something like what Derrida names as “a general logic of auto-immunization” (FK, 80n27). In sum, if the metaphysical conception of the human subject is deconstructed vis á vis its constitution, its autonomy, and its proper, the understanding of the human as species is also dislocated. Yet, Derrida’s work puts into question the notion of the human being as self, subject, and species but not only this. Remarkably, the displacement of the mastering manifestations that dominated western modernity causes as well the displacement of our understanding about otherness, the nonhuman, the nonliving, and faith. SOLA FIDE Luther’s findings with regard to justification and faith bring about a radical parting with the anthropological ideas of late medieval theology. It is my assumption that in this theological breakthrough the premodern theologian prefigures aspects of the postmodern deconstruction of the prevailing conceptions about the human. Traceable against the backdrop of the dominant theologies of his time, those findings still challenge our present formulations. I shall illustrate here the previous statements bringing into focus the different dimensions of the human transformed in the light of Luther’s comprehension of sola fide. Firstly, I shall briefly revisit what Luther calls a new definition of justice; secondly, I shall underline some of Luther’s perceptions about faith. After enumerating and exploring the implications of these topics, I shall explore into the deconstructive gap about the human that they render visible. Finally, reading Luther after Derrida, I shall sketch some theological considerations with reference to faith and the human, although exceeding the human. Undoubtedly, here again, the scheme is just an effort pursuing a clearer exposition: elements merge and the richness of the possibilities is vast.

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A New Definition of Justice The doctrine of salvation resting on natural human resources—as the existence of a divine ground in the soul or the free will to fulfill ethical principles—was altogether left behind by Luther in his search to understand the justice of God. Earlier in his career he asserts: “We do not have in us any salvation” (WA 3:301, 32).9 And, reading Tauler’s sermons, he annotates: “The spiritual person is the person who relies upon faith” (WA 9:103, 40–104, 3).10 It is of significance to restate that these affirmations bear not only a major theological shift but also an anthropological one. Moreover, as Luther’s scriptural readings continue opening different views of old trodden roads, this anthropological understanding shows itself to be part of a new perception of the justice of God. We have observed that two Hellenized notions of anthropological and ethical importance were still part of the doctrine of justification in Luther’s day. One was the idea of a “human free will” and the other the conception of divine justice as “distributive justice.” Luther alludes to this in his preface to the Latin edition of his works in 1545. There he describes that he “had been taught to understand philosophically” about the meaning of the justice of God, but he finally was granted to understand that the “justice of God” is that by which human beings are justified.11 As he explains in his Lectures on Galatians (1519), he found: “A wonderful, new definition of justice! This is usually described thus: ‘justice is a virtue which renders to each their due.’ Here it truly says: ‘justice is faith in Jesus Christ’” (WA 57:a69, 15–17; emphasis added).12 Thus, under a new light, the justice of God—iustitia Dei—turned to be the justice of Jesus Christ—iustitia Christi—and this is expressed precisely in what Luther—in the wake of Paul—refers to as the “faith of/in Jesus Christ.”13 All this did not only change what was the current understanding about divine justice but, also and consequently, about faith. Luther’s Perceptions about Faith What does Luther find when he discovers that the justice of God is the faith of/in Jesus Christ? As we are starting to see, he finds that the justice of God is not a matter of distributive justice and this, we shall observe as well, meets his earlier discernment about faith and the human condition. These are, in brief, some aspects of what Luther perceives. Faith in a Different Form In accordance with the scholastic order of salvation, good works are performed in view of receiving God’s grace and the virtue of faith is “formed”

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by those works of love. In this sense, “a unanimous medieval tradition” on justification shares the idea of a fides caritate formata, i.e., faith formed by love or through good works (Oberman 1966, 20).14 Since works of love are carried out as a way of “doing one’s best”—in order to obtain God’s grace— or as part of a mystical stage—pursuing union with the Godhead through likening to God—faith appears as a derivative of human activity. A faith shaped by “human works of love” is thus a “humanly shaped faith.” Yet, what Luther discovers about justification impacts on the pivotal ideas of this current order. On the one hand, he understands that justification is not human made, and this refers directly to the fact that human will is not free but captive, and cannot voluntarily “do its best.” On the other hand, he perceives that God’s justice is by grace and not anything to be achieved. And it is in this sense that, instead of a faith shaped by human love, Luther recovers a fides Christo formata, i.e., a “faith formed by Christ.” Later, in his Commentary on Galatians (1531/1535), he expresses the argument: “Just as the sophists say that love forms and trains faith, so we say that it is Christ who forms and trains faith or who is the form of faith” (LW 26:130). Now, we can say that in meeting Christ at the center of faith, Luther meets both a faith “formed” by Christ and Christ in a completely different “form.” He insists that there is the need of knowing Christ differently, for the teachings of the age had made Jesus Christ “a judge and a torturer” when, in reality, he is “Christ the savior” (LW 27:132). As we underline that Luther’s theological breakthrough is centered on his discovery of the fides Christi, we should not forget that this occurred together with his embracing of the theologia crucis. Indeed, Luther encounters a faith formatted by the folly of a God revealed in Jesus Christ crucified. Faith as the Companion of Promise The new understanding of justification unveils itself in the reading and rereading of scripture. As we already examined when elaborating on sola scriptura, for Luther, faith is elicited by a promise in the word. Thus he writes: “Apart from the word which promises and faith which receives we are not able to enter into any kind of relationship with God” (WABr 1:595, 23–24).15 And also: “Promise and faith go together, because where there is no promise, there cannot be faith, and where there is no faith the promise, even if it exists, has no relevance” (WA 54:33, 6–9).16 Then, Luther perceives faith not as the product of human will or effort but rather as that what occurs when we listen to the call of a promise. If we think in terms of the influence of the nominalist covenantal theology on Luther’s theology, there is one aspect that lets us grasp the liaison of faith with promise. In the covenantal theology of the via moderna, salvation depended on God’s pactum of conferring grace

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upon those who “do their best,” and rested on the trustworthiness of God’s word, that is, God’s fidelity to his pact. However, in this new “boundary situation,” believers could not know whether they had done their best, and, even worse, they could fear that God might not keep his pact.17 In the transition of parting with those teachings on justification, Luther confronts a most terrible situation: since he is already completely convinced that doing one’s best is impossible then, the fact that God is not constrained by a pact is implicit. In such a fix, facing the promise of justice inhabiting the word of scripture, faith emerges in weakness: at the interruption of the human ego along with its own confidence, will, and resources. Luther describes it in these words: And this is the reason why our theology is certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive. (LW 26:387)

This realization had started earlier, when in his Lectures on the Psalms (1513–1516), the “soteriologically de-substantial character of self and world” became evident for him (Ozment 1969).18 At that time he understood that faith is the “substance” of the believer. Thus, elicited by both the memory and the hope that weave the word of God, the faith of Jesus Christ appears as an absolute trust provoked by a promise exceeding the human. Faith as the Way of Participation Luther’s new understanding of justification no longer rests on works of love or ascetic discipline in order to ascend and achieve union with God, but neither love nor union with God are left behind. He avows that, by faith, love and God come to human beings in union with Jesus Christ. For Luther, justification by faith means that human beings are released from having to prove, accomplish, or claim anything of themselves. Justification is in perceiving human difference from God, and a reality not of our own; it happens as sheer gift, “outside ourselves”—not by our “inner” qualities or capacities. But paradoxically, at the same time, Luther realizes that justification by faith also means that human beings need to embrace this new reality “within ourselves,” for it happens “in union with Christ.” In fact, Luther’s mystical companions on his way to a theological breakthrough left their offerings.19 For this reason, the reformer can use a most interesting image in explaining how justification occurs by the faith in/of Jesus Christ: the “marvelous exchange” (commercium admirabile) occurring in the relationship of bridegroom and bride within the bounds of marriage.20 This occurs as one of the benefits of faith for, as Luther elaborates in The Freedom of a Christian (1520), “It unites

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the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom . . . Christ and the soul become one flesh. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage . . . it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil,” then, by “the wedding ring of faith” Christ takes part in “the sins, death, and pains of hell which are his bride’s”—actually, “he makes them his own.” So the bride can say: “If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and all mine is his.” Luther illustrates, “As the bride in the Song of Solomon [2:16] says, ‘My beloved is mine and I am his’” (LW 31:352).21 In the light of this, the faith of Jesus Christ means an all-encompassing participation: what is mine is yours, what is yours is mine. Indeed, we can see that Luther emphasizes the fact that the faith of Jesus Christ is a way of participation that redefines both the human and the God involved.22 EXPLORING INTO THE GAP As hinted above, when the inherited philosophical notions about divine justice and human nature are confronted theologically, a different anthropology starts to take shape. Here I propose to focus and explore into this gap. The aspects of the human that accompany the new understanding of justification and faith cracks old consolidated teachings. I shall follow those features through a selection of Luther’s texts produced in different times of his career and of diverse character: biblical interpretation, confessional formulations, and philosophical theological disputations. De-Substantial Self and World The shift in the conception of the human vis á vis the late medieval theological teachings appears incipiently in the early readings of Luther as, for instance, his Lectures on the Psalms (1513–1516), which Ozment (1969) closely analyzes. I referred above to the “soteriologically de-substantial character” of human self and world that Luther underlines in those readings. There, he observes that the effort of human life is set on the search for a safe footing, a “substance” to rely upon. However, as Ozment notices, what Luther finds in scripture is that substantia is not an ontological conception but a metaphor concerning the “place” upon which to stand firm;23 on such a place, one’s soul can set its feet, both affectus and intellectus, confident that one will not sink into the abyss of sin and death (WA 3:419, 25–28; Ozment 1969, 105–6). In this sense, one’s substance in life would be constituted by those things that sustain one’s life. As Luther illustrates, the substance of the ambitious is glory; of the rich, riches; of the gluttonous, food and the belly.

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But the sancti [spiritual]—he discovers—subsist and flourish by different means than the goods of the world: they support their life on the “substance of things which are not yet visibly present, i.e., things which are still in the future and in which they can only believe and for which they can hope” (Ozment 1969, 105). Indeed, the biblical sense of substance that Luther discovers points toward “what supports and embraces one’s whole life,” which is an outwardly received qualification of human life—a “quality” not a “quiddity” (WA 3:419, 37–38). This “different” substance is faith,24 and for Luther, such faith has a specific soteriological force: the memory of past works of God and the hope of future works of God (Ozment 1969, 109–11). Delineating a crack that he will continue to expand in his theology, Luther’s early glosses to Psalm 68 show that: “To trust and flourish ‘in oneself and in the world’ is to attempt to ground one’s life in a bottomless pit” (Ozment 1969, 106); the character of the substance on which human life can rest lies “outside of ourselves” (extra nos); this “different” substance is faith, which opens the human toward memory and to the future. Simul Iustus et Peccator, Totus Totus Complementary anthropological reflections are developed in another of Luther’s early readings: his Lectures on Romans (1515/1516). There, distinct features start to emerge over against the Neoplatonic dualism present in Augustine’s teachings, scholasticism, and the new humanism. The opposition between flesh and spirit is one of those aspects, which was very much alive in the sixteenth century. Bayer illustrates how Erasmus, for instance, in his Enchiridion militis Christiani exposes the humanist view that the spirit is what makes Gods of human beings, while the flesh makes them brute animals (Bayer 1998a, 377). Thus, in his debate with Luther regarding the issue of liberum arbitrium, that we shall discuss below, Erasmus portrays human free will fighting against the flesh and for the spirit. McGrath underlines Luther’s insistence on the fact that the antithesis of flesh and spirit should be interpreted theologically, rather than anthropologically: it is not about a lower, worldly, fleshy side of humanity against a higher, spiritual nature tending toward God (McGrath 2005, 226). What Luther understands is that the whole person is completely and simultaneously both spiritual and carnal, serving both the law of God and the law of sin. And his theological approach opens an anthropological perception. Thus he interprets: One and the same person at the same time serves the law of God and the law of sin, at the same time is righteous and sins! For they do not say: “My mind serves the law of God,” nor do they say: “My flesh serves the law of sin,” but:

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“I, the whole human being, the same person, I serve a twofold servitude.” . . . The saints at the same time as they are righteous are also sinners. (LW 25:336)

This expression of Luther’s anthropology could be summarized in the sentence simul iustus et simul peccator, totus, totus: totally justified and, at the same time, totally sinner. What he discovers in his search to understand the justice of God, is that “[c]onformity with God is simultaneously disconformity with God” (Ozment 1969, 214). Confronting the teachings of the dominant late medieval theologies, Luther realizes that human union with God is the simultaneous recognition of human unlikeness and opposition to God. And this can be read in different directions but never solved as long as we live. The affirmation of being at the same time completely spiritual and carnal, just and sinner, good and evil is in itself a paradox, which accompanies the theological paradoxes that Luther is given to find. Thus, coram Deo, being sinners we are righteous. However, when we work our own justice and righteousness before others, coram hominibus, we consider ourselves righteous but we are sinners before God. And so continues the paradox: “The saints are intrinsically always sinners, therefore they are always extrinsically justified”; and Luther continues, “but the hypocrites are intrinsically always righteous, therefore they are extrinsically always sinners” (LW 25:257). Besides, the affirmation of the simul implies that justification is a continuous act, not because it is a matter of personal effort and gradual achievement but because it is the promise of God. Justified sinners are and remain always sinners but always righteous, for “God will continue to deliver them from sin” (LW 25:336). Luther will persist stressing this continuous character of justification together with the opening toward the future that it operates in the structure of the human. In 1537, we find him affirming with regard to the justified life of the believers: “It is in production, in becoming, not in actuality neither in deed nor in existence (being). It is still under construction” (WA 39/I, 252, 11–13).25 As we carry on with Luther’s early readings of scripture, we find in his Lectures of Romans the blueprint of a new theology regarding the human: a theological formulation of the human condition that escapes philosophical dualism; a complex constitution that exceeds problematizing the limits of the individual; the sketching of a paradoxical, relational, and “futural” anthropology. Captive Wills Theologians adopted the philosophical notion of autexousia, that is, “selfdetermination,” from the Hellenized milieu of early Christianity.26 This conception, foreign to the biblical tradition, entered the realm of western theology

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rendered into Latin by Tertullian: liberum arbitrium. In the Middle Ages, the scholastics, both in its via antiqua and via moderna, developed their doctrine of justification resting on this idea. Albeit some differences, their conceptions about the order of salvation presupposed a certain degree of free will in order that divine grace could operate effectively in human beings. As Hans Joachim Iwand observes, the teachings of scholastic theology in general assumed that “personal decision is included in the reception of grace” (Iwand 2008 [1959], 8). As he studies Luther’s path toward a different understanding of justification, Ozment allows us to focalize on early writings such as the Lectures on the Psalms (1513–1516) and the Lectures on Romans (1515–1516). In those works, the author detects how the influence of the conception of synteresis, which Luther had received from his training in the via moderna, gradually disintegrates (Ozment 1969, 184–209).27 It is noticeable how Luther arrives at the fact that human will is not able to achieve what the law prescribes, and concludes that even if it were able it would not do so because it is inclined toward evil. Later writings of Luther witness to this new understanding of both human beings and justification. For instance, his position is made clear in two disputations presented around the time of the ninety-five thesis affair. In some theses of the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology (1517), he explicitly reacts to the dominant traditions in the late medieval church: 30. On the part of humans, however, nothing precedes grace except indisposition and even rebellion against grace . . . 33. And this is false, that doing all that one is able to do can remove the obstacles to grace. This in opposition to several authorities. 34. In brief, a person by nature has neither correct precept nor good will . . . 39. We are not masters of our actions, from beginning to end, but servants. This in opposition to the philosophers. (LW 31:12)

Likewise, in the Disputation of Heidelberg (1518) introduced at the general chapter of the Augustinian order in Germany, he affirms: 13. Free will, after the fall, exists in name only, and as long as it does what it is able to do, it commits a mortal sin. 14. Free will, after the fall, has power to do good only in a passive capacity, but it can always do evil in an active capacity. (LW 31:40)

However, it is in De servo arbitrio (The Bondage of the Will) of 1525, where we find the most extended and specific elaboration of Luther on the issue. It is written in reply to Erasmus’s De libero arbitrio (On Free Will) published in 1524. In his brief diatribe, Erasmus considers the debate about human free will as “irreligious,” “idle,” and “superfluous” (BOW, 74), and does not expect such a vehement readdressing of the matter by Luther. Yet, the title of

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Luther’s work in itself is already an outrageous affirmation since it infers that human will is not free but captive. Here again, what is at stake are Luther’s theological findings regarding justification because, while the good news is about sheer grace and faith, the affirmation of human free will is about rational knowing, choosing, and acting. For Luther, theology is not philosophy or metaphysics but professedly evangelical. Thus, as Iwand describes, his approach to the matter does not begin considering the general possibility of human existence, but the actual reality of the homo impius sola gratia justificatus: the godless human being justified by grace alone (Iwand 2008 [1959], 9). In fact, one of the arguments that Luther expresses is that the abstract human being portrayed by Erasmus “is nowhere to be found” (BOW, 161). The reason for this is that being capable of doing what the law commands is not part of an available human profile, indeed, even the acknowledgment of such limitation is a rare occurrence. Conversely, Luther remarks: But the scripture sets before us a person who is not only bound, wretched, captive, sick and dead, but who . . . adds to their other miseries that of blindness, so that they believe themselves to be free, happy, possessed of liberty and ability, whole and alive. (BOW, 161–62)

In a letter written at the time of his lectures on the Psalms and on Romans, Luther had already articulated precisely what was the point of this: “Christ only dwells in sinners.”28 Thus, he expands for Erasmus: “God has surely promised His grace to the humbled: that is, to those who mourn over and despair of themselves” (BOW, 100). This happens when human beings get to the point where the presumption of a free will founders with regard to their own soteriological programs. Thence, there is no longer working, winning, or demanding justification because such a situation relates to faith and grace not as “antecedent and consequent” (i.e., the former demanding the latter) but as “expectation and fulfilment” (Ozment 1969, 180, 185). As he abandons the precepts under which he had been trained, Luther perceives a different reality of the human condition before God. Here we have explored within a major crack and glimpsed one important aspect of such condition: with regard to their own salvation, the human will is a captive will. This discovery is deeply related to the following matter. The Curvature The gloss to Romans 8:3a in Luther’s Lectures on Romans (1515/1516) registers one of his most outstanding anthropological perceptions (LW 25:344–45). There, his rejection of Aristotelian anthropology applied to theology provides a very concise image of the human. Luther reflects on

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the impossibility of human fulfilment of the law and expresses one of his straightforward formulations: “Philosophy stinks in our nostrils.” In reality, he is reacting to the scholastic teachings, which echoing the Nicomachean Ethics affirmed that according to the law of nature, human “reason speaks for the best things” (see LW 25:344, n1). Thus, he comments, “We make up a lot of stories about the law of nature,” for, what “best things” are those, and according to whom? As far as he observes, human reason only speaks “the best according to us, that is, for things that are good in an evil way.” In fact, the presumed inclination of human nature toward the good “knows nothing but its own good, or what is good, and honorable and useful for itself, but not what is good for God and other people.” It is in this circumstance that the future reformer articulates the expression, inspired by the scripture and Augustin, that the human beings are “homo incurvatus in se,” that is, curved, folded, turned in onto themselves. The picture is clear and shockingly precise: human beings are those who “in all things seek only themselves.” Yet, Luther announces that their own natural powers cannot help them: “They need the aid of some power outside themselves.” After providing the realistic depiction of the human under servum arbitrium, we find that Luther’s early reading of Romans complements this specific anthropological information with the clear-cut image of homo incurvatus in se. At this point, we can add to the result of our exploring these ideas: that human volitional rational resources have no soteriological use; that human beings are not naturally inclined toward the good; that human beings are prone to close in on themselves over against the other; that in spite of the previous, human beings have a fundamental need of the other. With Others Another crack traceable in the opened gap lets us visualize the human as species, their existence with others, and their condition of dependence. This appears clearly in writings of Luther’s that differ in character. Confessional-Catechetic Writings In both his Small Catechism (1529) and Large Catechism (1529), Luther introduces and expounds, along with other Christian symbols, the Apostles’ Creed. We can focus here on some ideas that emerge as he refers to the first article, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” In the Small Catechism, intended for the catechesis within the household, we read how Luther answers the question “What does this mean?” It means: “I believe that God has created me and all that exists”—or as the German original version expresses, “I believe that God created me, along with all

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creatures.”29 Then, he continues expanding the meaning of this affirmation, for this implies as well that: I believe that God . . . has given me and still sustain my body and soul, all my limbs and senses, my reason and all the faculties of my mind, together with food and clothing, house and home, family and property; that God provides me daily and abundantly with the necessities of life. (SC II.1–2)

In the Large Catechism, the answer adds some other elements of God’s care: Besides, God makes all creation help provide the comforts and necessity of life—sun, moon, and stars in the heavens, day and night, air, fire, water, the earth and all that brings forth, birds and fish, beasts, grain and all kinds of produce. (LC II.14–15)

These teachings are part of a pastoral theological effort to picture creator and creation in accessible concrete terms. God’s creation encompasses all: “heaven and earth.” But, in everyday life, faith needs precisions, then Luther enumerates. The catalog—far broader than what is quoted—appears as an obviousness, so banal and simple, as mundane as Luther’s theology can be. It is evident here that, for Luther, givenness manifests itself in things taken for granted, because they are, actually, “granted.” And—as he makes quite clear—all that is given, freely given, by God. Yet, the emphases of the confession upon “me” as beneficiary of all that exists, and of the provision for life and comfort by all creation alerts our postmodern trained attention. Indeed, Luther is quite anthropocentric in his description. As different authors observe, this is to be read within the context of his time but also within the context of his theology.30 Within the immediate context of the Creed, far from being an expression of the central perspective of the modern subject, as Bayer comments, “the believing ‘I’ . . . is related to itself only by the fact that the ‘I’ is the object of God’s creative action” (Bayer 1994, 142). Soon enough, as we continue our reading, there is a corrective theological argumentation against anthropocentrism within the narrow framework of these very texts. In the Small Catechism, Luther’s enumeration of God’s gifts in creation includes these words in its closing: “All this [God] does out of pure, parental, and divine goodness and mercy without any merit or worthiness on my part” (SC II.2). And in the Large Catechism, he rounds up the list of benefits in the first article asserting: Thus we learn from this article that none of us has our life of oneself, or anything else that has been mentioned here or can be mentioned, nor can one by oneself preserve any of them, however small and unimportant. (LC II.15–16)

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Moreover, and in spite of all this, Luther certifies that we “swagger about and brag and boast as if we had life, riches, power, honor, and such things of ourselves, as if we ourselves were to be feared and served”; in fact, we act as “the wretched, perverse world acts, drowned in its blindness, misusing all the blessings and gifts of God solely for its own pride and greed, pleasure and enjoyment. ” (LC II.21) Thus, Luther underlines the fact that humans are creatures among other creatures. Human life is provided for, as is the life and existence of all creation. The action of giving and constant sustaining is God’s—for God does not create and disappear, but creates and continuously preserves. God’s creation is an act of self-giving out of nothing: there is no human merit or production about this. Yet, humans are creatures prone to blindness and given to use the good in evil ways. Biblical Interpretation However, following Paul, Luther interprets that creation—in a postlapsarian status—is, in fact, subject to service. His perceptions about the relation between human and nonhuman life and the cosmos in general are rich and thought provoking. We can see aspects of this already in the Lectures on Romans. Luther’s annotations and scholia on Romans 8:19–22 are quite suggestive—and in some way perturbing. He glosses on Paul’s reference to the expectation of creation and of the creature made subject to vanity, and interprets this subjection as “captivity and slavery to the unworthy . . . to the vain use of the ungodly.” Moreover, he underlines that such condition is “not of its own desire, but of necessity” by the will of God (LW 25:72). The way in which Luther interprets “vanity” in the scholium to verse 20 is significant; he notices that traditionally in the place of “creature” most have understood “humanity,” but he sees it differently: “Humanity is better understood through ‘vanity,’ as Psalm 39 says most appropriately and truly: ‘Nevertheless, every human being is wholly vanity’” (LW 25:362). In these lectures, Luther is taking another stand vis á vis the dominant scholastic traditions. He makes clear what sort of theology he has started to embrace and declares: “It is time that we free ourselves from other studies and learn Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (LW 25:360). Thus, in the gloss to verse 20, he affirms that Paul “is speaking of creation as if it were feeling, living, and suffering it that it has long been compelled to serve the ungodly in their abuse and their ingratitude to God” (LW 25:72). And in the scholia, he continues with meaningful observations regarding the issue, for he finds that Paul philosophizes in a different way than that of the “philosophers and metaphysicians.” For the apostle does not get lost in Aristotelic considerations about creation, on the contrary, he coins a new theological term talking about

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“the expectation of the creature,” that is, what the creature waits for. For this reason, Luther advises: You will be the best philosophers and investigators of things, if you will learn from the apostle to gaze at the creation as it expects, groans, and is in travail—in other words, as it loathes what it is and longs for what it will be in the future, but is not yet . . . Whoever studies the “essences” and “operations” of the creatures rather than their sighs and expectations, is without a doubt a blind fool. For such a one does not even realize that the creatures are creatures. (LW 25:361–62)

Sermons A study by Steven W. Tyra (2014) traces in this direction Luther’s “cruciform exegesis” of the condition of the creatures, and refers to different sermons of Luther about this issue. Searching in two of the sermons selected by this author and guided with the interest of this section, I find it possible to capture Luther’s concern and perceptions about the relation of creation, the human, and God. Hence, in in his sermons on Romans 8:19–22, written in 1535, we can observe: ‌‌‌‌Firstly, that Luther points out toward the suffering of all creatures and to the human involvement in the suffering of creation. He finds in Paul’s words “plain authority for the interpretation of the groaning of creation” for he “makes all creation—sun and moon, fire, air, water, heaven and earth with all they contain—merely poor, captive servants.” And they are not “in righteous service” since their service is given “to the wicked—to vanity” (Ser 8:91, 23). Remarkably, Luther portrays creation as innocent sufferer: He [Paul] brings out this thought prominently, telling us it is not strange we Christians should suffer, for in our preaching, our reproving and rebuking, we easily merit the world’s persecution; but creation must suffer being innocent, must even endure forced subjection to the wicked and the devil himself. (Ser 8:93, 1)

Secondly, when Luther refers to the creation, its abuse and suffering caused by the sin of humans, he includes all: living and nonliving, human and nonhuman. Then he preaches that all creation . . . with us it must be subject to tyrants. These tyrants wantonly abuse our characters, our bodies, our property rights, just as the devil abuses our souls. But we must suffer our lot, remembering that mankind is captive on earth in the kingdom of the devil, and all creation with it. The earth must submit to be trodden and to be cultivated by many a wicked one, to whom it must yield subsistence. Likewise, is this submission true of the elements—air, fire, water—all creation having its cross, yet hoping for the end of the dispensation. (Ser 8:94,4)

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Thirdly, Luther underlines the fact that if creation is subdued by the will of God, it will be liberated as children of God. As Paul affirms in Romans 8:21: “Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God,” Luther states: “We Christians are not the only beings to receive deliverance . . . the creature in bondage has the same hope of release as the poor, enslaved human being” (Ser 8:98, 14). Finally, and most outstandingly, we can find Luther underlining the fact that nonhuman creatures also have speech, implying that the relation of nonhuman creatures with God has no need of human mediation and, besides, that creation escapes human program and calculation. Luther asserts: Just as we Christians . . . sigh for and implore help in the Lord’s prayer, so do the creatures sigh. Although they have not human utterance, yet they have speech intelligible to God and the Holy Spirit, who mark the creatures’ sighs over their unjust abuse by the ungodly . . . This accusing cry is beyond human power to express, for God’s created things are innumerable. (Ser 8:89, 17)

Luther’s sermons accompany creatively his catechetic teachings and biblical lectures. In all these selected texts we may find an anthropological delimitation, putting each one into their place. What we distinguish here is that: Nothing living and nonliving, human and nonhuman exists and persists by itself; human beings are not self-made; humans exist with others; all creatures suffer, expect, and communicate; human beings have their doing in the suffering and abusing of others (living and nonliving, human and nonhuman); there is not such an exclusive thing as “the liberation of the human,” the liberation of creation includes all; in spite of all, humans are not as powerful as they think: although the fact is mostly hidden by the blindness of the species, creator and creation exceed them. Hominem Iustificari Fidei To close our searching, there is one text in which Luther portrays an image that lets us glimpse how two of our present interests are reunited: faith and the human. In his Disputation concerning the human being (1536), Luther considers human beings from the perspective of both philosophy and theology underlining their controversies; thus, he points to the limitations of the former, and profits from the “inside” information delivered by the latter. Nevertheless, he formulates a definition of the human that, informed by theology, has a somehow ontological impetus exceeding the “borders” of the human. In the first part of the disputation, Luther presents nineteen philosophical theses, introducing a definition of the human as “animal rationale,

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sensitivum, corporeum”—an animal having reason, sensation, and body— that is, a definition based in the human genus and its specific difference with other species. However, as he examines at length this approach to the human, he ascertains, “if philosophy or reason itself is compared with theology, it will appear that we know almost nothing about the human” (LW 34:136). And, in the same temper, the philosophical section draws this conclusion: “as this life is, such is the definition and knowledge of the human, that is, fragmentary, fleeting, and exceedingly material” (LW 34:137). Luther develops a theological approach in theses 20 through 40. It is in this section where we are presented with a peculiar definition. In order to close this evaluation of the deconstructive gap, here we focus on theses 32 to 36 of this academic debate (LW 34:138): 32. Paul in Romans 3 [:28], “We hold that the human being is justified by faith apart from works,” briefly sums up the definition of the human being, saying, “The human being is justified by faith.”

In thesis 32, Luther elaborates on the affirmation of Paul, which is the biblical foundation of the sola fide. And it is precisely there where he anchors a defining thesis about the human. Luther’s theological summing up, hominem justificari fide—the human being is justified by faith—is, in reality, “a fundamental anthropological thesis” (Bayer 2008, 156). In fact, paraphrasing Bayer’s argument, it is possible to enunciate such definition as: “human beings are human insofar as they are justified by faith” (Bayer 2008, 155). For this reason, we may well envisage that the faith that justifies is not something added to or acquired by the human, but is constitutive. This is so because Luther’s definition does not delve into metaphysical essence and substance or into moral agency and achievement, but revolves around what occurs to that which is passively outlined. Thus, “the human being is that which is justified by faith” is the sort of definition which, as Ingold Dalferth explains, “does not tell us what human beings are, but rather what happens to them” (Dalferth 2016, 36; author’s emphasis). Now, after this affirmation about the human, Luther broadens the focus: 33. Certainly, whoever says that human beings must be justified says that they are transgressors and unjust and thus asserts that they are guilty before God, but must be saved by grace. 34. And he [Paul] takes the human being in general, that is, universally, so that he consigned the whole world, or whatever is called human, to sin [Rom. 11:32].

In theses 33 and 34, keeping on with Paul, Luther makes a double statement of general character: First, we learn that “the human” is a universal

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formulation embracing “the whole world” and, the bad news is that all is subject to sin and in need of justification. Second, we hear the very good news that, although all must be saved, salvation is by grace. About this, and in the light of the previous definition, a new picture takes shape: if the human needs justification and is justified by faith, then what about the whole world? In the Pauline spirit and with Luther’s creative mood, Bayer formulates an answer: “In the broadest sense . . . one can say about creation: mundus iustificare fidei. Not only the human being but the entire world is justified by faith” (Bayer 2008, 100). The species, the world, the entire creation are defined as being justified by faith. And, as we have examined, for Luther, faith is elicited by a promise that opens the future:31 35. Therefore, the human being in this life is the simple material of God for the form of their future life. 36. Just as the whole creation which is now subject to vanity [Rom. 8:20] is for God the material for its future glorious form.

Thus, theses 35 and 36, takes us further beyond the border: the human just as the whole creation is material for the future in the hands of God. Raw material for a future form. There is here a displacing move: Luther reading Paul as a theologian interprets anthropologically but bursts the limits of the human; as a result, the human is delimited. The human is a little part of a whole. Creation, that is, the whole universe, is justified by faith. Echoing in the previous readings, these theses deliver us highly condensed material: faith defines the human, and, in a wider frame, faith defines the whole creation; the human along with the whole creation is material for their future form; all this is related to the theological formulation of “salvation by grace.”32 LUTHER AFTER DERRIDA The previous exploration into the gap opened by the readings and consideration of Luther’s sola fide in view of Derrida’s approach to “faith” lets us perceive some discourteous anthropological notions facing current positions. If we accept the anthropological implications evident in the works of Luther in the light of deconstruction, and follow the position of this work in finding a premodern-postmodern interaction on this issue, what could we (re) discover? Here I assume that those perceptions meet some of our present theological concerns, for instance: What does it mean to be human in the Anthropocene—the age of late capitalism and global warming? How can we speak about God in such a context? More precisely, assuming that faith is a preconstitutive bond of any relation to the other and, as such, constitutive of

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the human although not exclusively so, what theological insights could we receive? I shall sketch here some reflections prompted by these queries. Justice Derrida receives a definition of justice that he loves, that of Levinas, who affirms that “justice is the relation to the other” (VR, 17). Indeed, Derrida thinks that it is at the same time as simple and as tremendously meaningful as this: “Once you relate to the other as the other, then something incalculable comes on the scene, something which cannot be reduced to the law or to the history of legal structures” (VR, 17). It is in this sense that he thinks that the worst, that which is most unjust, happens in the affirmation of oneness, homogeneity, sameness. For justice occurs where there is non-identity with oneself, in endless inadequacy. Reading Luther after Derrida, this inspires theology to reconsider the “new definition” of justice that he found. As observed, this justice is not something we achieve by fulfilling the law, it rather involves perceiving the impossibility of self-fulfillment and self-realization. This sort of justice is, in fact, to be snatched out of ourselves by the other. This implies the disturbance of our own plans and programs—of who knows what sorts of compensations, retributions, punishments, or revenges. Actually, this justice implies the shattering of the ideal state of harmony and appropriateness in our dealings. In fact, what sort of institutional restrictions do we force on this justice, which is the faith of Jesus Christ? For the extensiveness of this justice exceeds the insistent minute repetition of our own codes and procedures. The challenge of the faith of Jesus Christ consists of a justice that disrupts anthropology and theology as it constitutes the immeasurable relationship to the other. And this always means the interruption of the same. The Call of the Other In their resourceful languages, Luther after Derrida—and Derrida always after Luther—let us think that for all that lives, living means being called into life and death. All life is welcomed and put into time, that is, history: the simultaneous opening toward memory and future unlocking the present. Besides, being called means that what is other is crucial for the constitution of the living. However, the human—as self, subject, and species—like any ipseity, looks for its own, investing into what is proper, individual, and identity reinforcing. This goes together with calculation, program, mastery—in brief, all sorts of maneuvers by which it searches to shape past and future for its own profit. Human will is thus a captive to its ends. As inhabitants of an era in which the impact of our species has notorious consequences on the

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planet, it is crucial to admit that the homo sapiens sapiens easily fall into a deceitful choking grip: the seductive illusion of realization, attainment, and self-making turns humans blind to our constitutive bond to the other. In this regard, the displacement of the metaphysical ideas about the human envisioned by both Luther and Derrida opens a gap where faith appears under a revealing light. From being considered a highly complex conception to which human beings arrive through their own capacities, Luther’s theology portrays faith as a constitutive call. Faith decenters the human self as it opens a breach toward an outer call, interrupting the asphyxiating closure of what we never completely are, that is, “ourselves.” We are constituted as singularities in the very act that delimits us, frustrating what we are not: autonomous self-identities. In the light of what Derrida envisioned about this issue, Luther’s theology can only inspire our present concerns to recalibrate the expansive anthropologies of the age: to this calling, to this welcome of the other, one can only answer— has already answered—even if one thinks one is saying “no” (EW, 261). We are constituted as singularities in the very act by which we are granted to grasp that this particular miracle that life is, with its incommensurable configurations, does not proceed from ourselves: it is a gift we receive with and from other(s). Beyond the Human Luther’s theology provides discontinuities that open a different understanding of what “being created with others” means. His theology about creation is deeply related to that of justification, and envisages the communion of all. For Luther, the totality of creation—living and nonliving, human and nonhuman—is in need of salvation and the God that creates is not indifferent, but continuously sustains and provides for all. Luther’s theology after Derrida’s deconstruction, let us find a displacing reading with regard to the human as species. Both authors focus on the philosophical description of the human delimited against its others via the having or not having of the logos and both of them find such demarcation as not truthful. In Luther we unearth a fruitful theological insight on those aspects that all the living share, his theology preaches to us, inhabitants of the Anthropocene. All that lives suffers—and to a large extent, by human-caused pains—all that lives groans and communicates its agony in its own speech, all that lives lives in expectancy. In fact, nonhuman life has its own languages and communicates itself without the need of human mediation. It seems that the fundamental relation between the human and other species is not one of radical difference but one of constitutional likeness: we all suffer, groan, and travail, we express ourselves and ask

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for deliverance. Actually, Luther’s theology underlines that the difference is rather a matter of innocence and non-innocence; in fact, “homo incurvatus in se” is an affirmation of the non-innocence of the anthropos. Yet, not a single creature is self-justified. All living things, and the very cosmos, receive justice through faith and by grace. Furthermore, echoing his readings of scripture, Luther’s philosophical and theological discussions enable us to find an affirmation of outstanding cosmological character: human beings and all creation are raw material for their future form. Besieged by the menace of our doings, the dislocating force of sola fide allows us all to be embraced by a memory and a hope that exceeds the idiotic narrowness of human programs and ends. The Form of Faith Theological language is vastly metaphoric—in effect, all language is elementally metaphorical, Derrida would say. Language and its metaphors are obstinate: we cannot get rid of them. Yet, we can choose diverse intonations for them (WD, 114). Luther’s theology picks up old metaphors and uses them in new ways as it addresses faith—shall we do the same? In fact, we have already started, and may continue deploying the metaphor of “format” uttering the language of a fides Christo formata into new tones. Derrida reads Heidegger on technoscience and informatization. On how the human is “formatted” by a principle of integral calculability, which does not just inform but gives form: “It installs man [sic] in a form that permits him [sic] to ensure his [sic] mastery on earth and beyond” (PR, 14; emphasis added).33 For Derrida—as we have observed—this obeys a certain emphasis on the way we heed the summons of reason and he proposes, instead, that mastery be weakened. For the immune format of ipseity and sovereignty needs to be confronted with its vulnerability—not in order to fix it, but in order to recognize it and surrender to it. It is the need of the other that renders “the one” vulnerable and faith is the new format that opens toward heterogeneity, heteronomy, dissymmetry, and multiplicity. We may say that faith as the answer to the call of the other is, in fact, the marker that an autoimmune condition is going on. We, children of the Anthropocene, read Luther after Derrida and may discern the form of faith, which is in the form of Christ—who justifies and saves into a new format, an actual futural form of the human, of the world, of the cosmos. And, we may perceive that this new format does not obey fixed programs; it is not ruled by a principle of integral calculability. Firstly, because the form of Christ is an “open format” belonging in an “open source” involving all: human and nonhuman, living and nonliving. Secondly, because any of its programs are always vulnerable and already infected by the need of the

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other. Thirdly, because it is rather imbued by an “aneconomic exchange”— and for such reason, the exchange is called admirabile, marvelous.34 Under such format of aneconomic economy, all that is mine is yours and all that is yours is mine and one can never predict how things will turn out. Such is the saving form of the faith of Jesus Christ. Yet, the “of” of this faith is provoking, because it is always about the faith “of” the other. It is about the “of” of otherness and the “of” of a shared faith. Our Shared Faith Faith interrupts the closing up of oneness. In faith, both Luther and Derrida see vulnerability: the need of the other. This invites us to resume the matter of this “of,” for there is much ambiguity: Is it me in need of the other? Is it the other in need of me? Is it the need of the other in me? All and each one of them, even those that we cannot enumerate (especially those, Derrida would say). “For I am yours, and you are mine” Luther captured in one of his hymns.35 This is the form of this faith, the faith of the other. If medieval theologies had great difficulties trying to imagine godly purity within a finite sinful creature (Ozment 1980, 31), Luther’s instead rescued a marvelous (scandalous) exchange. We still cannot avoid speaking about “you” and “me,” but as Luther’s work meticulously explored what we receive from Christ and what Christ takes from us, it provokes us to keep imagining: after Derrida we perceive that the borders are constitutively related. Reading Luther after Derrida we may continue to consider that this new format cannot be just machinal program and mastery fed by calculation. The form of the faith of Jesus Christ appears indeed as that which prevents the machinal compulsion of the human and also the machinal sovereignty of God—so tremendous, but so easily exploited (the Deus ex machina). Human and cosmos need the God made flesh in order not to turn into program, calculation, machine. God needs the human and the cosmos in order not to turn into Machine. We may bring up again the “open format.” Regina Spektor provides inspiring images in postmodern tone and tune: “I collect my moments / Into a correspondence / With a mightier power / Who just lacks my perspectives / And who lacks my organics / And who covets my defects / And I’m downloaded daily / I am part of a composite” (Spektor 2009, track 5). Spektor sees us “hooked into Machine”—and “Machine” stands here for the perfect realization of power through technoscience and informatization at the service of the homogenizing spirit of late capitalism. Yet our theological imagination may deconstructively think unio cum Christo as “being hooked” but to this open source, which lets us all participate in a “generalized de-machinazing composite”: that (hu)man without whom God cannot be God, that God without which the human cannot be human(e), this whole cosmos

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without which God cannot be God, and the human cannot be human(e). Thus, the yes of the other, the pledge of the other works in every way; it is a generalized need, a weakness of the other for the other, of otherness longing for inhabiting and being inhabited. There is some violence here. However, it is the least violence of weakness, of letting the other in, a violence that can confront the worst one that sieges our world. It is the least violence of faith opening pronominal resistances, interrupting the realization of pure sameness. “What disrupts the totality is the condition for the relation to the other,” Derrida observed (VR, 13). The “mightier power” needs our perspective, our defects, and our organics, and, as we all, it needs to be part of a composite. It is rather discourteous to point our finger to the weaknesses of others yet, this shared faith is not selective, it spells a “discourteous notion” affecting all: the human, the cosmos, and God. Sick with Love This “discourteous notion” implied by sola fide points toward the other, without whom one cannot be one (and one is thus always more than one). We may say that “we” are never “one,” whether God, human, or any other of the numerous species. In line with the idea of opening, of otherness, of outside and inside, we may perhaps rarefy those old theological terms so present also in Luther’s writings: extra nos, in nos, pro nobis. Even in the most orthodox “Lutheran” way—in which “imputation” happens outside of us—Christ dwells in us. And, as we shall see, what Luther’s theology understood about Christ is that “[a]part from this human being there is no God” since “[t]he humanity is more closely united with God than our skin with our flesh” (LW 37:218–19). Derrida’s deconstruction declares that “[t]he outside bears with the inside a relationship that is, as usual, anything but simple exteriority. The meaning of the outside was always present within the inside, imprisoned outside the outside, and vice versa” (OG, 35). In this sense, the decentering and the interruption of any ipseity is the opening to an “other outside” that turns into the “other inside.” It makes sense, then, to envision that faith implies an alien invasion due to a constitutive failure; an autoimmune reaction keeping things going. Perhaps we may ask if God dies from some sort of massive autoimmunity since Jesus Christ—God for us—is a severe self-exposure to the human and, as well, to the whole cosmos.36 While the classic theological concern is generally set in keeping christology from being absorbed into anthropology, Luther lets us envision anthropology and cosmology desperately embraced by christology. Unlike other forms of mysticism, Luther’s unio cum Christo is not the absorption of the other into the one but the inscription of otherness as a discontinuation of the one. We may thus think about a nonhierarchical asymmetry, a dissymmetry,

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a “web of otherness” woven by faith and graciously held in love. Luther’s considerations about faith enable us to imagine God, Christ, and the cosmos as a web of loving otherness. This may be the Spirit of a “generalized auto-immunization”—actually, the very condition of being “sick with love” (Song of Songs 5:8). NOTES 1. See chapter 9. 2. See chapters 4 and 9. 3. See chapters 5 and 7. 4. The ambiguity in the subjective/objective possibilities of the genitive in this “of” is noticed and deployed by Derrida. I resume this issue under “The Faith of the Other,” and reading Luther after Derrida, under “Our Shared Faith.” 5. See chapter 5. 6. See chapter 5. 7. “A Number of Yes” (NY) is, precisely, the title of an essay by Derrida published in 1987. Rereading Michel de Certeau, he elaborated there on the motif of the two “yesses.” 8. The issue is discussed mainly in his “Geschlecht II: Heidegger’s Hand” (1987 [1985]), Of Spirit (1989 [1987]), For what tomorrow (2004 [2001]), Rogues (2005 [2003]), and The Animal that Therefore I am (2008 [2006], based on texts from 1997 and 2003). 9. “Omnino nos nihil in nobis salutis habemus,” Gl. Ps. 53:3. 10. “Homo spiritualis nititur fide.” See Ozment (1969, 2); Steinmetz (1980b, 37). 11. See chapter 6. 12. “Mira et nova diffinitio iusticie, cum usitate sic describatur: ‘Iusticia est virtus reddens unicuique, quod suum est.’ Hic vero dicit: ‘Iusticia est fides Ihesu Christi,’” Scholion to Galatians 2:16. English version from McGrath (2005, 223). 13. The rendering of both the Latin “fides Christi” and the Greek “pistis Christou” is ambiguous: “faith in/of Jesus Christ.” Here, I use one or the other with the awareness of this ambiguity, which gains potentiality in the use of the “of.” As discussed above, the objective and/or subjective genitive implied in the “of” carries a number of displacing readings; see under “The Faith of the Other.” 14. As Oberman observes, the tradition of fides charitate formata “can be found with Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Gabriel Biel, et al., including the Council of Trent” (Oberman 1966, 20). 15. “Cum sine verbo promittentis & fide suscipientis nihil possit nobis esse cum Deo negotii,” Letter to Spalatin, 1519. 16. “Doch ob wol die zwey stueck, Verheissung und Glaube, bey einander sein mussen, Denn wo nicht verheissung ist, da kan kein glaube sein. Und wo nicht glaube ist, da wird die verheissung zu nicht,” Treatise on the Last Words of David (1543).

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17. It was Steven Ozment who introduced the notion of an alteration of the “boundary situation” of believers produced by the nominalist theology of the via moderna (Ozment 1978, 270–71). I refer to this matter in chapter 8. 18. In his work Homo Spiritualis (1969), Ozment searched minutely in those texts analyzing how Luther’s glosses show his early anthropological considerations in relation to faith. I resume this topic below under “De-Substantial Self and World.” 19. Staupitz most specially, see chapter 8. 20. I have introduced this aspect of the mystical tradition in chapter 8. 21. This image is to be read critically from feminist and queer theories; however, it is used as a metaphor and Luther himself doubts the exemplarity of human marriages: “And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage—indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage—it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil” (LW 31:352). 22. In the background of this is Luther’s distinct soteriological christology and his radical use of the communicatio idiomatum as a way of expressing what goes on in the christological dogma. I elaborate on this in chapter 12. 23. “Substance in scripture is used as a metaphor with a grammatical rather than physical meaning” [substantia in Scriptura metaphorice accipitur tam ex grammaticali quam physicali significatione], Schol. to Ps 68:2 (WA 3:419, 25–26). Since the new Finnish interpretation of Luther emerged, by the end of last century, there has been an ongoing discussion about what “ontologic” means with reference to Luther’s theology (see Risto Saarinen 2007, 170–71). It seems that in his early Bible readings, Luther himself felt the need to delimit the issue, here with reference to the “substance” of faith. 24. “In order that the faithful . . . have faith, which is a different substance, viz., God’s substance” [ . . . ut fideles . . . habeant autem fidem pro eis, que est substantia alia, scil. substantia Dei] (WA 3:440, 36–38). 25. “Est in agendo, in fieri, non in actu aut facto, nec in esse. Es ist noch jhm bau,” Promotion Disputation of Palladius and Tilemann (Rom 3:28). 26. See chapter 6. 27. See chapter 8. 28. “Christus enim non nisi in peccatoribus habitat,” Letter to Georg Spenlein, April 8, 1516 (WABr 1:35, 29; see Ozment 1969, 184ff). 29. “Jch gleube, das mich Gott geschaffen hat sampt allen Creaturn” (WA 30.I:363, 2). The two catechisms were written in German and immediately translated into Latin in the year 1529; for an introduction to the two pieces see Friedrich Bente (1921, 84–101). Citations here are from Tappert (1959), since this—as other English translations—is based on both the German and the Latin version, the exact references to WA are rendered impossible, the texts of the catechisms are found in WA 30.I, 125–425. 30. See, for instance, Arand (2006, 5), Bayer (1994, 140–43), Clough (2009, 20–21), Tyra (2013). 31. See above under “Luther’s perception about faith” and chapter 9. 32. Issue that advances the theme of chapter 11: Sola Gratia. 33. See chapter 5.

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34. I resume the matter of the “aneconomic exchange” in chapter 11. 35. It is a verse of the seventh stanza of “Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice” (1523). [Nun freut euch, heben Christen gmein (LW 53:217–20; WA 35:422–25)]. I came to this verse through Oswald Bayer’s reading of this hymn in christological key (Bayer 1996). 36. I resume the implications of this massive autoimmunity and the challenging perception that “bad things actually happen to God” in chapter 12.

11

Sola Gratia The Aneconomy of the Gift

Approaching the thought of the wholly other, Luther’s and Derrida’s perceptions mirror each other in a paradoxical aspect: for them, the thought of otherness—which is in itself an experience of the impossible—obliges into language and implies faith.1 Regarding this, we have considered a definition of justice that places it precisely in the relation to the other as other, and for this reason, it cannot be anticipated, calculated, or programmed.2 Reading Luther’s theology and Derrida’s deconstruction we find that, for both authors, justice actually occurs as a gift—by grace and through faith, theologically speaking. After working on sola fide in the previous chapter, here I assume that there is in Derrida a deconstructive twist about “the gift” that echoes in Luther’s understanding of the sola gratia. In the light of this, the works of both authors, while imparting offensive ethical declarations, open new enriching ways of approaching the issue. As I trail the motif of sola gratia reading Luther after Derrida, I shall explore with theological interest into this open gap in order to rediscover and value the deconstructive drive. GIFT In previous chapters, I have explored the gift with reference to knowledge. I have observed how in both Luther’s theology and Derrida’s deconstructive thought, knowledge of the wholly other is in itself impossible and, one way or another, points to the cross. Following Luther, the hidden God—which cannot be perceived as such—takes the believer to the experience of the crucified God, which is God “hidden under its opposite.” Thus, the deus absconditus and the theologia crucis weave an unsolvable tension of hiddenness and revelation, keeping theological thought at work. Following Derrida, the motifs of “khōra” and “the messianic”—which refer to the (im)possible 189

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relation with total alterity—lead to a “desert in the desert.” The persistent indecision about revelation and revealability portrayed in such image is what Derrida calls “my cross.” Indeed, for both authors complete otherness cannot be approached rationally or phenomenologically. The (im)possible experience of the relation with the other, which does not obey a logic of intention or intuition, has to do with the occurrence of an event that happens as a gift. However, there is one aspect of the elucidations about the gift that deserves a more detailed examination, this is the dimension of the human being as an agent subject. Specifically, how do all these considerations about “otherness” and “the gift” impinge on human will and action in our daily experience? Although “knowing” and “doing” cannot be easily extricated from each other, we shall now focus on the different ways in which they are challenged by the paradox of the gift. Economy Derrida’s deconstructive reflections about the gift make people quite uncomfortable. In fact, his ruminations displace classical views on the issue not only on philosophical, but on anthropological, sociological, and psychological grounds.3 However, the main impact of his ideas on the issue is economic. Since the dynamics of the gift are generally placed within a context of exchange and reciprocity, Derrida would assert that it is precisely there where the gift is inevitably destroyed. In fact, the need of recognition, mutuality, and symmetry inherent to the very economy of the gift actually annuls it. Or worst, such economy turns the gift into something bad: “Poisonous (Gift, gift), and this from the moment the gift puts the other in debt, with the result that giving amounts to hurting, to doing harm” (GT, 12).4 In view of this, for Derrida, a pure gift would be an impossible possibility. As he examines this paradox, Derrida underlines the logic of the circle. Economy, actually, goes “round” completing a circle: “circular exchange, circulation of goods, products, monetary signs or merchandise, amortization of expenditures, revenues, substitution of use values and exchange values” (GT, 6). Indeed, honoring the law of the house (oikos) to which economy refers etymologically (oikonomia), the circularity of economy pursues always the return, the “coming back home.” However, if one gives expecting a return, whether a word of gratitude or a counter-gift, one is already cancelling the gift. Even when we say, “thank you” for a gift we receive, we start “destroying the gift, by proposing an equivalence, that is, a circle which encircles the gift in a movement of reappropriation” (VR, 17). Here lies part of the impossibility of the gift: “The simple identification of the gift seems to destroy it” (GT, 14). As soon as a gift is recognized as such, it vanishes.

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Furthermore, the logic of the circle implies time. The circle of exchange occurs in time because the presentation of a gift already sets the timer on for when return will come, whenever that may be. However, even if it seems that the gift appears as such—that is, it becomes present—what is present in time is actually “a present” and not a gift (GT, 9)! Within the circularity of time, we regularly exchange presents but not gifts. In relation to this, exchange also implies debt: giving and receiving presents opens the horizon of time to “a chain of creditors and debtors” (Caputo 1997a, 163). As we well know, credits and debts are always surrounded by program, calculation, speculation, and timing. So here we find another aspect of impossibility, because a real gift cannot be calculated or programmed, and produces neither credit nor debt (GT, 12–13). The challenge would be then to consider the gift outside of this economic horizon with its implicit circularity, time, credits, calculation, debts, and rational agent subjects. This is, precisely, what Derrida proposes as he affirms: “If the figure of the circle is essential to economics, the gift must remain aneconomic” (GT, 7; Derrida’s emphasis). But, how can an “aneconomic gift” be possible? For the problem is that if a “real” gift—that is, one outside the boundaries of economy—could ever happen, we would not be able to recognize it. A real gift can never be perceived “as such”; it cannot be identified either theoretically or phenomenologically. In fact, the gift escapes intention and intuition, and evades the subject-object relationship (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 59). In the face of this, Derrida’s tricky proposal is: “We can think what we cannot know” (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 60). Although the gift cannot be known, it can be thought of. Yet, thinking the gift is always thinking about what is other and, thus, not an easy job. Thought is always constrained by metaphysics and, as Derrida notes, “[m]etaphysics is economy” (WD, 146; Derrida’s emphasis). Thus, thinking “the other” is the constant fight against the arguments of “the same,” which always wants to tame the other and take it “home” (oikos) in order to reappropriate it (oikonomia). Yet, “economy” does not only carry home, it also carries “the law” (nomos), and, as we shall see, Derrida considers it important to differentiate justice from the law.5 Here, we start to perceive how the thought of an aneconomic gift is a thought of justice. Because, if—following Derrida—we can define justice as the relation to the other as other,6 we may come to understand the impact of this aneconomic attempt. It is precisely while considering this that Derrida makes statements such as, for instance, “J]ustice and gift should go beyond calculation” (VR, 19).

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Disgusting Aneconomic Announcements It is not surprising, then, that the very thought of this aneconomic business becomes offensive. Economy encloses the logic of the same, the one, the own, the proper, which—as we have seen—shapes, as well, the metaphysics of the subject. As Caputo writes, “The ‘I’ is a principle of making expenditures precisely in order to gain a return” (Caputo 1997b, 143; Caputo’s emphasis). Since the economic exchange is tied to who, whom, what, and when, and looks for realization—that is, the closing of the circle—thinking about an aneconomic gift means the disruption of the whole picture. The giver, the receiver, what is given, and when—the warrants of a present transaction comprising subjects and objects—are turned into uncertain facts and blurred as referents. Of course, there can be an anonymous donor and, as well, an ungrateful donee and, sometimes, what is donated and when are not easily defined. Yet, to think about the gift dispensing with all of those certainties at a time is the impossible. All the same, an aneconomic gift cannot be perceived, recognized, or planned, and escapes program, calculation, and repayment. The very idea is outrageous! On the one hand, it puts the gift outside the control of the knowing subject and, consequently, the rational programing of the agent subject is deeply wounded.7 On the other, it deprives the moral act of giving of its expected merit, reward, or recognition. Since the economic exchange tends to keep track of who gives what to whom and when, the obliteration of those certainties appears as a source of injustice. However, this is just one aspect of the uneasiness regarding the issue. When we elaborated on the deconstruction of the conception of the human as subject of knowledge, we came across the question about what happens with the responsibilities of the subject of ethical, juridical, and political duties within this context.8 Here, the matter of responsibility surfaces again facing the paradox of the gift and the deconstruction of the agent subject. What happens to responsibility after this “aneconomic assault”? In order to meet this question we need to ponder on what Derrida uncovers: the displacement of the scenery of the gift makes visible its relation to justice and to the other, taking us to experience the aporia we inhabit. As he observes, “The question of justice, the one that always carries beyond the law, is no longer separated, in its necessity or in its aporias, from that of the gift” (SoM, 30). It is in this paradox of justice and gif that we are introduced to the double bind character of responsibility, which needs to pay heed to ethics, but at the same time to sacrifice it; to hear the claim of universality, but to honor singularity; to reason with the Greeks, but to follow Abraham.

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The Double Bind Responsibility consists in responding, that is, “in answering to the other, before the other and before the law” (GD, 26). Now, how do we respond? As rational human beings, we look for rules to guide our actions, and it is ethics that comes to offer us help. Most dear to the western tradition, backed by its philosophical origins, ethics sets the principles. As a product of the “architectural nature of human reason,”9 it lays foundations and provides criteria for the construction of secure judgments. In this sense, ethics supplies reasons to inform our agency, in such a way that when we step out of its realm, we become irresponsible. However, as Derrida sees, there is no real responsibility in following programs, principles, or rules (VR, 17); it seems that decisions are made and responsibility occurs, precisely, in irresponsibility. Why does this happens? In the search of proportion and equality, in order to respond before the other and before the law, both ethics and the law apply universal principles. Yet, universality is structurally blind to the particularities of the other. Universality misses the other as other, because the other is singular, and whatever fits in the universal loses its uniqueness. For this reason, responsibility—as the response to the call of the other—needs to betray the universality of ethics and of the law. This is, in part, the theme of Derrida’s The Gift of Death as he rereads Kirkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. For the Danish thinker, the motif of the Aqedah illustrates in its monstrosity the paradox of responsibility: Abraham is the one who in response to the call of the other is ready to become most irresponsible, that is, to sacrifice his son, ethics, and the law. As Derrida quotes, “For Abraham, Kierkegaard declares, the ethical is a temptation” (GD, 61; Derrida’s emphasis). Moreover, outside the umbrella of the universal protection of ethics and law, responsibility consists also in being alone. In fact, no one can respond to the other for me, no one can make my decision and, for this reason, when I decide, I am alone in my singularity. This includes secrecy and silence: solitude, secrecy, and silence belong to singularity. (As we can read in the narrative of the Aqedah, Abraham does not speak about the call, he is ready to respond.) As soon as I speak, I enter into the realm of language, which is the realm of the law, thus, I lose singularity: language, ethics, and the law belong to the public sphere and claim universality. As soon as I answer the call of the other following the rules, I betray both my uniqueness and the uniqueness of the “other” as I try to comply with general principles. Justice appears then as what exceeds the universal, meeting the other as other: in its singularity, in my singularity. For these reasons, Derrida affirms that “justice and gift should go beyond calculation” (VR, 19), and he considers both topics together in different occasions. In fact, justice, like the gift, escapes rational program because “[t]o

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speak of justice is not a matter of knowledge, of theoretical judgment . . . [we] cannot calculate justice” (VR, 17). And, in this context, it is important to differentiate justice from the law, that is, from the history of right and legal systems, their constitutions and institutions. In reality, the relation with the other is the place for justice and not for the calculation of restitution, vengeance, or punishment. Because justice cannot be limited “to sanctioning, to restituting, and to doing right,” it happens “as incalculability of the gift and singularity of the an-economic ex-position to others” (SoM, 26). As Derrida elaborates somewhere else, justice is not “distributive justice,” which seeks to repay to each one their own, “it is the experience of the other as other, the fact that I let the other be other, which presupposes a gift without restitution, without reappropriation and without jurisdiction” (‌‌‌‌N, 105). The gift happens in the way justice happens. Nevertheless, the call of the other upon me is absolute: in answering it, I need to betray all other calls. If I honor justice, that is, the other as other in its singularity, I should first break with the aspirations of universality. Here again, but in a different sense, I need to sacrifice ethics in the name of justice. As Derrida underlines following Levinas, “tout autre est tout autre”—every other is absolutely other—but one cannot answer the call of every absolute other. And, in answering one singular other, one sacrifices all others: I know that I can respond only by sacrificing ethics, that is, by sacrificing whatever obliges me to also respond, in the same way, in the same instant, to all the others. I offer a gift of death, I betray, I don’t need to raise my knife over my son on Mount Moriah for that. Day and night, at every instant, on all the Mount Moriahs of this world, I am doing that, raising my knife over what I love and must love, over those to whom I owe absolute fidelity, incommensurably. (GD, 68)

This is not a trap or an intellectual ruse to avoid responsibility; this is a thorn in the flesh. There is “no rest allowed for any form of good conscience” (SoM, xv); every time I respond to the call of the other in listening, in giving, even in loving, I am excluding all others. As Martin Hägglund reflects, even when I do good, I necessarily do evil; every time I respond, I am also excluding others, bound into an economy of violence (Hägglund 2014, 173–74). Thus, we should recall that deconstruction is “a kind of salutary description of the conditions under which we act” (Olthuis 2002, 164). Gift and justice exceed the human as subject of knowledge and agency.

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But Still . . . Therefore, the thought of the gift—in the same way as the thought of justice—leaves us, who are to be responsible, trapped in a double bind. As we have already noticed, deconstruction is always detecting aporias, putting us before undecidable experiences: If the universal claim of ethics and of the law disregards the singularity of the other, are we to act outside of ethics and ignore the law? If the obligation of ethics and of the law obliges me to answer the call of every other—which I cannot do—am I to give up responding to any and every call? Aporia means “no way out,” and deconstruction sticks to this. We inhabit the paradox from within, there where the event of justice may occur. As Derrida explains, every time we critique and improve the law we do it in the name of justice, for it is justice that gives us the impulse to deconstruct the law; we cannot do without the law, but law is always in need of deconstruction (VR, 16). We may think in the same way about the gift and the economy of exchange. Derrida does not mean that the gift does not exist, his question is whether the gift can be detached from all calculating intentions and motives; whether reciprocity and symmetry can be left aside to think something of the order of the unconditional and the unforeseen. It is in this way that we may perceive that the gift is what triggers a certain economy but, at the same time, that the experience of the gift is what interrupts the economic circle of return and exchange (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 59–60). As it always is with deconstruction, the desire to exceed the structure does not mean the possibility of going outside the structure. In the same way as we cannot dispense with ethics or the law, but need to hear the call of the singular other in the name of justice, we cannot either get out of the circle of giving, but must be moved by the desire of exceeding it. As Caputo well observes, “We need to appreciate what is going on with gifts, but still give” (Caputo 1997a, 171). And here is the deconstructive move: what has no room in the economic circle, that is, the “aneconomic gift” is actually what keeps the circle going—there is no economic circle without gift. Yet, the desire to exceed the circle is what upsets and interrupts the zealous drive to close a successful exchange. The gift is the event that happens, breaking the order of which it is part. We cannot program this event, but we are involved in it in ways we cannot foresee. Derrida’s challenge is in announcing that we cannot know an aneconomic gift but we can think of it. Yet, he makes one further step to entice our concerned considerations about human agency. He sees not only the distinction between knowing and thinking but the distinction between knowing and doing: “A gift is something that you do, without knowing who gives the gift, who receives the gift, and so on” (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 60; emphasis added). We act, we do, we inform ourselves in the best ways we can, but a

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gift occurs in spite of and exceeding all programming. A gift occurs without our knowing it. It is in this context that Derrida hints a most inspiring image about this, he speaks of “the gift as a living thread” (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 60). The continuity of life relates to our doing but it occurs beyond our knowledgeable programs of action. Undoubtedly, this leaves us thinking theological thoughts. In fact, it is after these considerations about justice and the gift that, at the “Villanova roundtable,” John D. Caputo poses the question: “Can we talk a little bit about theology?” Then, Derrida replies: “We have started already, but we could continue” (VR, 9). It is time now to think about all this as we read Luther on grace. SOLA GRATIA Luther is very much aware of the implications arising from the issue of justice and the gift. In fact, this matter is in a straight line with the breaking point of his theology and the core of the whole Reformation: the understanding of “justification by grace through faith alone.” It is my assumption that in his theological discoveries about grace, the premodern theologian prefigures aspects of the considerations about the gift in postmodern deconstruction. Along with the displacing of the prevailing conceptions about ethics, the law, human agency, and transcendence, sola gratia puts our human condition under a new light. While moral certainties and principles are quite shaken, amid some offensive ethical declarations, it is possible to envision a peculiar way of relationship with the other. In order to illustrate this, I shall first delineate some of Luther’s findings about grace and how they differ from the teachings of the late medieval church. Secondly, I shall explore some aspects of the conceptual gap that this opens. Finally, reading Luther after Derrida, I shall sketch some theological musings about grace and the human with regard to an issue that totally exceeds the human. Undoubtedly, here again, the scheme is just an effort in pursuing a clearer exposition: elements merge and the richness of the possibilities is vast. Luther’s Discoveries about Grace When considering a way of “knowing otherwise” in the light of Luther’s theologia crucis, we observed how knowledge of God occurs as a gift and, because of this, it is impossible to approach it phenomenologically. A gift cannot be grasped “as such” and meets human beings in a way they cannot program rationally or anticipate intentionally. We have already focused on faith as one of the theological terms that refer to this event, now we shall

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concentrate on grace. As Luther discovers, besides its unusual epistemological effects, sola gratia has peculiar implications with regard to human agency and the justice of God. The “Economy of Grace” In Luther’s time, the Thomist influence was strong in church doctrine. Because of this, the teachings about justification presupposed Aristotle’s conception of natural law and its teleological character. According to such notions, human beings guided by reason are able to discover and pursue both the finality for which they were created and the aims toward which they are naturally oriented. However, since theology understands that human ontological finality is out of the reach of the faculties and power of human actual existence, it provides that, in order to fulfill itself, nature is in need of a supernatural aid, which is grace. Added to the substance and faculties of the soul, as an “accidental form,” grace is received through the sacraments as administered and dispensed by the church. The infusion of grace occurs first in baptism as “prevenient grace” and, in the face of human subsequent sinning, is renewed by means of the sacrament of penance. Justification is thus conceived as a process: infusion of grace, movement of the will toward God, escape and step back from sin, remission of guilt (Ozment 1980, 29–30). The main feature of this understanding of justification is the cooperation between human will and grace, from which faith, hope, and charity are created. Moral good works are judged with regard to both their natural and supernatural finality. Since grace presupposes nature and perfects it, good works are functional for salvation: they achieve not only the forgiving of sin but also the renewal of human nature by the presence of grace as an “habitus,” shaping human acts gradually. As a result, those notions place human moral life within a sacramental, church- centered structure pivoting around penance. In addition, the conception of justice as “rendering to each one their due” applied to divine justice was fully operational in late medieval theology. Then, with reference to this general outline about justification and grace, the scholastic theology according to the via antiqua affirmed that prevenient grace was an enabling element granted by God to the believers in order that they may achieve good works and receive justification in return. According to the later approach of the via moderna, grace itself is to be won by human effort “doing their best,” and once grace is infused in return, it will work as an extra aid to human endeavor for obtaining God’s justification as a just reward (Ozment 1980, 233–34). Conversely, the humanists—in spite of criticizing the cumbersome ways of the scholastics—went along with their teachings in this respect; furthermore, they reinforced the ideal of a human free will able to choose and work for their own salvation.

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Nevertheless, an important aspect of those teachings and practices is the dissociation of justification from salvation. It is in this regard that Berndt Hamm observes that the justification of the sinner “possessed no eschatological final validity” (Hamm 2015, 141). Within this order of salvation, sinners are justified through the infused habit of grace but only receive their salvation—eternal life—after death in their individual judgment. As Hamm describes, between justification and salvation lies “the long path of purification from sin, sanctification, the inculcating of love and fulfillment of the law, works of merit and satisfaction, all of which serve to make the sinner worthy of the heavenly reward” (Hamm 2015, 141). In the beliefs of the late medieval church, the viator status of the Christian life is essentially a progression paved by meritorious accomplishment. In sum, the prevalent teachings about grace and justification in Luther’s time implicated an important amount of human rational initiative, moral cooperation, endeavor, improvement, and merit. For late medieval religiosity, present justification and future salvation rested on the assumptions of human freedom to choose and do good works, of God repaying moral efforts, and always of some exchange—institutionally facilitated—running the process: an actual “economy of grace.” The Disruption of the Economy As an active scholar, Luther was fully acquainted with Aristotle’s Physics, Metaphysics, and Ethics, he had read the main scholastic teachers both of the via antiqua and moderna, as well as the humanists. Consequently, his stand against scholasticism and humanism about justification was well-informed. As early as his Lectures on Romans (1515–1516) we find the record of an astonishing conclusion: “Hence, only grace justifies” (WA 56:255, 19; emphasis added).10 Later on, the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology (1517) includes affirmations such as: “Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace” and “No one can become a theologian unless they become one without Aristotle” (LW 31:12). In the same year, the implications of that “only grace” inspired his ninety-five thesis questioning the indulgences. In his Explanations of the ninety-five theses (1518), Luther refers to the whole system of the indulgences in general and to the indulgence sellers (who frightened the believers), in particular: I do not know whether or not those who speak in such a manner want to make God a usurer or a dealer, one who remits nothing to us gratis but who expects us to make a satisfaction as payment for the remission. Or do these men desire, perhaps, that we should bargain with the justice of God regarding our sins, before which justice no person can be justified? (LW 31:117)

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Some months earlier, in April 1518, Luther’s disputation presented at the Augustinian chapter in Heidelberg had reinforced the new theological perceptions, and the law, human free will, and works had been debated quite thoroughly. As it happened with sola fide, the theological formulation of sola gratia dislocated the penitential doctrines of the time challenging the current “economy of grace.” In fact, this new understanding disrupted every aspect of an established scenery, subverting and displacing its implied dynamics. I shall elaborate briefly on some aspects of what Luther lets us see. Grace Is the Gift of God 11 Luther’s rediscovery of the justice of God as revealed in the faith of Jesus Christ implies as well the rediscovery of grace. In The Freedom of a Christian (1520), he states that “to justify and to save by faith belongs to the grace of God alone” (LW 31:363), and in a later work he refers to justification as the “indescribable gift of God” (LW 26:6). Indeed, in proclaiming the faith of Jesus Christ, Luther is stating that justice is no human work but the unmerited gift of God in Christ, out of pure grace. It is important to remark that in the early readings on Romans, Luther relates gift to grace; there he comments that “our justice is free gift and grace” and, more precisely, that “‘the grace of God’ and ‘the gift’ are the same thing, namely, the very justice which is freely given to us through Christ” (LW 25:48; 306). Thus he pronounces in a sermon of 1528, reflecting on the promise of Immanuel in Isaiah 7:14: “Emmanuel, that is, God is with us, means that we have God, God was given to us, God is our own, God gave Godself to us to own” (WA 27:481, 6–7).12 Those scriptural findings echo in Luther’s readings of the Christian confessions as he later would express them in his catechetical writings. Explaining the creed, he clarifies the character of the gift, when on the first article he affirms that God the Father “has given Godself to us” (LC II.24). Subsequently, in the Christological article, he describes: “Here we learn to know the second person of the Godhead, and we see what we receive from God over and above— that is, how God has completely given Godself to us, withholding nothing” (LC II.26). On the third article he declares that we would never know of Christ and the treasure of salvation unless these were first “bestowed on our hearts” by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel into his holy community (LC II.37–38). In effect, from the beginning, Luther summarizes how the trinitarian God gives Godself completely: “The Father has given himself to us . . . and, further, has showered us with inexpressible eternal treasures through his Son and the Holy Spirit” (LC II.24). And all this, we may perceive, within a non-transactional economy: Luther also makes clear that it happens “out of [God’s] pure love and goodness, without our merit” (LC II.17).

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We may say that Luther emphasizes grace as the gift of Godself in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The justice of God through faith by grace means the indescribable gift of an all-encompassing participation of God who assumes the human and the whole creation in Jesus Christ. If the faith of Jesus Christ is rediscovered as the interruption of a vicious economic circle, then grace turns visible as the gift of Godself, which creates, saves, and sustains. Thus justice occurs unconditionally, by sola gratia, and the “giver” of the gift gives themself completely: the giver is the gift. Grace is the gift of Godself. Grace Is Not “a Thing” Hence Luther discovers grace not as “something added” to the soul of believers but as the disposition of God toward the human and the whole creation: grace as the gift of God. It is for this reason that Luther’s theology thwarts the reification of grace and, in so doing, rejects also its commodification. Grace is not a thing or a merchandise to barter upon. The justice of God, which is the faith of Jesus Christ, is given out of pure grace as a gift, and this is what triggers the seismic force of the theses on the indulgences. Luther refers to what is at stake on this debate in his letter to Albrecht Hohenzollern, archbishop of Mainz: “The unhappy souls believe that if they have purchased letters of indulgence they are sure of their salvation . . . For this reason I have no longer been able to keep quiet about this matter, for it is by no gift of a bishop that one becomes sure of salvation” (WML 1:26). In a world where the economic system is changing, flourishing financial transactions are not indifferent to religious matters. And the particular indulgence trading that the reformer is questioning had been issued by the archbishop of Mainz in order to repay the Fuggers’ bank house the loan granted to him to buy his episcopal see.13 In this context, the point Luther makes is strong: grace entails a relationship not based on current “economical exchange”—for it is neither something to purchase nor the transacted “gift of a bishop.” Grace is the gift of Godself and there is nothing to exchange when nothing is asked in return. In the light of this, it is possible to state with Kathryn Kleinhans that, for Luther, “The grace received through faith is relational, not transactional (Kleinhans 2013, 185). When justice occurs by sola gratia, by Godself given completely in Jesus Christ, the “thing”—which is a part in any economical exchange circle—is not such, and what is given falls off the radar of calculation and control. Luther perceived that there is no-thing to trade upon and no-body can make a deal; grace is not “a thing” negotiated by anybody.

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Grace Belongs with Justice In the Heidelberg Disputation (1518), Luther clearly delineates some paradoxical findings. As we have observed, he finds that the law of God does not advance, but actually hinders human beings on their way to righteousness; what appears to be an attractive and good work is prone to turn into mortal sin; free will is not free, and human beings do not do the best doing their best. Besides, he discovers that the justice of Jesus Christ is not “distributive justice,” therefore, we do not get what we deserve. In reality, the grace of God turns into a gift as we realize that there is nothing we can do to attain it. Then justice, which is commonly mixed up with the fulfilment of the law and the pursuing of ethical principles, turns into something different as it is produced by grace. Luther finds in scripture that human will is not free but captive; hence, we could never know, choose or do what is good for God and for our neighbor. In effect, how can we achieve a perfect love of God and neighbor if with our good works we pursue our own justification? Is it possible to be selfless for the sake of one’s own self? If good works are done just seeking our own, they are no longer good; and when our purpose in life is just looking out for our own good we are absolutely not free. Human beings neither want nor can, by our own resources, fulfill the ethical standards or comply with the precepts of the law: “A good law will of necessity be bad for the natural will. Law and will are two implacable foes without the grace of God” (LW 31:14). Out of our own will and righteousness, Luther observes, “we do nothing even when we do much; we do not fulfill the Law even when we fulfill it” (LW 26:8). Thus, thinking ourselves able to achieve justice in this way is in itself a denial of our limitations and sinfulness. Grace produces justice, but not our own. In discovering grace not as some divine addition to human nature in order to perfect it, but as relationship with God, Luther affirms that grace and faith belong together. This lets us consider that faith is the means for participation in justice, and grace is the way in which justice occurs. Most importantly, grace is the liberation of the human from the frustrating attempts to work and achieve their own salvation. In this sense, our “investments” never come home and what we receive is not related to what we do or give. Sola gratia interrupts the economic circle, it produces a justice that is foreign to calculation and program. Grace Sets Human Giving Free Unconditional and, thus, foreign to transactions, grace sets the human free to serve others. Luther’s theology underlines that our payment or efforts are not needed by God, but good works are needed by those around us, here and now.

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Justice by grace through faith means that human doing springs actually from God sharing Godself with us. This is what Oberman described as the “horizontalization” of good works, when he affirmed that “Luther horizontalized Christian ethics: he transferred its goal from Heaven to earth. Good works are not required for salvation but are crucial for surviving in a threatened world” (Oberman 1989, 80). This shift is already visible in thesis 45 about the indulgences: “Christians are to be taught that they who see a needy person and pass them by, yet give their money for indulgences, do not buy papal indulgences but God’s wrath” (LW 31:26). In effect, what occurs is not that good works are rejected but that “they are no longer done to please God but to serve the world” (Oberman 1989, 192). In Luther’s theology grace operates what Vítor Westhelle would name the “latitudinal” aspect of eschatology, impacting on the topos of salvation (Westhelle 2012, 78). Justice happening by grace transforms completely both the “giving” and “receiving,” and also the “where” and “when.” It is for this that sola gratia implies both a different anthropology and a different eschatology. The envisioned profile of “receiver” and “giver” is upset, together with the timing and the scenery. Taking into consideration the previous affirmations, we may see how Luther’s new theology of grace operates a deconstructive displacement in relation to a certain economy present in the current teachings on justification of his time. His perceptions dislocate the vicious circle of the penitential dynamic in the late medieval church and the impact works in all aspects: with regard to the giver, with regard to the receiver, with regard to what is received and given, with regard to the where and when grace occurs—in sum, with regard to the exchange economy itself. As we start to see how grace and gift belong together in Luther’s theology, we observe that sola gratia produces a real “aneconomy of grace.” EXPLORING INTO THE GAP Luther’s findings about grace displace the prevailing conceptions about ethics, the law, human agency, and transcendence. The aneconomy of grace produced by the affirmation of sola gratia spells some offensive ethical declarations challenging moral certainties and principles. Yet, because of this, the human condition is put under new consideration opening the way to a different relationship with the other. Here I propose to explore into this open gap.

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(Un)Ethical Declarations Underlining the difference between the “justice of grace” and the “justice of the law,” in his Lectures on Galatians (1535), Luther makes a number of outrageous declarations, as for instance: “It is a marvelous thing and unknown to the world to teach Christians to ignore the Law and to live before God as though there were no Law whatever.” In effect, as he continues elaborating, living up to grace—which is the “indescribable gift of God”—means for Christians to ignore law, works, and any active justice (LW 26:6). It is not surprising that this results are hard to digest for, in the light of it, being justified by grace involves an utterly counterfactual notion, that is, the idea of a passive righteousness. As Luther realizes, this is something that not only the world does not understand, but believers themselves do not adequately grasp (LW 26:5). In reality, what we meet here is one of the paradoxes into which Luther runs: although the law is “the best of all things in the world,” it does not save us because we fulfill it, but rather because we continuously fail to do so.14 Luther’s point is that before the law “sin becomes exceedingly sinful” and only in the face of such a reality do human beings face their limitations. It is in the presence of total despair with regard to a self-generated salvation that the promise in the scripture opens its way. This is why the words “You are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:14) can only encounter humans in their passivity. Being justified by grace means to stop our own works in order to be worked upon—although, as Luther reflects, “To do this is beyond human power and thought. Indeed, it is even beyond the Law of God” (LW 26:5). Actually, being met by the good news of the gospel implies being “outside” the law.15 Thus, what Luther remarks is true regarding both the teachings and beliefs of his age and also some in our present times: “It is inevitable that they be offended, for they cannot see any higher than the Law. Therefore whatever is above the Law is the greatest possible offense to them” (LW 26:8). Provided that “law” stands also for moral and ethical commandments, principles, rules, and procedures, the cause of offense continues to build up. It is within this theological context, paralleling Kierkegaard’s perception, that it can be said, according to Luther, that the law is our temptation: self-righteous people need to make sure they are not counted among the immoral, lest of all, among the outlaws. Luther refers to this, when he writes about the “human weakness and misery” that, before the terrors of conscience and the panic of death, look for salvation in “our own works, our worthiness, and the Law” (LW 26:5). It is easy to understand that the ethical implications of Luther’s distinct theology of justification has, as Bernd Wannenwetsch points out, “elicited a degree of passionate apologetic and repudiation rare among theological ethics” (Wannenwetsch 2003, 120). The existence of such

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conflicts is manifest at present as it was at the time of Luther’s writings, as we may see in those annotations on Galatians. However, it is before God (coram deo) that human beings need to live “as though there were no law”; the opposite happens as we live with others in the world (coram mundo). The “justice of the Law,” which will never justify or save us is, at the same time, necessary. Within society, paying heed to ethics and doing good works is a crucial aspect of sharing life with others. The law does not operate the justice of God, which occurs by grace and calls for human passivity; yet, the law protects and promotes life and well-being calling for human activity. Soteriological passivity does not imply ethical passivity: there is a “justice of grace” and a “justice of the law,” and Luther insists in differentiating between them. It is only under grace that we can understand the difference, although we are never free of constant struggle. The law applies to the “old human,” who is oppressed by its burden; it is only by “putting on” the “new human” that one enjoys the freedom of grace by faith in Christ—nevertheless, “this does not happen fully in this life” (LW 26:7). We may say that, above all, Luther realizes that humans are prone to deal with God and others by means of transactions that we can program to meet our own needs. Within this context, justice is calculated as a pattern of exchange and reciprocity, of giving in order to receive, of everyone getting their due, of reward and punishment. Unexpectedly, such sinfully disgusting reality is the landscape of sola gratia: the uncalculated, unthought-of scenery for an aneconomic gift. Free Servants and Slave Masters It is in a previous work of Luther that we can find a companion text to this ethical paradox we are reviewing. In The Freedom of a Christian (1520), Luther already refers to the tension manifest in the experience of the believer, which he expresses by means of a formula in two propositions: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all” (LW 31:344). For its elucidation, he uses the simul represented by the image of the “inner” and “outer” human being. In effect, this aporetic condition that Luther detects—put early into the theological formula “simul iustus et peccator, totus totus”—echoes in further parallel metaphors such as: flesh and spirit, old human and new human, law and grace, coram mundo and coram deo. As observed, they are not to be understood as expressions of dualistic thought but as a theological expression of an unsolvable reality: in this life, the whole person carries and experiences—completely and simultaneously—both conditions.16 It is in the light of this simul condition that Luther explains the “justice of the law” and the “justice of grace,” and points toward the paradoxical situation of the believer

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who lives concurrently before God and with others and is, at the same time, a passive and an active agent. In fact, this is a mark of the contradictory ways in which justification happens. Firstly, Luther exposes that the justice of God as a gift—that is, by grace— is that which disrupts human agency. Believers, he explains, “[i]nsofar as they are free they do no works, but insofar as they are servants they do all kinds of works” (LW 31:358). Luther thus elaborates on how an assumed free active agent is turned into a free passive receiver and, simultaneously, into an enslaved active giver. In fact, according to this treatise, believers are granted an awkward kind of freedom. As Kristin Johnston Largen reflects, this human condition can be grasped as being: “free from” and “free for” (Largen 2013). Being justified by grace, believers are free from the heavy burden of the works of the Law and, simultaneously, they are free for serving their neighbor. Secondly, Luther stresses vehemently the character of grace as sheer gift. If justification is sought through works, those works are not free, actually, with such actions “freedom and faith are destroyed” (LW 31:363). Human agency in this context is blasphemous: it is an attempt to seize that which belongs to grace—actually, it is an imposition over the gift of God, since “to justify and to save by faith belongs to the grace of God alone” (LW 31:363). A transactional “economy of grace” both destroys the gift of God and backfires on the presumptuous human agent. Thirdly, by recourse to the metaphor of marriage, Luther depicts justice occurring as relationship to the other, this is expressed in utter giving and also in utter receiving. Reissuing the mystic motif of bridegroom and bride, Luther writes on the union of the believer with Christ. As we have already observed, this metaphor illustrates how faith works interrupting the closure of “the one” upon itself, leaving an opening for “the other.”17 Now, we may see as well how the “marvelous exchange” occurring between God and the human, happens by grace. Indeed, this exchange is marvelous: “What is mine is yours, what is yours is mine”; grace is relational and not transactional, but here it conveys an exchange. This text inspires us to think—pace Derrida— that the possibility of this “exchange” can be a gift in itself! Finally, Luther lets us discover God’s justice as what we may consider an aneconomic gift. Being justified through faith by grace, the believers receive without earning or meriting and, simultaneously, are made free to give without expecting recognition. They serve others so spontaneously that, actually, they take no account of gratitude or ingratitude, of praise or blame, of gain or loss. For they do not serve that they may put others under obligations. They do not distinguish between friends and enemies or anticipate their thankfulness or

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unthankfulness, but they most freely and most willingly spend themselves and all that they have, whether they waste all on the thankless or whether they gain a reward. (LW 31:367)

Perceiving grace as the gift of God guides human beings to find a “living thread” stringing together the paradoxes exposed by justice. There are new ways of giving and receiving, “the good things we have from God should flow from one to the other and be common to all” (LW 31:371). At the closing of his treatise, Luther punctuates: We conclude, therefore, that Christians live not in themselves, but in Christ and in their neighbor. Otherwise they are not Christian. They live in Christ through faith, in their neighbor through love. By faith they are caught up beyond themselves into God. By love they descend beneath themselves into their neighbor. Yet they always remain in God and in God’s love. (LW 31:371)

This most provoking image of justice as relationship to the other pictures beautifully Luther’s theology of grace as the gift of God. LUTHER AFTER DERRIDA The previous exploration within the gap opened by the readings and consideration of Luther’s sola gratia in the light of Derrida’s approach to “the gift” lets us perceive some offensive ethical declarations facing current positions. Here I assume that those perceptions reveal aspects of the deconstructive drive at work in Luther’s theology, which meet some of our present theological concerns as, for instance: How to speak of human and divine action in our postmodern globalized world? Facing the displacement of the notions of exchange economy, law, ethics, and justice, what theological contemporary insights could we receive? I shall sketch here some reflections prompted by these queries. Falling Short of Virtue The perfect gift involved in living under grace frustrates common ideals of human realization and agency, for instance, those implied by the (Christian) achievement of modernity to which too many of our present institutions still cling. They assume a “man” (sic) come of age, which Kant relates to the process of leaving childhood in an elevation or ascension to the stellar sublimity of moral law. Thus, when one lives up to “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me,” in Kant’s very words, to “fall short of

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virtue” would be a “high treason against humanity” (PF, 271–75). Derrida notices this in passing as, in his Politics of Friendship, he examines the history through which the character of humanity is built up in a process of the fraternization of “men.” That is, the “subordinating hierarchical axiology” that traverses the species in very complex configurations where “the strong” are always better off. Thus reading Luther after Derrida, considerations about grace and justice are not just about “egos”—inner torments or petit bourgeois wounded consciences—they are about egos, plus subjects of action, institutions, traditions, societies, nations, world economy, and politics. As we observed, in rediscovering justice by grace, premodern Luther paves the way to treason and dares to utter outrageous news in the transactional context of late medieval Christendom. We, postmodern, know that in spite of himself he was enrolled in the community of the fratres—not only because he used to be a friar, but because he was a medieval male.18 Then, with the freedom of a Christian, we should try rephrasing both him and Kant, perhaps: “It is a marvelous thing and unknown to the world to teach Christians to fall short of virtue and to live before God performing a high treason against humanity.” Because virtue, which is “manly” by origin (vir-virtus) and humanity, which is construed upon violent hierarchy, will never justify or save us—contrariwise, they will just blind us and harden us. Christ, the gift of Godself given to us withholding nothing, happens as Niels Gregersen affirms: “Not just as a human being (anthropos) as opposed to other species, and not just as an individual man (aner) as opposed to being a woman”—it occurs as flesh, and “flesh is not only the principle of individualization . . . but also the principle of sharing” (Gregersen 2013, 260; author’s emphases). In this sense, in a theology of sola gratia, Christ also challenges the oppressive powers of heterosexual orthodoxy, whiteness, and global capitalism. The task of such theology, as Marcella Althaus-Reid envisions, rescues a grace that is “not indebted to historical subjugation processes and without criminalization,” a grace that does not work by “dis-gracing,” that is, by “organising the Christian universe of colonizers by default” (Althaus-Reid 2003, 46–47). In fact, we may perceive that justice in Luther’s theology is not about a “categorical imperative” but about a “categorical gift” (Bayer 2003a, 76)—and the gift, which occurs as an event, asks no permission and obeys no handbooks. In any historical age, the deconstructive drive of theology implies losing our good names in questioning, with unvirtuous and limited humane action, the credos of our species, of our cultural heritages, and of our world structures. And first of all implies losing the good name of our theological conceptions, always tied up to those idolatric creeds. As deconstruction deconstructs itself so also does a “theology against theology.”

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Our Economies By sola gratia Luther uncovers some aspects of the economy of the gift that continue to be a stumbling block for our economies. The questions that still count are many: Are we able to receive a gift? Can we imagine to be given something without being asked anything in return? Can we just receive something that we do not have to earn somehow? Can we think of something we can only receive, since it cannot be attained, grabbed, or bought according to our wishes and needs? However, are we able to give without expecting anything in return? Can we actually give anything to anyone? Besides, can we receive what we do not know we are being given? Or can we actually give not knowing that we are giving, ignoring what we give, to whom and when we give it? After Derrida, we see that a real gift cannot be programmed or calculated. Then, receiving a gift is actually not knowing that we receive it, and giving a gift is not knowing that we give it. Surely, Derrida is here after Luther, for not knowing is what faith and grace stand for: an opening toward the other, receiving and giving without calculation. All things considered, under sola gratia and breathing the air of a pure gift, after both Luther and Derrida, it is important for theology to be reminded that there is a difference between justice and the law. Unstringing the implications of this premodern theological and postmodern philosophical rediscovery leads once more into paradox. In fact, both deconstruction and Luther’s theology always burst our bubble: they depict the circumstances under which humans act. World economies will be always there, displaying the transactions of fallen human nature—which, of course, have little concern for gift or grace. Thus, the theological importance to express both: Firstly, the reminder that individuals and institutions are limited and reluctant agents before an always restricted law and, most of the time, unwary instruments of an always exceeding justice. Secondly, that grace frees us in order that we may, in spite of ourselves, keep the living thread for the other, for the good of the other. The demand is not to leave the battle ground for, as Vítor Westhelle points out: “A call for responsibility grows out of the awareness of our sinful condition” (Westhelle 2016, 128). Caught in the very mud of human constrictions, grace imbues the courage to review all records, all morals and all laws, extracting the best of them, but knowing that it will never suffice. Law is always in need of deconstruction for the well-being of our neighbor and some justice occurs there also, regardless of ourselves. The Living Thread Derrida uncovers that our abiding by the law together with our acts of giving happen always in a context of “bad conscience.” In effect, when we direct our

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actions toward any singular one other, we are always sacrificing all others. In spite of this, we need to keep giving and heeding the law, knowing that justice is something other, and our gift, although not pure, disrupts somehow the economy of exchange. It is in this context that—as already quoted—he expresses: “The question of justice, the one that always carries beyond the law, is no longer separated, in its necessity or in its aporias, from that of the gift” (SoM, 30). This is undoubtedly a confirmation that we are always inevitably reading Derrida after Luther whose theology of grace poses that neither our fulfilling the law nor our pure giving (if any of the two were possible) can buy us justice. Thus, liberated by faith and through grace, we live outside of ourselves in God and use this freedom to renounce and transcend ourselves in the love of others (Bayer 1998b, 135). We act and believe in unconditionality, knowing that unconditionality is in itself the gift of grace. And being made aware that we are always both just and sinners, we learn that it is God who gives and we are only granted to let “the good things flow.” Besides, Luther after Derrida takes us to revisit the experience that—going beyond our individual predicaments—grace is relational (or it is not). So we are introduced to acting and giving in spite of our calculating or sanctimonious intentions, facing the reality that “our” gift is not ours and its benefit does not depend on our limited conceptions of justice. In this sense, Eberhard Jüngel writes: “We are not, however, simply agents; we are not just the authors of our biography. We are also those who are acted upon; we are also a text written by the hand of another” (Jüngel 1995, 121). Relationship to the other overflows calculation and control. In fact, anyone of us without intention, without knowing it, “can become the destiny of others—for good or ill” (Jüngel 1995, 121). We do not live in ourselves but in Christ and our neighbor. Thus, what we do for others we do it for others here and now; yet, the living thread of the gift can only occur enmeshed in a tissue of relationships, the pattern of which escapes us. This could be a theological certainty for an age of uncertainties. Keeping the Other We read that Christians “do not distinguish between friends and enemies . . . but they most freely and most willingly spend themselves and all that they have whether they waste all on the thankless or whether they gain a reward.” And again, that they “live not in themselves, but in Christ and in their neighbor.” As observed, Derrida’s thinking considers justice as the relation to the other as other, and it is in this sense that the worst—the most unjust—would happen in the affirmation of oneness, homogeneity, sameness. Yet, we know that the late medieval man Luther failed to embrace the otherness of many

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of “the others” of his time. For instance, he harshly rejected Turks, Jews, and “enthusiasts” mainly on the basis of their religious beliefs—or, in the case of the latter, a different practice of the Christian faith. Then, are we to understand and accept that the neighbor within this theological tradition is just someone who fills in the right profile of a specific Christian believer? We are assessing Luther’s theological discovery according to which the justice of God—the faith of Jesus Christ—happens by grace and is relational. Now, we may consider what sort of relation this is. Does grace—the gift of God—do justice as it relates unconditionally to the other as other? Luther after Derrida lets us think about this (im)possible relation as an “ineffable gift.”19 This means to say that in this sense neither Luther’s theology nor Derrida’s deconstruction hold any romantic anthropology. For, in effect, thinking “the other” is a constant fight against the arguments of “the same”— we always want to bring the other “home” (oikos) in order to reappropriate it economically (oikonomia). Because of this, any interruption of the circle of economy—as for instance, to open the door and to receive at home freely, without conditions, without reappropriation—is undoubtedly a gift. After Derrida, we can find that Luther’s theology of sola gratia proceeds in a way that exceeds all economy. God’s grace does not take us home (oikos) absorbing us into the same, nor leaves us under the law (nomos) flattening us into universality. Yet, considering the freedom of a Christian—the liberating freedom from and the enabling freedom for—this same grace challenges us, facing the other: our home is always to be open to the stranger, and law and ethics are there always to protect them. We are more than ever aware of how religion is nurtured on the ideals of language, blood, nation, family, and, at the same time, of how the worldwide imposition of a strong conceptual apparatus of political rhetoric goes under the shadow of religion. Then, in our globalized contemporary world, we may refocus on a theology where, always in spite of ourselves, justice as the relation to the other means that we decline forcing the other to fit our patterns. And this implies that the other’s otherness creates difficulties for the attainment of our self-realization. Thus, we may theologically deploy sola gratia as belonging with the thinking of the aneconomic gift. Grace—the gift of Godself—makes justice as it relates to the other unconditionally, in utter giving and also in utter receiving. Luther’s Pharmacy Luther’s reception of the “marvelous exchange” has helped us consider how faith works. Now again we have met it as portrayed in The Freedom of a Christian letting us perceive the relational character of grace. Yet, reading Luther after Derrida, the “economical” inherent to the “exchange”

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(commercium admirabile!) begs the question. What sort of an exchange is that? Let’s consider how this microphysics of justification works as Luther uses the “exchange” motif, in spiritual counsel, in a letter to Georg Spenlein (1516): Therefore, my dear brother, learn Christ and him crucified [1 Cor. 1:23f.]! Learn to praise him and despairing say to him, “You, Lord Jesus, are my justice, but I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what was mine and have given to me what was yours. You have taken upon yourself what you were not and given to me what I was not.” Beware of aspiring to such purity that you will not wish to be regarded as a sinner or to be one. For Christ dwells only among sinners . . . From him you yourself will learn that just as he has taken your sins and made them his own, so also he has made his justice yours. (LW 48:12–13)

At first sight, the marvelous exchange (commercium admirabile) is overwhelming. It is surely an exchange—now, is it possible to perceive where “the marvelous” of it lies? Could this be the case of a, mirabile dictum, “aneconomic exchange”? Perhaps the marvelous resides, actually, in the relationship it portrays. We have underlined that, contrariwise to the theologies of his time, Luther discovers that union with God is not produced by a process of becoming like God (similitudo or conformitas) but actually by the fact of being completely unlike God, that is, “real sinners.” We have also explored the simul experience that Luther perceives in the human expressed by being at the same time: completely under grace and under the law, before God and before the world, both flesh and spirit, both inner and outer, completely just and completely sinner. For some reason, the exchange does not erase “the other” that the human is. It seems that this justifying relation not only includes the other as other, but exists because of this. However, such overwhelming grace hints again at the theological paradox of the gift of God.20 Grace, the gift of Godself in Jesus Christ, appears to unloose a generalized aneconomy in the enmeshed relationship with/in God. In this relationship “giving and receiving” affects and effects the very constitution of all those involved: “You have taken upon yourself what you were not and given to me what I was not.” What I wasn’t now I am, what you weren’t now you are. It is easy to perceive, again, that the marvelous does not lack violence in it. The exchange, even when it recognizes the otherness of the other requires that the one seize the other, and make it a part of itself. And, simultaneously, the one is infected by the appropriated otherness of the other. The gift of grace exposes both humanity and divinity to the cruelty of autoimmunity. Continuing with Derridean motifs and tropes, as we observed, the gift poisons. Derrida explains that when “the gift puts the other in debt . . . giving amounts to hurting, to doing harm” (GT, 12). It is like in “Plato’s pharmacy”;

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the remedy of the pharmakon, its virtue, “does not prevent it from hurting” (D, 99). What Luther discovers in sola gratia has something of this. There is absolutely no debt, for grace is sheer giving without asking anything in return. Yet, in this image of a justifying relationship, there is hurting and harm involved: the human ego is shattered and divinity is contaminated. Theological metaphors cannot get completely out of the economical lexicon, because theology can only speak about God as bound in the text. Grace as the gift of Godself takes us to the heart of christology, which for Luther, refers to the very relationship that makes God Godself.21 NOTES 1. These affirmations about language and faith are the product of both chapters 9 and 10 2. As seen, this definition of justice comes from Emmanuel Levinas and is assumed and elaborated upon by Derrida (VR,17). See chapter 10. 3. One of the classical works is the study of Marcel Mauss, Essai sur le Don (1925), which Derrida rereads deconstructively in his Given Time (1994 [1991]) by way of Charles Baudelaire’s “Counterfeit Money.” As we shall see, Derrida expressly critiques the classical view of the gift as sustained by a relation of exchange/reciprocity. 4. Derrida usually plays with the double bind of concepts and with etymologies and languages. In this case, the German term “Gift” means precisely “poison.” An issue that he explores earlier in his work Dissemination (1972) under “Plato’s Pharmacy” (D, 61–171). 5. See under “The Double bBind.” 6. About this definition see chapter 10. 7. I am resuming here what I have already introduced and elaborated upon in chapter 5. 8. This is, actually, the question Nancy posed to Derrida in this regard (EW, 85). See chapter 5. 9. This is a Kantian expression. See chapter 5. 10. “Non enim Iusta operando Iusti efficimur, Sed Iusti essendo iusta operamur. Ergo sola gratia Iustificat.” 11. As in previous occurrences, I emphasize here the ambiguity of this “of.” 12. “Emmanuel i. e., deus nobiscum i. e., quod nos den Got haben, datus est nobis, ist unser eigen, dedit se uns zu eigen,” Christmas Sermon, 1528; Luther’s emphasis. 13. About these developments, see chapter 2. 14. As observed, Luther had already introduced aspects of this paradox in the “Theological theses” of the Heidelberg disputation (1518). See chapter 6. 15. The original reads “extra legis” (WA 40.1:42b, 22). 16. See chapter 10. 17. See chapter 10.

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18. As noticed before, in some aspects, Luther’s mindset could not go beyond the medieval patriarchal system of his time, thus failing to comprehend the structural dimensions of sin and evil (Westhelle 2016, 132). 19. “The ineffable gift of grace” [dono ineffabilis gratiae] (LW 26:7; WA 40.1:45b, 31). 20. See chapter 10. 21. I revisit the christological aspect of this exchange in chapter 12.

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Approaching the thought of the wholly other, Luther’s and Derrida’s perceptions mirror each other in a paradoxical aspect: for them, the thought of otherness—which is in itself an experience of the impossible—although irreducible to knowledge obliges into language, into inscription, into the text. This has guided us thus far as we considered the specular reflections between Luther’s theology, read through the Reformation “solae,” vis-à-vis important features of Derrida’s thought: sola scriptura and text; sola fide and faith; sola gratia and the gift. It is time now to focus on the aspect that holds together the previous: Luther’s theological affirmation of the solus Christus. The companion motifs from Derrida’s work will be “the messianic,” “the supplement,” and what he expresses as “sovereign autoimmunity.” It is my assumption that the christology of the premodern theologian prefigures aspects of the postmodern deconstruction of divinity and transcendence allowing, in fact, a different understanding of transcendence. As I trail this topic reading Luther after Derrida, I shall explore into this open deconstructive gap with theological interest. THE MESSIANIC Considering what we have appreciated in previous sections, it may be said that for Derrida the messianic throbs in the text, it is the promise that opens history in space and time. The messianic is what interrupts the same in the name of the other—the other, which has always already come and is always to come. The messianic is that which releases the past, unlocks the present, and welcomes the future: it provokes faith. The messianic is the aperture toward an event, toward the gift. The messianic reminds us of messiahs and messianisms, but always escapes them—although, as we have already heard, it cannot 215

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do without them. Thus, after reading and rereading Derrida, one may know that these spirited ideas are not a heap of abstract gibberish. In the light of deconstruction, text, faith, and the gift embrace history, reality, and the world as they challenge our ways of knowing, acting, and being human. In effect, for Derrida, the messianic is what keeps us walking in our daily trodden deserts but, simultaneously, on the sands of another promising desert. It is in this context that we have already followed him in the thought of a faith previous to religion (religio).1 This faith is that which opens the one toward the other, preceding any holding back, respect, and piety (relegere) or any bond, ligament, and obligation (religare). Derrida thinks that, before the link between human beings, and between human beings and God, there would be a “messianic structure” that, universally open and singularly expressed, would render possible “precisely what it appears to threaten” (FK, 55). “Previous” and “before” would not indicate here time and causality, but a constitutive relation. Thus, Derrida imagines the messianic as a constitutive “fiduciary link” connecting singularities prior to any other link; such faith enables the hope of a “universalizable culture of singularities” beyond any determinate messianism (FK, 55–56). Because of this, the messianic invokes futurity although it is not tied to teleology, and associates to the motive of khōra, which evokes spatiality but not tied to a circumscribed territoriality. The desert is in the desert. One desert can only be glanced from the other and we inhabit both at once. This indeterminate messianicity is the fix about which Derrida confesses “[t]hat is part of . . . my cross” (Caputo and Scanlon 1999, 73). Does the Messiah precede the messianic, making the conditions of his manifestation noticeable only after the fact? Or are conditions of the messianic in place before the Messiah is revealed? There is no synthesis for this tension. This deconstructive cross is an indecision between revelation and revealability and Derrida decides to keep it. And this is why the messianic—which refers to an event—relates to text, faith, and gift. RECONSIDERING THE SUPPLEMENT An event happens without our programming, it goes on affecting us without our knowledge of it, and, in this sense, it is a real gift. When we come to think about the event, it is already “inside the text,” that is, caught in space and time and exposed to the logic of metaphysical rationality. Thus, when we pose the question in an oppositional fashion (“what happens first, the messianic or the Messiah?”), the iteration of textuality, the very play that provokes faith, opens a different structure of experience where the two poles of the alternative may cease to oppose each other. They “form another node, another ‘logic,’

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another ‘chronology,’ another history, another relation to the order of orders” (PF, 25n26). There is no room for cause-effect rationality, the messianic has always already given place to the Messiah as the Messiah testifies to the messianic. The Messiah is always already wounded by différance, keeping the trace of the messianic. It could well be, as Derrida reflects, “that only the coming of the event allows after the event, perhaps, what will previously have made possible to be thought” (PF, 18; Derrida’s emphasis). Although exceeding it, the messianic invokes the event of the Messiah that occurs in ways that escape us but needs to bend toward textuality for us to receive it. Thus, thinking theologically, the textuality of the Messiah will always deconstruct the God of metaphysics. In the text we are given to perceive that “all begins through the intermediary”—the motif of “the supplement” that lets Derrida affirm: “immediacy is derived” (OG, 157). What comes in the text both adds and substitutes for the lack of presence of “the possible that is presently impossible” (SP, 129); it is because of this that the Messiah will always already name God as affected by inscription, by différance. With reference to Derrida’s cross, we do not know what is first, but we always start by the text, within the text. The “logic” of the supplement is a way of deconstructing theology as ontotheology. Against this background it is possible to ponder Derrida’s later readings and considerations on Christian theology: the enactment of revelation, the event of Jesus Christ—an event that affects the very sovereignty of God. AUTOIMMUNE SOVEREIGNTY In his first works, Derrida speaks of religion but seems to avoid theology. He does, however, discuss God. In those works, “God” refers to the god of ontotheology. The God that does not know différance, because he is “the name of indifference itself” in his ipseity (OG, 71). In this regard, Derrida does not see a way out through the motifs of “return to finitude” or of “God’s death” since they still belong to metaphysics (OG, 68). And in fact, finitude and death may just well be a stage in the Hegelian teleological realization of the Absolute Geist. A theology focusing on such a God will always be tied up to the order of logos prone to the dealings of “the worst.” As Derrida asserts: “In speaking of an ontotheology of sovereignty, I am referring here, under the name of God, this One and Only God, to the determination of a sovereign, and thus indivisible, omnipotence” (R, 157). However, later in his career, he widens his considerations about God and even elaborates on Christian theological aspects. This approach starts as a task to deconstruct the “ontotheological politics of sovereignty,” which is traditionally related to the question of God conceived as absolutely powerful. He tries to think

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“some unconditionality that would not be sovereign,” some unconditionality associated not with power, but with powerlessness, with weakness (Caputo and Scanlon 2005, 41). This is, in fact, a very Christian motif. However, as Derrida would remark, in Christianity the weakness or vulnerability of Jesus Christ is traditionally understood as a sign of the God almighty (Caputo and Scanlon 2005, 41). Now, the deconstructive task of Derrida in this direction can be considered together with another feature of his work that I have already analyzed in previous chapters: the motif of autoimmunity. Immune systems cannot avoid the launching of a defense attack against themselves, inscribing otherness at the very heart of sameness. Autoimmunity names the weakening of a closed organism in order to let the other in; an auto-inflicted malady out of the need of heterogeneity, heteronomy, dissymmetry, and multiplicity (R, 14). This motif of the autoimmune operating on absolute sovereignty accompanies what, throughout his work, Derrida identifies as “the worst,” that is, the realization of sameness in rejection of otherness. He sustains that the avoidance of exposure to the other can only lead to the worst violence—as it occurs in the logic of rational thought, in the operations of identity, in the configuration of institutions, in the schemes of politics, and so forth. Human history is a catalog of this, the search of total pure power, inscribed into the dialectical engine of the autorealization of the same: God, King, Empire, colonialism, totalitarian systems, and so on. Thus, the description reads: “Absolute power is also total insensitivity, total impassibility with regards to an event. Nothing can happen to absolute power, to the sovereign” (EF, 44). But deconstructive readings show that the One is always already cracked by the other as it is inhabited by that which it tries to reject. Deconstruction is the laborious work that detects how the one is constitutively related to what is other. Hence, deconstruction is not a matter of appeasement or of plain revolution, it is rather a disruption of the ground, displacing the scenario. There, under the spot, we may see that the absolute is always already wounded. It is, thus, that Derrida opens the door to theological discussion: For wherever the name of God would allow us to think something else, for example a vulnerable nonsovereignty, one that suffers and is divisible, one that is mortal even, capable of contradicting itself or of repenting . . . it would be a completely different story, perhaps even the story of a god who deconstructs himself in his ipseity. (R, 157)

When, finally, Derrida translates what an event means into Christian terms, he affirms: “The passion, the crucifixion, happened to God. Yes, it happened to God” (EF, 44). And, if what happened to Jesus Christ happened to God, it means that God can be affected by an event; for “[t]he event must be totally

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unpredictable, even to God” (EF, 44). I envision that, for a theologian, such is the deconstructive crucible of all christology: Can the sovereignty of the Christian God be affected by autoimmunity in such a way that Godself cannot foresee it, therefore losing program and damage control? Can anything actually happen to God? SOLUS CHRISTUS Throughout this work, we have observed how christology is at the heart of Luther’s theology. The theologia crucis, a mark of his theological breakthrough, traverses his new understanding of justice, faith, and grace delineating a christology tightly tied to soteriology. As Luther’s theology pivots around the reading and rereading of the scripture, the solus Christus manifests what he finds in the gospel narratives: the suffering, crucified human being in whom God reveals Godself. Thus, we may consider that Luther’s treatment of the christological dogma is always within the context of this scriptural primacy. Yet, although it seems that he was familiar only with the first four ecumenical councils (Yeago 1995, 269n11),2 we find Luther both discussing and expanding the implications of the christological formula throughout his work. In this regard, one particular aspect of Luther’s christology is his distinctive comprehension and use of the communicatio idiomatum (“communication of properties”), which we may detect in his exposition of the dogma and in his christological debates with some of his contemporaries. As we shall see, Luther’s handling of this theological “tool” is peculiar, implying a challenge not only for the christologies of his day but for those of our time. My assumption is that it is precisely the evaluation of this feature that may provide an answer to the deconstructive trial to God’s sovereignty in Luther’s theology. It is against this background that I shall trace how Luther’s theology about a determinate Messiah mirrors Derrida’s thought of the indeterminate messianic. My presupposition is that, as previously observed with regard to other issues, this “mirroring” is not a static picture but a dynamic constant play. Here, such play will let us consider different motifs toward a different understanding of transcendence. Exploring the import of the solus Christus we may appreciate that Luther’s christology treads into a place which—as Derrida worded it later—“can . . . render possible precisely what it appears to threaten” (FK, 55). I shall start reviewing Luther’s reception of the dogma introducing briefly the christological definition and the communicatio idiomatum. After this, I shall focus on Luther’s debates about the meaning and use of the communicatio idiomatum underlining his peculiar christological emphases and their repercussions. Finally, reading Luther after Derrida, I shall sketch some

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theological considerations by means of which Luther’s christology addresses some Derridean motifs enabling a different understanding of transcendence. A Brief of Chalcedon The last christological formula the tradition receives is that of the Council of Chalcedon in 451. On the basis of the agreements of the previous Councils, the Chalcedonian declaration adds the affirmation of the two natures of Jesus Christ, “truly God and truly human,” and these two natures occurring “without confusion, change, division, or separation . . . coming together into one person” (Price and Gaddis 2006, 204). However, in a time of disagreement within the early church, the consensus achieved in this definition cannot afford comprehensive precision. The general perception is that the Council cannot clearly accord in which way the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ relate to each other. This aspect, to which Robert Jenson refers as a “vacuum at the heart of Chalcedon’s analyses” (Jenson 2003, 274)—and also as “a christological crux” (Jenson 2005, 64)—leaves open the possibilities of interpretation around the dogma. This poses a theological problem, as Alister McGrath observes, “The riddle that Christian theology is called to resolve is how these two elements can be held together” (McGrath 2008, 72). All the same, together with Brian Daley, we may also perceive that “Christology is always the affirmation of paradox” (Daley 2015, 136); then it can be argued that it is precisely in this “unresolved riddle” where theological possibilities lie. According to Jenson, what the formula of Chalcedon says about the “two natures” in “one hypostasis” (person) leads easily to be interpreted as if there were nothing real in this hypostasis, and, therefore, the union of the two natures “has no material consequences for the state or activity of either nature” (Jenson 2003, 274). The traditional western christology holds that the works of Christ—whether before or after his resurrection—are done “either ‘according to’ the human nature or ‘according to’ the divine nature, each ‘doing what is proper to it, in fellowship with the other’” (Jenson 2003, 275). In this common position, custom mostly keeps with what the Chalcedonian definition cannot provide, that is, they do not regard this “one person” as an actual agent. In the light of this, the sharing of attributes from both natures to the one person of Christ appears as not problematic; difficulties start to arise when the natures are portrayed doing what is not proper to each one of them. This second possibility actually implies a real exchange of properties between natures and originates a number of questions, such as, for instance: “Can Christ be bodily present in any given place?” or, rather, “Is only his divine nature ubiquitous? Can God be simultaneously beyond matter and within matter? Does Christ’s human nature suffer but not so his

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divine nature?” or “Is the suffering of the human Christ also the suffering of Godself? Can God be impassible and suffer at the same time?” The Communicatio Idiomatum The doctrine of the “communication of properties” (communicatio idiomatum) is a resource of the tradition that addresses the many questions about the relations of the humanity and the divinity in Christ that arise from the formulation of the christological dogma. As Grzegorz Strzelczyk traces, the contents of this tenet have neo-testamentary roots and, as witnessed by the texts of Melito of Sardis, they are already remarkably shaped by the second century (Strzelczyk 2004, 44–45; 54). However, as David Congdon notes, the conceptions about the mutual exchange of properties of the two natures in one person has a formal origin in the fourth century debates over Nestorianism and start to be used regularly in the neo-Chalcedonian debates of the sixth century (Congdon 2011, 4). Luther knows the communicatio idiomatum and uses it freely without a systematic articulation, but Martin Chemnitz—a second generation Lutheran theologian—shows a most detailed interest in the issue.3 In The Two Natures in Christ (1971 [1578]),4 Chemnitz approaches the various questions around the subject, naming and delimiting four different genera in which the communication between natures occurs. After his work, we have: the genus idiomaticum, which implies that what can be said about one nature or the other can be attributed to the one person of Christ; the genus apotelesmaticum, which implies that the singular operation of Christ’s work as mediator applies to both natures; the genus majestaticum, which implies the sharing of the divine majesty with the human nature, that is, Jesus as human participates of divine transcendence; finally, the genus tapeinoticon, which implies the sharing of the humility of the human nature with the divine nature, that is, the communication of human attributes to the divine nature (Congdon 2011, 4; Jenson 2005, 65–66). However, neither Chemnitz nor the other later theologians of the Lutheran scholasticism actually accepted the possibility of the genus tapeinoticon as a counterpart to the genus majestaticum. As Jenson observes, “Luther taught such communications; the Lutherans exercised more prudence” (Jenson 2005, 66). In fact, it can be said that while the christological implications of the first three genera are mostly accepted as orthodox in the Christian tradition, the consequences of the fourth one have been traditionally rejected—at least, until the twentieth century. Modern christologies elaborating on the death and suffering of God bring the genus tapeinoticon back into the theological scene. For instance, the influential works of Jürgen Moltmann and Jon Sobrino.5 In his consideration of the crucified God, Moltmann explores the use of the communicatio idiomatum in the tradition, and his work is evidently inspired by the implications

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of the genus tapeinoticon (Moltmann 1993, 227–35). Yet, his analysis of Luther’s dealings with the exchange of properties underlines the paradoxes involved by the christological statements of the reformer (Moltmann 1993, 235). If Moltmann does not advance a positive valuation, his comment about Luther’s peculiar theology is quite telling: “He [Luther] used the name ‘God’ generically and promiscuously” (Moltmann 1993, 235). In his christology, written from Latin America, Sobrino radicalizes the fourth genus in such a way that it suppresses the genus majestaticum. Thus, he sustains that in a correct understanding of the communicatio idiomatum “the human limitation is preached about God, but the unlimited divine is not preached about Christ” (Sobrino 2001, 223). Sobrino does not discuss Luther, but his emphasis on the “fourth genus” of the communicatio idiomatum is an example of the modern theologies of the suffering of God. More recently, going beyond the modern reception of the genus tapeinoticon, some works of contemporary Luther scholarship follow radically the nuances of Luther’s christology, thus providing important elements to the point I want to make here. In effect, as I shall illustrate bellow, they refer not only to the problematic fourth genus but to the way Luther’s christology creatively elaborates on all the aspects of the communication of attributes. LUTHER AND THE CHRISTOLOGICAL DOGMA Luther’s writings provide copious christological material; in order to elaborate on the character of the reformer’s christology, I shall focus on these interconnected aspects: How does Luther account for the linguistics of christological affirmations, how does he interpret the communicatio idiomatum, and how does such interpretation permeate his theology. The Language of Christology Luther’s theologia crucis disrupts the late medieval methods of doing theology and their use of philosophy. I have already referred to this issue quoting a debate of Luther’s: to the Parisian theologians who affirmed that “what is true in philosophy is true also in theology and vice versa” (LW 38:239), he responds with his disputation on John 1:14, The Word was made flesh (1539).6 In fact, against the theologians of the Sorbonne, Luther underlines that “what is true in one field of learning is not always true in other fields of learning,” as for instance, “[i]n theology it is true that the Word was made flesh; in philosophy the statement is simply impossible and absurd” (LW 38:239). We may see that this dispute, centered on the use of language in philosophy and theology,

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holds direct christological implications for it is precisely around this matter that Luther deploys this linguistic and epistemological argument. The same occurs in his debate against Schwenckfeld’s interpretation of the dogma as portrayed in the Disputation Concerning the Divinity and the Humanity of Christ (1540).7 Luther’s position is that Schwenckfeld’s interpretation is devious because of an inappropriate use of language in theology. The reformer’s argument expresses that theology is a different sort of language, not because it uses different words but because in theology the very same words have a different sense. In this regard, his theses facing Schwenckfeld’s aversion to use the noun “creature” when speaking of Christ make significant assertions with both linguistic and christological momentum. Luther affirms that, in reference to Christ, “every noun takes on a new meaning regarding the very thing which is signified,” in fact, while commonly “creature signifies a thing infinitely separate from divinity,” in theological language “creature signifies something which has been conjoined inseparably with divinity in the very same person in inexpressible ways” (DDHC, 153–54). As Paul R. Hinlicky points out, Luther’s arguments are part of a “paradigm shift from the old language of philosophy to the new language of theology” (Hinlicky 2007, 145). In this disputation, Luther evidences a displacement in language accounting for the limitations of regular grammar to express what goes on in christology. In this respect, he observes that the “people of the Spirit may say things that are grammatically wrong, yet nevertheless true according to the sense” (DDHC, 156). When considering the sola scriptura, I have examined the proposal that Luther discovers a truly “theological grammar”;8 here we find the suggestion that Luther describes a “grammar of the spirit” (Hinlicky 2007, 178). In sum, as Luther enumerates the many ways in which language failed theologians when considering the christological affirmation, he concludes: “They were trying to express something that is inexpressible, but ultimately every analogy falters and cannot stand on its own feet, so to speak” (DDHC, 155). We observed in previous chapters that the proposition “the word made flesh” belonging with “the word of the cross” shatters the logic of the logos. In effect, theology needs to express the inexpressible. Yet, as we shall soon see, for Luther the communicatio idiomatum opens a richer way to understand what happens to language and theology. Luther Explains the Communicatio Idiomatum In On the Councils and the Church (1539)—a study of patristic christology— Luther essays an explanation of the communicatio idiomatum. He describes, “Idioma means that which is inherent in a nature or its attribute” and provides examples of the idiomata of both human and divine nature (LW 41:100–101).

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In this context, Luther discusses Nestorius’s christological position— which had been condemned in the Council of Ephesus (431)—and also Eutyches’s—which, opposing Nestorius, was condemned later, in the Council of Chalcedon (451). Luther asserts that Nestorius's error was that “he will not admit a communicatio idiomatum” because “Nestorius does not want to give the idiomata of the humanity to the divinity in Christ, even though he maintains that Christ is God and human.” Contrariwise, Luther explains, Eutyches “does not want to give the idiomata of divinity to the humanity, though he also maintains that Christ is true God and true human” (LW 41:109). Elaborating upon the previous, Luther asserts that the opinion of Nestorius was that the attributes of the two natures cannot coincide, because, for him, “to be God is an immeasurably different thing than to be a human being” (LW 41:101). Thus, Luther points at Nestorius’s contradiction: “After he concedes that God and human are united and fused into one person, he can in no way deny that the idiomata of the two natures should also be united and fused. Otherwise, what could God and human united in one person be?” (LW 41:101). Similarly, Luther refers to Eutyches’s aversion to predicate the divine attributes about Christ’s humanity, because he was offended by affirmations such as: “A human being created heaven and earth” (LW 41:109). And he continues so underlining the theological inconsistence of Eutyches, who “forgets that he previously conceded that Christ is true God and human in one person and nevertheless refuses to admit the conclusion or ‘the premise for a good conclusion.’” (LW 41:109). What Luther observes is that both Eutyches and Nestorius accepted Jesus Christ as “truly God and truly human,” but refused the possibility of ascribing the attributes of one nature of Christ to the other. In short, they did not admit the exchange of attributes—the importance of which Luther underlines by asserting once and again that “whoever confesses the two natures in Christ, God and human, must also ascribe the idiomata of both to the person; for to be God and human means nothing if they do not share their idiomata” (LW 41:109). In the aforementioned work opposing Schwenckfeld—who sustained the “noncreatureliness” of the humanity of Christ—Luther comes close to a definition of communicatio idiomatum: “Namely, those things that are attributed to the human being may rightly be asserted with respect to God; and, on the other hand, those things that are attributed to God may rightly be asserted with respect to the human being” (DDHC: 152). Thus, Luther faces the theological “riddle” by putting to use the communication of attributes. For him, the distinction of the natures confirms the unity, and the unity implies the sharing of properties: “The two natures dwell in the Lord Christ, and yet he is but one person. These two natures retain their properties, and each also communicates its properties to the other” (LW 22:491–92).

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In sum, Luther affirms the doctrine of the communication of attributes in the person of Christ interpreting it as the sharing of properties of one nature to the other, both from the human to the divine and vice versa. Furthermore, the communication of attributes from the two natures to the one person of Christ is, for him, not a different thing from the sharing of properties between natures. Thus he asserts: “Rather, because of the union, the conjoining and the unity of the two natures, the communicatio idiomatum is effected, so that what is attributed to the one nature is attributed also to the other nature because, thereby, there comes to be one person” (DDHC, 158; emphases added). Luther does not seem worried by the conundrum of two natures in one person, since they are constitutively related in Christ, and this is a theological affirmation not a philosophical piece of speculation. Luther understands his interpretation of the christological dogma as orthodox, yet his formulations assuming the communicatio idiomatum show particular accents, especially when read facing positions that seem to protect God from Jesus Christ. As we shall observe, from such a point of view, Luther’s orthodoxy may appear rather “broad.” In fact, as it turns manifest in many of his writings, he puts the dogma creatively at work. A Christ of all Genera As introduced, the identification and systematization of the genera started after Luther, and they are still adopted as scholarly tools useful to analyze the christological dogma. According to Chemnitz’s systematization of four genera, what we read of the christological affirmations of Luther as he reviews and confronts other positions meets both the genus idiomaticum and the genus apotelesmaticum. Furthermore, his debates indicate that he does not reject the genus tapeinoticon, actually, he strongly applies it along with the genus majestaticum in a distinct mode. In effect, we may see that Luther’s christology meets all the genera and, in this aspect, he differs from the late medieval theological positions and also from his fellow reformers. Embracing the theologia crucis Luther affirms theology as starting from the suffering humanity of the crucified Christ, and this produces a displacing shift of the late medieval theological ground. This core understanding and its impact are what let us trace the emphases of Luther’s reception of the christological dogma. Since the scandalous dimension of the human Jesus Christ at the heart of the evangelical proclamation had been rendered blunt by the main theologies of his age, he explicitly manifests the implications of the sharing of properties of the human to the divine nature of Christ (genus tapeinoticon). For instance, when facing philosophical arguments, he insists: “The communicatio idiomatum stands firm . . . that which I assert with respect

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to Christ the human being, I correctly assert also with respect to God—that God suffered, was crucified” (DDHC, 160). Yet, as observed above, Luther’s emphasis on the implications of the human nature of Christ goes hand in hand with his particular accent on the simultaneous consequences of Christ’s divine nature (genus majestaticum).9 One example of this transpires in the Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (1528), where Luther distinguishes “three modes” of Christ being at any given place in his “one/united body” (einiger leib) (LW 37:222–23; WA 26:335b, 29:336b, 19). What he delineates shows his radical use of the communicatio idiomatum: The first mode of Christ’s presence is “the circumscribed corporeal mode of presence, as when he walked bodily on earth,” that is, the historical Jesus of Nazareth. The second is “the uncircumscribed, spiritual mode of presence” by which Christ may enter any reality without taking space; for instance, his presence “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine at the Lord’s Supper without the transformation of the substance of the elements (see LW 37:306). The third mode is that “according to which all created things are indeed much more permeable and present to him than they are according to the second mode.” This last way of presence, one should place it “far, far beyond things created, as far as God transcends them” and, at the same time, “place it as deep in and as near to all created things as God is in them. For he is one indivisible person with God, and wherever God is, he must be also, otherwise our faith is false.”10 Theological Debate What helps us to understand the implications of such christological assertions is the dispute that arose between Luther and some of his colleague reformers—among them Andreas Karlstadt, Ulrich Zwingli, and Johannes Oecolampadius—within the context of the eucharistic controversy.11 While Luther understands Christ as bodily present in the elements—bread and wine—for his colleagues this was impossible. Their opposing stands can be summarized by three main arguments: First, Jesus’s affirmation “This is my body” in the institution of the Lord’s Supper should not be interpreted literally, as Luther does; second, the location of the resurrected body of Christ seated at the “right hand of God” in heaven is an impediment for the body of Christ to be down on earth present in the elements of the Supper; finally, since according to the text of John 6:63 “the flesh is of no use,” there cannot be any benefit located in the physical body of Christ. Luther’s response to these three claims delineates accurately the import of his stance. Following Luther, the christological affirmation “the word was made flesh” embodies a new linguistic paradigm in theology, which belongs with

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the hermeneutical dislocation that we have closely traced in Luther’s theology.12 He responds to the first argument of the “sacramentarians,” precisely in this sense.13 In his treatise The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ— Against the fanatics (1526), Luther expresses that “as soon as Christ says: ‘This is my body,’ his body is present through the word and the power of the Holy Spirit” (LW 36:341). For Luther, the presence of Christ always remains tied to the word: “He is present everywhere, but he does not wish that you grope for him everywhere. Grope rather where the word is, and there you will lay hold of him in the right way. Otherwise you are tempting God and committing idolatry” (LW 36:342). In this direction, Luther explains that Christ “has put himself into the word, and through the word he puts himself into the bread also . . . through the word, he binds his body and blood so that they are received corporeally in the bread and wine” (LW 36:343). Luther’s is a theology of the word and the centrality of the word lies for him in the christological affirmation; thus, the ubiquitous presence of Christ is bound by the word. It is in this context that Luther refers explicitly to Zwingli’s use of a classic rhetorical device (alloeosis) as means for interpreting the words “This is my body.” The point that Luther makes is that what is at stake in this particular eucharistic subject is christology as a whole. Then, Luther criticizes the rational interpretation of biblical christological affirmations as he reaffirms the communicatio idiomatum and its wide implications: Now if the old witch, Lady Reason, alloeosis’ grandmother, should say that the Deity surely cannot suffer and die, then you must answer and say: That is true, but since the divinity and humanity are one person in Christ, the scriptures ascribe to the divinity, because of this personal union, all that happens to humanity, and vice versa. And in reality it is so. (LW 37:210)

What underlies Luther’s argumentation here is that when theological grammar is understood as absurd and thus translated into some rational enunciation, the christological affirmation is lost. Luther considers the second sacramentarian argument by problematizing the location of “the right hand of God” in his treatise That these words of Christ, “this is my body,” still stand firm against the fanatics (1527). While Luther unquestionably upholds the scriptural affirmation that Christ is at the right hand of God, for him this does not occur “up in heaven.” In this regard, he observes that Oecolampadius and Zwingli fancy “an imaginary heaven in which a golden throne stands, and Christ sits beside the Father in a cowl and golden crowns, the way artists paint it” (LW 37:55). Now, providing scriptural arguments, Luther affirms that the “right hand of God” is not about “a golden throne,” but is “the almighty power of God, which at one and the same time can be nowhere and yet must be everywhere,” and which “creates, effects,

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and preserves all things through his almighty power and right hand . . . full of divinity . . . eternal good, life, and salvation” (LW 37:57). For Luther, Christ does not need to come down from heaven for he is already on earth—actually, he is anywhere as the “right hand of God” is. Steinmetz remarks, “The ascension did not mean for Luther, as it did for Zwingli, that Christ had left the world’s space and time but only that the mode of his continuing presence in the world had changed” (Steinmetz 2002, 279). Luther asserts the humanity of Christ sharing in divine ubiquity, and, in affirming this, he keeps radically both the word of scripture and the christological definition. As he expresses: Apart from this human being there is no God . . . wherever you place God for me, you must also place the humanity for me. They simply will not let themselves be separated and divided from each other . . . The humanity is more closely united with God than our skin with our flesh. (LW 37:218–19)

Thus, the third sacramentarian argument is also met by Luther as he emphasizes the union of the natures in Christ. When debating with Zwingli, Luther calls him a Nestorian, because, in order to secure the transcendence of God, the Swiss reformer would proceed “separating the person of Christ as though there were two persons” (LW 37:214). For Luther, Zwingli’s argumentation through the text of John 6:63 implies that salvation comes from Christ’s divine nature and not from his human nature. Then, his eucharistic position would mean a chasm between the humanity and divinity of Christ, in detriment of the human nature. It is only in this way that the affirmation “the flesh is of no use” could be applied to the interpretation of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Thence Luther’s complete retort: And if you could show me the place where God is and not the human being, then the person is already divided and I could at once say truthfully, “Here is God who is not human and has never become human.” But no God like that for me! For it would follow from this that space and place had separated the two natures from one another and thus had divided the person, even though death and all the devils had been unable to separate and tear them apart. This would leave me a poor sort of Christ, if he were present only at one single place, as a divine and human person, and if at all other places he had to be nothing more than a mere isolated God and a divine person without humanity. No, comrade, wherever you place God for me, you must also place the humanity for me. They simply will not let themselves be separated and divided from each other. (LW 37:218–19)

For Luther, in the Lord’s Supper, believers meet Christ fully and not divided, because without the humanity of Christ there is no salvation: the flesh is indeed beneficial. In reality, Luther’s discernment about the modes in which the human Christ is present in any given place challenges the conceptions

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of transcendence of his time, and, if we follow the implications of those distant statements, they continue challenging some contemporary ideas. As Steinmetz remarkably expresses it: “The problem for Luther’s Eucharistic theology was not distance from the world, but inaccessible immanence within it” (Steinmetz 2002, 279; emphasis added). In effect, in light of the previous, Luther’s christology places no longer the opposition between transcendence and immanence: there is no need to choose between “far, far beyond” or “deep within” for it is both at once, without reduction. And this has important soteriological implications. As Westhelle would assert, it is “an attestation of the paradoxical nature of justification” (Westhelle 2016, 87). The Soteriological Dynamism of the Communicatio Idiomatum In Luther’s theology, what goes on at the heart of christology is also what goes on between Christ and believers, thus christology is deeply tied to soteriology. Johann Steiger observes that this soteriological reach of christology “is new and genuinely characteristic of Luther” (Steiger 2000,128). The sharing of properties that exists between the human and the divine natures of Christ appears in Luther as similar to the exchange that happens between Christ and the whole of humanity. In this sense, Steiger underlines that the christological communicatio idiomatum is the model for the soteriological “marvelous exchange” (Steiger 2000, 129). The inextricable union of the human and the divine is both a christological and a soteriological affirmation. In this sense, for Luther, what defines Christ is precisely what justifies and saves. Besides picking up Luther’s broad interpretation of the communicatio idiomatum, contemporary Luther scholarship underlines the cosmological dimension of his christology. Larry Rasmussen remarks that Luther’s insistence on the incarnate presence of Christ in all places stresses that “the transcendent is utterly immanent” (Rasmussen 1997, 3). Christ is Godself present in the finite, and from there comes a more recent formulation of Lutheran theologians affirming that “the finite contains the infinite” (finitum capax infiniti) and, at the same time, “the infinite bears the finite” (infinitus ferat finem) (Westhelle 2016, 107). Thus, Niels Gregersen understands that in assuming the flesh of Jesus Christ, God united Godself “with a human person and an animal body,” then the marvelous exchange takes place between Christ and all creatures (Gregersen 2001, 205). As he affirms, the incarnate God “who is present in, with, and under the many events, processes, and experiences in the world of creation” is none other than “the forever incarnated and resurrected Jesus Christ, who has conjoined the material world and shared the joys and sufferings of ‘all flesh,’ and will continue to do so forever” (Gregersen 2013, 252). Consequently, it could be affirmed that the bodily presence of Christ in

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the material world—at the right hand of God—allows to discern Christ “as the co-sufferer with all flesh, and as the redeemer of all flesh” (Gregersen 2013, 252). In this sense Westhelle writes that “[t]hrough the theology of creation the cross becomes ‘essentially identical’ with the suffering in and of the world” and, as well, “[t]hrough the theology of the cross the suffering in and of the world is recognized as the locus of God’s creative work” (Westhelle 2016, 131). Luther’s theology provides christology with a salvific reach that embraces the flesh of all creation. Preaching As we see, Luther’s use of the communicatio idiomatum is crucial for his christology yet, neither its intricacies nor the very riddle of the dogmatic affirmation are for him material intended just for scholarly debate. The soteriological content of those issues makes of them the consuetudinary fabric of Luther’s writings and preaching. In fact, Luther’s sermons are a constant source of christological articulation. The “Christ of all genera” is asserted in the sermon for the first day of Christmas (1529), in which Luther underlines both the human and the divine in Christ: “ The son of this virgin was born and has come to be of my essence and nature and nevertheless is God and has come to be so near to me that he is what I am and has taken on what I am” (WA 29:651b, 15–16).14 And preaching on the Gospel of John, he says: God is not to be sought or found outside the person born of Mary, the person endowed with real flesh and blood, and crucified. God is to be apprehended and found in the flesh and blood of Christ solely by faith. We must know that this flesh and blood, though real, not only have the qualities of the flesh and blood but partake of the divine. (LW 23:124)

Furthermore, his sermons depict Christ in close familiar images affirming “that God was born from the virgin Mary and sucked human milk . . . that God was born and became human and let himself be bathed and fed with porridge” (WA 34.2:492a, 2:3, 493a,2).15 And, as well, images of God’s vulnerability: “God became human, God suffered, and God died” (LW 22:492).16 Steiger affirms that “[p]reaching is the real place in which the communicatio idiomatum between God and the human is set in motion in the form of a verbal communication” (Steiger 2000, 131). For Luther, the promise in the word elicits faith in order to participate, through grace, of the gift of Godself. Besides the discussions on Nestorius and Eutyches or the debates with Schwenckfeld, Karlstadt, Oecolampadius, and Zwingli, stands the persuasion of the preached word:

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Therefore since we could not bear to hear God in God’s majesty, God humbly adopted flesh and blood, assuming not only our nature, that is, flesh and blood, but also all the frailties with which body and soul are afflicted, as, for example, fear, sadness, anger, and hatred. This is really burying and concealing God’s divine majesty! Now this is preached to us. We are told that he was weak, that he was like any other human being in body and soul, that he made himself subject to all human infirmities, that he hungered and thirsted, that he experienced all the wants of flesh and blood. In this weakness the true and eternal God shows Godself. For me he humbles himself; and for me he is finally crucified, although he is at the same time very God, who redeems me from sin and death. (LW 22:507)17

The step that Luther made with his christological affirmations makes room for subversive and displacing readings. His affirmations guide us to consider God as weak, vulnerable, exposed, limited, “made finite in his infinity” as Derrida worded it, and as some Luther scholars would indeed assert it: “the infinite suffers the finite” (infinitus ferat finem). Luther enables theologians to affirm that Godself is conditioned by that which Godself conditions and yet is unconditional—this is the paradox, the simul, the double bind. Derrida is not given to appeasing syntheses, neither is Luther. LUTHER AFTER DERRIDA The readings on Luther’s solus Christus in the light of Derrida’s approach to some related motifs let us perceive a different understanding of transcendence facing current positions. Some questions will help us ponder the import of this perception. For instance, how does Luther’s christology relate to Derrida’s thought of the messianic, the supplement and sovereign autoimmunity? What sort of implications do those specular reflections have and what current theological issues they may address? What answer does all this provide to the challenge: “Can anything actually happen to God”? I shall sketch here some reflections prompted by these queries. What’s in a Name? The title of a symposium organized some years ago by a congregation of the Reformed Church in Amsterdam still makes a point: “God is in, is Jesus out?”18 In some regions of this postmetaphysical, postsecular, postmodern world, talking religion is welcome, talking God is all over, but talking Jesus is quite another thing—actually, it’s problematic. It is problematic because some modern shame still clings to this name. It is problematic because

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throughout history too many atrocities have been—and continue to be—committed under this name. It is problematic because in our plural, multicultural, multi-religious societies this name stands in the way between one’s and other’s names. Jesus Christ the determinate Messiah is a stumbling block. The effort of a religion without religion belongs in this background. A messianicity without Messiah is an image of openness and hope, searching to avoid the latent violence of religious messianisms. In effect, “the messianic” is the motif Derrida poses naming a faith not yet marked by religion. Yet, this thought of an indeterminate faith is inhabited by very determinate religious names. And even if the relationship between “the messianic” and the Messiah belongs to the realm of the irreducible, there will always be some name haunting the unnamable. For, in fact, how to avoid naming? However, the effort of a theology against theology reacts to the vicious inclination of human institutions to feed idolatric instantiations of power in the name of God. Luther’s theology understands that God without a “determinate messiah” is not necessarily an auspicious possibility: God without flesh—deus nudus—would easily turn into something deleterious. Always already inside a tradition, Jesus—the crucified Messiah—was thus read as a weakening motif. Yet, how weak can the “Christian name” of God be kept? Derrida’s thinking always makes the point that whatever allows the play to play cannot be held hostage to any determinate play. Therefore deconstruction gets hold of ancient metaphors and somehow retells them in a continuous and open play, allowing for diverse intonations. As he observes, we cannot get rid of language and its metaphors, but we may strive to choose the best intonations for them (WD, 114). After so much hearing of the tones of absolutism and fanaticism, the tones of deconstruction are good music to the ears. Now, can this way of playing open theology to recognize its metaphors and modulate them in diverse tones? Let’s say, the “best” tones for today, those that welcome what is most feared: “Namely, the truth of the other, heterogeneity, the heteronomic and the dissymmetric, disseminal multiplicity, the anonymous ‘anyone,’ the ‘no matter who,’ the in-determinate ‘each one’” (R, 14–15)? In effect, deconstruction dares theology to awaken “the messianic” in the Messiah. In the very name of Jesus, we have seen and continue seeing “the use and abuse of the cross” (Westhelle 2006, 2). Yet, although in many scenarios the burden of a name still impinges, the very same name continues to release a redemptive faith. Theology needs to rescue the christological paradox because flesh needs the liberating unconditional force of the divine in flesh. Even now, in our postmodern globalized milieu, colonized peoples struggle to erase the colonizers’ faces out of Jesus the savior. Women collectives fight to keep the normativity of Jesus’s gonads out, in order to breach the Father-Son & Bro.’s phallocratric consummation of theology. Bodies expressing sexual

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diversity claim the very diversity of Godself in Jesus out of the closet of heteronormative institutionalized theologies. In global warming times, the groaning of all creation calls in need of salvation and many still find hope in the cursed name of Jesus the Christ. After considering Luther’s particular way of receiving the tradition around this name, we are enabled to persevere in a theology in which God is wounded in its sovereignty and unconditionally enmeshed with the world. We read after Derrida, who addressing theology expresses a wish: “I would like to think of something unconditional in forgiving, in grace, in forgiveness, in the gift, in hospitality—an unconditionality that wouldn’t be a sign of power, a sign of sovereignty” (EF, 42). The postmodern philosopher uses words and images that the premodern theologian deconstructed and rescued from the institutional captivity of his time. What throbs in sola scriptura, sola fide, and sola gratia is embraced by the solus Christus. The metaphors of a tradition hold a name that still haunts our theologies. Religious traditions always involve names, and names are problematic. Yet, names hold more than what any particular instantiation of them may receive. We cannot demarcate what names evoke and invoke, what memories they keep, what faith they elicit, what gifts they deliver, what futures they call. We cannot declare names or traditions closed, our theological task is to keep uttering them in the best intonations for our time. The Supplement and the Supplemented Metaphysics can only think “the other” as an imperfect, secondary term of “the One.” In fact, the logic of the One in order to affirm itself needs to forget, erase, or at least diminish the other. Yet, this imperfect, secondary term keeps reappearing as a “supplement,” which seems to add something to what, by definition, shouldn’t need anything. Deconstruction whispers in our ear: “It seems that the One suffers the lack of the other ‘from its very beginning.’” This is the scandalon for metaphysical thinking: to be confronted by the fact that the other has always constitutively infected the oneness of the One. Indeed, the other is that secondary supplement without which the One cannot be One and by which it is never just One. Following in the same direction, while metaphysical thinking needs a complete, pure origin to ground itself, the origin is in itself irretrievable. The One, the origin, the “Thing itself” is presently impossible, thus we only get an intermediary in its place. This means that a secondary, imperfect supplement of the origin has already taken place. And here, there is another problem for metaphysical thinking since deconstruction, again, whispers: “Immediacy is derived . . . [it] all begins through the intermediary” (OG, 157, emphasis added).

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Something similar happens to theologians when they, thinking about Jesus Christ, get caught in the riddle of christology. For in effect, as Guillermo Hansen elaborates, the very idea of “incarnation” implies the fact that some pre-existent principle was previously there in order to become later embedded in flesh. This logic says that the logos that became sarx (flesh) must have been sometime before asarkos (without flesh); consequently, Jesus the human being, was an enhypostatic realization of the logos, and did not have subsistence outside the logos. However, although, in Luther, we still see the use of the dogmatic theology of the “two natures” working within the framework of the theology of “incarnation,” we may also see that he cracks that frame. In Luther’s christology, the object of incarnation—its terminus ad quem—becomes its catalyzing subject—its terminus a quo—and this is so because Luther detects a theological density in the very humanity of Christ (Hansen 2010, 163–65). Now, reading Luther after Derrida, we may perceive the deconstructive drive: it uncovers that flesh, which is regarded as secondary to the logos, has always already contaminated and affected divinity from its inception; there is no such thing as a logos asarkos in this christology. The metaphysical theologic of the original One is disrupted by the illogic of the supplement. When Luther affirms that “apart from this human being there is no God” since “the humanity is more closely united with God than our skin with our flesh,” he is saying that this humanity makes God what God is: God cannot be God without it. Nevertheless, Luther’s christology affirms simultaneously “both sides” of the communication between natures; for him, genus majestaticum and genus tapeinoticon imply each other as “the double transit from the majestic to the humble and vice versa” (Westhelle 2016, 107). Thus, this christology starting by the humanity in Christ effects the subversion of the classic theologies of the “incarnated logos.” After this, comes the displacement involved by the strategy: there is not an original “divine One” because the “human other” has always already supplemented it. Yet, both human and divine are Christ in a different logic than the metaphysical opposition. It is for this reason that, for Luther, the language of christology escapes that of philosophy—and, in effect, leaves us theologians of the twenty-first century juggling with old Greek, some Latin, and antiquated medieval terminology. Although we may say that the riddle is other: both Derrida’s deconstruction and Luther’s theology refuse to lay hands on syntheses, for their habitat is the paradox. Perhaps, this paradox can be put under a contemporary motif. Writing about this, Westhelle announces the fix we are in: “To find a concept that can simultaneously affirm union while not forfeiting difference” (Westhelle 2016, 100; emphasis added). It is so that reading Luther after Derrida, he thinks of hybridity: “Hybrids essentially do not have identities. Their ‘identities’ are ‘impure’; they have been ‘corrupted,’ polluted, and displaced” (Westhelle

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2016, 96). In fact, the hybrid is not a synthesis but an undecidable. “Jesus is God, the hybrid” announces Westhelle—uttering the name in a liberating intonation for our time (Westhelle 2016, 107). Luther and Derrida let us receive the riddle not by solving it, but by embracing it. Luther’s premodern christology enables postmodern theological creativity. From his daring use of the communicatio idiomatum we receive the possibility of assuming theologically the gift of hybridity in a world raided by the quest for exclusive pure identities, by the violent closing of ethnic, religious, sexual, economic, and national borders. Something Happens to God Luther refused a heavenly Christ, aseptic of flesh and blood, foreign to bread and wine, completely distant from creaturely matter(s): “No God like that for me!” Reading this after Derrida we may find ourselves considering the full communication of the idiomata (idioms, oddities, properties): the border crossing of Jesus—who is God in the flesh—takes upon Godself all that we are. Jesus Christ, which in his humanity can be discerned in the very texture of the world, is at the same time the “dissemination” of God: divinity spread into the queerest places. As Marcella Althaus-Reid encourages us to grasp, Jesus Christ is Godself continuously in drag. Writing in honor of Derrida, Althaus-Reid (inadvertently?) allows us to engage Luther’s christology. As she thinks the presence of God in Jesus accompanying the economic and sexual untouchables, she observes: “Reading the ambiguous text of Jesus, we read the text of a God who does not fit Godself anymore and needs to come out of some divine closet” (Althaus-Reid 2005, 402). And she continues, “as we witness the tension of the act of God’s divine cross-dressing and the relativization of God’s essential being, we are also aware that Jesus disestablishes the false sense of transcendence prevalent in much North Atlantic theology” (Althaus-Reid 2005, 402). This is a creative theological exercise, the humming of a metaphor in diverse tunes: the premodern communicatio idiomatum offered to postmodern children. Thus we are taken to face the christological challenge: Can something like this really happen to God? Actually, can anything ever happen to God? Besides, can Luther’s theology help us in this sense? We may listen again to the sermon: Therefore since we could not bear to hear God in God’s majesty, God humbly adopted flesh and blood, assuming not only our nature, that is, flesh and blood, but also all the frailties with which body and soul are afflicted, as, for example, fear, sadness, anger, and hatred. This is really burying and concealing God’s divine majesty!

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Up to this point, we perceive Luther depicting a God that decides: “His Majesty, the cis-God” amorously chooses humbling himself on our behalf. God is still in control of things, he “assumes” us in drag. Yet, Luther insists now trying to read God from the other side, from inscription, from the text: We are told that he was weak, that he was like any other human being in body and soul, that he made himself subject to all human infirmities, that he hungered and thirsted, that he experienced all the wants of flesh and blood. In this weakness the true and eternal God shows himself.

Nevertheless, Derrida still doubts: “There you see that the powerlessness, of course, is also a sign of the almighty” (Caputo and Scanlon 2005, 41). Of course, “the true and eternal God” carries quite a metaphysical weight. But, perhaps, claiming the tradition, we may read after Derrida and pose some more questions: What if the weakening of God belongs to God’s very constitution? Does this still count as rational program and teleological rationale? For Luther’s christology affirms that God cannot be Godself without the other. Can we theologians of postmodern times continue saying that there is an “original” sovereign God, which hides in the humanity of Christ? It would be like affirming that drag is just a costume, that there is an “essence” of a “real self” disguised as something else. Yet, the other is always other, there is no essence of the other. We find in Luther the queerest God, who is hidden in hiddenness but shows themself to us: in this weakness God shows Godself. There is a need of the other that escapes the program of God, for it is always already part of God. The autoimmune weakening of God gets out of God’s hands, the divine immune system is constitutionally cracked: it turns against itself. Luther’s christology read after Derrida lets us see that God is always already affected and that theology cannot hide this condition lest it lose Godself. Indeed, we may say that (bad) things actually happen to God. Any effort to cure God of the “Jesus malady” would leave us without God, while the reversal also applies but without closure. For this wounded sovereignty still remains unconditional. Unconditionality is, in fact, the symptom of the “divine infection” upon the human. A Certain Strategy Applied to Transcendence In his brief christological observation, Derrida details the content of his challenge as follows: If it is as weak and vulnerable that Jesus Christ represents or incarnates God, then the consequence would be that God is not absolutely powerful. Or, putting

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things the other way round, we would say that the weakness, the powerlessness of Jesus, is the human part of the passion, and that God remains absolutely powerful. That’s a decision to be made within Christianity. (EF, 42)

Thus, in this long exercise of thinking Luther’s christology after Derrida, we have traced once more the strategy and perceived the delimitation of metaphysics. The subversive step lets us receive the impact of a christology that not only accepts but embraces the genus tapeinoticon; and only after this— when the violent hierarchy of divinity over flesh has been upturned—the perception of the genus majestaticum can only occur as the faithful companion of the previous. And here the displacement. For we need to see a displacement ,otherwise we rest in absolute immanence—which, after promising “the other,” gives us again “the same.” Derrida, the philosopher, displaces with “the messianic,” the oppositional thought of transcendence and immanence; and so does Luther, the theologian, as he implodes the very idea of divinity rescuing unconditionality out of a weakened sovereignty. With his peculiar portraying of the communicatio idiomatum, Luther’s christology affirms that there cannot be God without that crucified human Christ, but at the same time let us perceive divinity in all flesh nearby. The decision has been made. NOTES 1. See chapter 7. 2. Yeago argues, however, that Luther had received the later Neo-Chalcedonian christological discussions via the Sentences of Peter Lombard (Yeago 1995, 269n11). 3. With his work, Chemnitz set the parameters for orthodox Lutheran christology. In fact, subsequent representatives of the Lutheran orthodoxy elaborated upon the genera and, in some cases, with even more detail and complexity. Among those theologians were Leonhard Hutter, Matthias Hafenreffer, Johann Friedrich König, Johann Gerhard and Theodor Thumm (see Congdon 2011, 4–5, 5n9). 4. De duabus naturis in Christo: de hypostatica earum unione, de communicatione idiomatum, et aliis quaestionibus inde dependentibus libellus. 5. The genus tapeinoticon is implicit in the work of many modern theologians asserting the suffering of God. Among those whom Richard Bauckham includes in this group are: Miguel de Unamuno, Nicolas Berdyaev, James Cone, A. N. Whitehead, K. Chung-Choon, J. Y. Lee, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Bauckham 1984, 6–7). The issue is explicit in the theology of a number of modern Lutheran and Luther scholars, starting with the groundbreaking work of Kazoh Kitamori (1946). More recently, the work of Dennis Ngien, deals with Luther’s reception of the christological dogma, his use of the communicatio idiomatum and the suffering of God (1997, 2001, 2004a, 2004b). 6. See chapter 6.

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7. In 1538 Caspar Schwenckfeld (1489–1561), a Silesian nobleman, proposed his doctrine rejecting that Christ was a creature at any time, either during his earthly life or after the resurrection (DDHC, 151). 8. See chapter 9. 9. With regard to this, scholars observe that Luther’s strong emphasis on the union of the two natures in the one person of Christ and their mutual exchange of properties take on Alexandrian christology exceeding it; they actually speak of a “hyper-Alexandrian” christological tendency (Jenson 1992, 128; Ngien 2004a, 62). 10. I have been guided to the consideration of the “three modes” by both Neal J. Anthony (2010) and the Foreword to his book by Vítor Westhelle (Anthony 2010, ix–xii). 11. For a wider context on this controversy, see Amy Nelson Burnett (2016, 163– 70) and Brian Lugioyo (2015, 274–83). 12. See chapter 9. 13. The name “sacramentarian” was used by Luther for his opponents. The word originates in the definition of sacramentum as a “sign of a sacred thing” (Burnett 2016, 165). 14. “Daß dieser Jungfrawen Son sey meines wesens und Natur worden und doch GOtt sey und ist mir so nahe worden, daß er ist, was ich bin, und hat angenomen, was ich bin.” English version from Steiger (2000, 151–52, 152n25). 15. “Quod deus natus ex virgine Maria et sugat lac humanum . . . und hat sich lassen baden, brey einstreichen,” Sermon for Nativity (1531). English version from Steiger (2000, 127). 16. Sermon on John 3 (1538). 17. Sermon on John 4 (1538). 18. The symposium God is in, is Jezus uit? was held in the Westerkerk, on November 29, 2008.

PART IV

The Deconstructive Drive of Luther’s Theology

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A Happy Exchange

The theologian and the philosopher have met and had a chat. Although they lived on opposite ends of modernity’s transitional periphery, we can imagine them having a conversation, perhaps in the manner they both preferred: “at the table.” Thus, they held a Tischrede or a roundtable, and, as among many in a big audience, I was allowed to ask a few questions. Apart from that, I labored to write down many notes about what transpired, which later I managed to arrange into some chapters. At the time of concluding, although much of the exchange exceeds me, I find that the expectations I had about this exchange were on the right track. As the conversation progressed, this circumstance allowed a number of ideas to emerge and develop, inviting a diversity of topics. This reading exercise finds the relationship between a late medieval theological breakthrough and a late modern philosophical breakthrough: the theology of Martin Luther and the thought of Jacques Derrida are interacting with each other in a variety of ways. The analysis of the core matters of Luther’s theology—in the light of and in dialogue with Derrida’s work—shows how they played a deconstructive operation upon the dominant theological teachings of his time. This allows us to trace the deconstructive drive of Luther’s theology in a more extensive and supported manner, going beyond the acknowledged inheritance to deconstruction identified in the destructio of scholastic theology called for in his Heidelberg Disputation— more specifically, in his delineation of the theologia crucis. The deconstructive strategy and the delimitation of metaphysics—in which the writings of the philosopher and the theologian intersect—are at work in Luther’s theology, not only in connection with the dynamics of the theologia crucis and the deus absconditus, but also with the subjects of justice, faith, grace, scripture, human beings, creation, the law, and christology. Proceeding through intersections, echoes, and mirrors, the conversations in this book let us perceive how Martin Luther’s theological thought left tracks in premodern times that are still detectable in our postmodern territories. When faced with the 241

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challenge of postmodern readings, the issues shared by Luther and Derrida let us see that the deconstructive dynamic is still at work. Thus, epistemology, hermeneutics, anthropology, ethics, and the idea of transcendence entice critical and creative reflection. We can trace such dynamic in a number of important theological topics of Luther’s, and this does not only illustrate the deconstructive drive in Luther’s theology but describes how something new actually occurs. The exercise of subversion and displacement of a theological conception brings to light that which, although belonging to the same conceptual field, was not detectable before. And this involves not only abstract notions but also their material, concrete correlations. In this aspect, considering Luther’s theology in relation to Derrida’s work involves a task of unbuilding and rebuilding, performing an act of deconstructive construction. This lets us think that an exercise of deconstruction is inherently and strategically constructive and entails the possibility of keeping a tradition open to the future. For those of us who approach theology more or less aware of the traditions that run through us, I believe this may prove to be a fruitful although daring exchange. Because it is not only about challenging names and formulas that appear untouchable, it is also the laborious task of revisiting old concepts worn out by use and abuse, demanding their good news. Yet, this is our responsibility toward the traditions with which we are intertwined: to honor them by betraying them—albeit lovingly. A SPECIAL GIFT This happy exchange left many gifts.1 Those I could start to unwrap and share are, of course, imperfect. (For a number of reasons, at this point, we may well imagine why it is so.) As stated in the introduction of this book, one of its purposes is to contribute to the critical contemporary reception of a theological tradition. This reading exercise brought forth some thoughts in this sense. I formulate them here as a small input to keep traditions receptive to facing life anew. A small grain of sand at the shore of an unending task. On Tradition(s) The human is woven by traditions. We are always already inside traditions; they are here before we arrive and will continue to be here after we are gone. Traditions and their texts are part of the constitutive tissue of our lives, whether we are aware of them or not, whether we accept them or we reject them. Sometimes we choose some traditions, but this occurs always after they have already affected (and effected) us. Traditions are something that

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we inherit, and Derrida well notices that we inherit because we are finite beings. In Luther, this aspect is so radical that he ties faith to inheritance in a scenery in which, in order that we humans may inherit, God Godself has to die. Indeed, this is the way in which traditions work: they are bequeathed to us, we receive them passively, sometimes we choose them actively, and always pass them on. Tradition(s) imposes their heirs with the (im)possible task of reception. Traditions are textual—in the widest sense of the “text”—and this reminds us of the historicity of what we inherit. Because of this, receiving a handed down tradition means that we never receive it “firsthand.” In fact, traditions do not fall from heaven; their texts are woven in space and time, they are the stuff of history, they account for what others have done before us. Thus, choosing a tradition takes us to recognize that it is given to us and, at the same time, to accept the task of reading it responsibly for us and for others after us. As Derrida observes, this is always an (im)possible task: before tradition, our finitude is obliged “to receive what is larger and older and more powerful and more durable” than us; however, we are called to (re)interpret, to subvert, and to displace it so that a real transformation can take place. Fulfilling our task, aware of its immensity and of our limitations, is the risk we take as responsible heirs. Loving tradition(s) involves both honor and betrayal. Reading and rereading is, thus, the task of those who choose a tradition, and the works of Derrida and Luther witness to this. As Derrida confessed, he was always starting to read Plato and Aristotle and always found himself at the threshold of his reading. In the same way, at the end of his life, Luther—“Doctor of Scripture”— declared his status as a beggar facing the inexhaustible traces of scripture. We need to love traditions in order to honor them. That is, to be ready to start every day reading it as beginners, because we cannot critique scriptures, institutions, dogmas, or beliefs if we ignore them. Yet, this deconstructed sort of “love & honor” involves inescapably the opening of tradition to the other and, thus, always, some betrayal in the name of honor, in the name of love. The reception of tradition(s) calls for deconstruction. Although traditions are many, the Christian tradition imposes itself on the western world and its globalizing expansion. In fact, the exchange in this work—regarding thoughts of philosophy, religion, and theology—took place within a “Christian territory.” And this refers not only to the late medieval Christendom of Luther but also to our postmodern, postsecular time. As Derrida observed, when we speak “religion”—which is much more than religion–—we are always already speaking Christian Latin, and, as well, we are speaking Anglo-American, that is, some imperial language. Thus, loving and honoring traditions in our “globalatinized” world (especially if we are “doing theology”) require a constant deconstructive task. Traditions carry the bliss of promise, grace, and life

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together with the burden of imposition, terror, and the worst. And, as seen, “the worst” is the constant temptation of reducing the other into the same. Since traditions involve tangible, material aspects that amount to matters of life and death, deconstructive–constructive theological projects cannot indulge in comfortable dozing lapses. Tradition(s) is always given and receiving it involves us for the best and the worst. Furthermore, the responsibility of receiving something that exceeds us puts us constantly at some “receiving end,” which is an implicated part in the making of what is transmitted. For this reason, traditions belong to the fabric into which we are woven, and, simultaneously, their patterns bear the marks of our singularities. As the “deconstructive strategy” reminds us, we are constitutively related to that which we try to interpret, critique, and change. A deconstructive–constructive theological reading allows a better perception of the complexity of origin, reception, and transmission. As receivers we are always interpreted by and involved in the text we transmit; yet, after Luther after Derrida, we are aware that our being “receivers” happens always as a response, a “yes” that comes after an always already spoken “yes.” (And we are always receivers, even if we are saying “no.”) Tradition(s) exceeds us carrying together all its past, present, and future possibilities. Traditions are many, and they always involve names. And names hold more than what any particular instantiation of them may receive. We cannot draw the line to what names evoke and invoke, what memories they keep, what gifts they deliver, what futures they call. We cannot declare names or traditions closed. As observed, names and traditions may shelter both the asphyxiating imposition of decayed cultural structures and hospitable memories with opening promises. In the case of theological traditions, theological deconstructive constructions engage us to hum them constantly with new intonations in the best ways. Reading Luther after Derrida we have glimpsed a tradition witnessing to a promise that releases the past, unlocks the present, and welcomes the future. May the gift of the present rest in the opening toward what comes, in the constant expression of its irreducible multiplicity: new intonations invoked by old intonations of a variety of melodies. NOTE 1. The exchange has turned here from “marvelous” to “happy”; in reality, both terms are used to refer to the “commercium admirabile,” and I have used the former traditional rendering throughout this whole work. At the time of closing, provided that “marvelous” and “happy” are not synonyms, I claim also the happiness of this quite marvelous—although limited–—particular exchange.

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Index

Abraham, 198–99 Althaus, Paul, 85n11, 111 Althaus–Reid, Marcella, 10n7, 162– 63, 213, 239 Altmann, Walter, 76 Anfechtung, 31, 39n1, 118, 123, 128–29, 133, 154, 165n20 Apophatics, 95, 96, 100–2, 124, 131, 133, 139n28 aqedah, 199 Aquinas, Thomas 16, 23, 69, 123, 192n14; Thomist theologies, 115; Thomist influence, 203 Aristotle, 33, 69; Derrida’s readings on, 27, 30n8, 31, 33, 45, 50, 51, 170, 249; logical principles of, 47; Luther on, 31, 72, 73, 83, 85n3, 204; transcendentals in, 30n7; Aristotle’s “Prime Mover,” 22, 23; Aristotle’s influence on theology, 26, 69, 72, 203 Augustine of Hippo: in contemporary thought, 3, 5, 10nn4–8; Luther on, 73, 76, 85nn3–7, 124–25, 176; on justice, 71; influence on Staupitz, 125–26 autoimmunity, 168; Derrida’s notion of, 54, 60, 61, 168, 222; faith and, 60, 61, 168; God’s, 191, 194n36,

223; grace and, 217; reason and, 62, 63; religion and, 92; sovereign, 219, 223, 235 Bayer, Oswald, 83, 85n5, 112, 138n13, 151–52, 161, 164n8, 165nn18, 165nn20–21, 176, 181, 185–86, 193n35 Bornkamm, Heinrich, 122–23, 139n32 Brecht, Martin, 16, 128, Bulhof, 98, 103 Butler, Judith, 51 Calvin, John, 148, 166n23, Campolo, Lisa, 49 Caputo, John D., 3, 4, 5, 7, 9n1, 10nn4–8, 20n3, 30n13, 40nn4–6, 77, 86n22, 89, 90, 100, 103, 107n1, 161, 198, 201–2 Chemnitz, Martin, 225, 229, 241n3 christology: contemporary theological appraisal on, 235–41; logos Christology 23, 29n5; Luther’s 191, 193n22, 218–19, 223–24, 226–29, 231, 233–35; Luther’s vis-à-vis Karlstadt’s, Zwingli’s and Oecolampadius,’ 230–33; Luther’s vis-à-vis Nestorius’ and Eutyches’ 228–29; Luther’s vis-à-vis 259

260

Index

Schwenckfeld’s 226–27. See also solus Christus commercium admirabile (marvelous exchange), 140n40, 174, 216–17, 250n1 communicatio idiomatum (communication of properties), 193n22, 223, 225, 237–41; Chemnitz on, 225; Moltmann on, 225–26; Luther on, 226–31, 233–35; Sobrino on, 226 creation, 237; Eckhart on, 122–23; Luther on, 74, 123, 135, 181–86, 188–89, 206, 233–34, 247 Critchley, Simon, 53 cross: Derrida on, 84, 102, 105–7, 135, 195–96, 220–21; Luther on, 73–84, 86n15, 110–11, 120–21, 131–33; 135, 149–50. See also theology of the cross

faith 39, 112, 247; Bayer on, 152; contemporary theological appraisal on, 186–92; Derrida on, 58–63, 80, 81, 91, 93, 94, 103–5, 107n5, 109, 146, 167–71, 219–20, 236; Ebeling on, 152; Heidegger on, 58, 102, 104; justification by/through, 70, 109, 115, 117, 185–87, 189, 206–7; Luther on, 72, 80, 81, 83, 119–20, 123, 126–29, 131, 133–34,150, 154–55, 157–58, 160, 162, 164, 167, 171–76, 179, 184, 186, 205, 211–12, 234, 249; Westhelle on, 152. See also sola fide flesh: and spirit, 176, 210, 213, 217; Christ’s, 161, 175, 190, 233–36, 239–41; eating, 56, 65nn14–15; in the eucharistic controversy, 230; logos become (word made), 23, 81, 226–27, 230–32, 238

Dalferth, Ingolf, 10n7, 185 Deus absconditus (the hidden God), 80, 90, 109–17, 123–24, 128, 130–36, 149–50, 157–58, 162, 195 différance, 34–39, 40nn12–16, 47, 54, 58, 101, 104, 145–46, 167, 169, 221 Dionysius, 95, 98–100, 115, 117, 119– 24, 131, 133, 139n23 Dillenberger, John, 137n1, 140n47

Gasché, Rodolphe, 15, 20n2 gift, 39, 81–83, 248, 250; Derrida on, 81, 82, 162, 165n14, 188, 195–202, 214, 218n3, 219–20, 237; grace as, 205–18; Luther on, 205–6, 209, 234, 239; Marion on, 82 Goya, Francisco, 48 grace, 247, 249; Augustinian teachings on, 126–27; contemporary theological appraisal on, 212–18; Derrida on, 237; justification by, 76, 115, 117, 179, 189, 207–8; Luther on, 18, 73, 75, 81, 82, 126, 148, 155–56, 160, 173, 178–79, 185–86, 202, 204–12, 234; scholastic teachings on, 72, 115, 172–74, 178, 203–4. See also gift, grace as; sola gratia Gregersen, Niels, 213, 233–34

Ebeling, Gerhard, 151–52, 165n11 Eckhart, Meister, 95, 98, 99, 115, 117, 121–24, 127–28, 131, 133, 138n18, 139nn28–29, 139nn31–33 Écriture, 32–36, 39, 40n11, 54, 145–46, 158, 161, 163, 167–70 Enlightenment (Aufklärung), 48, 61, 94; the new (Enlightenment to come), 48, 62, 80 Erasmus, Desiderius, 82, 83, 110–12, 132, 147–48, 162, 176, 178–79 ethics, 27, 51, 56–58, 72, 74, 75, 94, 137, 198–204, 208–10, 212, 216, 248

Hägglund, Martin, 200 Hansen, Guillermo, 12, 238 Harnack, Adolf von, 29n5

Index

Hegel, Wilhelm F., 49; Derrida on, 22, 30n8, 33, 38, 49, 55, 57, 77 Heidegger, Martin, 10n4, 21, 22, 25, 49, 64nn2–3, 86n22; Derrida on, 3, 5, 22, 46, 50, 52, 53, 55, 57–59, 77, 101–2, 105, 168, 170, 189 the hidden God. See Deus absconditus Hinlicky, Paul, 227 human being: as subject, 52–57; Christ as a, 191, 213, 223, 228–35, 238–40; Luther on the, 175–86, 188–89, 210–12 Husserl, Edmund, 13; Derrida on, 26, 30n8, 33, 40n10, 55 Indulgences, 16–18, 20nn5–6, 76, 204, 206, 208 Iwand, Hans Joachim, 178–9 Jenson, Robert, 224–25 Jüngel, Eberhard, 65n22, 215 Kant, Immanuel, 45, 53, 213; Derrida on, 27, 30n8, 47, 48, 62, 92, 94, 107n5, 170, 212 Karlstadt, Andreas, 148, 155, 166n23, 230, 234 khōra: Derrida on, 36, 39, 91, 95–98, 101, 103–6, 108n9, 109, 130–35, 167, 169, 195, 220; Plato on, 96, 97 Kierkegaard, Søren, 3, 5, 10n5, 209; Derrida on, 30n8, 86n27, 199 Kleinhans, Katryn, 206 knowledge, 45–60, 83–84; faith and, 61–63, 80, 81, 94, 104–5, 168–69; theological, 4, 69–71, 74, 75, 77–84, 116–17; that which escapes, 15, 45, 57–62, 89–91, 96, 99, 102–7, 132, 167–69, 195 law: and gospel 148, 155–56, 159–60; and justice 187, 197–98, 200–1, 214–15; Derrida on the, 187, 197–201, 214; Luther on the 73, 74, 75, 83, 155–57, 178–80, 187,

261

207–11, 216–17; Luther vis-à-vis the humanist reformers on the 148–49, 155; natural, 155, 180, 203; Luther vis-à-vis Staupitz on the 125–26 Leibniz, Gottfried W., 64n2 Levinas, Emmanuel, 15, 58, 86n26; Derrida on, 30, 50, 51, 57–59, 83, 168, 170–71, 187, 200 Loewenich, Walther von, 85n11, 112 logos, 21, 22, 23, 24, 79, 80, 99, 132, 169–70, 188, 227, 238; Derrida on, 22, 29, 30n11, 32, 40nn8–9, 39, 46, 51, 56, 63; Heidegger on, 25, 26; logos tou staurou (word of the cross), 77, 80, 131, 132–33, 135–36, 149–50, 163, 227; the order of, 26, 31, 33, 34, 38, 56, 57, 81, 84, 97, 161–62, 221 Lohse, Bernhard, 70, 84n2, 85nn3–5, 112 Lumsden, Simo, 39, 57 Marion, Jean-Luc, 4, 9n2, 82 McGrath, Alister, 71, 78, 85n4, 110– 12, 176, 224 the messianic, 36, 37, 39, 91, 96, 102–6, 109, 132, 135, 169, 219–21, 223, 235–36 metaphysics, 4, 6, 8, 12, 20–25, 27–29, 31, 32, 39, 45–47, 50, 53, 55, 58, 63, 75, 83, 116, 146, 179, 197–98, 221, 237, 241, 247 Moltmann, Jürgen, 225–226 mysticism, 114, 116–18, 121, 124–25, 127–28, 130, 137n11, 140n45, 149, 191 Nancy, Jean-Luc, 5, 9n1, 57 Oberman, Heiko, 118, 137nn7–11, 138nn18–21, 140n45, 156, 161, 165n19, 192n14, 208 Ockham, William, 78, 86n20, 114–17, 137n9, 164n3 Oecolampadius, Johann, 230–31, 234

262

Index

Otto, Rudolf, 111–12 Ozment, Steven, 115–16, 121–22, 127–28, 137n11, 138n18, 139n32, 175–79, 192n17, 193n18 Packull, Werner, 138nn11–20 Paulson, Steven, 10n7, 114, 131 Plato, 30n7, 50, 95, 96, 98, 131; Derrida on, 22, 26, 30n8, 31, 50, 97, 101, 103, 131, 162, 249 posteriora Dei (God’s rearward parts), 7, 79, 81, 82 promise: Bayer on the, 152, 161; contemporary theological appraisal on the, 160–64, 249–50; Derrida on the, 34, 37–39, 59, 84, 90, 98, 103–5, 132, 136, 145–46, 167–70, 219; Heidegger on the, 58, 104; Luther’s theology on the, 117, 127, 132, 136, 145, 150, 154–57, 173–74, 186, 209, 234; in apophatic discourse, 99 Rasmussen, Larry, 112, 233 Religion, 216, 235, 249; Derrida on, 91–96, 102–3, 105–7, 107nn2–6, 132, 135, 220–21, 236 resignatio ad infernum (willingness to be damned), 118, 124, 129 responsibility, 57–60, 62, 62, 105, 168, 170–71, 198–200, 214; and traditions, 13, 248, 250 Roffe, Jonathan, 58 Ruge-Jones, Philip, 76, 86n14 scripture: Bayer on, 151–2, 161, 164n8; contemporary theological appraisal on, 158–64; Ebeling on, 151–52; Luther on, 17, 31, 145, 147, 150–58, 165nn15–16, 173–74, 223; Luther vis-à-vis the humanist reformers on, 148–49, 154–57; Luther vis-à-vis the Church of Rome on, 147–48, 153–54, 165n16; Oberman on, 156, 161; Westhelle on, 150–52, 155–56, 164n8. See also sola scriptura

Sobrino, Jon, 225–26 Solberg, Mary, 12, 86n15 sola fide, 9, 137, 164–65, 171–76, 184– 86, 189, 191, 219, 237 sola gratia, 9, 137, 179, 195, 202–8, 210, 213–14, 216–17, 219, 237 sola scriptura, 9, 137, 145, 147–51, 154–56, 162, 164, 173, 219, 227, 237 solus Christus, 9, 137, 219, 223, 235, 237 Staupitz, Johann von 73, 117, 124–26 Steiger, Johann A., 233–34 Steinmetz, David C., 125–26, 128, 232–33 the supplement, 34–36, 220–21, 237–38 Tauler, Johannes, 84, 110, 115, 117, 121–22, 125, 127–28, 138n21 Taylor, Chloé, 50, 51 Tertullian, 178 text, 249–50; Derrida on the, 32, 34, 36–39, 77, 145–47, 160, 163, 167, 219–21; outside the, 38, 101, 131, 160–62; the scripture (the word) as, 78, 131–32, 135, 145, 150–54, 156–64, 167, 218–19, 239–40 Theologia Deutsch, 117, 124–25, 128, 138nn19–21, 139n35 theology of the cross (theologia crucis), 73–84, 86n15, 110–11, 120–21, 131– 33; 135, 149–50; Caputo on, 4, 10n4 Tillich, Paul, 134, 140n47 Tyra, Steven W., 183 Vries, Hent de, 89 Westphal, Merold, 6, 22, 29n3 Westhelle, Vítor, 6, 13, 74, 112–13, 134, 150–52, 155–56, 164nn4–8, 165n14, 166n22, 208, 214, 233–34, 238–39 Zusage: Derrida on, 58–60, 65n21, 104 Zwingli, Ulrich, 148, 166n23, 230, 232, 234; Luther on, 231–32

About the Author

Marisa Strizzi is a professor of theology at the Ecumenical Network for Theological Education (REET) and at the Institute for Contextual Pastoral Studies (IPC) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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