Historic and Historical

been pondering MPJs words on tuesday - the gist being that the resurrection of Jesus is not remarkable because it is historical, but because it is historic. that is, we can well say that it did happen, and the importance of it having happened, and the historicity of the event. but in reflection, the fact that is is historical is only important because it is historic - epoch making, a new paradigm, a new way of understanding the world, a vindication of the promises of a creator God both fulfilled and beginning at this moment.

Badiou's book that i wrote about earlier in the year discussed this also - i was concerned because he didn't care so much about the historicity of the event, believing it was secondary. now i wouldn't want to go that far, in that it is causative (you can't have an historic moment without the historical event), but i think i get his emphasis a little more now.

i think i get too hung up on trying to convince people of the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, rather than the difference that makes - i need to emphasise that it changes everything!

[i might add, i feel the former is what Driscoll did when he was here - tried to convince people of the death of Jesus for them, but not of the resurrection of Jesus as changing everything. so saying Jesus died for you, so you can be forgiven - but not challenging their world views, that Jesus being raised makes everything different. just a thought.]

being broad - in a good way

read this quote, and then my comments, and then the quote again.

The contemporary world is thus doubly hostile to truth procedures. This hostility betrays itself though nominal occlusions*: where the name of a truth procedure should obtain, another, which represses it, holds sway. The name “culture” comes to obliterate that of “art.” The word “technology” obliterates the word “science.” The word “management” obliterates the word “politics.” The word “sexuality” obliterates love. The “culture-technology-management-sexuality” system, which has the immense merit of being homogenous to the market, and all of these terms designate a category of commercial presentation, constitutes the modern nominal occlusion of the “art-science-politics-love” system, which identifies truth procedures typologically.

Alain Badiou (translated by Ray Brassier), 2003, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Stanford University Press, California, p12

* nominal occlusions - the subversion of a true term, a broad, rich, meaningful term; in favour of another, more precise, yet in it's nature less true.

this is what i find a particularly interesting idea - as we define things to aid understanding, we cannot but occlude the true meaning.

i remember N.T. Wright saying 'the gospel is a story', meaning, as soon as you try and pin something down, giving a dictionary definition, you loose the true breadth meant by the term (c/f this on the way this works in Hebrew Poetry). we are too quick to condemn as heretics those who would emphasise one area of a doctrine over another, forgetting the context they speak from and the errors against which they must polemicise.

prophets, philosophers and apostles

the expander of the prophecy, of the discourse of signs, is a prophet.
the wise man, the philosopher, explains the wonders of wisdom, of cosmic order.
that leaves the apostle.
what do they do?

only one week till my theology/philosophy group meets. (we're reading Saint Paul: the foundation of universalism)

Theory of Discourses - Alain Badiou

i'll need to think this through a little more, but this was certainly a thought provoking quote in Alain Badiou's Saint Paul : the History of Universalism (2003) p48, contrasting Paul with Pascal, Badiou writes,

With Paul, we notice a complete absence of the theme of mediation. Christ is not a mediation; he is not that through which we know God. Jesus Christ is the pure event, and as such is not a function, even were it to be a function of knowledge, or revelation.

contrasting with Pascal, i think he's got the appropriate emphasis, although perhaps not the whole story. there is definitely "mediatory language" in Paul's Christology (c/f Col1:15), we know things about God because of Jesus. although i must admit there is a transcendence that is found "in" Christ (c/f esp. Eph1) that is almost beyond that of simply a mediator (in the terms of say Heb1 or 1Pet1).
i shall reflect some more on this.
and shall post some more Badiou!