I mentioned in my last post that I am struggling with the final chapter of a manuscript titled Christ the Commodity. A close friend gave me a gentle tongue lashing about why death was not the end. This is surely the case in one of my favorite texts, First Corinthians chapters 1-2, where Saint Paul counts the foolishness of the Cross wiser than the wisdom that scoffs it. What happens when God dies? In that case, God’s intention is τὰ µὴ ὄντα, ἵνα τὰ ὄντα καταργήσῃ, to bring to nothing the things that are through the things that are not.
But reflecting on this passage led me to another. Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ἐλπιζοµένων ὑπόστασις, πραγµάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεποµένων. Hebrews 11:1. Which brings me to the substance (ὑπόστασις) of things hoped for, the evidence (ἔλεγχος) of things not seen.
The Christian argument for hope is not against evidence. It is not Kierkegaardian. It is not romantic. But nor was it a prefiguration of class analysis.
God is in the god-forsaken. That is where God is.
If one believes, as Christians must believe, that God does not abandon what God has created, it follows that we find God in what is dying. We find God at the Cross.
But, I am trying to think the social logic that leads to resurrection. And that is where I am stumped. I get it in Rome. The resistance to Roman occupation, the movement Jesus joined, with John and others, was eager to build up martyrs. Martyrs helped their cause. But translating this meme into the 21st century is taxing me.
I grasp all of the negative dialectical themes. Death is life. Death is the passage, not the wall.
But, I am actually thinking pragmatically about social action, legislation, and what leads us from abstract value to substantive value. I’m stumped.