Unorthodoxy

A lot of us go around thinking that we are who we think we are, which is another way of saying that we might easily believe that we are best understood in terms of what we know. This doesn't make as much sense as we may think it does. In this episode, I look at the way that desire gives rise to, and animates, the self—and the fact that desire is always mimetic. I'm drawing a lot of great sources: James KA Smith's 'Desiring the Kingdom,' Rene Girard's 'Deceit, Desire, and the Novel,' Marcus Borg's 'Speaking Christian,' J-M Oughourlian's 'The Genesis of Desire,' and Todd McGowan's 'The Fictional Christopher Nolan.' 

Religious fundamentalism isn't generally very well understood, despite being so pervasive in our time. So in this podcast I outline a few ways that we can get to the bottom of this strange phenomenon. In particular, I consider the surprising fact that religious fundamentalism actually has something in common with secular cynicism. My main source of inspiration for the theory here is the psychoanalytic critique of ideology offered by Slavoj Zizek in 'In Defense of Lost Causes' and 'Enjoy Your Symptom!' I also briefly refer to Tad Delay's 'God is Unconscious,' and I also keep in mind Robert Pfaller's 'The Pleasure Principle in Culture: Illusions Without Owners' (I don't mention it by name here, but his distinction between faith and belief is something I find rather useful).

What makes genuine dialogue possible? When you find yourself talking to someone who just doesn’t seem to hear what you’re trying to say, it helps to understand a few of the conditions and capacities that make communication happen. So that's what we're looking at in this podcast, with an eye on what theology might say on this subject. My main sources in this podcast are some of thePatristic writers: Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus (which I mispronounce), Eusebius of Caeserea, Theophilus of Antioch, Cyril of Jerusalem, and the Didache. I also refer to GK Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, Kenneth Burke’s Rhetoric of Motives, Shane Hipps's Flickering Pixels, Slavoj Zizek's Violence, and the New Testament writer, St. Paul.  

Often Christianity is thought of as a solution to a problem, but what happens if we think of it as a problem posed to all flimsy solutions? The world offers dreams, fantasies, promises, banquets, but these are often far from satisfying. To this, Christianity offers the logic of the Eucharist, which subverts the logic that tries to cure the disease without properly understanding what the disease is. In this episode, I refer to Shaun Achor's The Happiness Advantage, Anthony De Mello's Awareness, and Paul Tillich's Shaking the Foundations. And for good measure, I also reference Simone Weil, Bruce Cockburn, the book of Genesis and a bit of Greek mythology.

The Didache, a profound first-century Christian text, talks about the two ways to live, one that leads to life and one that leads to death. And in this episode, I look at another way of looking at these two ways: through the notions of an "ontology of peace" and an "ontology of violence." At the risk of getting a bit too technical, I glance at Plato's theory of forms, as well as the way that Nominalism undermines faith in the Transcendent. Texts referred to in this episode include the anonymously authored Didache, Thomas O'Loughlin's The Didache, and Paul Tyson's Returning to Reality. But I'm also keeping in mind the thinking of Thomas Aquinas, Hans Urs von Balthasar (especially the first book in his The Glory of the Lord series), and David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite. I also make reference to Simon Critchley, whose idea that philosophy begins with disappointment is something I've read in two of his books: Very Little, Almost Nothing and Faith of the Faithless. 

This episode takes a look at a Japanese proverb—"A nail that sticks out will be hammered down"—and how it sparks a few Lent-appropriate musings. Kierkegaard's pessimism about crowds in mentioned, Martin Heidegger's famous hammer analogy makes an entrance, and Rene Girard's brilliant notion of "mimetic desire" is also briefly discussed.   

What can the notion of "excommunication" contribute to our thoughts about communication, theology and God? What does the God talked about by Jesus have to do with excommunication? Books referred to in this episode include Excommunication: Three Inquiries Into Media by Alexander Galloway, Eugene Thacker and Mackenzie Wark, Phaedrus by Plato, Twelve Chapters on the Faith (supposedly by Gregory Thaumaturgus/Neocaesarea). Zizek’s Jokes by Slavoj Zizek. Hughes Mearns's poem Atagonish also makes an entrance at some point.

In this first episode of the Unorthodoxy podcast, I offer a few reflections on the tricky distinction between orthodoxy and heresy in Christian theology. Books referred to in this episode include: Atheism in Christianity by Ernst Bloch, Did Calvin Kill Servetus? by Stanford Rives, The Soul of Doubt by Dominic Erdozain, Heresy: It's Utility and Morality by Charles Bradlaugh, Heretics by GK Chesterton, and The First Apology by Justin Martyr.