No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 November 2018
In recent years, discussion has raged within theologies inspired by Continental philosophy of religion regarding the supposed “overcoming” of ontotheology. In this article, I will consider the theological methodology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, a sacramental theologian whose work has been highly influenced by these discussions. For Chauvet, it is the liturgy that provides human beings with the necessary means, not for overcoming ontotheology, but for learning to live with it in a healthy way. Through the liturgy, we learn to work through ontotheology, and thus to hear the call of Being to appropriation and thankful response. This is, however, quite a bit to ask of our liturgies, and I suggest that the only way that Chauvet's method can function is if it is placed in a framework of dialogue. I adopt this framework from Chauvet and expand upon it, which results in an innovative relecture of Chauvet's theology.
1 To offer but a small selection of studies and authors: Caputo, John D., The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Caputo, , The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional (Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Kearney, Richard, Anatheism: Returning to God after God (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Marion, Jean-Luc, Certitudes négatives (Paris: Ed. Grasset, 2010)Google Scholar; Marion, , God without Being: Hors texte, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simmons, J. Aaron and Minister, Stephen, eds., Reexamining Deconstruction and Determinate Religion: Toward a Religion with Religion (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Schrijvers, Joeri, Ontotheological Turnings? The Decentering of the Modern Subject in Recent French Phenomenology (Albany: SUNY Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Schrijvers, , Between Faith and Belief: Toward a Contemporary Phenomenology of Religious Life (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016)Google Scholar.
2 See also Chauvet, Louis-Marie, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, trans. Madigan, Patrick SJ, and Beaumont, Madeleine (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 26Google Scholar.
3 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 28.
4 Ibid., 48.
5 See Miller, Vincent, “An Abyss at the Heart of Mediation: Louis-Marie Chauvet's Fundamental Theology of Sacramentality,” Horizons 24, no. 2 (December 1997): 230–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lieven Boeve, for his part, notes that Chauvet has “brought theology to the threshold of the Postmodern context,” and that it is “from this perspective that Chauvet's endeavor is to be appreciated while at the same time deepened and strengthened.” This deepening and fine-tuning take the form of taking seriously contemporary thought's turn to language, and concomitant turn to theological hermeneutics. Boeve, Lieven, “Theology in a Postmodern Context and the Hermeneutical Project of Louis-Marie Chauvet,” in Sacraments: Revelation of the Humanity of God; Engaging the Fundamental Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, ed. Bordeyne, Philippe and Morrill, Bruce T. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), 6ffGoogle Scholar. This article is inspired by Boeve's focus on and appeal to hermeneutics and stands in constructive-critical dialogue with Miller's critique, though I do, ultimately, choose to follow the linguistic-hermeneutical route of criticism rather than one influenced by Habermas, as will be discussed below.
6 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 50 (emphasis in the original); here paraphrasing Heidegger, Martin, Lettre sur l'humanisme—Über den Humanismus (Paris: Aubier éd. Montaigne, 1970), 104–9Google Scholar.
7 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 50.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., paraphrasing and quoting Heidegger, , “Identité et différence,” in Questions I et II (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 299–300Google Scholar.
10 Ibid. (emphasis in the original).
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., 50–51 (emphasis in the original).
13 Ibid., quoting and paraphrasing Heidegger, “Identité et différence,” 286.
14 Ibid. (emphasis in the original).
15 Ibid., 52 (my emphasis; emphasis in the original).
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., 52–53. Chauvet does not explicitly refer to Ricoeur here, but one can draw connections with what Ricoeur says at the conclusion of The Symbolism of Evil with regard to the movement from the first to the second naïveté—we will return to this below. See Ricoeur, Paul, “Conclusion: The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought” in The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Buchanan, Emerson (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 347–57Google Scholar.
18 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 53 (emphasis in the original). See Heidegger, Martin, Lettre sur l'humanisme, Question 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), 106Google Scholar.
19 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 53.
20 Ibid., 84 (emphasis in the original).
21 Ibid., 84–85 (emphasis in the original).
22 Ibid., 85. Here alluding to Lévi-Strauss, Claude, “Introduction à l’œuvre de M. Mauss,” in Mauss, M., Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris: PUF, 1973), xlixGoogle Scholar.
23 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 85 (emphasis in the original). He continues: “Eating for us [humans] is not simply a matter of absorbing a certain number of calories but of consuming foods that are socially hallowed, so that the meal is the preeminent place for the nourishment of the social body” (ibid.).
24 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 85 (emphasis in the original), quoting Flahault, F., La parole intermédiare (Paris: Seuil, 1978), 84–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 86 (emphasis in the original).
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., 88.
28 Ibid., 93, quoting Benveniste, Émile, Problèmes de linguistique générale (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 1:261–62Google Scholar.
29 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 93, quoting Ortigues, Edmond, Le discours et le symbole (Paris: Aubier, 1962), 152–53Google Scholar.
30 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 93, quoting Ortigues, Le discours et le symbole, 153.
31 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 93, quoting Ortigues, Le discours et le symbole, 153.
32 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 93.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., 94 (emphasis in the original).
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid. (emphasis in the original).
37 Ibid., 94–95 (emphasis in the original).
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid. (emphasis in the original).
41 Ibid. (emphasis in the original).
42 Ibid., 97 (emphasis in the original), quoting Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (Paris: PUF, 1949), 10Google Scholar.
43 Ibid. (emphasis in the original).
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid. It should be noted that Susan A. Ross offers a very salient feminist critique of Chauvet's project, arguing that Chauvet's use of Lacan and Freud reflects a man's perspective to the detriment of one coming from a woman. She notes: “It is worth raising the question here … whether the dynamics of desire for an unmediated relationship with the (m)other, as understood psychoanalytically by Chauvet, represent a universal desire in human experience, or whether this desire is more the characteristic of men than of women. If one's relationship with one's mother is affected by the dynamics of gender, might this desire for the unmediated be similarly affected? Might this suggest that women's relationship to the symbolic could follow a different journey than that of men?” Susan A. Ross, Extravagant Affections: A Feminist Sacramental Theology (London: Continuum, 2001), 145–46.
46 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 97.
47 Ibid., 98 (emphasis in the original). In psychoanalytical terms, Durchärbeitung refers to “psychic work which enables the subject to accept certain repressed elements and to free himself from the grip of repetitive mechanisms.” The process of working-through is most pertinent “at certain phases where the treatment seems to stagnate and where a resistance, while understood, persists.” Laplanche, Jean and Pontalis, J.-B., Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse, ed. Lagache, Daniel, 2nd ed. (Paris: PUF, 1981)Google Scholar, https://psycha.ru/fr/dictionnaires/laplanche_et_pontalis/voc211.html). The term's original use, then, refers to the working-through of repressed or subconscious elements, patterns of thought, and behavior, which manage to keep us in their grip even though we have been able to “understand” or interpret them. Interestingly, the French translation of Durchärbeitung is perlaboration, a word that Chauvet uses as well in his discussion of sacramental grace, wherein he describes the work of grace as follows: “not an object we receive, but rather a symbolic work of receiving oneself: a work of ‘perlaboration’ in the Spirit by which subjects receive themselves from God in Christ as sons and daughters, brothers and sisters” (Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 140). This indicates that working-through is not something we do completely on our own, but is received as a grace that then requires human cooperation to realize fully. In the referenced English translation of Symbol and Sacrament, the translators have opted for the word “perlaboration” in the section just referenced rather than a translation of the term as “working-through,” probably because it is impossible to smoothly use the translation in the idiom they were translating into (see Chauvet, Louis-Marie, Symbole et sacrement: Une relecture sacramentelle de l'existence chrétienne [Paris: Cerf, 1988], 147Google Scholar). Nevertheless, it is important to note the continuity between the discussion in this latter section and the earlier sections wherein Durchärbeitung is discussed in relation to the “working-through” of metaphysical thought patterns.
48 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 98 (emphasis in the original).
49 Ibid. (emphasis in the original).
50 See Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 171–80; Chauvet, , The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, trans. Beaumont, Madeleine (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), 29–31Google Scholar.
51 Chauvet, , “Présence de Dieu, présence à Dieu dans le jeu liturgique,” in Le corps, chemin de Dieu: Les sacrements (Paris: Fayard, 2010), 89Google Scholar.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid., 90.
57 Ibid., 91.
58 Chauvet notes that while the via negativa is an “obligatory rite of passage” for any theology worthy of the name, “this cannot mean that the primordial task of Christian theology is to purify through analogy the concepts that we use about God—so that we can reach ‘knowledge under the mode of unknowing’ (Dionysius).” Chauvet instead follows Eberhard Jüngel's suggestion that the main task of theology is, instead, to consider “the gospel itself as a form of analogy, that is, as a type of parabolic language whose distinctive characteristic is ‘to insert human beings, insofar as they are summoned, into being about which they are speaking.’” Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 41–42 (emphasis in the original), quoting Jüngel, Eberhard, Dieu mystère du monde: Fondement de la théologie du Crucifié dans le débat entre théisme et athéisme, 3rd ed. (Paris: Cerf, 1983), 102Google Scholar, 108.
59 See Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 260–61.
60 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 91.
61 Ibid., 92–93.
62 Ibid., 93.
63 “Collecta: Dominica XXX per annum,” in Missale romanum ex decreto sacrosancti oecumenici Conciliii Vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Pauli pp. VI promulgatum (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1975), 369 (my trans.).
64 Chauvet, “Présence de Dieu, présence à Dieu,” 94, quoting Chrétien, Jean-Louis, “La parole blessée: Phénoménologie de la prière,” in Phénoménologie et théologie, ed. Courtine, J.-F. (Paris: Criterion, 1992), 74Google Scholar (emphasis added).
65 Chauvet, “Présence de Dieu, présence à Dieu,” 94. See John Cassian, “Chapter 11: Of the Perfection of Prayer to Which We Can Rise by the System Described,” in The Second Conference of Abbot Isaac on Prayer, New Advent, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/350810.htm.
66 See Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 58–63.
67 John Caputo, for example, draws too firm a line between the practice of hospitality that marks the coming of the Kingdom of God and the dogmas and sacramental practices that would quell that hospitality. He notes that what is needed is a church as “Ikon,” that is, “a non-conventional and experimental church, an alternative church,” which “tries to reinvent the tradition, to reimagine classical theology, to rethink God and Christ and church, not so much on the level of doctrine or dogmatics but as a practice, a performance, indeed as a certain experimental theo-drama, a parasitical, postmodern liturgy.” Caputo, John, What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 135Google Scholar.
68 Miller, “An Abyss at the Heart of Mediation,” 239.
69 Ibid. The first half of this statement is not altogether accurate, as Chauvet has, indeed, provided the means for evaluating liturgical symbols: they must always sit between the extremes of hieratism and trivialization, and also with a bit of eschatological reserve (see Chauvet, “Eschatologie et sacrement,” La Maison Dieu 220 [1990], 47–78). Timothy M. Brunk helpfully points this out, though he also makes the assertion that Miller was incorrect in claiming that Chauvet provides no resources for the evaluation of corrupted symbols (Brunk, Timothy M., Liturgy and Life: The Unity of Sacrament and Ethics in the Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet [Brussels: Peter Lang, 2007], 118Google Scholar). Just because Chauvet has given us the criteria, however, does not mean that he has provided us with the means for doing anything constructive with it.
70 Miller, “An Abyss at the Heart of Mediation,” 239–40. Miller relates this to Chauvet's “purely optimistic reading of the later Heidegger,” wherein “cultures and historical epochs are interpreted positively as manifestations of being” without taking into account that cultures and history also contain “much that is violent, oppressive, and evil” (240).
71 Miller, “An Abyss at the Heart of Mediation,” 241. Miller concedes that Chauvet would agree with this sentiment as “evidenced by his frequent reference to the human desire to encompass truth and confine Christ within ideologies”; he concludes, however, that “his position lacks the resources to deal with this problem” (ibid.).
72 Miller, “An Abyss at the Heart of Mediation,” 241.
73 Ibid., 243.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid.
77 See Ricoeur, Paul, The Rule of Metaphor, trans. Czerny, Robert et al. (London: Routledge, 2003), 354Google Scholar.
78 Dolejšová, Ivana, “The Symbolic Nature of Christian Existence According to Ricoeur and Chauvet,” Communio Viatorum 43, no. 1 (2001): 46Google Scholar.
79 Ricoeur, Paul, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 351Google Scholar.
80 Dolejšová, “The Symbolic Nature of Christian Existence,” 46.
81 Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, 351.
82 Ibid.
83 Ricoeur, Paul and Kearney, Richard, “Myth as the Bearer of Possible Worlds: Interview with Paul Ricoeur,” Crane Bag 2 (1978): 112Google Scholar.
84 Ibid. (emphasis in the original).
85 Ibid.
86 This appeal to metaphor and poesis is directly connected to Ricoeur's own criticism of ontotheology in The Rule of Metaphor. The ontotheological tradition (exemplified by the Scholastic analogia entis) served “to establish theological discourse at the level of science and thereby to free it completely from the poetical forms of religious discourse, even at the price of severing the science of God from biblical hermeneutics” (Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, 322).
87 Helenius, Timo, Ricoeur, Culture, and Recognition: A Hermeneutic of Cultural Subjectivity (London: Lexington Books, 2016), 153Google Scholar.
88 Ibid. It should be noted in passing that this mytho-poetic nucleus is also connected to ethics, for, as Helenius observes, “for Ricoeur, the poetic pertains to social action” (ibid., 183). See also Ricoeur, Paul, “Civilisation universelle et cultures nationales,” Esprit 29, no. 10 (1961): 445Google Scholar.
89 Ricoeur, The Crane Bag, 113.
90 Ricoeur, Paul, “Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology” in From Text to Action, trans. Blamey, Kathleen and Thompson, John B. (London: Continuum, 2008), 292Google Scholar.
91 Ibid. Ricoeur continues: “The strategy of this discourse involves holding two moments in equilibrium: suspending the reference or ordinary language and releasing a second-order reference, which is another name for … the world opened up by the work” (ibid.).
92 Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology,” 293.
93 Ibid.
94 See Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, 352.
95 Dolejšová, “The Symbolic Nature of Christian Existence,” 47.
96 It is also helpful to consult the already-referenced “Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology,” which, while articulating Ricoeur's position in dialogue with Gadamer and Habermas, ends by noting the necessity for both hermeneutics and critique rather than allowing one to dominate the other, for this would establish them as “no more than … ideologies” (Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology,” 299). Miller does not reference this text even though it would seem to be directly related to his topic, and it would have been useful in helping to expand upon his appropriation and situating of Ricoeur, which does seem to pale by comparison to his use of Habermas.
97 See Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 265.
98 Chauvet, “Présence de Dieu, présence à Dieu,” 100.
99 Ibid., 99.
100 See “Prex Eucharistica III,” in Missale romanum, 463.
101 Chauvet, “Présence de Dieu, Présence à Dieu dans le Jeu Liturgique,” 100.
102 Chauvet, Louis-Marie, “Den Sakramenten den ihnen zustehenden Platz einräumen: Interview mit Louis-Marie Chauvet, Thomas Fries, im Gespräch mit Louis-Marie Chauvet,” in Fundamental-theologie des Sakramentalen: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Louis-Marie Chauvets “Symbol und Sakrament” (Regensburg: Pustet, 2015), 210Google Scholar.
103 One should also observe that much of Chauvet's work was published before the 2001 promulgation of Liturgicam Authenticam, which initiated the ongoing process of the National Episcopal Conference's evaluation and retranslation of their liturgical texts in order to supposedly better reflect the original Latin. Glenn P. Ambrose, in commenting on the November 2011 promulgation of revised English liturgical translations, notes that “their close adherence to the Latin in some instances may only further reinforce metaphysical tendencies,” and that there is a need to “compose and refine texts and prayers that better facilitate the ‘overcoming’ of onto-theology” (Ambrose, Glenn P., The Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet: Overcoming Onto-Theology with the Sacramental Tradition [Farnham: Ashgate, 2012], 192Google Scholar).
104 Ricoeur, for his part, in one of the few times in his oeuvre that he explicitly speaks of the liturgy, explicitly ties it to hermeneutics as well as the moment of coming into the second naïveté. He notes that the meaning of the liturgy is such that it is drawn from the moment of hermeneutics; however, this meaning remains an idea and is not realized unless it is expressed in the liturgical action itself. He notes, “The liturgy in terms of representation accomplishes something of the post-critical naiveté that I have sometimes called the second naiveté and which must remain an erudite naiveté (docte naïveté).” For this reason, Ricoeur continues, the game of the liturgy (jeu liturgique) does not extinguish the search because the figure remains a figure; it makes the circle with reflection.” In other words, the liturgy, insofar as it makes use of symbols and figures, brings one to the moment of second naïveté, which is always aware of the need to critically appropriate the liturgical representations—even though we need those very representations in order to realize this. Chauvet, as we have seen, does not have the means to evaluate hermeneutically the liturgical mediations themselves, a fact not unlikely related to the fact that Ricoeur as a Protestant had less difficulty understanding the Word's potency as being able to have a more direct relationship with human beings, not requiring ecclesial and sacramental mediations in the same way as Chauvet the Catholic would. Nevertheless, the two approaches need each other, it seems, and do not mutually exclude one another. (Ricoeur, Paul, “Postface,” in Paupert, Jean-Marie, Taizé et l’église de demain [Paris: Le Signe/Fayard, 1967], 250Google Scholar).
105 I borrow this concept from the work of Lieven Boeve, who has developed it as a methodological tool or “motor of a concrete theological hermeneutics of faith, tradition, and context” (Boeve, Lieven, “A New Method: Recontextualization Leads to Interruption,” in God Interrupts History: Theology in a Time of Upheaval [London: Continuum, 2007], 31Google Scholar).
106 Boeve, “A New Method,” 46.
107 Ibid., 46–47.
108 Ibid., 47.
109 All in all, the importance of this narrative for Chauvet lies in the fact that “the passage to faith thus requires that one let go of the desire to see-touch-find, to accept in its place the hearing of a word,” a word that is proclaimed by an odd stranger who actually ends up being the risen Lord Himself (Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 162).
110 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 162.
111 Ibid.
112 Ibid., 168.
113 Ibid.
114 Ibid. (emphasis in the original).
115 Ibid., 170 (emphasis in the original).
116 Ibid.
117 We must, of course, remember that the church is not, for Chauvet, a closed circle, but one that is “made up of dotted lines.” The church is the sacrament of God's reign, but must never be confused with being the reign itself, which remains larger than it within the world (Chauvet, The Sacraments, 29). Chauvet also understands the moment of the breaking of the bread, the fraction, as showing that while “the presence of Christ is indeed inscribed (inscrite) in the bread and wine, that presence is not confined (circonscrite) to them.” The breaking of the Eucharistic bread, then, points to the presence of God being an “open place,” which shows “that one is not able to assign God a residence.” God is, indeed, present, but he is present as being physically absent, standing in need of the other to make him tangible (Chauvet, “Le pain rompu comme figure théologique” in Le corps, chemin de Dieu, 221).
118 It should be noted that this being caught off guard is something that happened to Jesus as well when he found himself “interrupted” by the Syro-Phoenecian woman (Mark 7:24-30). Jesus’ first response to the woman—“Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs” (v. 27)—is met by the woman's surprising response—“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps” (v. 28). Boeve notes that “at that moment Jesus’ narrative about God is interrupted and he learns how to open it further in such a way that others, including non-Jews, have a place therein” (Lieven Boeve, “Conclusion: The Shortest Definition of Religion; Interruption,” in God Interrupts History, 206). Jesus reveals himself not only as the interrupter, but also as one who allows himself to be interrupted. This leads to the conclusion that the only appropriate imitatio Christi is “a praxis of being both interrupted and interrupting” (Boeve, “A New Method,” 48).
119 Matt. 25:13 and “The Office of Readings: First Sunday of Advent,” The Liturgy of the Hours, http://www.liturgies.net/Liturgies/Catholic/loh/advent/week1sundayor.htm.
120 See Chauvet, “Le pain rompu comme figure théologique,” 220–24.
121 Dialogue, similar to interruption, should be also understood as a properly theological category and not merely as a functional one. For example, if one interprets the very structure of revelation in terms of God's dialogue with humanity, this should lead to one valuing dialogue itself insofar as dialogue can be a means of interruption. See Boeve's commentary on Dei Verbum: Boeve, Lieven, “Foundation: Revelation as God's Dialogue with People and History,” in Theology at the Crossroads of University, Church, and Society: Dialogue, Difference, and Catholic Identity (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 15–32Google Scholar.
122 We are here thinking of Ricoeur's discussion of metaphor and how it functions to supply new predicates to words that thereby serve to offer new and expanded shades of meaning. See Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, 353.
123 Francis, Pope, Evangelii Gaudium: The Joy of the Gospel; Apostolic Exhortation of the Holy Father Francis (Dublin: Veritas, 2013), 31Google Scholar (§47).