Archives and the Event of God: The Impact of Michel Foucault on Philosophical Theology by David Galston (review)

By ventilating Michel Foucault’s impact on philosophical theology David Galston picks up decisively what postmodern thinking left on the desk for any theologian: “Can there be another fruitful avenue of study for theology?” Applying Foucault’s insights from The Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish, Galston seeks to overcome “normal theology” as an apologetic task concerned with the “compatibility of the idea of God with the limits of reason” and grounded on ontological speculation. He argues that Paul Tillich’s theology, for example, is the “theology of the ontic subject,” his a priori ground is “Being,” and the “project of theology is the resolution of the problem of personal being with the ground of being.” In opposition to that “Western tradition,” Galston follows Foucault’s concepts of archaeology and genealogy and his understanding of an epistemic event to ask an “archivist question” theologically. “It is the question of how ‘God’ is credible, that is, epistemically permissible.” The shift from an ontological to an epistemological question is “an inquiry into the production of the concept of God.” That is “philosophical hermeneutics” with the “understanding of human interpretation as an event.” Galston helpfully emphasizes a kind of “wake-up call for theology” because Foucault changed the condition of the questions posed: “In effect, in post-structuralism, the positive emphasis on language found in structuralism combines with the hermeneutical sensibilities of phenomenology to emphasize language as the producer of reality.” With Foucault, entering an archive is a hermeneutical act, and language can be described as form and order. “In short, language is power.” The first seven chapters offer an overview of Foucault’s work. Galston investigates how archaeology, genealogy, and the archive can be defined, what statement and space in the archive means, and how genealogy might work. Foucault’s “Philosophy of an Event” is as well presented as his famous investigation of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon It is notable how Galston manages the challenges that emerge when Foucault’s French terms are translated. Chapter 8, “The Archive and Theology,” marks the beginning of Galston’s own constructive approach, that is, “philosophically thinking the concept of God in the archivist way” and encountering the epistemological creations of language as Foucauldian “strata” or “epistemic layers of language archives.” Archaeology and genealogy are the two projects for how to investigate these archives. Consequently, Galston then presents “archaeological theology” in chapter 9 and “genealogical theology” in chapter 10. The first is “a redefinition of systematic theology as the history of systems of God.” The second is the “critical activity of the present.” Archaeological theology “is concerned with the history of the production of God” as an event and the “examination of the statement in order to investigate the event of God.” The God concept is “comprehended as a side effect of the linguistic event,” which is, moreover, a “credible side effect.” Following this path theology is separated “from the normal tradition of systematic theology by substituting for the question of the identity of God the problem of the archival production of metaphysical concepts” and by asking for its certain “forms of perception within its permitted boundaries.” Three “directives” are pivotal for the challenge of archaeological theology: “[t]he first directive is to uncover productivity” without any “premeditation when it claims that God is a product of the archive.” “The second directive is related to forms of resolution” without any apologetic tasks or the attempt to define a certain concept of reality. And the “third direction is the location.” Archaeological theology “remains focused on understanding what produces the statement of God as an event.” Accordingly, Galston explores genealogical theology that arises from archaeological theology because this theology “affirms itself as a location in the productivity of an archive”: “The practice of genealogical theology can be called the practice of ‘presence’ in the archive.” Galston opens two new questions “for consideration of thinking theologically in...