The Exorbitant: Emmanuel Levinas Between Jews and Christians

Against Theology, or ‘‘The Devotion of a Theology Without Theodicy’’

Against Theology, or ‘‘The Devotion of a Theology Without Theodicy’’ Levinas on Religion R I C H A R D A . C O H E N The sentence in which God gets mixed in with words is not ‘‘I believe in God.’’ The religious discourse that precedes all religious discourse is not dialogue. It is the ‘‘here I am’’ said to a neighbor to whom I am given over, by which I announce peace, that is, my responsibility for the other. —Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘God and Philosophy’’ This obligation is the first word of God. For me, theology begins in the face of the neighbor. . . . To recognize God is to hear his commandment ‘‘thou shalt not kill, which is not only a prohibition against murder, but a call to an incessant responsibility with regard to the other. —Emmanuel Levinas, Interview with Bertrand Revillon The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained. —Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, October 28, 1813 Theology is a notoriously difficult term to define, owing both to the depth of its meaning and to its long and varied usage in the West. Etymologically , the term is a combination of two classical Greek words: theos, referring to the divine, and logos, referring to word, speech, manifestation, reason, science, or logic. Both of these words are perhaps no less difficult to define. We can nevertheless say that the term theology is commonly used 74 to mean reasoned speech about God. In this way it is a term akin to such words as biology, anthropology, and etymology, except that common sense also understands that the term theology, unlike these scientific terms, usually includes an aspect of special pleading or apology. For the most part,1 Levinas usually uses the term theology in three different senses, two of them strict and one of them relatively loose. The loose sense is as a synonym for religiosity (as in the second epigraph above) or, somewhat more narrowly, for the intellectual or discursive dimension of religion or spirituality, as when Levinas speaks of ‘‘rabbinic theology’’ or ‘‘Jewish theology.’’ What it refers to varies according to context , and Levinas attaches no strong evaluative judgment to it. For obvious reasons, this loose usage is not our concern.2 The first and broader strict sense in which Levinas uses the term theology refers to ‘‘formulations of articles of faith.’’3 Here Levinas has in mind a person’s or an organized religion’s representations of God, whether as testimony, prescription, description, or dogma. Here theology means discursive truths articulating belief or faith in God. The second strict sense in which Levinas uses the term theology is actually a subset of the first, but, as we shall see, we must treat it separately according to its specific difference. By ‘‘theology’’ here Levinas will refer specifically to Christian dogmas and doctrines, that is to say, Christian representations articulating, expressing, and, above all, performatively actualizing faith in God.4 Theology as performative utterance, in this instance , occurs when a Christian verbally professes his or her articles of Christian faith. Here, verbally to express one’s faith is to have faith, to have proven it, to bear witness to its reality. To say ‘‘I believe in God’’ or to say ‘‘I acknowledge Jesus as my Lord and Savior’’ is to be a believer and to be saved by Jesus. And it is only in the saying of these statements, in using them and not merely mentioning them, that these testimonials become true. Since no other human (but only God) can verify the sincerity with which one enunciates such theological formulations, the issue of whether one means it or not, in contrast to the question of whether one is using or mentioning these dogmas, is objectively not at stake. Theology in this narrower but still strict sense, regardless of the degree of its intellectual sophistication—from the magisterial Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas, on the one hand, to the emotionally charged outpourings of a simple American Southern Baptist, say, on the other—is both witness and apology, that is to say, performatively self-justified Christianity. To declare one’s faith in God is to be faithful to God. Levinas boldly criticizes both these versions of theology—doctrinal representation of religion...