Lyotard and Theology by Lieven Boeve (review)

Despite being the very person who defined the now pervasively used term postmodern, Jean-François Lyotard has received little treatment by theologians (3), who have typically preferred to dialogue with Derrida or Foucault when it comes to thinking through the challenges of postmodernism. So, while Lieven Boeve has merely written the next in the Bloomsbury Philosophy and Theology Series (the twentieth book in this rather successful series), the originality of this contribution cannot be discounted. This book offers one of the first engagements with Lyotard for English students of religion and theology.

The work summarizes the key ideas of Lyotard (chapters 1-4), relating them to theological problems (chapters 5-6), showing how Lyotard’s work offers varying degrees of challenge to and compatibility with theology (chapters 7-8) and concludes with a treatment of how Lyotard can complement and challenge sacramental thinking (chapter 9). Finally, Boeve discusses the work of J.B. Metz as a thinker similar in these concerns (chapter 10).

Boeve’s book does everything an introductory work should. It summarizes the key concepts of Lyotard. He explains what the postmodern condition of the “incredulity toward master narratives” means. He defines the rather tedious key terms in Lyotard’s linguistic pragmatics such as phrase regimes as well as central concepts like the differend (what alludes or is other from a language and discourse) or how truth is performativity. The most applicable concept for theology is paralogy (the intentional disruption of hegemonic discourses). Since postmodern philosophers often use idiosyncratic terms, a book that explains them is helpful.

Boeve sees a commonality between Lyotard’s philosophy and Christian theology, which is that both can seek the undoing of hegemonic discourses. Both can undo the idols that exist in the way we speak. Marxism and liberalism were two hegemonic discourses that Lyotard attempted to dismantle in his own day, but Christians must be aware of how their own theologies can become hegemonic along with others. Lyotard was unconvinced by Christian theology because he felt the incarnation could be used to form a hegemonic master narrative (65).

So the question of whether Christianity can be both a master narrative of the “idea of love” and also non-hegemonic (71) is pivotal. Lyotard was convinced that this was not possible and looked for other means to ground his ethics. However, Lyotard was impressed with Augustine as the thinker who first discovered the presence of the other within the self (61), and he argues that this creates an inherent obligation of the self to be open to the other. However, as complete openness is neither possible nor desirable, Boeve notes that there are resources within the biblical narrative itself that qualify this openness to others, which can both complement Lyotard’s thought and prevent Christian theologies from becoming hegemonic. Unsurprisingly, Boeve looks to Jesus’s identity and teaching as offering the presence and transcendence of God that both founds and interrupts Christian theology, obligating believers to go to the marginalized and the oppressed.

Boeve is clear as to why theologians should read Lyotard. Lyotard does not replace the primary content of theology, nor can any theologian fully “baptize” Lyotard for his or her own project. Lyotard stayed clear of the “religious turn” in Continental philosophy (67), so he can offer only conceptual tools to do better theological work. In turn, Boeve suggests that there is narrative content that can aid the ethical purposes of Lyotard’s philosophy. However, it should be asked, if Boeve does not see the primary content of Christian theology touched by Lyotard’s challenges, is this really an even dialogue for mutual enrichment? Is the implicit purpose of this book then to revise Christian theology or to provide an apologetic to postmoderns? At any rate, reading postmodern philosophy to do Christian theology better is an ironic way to appreciate Lyotard, not that it cannot be done.

This book will work well for both philosophical theologians and Continental philosophers of religion as an...