Sharks in Captivity

What is theology? I think one of the problems the question poses is in the word theology itself. Theos means God and logos discussion, argument, logic, or word. The word theology then juxtaposes the enculturated nature of our thoughts as language and the divine transcendent beyond all thought and language. It is in this manner that theology is inherently a question of the incarnation. What we have in theology then is a more explicit confrontation with the need to look beyond in order to understand what it is that we are talking about, or to know what we don’t know. Herein lies the problem.

The God under discussion in theology is something akin to a Great White Shark. They die in captivity. None have lived beyond a few days once caught. So too with the theos of theology. If we presume to have caught God in clever explanation we find that this is in fact not God at all. Nietszche understood this in his claim that God had died while under the captivity of the theologians and philosophers (the death of God first arising in Hegel’s thinking in this regard). As Heidegger saw, this was a prophetic call to consider a God without philosophical categories such as being. Hence, one approach to theology today is post-ontological, ala Jean-Luc Marion.

Probably one of the best artistic representations of post-ontological theology today is Damien Hirst’s “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.” There is a wonderful summary of the sociological implications of this piece that I will discuss in a moment. At this point however, I want to take the liberty to theologically interpret Hirst’s concern for the impossible possibility. It is impossible to contain a Great White Shark (the longest recorded is not much more than a week, and most die within a few days of capture). So too, a metaphor can be drawn here to the impossibility of containing God in theology. It is precisely insofar as the death of the shark confronts us with the impossibility of its captivity that it reveals a profound truth. The negative statement of impossibility, in fact, becomes a positive statement of what is really true. It stands as a profound reminder of the knowledge of what we don’t know. Hirst’s shark could thus be interpreted as a contemporary representation of the negative theology which attempts to inscribe the God without being.

The question which arises at this point is whether the post-ontological theologians may still be saying too much when they suggest that God does not exist as such. In other words, do we not give up the theological game and the very incarnational nature of the word theology itself when we presume to speak of a God without being? Is there a need to take Heidegger’s cross more seriously than he himself did, and consider the cruciform death of God all the more closely.

The reasons for this re-emphasis of the logos in theology can be felt as we pay closer attention to the contemporary interpretations of Hirst’s art as the representation of the vampire culture of capitalism. Hirst has put Warhol to shame. Hirst continues to break record profit barriers even amidst the financial crisis, and is one of the most market savvy examples of bourgeois bohemia in existence today. In Marx’s reading this sets his art in utter contradiction to the qualitative value it might have, moral, theological, or otherwise. Rather, it, like all other commodities, takes on a life of its own with a value dictated by the fetish it can conjure in the market. Hirst’s shark is a kind of zombie, a vampire which sucks as much commodity value it can out of the system.

Why is this interpretation so important here? Because it is precisely in our theology today that a response to such zombie commodification is needed. We simply say too much when we distance God from our categories of existence in such sanctimonious protectionism of the theos of theology. Hirst’s shark is in fact an idol of the deity in the vampire culture of capitalism which blinds us by its multimillion dollar magnificence. It is no more able to reference deity than a cathedral can be much more than a tourist attraction in western society today. Rather, a much more risky, if not radical approach to theology is demanded precisely in order to preserve the full force of interactions between the theos and the logos of theology. There is need for a cross in Christian theology that has not been sanitized like Dali’s Christ of St. John of the Cross, a death of God which hovers above in the clouds, no unlike one which could be suspended in gelatinized formaldehyde. Rather, we must face a cross which is firmly planted in the ground, its timbers stained with blood. It is not that we can be sure to see God there, as Luther was right to say. But it is there that we must look nonetheless.