Present as a Rosy Cross 2
Summary/Overview of the Sixth Philosophy Portal Conference
This past weekend Philosophy Portal hosted its sixth conference, inspired by the Christian Atheism course, and titled Rosy Cross 2: Radical Theology Meets Emancipatory Politics.1 The conference opens with a basic philosophical introduction to the concept of Christian Atheism situated in historical context. Much of the opening presentation aims to communicate some of the core motivations and structures that are further elaborated in the Christian Atheism course itself.2
Below you will find a basic summary of the presentations hosted throughout the weekend, and below this summary, you will find embedded recordings from the weekend.3
- Crooijmans builds out “The Truth of Communism” in an extension of the double negation/foundation for the Christian Atheism course: “Christianity as the Truth of Religion”, “Atheism as the Truth of Christianity”, “Communism is the Truth of Atheism”. Crooijmans attempts to steer through the deadlocks of both progressive liberalism and liberal fascism, while also warning us of some common ideological pitfalls of communist ideology (e.g. history is not with us, people won’t awaken, no pre-established eschatology, etc.). He ends with the centrality of emancipatory thinking in the locus of a “gap” or “glitch” in the chain of causality.
Daniel Coughlan (
) offers “A Pervert’s Guide to Being Christian” in juxtaposing patience/impatience/digestion of the concept (common “Portal axioms”) with the idea of confusion/betrayal of the concept in the subject. He locates a “problem space” that includes signifiers like “death drive”, “sin”, “body”, “ideology”, “M-C-M’”, “aliens”; emphasises that the subject becomes through failure, and that subjectivity (echoing Terence McKenna) is “stranger than we can imagine”. Coughlan ultimately points us towards the disorienting dimension of “self-sacrifice” in contemporary theopolitical and capitalist context (as “alien god”).Kirsty Rosenstock develops a presentation titled “Frivolous Faith and Free Association” which is a dynamic and creative expression of many themes and ideas that were inspired by both the Christian Atheism course as well as The Portal culture in general. She notes that, while she feels like she has understood much of the intellectual content, her understanding is best expressed through “images” (as opposed to words). In this context, her presentation does not “have something to say”, but rather as “has something to show”. She suggests that “Frivolous Faith” should be understood as a “cognitive intervention” of holding attention and letting it go, an “on-going craft” at the “table of belief”.
Sahil Sasidharan offers us “A Philosophy That Binds…” through a reflection on the philosophies of Hegel and Žižek, but also Bernard Stiegler. Sasidharan emphasises “freedom” as a “philosophical pursuit” as opposed to regressive returns and committed to the necessity of escaping “authoritarianism” in all times. In this pursuit Sasidharan focuses on how this involves the capacity to “think for oneself” while also retaining/preserving and sublating through historical development of thought in truth. The core challenge this presents to us is the gap between the relation of Christianity (as the truth of religion’s phenomenological movement) and the logic of truth itself.
Andrew Robinson focuses on both Christian Atheism and Hegel’s Science of Logic, and situates this in his intellectual history involving work in semiotics of Christian doctrines of incarnation and theosis. The questions that he poses to us in his current work involve (1) the tension in Christian Atheist theology of Thomas Altizer and Gabriel Vahanian, which brings us to the antagonism of the body of Christ and the Church, as well as “wording the world” and “worlding the word”; and (2) the philosophy of reading Hegel’s Science of Logic from the point of view of Being (Nothing) or the point of view of the conceptual “diremption” of subject-object.
- works through liberation theology in contemporary capitalist conditions. He critiques liberation theologians for calling for rebellion and revolt (transgression), while not understanding the neoliberal context in which they are rebelling and revolting, potentially leading to what capitalism itself wants to include within itself (neutralising it). In a world of political-economic traps (involving both state and market), he offers us the idea that in our obsession with ontological freedom (that we can imagine things otherwise), we have undermined our practical freedom (capacity to adapt to our situation). For Stanley this adaptation points towards developing new solidarities and socialities.
Chris Eyre challenges the very notion of Christian Atheism as a false dualism that is at odds with his mystical identification as well as his pantheist leanings. His work is situated in a skepticism of both Slavoj Žižek and Thomas Altizer, as well as their reliance on Hegel’s philosophy. He sees these thinkers, as well as the way we relate to them, as providing simplistic “magic decoder rings” that radically simplify the history and the reality of theology (for example, discounting thousands of years of theologian texts and innovations for more recent developments in thought). Eyre concludes with the idea that we must avoid one totalising paradigm, and instead embrace a multiplicity of alternatives.
- work operates at the intersection between the “God of Abraham” and the “Spirit of Philosophy”, emphasising that in this intersection she deconstructed to the “point of madness”. Kearns challenges conventional assumptions about reason and lack, suggesting a reframing about opening the limits of reason towards the limitlessness that constitutes its truth. She notes that the concept of God as trinitarian represents one of the great contributions of Christian theology to thought about the divine mystery; makes links to both Lacan’s borromean knot and Deleuze’s original difference; and concludes with the challenging idea that God as excess is more problematic than a God of lack.
Mark Gerard Murphy explores his most recent work in a presentation titled “Beyond Kundalini Syndrome”. This “beyond” involves a Lacanian focus on “organising knots” to “hold the body together” at the intersection between “phenomenological experience” and “somatic body work”, and claims that “neurodivergent psychologies” have a “different relationship to their bodies” that is overlooked by conventional linguistic/symbolic approaches in psychoanalysis. He offers a model of the “extended body” with the geometry of the “torus” which transcends both Platonic vitalism and a dry overdetermination by the signifier, allowing for a psychic reconstruction and a somatic anchoring.
- presents an experiment with a haunting and simple idea that that the Western philosophical subject thinks from the “position of a child”, and moreover the position of “separation from a parent” with the “idea of transcendence”. She juxtaposes this way of thinking with resources from the psychoanalytic work of Julie Kristeva’s distinction between symbolic (masculine, language, identity, order, structure), and the semiotic (feminine, maternal, lacking structure, no identity, poetic, rhythmic). Reshe proposes that we can never separate (it is a point of impossibility) and that the attempt to separate is a fantasy stigmatising the Mother as primitive.
Barry Taylor thinks through these discussions and reflections as part of the mystery of the “theological unconscious”. Taylor states that he has a lot of sympathy with Slavoj Žižek/project of Christian Atheism, as well as Peter Rollins’s/the Death of God, but he is also trying to push towards something different. For Taylor, Žižek and Rollins focus on “Hegelian contradiction” and “Lacanian lack” are important, but also can be too limiting. He is interested in what is “swirling around” these conversations, whether from the side of Christianity, which emphasises the supernatural side of things, or the side of Atheism, which he suggests emphasises the transcendental rational side.
Eliot Rosenstock (
) is working at the intersection of the relationship between psychology and religion. He notes that there is a tendency for the modern subject to remove oneself from communal thinking, but that there is an implicit ethics in either “complexifying something” or “simplifying something”. Rosenstock works from the standpoint of the “dialectics of absolute egotism” and “narrative self-interest” as the ground of psychology, which points towards “enjoyment” as the key to understanding psychic processes, and which contradicts or is the opposite of the ground of religion.Carmen Hannibal’s presentation titled “Creavitiy in Liturgy for Christian Atheism” offers a deep engagement with the materials of the Christian Atheism course, and specifically the intersection of Slavoj Žižek’s ideas of the “gap that separates humans from god becoming transposed into god himself”; and Peter Rollins pyrotheological centring of fundamental doubt and questioning, as well as a liturgy that encompasses lack and unknowing. Hannibal is particularly interested in the role of imagination and how these ideas can help us cultivate or make space for transformative art, as opposed to just endlessly thinking and writing about these dimensions of theology.
Dominic Sacranie develops a work titled “Islam’s Wager” with many references to the work of Lacan, Pascal, and the dynamics of faith and belief. Sacranie suggests that faith is intimately related to truth, and belief is more related to reason as a social function dependent on the word of others. In this context, he proposes that Islam as a religion is more focused on an “Ortho-praxis” (prayer, fasting) that requires a “psychic dimension of surrender” and a “logical moment of unknowing”. In the development of this argument he ultimately concludes that “Islam’s Wager” is a focus on the “real of structure” as opposed to the dimensions of the imaginary or the symbolic.
James Wisdom (
) develops a challenging presentation inspired by Žižek’s Christian Atheism “There Were in Hell with No God to Protect Them and Christ Was There”. His work centres and revolves around the question of “perverted violence” and “divine love”, with reference to Lacan’s notion of the “sinthome” as a stabilising formation binding together the imaginary, symbolic and real dimensions of our social psyche. Wisdom’s lines of thought are situated in relation to many contemporary conversations about Christianity and Atheism, and with a focus on their theoretical gap positioned in relation to Žižek’s emphasis on Marxist political economy and psychoanalysis.Pae Veo reflects a new understanding of literature from a Christian Atheist perspective in a clever work titled “God Does Not Exist In Fiction”. He proposes a Trinitarian metaphor that applies to the trinity of God-Son-Spirit in relation to literature with God as Author, Son as Character, and Spirit as Transcendental Concept. He suggests that in literature “God must die” or “be negated” for a new development. In using many different references to modern literature, he suggests that it is “impossible for God to exist in fiction”, but it is also and equally “impossible to portray an atheistic worldview”, leading to the idea that literature is itself a “Christian Atheist struggle”.
Daniel L. Garner (
) opens with reference to John 4:18 “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” He suggest that faith becomes the “structural opposite of fear” leading towards an “open ended (and cracked) intelligibility” qualitatively coupled to courage and a (Hegelian) recognition that “failure to reach truth is an indicator of truth itself”. In this, to be Christian, we have to be cracked and self-skeptical, cultivating a weirdness working against self-enclosure. His Christianity emphasises activity over ideas, and specifically placing oneself in surprising encounters and being with sinners.- continues his work in deconstructive theology in situating its connection to emancipatory politics. He suggests that Christian Atheism and the Death of God is perhaps the best Christian narrative for opening us to a political framework capable of helping is “remake the world”. In his deconstructive theology he salvages core Christian axioms that have relevance to emancipatory politics, e.g. Christianity includes a “Context-Bound Plot with a Context-Transcending Message”, and Christianity offers the paradox of both “imminence and transcendence”. Palmer’s work also points towards the connection with liberation theology which advocates for social justice and economic equality.
- opens her presentation with the claim that “Consciousness raising doesn’t do enough to emancipate us” and that “God is unconscious” for us so “we believe we are beyond belief”. She focuses on the “structure of the unconscious” and that “our desire for God points towards the absence of God”. She is fundamentally asking questions at the level of subjectivity itself, and questioning how the structure of our desire and our libidinal form itself keeps us invested in a system that causes unnecessary suffering, where we would rather die than give up the fantasy image we have of ourselves in relation to the Other. If we can reflect more deeply this structure we may see how our failures are already a success.
Peter Rollins ends the formal presentations of the conference by offering us three forms of Christian Atheism, including the Apophatic tradition, the Existential tradition, and the idea of God itself as lack. In the exploration of these three different traditions, Rollins seeks for connections between Christian Atheism, and the Church of Contradiction. Rollins thinks of the Church of Contradiction as a currently speculative project that is aiming for grounding in aiding creative networks. In this way, the Church of Contradiction is not an alignment with the traditional church, but is at the same time a space for Atheists who need to be open to its (and their) contradiction.
The conference ends with both a pointing towards The Portal’s participation at Wake Festival, as well as a reflection on the Rosy Cross 2 conference as a whole.
Below you will find all recordings.
DAY 1:
DAY 2:
Following the Rosy Cross 1 conference, inspired by Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
See: Christian Atheism.
You can also find the presentations on the Rosy Cross 2 homepage.