The Apocalyptic Trinity PDF
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The Apocalyptic Trinity Radical Theologies Radical Theologies is a call for transformational theologies that break out of traditional locations and approaches. The rhizomic ethos of radical theologies enable the series to engage with an ever-expanding radical expression and critique of theologies that have entered or seek to enter the public sphere, arising from the continued turn to religion and especially radical theology in politics, social sciences, philosophy, theory, cultural, and literary studies. The post-theistic theology both driving and arising from these intersections is the focus of this series. Series editors Mike Grimshaw is an associate professor of Sociology at Canterbury University in New Zealand. Michael Zbaraschuk is a lecturer at the University of Washington, Tacoma, and a visiting assistant professor at Pacific Lutheran University. Joshua Ramey is a visiting assistant professor at Haverford College. Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism By Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey W. Robbins The Apocalyptic Trinity By Th omas J. J. Altizer The Apocalyptic Trinity THOMAS J. J. ALTIZER THE APOCALYPTIC TRINITY Copyright © Thomas J. J. Altizer, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-1-137-27620-9 All rights reserved. First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-137-27621-6 ISBN 978-1-137-27622-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137276223 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Altizer, Thomas J. J. The Apocalyptic Trinity / Thomas J. J. Altizer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN 978–1–137–27621–6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Trinity. I. Title. BT111.3.A48 2012 231(cid:2).044—dc23 2012028019 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Ray L. Hart and Mark C. Taylor Contents Series Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: The Apocalyptic Trinity 1 1 The Mystery of the Trinity 9 2 The Offense of the Trinity 31 3 The Necessity of the Trinity 51 4 The Origin of the Trinity 75 5 The Apocalyptic Trinity and Absolute Nothingness 97 6 The Transfiguration of the Trinity 119 7 The Tragic Trinity 133 8 The Explosive Trinity 141 Appendix: D. G. Leahy and the Triple Nothingness of the Godhead 151 Works Cited 171 Index 175 Series Preface It was in conversation with Thomas Altizer that the idea for this book series in Radical Theologies first emerged and devel- oped. Altizer has been for many the central figure and lead- ing intellectual of radical theology over the past half-century. He is, furthermore, a major American theologian and indeed a major theologian of the twentieth century on into the twenty- first. This means radical theology has been and continues to be undertaken, implicitly or explicitly, in reference to and debate with Altizer’s work over the past fifty years. Altizer is first and foremost a major Christian theologian who has consistently, bril- liantly, and provokingly engaged with dogmatic theology from a radical position. That his is a Christian theology is a reminder of the radical roots and message of Christianity, for Altizer’s theol- ogy has always been a call to Christianity to recover and reex- press its most radical claims. The present book completes the challenge first raised by Altizer in the late 1960s during what came to be known as the death of God debate. In many ways it is an audacious book, for it demands nothing less than a thorough and radical rethinking of the theology of the Trinity. It is a profoundly challenging and provocative work of pure theology—a “dangerous” work in the best sense—because it forces into question the residual liberal faith and piety that still undergird so much of religious studies and liberal theology. And yet at the same time it is a book that returns the Trinity to centrality within Christian theology and existence. Altizer has, in a dramatic and challenging theology, undertaken no less a feat than to have restored the Trinity to the x Series Preface heart of radical Christian thinking, imagination, and faith in the wake of the death of God. He demonstrates why the Trinity is and must be an apocalyptic Trinity: a Trinity that overturns all our previously safe and institutional trinitarian thinking— which has heretofore served to deny the apocalypse that is cen- tral to Christianity. The apocalyptic Trinity is the central demand of a radical theology that originates in consciousness of the death of God, a death of God that is made present to us in the Crucifixion. For the death of God is that death which occurs within the Godhead itself, a Godhead in process of becoming toward and for the “other,” toward and for us. As Altizer demonstrates, historically we have desired and demanded a Trinity that negates the death of God for us. The apocalyptic Trinity is what occurs when God stops being the God we wanted God to be. The true Trinity— the apocalyptic Trinity—embodies the death of the primordial Godhead. How should we read this book? It is a homiletic work pro- claiming the apocalyptic Trinity with great power and imme- diacy, written at once for the ear and the mind. I read it as a prophetic poetics, a text that is not only an exposition but also an exhortation. If it can be called a work of the apocalyptic theo- logical imagination, I do not mean that in the sense of “made up” but rather in the sense of embodying creative response. It is a radical theology that arises out of—and in response to—a life lived at the intersections of being both late modern and a theo- logian. If this is a poetics, it is also a poetic manifesto that needs to be heard as a voice addressing us, as a prophetical text. Indeed, the book can be read as a manifesto that sets out an impassioned political and social argument—whereas the tradi- tional religious equivalent has been a creed. The historical and institutional nature of a creed, as a sectarian disclosure and clo- sure, acts as a barrier to and limitation on radical and politi- cal theology. A manifesto on the other hand, overtly political in nature and outlook, becomes the open call to possibility that sits at the heart of both radical and political theology. This book, Series Preface xi in its central engagement with issues of power, sovereignty, and modern nihilism, is also a powerful and prophetic work of political theology. It operates out of what Mary Ann Caws (in Manifesto: A Century of Isms, 2001) calls “the manifesto moment”: the moment that “positions itself between what has been done and what will be done, between the accomplished and the poten- tial, in a radicalizing and energizing division” (xxi). Radical theology can never achieve completion, for it arises out of a deep awareness of human existence as incomplete. Hence it is a mode of inquiry that stands against all our attempts, in modernity, to attain completeness—which is why radical the- ology is so problematic, and willing to remain that way. The nihilistic leanings of the modern imagination, including its turn to the nothingness of Buddhism, has shown us a way to negate ontotheology—the “thingness” of orthodox Christianity. It is often artists, writers, painters, musicians, and other creators who are truly engaged in doing radical theology; art has often been the primary location in which creative wrestling with the mod- ern condition has been given expression. Altizer’s mediations between theology and literature, his engagement with art and jazz, all arise out of his identity as a radical theologian and quest- ing late modern thinker. The primacy of literature and art in Altizer’s radical theology should remind us that theology cannot be done in isolation. Theology is an engagement of the whole of our existence in the expressions we create to signal what it means to be human. In the process, theology provides orienta- tion toward an answer, an answer that in Christianity is radical. Ultimately, Altizer reminds us that radical theology is inher- ently political, inherently poetic, and always demanding, chal- lenging; as such it offers the hope and claim of an alternative that is the mysterious core of the radical theological task. Mike Grimshaw Associate Professor of Sociology University of Canterbury, New Zealand March 2012
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