Pentecostal Epistemology, The Problem Of Incommensurability, And Creational Hermeneutic

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Pentecostal Epistemology, the Problem of Incommensurability, and Creational Hermeneutic The Harmonious Relationship between Affective and Cognitive Knowledge

Yoon Shin

Southeastern University, Lakeland, Florida

[email protected]

Abstract

This article expounds James K.A. Smith’s pentecostal epistemology, analyzing its char- acteristicsas affective,pretheoreticalknowledgeandits ambiguous relationshiptocog- nitive, theoretical knowledge, and then correlating this relationship to Smith’s expo- sition of the problem of incommensurability between pretheoretical transcendence and theoretical immanence. I argue that Smith’s epistemology is partly rooted in Hei- degger’s notion of Dasein as being-in-the-world in order to clarify the relationship between the affects and cognition. I then address the problem of incommensurabil- ity and argue that Smith’s creational hermeneutic eliminates the problem altogether, healing the ambiguous relationship between affective, pretheoretical knowledge and cognitive, theoretical knowledge that affects his pentecostal epistemology.

Keywords

pentecostal epistemology – Heidegger – hermeneutics – creation – incarnation

Introduction

Consistent throughout Smith’s works, especially in Thinking in Tongues, You Are What You Love, and the cultural liturgy trilogy, is the theme that persons are fundamentally affective, pretheoretical beings. As irreducible and primary, affections have epistemic import as, along with narratives and practices, they form one’s construal of the world.1 In Thinking in Tongues, Smith identifies

1 The philosopher of emotion Robert Solomon distinguishes between emotion (Smith’s under-

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pentecostal spirituality as embodying the reality of this narrative, affective epistemology in its practices.

Arguing against the res cogitans of modern rationalism that places faith in the objectivity of reason, Smith revalues embodiment by presenting embod- ied knowledge as a more fundamental mode of knowing. While Smith right- fully draws attention to this alternative knowledge, questions remain: namely, given its irreducibility and primacy, how is affective, pretheoretical knowledge related to cognitive, theoretical knowledge? In this article, I will argue that Smith’s hierarchy between affective, pretheoretical knowledge and cognitive, theoretical knowledge is partly rooted in a more fundamental hierarchy, that between pretheoretical transcendence and theoretical immanence.2 Because Smith argues that the latter suffers from the (violent) problem of incommen- surability, the former becomes implicated as well. By turning to his creational hermeneutic, however, I will argue that the goodness of creation unveils the problem of incommensurability as a pseudo-problem. If correct, this thesis clarifies the ambiguous relationship between pretheoretical and theoretical knowledge that plagues Smith’s pentecostal epistemology.3

standing of affect) and feeling. Emotion is a rational and intentional judgment, whereas feel-

ing is episodic and not intentional. See Robert C. Solomon, “Emotions and Choice,” in Robert

C. Solomon, ed.,What Is an Emotion?: Classic and Contemporary Readings, 2nd ed. (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2003), 225.

2 I say partly because the relationship is also rooted in linguistic pragmatism. However, cov-

ering linguistic pragmatism would be beyond the scope of this article. For his engagement

with the linguistic philosophy of Wittgenstein and the neopragmatism of Richard Rorty and

Robert Brandom, see James K.A. Smith,Who’s Afraid of Relativism?: Community, Contingency,

and Creaturehood (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014).

3 This ambiguity is also the main contention against Smith by Klaas Bom and Simo Frestadius.

See Klaas Bom, “Heart and Reason: Using Pascal to Clarify Smith’s Ambiguity,” Pneuma 34,

no. 3 (2012): 345–364; and Simo Frestadius, “In Search of a ‘Pentecostal’ Epistemology: Com-

paring the Contributions of AmosYong and James K.A. Smith,”Pneuma38, no. 1 (2016): 110–111.

Smith, however, does not view the relationship as antithetical. See James K.A. Smith, Desir-

ingtheKingdom:Worship,Worldview,andCulturalFormation(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,

2009), 28n11. His emphasis on pretheoretical knowledge is most likely due to the relative

neglect of noncognitive epistemology by most epistemologists. Linda T. Zagzebski, On Epis-

temology(Belmont: Wadsworth, 2009), 5.

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Pentecostalism, Countermodernity, and Cartesian Rationalism

In his investigation of the phenomenological features of the doxological prac- tices of Pentecostalism, Smith argues that an alternative, postmodern episte- mology inhabits these practices.4 First, Pentecostalism rejects modern reduc- tive rationalism and the priority it gives to theoretical, propositional reason. Second, embodied knowledge, a “knowing-otherwise,” replaces this primacy. Smith discovers in these practices a narrative, affective knowledge that is irre- ducible and primary to discursive reason. It is a way of knowing that pretheo- retically construes the world, such that a person feels his or her way around in narrative worlds as an exercise in practical knowledge.

Cartesian rationalism and its attendant anthropology, on the other hand, denigrate embodiment by reducing persons to “thinking things.”5 The body is merely an unfortunate and unessential appendage. With its emphasis on the mind, Cartesian rationalism considers knowledge as “that which conforms to the calculable standards of logical operation … [and] reduced to ‘information’ or data.”6Therefore, viewing theoretical, neutral reason as essential to human nature, Cartesian rationalism views certainty and objective truth as achievable with the use of universally available objective reason.7

Smith juxtaposes this reductive rationalism with postmodernism as a point of critique. First, he argues that postmodernism reveals modern rationality as just another perspective, so that “what claimed to be a universal, neutral, God’s-eye-view of the world turns out to be only the elevation and deifica-

4 Kenneth Archer describes classical Pentecostalism as “paramodern” because it did not eclipse

modernity, but was heavily influenced by it. See Kenneth J. Archer, APentecostalHermeneutic:

Spirit,Scripture,andCommunity(Cleveland:CPTPress, 2009), 44–45. Smith acknowledges the

disparity between Christianity and postmodernism insofar as postmodernity extends moder-

nity’s freedom and autonomy. See James K.A. Smith,Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking

Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 26. 5 James K.A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy

(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 54. Another implication of this privileging is the autonomy

and absolute epistemic ability of the mind to grasp the totality of Being itself, which creeps

into theology in the form of onto-theology. See Merold Westphal,Overcoming Onto-Theology:

Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith(New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), 1–28. 6 Smith,Thinking in Tongues, 54–55.

7 Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 13. Enlighten-

ment modernity also objectifies knowledge, even viewing it in economic terms. The object is

viewed in terms of effectiveness and usability, as a mere tool to be used at one’s disposal—

what Heidegger calls “standing-reserve.” See Glenn McCullough, “Heidegger, Augustine, and

Poiēsis: Renewing the Technological Mind,”Theology Today59, no. 1 (2002): 24.

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tion of one particular perspective pretending and parading as if it were not a ‘perspective’ at all.”8 Second, postmodernism begins from a fundamentally different starting point. Whereas the transcendental ego makes neutrality pos- sible, postmodernism starts with a particularistic, embodied anthropology that replaces neutrality for perspectivism due to the situated condition of persons- in-community. Smith connects postmodernism with Pentecostalism by pre- senting Pentecostalism as carrying this postmodern anthropology and epis- temology in its practices.9 Smith’s phenomenological descriptions of pente- costal practices reveal the creational and incarnational principles that affirm the goodness of the body as a body, denying the view that the body is deriva- tive to the mind or unessential.10 This affirmation is evident in various pente- costal practices, such as the emphasis on healing, physicality of worship, and the encounter with God through experience.11While they may seem epistemi- cally innocuous at a glance, Smith argues that these pretheoretical practices are ways of construing the world, as an imaginative picturing of the world as open to the surprising movement of God. Thus, to understand Smith’s epistemology, we must turn to his postmodern and Heideggerian anthropology.

Being and Knowing

For Smith, the postmodern affirmation of embodiment and particularity un- veils the affections as the site of one’s fundamental orientation to the world.12 The postmodern person is not a disembodied mind that wields neutral, uni- versal reason. A person is not merely an interested subject peering into the objective world, as if intuition allows for a “pure-seeing.”13Rather, as an embod-

8 9 10

11 12 13

Smith,Thinking in Tongues, 57.

Smith,Thinking in Tongues, 59.

This ontological theme of creation and incarnation is dominant in Smith’s various works. It would not be an overstatement to state that creation and incarnation frame many of his views on ontology, epistemology, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. See James K.A. Smith,Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation(New York: Rout- ledge, 2002); James K.A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004); and James K.A. Smith, The Fall of Inter- pretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012).

Smith,Thinking in Tongues, 61–62.

Smith,Thinking in Tongues, 58.

Merold Westphal, “Phenomenology of Religion,” in The Routledge Companion to Philoso- phy of Religion, ed. Chad Meister and Paul Copan (New York: Routledge, 2013), 734.

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ied creature, a person’s very identity is linked to their embodied existence and its attendant feelings.14This phenomenological reality dictates that knowledge must be interpretive, for “all seeing is ‘seeing-as.’”15 Embodiment necessitates situated perspectivity.

The body is central to human be-ing. For Smith, the body situates discursive reasoning in its particularity. By inverting the Cartesian anthropology, Smith contends that persons are “primarily affective: the center of the person is not the mind, but the heart.”16 Smith is not merely stating that people are more emotional than cognitive; rather, affect is primordial; it is an irreducible and pretheoretical way of understanding the world. In other words, affect is a pri- mary and nonratiocinative construal of the world.17

Although Smith relies on Pentecostalism for the construction of his epis- temology, a figure that looms large in the background is Martin Heidegger. Indeed, Smith’s phenomenological method, the language of persons as being- in-the-world, and the inversion of the primacy of epistemology with the ontol- ogy of human be-ing indicate Heidegger’s influence. While one may think that Smith’s reliance on Heidegger’s Dasein for his anthropology takes an ontolog- ical turn, Smith does not explore the question of Being for being. Rather, for Smith, the critical concept of retention for Dasein is the “fusion of horizon” between the subject and object in being-in-the-world. Person as a being-in-the- world shows Heidegger’s influence, specifically his view that persons always already inhabit an inescapable world into which they are thrown.WhileDasein inhabits the question of Being, this question arises from Dasein’sfundamental being-in with the world. Being-in-the-world is a being-toward-death, one who cannot escape this earthy, gritty existence.18 Smith spotlights the mode of this being-in as one of pretheoretical existence or facticity, which he then uses to

14 15

16 17

Smith,Thinking in Tongues, 60.

Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology, 129. Therefore, the perspectivity of embodiment even negates the possibility of universal feeling.

Smith,Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, 136–137.

Questions remain, however, about how affect can construe the world rightly. While the scope of this article cannot address this question, Richard Davis and Paul Franks charge Smith with relativism and fideistic arbitrariness. See Richard B. Davis and Paul Franks, “Against a Postmodern Pentecostal Epistemology,”Philosophia Christi15, no. 2 (2013): 129– 145.

It is interesting that Heidegger’s tracing of this waywardness toward a supersensible realm is pointed at Plato, the consummate rationalist. See Carol J. White, “Heidegger and the Greeks,” in A Companion to Heidegger, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall (Malden: Blackwell, 2005), 136; and Westphal,Overcoming Onto-Theology, 81.

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draw a critical line from theoretical inquiry, and this demarcation between the primacy of pretheoretical being-in-the-world and theoretical inquiry becomes the key element in his prioritizing of passional orientation over discursive thinking. To understand Smith better, the next section will expound Heideg- ger’s themes from which Smith draws.

Being-in-the-World

The central aim of Heidegger’s Being and Time is to explore “the question of the meaning of ‘being.’”19 The being that is central to Heidegger’s philosophy is not any being, like a tree or a table. Instead, the being in question is “always the being of a being.”20 Heidegger calls this type of being Dasein, which one must understand in terms of existence. In other words, existence is primary to Dasein, unlike the ontotheological emphasis on essence.21 Existence points to the fundamental idea of Daseinas appropriated by Smith, thatDaseinis being- in-the-world. Existence is not a nebulous ideal; it is a concrete mode of be-ing.

Being-in-the-world expresses a “unifiedphenomenon.”22Being-in-the-world cannot be separated into the dualism of Cartesian mind and body.23 Instead, it is “absorbed in the world.”24 Being-in is always already having relations with the world. Being-in and relations are inseparable. Furthermore, being-in-the- world presupposes that one is always at experience with oneself ontically.25

20 21

22 23

24 25

MartinHeidegger,BeingandTime,trans.JoanStambaugh(Albany:StateUniversityof New York Press, 2010), xxix. Others have noted that the question of being is the central concept with which Heidegger wrestled. See Dorothea Frede, “The Question of Being: Heidegger’s Project,” inThe Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon (New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 1993), 42; and John Macquarrie, Martin Heidegger (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1968), 4.

Heidegger, Being and Time, 8.

Heidegger, Being and Time, 12. Dasein’s essence (Wesen) is understood in terms of exis- tence, its “determination of being” that is only available toDasein. Heidegger distinguishes a difference between this definition of existence from existentia, which is the traditional understanding of being present or what he terms “objective presence” (41). The essence of Daseindoes not express whatness, but its own being (41–42).

Heidegger, Being and Time, 53.

Being-in-the-world, or “being together with,” does not mean spatially “being-objectively- present-together” in the manner of being next to. Heidegger, Being and Time, 55. Heidegger, Being and Time, 55.

The ontic and existentiell level is the concrete level of everyday existence. Dasein’s own concrete existence is always already involved in Dasein’s question of its being. Therefore, the higher level of the ontological and existential question is always “rooted in the exis-

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Thus, being-in-the-world posits that human existence without a world is incon- ceivable. Smith agrees:

In factical experience, we do not find the encounter between a subject and an object—which is a derivative experience found in theoretical consciousness. Rather, factical experience is characterized by a certain immediacy such that the subject is not yet rigidly distinguished from the object, but rather finds itself imbedded in its world, its environment. “I” am imbedded in “life,” and any distillation of “I” or the “world” as distinct components is always already a derivative mode of being-in-the-world.26

To be Dasein as being-in-the-world is fundamentally to reject the Cartesian priority of subjective reason, the priority of epistemology over ontology.27 For Heidegger,the question of ontologyleads toDasein,which points tothe anthro- pological description of Dasein as being-in-the-world that unifies knowledge with embodiment. Being-in-the-world invalidates subject/object language by focusing on factical existence, or the concrete existence of “being what it has already been and choosing what it can be.”28 Facticity brings to focus one’s particular context that inevitably shapes one’s understanding and knowl- edge. Thus, Dasein as being-in-the-world cannot be divorced from the world, which changes the concept of subject so that “we have ‘Dasein’ rather than a ‘subject’—not a ‘spectator’ constituting objects, but a worker involved in the world … one [who] as always already involved … cannot escape its world-

26 27

tentiell one, that is to say, the theoretical inquiry takes its rise from the concrete situation of existing in the world.” Macquarrie, Martin Heidegger, 10.

Smith,Speech and Theology, 76.

The dominant traditional epistemology of Heidegger’s time was Cartesian foundation- alism. Beginning from methodological doubt, Cartesian foundationalism brought skepti- cism upon seemingly self-evident beliefs, as it was possible that one’s sensory data was but an illusion. This subject/object problem was one that Kant believed must be given philo- sophical treatment. The questions, “Is there such thing as an external world outside of our minds, and how could we know it?” needed rational proof. According to Charles Guignon, Heidegger turned this epistemological problem upside down. The problem was not that this question had not received its proof, but that it required such a proof in the first place. This Cartesian skepticism of the external world revealed the “unquestioned centrality and sovereignty of epistemology.” Charles B. Guignon,HeideggerandtheProblemof Knowledge (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), 53.

Richard F.H. Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 66– 67.

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liness.”29 How does facticity of being-in-the-world affect one’s knowledge of the world? For Heidegger (and Smith), one always already has some kind of a pretheoretical understanding of the world by virtue of inhabiting the world.

Understanding and Attunement/Mood

How does a being-in-the-world know in this unified existence? For Heideg- ger, knowing is grounded by “already-being-alongside-the-world” and is a “kind of being of being-in-the-world.”30 Knowing cannot be separated from the con- crete existence of Dasein, as it is a fundamental structure of being-in-the- world. Thus, Heidegger describes the epistemological condition of Dasein as always already having an “average and vague understanding of being.”31Broadly, this average and vague understanding moves beyond understanding of being, although it does not rise to the theoretical, rational level. It is at this ontic level that being-in-the-world always already understands.

Understanding (verstehen) is pretheoretical because it arises from facti- cal or pretheoretical existence.32 For Heidegger, understanding “always con- cerns the whole fundamental constitution of being-in-the-world.”33 Under- standing is part of being-in-the-world. It is how being-in-the-world knows or construes the world. Interpretation reveals how this understanding works. Interpretation of understanding requires a prior understanding of what is to be interpreted.34 No interpretation is isolated from another interpretation. Every interpretation has a frame of reference of being-in-the-world, which is under- standing.35 Thus, there is no “presuppositionless grasping of something pre-

29 30 31

33 34 35

Smith,Speech and Theology, 25.

Heidegger, Being and Time, 61.

Heidegger,Being and Time, 5. Heidegger foresaw the charge of circular reasoning and pre- emptively addressed it by differentiating between presupposing being as a principle and presupposing being as Dasein’slaying bare of itself from always already being involved in the world. Later in Being and Time, Heidegger argues that this knowledge is not viciously circular, although it is circular. Since this epistemic circle is grounded in the “existential constitution of Dasein,” it is an inescapable condition that is not viciously circular in prin- ciple (7, 148–149).

Smith explains that understanding is more primordial than knowing because it is always present without the conceptualization of the “is.” See Smith,Speech and Theology, 75. Heidegger, Being and Time, 140.

Heidegger, Being and Time, 146.

For Heidegger, every interpretation carries two structures: the fore-structure and the as- structure. The fore-structure is the prior understanding that one brings to the situation. The as-structure is the act of interpreting something as something, as what it is. Macquar- rie, Martin Heidegger, 23.

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viously given.”36 Dasein’s ever present understanding of itself and the world makes impossible neutral interpretation. Instead, this pretheoretical, presup- positional construal of the world is the basis on which theoretical knowledge traffics.37

Attunement is a fundamental characteristic of this pretheoretical under- standing that is always already present in the existence of being-in-the-world. Heidegger thus states, “Understanding is always attuned.”38Attunement is cen- tral to Smith’s affective epistemology because attunement is that which per- sons are always already experiencing: mood. Mood is not mere emotions, just as affections are not mere emotions. Mood is a primordial disclosure of being- in-the-world; it arises from being-in-the-world that makes it possible for being- there to question and find meaning. Whether certain settings call for cogni- tion and volition to master a mood, mood is always already a kind of being of Daseinthat is prior to cognition and volition.39Furthermore, Heidegger argues that mood directs being-in-the-world like a hermeneutical filter.40Heidegger’s influence on Smith’s prioritization of affect is clear here. Affect is a pretheoreti- cal lens that always already shapes how one understands reality as meaningful. This affective construal as a particular knowledge is present in attunement.

Elements of Smith’s affective epistemology are clearly present in Heideg- ger’spretheoreticalunderstandingand attunementasmood/affections.Under- standing is an affective understanding; they are interconnected, constitutive modes of being-in-the-world, of being-there.41 Ever present affections accom- pany interpretations grounded in pretheoretical understanding that arises from factical existence. For Smith, these epistemological elements of being- in-the-world reveal knowledge as primarily affective and precognitive. Also, facticity of being-in-the-world opposes neutrality and universality, as it cannot escape particularities of time and space. For Smith, this means that knowledge is affective, irreducible, pretheoretical, particular, and perspectival.

The fundamental orientation of pentecostal epistemology is affective and pretheoretical: “objective knowledge is made possible by a primary percep-

36 37

38 39 40 41

Heidegger, Being and Time, 146.

Charles Guignon reminds us that theoretical inquiry, like that of science, detaches the sci- entist from his or her actual being-with the world. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, 157. Dorothea Frede argues that, for Heidegger, the theoretical is a derivative mode of being. Frede, “The Question of Being,” 58.

Heidegger, Being and Time, 138.

Heidegger, Being and Time, 132.

Heidegger, Being and Time, 133.

Heidegger, Being and Time, 130.

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tion that is not on the order of thinking.”42This knowledge arises from “mate- rial, embodied practices.”43 The influence of Heidegger’s epistemology of an ever present pretheoretical attuned understanding is clear in Smith. This is why anthropology and epistemology unite in Smith’s epistemology. Everyday existence precedes thinking; pretheoretical affection precedes theoretical cog- nition. According to Smith, however, a problem occurs from this pretheoreti- cal/theoretical distinction.

Problem of Incommensurability

Smith considers that an incommensurability between pretheoretical existence and theoretical conceptualization exists in Heidegger. While pretheoretical existence undergirds theoretical inquiry, Heidegger opposes the “‘cognitiviza- tion’ of pretheoretical existence which reduces factical life to that of theoretical consciousness, resulting in a leveling of the dynamics of facticity to mere cogni- tive perception—a subject ‘knowing’ an object.”44The problem that arises for Heidegger in this opposition is the “formal problem of incommensurability.”45 This is the problem of describing theoretically or conceptualizing the tran- scendence of pretheoretical existence, which is “otherwise than conceptual, appearing on a completely different register.”46 Any attempt at conceptualiza- tion does violence to the transcendence of the experience and reduces it to that which is not.47The project of conceptualizing pretheoretical existence, as Smith points out, is a linguistic problem.48 Language, which conceptualizes, violates the transcendence of the other, of pretheoretical existence. Therefore, Smith raises the question of whether it is possible to speak of the transcendent or if one must stay silent.49

43 44 45

46 47 48 49

James K.A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works(Grand Rapids: Baker Aca- demic, 2013), 70. Emphasis mine. Smith utilizes Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, but perception is still in line with Heidegger’s epistemic priority of under- standing.

Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 28.

Smith,Speech and Theology, 68–69.

Smith, Speech and Theology, 43. Smith argues that this problem is a problem not only of phenomenology, but of the “very possibilityof philosophy” (75).

Smith,Speech and Theology, 43.

Smith,Speech and Theology, 43, 84.

Smith, Speech and Theology, 43–44, 84. Smith sees in the young Heidegger’s method of

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The danger of conceptualization is the possible violation of the “autonomy and primacy” of pretheoretical existence by theoretical description.50 Signs maintain the transcendence of the Other (pretheoretical existence). A sign is not theres(things or objects). Because the one is not the Other,toknow the sign is not necessarily to know the Other. In fact, Smith considers this difference in structurebetweenthesignaandrestobeincommensurable.Inthisparadoxical weakness, however, Smith argues that the incompletion of the sign to describe the thing is healed in one of the functions of signs to point beyond itself to the experience of the thing itself.51 For the sign to have effect, the Other has to be experienced.Yet, to learn anything, sign is required.Thus, there is a paradoxical relationship between the sign and the thing: “Words, insofar as they are signs, are bothnecessary(‘nothing is learned withoutsigns’), andinsufficientorinad- equate… (‘nothing is learnedby means of signs’).”52While sign is not the thing, what sign accomplishes is pointing itself to the thing. It “refers beyond itself, refers to that which transcends it, and therefore the sign can (or at leastshould) never constitute an end in itself.”53 In the context of pretheoretical existence, concepts point to the experience itself without fully grasping and objectifying experience as concepts. Thus, the key to Smith’s semiotic answer to the prob- lem of incommensurability is not that of one-to-one correspondence between the sign and the thing (experience), which he refers to as an idolatrous “forget- ting of transcendence,” but is that of a more modest “pointing to” that acts as an icon, which is a reference “to that which exceeds it.”54

Smith overcomes this danger through the Augustinian semiotic view of signs as a way to describe pretheoretical existence, thus preserving the integrity of experience. He points to the incarnation as the supreme reality of the signage of transcendence without objectification. The incarnation acts as an icon in a manner similar to signs. It is the sign of transcendence in immanence that, while being immanent, points beyond itself to the divine.55Through this refer-

50 51 52 53 54 55

formal indication a move toward a new conceptuality that describes without objectifying. However, Heidegger returned to the priority of “philosophy” over factical life inBeing and Time (see 82–104). Formal indication is a manner of speaking about something without theoretically capturing its essence. It is an “indicating” or “alluding.” See Polt, Heidegger, 17–18.

Smith,Speech and Theology, 77.

Smith,Speech and Theology, 120.

Smith,Speech and Theology, 123.

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ential role of the incarnation, one can know transcendence without objectively grasping it with certainty.Thus, Smith provides the possibility of linguistic con- ceptuality that does not reduce the object (pretheoretical existence) to the sign (theoretical conceptualization) while still allowing for the indication of the object by the sign.56

Smith’s solution is inadequate, however. While the incarnation is the exam- ple par excellence, his solution retains the structural violence between the pretheoretical and the theoretical that he described in the problem of incom- mensurability, because the pretheoretical and the theoretical still suffer from an incommensurable relationship. Rather than Smith’s linguistic incarnational logic, a better solution lies in ontology, namely, Smith’s ontological theme in his creational hermeneutic. His creational hermeneutic affirms an ontolog- ical harmony between differences in which interpretation (the problem of description) qua interpretation is a good enterprise; interpretation is not orig- inally a violent act to be overcome. Analogically, by turning to the logic of cre- ational hermeneutic, transcendence becomes understandable through imma- nence even if understanding does not achieve totalizing grasping, which Smith is adamant to avoid. As a creaturely act, creational interpretation does not violate the Creator-creature distinction. Similarly, I contend that a creational hermeneutic opens up an ontological continuity between affective, pretheo- retical knowledge and cognitive, theoretical knowledge. In other words, a cre- ational hermeneutic eliminates the problem of incommensurability, so that there need not be a solution to a pseudo-problem. In fact, a creational herme- neutic would allow for more than mere pointing, a hint of actual grasping of transcendence, or what Merold Westphal calls truth as opposed to Truth.57The goodness of creation, with the necessary act of interpretation, dictates that violence to the Other is not a necessary consequence of interpretation. Since interpretation is necessary to conceptualizing, this consequence would also apply to the problem of the pretheoretical/theoretical divide.

Creational Hermeneutic

Due to the finite, situated nature of persons as beings-in-the-world, persons necessarily interpret. This leads to the reality of “intersubjectivity” and “dif- ference.” Persons are not isolated individuals, but are intermingled with one

56 57

Smith,Speech and Theology, 127. Westphal,Overcoming Onto-Theology, 75–88.

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another in communicative reality. Due to the finitude of be-ing, difference characterizes creaturely existence.58The goodness of creation affirms this dif- ference and the heterogeneity of intersubjective communities. (Violent) mis- interpretation is the product of the Fall and does not characterize an inher- ent nature of creation. Smith’s structure/direction schema helps clarify this distinction. Interpretation is structurally good. Prior to the Fall, interpreta- tion was part of good creation. Interpretation will also be part of eschato- logical redemption. During the in-between times, however, interpretive vio- lence is a reality, but that is the result of the misdirectedness of interpre- tation. In other words, direction can take an iconic or idolatrous turn. The idol operates with a will to power, to totalize through immanent grasping. Yet, interpretation in the in-between can be iconic, directed to the redemp- tive logic of the incarnation. While Smith’s logic of incarnation operates in the in-between, his creational hermeneutic provides a glimpse of the onto- logical goodness of interpretation. More specifically, the logic of incarnation operates under the auspices of the creational hermeneutic. Therefore, since formal indication and conceptualization are acts of interpretation, creational hermeneutic considers both as structurally good, while the latter can be mis- directed.

Is interpretation necessarily violent? As Charles Guignon points out, lan- guage constitutes Dasein, such that “human existence is possible only within language.”59 Yet, the intersubjectivity of being-in-the-world, the being-with- one-another, leads to inauthenticity, or averageness, because one becomes lost to the “they-self.” In other words, one becomes constituted by others, falling to the superficiality of everyday existence rather than committing to the search for one’s authentic existence. This publicness of being-with is negative, but it cannot be overcome. The everydayness of Daseinis always already surrounded by the public “they,” thrown into an inescapable, situated existence of the they, such that Dasein is the they-self.60 Thus, a structural fallenness accompanies Heidegger’s Dasein, which also implicates language and interpretation.61 This is Smith’s critique of Heidegger. If interpretation is structural toDaseinbecause there is no presuppositionless mode of be-ing and interpretation is the mode

58 59 60 61

Smith,The Fall of Interpretation, 161.

Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, 125.

Heidegger, Being and Time, 123–125.

Smith,The Fall of Interpretation, 97. For John Milbank, this ontological fallenness contains interpretive violence. See John Milbank,Theology & SocialTheory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 302.

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through which one becomes absorbed into the they-self, an averageness of inauthenticity, then Daseinis the vehicle of inauthenticity.62

The goodness of creation negates this structural fallenness. With Heideg- ger, Smith agrees that interpretation is structural. Against Heidegger, how- ever, Smith argues that hermeneutics is good, albeit presently fallen. Yet, fal- lenness does not obliterate creational goodness. Against Heidegger’s “violent mediation model,” Smith argues that a creational hermeneutic does not cast aside interpretation as structurally fallen, neither originally nor eschatologi- cally. Interpretation goes all the way down, having received the benediction of God in creation. Smith states:

In contrast, my creational hermeneutic contends that if interpretation is constitutive of human be-ing and creaturehood, then it must be “good” and not necessarily or essentially violent (though it is nevertheless dis- torted and corrupted by the Fall). If to interpret is in and of itself violent and if interpretation is constitutive of human existence or creaturehood, then being human would mean being necessarily violent. But if human life as created is “good,” then this cannot be the case, though again we emphasize that understanding hermeneutics as creational does not deny that we now inhabit a broken, fallen creation. But the effect of the Fall is not the appearance of interpretation but rather the distortion or corrup- tion of interpretation.63

Interpretation is an essential and ubiquitous condition of being human, because humans are finite and situated.64 In this model, the eschaton indeed fulfills and completes. However, it is not a consummation from lack. Rather, it is a completion of what was nascent in creation and the healing of the damage to mediation.65

A key point to notice is Smith’s turn to Christian theology. Smith’stheo-logic overcomes the violent mediation model. Just as the Heideggerian ontology of violence is a “fundamental commitment or faith,” the goodness of creation is a pistic commitment to God’s creational benediction.66 But latent in Smith’s problem of incommensurability is a Platonic heresy, as evidenced in his ascrip- tion of fallenness to the theoretical: “there is … a sense in which I would

62 63 64 65 66

Smith,The Fall of Interpretation, 97–102. Smith,The Fall of Interpretation, 24–25. Smith,The Fall of Interpretation, 43. Smith,The Fall of Interpretation, 70n16. Smith,The Fall of Interpretation, 171.

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say that the theoretical attitude is in a way unnatural, a modification of and abstraction from everyday naïve experience.”67Likewise, “there is a qualitative difference—an abyss—between the order of thought and that of experience … In other words, as incommensurate, they have nothing in common, no com- mon point of overlap; it is radical difference of order.”68 Smith judges not only theory as objectifying, but nontheoretical cognitive perception as well, since the gazeof cognitiveperceptiondoes injustice tothe precognitivedimension of facticity.69 Given this violent incommensurability, Smith (correctly) offers the logic of incarnation to prevent the silence of total apophatics. Indeed, within a postlapsarian context, the incarnation is a necessary redemptive event. By prioritizing the incarnation, however, Smith presupposes the Fall. Given his continual emphasis on the primacy and autonomy of pretheoretical experi- ence and the attendant incommensurability that necessarily accompanies this emphasis, Smith seems to operate with the logic of fallenness. For such incom- mensurability seems structural to creation, an inherent fissure and disharmony prior to the Fall and the incarnation.

Yet, this is not a necessary position within Smith’s thought. Instead, Smith should strip off this unnecessary element of Platonism and apply his cre- ational hermeneutic as a balm. In other words, if he also views the relation- ship between pretheory and theory through the lens of the goodness of cre- ation, then theory need not be incommensurate and violent. The lens of good creation creates a harmonious relationship between pretheory and theory that exists from the very beginning; the disharmony of incommensurability is replaced by the harmony of creational (and eschatological)shalom.

Smith is correct that God cannot remain epistemologically wholly Other, because the alterity of the ontological wholly Otherness of God would render God unknowable, even of God’s existence. Therefore, Smith rightly argues that the wholly Other must reveal the self through the free act of self-condescen- sion, a gift of revelation, which is not conditioned by the will of the receiver.70 Such movement of condescension “privileges the intentional direction from the Other to the Same.”71 However, is the incarnation the supreme model or metaphor of God’s self-condescending act of revelation, the act by which the creature can speak of the Creator? Just as the incarnation is the condition for

68 69 70 71

James K.A. Smith, “Taking Husserl at His Word: Towards a New Phenomenology with the Young Heidegger,”Symposium4, no. 1 (2000): 106.

Smith,Speech and Theology, 9. Emphasis mine. Also, see43.

Smith, “Taking Husserl at His Word,” 93–97.

Smith,Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation, 158–161.

Smith,Speech and Theology, 160.

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Jesus’s death and resurrection, is not creation the condition for the incarna- tion? Without creation, there would be no incarnation. Moreover, there existed unbroken communion between God and humans in prelapsarian creation, but God’s communion required condescension to the epistemic capabilities of Adam and Eve. The incarnation is therefore but one of the more intense moments of God’s condescension.72God’s self-condescension begins from cre- ation,forcommunion(thatis,revelation)withcreationmustoccurthroughthe conditions of finite creatures.73

If communion was actual with the wholly other God prior to the incarnation in prelapsarian creation, then the logic of incarnation is embedded in the logic of creation; the former must apply to the latter, and without the disharmony of incommensurability.74The logic of incarnation is at work in the logic of cre- ation; they are two sides of the same coin. Incommensurability, on the other hand, is the result of the Fall. For in creation, God condescended his nature as wholly Other. In a moment of kenosis, God creates persons in God’s image, cre- ating an eternal (analogical) identification with humanity, so that the wholly Other is both structurally similar and other, God’s transcendence both present and absent.75Incommensurability is absent in the originalshalom, nullified by the image of God, only rearing its head after the Fall. If incommensurability

Here I borrow Smith’s utilization of degree, which opposes the binary logic of either/or. See Smith,Thinking in Tongues, 103–105.

An essential mark of Pentecostalism is the belief in direct encounter with God. However, such encounter is still mediated by Scripture, tradition, and reason, which are conditions of finite creatures. See Peter Neumann, Pentecostal Experience: An Ecumenical Encounter (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 122–161.

According to Jason Sexton, the image is christocentric, for Christ is the goal of the image. But as “anthropology and theology (proper) together have yielded in the incarnation,” anthropology presupposes creation, such that the incarnation and (christocentric) cre- ation are inextricably interrelated.Thus, the divine goal for the image was always to enjoin God and humanity in the true image of Christ through the work of the Spirit. See Jason S. Sexton, “The Imago Dei Once Again: Stanley Grenz’s Journey toward aTheological Inter- pretation of Genesis 1:26–27,” Journal of Theological Interpretation4, no. 2 (2010): 196–199. Because the Spirit is at work in creating the bond of commensurability, the Spirit is central to the dissolution of incommensurability in creation.

Richard Hess argues that the Ancient Near Eastern practice of erecting divine images that represented the king’s dominion over his empire must be the lens through which to understand the image. Humanity’s imaging of God thus creates an analogical extension of God’s self to humans, marking God’s presence, while also accounting for God’s absence, hence, the image. See Richard S. Hess, “Equality with and without Innocence: Genesis 1– 3,” inDiscovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy, ed. Rebecca Merrill Groothuis and Ronald W. Pierce (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 81. Cf., Phyl-

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is the absence of a “common point of overlap,”76 then God’s revelational and trinitarian gift of the image of God as the structure and activity of humanity nullifies incommensurability,77the implication being that humans can analog- ically know transcendencelikeGod. That is, knowledge of transcendence is not an incommensurate impossibility inherent to creation, but an analogical pos- sibility as the result of God’s self-condescending gift.

Therefore, the image of God is the creational condition of possibility for revelationandis itself revelation,aninherentconditionof theimmanentrecip- ient made possible by the transcendent (and self-condescending) God. This does not nullify the otherness of God, the qualitative difference between Cre- ator and creature. The image is a gift that neither sacrifices transcendence nor transforms immanence into transcendence, as if Adam and Eve became gods at their creation. Instead, it is a trinitarian gift that preserves both the presence and absence of transcendence. As revelation, this gift does not identify with Emil Brunner’s understanding “of an enduring formal image of God … [that] fatally smuggles in amaterialcontent abstracted from revelation.”78The image thus acts as an inherent link that binds the creature to the Creator as a con-

76 77

lis A. Bird, “‘Male and Female He Created Them’: Gen 1:27b in the Context of the Priestly Account of Creation,”Harvard Theological Review74, no. 2 (1981): 141–144. C.L. Crouch dis- sents against this view. See C.L. Crouch, “Genesis 1:26–27 as a Statement of Humanity’s Divine Parentage,” Journal of Theological Studies 61, no. 1 (2010): 9. Furthermore, Crouch argues that the image describes God’s parentage. If humanity is God’s children, then incommensurability is an impossibility since parentage necessitates likeness (see 10–15). Moreover, Richard Briggs argues that the purpose of the image is the setting up of read- ing humanity’s significant role in the narratives of Scripture, such that one wonders what that entails throughout Scripture. In this way, Genesis does not provide a clear picture of the nature of the image. However, the reader of Scripture can get glimpses of the image in action, examples such as Abraham’s and Moses’s arguing with God (Gen 18:23–25; Num 14:13–19) that show “how a human being can stand before God and aspire to God’s justice and compassion, attempting even to argue before God by grasping God’s own perspective on human affairs. Moments such as these suggest all manner of characteristics of humans at their best, as they image God.” Richard S. Briggs, “Humans in the Image of God and Other Things Genesis Does Not Make Clear,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 4, no. 1 (2010): 123. Emphasis mine. This view further solidifies the argument that theimago Deiis a divine gift that creates a (gifted) commensurability through creation between God and humanity. Incommensurability, then, must be seen for what it is: a result of the Fall. Smith,Speech and Theology, 9.

The image is both structural and teleological, the goal of “mediating the Creator’s imma- nence in the world.” Sexton, “The Imago Dei Once Again,” 193.

Paul T. Nimmo, “Karl Barth,” inThe Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology, ed. William J. Abraham and Frederick D. Aquino (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 526.

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dition of possibility—a necessary but not sufficient condition. For to admit of sufficiency seems to reopen the door to natural theology, as if this image that is wrecked by sin can naturally know God without other revelational condi- tions. Instead, even this revelational condition requires the gracious christo- logical and pneumatological redemptive acts of God, which “grants the ability to participate actively in the revelation of God by way of human thought and speech.”79 In this way Smith’s argument for an equality that does not destroy the difference between two “incommensurable” subjects, which is found in the “descent by God, and more particularly, by an incarnational appearance in which God [appears] in terms that the finite knower can understand,”80 is affirmed, but modified. The incarnational appearance is indeed a divine descent,butitisprecededbythecreationalappearanceof thetrinitarianGodin theimago Dei. In other words, the incarnation is not the only condition of pos- sibility for learning, as Smith argues.81 Rather, creation and the image of God are also part, one that assumes the logic of incarnation. Because a focus on the image is in danger of descending to natural theology, however, it is important to highlight that the redemptive activity of God also act as the condition of pos- sibility for true creation, the rehabilitation and perfection of the image, and epistemic activity. For without redemption, the defaced image cannot produce right belief, desire, or will. Therefore, for the image to act as the right condi- tion of possibility for knowledge, broadly construed, it must be conditioned by redemption.

This creational-redemptive model is consistent with Smith’s incarnational account of language, but disagrees with the existence of incommensurability, rather opting for qualitative difference without incommensurability. Differ- ence, even excessiveness and irreducibility, need not denote the disharmony of incommensurability. Incommensurability is the product of the Fall, neces- sitating the incarnation. Therefore, the logic of creation in its postlapsarian condition leaves room for the possibility of objectivizing conceptualization, understood as objective knowledge,82 just as Smith’s creational hermeneutic accounts for the possibility and actuality of wrong interpretation in postlapsar- ian creation. However, creation remains the basis for the incarnation. Although the image is damaged, it is not destroyed. The link remains, and creaturely knowledge of transcendence as an answer to loving invitation remains possible and good.

79 80 81 82

Nimmo, “Karl Barth,” 527. Smith,Speech and Theology, 162. Smith,Speech and Theology, 163. See Smith,Speech and Theology, 165.

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This invitation to be known is the gift of communion present in prelapsar- ian creation, which is ongoing today. Therefore, knowledge of transcendence, whether pretheoretical experience, the subjectivity of the Other, or God, is not something to be achieved through an overcoming, but an inbuilt structure of being God’s creatures. But as an inbuilt gift, it is not, consistent with Smith, “a positive capacity of human beings to rise up to the Infinite, but … a movement of the Other toward human beings, condescending to appear under the con- ditions of perception which alone would make the revelation revelatory.”83 It is critical to understand the image of God as a revelational gift. Natural theol- ogy would result without this understanding. Given this understanding of all aspects of creation as the free gift of revelation, however, the advantage of the logic of creation is that it maintains the Creator/creature distinction, thereby preserving analogical knowledge, which is “an incarnational account of knowl- edge.”84 Since I have argued that the logic of incarnation is embedded in the logic of creation, of which the image of God is part, analogical knowledge is also a creational account of knowledge.

Moreover, if the (trinitarian gift of the) logic of creation eliminates the wholly otherness of God, then could it not be that the relationship between pretheoretical experience and theoretical conceptualization is not wholly other and incommensurate either? In good creation, just as the transcendence of God invites loving communion, of which theoretical understanding is part, could it not be that pretheoretical experience in its prelapsarian condition was also designed for theoretical understanding? If so, then the occasional shaping of pretheoretical experience through the sedimentation of theory is a glimpse of this original design. Therefore, rather than Smith’s call for the autonomy and primacy of pretheoretical experience,85 which creates the disharmony of incommensurability, the logic of creation (and redemption) operates under the hermeneutics of mutuality andshalom.86

Smith’s pentecostal epistemology is based on an anthropology that is finally undergirded by an ontology (that provides impetus for the creational herme- neutic), which solves the problem of incommensurability between pretheoret-

83 84 85 86

Smith,Speech and Theology, 168.

Smith,Speech and Theology, 164.

Smith, “Taking Husserl at His Word,” 100.

Smith is not somehow prioritizing the incarnation over creation. My proposal is an attempt to clarify Smith by identifying his logic of fallenness and the necessary relation- ship between the logic of creation and incarnation, the former eliminating Smith’s sense of fallenness between pretheory and theory. In this way, this section has been an attempt to read Smith against Smith.

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ical understanding and theoretical conceptualization. The violence of inter- pretation is nullified by the goodness of creation and interpretation. What is the relationship between affective, pretheoretical knowledge and cognitive, theoretical knowledge? Theoretical knowledge arises from pretheoretical exis- tence, that mode of being-in which is always already attuned in understanding. This hierarchical relationship is not violent because of the good hermeneutical structure of creation. Because interpretation and knowledge are good, concep- tualization of pretheoretical experience is possible and good, even if always finite and limited. Since this conceptualization is possible, there is greater clarity of relationship between affective, pretheoretical knowledge and cogni- tive, theoretical knowledge. Further, if theoretical knowledge is a grasping of pretheoretical understanding, then this discovery emphasizes the importance of theoretical knowledge in arriving at a more explicit knowledge of the expe- riences we have of our selves, the world, and God, rather than leaving these pretheoretical experiences in a nebulous realm of noncognitive understand- ing.87 Thus, my proposal maintains Smith’s emphasis on the irreducibility of affective, pretheoretical knowledge, but clarifies the (commensurable) rela- tionship between the pretheoretical and theoretical and eliminates the prob- lem of incommensurability. If my argument is correct, then a viable pentecostal epistemology must (re)value the role of the theoretical.

Smith hints at this important role of theoretical thought when he exhorts pastors to take on an ethnographical role in order to mine the practices of “the world” for their deforma- tive powers. See James K.A. Smith, Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 194–195.

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Pentecostal Epistemology, The Problem Of Incommensurability, And Creational Hermeneutic

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