The Underside of Reality. (Books).

Joerge Rieger, Remember the Poor: The Challenge to Theology in the TwentyFirst Century. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1998. 240pp. $19.00 (paper).

Joerge Rieger, God and the Excluded: Visions and Blindspots in Contemporary Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. 310pp. $20.00 (paper).

Joerge Rieger is an impressive member of the rising new generation of U.S. theologians. In both of these two books he succeeds in binding together the impasse of current Western theology with the global crisis afflicting marginalized peoples of the Third and First Worlds. And he does so without resorting to simplistic versions of liberation theology, but by a careful framework that demonstrates the genuine commonalities of selfhood--commonalities shared by academic white theologians, Hispanic cleaning women, African-American sharecroppers, and Peruvian peasants. The framework is undergirded (and perhaps burdened) by the theories of the French postmodern philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

But in simplest terms his argument goes like this: Energized by a sense of the imperial self, Europeans have for centuries expanded across the seas, conquered colonies, and now through late capitalism they have brought virtually the whole globe under their domination. People of color, women, and all the marginalized and victimized have borne the weight of this oppression, and continue to do so to this day. Over the same span of centuries Western theology was also driven by a new sense of the entrepreneurial self, emerging from the older orthodoxies and trying to retain some traction within a society in the throes of modernizing. Both on the geo-political level and the conceptual level, the domineering self succeeded in these widening conquests. But it was only at the expense of dissociation and repression of aspects of the self deemed unacceptable -- namely, the oppressed classes of the world as well as the repressed unconscious of the Western mind. While for Christianity the process began as early as the Pro testant Reformation, it is Friedrich Schleiermacher who deserves his reputation as the father of modern theology. He was the first to make explicit this realignment of faith around the expansive self, so that all parts of church doctrine and practice come to be articulated from the self's feeling of absolute dependence. What could not be made explicit, however, since it was all the more deeply repressed into the unconscious, were the split-off fragments of the self. These splits paralleled nineteenth-century imperialism, the suppression of "the other," the colonized peoples of the world.

Liberal theology, then, expressed this turn to the self. For all its positive contributions, it also ended up sanctioning modernity's power struggles, the quest for globalization and unity (on European terms, of course). A new vision of authority resulted, now redefined as the ability to control, but with little regard for those peoples being subjected to such control, those who live on the underside.

Thus far, Rieger's two books overlap. But in addition to liberal Protestantism there are other ways of responding to the crisis of modernity. And it is at this point that the books diverge in their line of argument.

The earlier, Remember the Poor, focuses on comparing notions of authority and power in mainline Protestantism in North America with those of the Christendom model of Latin American Roman Catholic theology. In the latter, the power of the text (Thomistic theology allied with the political powers that be) offers the alternative to the turn to the self, although the modern self is still evident in colonial mentalities and the narcissistic and aggressive assimilation of native peoples. Rieger then supports his case with a chapter on the analytic framework offered by Jacques Lacan, who maintains that "the real" resists easy conceptualization and so we must seek the underside of reality by examining the repressions of the modern self. Next are helpful chapters on the most promising contemporary theologians of the two Americas who carry out that necessary task, Frederick Herzog and Gustavo Gutierrez. The remainder of the book, Part Three, is an exposition of the paradigm shift needed for meeting the theological cha llenge posed by the underside of history in the twenty-first century. The exposition, however, does not advance the argument much beyond the earlier two-thirds of the book or add much substance, but too often seems to wander inconclusively.

The subsequent book, God and the Excluded, is a stronger presentation, solid and with some interesting new lines of development. Instead of the comparison between North America and Latin America, leading to expositions of two featured theologians (Herzog and Gutierrez) as the antidotes, Rieger now confines himself to the Euro-American context and compares four modes of theology, both modern and postmodern. This is preceded by an initial chapter that succinctly sketches the widening gap between rich and poor around the world and links this to the impasse of recent Christian thought. "The crisis of theology is not primarily an intellectual crisis, as many theologians still think, but the fact that we have separated ourselves from most of humanity" (4). Inspired by "four discourses" posed by Lacan, Rieger then develops a nice comparison of the four (largely successive) types of theology. Especially the first three are built on generalizations about human nature that are actually not as universal as claimed, but which are class-based, reflecting the malaise of educated, middle-class Westerners.

The first is the legacy of Schleiermacher, the turn to the self in a "theology of identity." In those pre-Freudian days the unity of the self was taken for granted, and no blind spots foreseen. Moreover, the self yearns to rediscover its basic identity with God, a unity that happens to exclude other people who are "different" or relegate them to lower levels of a developmental hierarchy. For the nineteenth century in the West this turn to the self coincided with an impressive burst of energy in science, culture, the arts - and (no coincidence) in colonial domination over much of the world. From its privileged position the needs of the autonomous self became the filter for perceiving all of life, the default for making moral or theological judgments. Nowadays the legacy continues in classic liberalism, in popular self-help literature, and in the modern commercial advertising industry required to fuel late capitalism.

Liberalism prompted a theological reaction, secondly, a turn to the "Wholly Other" by the Barthian revolution. This could be labeled a "theology of difference," insisting on the immense gap between God and humanity and criticizing the all-consuming centrality of the modern self and its feelings of absolute dependence. For Europeans, anyway, grandiose self-confidence ended in two world wars. For this turn authority is instead vested in God the transcendent One, before whom all our cognition falters and even the church's scriptures and doctrines are relativized. Truth is dynamic, an encounter with God. Rieger grants that Karl Barth's legacy does challenge the sovereignty of the human (Western) self. But Rieger believes it does so without adequate recognition of how encountering non-Western selves, the poor and disinherited, may offer unexpected opportunities for encountering the Wholly Other. Furthermore, by just turning the tables and dethroning the self, simply repressing it without reconstructing it, Barth may overlook how the now-hidden powers of the self continue to influence our key images and basic concepts. As in the case of liberalism, whatever is merely repressed will continue to haunt us unawares.

A third theological stage arose as modernity falters and gives way to postmodernity; now the turn is to language and the texts of the church. The postliberal theology of George Lindbeck is the example. Now the human self is not primary but a product, and its world is socially and linguistically constructed. So religion must focus on the community of faith and the texts it uses, the grammar that molds our consciousness and brings us into conformity with the group. Godself cannot be encountered, really, so authority derives from the texts themselves and their ability to close the gap between the human and the divine. Disintegrating Western culture can only be healed by reclaiming a common scriptural language through the ecumenical church. However, this proposal of cultural reconstruction (restoration?) through textual training remains unaware that the texts themselves may need criticism. Church doctrine and scripture have long contained elements of patriarchy, class division, and structures of exclusion which are far more apparent to oppressed and marginalized peoples who do not share in the largess of modernity or postmodernity. While Lindbeck may appeal to affluent worriers about the decline of the Western canon, says Rieger, "the postliberal resistance to modern individualism does not necessarily lead us beyond the construction of gated communities" (94). Our crisis is not just one of the dissipation of language and tradition, but of global expansion at the cost of other peoples and of psychological repression at the cost of unconscious truth.

The fourth theological mode is the turn to others, the excluded peoples over the world. While Rieger's earlier book lifts up liberation theology in its Latin American setting, now he uses the example of feminist theology (with special attention to Mary McClintock Fulkerson). Refuting the misconception that feminist faith is but a special interest variant of liberalism, he maintains that the reference point is not the experience of the self and its God, but the experience of cognitive dissonance and suffering. From this comes awareness of an interconnectedness of oppression as we listen with new ears to people who are different and culturally dismissed. Experience is important, yes (contra Barth), but no longer is it the experience of the self falsely universalized and in positions of control (contra liberalism) or of tradition and text enjoining a group conformity (contra postliberalism). Theology begins where pain and brokenness open up fresh space for the presence of God. The turn toward others helps us br eak out of our isolation, reaffirm our place in the web of human relationships, and reclaim access to the wider range of truth long repressed in the age of the ego. Yet this turn is not partisan, since the poor are not absolutized as a source or norm. "Identifying with those who are excluded points us to new sources of energy that are overlooked in the other discourses," the previous three modes of theology (159). Indeed, by unlocking what has been repressed it actually enhances the strong points of each earlier mode. Somehow the turn to others allows the self at last to be reformulated, places the Wholly Other in a more accessible light, and refreshes the power of scriptural and doctrinal texts.

That's the simple summary. But in both books Rieger goes further, grounding his argument in the arcane framework of Jacques Lacan's postmodern theories. In addition to frequent quotations, each book devotes one of its later chapters to an exposition of Lacan's thought, which prove to be the most difficult reading in either book. I would question whether those chapters are essential for the average reader, who may well choose to defer or skip them altogether.

As an alternative, let me simply list several primal assumptions I find in Rieger. If the reader accepts them, well and good, and the books will thereupon repay a careful reading. If the reader does not accept them, then some more technical analysis may well be called for--whether it be by Lacan or by some alternate theorist. For my part, I readily accept the following assumptions and so find little use in struggling to comprehend the intricate exposition of Lacan.

1. Economic class divisions, racism, patriarchy, and the harsh effects of colonialism are major realities today; our fallen world does indeed thrive on excluding "others."

2. Injustice is not just a moral offense but a serious cognitive and theological barrier.

3. The individual self and the collective self (e.g., of the West) are conjoined as micro/macrocosms of each other (as C. G. Jung would argue, compared to the usual contrast readers infer from Reinhold Niebuhr's title, Moral Man and Immoral Society).

4. Far more than we'd like to admit, both the individual and society are profoundly influenced by the covert forces of the unconscious.

5. Such influence has theological and moral consequences that go unchecked until whatever has been repressed begins to be raised to consciousness.

6. To embrace human beings who are different does indeed open us in unforeseen ways to a deeper self-awareness and thereby to a greater receptivity to God's presence. Most married couples can attest this fact, if sometimes ruefully, and the same principle should apply to cross-cultural and inter-class contacts of all kinds.

In suggesting this alternative substructure, I certainly do not want to detract from the crowning value of Rieger's two books. That is his convincing demonstration of the inexhaustible resilience of the self within modern theology -- both those types that explicitly exalt its role (e.g., Tillich's "ultimate concern," pietism's "personal salvation," the pop religion of "feel good" fulfillment) and those that try to suppress it in order to glorify God (e.g., neoorthodoxy, traditional orthodoxy, Catholicism). That is, the gravitational pull of the self is so constant that it cannot be tamed by simply giving way to it, through lauding self-actualization. Nor can it be countered effectively by conventional pulpit antidotes, a renewed summons (or scolding) that we should be more dependent upon God. Instead, Rieger proposes a lateral shift: not a vertical turn (inward or upward, so to speak), but a horizontal move outward--to the excluded neighbor. When we join in solidarity with victims of the powers that be, we di scover new avenues to a renewal of self and of relationship to God. Is this a bland humanism? No, a turn to the other and the marginalized does initiate a profound inner change that mysteriously makes us more receptive to God. (Rieger calls it the self-criticism of the reformulated self; one wonders if there is not also a mixture of guilt and pathos in recognizing our own complicity in the suffering of migrant laborers, homeless women, and the 35,000 needless deaths of children worldwide each day--a psychic shock treatment awakening us to reality.) Having first turned to our exploited fellow human beings, we may find there a God awaiting us who is a God of self-emptying love and mercy (Rieger could use the term kenosis) who has the power to change us all.

Here then is an alternate way of dealing with the power of the self. Moreover, we should recognize that the self is far more than our consciousness, the surface levels of reason and faith with which theology normally concerns itself. The church has not paid enough attention, on the personal level, to the tenacious role of the unconscious, and, on the societal level, to the displacement of these psychic forces by repression and projection onto whatever humans our "in-group" excludes. Until such uncanny powers are taken into consideration, there is little reason to puzzle over why church reform movements are so short-lived, why racism and classism so silently prominent at eleven o'clock on Sunday mornings, why doctrinal clarification so quickly becomes distorted in practice, why Christian education often seems so ineffective, and so on. How can the broader and deeper self be brought into harmony with itself, with God, and with other selves? All these dimensions are intrinsically and indissolubly connected, as R ieger tirelessly points out. And, although he gives little mention to such examples, this insight has already found statement in current movements of spiritual formation, cross-cultural work camps, and (at its best) the global ecumenical movement. But systematic theology has not yet grappled sufficiently with these matters, and here Rieger has made a singular contribution. All other commentary on his work should pale before that accomplishment.

With that said, we may return to some points of critical evaluation. First and again, are the advanced theories of Jacques Lacan really necessary for Rieger to make his case? Perhaps so, for some readers. I have already expressed my doubts -- or perhaps my limited capacities. But I suggest that the church's scriptures and practice already provide some alternate resources. Two of them Rieger himself makes passing reference to. Holy Communion brings together every variety of people around a common table and a common sharing of bread, the most basic staple lacking to the poor. "The Eucharist helps expand the Christian search for God's presence without falling back into the control mentality" (Remember the Poor, 214; see 213-15) and through tangible gifts of suffering love. A second avenue is through a reinterpretation of Jesus' words on the two greatest commandments (ibid., 99f; God and the Excluded, 191f). Love of God and neighbor are indivisible (Mark 12:29-31). Moreover, to "love your neighbor as yourself" d oes not mean yet one more rule to comply with, nor does it mean we first have to learn to love ourselves before we can love others. Rather, it means we should love our neighbor while seeing her/him as being part of ourselves -- an expanded vision of selfhood as embracing its perceived opposites. Thereby we concurrently reach out to our newly discovered siblings in Christ, find our inner divisions being healed, and encounter a God of unexpected grace. Whether Rieger continues to depend on Lacan or not, I suggest these biblical resources should count more heavily.

Although Rieger clearly favors liberation thought, his goal is to bring together all four modes of theology, each making its own contribution and each enlivened further by new alertness to the world's excluded. "When all four discourses come together in light of what is repressed, theological reflection becomes a form of listening, of reading between the lines, and of receptivity to that which usually goes unnoticed" (God and the Excluded, 162). This spacious goal becomes possible when the temptation to "control" is stripped from the self, from texts, and from (our idealizations of) the Wholly Other and the marginalized others. The new paradigm offered rests upon a reconstituted self, now in a "self-critical" mode. Little more illumination is apparent, however, in what Rieger means by that self-critical mode and how it may differ from the previous two centuries of allegedly critical thought about the self. Rieger believes the transformation may be so complete that he entitled it indeed the "new self." While this certainly is our eschatological destiny, I wonder whether here and now, living "between the times," that new self can be a reliable basis for the sweeping changes needed on the theological scene. At least we would like further clarification on that matter. And there is much reason to hope that Rieger's future work will do so.

Rieger's own literary style sometimes gets in his way. There are cumbersome sentences and enumerated subpoints with little apparent substance. Writing style is more a problem in the earlier book, particularly in the final section laying out his own constructive position. Here is located most of his lapses into liberation rhetoric and loose generalities, even near slogans at times. The section is longer than it needs to be, and a firm editorial hand might have gently pointed out that ample repetition of assertions is no substitute for argument or exposition. Granted, liberation theologies are not the only schools of thought with a weakness for self-propagating generalization, but Rieger's theme is much too important to tolerate stylistic impediments. Happily, his writing is usually clear and focused. This is especially so in the second book, which on the whole should rank as a lasting contribution to help current theology chart a new course.

These two volumes show Rieger to be an impressive and talented young theologian, an astute mind able to master sizable amounts of material from (for instance) French, German, Peruvian, feminist, and male North American sources. He is widely read and the footnotes are extensive; in the earlier book the citations are even located conveniently at the bottom of the page. Rieger has traveled widely, but most important have been his studies at Duke with Fred Herzog, whose influence is unmistakable on these pages. It is a joy to see a chapter in Remember the Poor summarizing Herzog's thought, giving an overview of the evolution of the thought of this memorable mentor. It is no easy task to extract a compendium of ideas from such an impassioned heart, but it is a commendable memorial to one of the outstanding North American theologians of our time. In explicating the many ways the controlling self has dominated modern theology, and in charting how the path of justice may also be the path of theological renewal, Rieg er shows himself to be a worthy apprentice and a promising guardian of Herzog's legacy.

G. Clarke Chapman, Jr. is a professor of religion at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.