<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://books.google.nl/books?id=sy9zn3FcHnwC&pg=PR7&hl=nl&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false">http://books.google.nl/books?id=sy9zn3FcHnwC&pg=PR7&hl=nl&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false</a><br>
<br>
The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology<br>
Simon Critchley<br>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div class="bookinfo_sectionwrap" style="margin-bottom: 2px; color:
rgb(119, 119, 119); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size:
13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight:
normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto;
text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<div style="margin: 0.2em 0px;"><span dir="ltr">Verso Books</span>,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span dir="ltr">1 feb.
2012</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>-<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span dir="ltr">291
pagina's</span></div>
</div>
<br>
<br>
pg. 174: <br>
<br>
PAROUSIA AND THE ANTI-CHRIST<br>
<br>
W hat about that waiting community? W hat does it await? How<br>
does it await? This takes us directly to the question of temporal<br>
ity. Heidegger has two working theses with respect to Paul: first,<br>
that primordial Christian religiosity is bound up with an experi<br>
ence of the enactment of life in the way we have described above.<br>
<font color="#ff0000">Second, he claims that Christian religiosity
“lives time itself” (lebt<br>
die Zeit selbst).66 </font>Everything turns here on the
interpretation o f<br>
parousia, which can be variously translated as presence, arrival,
or,<br>
more commonly, the second coming. Heidegger tackles this issue<br>
in his interpretation of Second Thessalonians, which some schol<br>
ars consider apocryphally ascribed to Paul. The sense o f parousia
as<br>
the literal return o f Christ doesn’t interest Heidegger much. His<br>
concern is rather with the way in which parousia suggests a tempo<br>
rality irreducible to an objective, ordinary, or what Heidegger will<br>
call in Being and Time “vulgar” sense o f time. <font
color="#ff0000">That is, a temporality<br>
“without its own order and demarcations,” the simple demarca<br>
tions into past, present, and future.67</font> Rather, parousia
refers back<br>
to the idea of life as enactment: namely, that what gets enacted<br>
in the proclamation of faith is a certain relation to temporality.<br>
More specifically, this is temporality as a relation with parousia
as a<br>
futurity that induces a sense o f urgency and anguish in the
present.<br>
In short, what we see in the interpretation ofPaul is a foreshadow<br>
ing of ecstatic temporality in Being and Time, where the primordial<br>
phenomenon of time is the future.<br>
But it is the key insight into the fmitude of time in Being and<br>
Time that reflects back so suggestively onto the reading of Paul.<br>
If, in Heideggers magnum opus, time is finite because it comes<br>
to an end with death, then the end of time in Paul turns on the<br>
concept o f parousia as the eschaton, understood as the uttermost,<br>
furthermost, or ultimate. The person “in Christ” proclaims in the<br>
present a relation to an already (the historicity of resurrection)
and<br>
a not-yet which is uttermost (the futurity of parousia). Temporality<br>
is not a sequential line, but a finite unity of three dimensions.<br>
In another crypto-Harnackian gesture, Heidegger claims that this<br>
Pauline experience of the eschatological was already “covered up<br>
in Christianity” by the end of the first century AD, “following the<br>
penetration of Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy into Christianity.”6<br>
8<br>
By contrast— and here we can note a further quasi-Messianic<br>
moment in Heidegger— the original sense of the eschatological<br>
is “late Judaic (spätjüdisch), the Christian consciousness [being] a<br>
peculiar transformation thereof.”6 This suggestive reading would<br>
9<br>
allow for a bringing together of Messianic temporality, rooted in<br>
the ho nun kairos, the time of the now, which Agamben links to<br>
Benjamins idea o f Jetztzeit, now-time, and Heideggers concep<br>
tion o f the Augenblick, the m om ent of vision— which, o f course,<br>
was Luthers translation of kairos in Paul.<br>
Christian life, Heidegger insists, is lived without security. It<br>
is a “constant insecurity”70 in which the temporality of factical<br>
life is enacted in relation to what is uttermost, the eschaton. It
is<br>
this sense o f insecurity and anguish that is at the heart of Second<br>
Thessalonians. This is where the figure o f parousia has to be con<br>
nected with “the son o f perdition,” namely the Anti-Christ. Paul<br>
writes: “Now concerning the coming (parousia) of our Lord Jesus<br>
Christ and our assembling to meet him ... Let no one deceive you<br>
in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes<br>
first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition”<br>
(2 Thess. 2:1, 3).<br>
The figure of the Anti-Christ massively heightens the sense o f<br>
anguish and urgency among the waiting community of believers.<br>
He is the figure who opposes all forms of worship and pro<br>
claims himself God. In one passage where Paul begins to sound<br>
like Marcion, the Anti-Christ is declared “the god of this world”<br>
(2 Cor. 4:4). Heidegger links the Anti-Christ to what would<br>
become, in the years to follow, the theme of falling, das Verfallen:<br>
“The appearance o f the Anti-Christ in godly robes facilitates the<br>
falling-tendency of life (die abfallende Lebenstendenz) .”7 W hat is<br>
1<br>
almost being envisaged here by Heidegger is a conflict between<br>
two divine orders: Christ and Anti-Christ. For Heidegger, the<br>
Anti-Christ reveals the fallen character o f the world, in relation<br>
ship to which “each must decide,” and “in order not to fall prey<br>
to it, one must stand ever ready for it.”72 Heidegger adds, “The<br>
decision itself is very difficult.”7<br>
3<br>
What the figures of parousia and the Anti-Christ reveal is the<br>
falling tendency o f life in the world. In a marginal note to the<br>
lecture course, Heidegger writes telegraphically o f the “Communal<br>
world (Mitwelt) as ‘receiving’ world into which the gospel strikes”
;<br>
and again, “this falling tendency of life and attitude in communal-<br>
worldly tendencies (wisdom o f the Greeks) ”74 Our everyday life<br>
in the world— what Heidegger will later call das Man— is revealed<br>
to be abfallend, in the sense of both falling, dropping, or melting<br>
away, but also becoming Abfall, waste, rubbish, or trash. This dis<br>
closes a peculiar double logic: in proclaiming faith and enacting<br>
life, the world becomes trash and we become the trash of the<br>
world. The waiting community becomes the unwanted offscour-<br>
ing that is seen as garbage by the lights of Greek wisdom and sees,<br>
in turn, the existing communal world as garbage.<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>