POETICS AND RELIGION - COnnecting REpositories · bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium ccxl paul ricŒur poetics and religion edited by j. verheyden – t.l. hettema

BIBLIOTHECA EPHEMERIDUM THEOLOGICARUM LOVANIENSIUM

CCXL

PAUL RICŒURPOETICS AND RELIGION

EDITED BY

J. VERHEYDEN – T.L. HETTEMA –

P. VANDECASTEELE

UITGEVERIJ PEETERSLEUVEN – PARIS – WALPOLE, MA

2011

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII

Short Title Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII

J. VERHEYDEN – T.L. HETTEMA – P. VANDECASTEELE

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XVII

I. MAIN PAPERS

J. GREISCH

Lire, interpréter, comprendre: Vers une herméneutique philo-sophique de la religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

M. JUNKER-KENNY

Poetics of Culture and Christian Memory: The Relevance of Ricœur’s Thinking for Christian Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

D.R. STIVER

One Philosophy, Many Theologies: A Hermeneutical Spiral from Ricœur to Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

L. BOEVE

Naming God in Open Narratives: Theology between Decon-struction and Hermeneutics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

A. THOMASSET

La poétique biblique comme meta-éthique théologique: La parabole et la vertu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

B. BLUNDELL

A Good Story Well Told: Toward a Christian Narrative Iden-tity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

P. BÜHLER

Ricœur’s Concept of Distanciation as a Challenge for Theo-logical Hermeneutics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

F.-X. AMHERDT

The Hermeneutics of Paul Ricœur: Implications for Homiletics and Practical Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

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X TABLE OF CONTENTS

J. PORÉE

Finitude et transcendance: Une philosophie à deux foyers . . . 189

T.L. HETTEMA

Spirituality and Biblical Hermeneutics: The Challenge of Ricœur’s Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

C. REAGAN

Conversations with Paul Ricœur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

II. OFFERED PAPERS

M. MOYAERT

Facing Up to Our Own Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

A. DAUGHTON

Speaking of the Other: Paul Ricœur’s Ethics of Recognition and Thomas Aquinas’s Language of Analogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

B.A. BUTCHER

“We Do Not Conceal Your Benevolence”: The Course of Liturgical Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

L. STUPARU

La vertu symbolique de l’idée de reconnaissance dans l’horizon ouvert par Paul Ricœur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

R.A. KLEIN

Paul Ricœur and the Christian Concept of Neighbourly Love 313

S. MARBLE BARRANCA

Legal Limits and Ethical Conundrums: Paul Ricœur’s Comple-mentary Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

N. VAN DEN HAAK

Law, Violence, Conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

M. JOÃO COELHO

Ricœur’s Dialectics between Love and Justice: Contributions to a Narrative Work of Happy Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

A.M. MEALEY

Reinterpreting the Glaubensethik/Autonomy Debate through the Work of Paul Ricœur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

J.A. STEWART

Paul Ricœur and ‘The Human Person, Adequately Considered’ 393

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TABLE OF CONTENTS XI

A. LOUTE

Le pardon peut-il être collectif pour Paul Ricœur? . . . . . . . . . 405

Â. CARDITA

Chemins du texte à l’action: L’arc herméneutique en théologie 421

P. ROYANNAIS

Philosophie et théologie dans l’œuvre de Paul Ricœur . . . . . . 439

C. BRABANT

Ricœur’s Hermeneutical Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453

M.-A. VALLÉE

De Gadamer à Ricœur: Vers une conception herméneutique du langage? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

C. DICKINSON

The Absent Notion of ‘Canonicity’ in Paul Ricœur’s Memory, History, Forgetting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487

A.J. GRAVES

Revelation and Event: Ricœur on the Uniqueness of Scripture 503

M.T.H. WONG

Theological Anthropology as Informed by the Changeux–Ricœur Dialogue on Science, Philosophy & Religion . . . . . . . 519

INDEX OF NAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

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NAMING GOD IN OPEN NARRATIVES

THEOLOGY BETWEEN DECONSTRUCTION AND HERMENEUTICS

The dialogue with contemporary, so-called continental philosophy entertains a major challenge to fundamental theology. At first sight, the often proclaimed ‘turn to religion’ in recent phenomenological and deconstructive movements would seem to offer opportunities to link up theologically with the philosophical dealings with religion, and with, in a lot of cases, philosophical interpretations of Christianity. As is the case within the broader culture and society, religion is again en vogue in phi-losophy – a subject worthy of consideration and discussion. As was often the situation in the past, such philosophical reflections on religion might well assist contemporary Christian theology in its never-ending task of fides quaerens intellectum. A renewed dialogue between theology and philosophy then may result in a contextually plausible and relevant intel-lectus fidei, reframing the relationship between faith and reason, and allowing theology to recontextualize its reflexive and argumentative potential, both ad intra for the believing community and ad extra on the public forum1.

Nevertheless two further considerations would seem to present them-selves in this regard. First, current philosophical dealings with religion often criticise existing religions for not being able to live up to the pure kernel of religion, and so in some degree at least contaminating this ker-nel. In contradistinction they consequently develop philosophical nega-tive theologies, attempting to point at transcendence, otherness and/or difference beyond language. Secondly, and not unrelated to the first con-sideration, it would seem that in most cases Christianity especially has met with a lot of suspicion and criticism. Too positive philosophical engagements with Christianity, or those deemed under the influence of it, are often accused of being ‘theological’ or ‘confessional’ – a qualifica-tion definitely not intended as a compliment, and an accusation against which the author to whose work this symposium is dedicated, on several occasions, tried to protect his philosophical work2.

1. On the notion of recontextualisation, see L. BOEVE, Truth and History: Tradition Development as Recontextualisation, in M. LAMBERIGTS – L. BOEVE – T. MERRIGAN (eds.), Orthodoxy, Process and Product (BETL, 227), Leuven, Peeters, 2009, 27-44.

2. Cf. infra.

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3. See in this regard, e.g., L. BOEVE, The Rediscovery of Negative Theology Today: The Narrow Gulf between Theology and Philosophy, in M. OLIVETTI (ed.), Théologie néga-tive (Biblioteca dell’Archivio di Filosofia, 59), Rome, CEDAM, 2002, 443-459; God, Particularity and Hermeneutic: A Critical Theological Dialogue with Richard Kearney on Continental Philosophy’s Turn (in)to Religion, in Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 81 (2005) 305-333; J. SCHRIJVERS, On Doing Theology ‘after’ Ontotheology: Notes on a French Debate, in New Blackfriars 87 (2006) 302-314; Ontotheological Turnings? Ma rion, Lacoste, and Levinas on the Decentring of Modern Subjectivity, in Modern Theology 22 (2006) 221-253; S. VAN DEN BOSSCHE, A Possible Present for Theology: Theological Implications of Jean-Luc Marion’s Phenomenology of Givenness, in Bijdragen: International Journal in Philosophy and Theology 65 (2004) 55-78.

In the current contribution, I will first shed some light on the negative theologies which result from the so-called ‘turn to religion’ in recent philosophy. In one way or another they convey a distrust in language such that they wish to protect what they determine religion really would be. I will conclude this section with a critique of such – what Ricœur would call – short-cut approaches – and I will do this not only on philo-sophical but also on theological grounds. Afterwards, I will develop – from within a discussion of Jean-François Lyotard’s notion of grand nar-ratives and philosophy’s task of bearing witness to the differend – the model of the ‘open narrative’: a narrative mode, which in contradistinc-tion to grand narratives, is not self-encompassing, but remains open to difference and otherness. At the same time I will also investigate in what way the Christian narrative could be said to constitute an open narrative, so undoing Lyotard’s characterizing of it as a master narrative. Whereas Lyotard’s approach serves well to elaborate on the ‘openness’ of an ‘open narrative’, I will finally turn to Ricœur in order then to further develop its ‘narrative’ dimension.

I. INTRODUCTION: SHORT-CUT APPROACHES

PURE RELIGION AND THE CONTAMINATION OF LANGUAGE

By way of introduction I will now briefly refer to some findings of previous research3 concerning the philosophical and theological conse-quences of the way in which contemporary continental philosophies offer reflections on religion, and in particular, on Christianity. In general, and often in an attempt to overcome onto-theology, a lot of them develop hermeneutical strategies which seek to trace an original religious struc-ture of experience, that is, one at least more original than those found in existing particular religions. Such a structure is then to be situated before or beyond language – even if one is never able, as some claim, to reach this ‘before’ or ‘beyond’. Concrete realisations of this more original


NAMING GOD IN OPEN NARRATIVES 83

4. Cf. e.g., R. KEARNEY, Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness, Lon-don, Routledge, 2003.

structure within existing religions are never able to do justice to it. They contaminate it through their being enclosed in language, history and nar-rative. From the outset they are always already too particular, too deter-mining, and too confessional. In short, religion as such, or pure religion, is to be thought of as being beyond the contamination of language.

(1) A first main line of thought in this regard is offered by phenom-enological approaches from thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jean-Yves Lacoste. All of them tend to think the reli-gious subject as a fundamental passivity posited in a radically asymmetrical relationship with (an) absolute transcendence. This is the case for Levinas’ subject-before-the-other in the accusative case, Mari-on’s subject in the dative case, and Lacoste’s liturgical subject. The original passivity which characterises these religious ‘subjects’ seems to turn into an absolutised passivity vis-à-vis an absolute exteriority and/or radical transcendence, giving an account of these ‘subjects’ within a totalising asymmetrical relationship.

Such a relationship is allegedly to precede language, and it turns a hermeneutics of this language into a structurally secondary affair. Any hermeneutics of religion is, in principle, preceded by a phenomenological account of the more original structure of absolute passivity and asym-metry. Language serves then first and foremost as the recognition of this structure (i.e., for Levinas the structure of responsibility, for Marion the structure of being given, and for Lacoste the structure of the liturgy). The concrete discourses of particular religious traditions, therefore, only mat-ter insofar as they express this structure, and essentially function devoid of their empirical and descriptive features. Every form of prayer and praise is reduced to a radically pragmatic and performative naming of God who is beyond being and discourse.

From a theological perspective – and also from a philosophical approach like Ricœur’s, that of resisting short-cut approaches – it is legitimate to enquire whether conceiving the religious subject from within such an asymmetrical relationship radically beyond language is appropriate, or even deserves the qualification of being a ‘relation’ at all. Within this framework, it would seem that the subject is too passive, God too other, and language no longer a mediating place. Such a wholly other God becomes alien, unknowable, and so absolutely transcendent that such a God may as well turn into a stranger or a monster, as some have claimed4. The radical precedence of the structural relationship over lan-


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5. Cf. J. DERRIDA, L’écriture et la différance, Paris, Seuil, 1967.

guage only stresses this unknowability and strips theology of its kataphatic capabilities. In such philosophical negative theologies, naming God in the end becomes futile.

(2) These phenomenological approaches, however, have been severely criticised from the side of deconstruction, the second main line of thought to be distinguished in the ‘turn to religion’ in contemporary continental philosophy. According to Jacques Derrida, such phenomenological attempts to get beyond language are contra-productive, self-defeating and misleading because, from the first sentence, they are already stated in language. Their attempts to overcome language irreducibly fall back into language.

Remarkably, in order to explain and illustrate the differential nature of language and identity formation, deconstructionist thinkers are also turn-ing to religion. In contrast to the phenomenological approaches men-tioned above, deconstructive dealings with religion do not result in posit-ing a radical asymmetrical relationship between a wholly Other and a passive subject, but attempt to point at a more original structure – the structure of language itself. They deconstruct all signification to an orig-inary differential space (‘différance’), which is both presupposed by, and yet makes possible, all discourse itself5. A ‘radical hermeneutics of reli-gion’, according to the American ‘Derrida-ist’ John Caputo, should lead to determining the ‘religious’ in terms of ‘pure religion’, or ‘religion without religion’. It should point to the universal structure of religious desire, conceived of as at the unreachable ‘other side’ of language. Expressed in another way, this structure of religious desire is said to be the ‘messianic structure’ recognised in, but at the same time distinguished from, the various particular messianisms.

What is at stake here, according to Caputo, is the desire to keep the openness for otherness radically open, to hold on to the irreducible but ever slipping away moment of undecidability as the condition of any decision. Religion is therefore reduced to a structure which ‘precedes’ and is ‘beyond’ particularity, while at the same time stating the impos-sibility of this being ‘before’ or ‘beyond’ language. It is at this point that language matters not only merely formally or pragmatically, but is even considered guilty of contaminating the pure structure of religious desire. A deconstructionist hermeneutics of religion, therefore, results in a com-plete doing away with all theological positivity, religious narrativity and even negative theology’s ultimate ‘limit-affirmation’ that there is an Other, albeit one that is ineffable and incomprehensible. The passion for



6. At other occasions I have elaborated on this criticism. See e.g., my The Particular-ity of the Hermeneutics of God: A Response to Richard Kearney’s God-who-may-be, in L. BOEVE – J. SCHRIJVERS, et al. (eds.), Faith in the Enlightenment? The Critique of the Enlightenment Revisited (Currents of Encounter, 30), Amsterdam – New York, Rodopi, 2006, 327-339.

unknowing amounts, for Caputo, to a passionate refusal to choose between theism – an option for a relation with God – and atheism.

At this point as well, one may legitimately ask whether such a ‘religion without religion’, living from a ‘relation without relation’, is appropriate to conceive of religion. Any positing of the ‘other’ can be deconstructed as already filling in a structure which is, in principle, open, and which, although impossible, should remain open. ‘Pure religion’ thus strives to cherish that moment of undecidability which is both underlying and for-gotten in concrete religions. Language, or naming the other, then, is from the outset contamination and betrayal. In sum, despite a heavy usage of religious vocabulary, the ‘turn to religion’ serves, in the first place, the purposes of unfolding the differential structure of language, a structure more original and – when religiously cherished – more authentic than concrete religions.

(3) Inspired by Paul Ricœur, the Irish Boston-based philosopher Richard Kearney, has criticised both these phenomenological and decon-structive philosophical approaches of religion. Without exception, their respective ‘short-cut’ approaches lead to a negative-theological outcome, at odds with – and even in opposition to – the reality of existing religions and their truth claims. These outcomes in effect reduce the narrative thickness of religious reality to the rather meagre results of an unknow-able and untouchable transcendence utilized to describe the depth-struc-ture of religious realities. According to Kearney, such deconstructive-phenomenological descriptions of God do not suffice. What God stands for may only come to life when one engages in the long detours of a hermeneutical retrieving of inspiring insights from the main texts of a western Judeo-Christian and philosophical history.

Although Kearney finally also succumbs to the Siren’s call of decon-struction’s desire for pure religion6, his critical analysis of the two afore-mentioned current philosophical approaches to religion appears to be valid – if not from a philosophical perspective, then at least from a Chris-tian fundamental-theological one. Is it indeed legitimate to deem lan-guage as the contamination and betrayal of pure religion, pure religious desire, pure religious experience, etc.? Even if these claims are already questionable on hermeneutical-philosophical grounds, these questions, at the very least, also challenge, from a Christian fundamental theological


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perspective, the importance of the Incarnation as the theological-episte-mological category par excellence for naming God. Through the Incarna-tion a naming of God occurs which finds its roots in God’s concrete historical-narrative relationship with God’s people. From such a perspec-tive, instead of contaminating humanity’s relationship with God, lan-guage and narrative would constitute precisely the pre-condition of such a relationship. In this regard, Kearney’s insight into the necessity of a hermeneutical approach to religion is to be theologically endorsed and even radicalised. Interpreting Christianity, therefore, cannot lead ‘beyond’, or let alone ‘behind’, language, but needs to pass through lan-guage itself. Conceiving of its truth leads to the concrete stories, prac-tices, texts and traditions in which this truth is lived and experienced.

(4) However – at least from the side of philosophy, even when one favours long detour approaches to religion – the question returns: is Christianity, with its Christocentric approach and specific incarnational claims, not doomed always to be too particular, too contingent, too his-torical, too positive? In other words: is Christianity not inescapably a too determining and therefore closed discourse, a hegemonic grand or master narrative, to be criticised for its lack of openness to otherness and differ-ence? It is at least quite remarkable that most of the philosophical herme-neutics of religion we have mentioned – including Kearney’s – criticise Christianity for its Christological claims regarding the Incarnation in Jesus Christ. At this point, it is necessary to point again to our second introductory remark, namely, that the new interest for religion in phi-losophy does not necessarily include a new openness for Christianity.

So the question can be restated: even if one concedes that long detour approaches are more appropriate for a hermeneutics of religion, in what way does this option prevent the very narrativity of a religion from ines-capably lapsing again into contamination, turning it into a closed master narrative? And, as regards Christianity: when conceiving of Christianity as a narrative and the Christian’s identity as narrative identity, how then are we to conceive of this narrativity in order for it not to be, or to become, a master narrative, unable to deal with difference and otherness in non-hegemonic ways?

II. JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD: AGAINST MASTER NARRATIVES,BEARING WITNESS TO THE DIFFEREND

In order to deal with this question we now turn to Jean-François Lyotard. Being one of the fathers of a postmodern thinking of difference,



7. J.-F. LYOTARD, La condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir, Paris, Minuit, 1979; Le différend, Paris, Minuit, 1983 (ET: The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, Man-chester, University Press, 1988); Le postmoderne expliqué aux enfants: Correspondance 1982-1985, Paris, Galilée, 1986; L’inhumain: Causeries sur le temps, Paris, Galilée, 1988. See also his Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event, New York, Columbia University Press, 1988.

he indeed considered Christianity, as well as most modern ideologies and world views, to be master narratives. At the same time, however, he developed strategies to cope with difference in less hegemonic ways7.

Already in 1979, in his seminal La condition postmoderne, Lyotard explained the contemporary era as the end of the modern grand (or mas-ter) narratives of knowledge and emancipation. All the modern ‘–isms’ such as communism, liberalism, capitalism, positivism, idealism, all of them modern grand narratives – says Lyotard – cannot keep up with their promises of rational mastery or the construction of a better world, and even lead to the opposite: the attempt to understand and master the world has resulted in a resurgence of irrationality and unmasterability; attempts to render the world more humane have in fact led to acts of gross inhu-manity, massive poverty, ecological disaster, etc. This is due to the fact that modern grand narratives strove to be all-encompassing discourses, claiming a God’s eye view and, in so-doing, reduced otherness and dif-ference to more of the same. History was seen by them as (r)evolutionary progress, in which nothing really new could happen; all events, all new-ness, in one way or another, were already incorporated in the regulating narrative. Otherness, so doing, was from the outset included as more of the same, or excluded as insignificant or even inimical.

It is in this regard that Lyotard, e.g. in Le différend, denounces Chris-tianity as a very powerful master narrative, regulated by the all-encom-passing circularity of the idea of love. It is the task of postmodern think-ing, and thus Lyotard, to criticise such hegemonic narratives for their forgetfulness – and even victimising – of otherness, and to bear witness to it instead. It is the task of postmodern philosophy to remind us of this otherness, this difference, which escapes all our striving after full knowl-edge and mastery. Postmodern thinking therefore must “bear witness to the différend”, which accompanies and enables all of our attempts to speak out in the world, without ever being able to grasp it. This involves both a critique of the hegemony of master narratives, and a search for appropriate ways of non-hegemonic discourse.

To understand the notion of a ‘master narrative’, we will now first sketch the main lines of Lyotard’s language pragmatics through which he develops his thinking of difference, or his thinking of the ‘differend’ as he calls it.


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8. For the following paragraphs, see also my Bearing Witness to the Differend: A Model for Theologizing in the Postmodern Context, in Louvain Studies 20 (1995) 362-379.

(1) Difference occurs when we speak, when we interpret, basically when we utter phrases. Phrases happen, Lyotard says8. Furthermore, a phrase is always followed by another phrase. That there is always a link-ing of phrases is a necessity; what specific phrase links onto the preced-ing phrase remains essentially open or contingent. A descriptive phrase, for example, is never automatically followed by a prescriptive phrase. The rule for the linking of phrases, then, is provided by a genre of dis-course. In order to realize a specific goal, the genre of discourse regulates the linking of phrases. Examples of genres of discourse include: teach-ing, narrative-telling, making one laugh, arguing, reasoning, etc. To give a lecture, for example, one does not use phrases in an arbitrary order, but links one phrase after the other such that the insights one wants to convey to the audience can be appropriately grasped. Whether the lecturer suc-ceeds in this, first and foremost, then depends on his or her mastery of the discourse genre and its rules.

While the nature of the linked phrase is contingent, each phrase that has happened, each ‘happened phrase’, can be followed by an indefinite number of phrases. For example, the prescriptive phrase “close the door” can be followed by “OK, I will close the door”, but also, “No, it is bet-ter not to close the door because it is too hot in here”, or “No, do it yourself”, or even the phrase “‘close the door’ is a prescriptive phrase” – this according to the genre of discourse which is able to regulate the linking. Because of the necessity of the linking and at the same time the contingency of the nature of the linking phrase, a struggle for the linking breaks out after every happened phrase. This struggle essentially entails a conflict between genres of discourse. From the perspective of one spe-cific discourse the linking is self-evident, and decisions are easily made because they are taken according to the discourse’s rules in order to real-ize its goal. But as no discourse can claim to be a meta-discourse, no supreme rule of linking is available. The conflict therefore is structural.

(2) This situation, that is, the situation wherein one is first of all confronted with a number of possibilities of phrases that can be linked to a happened phrase, and, secondly, wherein one finds oneself without a general rule to decide which specific phrase will follow, is called a differend. A happened phrase opens an expectation – which phrase will follow next? – that is then closed with the happening of the next phrase. This closing off of the expectation can be identified with the victory of a specific genre of discourse that has succeeded in imposing



its rule on the linking of the phrases. This victory at the same time spells the certain defeat of the other genres of discourse and any of their proposals for a possible linkage. Each phrase is always merely just one out of a number of equally valuable possibilities, likewise entailing that justice cannot be done to the others; only one phrase alone can assert itself or its meaning. A genuine plurality therefore can never really be respected.

Yet, according to Lyotard, there is still a sense in which plurality can be conveyed, since the closing off of the expectation never actually fulfils the expectation itself. A phrase never succeeds in expressing the event that is involved in the linking; the untimely ‘now-moment’ of relative nothingness (but also absolute richness) between the preceding and the following phrase is closed off with the latter. Here we grasp the second and more fundamental sense of what is meant by ‘differend’. In the first sense the word ‘differend’ is pointing at the plurality and conflict which occur when choices have to be made. The second sense evokes an idea of difference, of heterogeneity, that accompanies all linking, all decision-making, all choosing. There is a plurality present here because no phrase can be seen as the definitive expression of the event, of the fundamental heterogeneity revealed in the linking process itself. Each phrase that fol-lows will always fail to do so, even doing a certain injustice to the event by closing it off.

(3) According to Lyotard, the narrative (‘le récit’) is a genre of dis-course which not only goes about regulating the linking of phrases but also the plurality of genres of discourse. In the narrative, other genres of discourse are integrated, and made subservient to the realisation of the narrative’s goal, namely constituting identity, or constructing ‘who we are’. A narrative very easily overlooks the heterogeneity between genres and the differend occurring in the linking of phrases. The narrative re-narrates the differend, situating it in the narrative’s finality, so that the differend is encapsulated by it and looses its event character. Narratives thus tend to act as hegemonic, exclusivist discourses, subordinating all other discourses, and thereby regulating the links between different phrases and discourses seemingly automatically.

(4) Narratives in premodern times – which are often assembled as collections of small narratives – constitute particular identities and they do this by referring to an (untimely) origin, explaining why things are what they are: in this sense, the past legitimises the present. Lyotard illustrates this with a discussion of the myths of the Latin-American Cashinahua Indians: through a plurality of small narratives they are inte-grated into their specific universe of names, or what constitutes their


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9. These narratives begin and end each time with the presentation of the entire universe of phrases: “This is the narrative of [name], as I have always heard it told. It is now my turn to tell it; listen”; the closing formula goes: “Here ends the narrative of [Cashinahua-name], for the white man [Spanish or Portuguese name]”. The narrative itself commences as follows: “On that day, in that place, it happened that x…” and so refers to the particu-larity of the local narrative (LYOTARD, Le différend [n. 7], nr. 266). For his information on the Cashinahua Indians, Lyotard refers to A.-M. D’ANS, Le dit des Vrais Hommes: Mythes, contes, légendes et traditions des indiens Cashinahua, Paris, Union générale d’éditions, 1978.

10. The grand narratives, with universalised particular instances and (universal) cogni-tive aspirations, can all be reduced, in one way or the other, to exponents of the discourse of the emancipation of humanity. In them, thought and action are inspired by the presup-position that this Idea proceeds towards its realisation. Concretely, Lyotard names the following as grand narratives: the “Christian narrative of the redemption of the fall of Adam through love, the Enlightenment narrative of the emancipation out of ignorance and servitude through knowledge and egalitarism, the speculative narrative of the realisation of the universal Idea through the dialectics of the concrete, the Marxist narrative of the emancipation out of the exploitation and the alienation through the socialisation of labour, the capitalist narrative of the emancipation out of poverty through techno-industrial devel-opment” (LYOTARD, Le postmoderne expliqué aux enfants [n. 7], p. 47).

11. Cf. LYOTARD, Le différend (n. 7), nr. 232-235.

encompassing cultural world9. The distinctive characteristic of modern narrativity, however, is that it gave rise to unifying grand narratives which encompass the whole of history, of humankind, and of the world. Instead of relying on origins and constituting particular identities, modern master narratives legitimise themselves from the finality of history, the future to be realised, and claim universal validity.

More specifically, according to Lyotard, they are to be characterised as exclusivist, hegemonic, cognitive and universalistic discourses of an ‘Idea’, a fact which largely explains their distinction from pre-modern myths: the Idea functions as finality, it universalizes all particularity, explains reality and regulates all linking. In the Marxist master narrative, for example, the Idea of the emancipated proletariat sets the finality of history, in this case as the realizing of a classless society; it universalizes all particular movements of labourers; it interprets the whole of history and historical (r)evolution as the dialectical progression of an emanci-pated proletariat; and it structures the linkage exclusively and hegem-onically, that is, the description of reality leads to a specific praxis for the emancipation of the proletariat10.

(5) For Lyotard the Christian narrative is also to be unmasked as a grand narrative, hegemonically regulating differends with recourse to the Idea of love11.

The Christian narrative vanquished the other narratives in Rome because by introducing the love of occurrence into narratives and narrations of narra-tives, it designated what is at stake in the genre itself. To love what happens



12. Ibid., nr. 232. 13. Ibid., nr. 233.14. Cf. ibid., nr. 182; Le postmoderne expliqué aux enfants (n. 7), p. 53.

as if it were a gift, to love even the Is it happening? as the promise of good news, allows for linking onto whatever happens, including other narra-tives12.

Love fulfils the entire law (Rom 13,10b). Love is present at the begin-ning and at the end. Christians ought to love one another, just as and because God, in Jesus Christ, first loved them (Jn 13,34). This frame of reference causes Lyotard to conclude that the Idea of love determines the Christian hegemonic narrative.

It is this Idea of love which turns Christianity into a universalistic, all-encompassing narrative, undoing particular identities of their particu-larity. Love then becomes a universally applicable and exclusive reading key for the whole of history, and any event happening in it, like the events phrased in the narratives of pagans, infidels, etc.13.

According to Lyotard, finally, the Christian narrative demonstrates an exceptional power, precisely because it loves the ‘event’, and under-stands it immediately as gift and grace. In so doing, the event is not stashed away but immediately inscribed as a gift of love within the Christian narrative, and therefore deprived of its cutting edge. The event remains, but its event-character is disowned. All other genres of dis-course are subordinated to this narrative: the historical, the prayerful, the ethical, the ritual, the cognitive, the argumentative, etc. They con-stantly appear within the frameworks of the discourse of the Idea of love which forms the perpetual background of all speech. Those who do not respect this background are unbelievers; they miss the opportunity of salvation; those who step out of the narrative are heretics and excom-municated.

(6) It is postmodern philosophy’s task then, states Lyotard, to criticise such hegemonic master narratives and to give witness to the differend they overlook when regulating the linking of phrases. Philosophy has to attempt to link phrases in such a way that the original openness of the differend is referred to, being conscious of the fact that each phrase, also the witnessing phrase, in fact is closing it again. Philosophy then should seek to constitute a special discourse, one without a determining rule. In this regard philosophy is not the grand narrative of the end of grand nar-ratives14, but the attempt to raise the consciousness that one should not forget, that in all speech and identity constitution, difference and hetero-geneity all too often are forgotten.


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15. Cf. LYOTARD, Le postmoderne expliqué aux enfants (n. 7), p. 86. For a broader reflection on ‘Jewish thinking’, cf. J.-F. LYOTARD, Heidegger et ‘les juifs’, Paris, Galilée, 1988; and La terre n’a pas de chemins par elle-même, in J.-F. LYOTARD, Moralités post-modernes, Paris, Galilée, 1993, 95-102.

16. It is difficult, however, not to judge the passionate agnosticism of Caputo along the same lines. Caputo is aware of the fact that neither Derrida nor he himself escape from linguistic contamination. In the end, he avows that the distinction between the ‘messianic’ and the diverse messianisms “cannot be rigorously maintained … We are always involved with structures whose historical pedigree we can trace if we read them carefully enough … That is no less true of deconstruction itself … If we search it carefully enough, we discover that it, too, is another concrete messianism, which is the only thing livable" (What Do I Love when I Love my God? An Interview with John D. Caputo [by B. Keith Putt], in J.H. OLTHUIS [ed.], Religion With/out Religion: The Prayers and Tears of John D. Caputo, London – New York, Routledge, 2001, 150-179, p. 165).

At many places and in many ways, Lyotard has illustrated how critical postmodern thinking should bear witness to the differend, to the event and its unexpected, shattering character. Instead of grand narratives Lyotard calls upon Adorno’s plea for ‘micrologies’ accompanying meta-physics and thus grand narratives in their fall. Perhaps we can learn from Jewish thinking, he states elsewhere: not to ask for an answer, but to ask in order to remain questioned. For the Jewish tradition, all reality is a dark message of an unknown, unnamed addressor15.

(7) At this juncture it is necessary to enquire whether Lyotard’s concept of philosophy – itself no doubt historically and contextually situated – is the only way to bear witness to difference. Philosophy, being a discourse itself, in the end also situates the event. For the indetermina-ble can only be referred to in a determined way. Language in one way or another never succeeds in fully respecting the event. In this regard, Lyo-tard’s concept of philosophy is to be considered a particular instantiation of a discourse attempting, in its linking of phrases, not to forget that an event happens – an event which can never be expressed in its event-character by the phrases which follow16. In as much as Lyotard’s phi-losophy should not be grasped as a new master narrative that narrates the end of the master narratives, it then may well be considered – in contra-distinction to closed hegemonic master narratives – as a particular instan-tiation of what one might call an open narrative. The latter, then, uses language, phrases, to bear witness to the ‘event’ which at the same time both enables each linking and accompanies it, though at the same time it cannot be fully respected by it. And apparently, even for Lyotard – him-self here referring to Jewish thinking – several discourses can be deemed capable of having such an openness built in.

(8) The question then of course appears as to whether the Christian narrative could conceive of itself as an open narrative. It would seem that



17. LYOTARD, Le différend (n. 7), nr. 234.

even Lyotard would leave some room for a non-hegemonic Christian nar-rative. In Le différend, for instance, Lyotard distinguishes between tradi-tionalist and prophetic ways of handling the event – from within a Chris-tian perspective: the event of grace as the gift of divine love which calls forth an answering praxis of love17. Christianity indeed lives from the experience of grace, or better, from the event of grace, the gift of love. A too quickly made identification of the event with the Idea of love, as Lyotard has mentioned, necessarily leads to a Christian master narrative. But in a theological perspective we ought to pose the question of whether the terminology of grace in a sound theological discourse could function as the word ‘event’ does in Lyotard’s discourse? In other words, is ‘grace’ not a naming of the unnameable gift of love by the Unnameable, the One who is not merely part of the Christian narrative but transcends it radically in principle (Deus semper major)? Certainly, the perspective of the dis-course receives a specific colour if the word ‘love’ is involved, but the critical impulses that the ‘event’ has in Lyotard’s philosophy may well remain untouched. For Lyotard also needs a vocabulary, needs phrases, needs the linking of phrases, to be able to bear witness.

If grace is the event of the breaking through of God’s love, then theol-ogy must critique every immediate closing of the event in closed stories. The event of grace does not function primarily as an affirmation of dis-course strategies, a legitimation of the current Christian narrative, but questions all speech, all linking of phrases, indeed even the ongoing Christian narrative itself. Besides this critical aspect, Christianity as an ‘open narrative’ also contains a kerygmatic aspect: the experience of grace challenges us to give witness to it – knowing, however, that the event can never be encapsulated in our language. Because of the event of grace the Christian is urged to re-tell the narrative of love over and over, and tell it in such a way that it bears witness to the ungraspable, unnameable and incomprehensible origin of the event of grace.

The model of the ‘open narrative’ offers Christian theology a chance to come to a new, contextual self-understanding. Herein theological speech becomes aware of its radical hermeneutical character, fostering the consciousness that it needs to give witness to the event of God’s grace. At the same time, it remains aware that this giving witness is context-dependent, never a complete nor an exhausting determination of what is not determinable.

To conclude this section: Lyotard’s language pragmatics provides a structure of thinking fit especially to conceive of the ‘open’ character of


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18. I would like to thank dr. Christophe Brabant for his many helpful suggestions and critical-constructive comments on the following paragraphs. For his own approach into Ricœur and theology, see e.g., The Truth Narrated: Ricœur on Religious Experience, in L. BOEVE – L.P. HEMMING (eds.), Divinising Experience: Essays in the History of Religious Experience from Origen to Ricœur (Studies in Philosophical Theology, 23), Leuven, Peeters, 2004, 246-269; Faith, Truth and Referentiality, in LAMBERIGTS – BOEVE – MERRIGAN (eds.), Orthodoxy, Process and Product (n. 1), 257-276.

a Christian open narrative, continuously warning it not to lapse again into a grand narrative, and thus to counter the self-enclosing tendencies which characterise the very nature of a narrative. There are, however, hardly any clues in Lyotard’s work to further develop the narrative dimension of the ‘open narrative’ – for example, focussing on how both dimensions, i.e. openness and narrativity, dynamically interact with each other. It is at this point that drawing on some of the resources provided by Paul Ricœur may offer support.

III. NARRATIVE IDENTITY IN PAUL RICŒUR:THE SURPLUS OF MEANING, MIMESIS AND TRUTH AS ATTESTATION

In at least five respects Ricœur’s thinking may assist our reflection on the open narrative18. (1) First of all there is his insistence on the detour of interpretation, revealing his adherence to the deep particularity, and its linguistic nature, of identity construction, as well as the search for mean-ing and truth. (2) Consequently, and precisely because of this methodo-logical option, narrative identity, appropriately conceived of, is not to be identified with the patterns of grand narratives. In contradistinction to some thinkers of difference Ricœur develops this not from an economy of lack, so to speak (which turns language all too easily into contamina-tion), but from an economy of excess, of the surplus of meaning. (3) Thirdly, as in Lyotard, narrative is the genre par excellence through which meaning and identity are constituted. For Ricœur, then, it is the threefold process of mimesis which keeps narratives and their interpreta-tion open. Lyotard’s bearing witness to the differend, by so doing, is co-constitutive of the narrative understood in this way. (4) Fourthly – and this may be the most important contribution of Ricœur to the model of the open narrative – it is because of the fully realized hermeneutical turn in Ricœur and the ontological vehemence he points to, that the capacity for narratives to contain truth can come to the fore again. It is at this point, again, that language should no longer be considered as contamina-tion but, on the contrary, as co-constitutive of the reality it speaks about. The concept of ‘attestation’ in this regard offers a rich concept of truth,



19. See the introduction to Soi-même comme un autre.20. P. RICŒUR, Renoncer à Hegel, in Temps et récit III, 280-299.21. Le conflit des interprétations, pp. 10-23.22. Temps et récit I, pp. 118-119.

starting from the insight that the self is already co-implied in all speaking of truth. (5) To conclude this section, we will finally comment on the discussion of the relation between philosophy and theology to which Ricœur’s approach has led. Such discussion will shed some light on our comment vis-à-vis Lyotard that, apart from the latter’s philosophy, other discourses also may retain the open structure he pleads for, while his own discourse is yet to be situated in a particular time and context.

In the following I will try to elaborate on each point of these – know-ing that any attempt will be only all too brief.

(1) Confronted by a similar challenge as was Lyotard, that is, thinking after the falling away of the grand narratives, Ricœur sought refuge in a way of thought that stands midway between Cartesian certainty and Nietzschean despair19. For Ricœur the departure from grand narratives meant a distancing from the temptation that lies in Hegel’s thinking: to present an all-embracing intellectual narrative wherein everything becomes transparent for reflective thinking20. Therefore, in his own reflection, Ricœur distances himself from short cut approaches in favour of what he considers as the ‘long way’ of interpretation and herme-neutics21. The reason Ricœur chooses to take this long way or ‘détour’ has to do with his insight that the method of coming to understanding cannot be detached from a particular context which is always already determined by language.

His proposal, therefore, is to allow rationality to begin in medias res, or by a reflection on the way in which language contributes to our com-ing to understanding. Ricœur does not as such claim that everything is language, but he does state that every understanding comes into being in language. Claiming thus, and since language is always a concrete lan-guage, he affirms the particularity of thinking, of coming to understand-ing.

(2) At the same time, it is impossible for thinking which reflects upon its linguistic character to remain or become a grand narrative, because although language is of the order of the same (‘le même’), the reality which is referred to in language, however, is of the order of the other (‘l’autre’)22. Consequently, thinking is confronted by an exteriority which it cannot completely comprehend. Already in his study of the symbolism of evil it became clear that language cannot exhaust the wealth of mean-


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23. La symbolique du mal, p. 481.24. Temps et récit I, p. 112.25. Ibid., p. 85.26. Du texte à l’action.

ing of the other. There is always a surplus of meaning which cannot be entirely preserved through its interpretation. That is the reason, among others, why Ricœur ended his study of the symbols of evil with the state-ment that the ‘symbol gives rise to thought’23.

Indeed, Ricœur’s philosophical hermeneutic in general, and his biblical hermeneutic in particular, is propped up by the thought that there is a surplus of meaning (‘surplus de sens’). The meaning which is offered is to be interpreted, but in each case it must be guarded against forms of interpretative violence24. Such violence commits an injustice against what is announced to us as meaning. The same intuition that reality offers a meaning which is always already linguistically recorded forms the basis for his understanding of metaphor and his later ideas concerning narrativ-ity. Language is able to express reality, but it does more than simply reflect it. It forms, creates, and co-constitutes the reality which it brings to expression.

(3) For Ricœur, time is the ontological material of our existence. By expressing time in a narrative, human beings gain insight into their own existence25. In other words: the narrative expresses and clarifies human time. Here, as well, it is possible for humanity to strive after an all-encompassing narrative that presents time as a representation that con-tains an archeology and an eschatology as conclusive book ends. How-ever, this is not what Ricœur wants to do. In Temps et récit, Ricœur presents his concept of mimesis which allows an openness for the ‘other-ness of time’. The latter breaks open each particular narrative and com-pels a continuous rereading. Mimesis, then, is a threefold process where the pre-understanding (mimesis 1) is reconfigured once again and finds its expression in a new formulation of the narrative (mimesis 2) working its way through the concrete reality in which we live (mimesis 3). In this respect, the concept of mimesis is the application of the title of one of Ricœur’s books, Du texte à l’action26. Ricœur repeatedly emphasizes the fact that the circle – the hermeneutical circle – is not self-enclosed and that mimesis 3, which in time becomes once again a pre-understanding of another threefold process, is not identical with the pre-understanding from which one at first started.

Ricœur’s concept of mimesis certainly allows for an openness for new-ness and gives room for the other of the narrative. The dynamism of mimesis testifies to the longing for the narrative to remain open. It con-



27. La métaphore vive; Soi-même comme un autre.

stitutes a witness to the other of the narrative from within the narrative itself, a sign that the narrative can never be completely enclosed. In this respect, every attempt by a narrative to make a point or to present a plot is temporary because it remains a signification of things in their becom-ing (‘signifier les choses en acte’).

(4) From the outset of his thinking, Ricœur has been sympathetic to the question of which ontology might be said to result from such an approach. He has never devoted an independent study to this subject, but in a number of his books the question returns or constitutes a concluding chapter, as in La métaphore vive and Soi-même comme un autre27. The poetical power of the metaphor has a capacity-for-truth to express reality on the basis of the ‘is as’ and ‘is not as’ typical for metaphorical refer-ence. At this point, it indeed becomes clear that, for Ricœur, language plays a constitutive role in what reality is for us. It is this consciousness concerning the inescapable mediation of language that is present in every attempt to gain insight, to give meaning, and to constitute identity, and it is this consciousness which has led his thinking into a full hermeneuti-cal turn. In light of the positing of Cartesian truth as certainty, such a hermeneutical search for truth is probably to be considered as a loss. In view of Ricœur’s wish to take linguistic mediation and the particular position of the speaking, reflexive self, seriously, however, his herme-neutical truth-concept is a gain. For the self is never completely external to the way in which it speaks the truth. Indeed, with Kant it became clear that knowledge is concept- and theory-laden.

Ricœur takes this insight a step further then in stating that the ‘aletheic’ mode of expressing the self must be made on the basis of ‘attestation’. Knowledge is not in the first place certainty, but bears upon confidence (‘croyance’). Because the self is intrinsically engaged in the speaking of truth, the latter is first and foremost a bearing witness, testifying, or attesting. Paradigmatic examples for such a concept of truth and the ref-erence made by it, are then not in the first place scientific truth claims about reality, but concern claims about the reference in statements such as “I really love you”, “I really trust or believe you”, etc. It is from such a richer concept of truth then that narratives and their ‘ontological vehe-mence’ have to be considered.

In short, the self that seeks after insight is never completely outside of the narrative, or the tradition, in and through which this insight is gained. At best, it is able to maintain a distance – a distance within the narrative involvement. All in all, through his consideration of the particularity of


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28. Le conflit des interprétations, p. 28.29. Ibid.30. Réflexion faite.31. For a defense of the difference between philosophy and theology, see among other

works the introduction to Soi-même comme un autre, pp. 23-24.32. See M. JUNKER-KENNY – P. KENNY, Memory, Narrativity, Self and the Challenge to

Think God: The Reception Within Theology of the Recent Work of Paul Ricœur (Funda-mentaltheologische Studien, 17), Münster, LIT-Verlag, 2004, p. 203.

33. Du texte à l’action, p. 119; P. RICŒUR, L’herméneutique biblique, trans. F.-X. AMHERDT, Paris, Cerf, 2001, p. 98.

what is spoken, told, or thought, Ricœur, although in other words, appears to go along with what is meant by the phrase ‘open narrative’. Truth, knowledge, ontological certainty … all receive an eschatological dimen-sion. The fullness of truth, the formulation of an ontology, the acquisition of knowledge, etc. are not yet realized. They refer, therefore, to a future that really remains open. Ricœur uses the image of Moses, who sees the Promised Land – a land which he himself cannot yet enter28. Philosoph-ical thinking, in other words, collides with its limits from within. In the experience of the limit, there is a firm reference which refers philosophy to the other of itself, i.e., to an archaeology and an eschatology, both of which have always been the domain of religion29.

(5) This leads us to our last remark: does this religious turn in phi-losophy constitute a final victory for theology? Is Ricœur, in his philo-sophical writings, a crypto-theologian? It is well-known that Ricœur openly confesses that his philosophy has Christian roots, and that what causes him to think is outside of the domain of philosophy: on the one hand, the realization of an absolute dependence à la Schleiermacher, and, on the other hand, the being addressed by a Word that comes from higher and farther30. In this sense, Ricœur may rightly be considered someone who is situated on the border between philosophy and theology. During his active academic career, he maintained a strict distinction in his think-ing between both domains31. After he received his emeritus status, how-ever, he confessed that he was no longer concerned about maintaining this strict difference and that he would no longer lose any sleep over the reproach of being a crypto-theologian. Defence of the distinction was a strategy he employed to be taken seriously as a philosopher in the strongly laicized France – something we understand quite well here in Belgium as well32. Perhaps it is fair to say that Ricœur is the personifica-tion of the relationship between theology and philosophy he characterized himself as a ‘mutual inclusion’33. From his standpoint, the philosopher considers theological hermeneutics to be regional; on the other hand, the theologian considers philosophy as his organon, i.e. his instrument. For



34. Lectures III, p. 287.35. P. RICŒUR, Foi et philosophie aujourd’hui, in Foi-Éducation (1972) 1-13,

pp. 12-13.36. Lectures III, p. 301.37. Ibid., p. 301.38. RICŒUR, Foi et philosophie aujourd’hui (n. 35), p. 13.39. R. RORTY, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge, Cambridge University

Press, 1989, p. 73.

Ricœur the theological speaking out of truth concerns a ‘founding’ moment. ‘Founding’ here means that a discourse starts off from a par-ticular rootedness, from a belonging to reality in a well-determined way34. Therein lies the major difference between poetical language and the discourse of religion35. Through metaphor a number of possible ways to express reality and to articulate it in language are available. Of course religious language is also poetic in the sense that it configures and struc-tures reality. It distinguishes itself from poetic language, however, through its referent: an archi-referent, God36. The reference to God as its archi-referent grants to the texts of the Bible a founded character, to be distinguished from fiction37. Fiction confronts the reader with a heterono-mous moment in existence, a moment that confronts him or her with the anteriority of the text. The reader experiences through narrative literature the fact that he or she is not the master of language. That heteronomy, however, remains anonymous and in contrast with the biblical stories which give this heteronomy a name: Jesus Christ38. The Bible functions here as a ‘final vocabulary’ as Rorty defines it, a vocabulary which one cannot as such exchange for another one39.

It is as such a founded open narrative, that the Christian narrative may constitute a – for sure – different manner to bear witness to the differend, while at the same time being much more aware than Lyotard that all bearing witness to the different is situated in narrativity and particularity, in time and history.

IV. CONCLUSION

The ‘turn to religion’ in recent so-called continental philosophy has resulted in the creation of several philosophical negative theologies, each suspicious about the contamination of language. Against such short-cut approaches with hardly any room for the positivity of a particular tradi-tion, we have argued that theology is best served by an approach in which language and linguistic mediation do indeed matter in reflecting upon Christian faith in the current context. How then can theology escape from


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lapsing into a grand narrative? It was in discussion with Lyotard that we developed the structure of the ‘open narrative’, partly by adopting Lyo-tard’s sensibility for the event of difference, partly also by qualifying his discourse as a particular way of bearing witness to the differend. Chris-tianity is thereby challenged to structure itself as an open narrative – and to prevent itself from becoming once again a master narrative of love. This entails both developing a critical attitude against closure and bearing witness to the event of grace from within the narrative without being able to encapsulate this event in the narrative. Although Lyotard offers some important insights on the dimension of ‘openness’ in the open narrative, it is to Ricœur that we consequently turned for resources to think further through the narrative dimension, especially as regards his insistence on the linguistic nature of identity and meaning, and the importance of inter-pretation, on the surplus of meaning, on the triple mimesis offering the interpretation of narratives a dynamic and open structure, and on the ontological vehemence and attestation qualifying a hermeneutical con-cept of truth, each of which proved to be helpful in this regard. The link between theology and philosophy in Ricœur’s discourse thus both attests to the hermeneutical circle in which he himself operates and – ex nega-tivo – to the one we discovered in Lyotard.

It should be clear that a Christian open narrative, because of its rooted-ness in language and existence, although perhaps structurally homolo-gous to Lyotard’s postmodern philosophy, is yet very different. At the same time it is precisely because of their homologous structure that a dialogue between them could be possible, making possible a situation when the one can become the other of the other.

A last remark, linking up to this, and which concerns at the same time Lyotard, Ricœur and a Christian open narrative: recognising the funda-mentally particular nature of our narratives does not do away with their striving for universality, with their venturing of truth claims. It does, however, remind us of the fact that we are already positioned in language when we make such truth claims, and that the verification of these claims can only be done when likewise accounting for one’s self-involvement in speaking the truth. It is only on the basis of this consciousness that dealing with otherness and engaging in dialogue with others is possible.

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Lieven BOEVE

Faculty of TheologySint Michielsstraat 4 bus 31013000 LeuvenBelgium


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POETICS AND RELIGION - COnnecting REpositories · bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium ccxl paul ricŒur poetics and religion edited by j. verheyden – t.l. hettema