Towards a Phenomenology of Kenosis: Thinking after the Theological Turn

2.1 Kenosis as a statement about God

Though otherwise not averse to high-flying theologising; here, Paul opts for a pre-existing Christian hymn. This immediately serves to indicate that Paul is not providing us with a treatise in systematic Christology or a metaphysics of the Incarnation: i.e. an account of how the divine and human natures of Christ are conjoined, or of the ontological change divinity would supposedly undergo in entering into humanity. Such a highly metaphysical account of kenosis is provided by the so-called “kenotic theology” of mid-nineteenth-century Germany and early twentieth-century Britain.^[25] Its most famous exponent is Gottfried Thomasius, who uses the kenotic motif to conceptualise the Incarnation as an ontological change in God: though divine, Christ is not omniscient or omnipotent on his account; because, in becoming human, divinity divests or empties itself of certain attributes.^[26] Yet, the genre of the text really pre-empts the idea that we are dealing with such deeply metaphysical concerns: due to its poetic form, the New Testament scholar Michael Gorman suggests, emptying “should not be read as a reference to the divestiture of something (whether divinity itself or some divine attribute) …, but ‘figuratively,’ as a robust metaphor for total self-abandonment and self-giving.”^[27] In this section, I will therefore draw on a series of modern theologians who all react against the so-called “kenotic theology” in order to lay the groundwork for a phenomenological rather than metaphysical understanding of kenosis.

Looking at the specific wording of the hymn, T.F. Torrance agrees that it provides “no ground for any theory of kenosis or emptying as that has been expounded in the ‘kenotic theories’ of the incarnation,” according to which “in becoming man the eternal Son emptied himself of some of his divine properties or attributes in order to come within our human and historical existence.”^[28] The hymn, Torrance emphasises, speaks of God’s self-emptying of the divine form (morphe) into that of the human servant: in taking-on the servant form of humanity, God humbles himself by taking-leave of the majestic and glorious form of divinity, yet without ceasing to be God. Indeed, paradoxically, God is fully God precisely in emptying himself out in the human.^[29] On this account, kenosis serves to indicate precisely that a metaphysical theory of the Incarnation is ill-advised if not impossible, since it does not concern a change in God’s way of being but only in his form of manifestation: in emptying himself of divinity, God is God; in assuming humanity, God is God. This paradox is not presented to reason to be accounted for, but only to faith to be believed:

It is God himself, he who was in the form of God and equal to God, who condescended to be very man of very man. Nothing at all is said of how that takes place. All kenotic theories are attempts to explain the how of the incarnation in some measure: how God and man are united in one Jesus Christ, how the Word has become flesh. All that is said is that this union is a way of incredible humiliation and grace.^[30]

By kenosis (and incarnation generally), we should therefore not understand the indwelling of a foreign substance, or the diminution of essential attributes, but rather the constitutive movement of the self’s descent (katabasis) – its self-effacement and self-humiliation – that simultaneously forms its coming-into itself.

This same idea is expressed more vividly, more paradoxically, by Sergei Bulgakov: the Incarnation, he says, expresses “an unfathomable mystery,” namely that “God ‘was made (egeneto)’ a creature, ‘flesh’,” meaning “that God became not God without ceasing to be God.” In short, “flesh is not God,” and consequently, “the Word-God (without ceasing to be Word and God) became not-God; the Creator became a creature.”^[31] Like Torrance, Bulgakov understands this not as a change in God’s being, but as a descent to the historical and worldly form of humanity:

God left the supramundane absoluteness of His being and became the Creator; but the Creator, the Word …, Himself became a creature. From His absoluteness He descended into creatureliness. … Here, God the Word leaves heaven with its unperturbed tranquillity of blessed divine being and enters inside creaturely cosmic being, “becomes” a creature.^[32]

Note here that insofar as Bulgakov speaks of different kinds of being, these do not concern a change in God himself, but rather his movement between ontological realms: God leaves-behind divine being (kenosis of absoluteness) and enters-into creaturely being (incarnation into creatureliness), without ceasing to be God. As he puts it: “In becoming man, God does not stop being God; even after descending from heaven, He remains in heaven.”^[33] Bulgakov therefore places a robust “kenotic principle” at the centre of his theology: though noting his appreciation of the kenotic theologians, who have “done a great deal to advance this principle (first in Germany, then in England),” they only did so “in a one-sided manner.”^[34] First of all, they limit the question of kenosis to Christology, and the Incarnation specifically, instead of understanding it as comprising the whole relation of God to the world (e.g. creation): “The kenosis of the Absolute in the world and for the world is a basic, unifying idea for theology.”^[35] Kenosis is therefore at the core of how we conceive of God, and not just Christ. Secondly, their metaphysical account insufficiently appreciates the paradox and mystery of the Incarnation: “Without ceasing to be God, God ceases to be God (even though that is inconceivable and impossible), and He becomes man; that is, He enters human life in the most real sense, and He makes this life His own.”^[36]

These two criticisms can be combined by saying that kenosis does not primarily concern Christ, in his human and divine natures, but God, who voluntarily descends towards man and humbles himself. This is crystallised in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s criticism of the kenotic theologians: identifying kenosis precisely “with the divine freedom, over against every way of thinking that would posit here a process of a natural (Gnostic) or logical (Hegelian) character,” he sees “in the powerlessness of the Incarnate and Crucified One the shining forth of God’s omnipotence.”^[37] This means that kenosis does not concern what happens to God’s freedom and omnipotence in the Incarnation, but rather how these “attributes” are understood in the first place: kenosis concerns the doctrine of God, rather than Christology narrowly conceived. For example, the fact that God is God in his self-abasement shows that “the divine ‘power’ is so ordered that it can make room for a possible self-exteriorisation, like that found in the Incarnation and the Cross, and can maintain this exteriorisation even to the utmost point.”^[38] So, God’s self-humiliation in Jesus Christ (incarnation) and as Jesus Christ (passion and crucifixion) does not indicate a diminution of his omnipotence and thus a change, but rather serves as the model for understanding it: “the whole affair proceeds in the sovereign freedom (and so in the power and majesty) of the God who has the power to ‘empty himself,’ in obedience, for the (eventual) taking of the form of a servant, and from out of the divine form itself. And so God, whilst abiding in himself (for everything happens in his sovereign power) can yet leave himself (in his form of glory).”^[39] What marks out God’s omnipotence, his divinity, is that he did not consider it as “a thing to be grasped,” something to cling or hold on to; but, instead, “emptied himself” of it (Philippians 2:6–7). Whereas man, if he found himself equal to or in the form of God, would eagerly exploit this for his own advantage; God voluntarily takes leave of his divinity in the human being, Christ freely humbles himself on the cross: precisely this free action is incomprehensible to man and thereby marks out God as divine, paradoxically constituting his divinity as its effacement.^[40] God is God in his incredible choice for the human, the world and the finite as the site for divinity’s self-manifestation through self-effacement. This understanding of kenosis is eloquently summed up by Bonaventure: “The depth of God made man, that is, the humility of God, is so great that reason fails before it.”^[41] In short, the kenosis hymn describes God’s glory metaphorically as humiliation.

These theological arguments for reading the kenosis hymn as concerning God’s divinity metaphorically rather than Christ’s divinity metaphysically are supported by Gorman’s exegesis: in the hymn, Gorman says, “Christ’s divinity, and thus divinity itself, is being narratively defined as kenotic and cruciform in character.”^[42] He continues: “God … is essentially kenotic, and indeed essentially cruciform. Kenosis, therefore, does not mean Christ’s emptying himself of his divinity (or of anything else), but rather Christ’s exercising his divinity, his equality with God.”^[43] So, when Paul speaks of God’s self-emptying of divinity, he is not describing what actually happens to God’s divinity in the Incarnation (it being left behind), but rather offering a metaphoric illustration of how it should be understood (as a profound and incredible humiliation).

I stress this non-metaphysical character of kenosis, along with its centrality to the Christian doctrine of God, to pre-empt the criticism that an emphasis on kenosis in conceiving of Christianity would somehow be inappropriate. For example, accusing Nancy of placing “the apparently marginal doctrine of kenosis at the heart of Christology,”^[44] Ian James writes:

This doctrine has a rather marginal and disputed status within Christology and Christian theology more generally. Far more orthodox is the doctrine of hypostatic union, according to which divine spirit and mortal flesh are conjoined in the body of Christ in a manner that affirms their shared essence (homoouisia), or consubstantiality.^[45]

Yet, in understanding the doctrine of kenosis as in competition with that of the hypostatic union (i.e. the union of human and divine natures in Christ’s individual existence), James understands kenosis in an inappropriately metaphysical way (i.e. leaving behind the divine nature). Since kenosis concerns form (morphe) and not nature (ousia), it is not in competition with the hypostatic union. In short, the two doctrines concern different things: hypostatic union describes what constitutes God as paradox (the union of human and divine natures), whilst kenosis describes how God appears in the paradox (the exercise of divinity thus unified with humanity). In other words, if hypostatic union belongs to metaphysics (with its talk of “natures” and “existence”), kenosis belongs to phenomenology (the “form” of manifestation). Kenosis, as primarily a statement about God, should consequently be understood as a phenomenological statement about God, articulating both: (1) his mode of phenomenality (i.e. his revelation as God) and (2) the phenomena he is to be found in (i.e. his incarnation in the human servant).

2.2 Kenosis as a statement about revelation

Starting with kenosis as it relates to revelation, Torrance suggests that the “whole movement of humiliation and incarnation is related to revelation as much as to reconciliation.” He explains:

Jesus veils his glory under the form of a servant, in order to get near man for revelation and reconciliation, but in this, the veiling of the Son is a necessary part of his future unveiling for it is a means to its fulfilment, and so to achieving a reconciliation that is not only from the side of God to man but from the side of man to God.^[46]

Two things should be noted here. First of all, Torrance echoes Heidegger’s description of the dynamics of phenomenalisation (Offenbarung), in which a being-veiled (Verdecktheit), understood as “the counterconcept to ‘phenomenon’” or the concealment of what is about to appear (phanein), precedes the appearing.^[47] However, rather than the veiling preceding the unveiling, I would suggest that kenosis shows how one is only realised in and as the other: God reveals himself as himself only by emptying himself of himself, and thereby veiling himself, in the human being that is Jesus Christ. Søren Kierkegaard was perhaps the first Christian thinker to conceive of kenosis in this way – i.e. phenomenologically, in terms of appearing – through his emphasis on the fact that “it was Christ’s free will and determination from all eternity to be incognito,”^[48] to appear in such a way as to not be directly recognisable as God. Kierkegaard explains:

The God has thus made his appearance as Teacher …, and has assumed the form of a servant. … The God’s servant-form however is not a mere disguise, but is actual …. He cannot then betray himself. There exists for him no such possibility as that which is open to the noble king, suddenly to show that he is after all the king.^[49]

The servant form is not a disguise, in which case the revelation would consist in God dropping the veil of the servant form; rather, veiling is the mode of God’s self-revelation (paradoxically): as and in the human servant. Here, Kierkegaard’s emphasis is on appearing rather than being: the incognito means “not to appear in one’s proper role,”^[50] in the form of the human servant rather than the divine lord.^[51] In short, the revelation takes place in the veiling, the appearing (of God) in the disappearing (of divinity), the self-emptying of appearing as the disappearing of what appears (divinity) in its appearing (as humanity).

This brings us to the second point, namely that kenosis allows God to get near to man for revelation. Just like Christ voluntarily humbles himself by dying on the cross, not just for any reason, but in atonement for our sins; God voluntarily humbles himself by assuming humanity in order to reveal himself to us, so as to make possible our salvation. In revealing himself, God descends towards man. As Athanasius puts it: “He [God] deals with them [men] as a good teacher with his pupils, coming down to their level and using simple means.”^[52] As necessitated by the rift between man and God caused by original sin that distracted man from God in favour of the sensible world, God comes down to our level, meets us where we are. Athanasius’ point is therefore that by “stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us,”^[53] God not only reveals himself to us and on our terms in the Incarnation (as a sensible object, a human body), but also for our sakes (reconciliation between man and God, salvation): “it was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who were the cause of His taking human form, and for our salvation that in His great love He was both born and manifested in a human body.”^[54] Its kenotic doctrine of God makes Christianity – the story of God’s revelation through incarnation – anthropocentric rather than theocentric, or anthropocentric as theocentric: focussed primarily on humanity insofar as the Christian God’s divinity exists in its self-emptying in humanity (Jesus Christ). Even though “He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way,” one more befitting that majesty (the divine form), “moved with compassion for our limitation” or “out of sheer love for us,”^[55] Athanasius insists, God instead took on a visible and mortal body like our very own (the human form) to ensure that his message would be received: God does not reveal himself in his divine form, of which he has emptied himself, but in human form, which he has taken on. Put phenomenologically, divinity remains transcendent to experience, God therefore only reveals himself insofar as he becomes immanent to the sensible world (incarnation) and thus takes leave of his divinity (kenosis). Does that mean, as for example Marion suggests, that the language of kenosis ultimately resorts to anthropomorphism?^[56] Nothing could be further from the truth, precisely because – once again – kenosis does not describe the Incarnation metaphysically but phenomenologically: “The incarnate God,” as Jürgen Moltmann suggests, “is present, and can be experienced, in the humanity of every man, and in full human corporeality.”^[57]

2.3 Kenosis as a statement about incarnation

Having come down to the level of man to reveal himself, how does God actually reveal himself? How can the invisible enter visibility without ceasing to be invisible? According to Athanasius, in revelation, God not only comes down to our level, but does so “using simple means.”^[58] Incarnation is thus not only the mode of Revelation (God’s descent), but also its means (God’s lowliness): by assuming the human condition, God reveals himself in Christ’s eminently human suffering on the cross; by humbling himself, God reveals his divinity in that humiliation.^[59] Consequently, if “the incarnation of the Logos is completed on the cross,” as Moltmann suggests, then “the death of Jesus on the cross is the centre of all Christian theology,” i.e. God’s lowly and humble humanity forms “the entry to its problems and answers on earth.”^[60]

Gorman therefore concludes that kenosis – first as God’s self-humiliation by assuming humanity and then as Christ’s self-humiliation by suffering and dying on the cross – confirms the “idolatry of ‘normal’ divinity.”^[61] God does not reveal himself in a way that we, ordinary humans, would expect him to: not by a spectacular show of divine force, but with the humble means of an ordinary human being. Indeed, if the cross is the primary theophany, his glory is precisely revealed – most counterintuitively – in a profound humiliation. When Paul then speaks of Jesus’ self-emptying of the “form of God,” he means that God revealed himself in a way unbefitting of divinity. As Gorman puts it: “such a form of God (and thus also essential divinity) is in normal human perception one that would never condescend to incarnation and crucifixion. Normal human perception of deity is such that the story of Christ is counterintuitive, abnormal, and absurd as a story of God.”^[62] It is counterintuitive to us, human beings, that God, the divine majesty for whom nothing is impossible, would reveal himself in a humble servant, a weak human being easily crushed by a worldly empire, rather than displaying his glory for all to see. As limited human beings, we cannot conceive of a God who is so profoundly human (i.e. humble), and this is what constitutes his divinity (i.e. distinction from humanity).

Caputo has developed this idea admirably in his The Weakness of God. It likewise starts with Paul, for whom the crucifixion, as culmination of God’s incarnation and kenosis, confirms this idolatry of ordinary divinity:

God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not (ta me onta) – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Corinthians 1:27–29)

God is found in unexpected places – namely, the things that are not (ta me onta): lowly and weak things rather than strong and glorious ones (a humble servant), what appears as foolishness to the world rather than common sense (a God made man). Kenosis is meant to make us second guess how we ordinarily speak about God: rather than divesting himself of his omnipotence, kenosis means that God’s power appears precisely in his weakness on the cross. “God crossed out by the cross,”^[63] as Caputo puts it, he “withdraws from the world’s order of presence, prestige, and sovereignty in order to settle into those pockets of protest and contradiction to the world.”^[64] Or, as Gorman puts it: “The counterintuitive God revealed in Christ is kenotic and cruciform …, the God of power-in-weakness.”^[65] God’s power is his weakness, his resistance to the world’s logic, his dwelling amongst the nothings of the world.

How does God make his divinity evident in a form unbefitting of him? It is not that the weakness of the human condition itself is identified with divinity (that would be anthropomorphism); but rather, Athanasius suggests that divinity is manifested by the man seen to be doing things that are only befitting of God:

When, then, the minds of men had fallen finally to the level of sensible things, the Word submitted to appear in a body, in order that He, as Man, might centre their senses on Himself, and convince them through His human acts that He Himself is not man only but also God the Word …; and, invisible and imperceptible as in Himself he is, He became visible through his works and revealed Himself as the Word of the Father.^[66]

It is thus not the case that God never becomes visible, but simply that he does not become visible as divine, in his proper form; his divinity can be seen only indirectly in the works of the human being: a man doing things no other man would do (e.g. turning the other cheek). Athanasius therefore concludes that “he who desires to see God Who by nature is invisible and not to be beheld, may yet perceive and know Him through His works.”^[67] Precisely this constitutes the paradox and the incomprehensibility: that it is a human being doing these things, that the Word became flesh.

3.1 Emmanuel Levinas

Levinas is difficult to categorise in my theological–atheological (or kenotic) schematisation of contemporary philosophy: though his phenomenology of the infinite undeniably makes it possible, Levinas himself refrains from Marion’s (revelation) and Henry’s (incarnation) overt theologising.^[72] Obviously, Levinas is not a Christian and is therefore far less eager to model experience generally on the Christian theological model. When it comes to the appropriation of the concepts of Christian theology, such as kenosis, Levinas therefore finds himself in the same position as the authors of the “kenotic turn”: namely, drawing on the language of a tradition he remains outside of in order to think broader philosophical problems.

When invited to speak about the Incarnation, Levinas admits as much: “I do not have the effrontery to enter an area forbidden to those who do not share the faith, and the ultimate dimensions of which no doubt escape me,” instead he merely wants “to reflect” on “the multiple meanings suggested by the notion of Man-God.” This includes kenosis as “the idea of a self-inflicted humiliation on the part of the Supreme Being, of a descent of the Creator to the level of the Creature.”^[73] Of course, Levinas does not believe that God humbled himself in Christ, his interest in this notion is therefore not that of the theologian. Instead, he wants to explore “to what extent these ideas, which have unconditional value for the Christian faith, have philosophical value, and to what extent they can appear in phenomenology.” This is also the approach taken by the authors of the kenotic turn: namely, investigating what Christian theological notions mean outside of or beyond their immediate context. Their philosophical and theological meanings cannot straightforwardly be identified. Levinas therefore cautions: “I ask myself to what extent the new categories we have just described are philosophical. I am certain that this extent will be judged insufficient by the believing Christian.”^[74] This apparent insufficiency for the theologian of the philosophical treatment of Christian concepts is not due to the limitations of philosophy’s perspective compared to theology’s, but to a divergence in the respective concerns orienting them. This distinction is what, for example, the Anglican theologian Graham Ward fails to recognise when, himself tracking the philosophical appropriation of the kenotic motif since Hegel, he complains that “what is absent from modernity’s concept of kenosis is the role played by theological discourse as response to a reception of and participation in the divine.”^[75] Yet, to philosophically appropriate the concept of kenosis means precisely to expropriate it from theological discourse: it is articulated by people who do not recognise the divinity it is supposedly participating in. Ward’s complaint presupposes that the Christian theological viewpoint has both priority and ultimate authority, ruling out from the start that an outside or philosophical perspective on its concepts might be useful to that theology (in phenomenology’s appropriation), or that its concepts speak beyond their immediate religious context (in Christianity’s self-deconstruction). Levinas’ goal, like my own, is not to satisfy the theologian, but to interest the philosopher.

What Levinas finds philosophically interesting about kenosis is that, as “the humiliation of God,” it “allows for conceiving the relationship with transcendence in terms other than those of naiveté.” Christianity’s innovation is that, compared to the pagan religions where the gods likewise manifest themselves among men, the Christian God manifests its divinity precisely in its humiliation in humanity:

The appearance of man-gods, sharing the passions and joys of men who are purely men, is certainly a common characteristic of pagan poems. But in paganism, as the price for this manifestation, the gods lose their divinity. Hence philosophers expel poets from the City to preserve the divinity of the gods in men’s minds. But divinity thus saved lacks all condescension. … Infinity then manifests itself in the finite, but it does not manifest itself to the finite.^[76]

In paganism, the gods either remain entirely transcendent to the concerns of man or lose their divinity in being rendered immanent to the world of men (the city). This maintains the order of man, placing divinity either firmly outside the city as divine or inside as just another man, which precludes the possibility of divine revelation to man. The Christian doctrine of kenosis, meanwhile, disrupts this order by providing a new way of relating to transcendence: a god who is God precisely in being man, whose transcendence lies in condescension, and whose glory exists in humiliation. God’s humiliation – his coming down to our level in order to raise us up to his – allows us to conceive of transcendence, not as what breaks-into immanence from beyond, but as what opens-up immanence from within:

The idea of a truth whose manifestation is not glorious or bursting with light, the idea of a truth that manifests itself in its humility, like the still small voice in the biblical expression – the idea of a persecuted truth – is that not henceforth the only possible modality of transcendence? … To manifest itself as humble, as allied with the vanquished, the poor, the persecuted – is precisely not to return to the order. … To present oneself in this poverty of the exile is to interrupt the coherence of the universe. To pierce immanence without thereby taking one’s place within it. Obviously such an opening can only be an ambiguity.^[77]

The ambiguity is the paradox of God’s power-in-weakness, transcendence-in-immanence, and divinity-in-humanity: “The ambiguity of transcendence,” Levinas says, is not “a failure of the intelligence that examines it” or “the feeble faith surviving the death of God,” but “precisely the proximity of God which can only occur in humility” as “the original mode of the presence of God, the original mode of communication.”^[78]

An example of the fact that Levinas sees Paul’s kenosis as speaking to a set of problems far broader than Christology – i.e. our relationship with transcendence rather than Christ’s humanity – is his remarkable essay “Judaism and Kenosis.” It uncovers Levinas’ understanding of kenosis in the Kabbalistic cosmology of the nineteenth-century Lithuanian rabbi Chaim of Volozhin. The rabbi presents God’s reign over creation as requiring ethical mediation through human action: “God associates with or withdraws from the worlds, depending upon human behaviour. Man is answerable for the universe! Man is answerable for others.”^[79] Or, more specifically:

This is the ethical meaning of human activity: … God’s reign depends on me. … God reigns only by the intermediary of an ethical order, an order in which one being is answerable for another. The world is, not because it perseveres in being, not because being is its own raison d’être, but because, through the human enterprise, it can be justified in its being. … More important than God’s omnipotence is the subordination of that power to man’s ethical consent. And that, too, is one of the primordial meanings of kenosis.^[80]

Levinas sees this as kenosis because it understands God in terms of weakness, unequal to divinity, emphasises the order of the finite human being’s actions in the world down below: “this God, master of power, is powerless to associate himself with the world he creates … and maintains in being by that very association, without a certain behaviour of man,” which consequently ensures that “everything depends on man,” for “the vocation, or raison d’être, of humanity is precisely to provide the necessary conditions for the association of God with the worlds, and thus for the being of the worlds.”^[81] Likewise, in Christianity, God becomes human for the sake of his revelation to and reconciliation with humanity. Kenosis thus emphasises man as what Renée van Riessen, in her study of the kenotic motif in Levinas, has called “a place of God.” She explains: “Kenosis is the event in which God makes room for human action. Conversely, for Levinas, the human being is ‘a place of God.’ Its existence is meaningful as a reference to the kenotic God, in the devotional movement of ‘À Dieu’.”^[82] Since God has come down to the level of humanity, the human being becomes the site where divinity takes place as (indirectly) recognisable. “Paradoxically,” Levinas therefore concludes, “everything depends on them – those whose bodies are at the lowest level, located within the order of action and work, at the level of matter. Everything depends on them, even the outpouring of God,”^[83] since “to some degree, in relation to the human will, the Divine is then subordinate. There is kenosis in this ‘sub-’.”^[84]

3.2 Gianni Vattimo

Levinas still understands his philosophical analysis of kenosis as ultimately being completed by a theological one: he merely wants “to show the points beyond which nothing can replace religion.”^[85] However, in his Belief, Gianni Vattimo proposes something far more radical: by centring its theology around kenosis, Christianity de-theologises or secularises itself in a movement he calls weakening. For Vattimo, like for Levinas, kenosis introduces a new relation to transcendence, namely as to be found down below within, rather than beyond or above, the world: “The guiding thread of Jesus’ interpretation of the Old Testament is the new and more profound relation of charity established between God and humanity, and consequently between human beings themselves,”^[86] meaning “that the ‘kenotic’ interpretation of the articles of faith goes hand in hand with the life of every person,” namely “the commitment to transform them into concrete principles that are incarnate in one’s own existence, and irreducible to a formula.”^[87]

However, Vattimo goes further and suggests that the kenotic doctrine of God actually effaces theological transcendence altogether: “The only great paradox and scandal of Christian revelation is the incarnation of God, the kenosis – that is, the removal of all the transcendent, incomprehensible, mysterious and even bizarre features,” at least when this transcendence is understood in “a naturalistic, human, all too human, ultimately unchristian” way (i.e. metaphysically).^[88] Transcendence is thus not merely related to differently, it is understood differently, namely kenotically. However, crucially, it is Christianity itself, with its kenotic doctrine of God, that establishes this understanding of divine transcendence as its own effacement: the gesture characteristic of Christianity is to efface divine transcendence, what Nancy calls “de-theologisation” and Vattimo calls “secularisation.”

Vattimo then presents us with a “Christianity recovered as the doctrine of salvation (namely, secularizing kenosis).”^[89] He explains:

Salvation is an event in which kenosis, the abasement of God, is realized more and more fully and so undermines the wisdom of the world, the metaphysical dreams of natural reason which conceive God as absolute, omnipotent and transcendent, ipsum esse (metaphysicum) subsistens. In this light, secularization – the progressive dissolution of the natural sacred – is the very essence of Christianity.^[90]

De-theologisation or “secularization as the essence of modernity and of Christianity itself” thus means a weakening of the metaphysical structures in which Christianity articulated itself along with its theology – i.e. their self-effacement or self-emptying – since at its core sits the secularising “feature of kenosis in which the history of salvation is realized” and “must be attributed to this whole experience of ‘dissolution,’ or the weakening of strong structures.”^[91] This gesture does not oppose itself to “Christianity” or “theology,” but instead opens a new Christianity or theology and wrests itself away from a supposedly contingent metaphysical framework. Crucially, however, this movement beyond “Christianity” (onto-theo-logy) precisely starts from Christianity itself (the kenosis of God). Tracing this movement is the task Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity sets itself.

3.3 Jean-Luc Nancy

In the preamble to his two-volume project entitled The Deconstruction of Christianity, Nancy states his intentions: “It is not our concern to save religion, even less to return to it. The much discussed ‘return of the religious,’ which denotes a real phenomenon, deserves no more attention than any other ‘return.’”^[92] If Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity forms his own turn to religion, it does not aim at a return to the religious or theological mode of thought. Instead, his question concerns something entirely different. Nancy is interested in a resource, found within Christianity, carrying us beyond Christianity: as the religion of the egress of religion, Christianity carries within itself the gesture of its own self-surpassing.^[93] The deconstruction of Christianity concerns itself with precisely that gesture:

My question will be very simple, naïve even, as is perhaps fitting at the beginning of a phenomenological procedure: How and to what degree do we hold to Christianity? How, exactly, are we, in our whole tradition, held by it? … Christianity itself, Christianity as such, is surpassed. That state of self-surpassing may be very profoundly proper to it; it is perhaps its deepest tradition …. It is this transcendence, this going-beyond-itself that must therefore be examined.^[94]

This gesture of Christianity’s self-surpassing – one that starts from Christianity yet moves beyond Christianity – is envisioned by the deconstruction of Christianity as “the operation consisting in disassembling the elements that constitute it, in order to attempt to discern, among these elements and as if behind them, that which made their assembly possible,”^[95] in order to “go back to (or to advance toward) a resource that could form at once the buried origin and the imperceptible future of the world that calls itself ‘modern.’”^[96] If we understand deconstruction as the gesture of taking apart a complex whole in order to discover what makes it fit together, only to find that once taken apart, it cannot be put together anymore – i.e. every construction is itself always inhabited by the threat of its own infinite deconstruction – we find that, on Nancy’s account, deconstruction is identified with Christianity itself in its movement of self-surpassing: what is characteristic of Christianity moves us beyond Christianity as the agent of its own secularisation or de-theologisation. Indeed, “the gesture of deconstruction,” Nancy says, “is itself shot through and through with Christianity,” and is therefore “only possible within Christianity.”^[97] Consequently, the deconstruction of Christianity, like any deconstruction, is a self-deconstruction: deconstruction is not something done to Christianity from without, but something going on within the Christian religion as its very Christianity. Nancy’s core claim is that Christianity is nothing but this movement, this deconstruction, this de-theologisation or secularisation, of itself as itself.^[98] In short, Christianity is Christian in its own “de-Christianisation” or self-deconstruction: “deconstruction … is itself Christian … because Christianity is, originally, deconstructive …. The structure of origin of Christianity is the proclamation of its end.”^[99]

We can already anticipate where in Christianity Nancy will find its self-deconstructive agent – the origin that proclaims its end – namely, its kenotic doctrine of God: like the Christian God is only God in his self-effacement as “God” (the form), Christianity is only Christian in its self-effacement as “Christianity” (the religion). However, before exploring Nancy’s treatment of the kenotic motif and his development of the deconstruction of Christianity, it is worth contextualising this project. We should understand it in the context of an essay by a friend and collaborator of Nancy’s, namely Jean-Christophe Bailly’s Adieu: Essai sur la mort des dieux. In his meditation on the meaning of the death of God, Bailly insightfully remarks that “farewell (adieu) has not really been said to God (à Dieu). He is no longer there, that’s all.”^[100] Specifically, “modern Western man did not really want the death of God, he has simply lost God along the way (en route), and in such a foolish way that he has not even realised it yet.”^[101] This is a perfect summary of Nietzsche’s development of this idea, where a “madman” (who nevertheless “lit a lantern in the bright morning hours”) urgently proclaims the death of God, not to the believers, but to the cultured despisers who think to have no need of him. Yet, they do not listen for they do not understand what they have done, they do not comprehend the consequences of this death they themselves nevertheless accomplished.^[102] It is with this tremendous, and indeed still ongoing, event that Bailly wants to come to grips by making its extensive reverberations felt. Or, as he puts it: “Truly saying farewell (adieu) … to God (à Dieu).”^[103] This cannot be done in an instant, merely noting the death is insufficient; it requires a laborious effort of bidding God farewell: not merely writing his obituary, but clearing out his house and selling off his possessions – deconstructing the various constructions secured by him. In other words, we need to perform the work of mourning his death: “I propose that thinking what ‘God is dead’ means and doing the work of mourning are one and the same thing.”^[104] The work of mourning God’s death is an intellectual labour: thinking through the effects of the death of God, the erasure of the horizon the unchaining of the earth from its sun. It means considering the meaning of a genuine atheism, which is not merely a denial of God (anti-theism), but something much more difficult: ceasing any reference to God (a-theism). Atheism, Bailly suggests, means “saying simply that which is, the world shines in the absence of God, any god, it shines divinely in this absence.”^[105] That is the challenge the death of God poses to thought, to be met only in the intellectual labour of mourning this death.

Nancy’s deconstruction undertakes precisely this work of mourning: it is not an accomplishment (i.e. achieving a “deconstructed Christianity” resembling C.S. Lewis’ “mere Christianity”), but the project or endeavour of bidding farewell to God (i.e. tracking Christianity in its self-deconstruction). Rather than Christianity, Nancy’s question therefore concerns the possibility of a genuine atheism: thinking in the wake of the death of God. He nevertheless finds the answer in Christianity, precisely because it has made the death of God into a religion: “Only an atheism that contemplates the reality of its Christian provenance can be actual.”^[106] That Christian provenance points the way towards a genuine atheism, namely a world without any reference to God, a world without given meaning other than its own being-world.^[107] Thinking the world without God, thinking atheologically or moving beyond theology, is Nancy’s project. Yet, he says, it must be done precisely by starting from Christianity itself, the de-theologisation going on within it, the self-deconstruction that it is. This is what it means to bid farewell to God, to carry out the work of mourning his death, to de-theologise thought – indeed, to deconstruct Christianity. If we were to apply this to contemporary phenomenology, as I will now argue that we must, we could equally say that this is what it means to think after the theological turn, namely to let phenomenology de-theologise itself.

4.1 Thinking after the theological turn

Curiously, the authors of the kenotic turn are rarely studied in relation to phenomenology’s theological turn, presumably because – as indicated – these respective movements proceed in opposite directions. The question therefore arises whether the return of religion really is a unified phenomenon. Assuming that it is, as the scholarship does, an account of how the theological turn relates to the kenotic turn is required: What do these two diverging movements, taken together, give us to think? Well, if the theological turn exemplifies how philosophy (and phenomenology in particular) turns (in)to theology (e.g., by taking the Revelation of Christ as paradigm for experience generally); and if the kenotic turn shows how Christianity exists in a movement of self-effacement or de-theologisation (e.g., by depicting God’s self-emptying of divinity in the Incarnation as setting in motion Christianity’s self-deconstruction); then I would suggest that the return of religion is the movement in which philosophy (and phenomenology in particular), precisely in and only by turning to theology, de-theologises itself. If the Word must assume a condition foreign to itself (humanity) in order to come to itself (Jesus Christ as incarnate divinity), then philosophy must turn to theology in order to properly understand itself in its atheological bearing. In short, by thinking after the theological turn, I mean a deconstruction or de-theologisation of phenomenology’s inherent theological structure as a movement beyond, though starting from, the theological turn it facilitated: a phenomenology that does not straightforwardly turn into theology, that has been de-theologised, is best equipped to account for religious or theophanic experience phenomenologically (i.e. an account that is not itself “theological”).

This parallels the project Derrida undertakes in his final book, On Touching – Jean-Luc Nancy, an extensive study of his friend’s work: reprising his earlier critique of phenomenology as always oriented towards an impossible immediate and auto-affective presence by way of a comprehensive deconstruction of Husserl’s “principle of all principles,” he suggests that phenomenology’s structural problems are exacerbated when it comes into contact with Christianity, as it does in phenomenology’s theological turn. Whereas Derrida concerns himself primarily with Husserl, it is worth taking up that same deconstruction in reference to Husserl’s theologising French interpreters. However, here too, everything still depends on what Husserl understands as the principle of phenomenology, namely that its field of study is intuition as it is leibhaftig gegeben (literally “bodily given”), or “given in its personal actuality” (its usual idiomatic English translation).^[108] Phenomenology is the study of the appearing of things in propria persona, letting them appear as they give themselves out to be: “to let what shows itself be seen from itself,” Heidegger says, “just as it shows itself from itself.”^[109] Yet, everything turns on how the German is translated. In France (and Italy), the translation lends itself easily to theologising: namely, givenness in the flesh (en chair, in carne). This Gallicism inscribes the potential for a theological turn (i.e. towards sarx) within phenomenology from the outset by overdetermining the meaning of its principle, thereby allowing for example Didier Franck to speak of incarnate givenness, which Marion identifies with revelation.^[110] Take the opening lines of Marion’s Gifford lectures, entitled Givenness and Revelation: “this title may … surprise,” he says, “nothing seems to join an apparently old and steadfastly theological notion together with a philosophical concept drawn from the most recent phenomenology. However, if we wanted to consider better their respective features, the two terms could instead converge.”^[111] For Marion and his colleagues, the philosophical and theological converge in or as phenomenology, in philosophy’s (re)turn to religion. In short, phenomenology facilitates a theologisation of philosophy by placing the terms proper to each discipline on the same axis as phenomenologically synonymous. Specifically, the theological turn understands: (1) givenness (Gegebenheit) along the lines of revelation; (2) embodiment (Leiblichkeit) along the lines of incarnation; and (thereby) (3) phenomenological philosophy along the lines of revealed theology. Derrida observed that this is due to the structural tendency of phenomenology itself, which makes its turn to theology possible in principle; yet, these structural tendencies are exacerbated, and manifested particularly acutely, when phenomenology explicitly entertains the Christian understanding of Revelation or Incarnation, as it does in its actual theological turn.

Proceeding along the path cleared by Derrida’s study of Nancy, a deconstruction of phenomenology’s theological turn therefore claims the following: when exploring philosophy’s theologisation in phenomenology’s theological turn, facilitated by the apparent convergence of philosophical and theological notions in the basic terms of phenomenology, we discover that these notions in fact diverge in the way they expose phenomenology’s structural problems, thereby de-theologising philosophy and even de-Christianising phenomenology (i.e. making evident the divergence).^[112] In other words, a deconstructive approach to the authors of the theological turn might demonstrate how they incorrectly place philosophical and theological terms on the same axis, regarding them as phenomenologically synonymous: (1) givenness cannot be thought along the lines of revelation (against Marion); (2) embodiment cannot be thought along the lines of incarnation (against Henry); and (therefore) (3) phenomenological philosophy cannot be thought along the lines of revealed theology. Only once established that Gegebenheit does not mean the Revelation of Christ, and that Leiblichkeit does not mean the Incarnation of God (i.e. only once phenomenology is de-theologised), can we appreciate the properly phenomenological meaning of these terms (i.e. as distinct from their theological resonance – which, it cannot be stressed enough, they lack entirely in German).

Like Derrida’s engagement with Husserl, this would not be a critique coming from without, but a deconstruction going on within that it would be a matter of documenting: it is a question of exposing how the shortcomings of the existing phenomenological accounts are due to the inherent play of contradiction and displacement within their basic assumptions. In short, thinking after the theological turn means showing how the phenomenological coupling of philosophical (givenness and embodiment) and theological terms (revelation and incarnation) deconstructs itself within that turn. Only by delving into phenomenology’s turn towards theology (the texts and language of the Christian tradition) does the kenotic turn then show us how to turn away from “the theological” (the metaphysical priority of transcendence): to de-theologise philosophy. Thinking after the theological turn, purging philosophy of “theology,” can then only be done by exploring its inherently theological structure, precisely by taking a kenotic turn.

4.2 A phenomenology of kenosis

Kenosis thus embodies what thinking ‘after theology’ means: thinking from theology (the theological notion of kenosis), beyond ‘theology’ (the theos effacing itself within that notion); ‘the theological’ deconstructing itself (self-emptying); “the theological” deconstructing itself (self-emptying). However, what would be involved in developing a phenomenology of kenosis?^[113] With the philosophers, we must again understand kenosis broadly, but always without abstracting from its theological significance and context: starting from its theological significance and context, it is a matter of conceiving how kenosis embodies a gesture that demands to be applied beyond it. That gesture is self-emptying, self-effacement, or withdrawal. So, the theological figure (kenosis) can facilitate a conception of a broader philosophical dynamic (withdrawal or self-effacement), and precisely in that sense de-theologises itself, withdraws from itself, or deconstructs itself.

Schematically, the notion of kenosis can then operate on four levels, moving from the theological to the philosophical and ultimately the phenomenological. First, there is (1) kenosis as the self-emptying of divinity: this is the Pauline understanding of the Incarnation wherein God takes leave of his divine form in order to assume the human or servant form. It emphasises God’s complete assumption of the human condition in the Incarnation, including its “lowly” elements: his exaltation is his humiliation on the cross, his power is the weakness of the servant, his divinity lies in voluntarily suffering human finitude. In short, the relevant theological implication is that divinity takes place “here below”: in the world, in a human being just like us, in finitude and historicity, suffering and embodiment. Secondly, this becomes (2) kenosis as the self-emptying of Christianity: in itself producing secular modernity by effacing itself, Christianity takes place in and as the secular modern world, instead of being bypassed as its opposite. This is kenosis as understood by the authors of the post-secular turn strictly conceived: the self-emptying or self-effacement characteristic of the Christian God becomes characteristic of the Christian religion as such, resulting in an understanding of modernity as Christianity-after-Christianity, a de-theologised Christianity stemming directly from Christianity itself (of “Christian provenance,” as Nancy’s puts it).^[114] Clearly, (2) can be concluded from (1): if the Christian God is only God insofar as he empties himself out of his divine form; then Christianity is only Christian insofar as it egresses its religious or theological mode, de-theologises itself by making way for concrete action in the world (e.g., Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity”).^[115] Thirdly, we have (3) kenosis as the self-emptying of God’s phenomenality: God does not appear, or is not revealed, as God, but as a man, a historical, finite, and embodied human being; thus, God empties himself out of his own divinity, of his phenomenality as divine, insofar as he appears or becomes phenomenal. Put otherwise, divine transcendence, by definition, cannot appear, except insofar as it assumes the human and historical condition, becomes immanent to the world, empties itself of that transcendence and thus of itself. This, too, follows from (1), since if there is only revelation insofar as there is incarnation, there is equally only revelation insofar as there is kenosis: in appearing, God’s divinity withdraws from appearing. We find this understanding of kenosis in certain theologically interested French phenomenologists who nevertheless do not belong to the theological turn strictly conceived, such as Emmanuel Falque and Jean-Yves Lacoste. The former proclaims that “We have no other experience of God than the experience of the man (l’expérience de l’homme)” he became in his incarnation.^[116] The latter likewise insists that God “does not appear to be described, since there is nothing to describe, only a man like other men,” meaning that “to make an appearance … the god must be present kenotically.”^[117] Or as he puts it slightly more vividly: “God does not appear like the Alps, huge and undeniable,” but “in such a way that we can make up our mind about him, for or against.”^[118] Finally, we have (4) kenosis as the self-emptying of phenomenality generally: all appearing depends on an element that itself does not appear, meaning that appearing therefore necessarily withdraws into or gives way to the extra-phenomenal element that makes it possible. If (2) is concluded from (1) as its general implication, or (2) understood as the de-theologised version of (1), then the same is the case with (4) in relation to (3): divinity’s self-emptying in appearing, the kenosis of God’s divinity in coming to phenomenality, becomes the model for thinking all appearing, for the kenosis of phenomenality and kenosis as phenomenality more generally. Put differently, just as God’s phenomenality depends on an extra-phenomenal element, so too does all phenomenality depend on an extra-phenomenal element: the phenomenal always withdraws into something that does not belong to it, yet that nevertheless makes it possible.^[119] However, (1–3) are useful in illustrating both (4) as well as how the de-theologising movement from (1) to (4) is inherent to and set in motion by (1).

A phenomenology of kenosis would then describe two things: (a) the kenosis of God, or how God appears by withdrawing from appearing since his divinity transcends appearance by definition (beyond phenomenality); (b) the kenosis of phenomenality, or how phenomenality itself withdraws or descends into something that makes it possible whilst nevertheless remaining extra-phenomenal (below phenomenality).^[120] Put otherwise, we can only speak phenomenologically about what transcends phenomenality (the experiences believers recognise as theophanic) by descending below the phenomenal into what makes that phenomenality possible (the faith that conditions experience as theophanic). Strictly speaking, such a phenomenology of kenosis would not deal with a “phenomenon” at all and therefore could not properly be conceived of as a “phenomenology,” but would instead thematise God’s withdrawal from phenomenality, precisely because he can only become phenomenal by emptying himself of his divinity. Consequently, such phenomenology could offer a way of speaking phenomenologically about incarnation and revelation without insisting with the theological turn that these theological notions are coextensive with those of phenomenological philosophy.

In that sense, both the kenotic turn and the theological turn are engaged in a critical interrogation of what transcends the limits of phenomenality. As the editors of a major volume on the deconstruction of Christianity, which is the prime example of the kenotic turn, put it: “Nancy, together with those advocating a “theological turn,” does not disagree with phenomenology itself. Rather, they seek to establish a turn within phenomenology, bringing it toward and maybe even outside its limits.” However, they do so in different directions:

Nancy disagrees at a fundamental methodological level on … how to deal with the theological in that turn. Those who advocate the theological turn are dealing, broadly speaking, with the nonapparent … as belonging to the realm of phenomenality. … According to Nancy, however, the nonapparent … can never end in a reconciliation … with phenomena. Absence can never stop being the blind spot of presence, of phenomenality, and thus of phenomenology. In other words, phenomenology cannot be “improved” or “completed” by making it theological.^[121]

In short, whereas the theological turn assumes the presence of distinctly and undeniably theological phenomena within the realm of human experience, a phenomenology of kenosis as a deconstruction of that turn would instead show this theological qualification to be made up by a persistently extra-phenomenal element in which divinity’s supposed phenomenality therefore withdraws. It is precisely in this way that I propose that the figure of kenosis can be used to think after the theological turn: in turning to theology, phenomenology de-theologises itself, makes evident how its basic notions diverge from their theological appropriation. Moreover, in doing so, it would provide a better account of religious experience than that of phenomenology’s theological turn for reasons that are as much theological as they are phenomenological: namely, an account that insists on God’s absolute transcendence, meaning the irreconcilable estrangement of his divinity from phenomenality.^[122]