Volume 34, Issue 1

Starting from the Aristotelian conception of rhetoric as ›pithanology‹ the following essay formulates some theses on rhetoric, religion and science. The general thesis states that rhetorically generated credibility is an anthropological principle, which dominates human live and history. In this point of view science with her simple form of purely rational credibility is anthropological insufficient. In contrast, religion has all three dimensions of ›ethological‹, ›pragmatological‹ and ›pathelogical‹ credibility. This advantage gives the religion a great power of identification and community building in human history and explains the amazing return of religions at the beginning of the 21st century.

True to its semantic origin, the term ›pistis‹ indicates, in ancient Greek, a work of the ›peitho‹. Accordingly Aristotle’s Rhetoric explores the famous trinity of persuasion - ›logos‹, ›ethos‹, and ›pathos‹ - under the heading of ›pistis‹. As the Rhetoric is a study of man as much as a believer as in need of belief, it is only fair to ask what can be gathered from this work and from an investigation of the art of persuasion in general when it comes to Christian theology of faith. All the more so, because Christian thinking was not only shaped by ancient philosophy proper but also to a high degree by the rhetoric tradition; for the majority of the founding fathers of Christian theology were well versed in the subject.Via the topic of ›persuasion‹ versus ›force‹ I am tracing the influence of the rhetoric tradition right from the first theological thinkers of Christianity through to the Regensburg speech of pope Benedict XVI th .

Since Cicero (or, presumably, Varro) and, more recently, Benveniste and Agamben, the etymology of religio gave rise to speculations on the genealogy of theologies. The alternative of belief systems vs. binding forces offers insight into latent ambiguities barely managed in theological uses of rhetoric and misunderstood by secularization theories. The rhetorical format of religio in liturgy and cult - not to be confused with the rhetoric of religion - presupposes and maintains a precarious historicity of religions: of histories included or occluded, embedded or erased in religious beliefs.

The paper discusses the intellectual development of Augustinus by means of his discussion of the status, the sense, the function and his judgement on rhetoric. This discussion let Augustinus be an important station in the history of the philosophy of language. Starting point is the explanation of the dialectics of the topos (or pathos) of the ›ineffabilis‹. Augustinus shows that the antirhetoric meaning of the ineffable leads in selfcontradictions. Therefore he discusses the forms and the conditions of understanding. This begins with the early dialogue De magistro and reaches to De trinitate and one of the central subjects within this theoretical mainwork of Augustinus: the concept of the verbum intimum. With the (at first view) extreme reductionism in the theory of signs, presented in De magistro - a mental ›oracle‹ is claimed as instance and criterion of understanding -, he destructs the naive representation-belief in an 1:1-relation between outer signs and mental contents. The subject of the ›inner word‹ in De trinitate then is the question of understanding signs as signs. It is shown that only the explanation of the inner word as a mental achievement within ordinary language is sufficient to answer the question of understanding. An excursus elucidates that the sermocinalis scientia of Wilhelm v. Ockham in the 14th century continues the discoveries and philosophical innovations, Augustinus made at the end of antiquity. These discoveries are inalienable for present debates concerning the philosophy of language. And they are inalienable for concepts of rhetoric based in the hermeneutics of understanding. The critique of rhetoric as ›fair of talkativeness‹ brings up a purified sight of the art of language: of the art, language ›is‹.

In the newly published, critical edition of Birken’s handwritten manuscript, Birken inserts fictitious conversations that contain sacred poetry and prayers to God. This text, which belongs to a new genre of »exercises in sacred conversation« (»geistlichem Gesprächspiel«), serves the praxis pietatis in which the public proclamation of God’s Word is appropriated to private meditation. The added value of this conversational form is not only that it serves to edify, but also that it allows thoughts to freely fall into the mind that otherwise would not. Birken makes it clear that in conversation the Holy Spirit makes Himself known 1) within the plurality of interlocution, as well as 2) in the intensified form of the conversation, so that the presence of God is realized among the interlocutors (following Matt. 18:20) in the mutuum colloquium. Therefore, not only the proclamation from the pulpit, but also the devotional discussions become the vehicle of the Spirit’s presence. In this way, everyday rituals, such as getting out of bed, brushing one’s hair, and bathing the body, are explored according to their sacred and emblematic significance. Birken conceptualizes and practices this intermediality of the talking image, the painted word, and the pictorial conversation in such a way that this elevated rhetoric can be implemented through the medium of everyday speech.

The Essay offers in prismatic perspektives the plurality and possible variations of using rhetoric figures in theology (Anselm von Canterbury, Dante) and theological reasoning about the status of rhetoric (»New Rhetoric«: Luther and Hamann).Why is the connection between theology and rhetoric so close and compact (Derrida and Apokalypse of Johannes)? It matters of the pecularity the obstinacy and obstacles of faith, truth and belief (pistis). To communicate belief means to communicate an uncommunicable: the secret of God. Faith, thruth and belief needs a space of resonance in an own way of expectation between desire, reasoning, recolletion and memoration. Rhetoric assists, more: it creates bemixt between faith as belief as a relief from the Other Outside - the desire, the reasoning and the suffer of Gods own reason in the traces, spots und scenes of human language: as a occasional chance in an open space of expectation. May be: rhetoric as »Super-Cali-Fragilistic-Expi-Ali-Docoius« (a untranslatable magic exorcism and experience in exorcism again) creates a lobby or subterraneous urbanity of desire of humanity as Gods own Desire.

In paradox language reaches its limits. Among all forms of language, paradox is an extreme case, where what it is possible to say turns into its own impossibility. Paradoxically this reversal does not signal the end of language but rather one of its forms. However, in paradox the speaking subject is called into question, he loses a measure of control over his language. He is the speaker of its discourse and at the same time he is not. Surprisingly, the intensity of language doesn’t decrease in this situation but rather increases. What about religion - the other aspect of our topic - in this matter? If the old and somehow old-fashioned phenomenon of religion still has something to tell us, it would be this: that it is at the very limits of language that the event of its central speaking takes place.

The author argues, that the analysis of the »rhetoric situation« by Hans Blumenberg corresponds to the situation of modern christianity in many ways. From this, the author concludes that the theological responses to the problems of the modern situation of Christianity must be rhetorical analyzes. Therefore he interpreted F. D. E. Schleiermachers Reden über die Religion (1799) as a form of rhetorical and literary foundation of religion. Moreover, the author tries to show by the example of classic texts of modern theology, that modernization and rhetorization of religion and Christianity are closely related.

Obviously, the vera religio must have to do with truth. Truth, however, is traditionally considered to be the successful correspondence between thought (or language) and world (or reality). Now, there is a prominent tradition in modern theology that puts this approach upside down in claiming that the truth of religious convictions entails a certain kind of inadaequatio concerning the world. Three influencial examples of this very tradition - Hermeneutic Theology (E. Fuchs, E. Jüngel), Political Theology (D. Sölle, J. Moltmann), and Pacifist Peace Ethics (J.H. Yoder, S. Hauerwas) - are critically discussed and presented in terms of their specific rhetorics of theological (or even salvific) non-correspondence between faith’s possibility and the reality of the world.

There is a long during controversy about the reception of the rhetoric tradition within Christian theology. The essay focuses on the question of the relationship between voice and prayer. Against the tradition of imagining prayer as an essentially mental and inner event, which may be in the background of the grüne Heinrich’s shame about his own voice, the author underlines the essential exteriority of prayer expressed paradigmatically in the voice of prayer. This relation between prayer and voice is shown in a conversation with Martin Luther’s and Jean-Louis Chrétien’s understanding of prayer.

Starting from the concept of ›Deutungsmacht‹ (interpretational power) the origin of christian theology in the rhetoric of Paul is analyzed. The power of words against the words of power is distinguished to show, how ›power‹ (potentia) works: as the power of showing, saying and monstration. The pauline ›word of the cross‹ is a paradigm for such interpretational power, figuring and transfiguring Christ as the Crucified. The word of the cross is the origin of christian theology as rhetoric - but always with the pretention to be autorized by God himself. The problems of autorization (apostolicity) seems to be a shift from the power of words to the words of power: a history of autorization, in which the ›historic Paul‹ becomes the ›canonical Paul‹, the ›imaginary Paul‹ and at last the ›pauline dispositive‹ of the church.Who is speaking when Paul speaks?