Did God Neuter Himself For Christmas?
A friend shared this with me today. Back on the last day of Advent Kester Brewin posted on the subject of Gifts. Here’s a snippet:
The incarnation is the gift that carries no cargo. It has been emptied of all power. It is thus both offensive in its simplicity and infuriating in its humility. It is as if the church would prefer God to have done something powerful and strong – that’ll show them! – but God refuses. Why? Because that would twist the power-relationship, and leave us less than free to make our response to it.
In How (Not) To Speak of God Pete Rollins describes Derrida’s view of the perfect gift thus:
(1) the receiver does not know they have been given a gift
(2) nothing is actually given
(3) the giver does not know they have given anything.
Brewin is right that gifts bear the “invisible cargo” of power, but wrong that good gifts by definition are emptied of such power. He seems to think all power is coercive, so the only way to make giving virtuous is strip it – which, of course, requires stripping not only its substance of power but also stripping us of the knowledge of the (empty) gesture. He’s apparently done this in order to protect freedom. All of this would be necessary if virtue was synonymous with powerlessness and freedom was synonymous with isolated detachment. But neither are true. Consequently, he’s wrong about giving in general and wrong in particular about the gift of the incarnation.
This view of gifts bears no resemblance either to scriptural gifts nor the ethnographic data on gift-giving in cultures all over the world. Derrida’s conception of the perfect (powerless) gift is a defense of the hyper-Modern, and hyper-individualist view of the self and assumes as true the strictly Modern virtue of gratuitous giving. This view is itself a tainted with the power dynamics of the marketplace, which force gifts to be selfless and powerless in order to insulate them from abuse. It’s culturally arrogant of Derrida to conclude that all the world’s indigenous cultures (including the ancient Hebrews) are wrong about the nature of virtuous giving, while Modern Western culture is exclusively and uniquely correct.
Obviously I hold to a different view of gifts. I’ve written about the subject here and here and a series of posts here. My response to Rollins “perfect gift” formulation would be this:
(1) The receiver acknowledges their dependence in receipt of the gift.
(2) The gift transcends its form and grows with each subsequent giving, causing transformation.
(3) The giver acknowledges non-ownership of the gift and mutual dependence as a future receiver.
This is hardly a complete view of the “perfect” gift, but it should at least make clear the distinction between the two formulations. Rollins’ gift separates and divides people; mine unites them. A pertinent question would be: Is it God’s intention to unite people to himself and others, or divide them? Perhaps Rollins and Brewin would counter that it is necessary to first separate people in order to make them free to unite, but that is a non sequitur. It is not necessary that people be separated in order to be free (I would argue that the contrary is more likely given the deeply interdependent nature of persons – and of God).
Just because gifts can become coercive doesn’t mean they must be drained of power. Such a formulation either denies the existence of virtue (which enable the righteous exercise of power) or confuses powerlessness with virtue itself. Either way, powerless-substanceless gifts don’t bind people, and that is the purpose of gifts; kinship and intimacy. Kinship can liberate from one thing (i.e. sin), by binding to another (i.e. God).
God conquers with power. I know that’s deeply uncomfortable – especially for those, like myself, who lean anabaptist - but it’s deeply biblical. The inverse nature of the incarnation and crucifixion is not that they are powerless, but that they wield a different form of power – one that allows God to conquer with gifts rather than by violence, making kinship possible. Draining God of all power – coercive and generous – effectively neuters Him, rendering him incapable of both redemption and judgment. Such a “god” would be incapable of either mercy or justice.
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