Murphy 1

Global Center For AdvancedStudies

Holy Terror

Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory in Christian Theology and Praxis

Murphy 2

Aaron Murphy

Is Theology Dead ? CTHEOC501 David Reinhart January, 1, 2015

Introduction While the death of theology is being felt in academia after

the enlightenment. The theological framework is outdated and

premodern in most churches. While much intellectual critique has

been given to the poverty of the Big Other, there has been little

analysis given to the psychological reasons. What they often miss

is the comfort that onto-theology brings. The death of the Big

Other God means giving up a kind of comfortable certainty. This

discomfort can be heard in Nietzsche's Mad Man when he cries out

asking, “who unchained the Earth from the Sun?”

Ernest Becker's Denial of Death explores how all belief is a

denial of death. He uses an existential psychoanalytical

Murphy 3

framework to delve into the human condition and the human psyche.

This is a similar framework to the one that Peter Rollins uses,

which draws heavily from the work of the likes of Lacan, Zizek,

and existentialist like Kierkegaard. Using Becker's

psychoanalytic anthropology and Rollins' radical theology, a

critique and response to the problem of the death of theology can

be formulated.

What situates Becker in the Judeo-Christian tradition is his

debt to Kierkegaard's psychology. Pagan philosophical traditions

expressed either detachment from the physical world and a life of

contemplation (Platonism) or the abandonment of contemplation and

emphasized self-indulgence (Lucretius).

In contrast, the type of self that Kierkegaard proclaims is a

paradox of both, “the infinite and the finite, the temporal and

the eternal, freedom and necessity” (Kierkegaard, 43).What pagan

philosophy attempted to do for Kierkegaard is to come down on one

side of this paradox to see what is really essential for a human

being. The question for the pagans was to figure out whether the

self was primarily the body or soul. Kierkegaard, rejecting such

Murphy 4

notions by introducing a dialectic that presented a human being

as a complex interplay of both internal and external factors all

of which were in relation to each other.

Rollins himself owes a debt to Kierkegaard as well, which he

admits to, and it is on the figure of Kierkegaard that Becker's

analysis of the human condition turns. It is also from

Kierkegaard, who all future writers in the existential thinkers

would draw inspiration, including those who would rework

psychoanalysis from its narrow focus on sexuality to a more

robust focus on human existence as such.

Becker's Existential Psychoanalysis

To first understand Becker's philosophy and how it has

resonance with the practices and theory Rollins espouses, we must

first understand his use of psychoanalysis. Becker takes familiar

psychoanalytical theory and broadens them to be existential

categories. For Becker, the main dilemma is the paradoxical

two-fold nature of what could be called an existential

anthropology: “Man has a symbolic identity that brings him

sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a

Murphy 5

name, a life history”(Becker 28). Unlike most other animals,

human beings have consciousness of self. They can say the pronoun

I, have an internal world, can imagine possibilities for

themselves, create and dream. Each person grasps themselves as a

symbolic self which is unique from all others and has and

understands that that self they refer to is sentient. At the same

time human beings are mortal. The curse and gift of self-

consciousness is to be able to know that I am I, while at the

same time know that we have the same fate as every other thing on

the planet.

This is where Becker begins to introduce strong psychoanalytic

elements into his work. The master stroke is to emphasize the

idea of conscious self understanding of meaning into the anal

stage. It is universally understood that the anal stage is

concerned with appropriate social rules manifested in toilet

training. The element that Becker introduces is the fact that the

child knows the meaning of the waste product he creates: “the

anus rand its incomprehensible product represents not only

boundedness, but the fate as well of all that is physical: decay

Murphy 6

and death” (Becker 31). Thus, a more robust existential

interpretation of anality takes into account the fact that the

child knows that social rules and codes ultimately protect

against one thing: the personal extinction of the child who is

learning them.

The child, if not reared in a manner that is understanding and

patient can become neurotic. This neurosis, which might be

fetishized in an obsession of a certain phobia is actually a

response to the global fear of death which is focused into a

single point as a way of managing locally what is global and

universal.

Phenomenologically, the movement into anality represents the

birth of the child as a being that grasps himself as a separate

entity. Before this point he exists in a type of quasi symbiosis

with mother who is the totality of the child's life-world. Now

the child finds himself in a bind. He is still dependent, yet at

the same time he is conscious of himself as an independent being.

He

wants freedom, and thus enters into the Oedipal complex.

Murphy 7

Classically the Oedipus complex saw the child as a rival of

his father for sexual reasons. Becker re-works the oedipal

complex to be more robust and holistic. In Becker's framework,

the child's motives are not entirely sexual. Instead the child

sees the father as a rival because he wants to be his own father

(Becker 36).

What better way to secure all the power and resources against

death than to be one's own father? He would be totally self

generating and have full uninterrupted access to the person that

he associates with the spring of all life? What the child, who

still does not fully understand sex differences or biology, is

fighting against is his own finitude. He wants to be the spring

of his own life.

This is what Becker, drawing from Spinoza calls a causa sui. The

child takes upon himself the project of becoming a god with full

power over himself and all of his faculties. The Oedipal project

means adhering to a type of self sufficiency that makes the child

almost sees himself as not needing anybody. Needing anything

would mean, after all, that the child was not an all powerful

Murphy 8

uncaused force unto himself, independent from all causal

relations in the world. This is why children of this age can be

so stubborn. Asking for help is a sign that they lack the power

to be a god and are mortal like everybody else.

This is Inevitably, the causa sui project is abandoned. It has

to be in order for the child to fully enter into society. As

Becker succinctly puts it, “the child gives up being his own

father to the Fathers” (). Ultimately he enters the world of

social codes. When he does there is a sense of loss for the

remainder of power that he would have if he were god-like, thus

he searches for his immortality outside himself via a

transference object.

Becker's work begins to take a religious tone here. We look

for a power supplement in a transference-object. This object

serves as a type of master signifier that makes life ultimately

meaningful and secures immortality for the person who is faithful

to this god object.

Causa Sui and the Imago

This is the first point of harmony with Rollins. Both thinkers

Murphy 9

deal with how theological terms we look for a power that we feel

is lost and will complete us. As mentioned above, for Becker this

is the causa sui. Rollins deals with this power loss under the

heading of the Lacanian imago. In both cases we see how religion

and theology works as an object for a power that we perceive as

being lost.

The mirror stage takes place between 6 and 18 months of age,

while the anal stage lasts from 18 months to three years. Before

this period the child does not differentiate between himself and

his environment. The mirror phase marks the child's grasping of

himself as an independent entity.

Rollins using Lacan, seems to see the trauma as separation from a

sense of holistic oneness that comes from a per-lingual world.

This is the return to the womb. Becker on the other hand, sees

the loss as the exact opposite, who see the child as protecting a

kind of god-like individuality. This problem is easily resolvable

though. The child sees the causa sui power as part of the

Lacanian imago. The gap that exists is between the image the

child has of himself as a god that is perfectly capable and the

Murphy 10

way he actually experiences himself, as a subject with drives and

desires that skirt the boundaries of his control and erupt out of

him both metaphorically and literally. This gap is what the God-

supplement is often used to fill.

God of the Gaps in the Gap

The theology that is born out of desire for what some kind of

primordial loss often results in what Bonhoeffer would call the

Deus Ex Machina. God here acts as a supplement for what lacks in

human agency. The world after the enlightenment is a world for

Bonhoeffer and Rollins, come of age. We no longer live within a

super-naturalistic frame of reference that relies on the divine

for direct participation in the physical world. The planets get

along just fine without God's hands moving them. What is often

missed is to what effect this paradigm shift rocked the western

world. No longer was God the invisible hand holding the planets

up in the heavens a growing understanding of the sciences painted

a new picture of the universe as a play of causal forces.

At the same time, this unshackling of humanity was the birth

of a much more anthropocentric world. This emphasis on human will

Murphy 11

and choice best shown with the increase in the belief in

democracy and the abolition of the divine right of kings. No

longer did humans accept that God ordered hierarchies by divine

will that could not be protested against. God was in essence,

decentered from existence as an all powerful cause. Yet this is

the theology used in churches today that has been dead since the

19th century. What is not taken into consideration is the

emotional and psychological comfort that this idea provides.

Before the advent of modernity the Deus Ex Machina was

somewhat valid as an explanation for phenomena, even if it still

served as a causa sui, it could still fit into a framework that

was somewhat justifiable from a premodern worldview. Yet it still

lingers after all of this time as a security blanket. It is only

with the gap between intellect and emotional dependency that the

source of the Deus Ex Machina is laid bare as a power supplement.

Yet it is hard to overcome, since it is being protected by layers

of defense mechanisms.

For Becker character is a vital lie. Simply put, nobody can

take the shock and awe of existence carte blanche. Human's build

Murphy 12

character as a way to cut back the intensity of life. We simply

can not stand alone against what Becker calls, “[man's] real

creature feeling before the crushing and negating miracle of Being”

(Becker, 73). All character traits, our belief in any sense of

cosmic specialness, politics, narratives, and even identity arise

out of the need to protect ourselves from the fear and trembling

of being before Being as such. It should be said that not all

defense mechanisms are bad. Healthy defense mechanisms, such as

sublimation. Even these defense mechanisms are not part of what

can be called the the authentic person. Drawing from

Kierkegaard's characterology

Becker states that, “the lie of character is built up because the

child needs to adjust to the world, to parents, and to his own

existential experience” (Becker, 73). Before the child is even

fully formed he begins to develop character traits, which make

life tolerable by cutting himself off from the larger

experiential horizon.

Religious narratives, for Becker, are just one more story

that we rely on to make up for that help shield us from the

Murphy 13

trauma of Being after after castration from the causa sui

project. It is natural to look for power elsewhere. We look

externally for sources of power to secure us to compensate for

our existential vulnerability. God from this perspective sounds

very much like the Deus Ex Machina, which, building on

Bonhoeffer's Prison Letters, is very God that Rollins critiques

in Insurrection.

For Rollins, even though he does not use the concept of the

causa sui directly, it can well be placed in his work since he,

like Becker draws upon psychoanalysis and the use of defense

mechanisms. Rollins drawing on Bonhoeffer and psychoanalysis

states himself:” The religious God provides provides us with

such stability that the experience of losing it involves nothing

less than the horrifying experience of being forsaken”

(Rollins,16). Isn't Rollins saying exactly what Becker is?

Namely, that God often functions as a transference object to

ensure stability in a world that bears down on every human

subject with its sheer too muchness? The religious beliefs and

religious character often function as a way to shut out any sense

Murphy 14

of contingency. God functions as a master signifier stabilizing

personal meaning in the lives of people. Any time this belief

system is attacked the individual feels it as an attack on

himself since his very sense of identity comes from being

enclosed in a rigid structure that is ultimately built on straw.

In this way the God of onto-theology is a limiting factor on

human life. This all-powerful God of Philosophy stops a person

from standing before the larger horizon of Being, while at the

same time ensuring that human power is supplemented when the edge

of finitude is reached by a person and they experience the

boundaries of their own agency.

What a person needs to do to be liberated from such a way of

thinking involves a kind of trauma. Footing must be lost. The

ground beneath the persons feet must give way and the character

defenses the person has built up must violently collapse in upon

themselves. This involves undergoing a certain kind of living

death that is found paradoxically in the central event of

Christianity. In order for a person to wake up to a more living

faith that is not a mere security blanket that functions as a way

Murphy 15

to help them sleep at night they must undergo the experience of

standing naked in the storm of life. The very experience

testified to by Jesus on the cross.

Christian Nihilism

One of the central motifs of Christianity is that of the

crucifixion. During this event Jesus is put outside all of the

cultural acceptable forms of terror management. Jesus, God

Godself is stripped of the structures that secure his symbolic

identity. This is not a biological death, what could be called

real death. It is instead the type of death that a prisoner feels

when he is thrown in jail and forgotten by all the social

structures that should acknowledge him as a human being. It is a

living death in which a person is excommunicated and reduced to a

being of sheer biological life.

In psychoanalytical terms, a person can only become authentic

when they are exposed to what they are underneath their defense

mechanisms many are which are found in forms of inauthentic

existence. For Becker, drawing upon the psychology of

Kierkegaard, there are certain forms that this inauthenticity can

Murphy 16

take. The most widely experienced in today's society, which is

becoming more and more mechanized is the “normal cultural man.”

This is the person who holds down the job he is supposed to, does

what he is told by the ethical standards of the day. He might

even be praised by others for being an exemplar of the ethical

standards of the day, yet within him lies a dark secret: He has

conformed to these standards in order to cut himself off from the

broader existential horizon. He is playing it safe. At the

deepest level this is the person who has convinced himself that

he wants exactly what society offers and nothing more. He has

manged to shut out any deeper yearnings that might expand his

world.

Much of theology in America is aimed at perfecting a person

into a “normal cultural man.” Christianity for these people is a

way of ensuring the static social order that shuts out any kind

of opening through which new possibilities might arise. They

simply do not want to stand open before possibility. Beliefs are

a way to ensure a pagan idea of eternity that is found in the

idea of endless stasis and certainty. In a Kierkegaardian sense,

Murphy 17

this was the problem with much of Danish culture in his day.

Christianity becomes reduced to a purely socio-ethical form of

life, which in its most radical form is nothing except a social

code and menu of behaviors that have completely external locus of

control. In effect this type of Christianity functions as a way

to avoid the experience of Christ's crucifixion all together. It

is testified to only as a belief amongst others, not as a lived

event that must be undergone before one can become an authentic

human being.

The example par-excellence of the normal cultural Christian

is found in the Fydor Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor. The Inquisitor

himself falls into a category all his own. He after all, is

willing to stand before Christ in open rebellion. He fully

believes in what he is doing, even if what he is doing is an act

of rebellion. What he seeks is to make the entire world into a

normal cultural world by blinding them with the immediate. The

people who follow him are cultural Christians, and are thus only

as good or bad as the social codes the Inquisitor creates allow

them to be. It is the the followers of the Inquisitor who

Murphy 18

represent the automatic cultural men of society. They are more

than happy to obey whatever laws are put in place and will

happily abandon their freedom to block out the wider scope of

being to reduce anxiety through both routine and mindless

pleasure.

It is easy to see why both Rollins and Becker are fans of

Kierkegaard, for whom a person to be crucified with Christ, which

means, “having the self broken in order to become itself” (Becker

88). Becker also finds this line of thinking in Zen Buddhism as

well, not to mention psychoanalysis (Becker, 89). For those who

are confessing Christians what makes this type of death so unique

turns on the person of Jesus himself who is God incarnate in the

flesh. Jesus offers himself over as an act of radical solidarity

to the entire human race.

This crucifixion is a necessity for a person to be

authentic, or as Becker himself says, “the school of anxiety

leads to possibility only by destroying the vital lie of

character”(Rollins,88). Like Christ we must stand before the

universe naked. Most churches build up a narrative that works as

Murphy 19

a sheltering device, when in actuality to stand in the place of

Christ is to be hurled into the middle of being without armor.

Rollins sums up this experience to be not a site of security, or

a safe harbor where personal beliefs are re-enforced, but

instead, “signals the experience in which all that gives us

meaning is lost”(Becker, 22).

While this nihilistic move seems morose, it is a necessity for

human development. The person is shut-up inside themselves,

blinding themselves through immediate pleasure (what Kierkegaard

would call the aesthetic) or blindly follow the cultural mores of

the social codes around them. What lies on the other side of this

is a new authentic person, who is ready to face up to the

hardships of life. This person can drink the cup of life dry with

all of its bitterness and sweetness. This new orientation is

described by Becker as,“an opening towards new possibility, the

ability to face into anxiety” (Becker, 72).

The crucifixion experience, for Becker is the only way for

the person to open up to possibility or as he puts it himself:

[the self] must be thrash around in its finitude, it has to,

Murphy 20

'die' to see whats beyond it” (Becker, 89). The pay off of this

thrashing about is an opening to what Becker, who begins to sound

a lot like Tillich, calls the Ultimate Power of Creation.

Although it is the only time he uses the saying in the entire

text, Becker is using a term that sounds more like an existential

theology than the all too familiar theist framework of onto-

theology. The person is brought into contact with the Ground of

Being in which all beings have their being. This Ultimate Power

of Creation seems to be a wellspring of personal power to create

one's self and venture courageously out into the world rather

than a deity.

As has been mentioned before, theology in the church is an

example of how terror is managed through a narrative that

provides people with a transference object to compensate for the

loss of perceived power after castration from the causa sui

project. Such belief systems operate as a shield against the

shock and awe of being. Sociologically this causes a heard

mentality, in which groups of like-minded believers flock to each

other in order to re-enforce their own beliefs. In Kierkegaardian

Murphy 21

language, what results is “the crowd”, the source of untruth.

Such crowds can be very reactionary,choosing to hold on to ideas

long after they are antiqued in the name of security and

certainty.

Such reactive communities are often willing to push out others

who might have ideas that are foreign, because they perceive them

as an existential threat. It also has been mentioned that the

crucifixion offers a counterpoint to such ways of thinking, in

which one stands raw before the too-muchness of being.

From Theism to A/Theism

One way that Christian communities manage terror is through

rigid beliefs that guarantee certainty and clarity. While such

ways of thinking can provide a sense of peace, such a piece comes

at the price of holding on to antiquated structures that are

becoming irrelevant in the 21st century. The need for literal

clear-cut images of God reduce God to onto-theology.

Modernism also is to blame for such ways of thinking about

God. Science has become the dominant way of finding truth, and

has expanded itself to all fields and modes of discourse. This

Murphy 22

has lead to the death of ambiguity in church culture and with it

the death of mystery. Theologies of certainty put a great deal of

emphasis on having an exact object of study. While this provides

comfort, because it promises exactitude, it is also squishes any

type of critique or analysis that might open up Christian

theology to become part of a wider cultural discourse.

One alternative offered by Rollins proposes is what is called

a/theism. Unlike having a positive theology that is based on pure

affirmation, a/theism is a return to the via negativa. Unlike the

dominant way of modernist thinking, which puts a great deal of

effort into making objective truth claims about phenomena,

a/theism sees talking about God as a language game, in which all

speech-acts are failed attempts at trying to describe a hyper-

present saturated phenomena that exceeds human grasp, but at the

same time, must be put into language which is always less than

that which is overflows both understanding and experience.

Instead of objective description, which is always transparent

in it's subject matter, all descriptions are seen instead as a

poetic response to that which is excessive, overwhelming and

Murphy 23

eluding our very capacities to describe it. A/theism is a

paradoxical move that allows both affirmation and denial. All

truth claims are seen as constructs for something that exceeds

what language can possibly contain.

A/theism allows the Christian community to make claims about

the divine, while at the same time allowing them to understand

that such claims are not literal but arise out of necessity. This

opens up theology to a much wider horizon that is flexible since

all descriptions are provisional.

At the same time, a/theism can not be said to be a middle

position that will find resolution in some final synthesis.

Instead, what arises between affirmation and negation is

theological dialogue itself: Every theistic claim is held in

tension with an un-naming based on the hyper-pr of God. In this

way, even the critiques of the New Atheists like Dawkins,

Dennett, and Harris are seen as a form of negative theology that

remind the believer that God is beyond the rational-empirical

methods that are used in fundamentalism to define God as an

object.

Murphy 24

A/theism is a complex dialectic between thesis and anti-

thesis in which the final product is not a synthesis,but instead

the discourse that rises between the twin poles of affirmation

and negation. Such a dialectic values dialogue between

conflicting points of view, because for every signification the

Christian community has of God, it also glorifies God to have God

de-signified.

While signification points to what the believer understands God

to be de-signification is the act of pointing out God's

hypernymitity. A/theism thus shifts discourse from a re-enforcing

monologue to a dialogue which can open the Christian community up

to the world, since the act of having discourse put into question

is seen as part of the Christian faith. Where as before doubt was

seen as a totally negative phenomenon that indicated a lack of

faith, now doubt can be seen in itself as an a holy experience.

When one doubts there is often an inability to construct a

language to express what one is experiencing. The familiar

vocabulary that is used to express belief does not work. Instead

of being a form of sickness or weakness. The experience the

Murphy 25

silence of doubt can be seen as holy. The doubter who does not

know how to speak of their doubts occupies the same space as Job

in the Old Testament who while in the presence of God in the

whirlwind said, “I shut my mouth.”

Th traditional understanding of this verse might be interpret

Job as having words to speak but choosing not to say them out of

respect. A more subtle reading of Job might see Job's silence not

as a choice to speak something that is present, but instead as

the failure of language to construct any type of meaningful

statement due to Job's being in direct contact with God's hyper-

presence. The space that Job occupies would be defined by Rollins

as the God-shaped hole. Borrowing the phrase from Pascal, Rollins

reversed its polarity. Job's challenge is not to keep his mouth

shut to keep from offending God, but instead he must construct

language to speak top describe an experience in which all words

fail.

God Beyond Transference Object.

While Becker critiqued religion he also had a profound

respect for it: “ It answers directly to the problem of

Murphy 26

transference by expanding awe and terror to the whole universe

where they belong” (Becker, 202). This form of transference can

be seen as an unfetisihization. While a transference object, such

as a personal relationship, an artistic task, or a career is a

singular point to compensate for castration from the causa sui

project, only God has a scope big enough to encompass the awe and

terror of being. We can see how Job is a helpful figure. Job

stood alone before being itself speechless of it's power and

terror.

Yet at the same time, Becker's explanation of God-as-

transference-object is still a claim rooted in onto-theology. God

for Becker, is just another object that helps us sleep at night

by providing for us all that we lack. Any time God is an object,

God will become fetishized as an ultimately meaningful object

amongst other objects. Religion is reduced to just another way of

coping with the terror of reality. Rollins holds the key to move

us to a psychoanalytic understanding of religion that is beyond

transference. Drawing upon the critique of ideology, the God-as-

transference-object can be seen for what it is: an idol. In fact,

Murphy 27

idol and idolatry have the same root (Rollins 12). Now laying

fully exposed, we can see that making God a transference object

is an act of idolatry for the orthodox Christian community.

Idolatry takes two basic forms: The first form can be called

aesthetic idolatry, meaning God exists fully in a material object

like a statue. The second form is much more subtle and modern.

This is what can be called conceptual idolatry The belief that

God can be completely captured in a theological system

(Rollins,12). This conceptual idolotry is not the type that

attempts to make God present through a visible rendering, but

instead reduces God to an object of the intellect, (Rollins,12).

If God is hyper-present as Rollins claims, then it is

impossible to make God a transference object. God as hyper-

present is a saturated phenomena, which overflows both experience

and understanding. This saturation is the reason why theology is

over-coded. The over-coding comes from the excess of meaning.

Much like a fractal, which has endless layers the further the

observer looks it, every time God is signified there are more

significations that arise in a endless string of signifiers.

Murphy 28

The idol is only rendered when theology becomes a science

that promises exactitude and objectivity. Science must snip off

any unessential excess through physical and conceptual

reduction. While this type of reduction is necessary for the

scientific language game to take place, the over-extension of

this game has cause the Biblical text and God to be reduced to

idolic status. Instead, theology is best thought of as a poetic

attempt to make meaning through symbols which arises from an an

event that exceeds what can be seen as exceeding description

through a scientific paradigm. God talk is not what could be

called “blueprint language,” a way of talking that offers precise

descriptions, but a creative response to a tear in the very

fabric of meaning itself that can not be described with accuracy,

but instead calls for a creative response which testifies to the

crater left in God's wake. Such a way of thinking makes exact

transference impossible, since God can not be nailed down to a

specific object, but can only be described through a symbolic

poetics.

In order for transference to take place, there must be an

Murphy 29

object such as a person, or a concept that can be at least

partially identified with as present. A/theism reminds the

believer that any attempt to objectify God as an object or

concept is impossible. The symbols of worship are seen as just

that: pointing to something beyond themselves. It is only the

idolotrous gaze that apprehends the object as present in the

object .

Idolotrous theology calls for God to be a system of rigid

concepts. Such a way of thinking keeps the contemporary church

trapped in a pre-modern framework. This theology functions to

reduce God to a transference object that can be identified with

to make up for a lack in personal power. The static identity and

spatio-temporal location of the object allows it to be identified

again and again for transference. This is why contemporary forms

of Christianity practice theologies that emphasize literalism and

objectivity in either physical objects or conceptual objects.

This type of idolotry was strongly spoken against in the early

church. Most art that can be found in catacombs of early

believers falls into the category of symbolic realism. These

Murphy 30

frescos never depicted the literal object that they were about.

They chose to use symbols such as the hen or the shepherd boy as

stand-ins for their subject matter so that it would not be

fetishized as an object of idolotrous worship.

In the same way that the ancient Christians avoided literal

physical depictions in paintings which could lead to idolotry,

the church should have a theology that is iconic. This iconic

theology would see all the symbol for God as non-reducable to any

kind of literalism since all God-symbols are stand-ins for God,

(Rollins, 38).

Fetishization, for Becker is a strategy for managing

existential terror. It occurs when global terror is focused on a

single entity. When children are young they fetishize the

genitals of the mother. This allows the child to believe that the

awe and terror of existence is in a specific place that can be

monitored (Becker, 39). This kind of behavior continues

throughout life as a person finds ways to rid the world of it's

ontological sting. By focusing the too-muchness of being into a

single point the rest of the world becomes managable because all

Murphy 31

the inexplicable beauty and terror of creation becomes located in

one single structure. Fetishization is not limited to physical

structures. If it were than any sense of arousal or terror would

be unachievable in the absence of a physical representation of

the fetish-object and fantasies involving fetishes would be

impossible. Arousal is possible from mental representationd of

the object just as much as physical representations of the

object.

,Mental objects can be anything that can be held in

consciousness, whether it be a concrete shape or an abstraction.

It thus can be seen how a theological doctrine can become a

fetish object. The fetishization of theology serves as a

container for existential dread.

In contrast the point of the icon is not to be grasped. An

icon is never literal but is a symbolic aid that is irreducable

to words, images, or experience (Rollins, 38). Icons do the

oposite of fethization. They open the worshiper up to that which

is beyond them. They are not stop signs of where are journey for

the divine stops, but arrows giving us a starting point to what

Murphy 32

is beyond them. The irreducable quality of the symbol imbues it

with an ambiguity that stops fetishization through partial

concealment.

An icon is also an absence. In post-structuralist terms,

language is a sign of what is not present. Fetishization of an

icon is impossible if rightly understood, because God is

literally not in the symbol. It is only through the fetishization

of the icon to construct a transference object to manage

existential terror that idol fetishization occurs. In other

words, idolotry is what happens when we take our symbols into

rigid singular points that are the actual spatial location of

God. Such idolotry can only ends up making God into an entity

bound to either the external space of a statue, as in primitive

religions or to the internal thought space of doctrines, creeds,

and truth statements.

Systematic theology often times attempts clarity. This

stripping away of an ambiguity comes from the desire to turn

religious symbols into idols. The more rigid the doctrines and

dogmas, the more transference can occur through fetishization.

Murphy 33

Icons on the other hand, are like the mirrors used in optics

experiments. They deflect the gaze of the viewer into space like

a light beam being bounced into the vacuum of space.

In terms of birthing theology again in the contemporary

church, having theology as icon instead of idol would cause

theology to be seen as a poetic way of making meaning. This would

allow other forms of discourse, like science to be seen as valid,

since it has different kind of language game than religion. This

would make church practice much more inter-disciplinary as well.

Instead of shutting out all other forms of knowledge as

existential threats to the transference object that must be

protected, it would be understood that God-talk is symbolic, not

literal, and that other subject areas have other ways of talking,

since they are different language games with different internal

rules of logic.

Killing God in Church

The first step to re-birthing theology in the Christian

community is to, ironically put God to death as the idol. One

such community that does this is Ikon's practice of Atheism for

Murphy 34

Lent. During this practice participants are asked to give up God

for the lenten season. While this might seem to be nothing but

tongue-in-cheek irony, Rollins is actually seeking to bring

participants into a space where they experience the awe and

terror of Christ on the cross. During this time the

participants read some of the greatest critiques by the likes of

Nietzsche, Marx, Feurbach, and Freud.

Each one of these figures was such a powerful force, not

because of their critiques were founded in science, but in

culture. Each one on one level or another dealt with the

idolotry: For Nietzsche this meant tapping them with a hammer to

expose their hollowness. Marx exposed how religion is often used

as an opiate to oppress the masses. Freud showed how God

functioned as a form of wish-fulfillment for the father we never

had. Feurbach teaches us that theology is antropology, meaning

our figuring of the divine our projections of human traits

magnified one hundred fold.

The power of such critiques is their attack on the onto-theology

in some shape or form. In psychoanalytical terms onto-theology is

Murphy 35

a result of fetishization. They are secular prophets that lead us

to Gologotha to experience a crucifixion where belief is put to

death and like Christ, they stand before being without an

available transference object to shield them from their own

terror.

What makes the terror managable is not a transference-object,

like in most cases, but solidarity with Christ who suffered the

same loss. On the cross Christ does not act as a proxy to

experience what we do not have to, but allows us to undergo a

transformation by standing with humanity in the suffering and the

darkness.

What happens during contemplative practices like Atheism

for Lent is a shift from God being seen as an object to god being

seen as the Ground of Being. God is no longer a mythical figure

in the heavens, but is in the midst of life. The participants

enter into a new life-affirming form of being that can find joy

in the midst of suffering.

God is no longer an entity that is ultimately meaningful

sucking all life out of the surrounding world, like a black hole,

Murphy 36

but is that which makes everything else ultimately meaningful

(Rollins, 137). This is a very Tillichian move on Rollins' part.

God ceases to be an entity and is instead that, “which calls

everything else into existence”, (Rollins,137). This God is

beyond fetishization, since very literally speaking, is a ground

and not an object. This Ground is a no-thing that gives birth to

and establishes everything else.

This theology is beyond the narrow legalistic structure of

undead theology in church today. It is not a theology that

presupposes God as an entity beyond the world, but is the ground

that everything else rests on irreducible to an object and thus,

beyond the onto-theology that tends to dominate most discourse in

churches today.

In order to break the hold of the undead theology, what is

needed is not intellectual debate, but spaces and practices like

the ones Rollins is providing where people can come and

experience a psychological transformation. They allow people to

have the kind of experiential modalities that are popular in

churches today.

Murphy 37

One of the critiques of theology in the church is that it has

become a matter of private conscious powered by nothing but

subjective emotivism. If that is true then for theology to be

reborn as an intellectual discipline, there must be affective

practices that emphasize transformation through participation in

community.

Catharsis is a central experience of the death of God, in

which the causa sui that acts as a power supplement dies as

transference object. This crucifixion kills the God of onto-

theology that is pre-modern, exahsted and holding the church back

from intellectual discourse. It is only then that God can be

experienced as the ground of being, which causes everything to

emerge, as supposed to just a specific entity.

This theology is not only a thought structure, but can be seen

through the ways in which it's believers live their lives. They

are like Father Zossima from the Brothers Karamozov, for whom

everything is so beautiful that he falls down and kisses the

earth (Dostoevsky,78). Zossima is a man that can take in the

whole awe of creation, and stands awestruck at the whole of

Murphy 38

created order. Since he sees God as that which causes everything

to exist there is no secular-sacred divide since the profane for

him is sacred. His church is the whole wide world.

This person is not afraid to live outwardly, to venture out into

the world with all of it's uncertainty. Building on Derrida, it

can be said that for this person God is that which makes every

other other, not as otherness, but as that which makes the

otherness come forth. He lives the resurrected life, which is an

unconditional gift for better or worse.

Murphy 39

Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. The Free Press: New York, NY 1975.

Dostoevsky, Fydor. The Grand Inquisitor with Related Chapters from The BrothersKaramazov. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc: Indianapolis, 1993

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Sickness Unto Death. Penguin Books: London, 1849

Rollins, Peter. How(Not)To Speak of God Howard Books: New York, 2006

Rollins, Peter. The Idolotry of God: Breaking Our Need for Certainty and Satisfaction. Howard Books: New York, 2012

Rollins, Peter. Insurrection: To Believe is Human To Doubt, Divine. Howard Books: New York, 2011