Abstract
The Gift of the Other: Levinas, Derrida, and a Theology of Hospitality is provocative and theologically intelligible, while drawing significantly on French philosophical sources. Here, Andrew Shepherd has crafted a constructive theology of hospitality with an acute consciousness of the possible effects of Derrida and Levinas upon ethics. In many ways, Shepherd’s book is further evidence that theology has turned a corner in its relationship with some of the great thinkers of French phenomenology, in that he is not so much responding to their provocations but critically building upon their insights. This is to be welcomed and read with optimism and close attention.
In his Foreword, Steven Bouma-Prediger rightly highlights that Shepherd’s book opens up to possibilities in hospitality that apply to both ‘genuine homemaking and homecoming’ (p. x). The first of these terms is hardly popular language in schools and families these days, but alongside that of ‘homecoming’ it elicits the glory that can appear in domesticity and in the home when the stranger is loved rather than commodified, and when strangeness is welcomed as a divine encounter rather than a threat. Such a glory belongs peculiarly to the Christian tradition, and its accompanying theology is warmly attuned to the rich possibilities of goodness and happiness in the most quotidian of the events of human life.
For its first three chapters, the book uncovers the layers of thinking at work in the philosophies of Levinas and Derrida, with critical attention to the overwhelming commitment in both to ‘the Other’. In their work, appeal is made time and time again to otherness as the fundamental category for a philosophy of ethics, all the while lamenting the directions of Western philosophy in its prioritisation of ontology. In chapter 4, Shepherd begins his theological work in earnest, beginning with what he calls ‘Trinitarian Personhood and an Ontology of Communion’ (p. 98). Shepherd takes the view that post-modernity is largely the final stages of late modernity properly speaking, and the discord and anxious prying apart of the self in multiple directions is a consequence of our collusion with a culture of consumerism, of an endless pursuit of satisfying our appetites rather than the good, even if the cost is the well-being and life of the suffering Other. To help Christian practice resist this pervasive tendency, Shepherd turns to contemporary Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas, alongside interpreters of Derrida such as John Caputo. The intermingling of Eastern Orthodox Trinitarianism with postmodern deconstruction is a delightful provocation to any account of Christian theology that lazily falls into conservatism instead of the biblical demands of a radical discipleship. Shepherd achieves this walk between two schools of thought with nuance and, it has to be said, a certain sober joyfulness. He courageously agrees with Zizioulas that the only model for correctly understanding and signalling ethical behaviour is that of the divine Trinity. This is developed with reference to various patristic and contemporary theologians towards the claim that personhood, because it is Trinitarian, is to be understood most perfectly when looked at through a Christocentric lens, and thus the claim that the ‘only secure foundation’ for radical hospitality is the change brought about by the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (p. 171). Of course, this is a long way from Levinas and Derrida, perhaps further away than Shepherd realises, but it is a logical step given the author’s reading of his source material and the significance of the core doctrines of Christian faith.
So, the kind of self that Shepherd envisages based on his theology is an ‘ecclesial and eschatological self’ (p. 176), one that rests upon the actions of the Triune God and which is embedded within the gift of Creation (and not above it). This is to be regarded as the true self, but not one that reaches its end point in the present epoch; it reaches towards an eschatological horizon in which ethics is met in its fullness and in which Christ’s strange friendship is present all in all.
A lovely touch in this book is the appeal to recognisable social gestures in which readers will find comfort and resonance, such as the title of one chapter, ‘A tête à tête: A Drink with the Other’ (p. 202), and the appealing section title, ‘The Cheerfulness and Voluntary Nature of Hospitable Giving’ (p. 219). This reflects something of the critique Shepherd applies to Levinas and Derrida in the first half of the book, in which he wishes to step away from their assumptions of violence at some kind of an ontological level in the human condition. The strangeness and hostility that Levinas and Derrida presume (or incorporate?) into their accounts of sociality are, for Shepherd, an imposition, and he would prefer to theologise with a purview of both the torments and the joys in human living. Hence his positive presentations of discrete moments of the shared value in hospitality, of a drink or a meal, or even the implicit blessings of shared silence. This is what, in his conclusion, Shepherd calls ‘grounded hospitality’ (p. 246), in which Christian self-giving and the sharing of challenges overcome the exploitative rhetorical discourses of the ‘war on terror’ and ‘the market’ (p. 246), and their resultant effects upon both the natural environment and what Pope Francis has recently called our ‘social ecology’. The Christian vision is one that encompasses both the grand universal categories as well as the seemingly banal and innocuous actions of human beings as they attend to one another, and every action has an eternal and ethical value.
For readers of Levinas and Derrida and of theology, Shepherd’s book is a beautiful contribution to a fascinating and renewing conversation. He is willing to follow the logic of his own argument and be unsettled by it, and invites his readers to do the same. If, however, a criticism is to be made, it might do to consider a theme not at all prominent in the book, that of sin. While there is appeal to the broad and deep tradition of Christian thought (across Western and Eastern divisions), and there is a credible reading of figures such as Moltmann and Barth along the journey, there is a tendency here to avoid the language of sin and, in its place, to refer to the mimesis of objectifying the Other, of violence and irrationality, and to the exploitation and commodification of others (including children and refugees). No doubt, all of these are devastating realities to which theologians are called to address their biblical critique, but the notion of sin is an important part of the Bible’s witness, and indeed Christian witness, in that it is the name given to the conscious departure of humanity from light to darkness, through which evil of every kind is given its entry point in a world that, to begin with, is deemed ‘good’. Shepherd gives a concise and orderly account of sin about half way through the book, but does not take it up with energy again. His enthusiasm for a grounded hospitality can be refined further with a more vigilant watchfulness for the reality of sin and its place in a theology that meets and is confronted by alterity. Perhaps this is merely a reflection of the nature of theology in the contemporary academy, and perhaps all of us are guilty of it, and, in fairness to Shepherd, he certainly gives it some treatment. Nevertheless, the boldness of the author’s other claims can be strengthened by a more constant awareness of the insidiousness of sin, and the spiritual tradition that sin wins when we avoid naming it as such.
In any case, the above criticism does not rob this book of its value. It asserts a theology of hospitality that is well argued and enticing, and which avoids falling into sectarian or denominational ghettos along the way. For those who are wrestling with Derrida and Levinas but have eyes also for the cross and the resurrection, The Gift of the Other is a must read and an unavoidable contribution in a lively and important debate.