– Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995. Three gelatin silver prints, 148 x 121 cm each –
“But on rising from the table where [Foucault] had inwardly decreed this end [to the writing of History of Sexuality 2 and 3], he knocked over a glass that broke, and just then it seemed to him that the time of satisfaction was ended; it had not lasted but a few seconds.”
– Mark Jordan, citing Mathieu Lindon, Ce qu’aimer veut dire (2011), in Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault (2015), 200 –
“Philosophy [and, in my view, Theology] is always a breaking of the mirror.”
– Alain Badiou, Conditions, 25 –
The author of Ephesians (most scholars don’t think it’s a Pauline letter) writes, “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up . . . “ (4:15, NRSV).
Riffing on Judith Butler’s analysis of speech in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997), in which Butler continues their engagement with J.L. Austin’s theory of language, I ask, What kind of speech act is “speaking the truth in love”?
Is speaking the truth in love (a) an example of a performative speech act (a type of illocutionary speech act), a form of speech that immediately does what it announces (e.g., “I pronounce you husband and husband”)? Or, is speaking the truth in love (b) an example of a perlocutionary speech act, a type of speech that, as a result of being spoken, sets in motion a chain of consequences (e.g., “Get out, get out before I kill you!”)?
In other words, when we read, “But speaking the truth in love, we grow up . . .” are we to think that (a) we grow up at the very moment we speak the truth in love, that in the act of speaking the truth in love we become a body possessed by the mind of Messiah? Or, are we to think that (b) we grow up into Christ as a consequence of speaking the truth in love, that the future or promise of speaking the truth in love is growing into a body ruled by the mind of Messiah?
Perhaps the answer is (c): none of the above.
The Greek is (for me!) a bit tricky, but it is helpful to have it before our eyes: “[1] Alētheuontes de en agapē [2] auxēsōmen eis auton ta panta, hos estin hē kephalē, Christos.”
What we take Ephesians 4:15 to mean is, I think, determined by the words 1) Alētheuontes and 2) auxēsōmen.
- Alētheuontes = speaking the truth, and it is a present active participle. It means that speaking the truth in love is a way of life that is ongoing.
- Auxēsōmen = must/should/might grow into, and it is an aorist subjunctive verb, first person plural. It means that growth is a possible outcome of beginning to (I take the aorist here as indicating a “point of entry” into some action) speak the truth in love.
If my analysis is correct, it would seem that “speaking the truth in love” is neither a performative nor a perlocutionary speech act. It does not do what it says in the moment of its saying. Moreover, there is no guarantee that in saying it, that in speaking the truth in love, we will grow into a body ruled by Messiah. The author hopes that growth will follow the act of speaking the truth in love.
There is another possibility, answer (d): speaking the truth in love is neither a performative nor a perlocutionary speech act, but it is intended to become a perlocutionary speech act.
Ephesians 4 begins with the author neither asking nor demanding that their readers “make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Instead, they “beg” their readers to do so (vv 1-3). The author does not have the necessary status to make either a performative or a perlocutionary statement. The outcome of either kind of speech act depends on a convincing citation of law, tradition, context, and so on.
The force of the author’s statement depends entirely on the character of its readers. If they are the subjects of messianic desire, then they will forsake deceitful living and speak the truth in love, growing into the body of the Messiah and thereby maintaining “the unity of the Spirit in the body of peace.”
These observations are essential for understanding what it means to speak the truth in love. For too many Christians, this passage means: You are free to say the nastiest things to others so long as you do it gently and with a smile. Bless their hearts!
Ephesians 4:15 is often read as blessing hubris–this even though the author begs the readers to adopt a position of weakness and humility at the outset (vv 1-3). Weakness and humility are the preconditions for speaking the truth in love.
To understand why weakness and humility are preconditions for speaking the truth . . . in love, let us briefly consider Alain Badiou’s elaboration of the Truth in Conditions. “I propose to call ‘religion,’” Badiou writes, “everything that presupposes that there is a continuity between truths and the circulation of meaning” (24). Furthermore, Badiou contends that “any truth that accepts a position of dependency with regard to narrative and revelation is still gripped by mystery, whereas philosophy [and, in my view, theology] only exists in its desire to tear down mystery’s veil” (36). Moreover, “Philosophy [and, in my view, theology,] commences . . . only with a desacralization: it establishes a regime of discourse that is its own inherent and earthly legitimation . . . the authority of profound utterance [being] interpreted by argumentative secularization” (36, emphasis original).
Why, though, is religion as the “continuity of truths and the circulation of meaning” and mystery (related as it is to veiling meaning) opposed to the Truth, while secularization is amenable to it?
All too briefly, Badiou defines the Truth as an empty or operational category out of which truths are seized. Truth is not the same as presence; it is not present; thus, it cannot be associated with “the circulation of meaning” (23).
The Truth is precisely what is not present in a text, play, film, and so forth. Philosophy—and, in my view, theology—is the practice of seizing truths out of the void of Truth, of trying to say what is impossible to say.
Philosophy—and, in my view, theology—is “subtractive in that it cuts holes in sense, or causes an interruption in the circulation of sense, so that it comes that truths are said all together” (24, emphasis mine). Yet, the truth is not a “mystery,” veiled and unknowable. We can “know” the Truth as truths that cause knowledge to fail (46).
Truth is necessarily fiction. Thus, power cannot make Truth persuasive. Hence the significance for philosophy, and, in my view, theology, of address. “Addressed to all so that all may be in seizing the existence of truths, it is like a political strategy with no stake in power” (23). A disciple is one persuaded by such an address; a disciple is the subject of the address, “one who knows that [they do] not form a public or constitute an audience but support a transmission” (28).
My all too hasty reading of Badiou on Truth in Conditions brings us back to Ephesians 4. Recall that the author begins from a standpoint of weakness and humility. They address the reader with a Truth that is truths. Take note of the one that is seven ones in Ephesians 4: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God (vv 4-5). The Truth exists for all those who are subjects of its truths—hence the author cannot guarantee if their admonition will inspire growth into the one body that is not one—and not whole. If the body were whole, there would be no need for the address.
So, what does all this potentially mean? What truth may we seize from this address and so address to others?
My answer: The Truth is fiction, so it must be shared with a sense of irony (i.e., in agapē — and why I think agapē should be interpreted as an already ironized form of desire is a topic for another day).
Put another way, Truth is just not that serious. Truth is (un)serious. Unity then, or growth in love, or growing into the one body that is not one, involves trying things out, imagining things differently: an open mind. It does not require belief in any doctrine or even belief, a force of will that purports to make the Truth present.
“The modern sophist,” Badiou writes, “attempts to replace the idea of truth with the idea of the rule” (6). I have argued elsewhere that the (modern) cleric attempts to “replace the idea of truth with the idea of the” norm.
“But speaking the truth in love” entails living without such assurances. It is more like sending a postcard: we hope the exposed truths make it to the listed address, to the all to which it is (un)intentionally addressed—”so that all may be in seizing the existence of truths.”