The Maneuver of ‘questioning-back’ and Retroactive Ontology
I’ve enjoyed considering two different approaches to public theology and prolepsis from Ted Peters and Paul Chung in their papers, Proleptic Public Theology and Public Theology and Eschatology, respectively. In presenting the ethical questions of our present predicament in light of the transformative power of the promised future of the resurrection of Christ, the papers complement one another well.
Paul’s paper, Public Theology and Eschatology, grounds ethical praxis in a rich understanding of the present in its multicultural depth and embodiment, through the phenomenological maneuver of “questioning-back.” Then, with this vivid portrait of the present, understanding the perspective and practice of public theology in the movement of protension, simultaneously returning to a critically remembered, reconciled past and reaching forward in hope toward the promised future God enacts, a future realized fragmentarily and parabolically in the present.
Likewise, in Ted’s work, Proleptic Public Theology, the future orientation of being is central. As he writes when discussing retroactive ontology, “To be real is to have a future.” Thus, public theology lies in the embrace of God’s promised future in the Easter event and the biblical symbols of the eschaton, as well as the rejection of that which would foreclose the future of creatures and creation itself. This embrace of the promised future is enacted through a turn to provolutionary ethics, acting towards the promised future rather than a return to idealized edenic past.
The concrete and conceptual proposals in these papers provide meaningful reorientation of the present and future. Rather than being solely an open possibility shaped by present trends which does not exercise causal power on present reality, the future is God’s promised and better world that reaches transformatively into life here and now. This future animates the present, is incarnated in present ethical action, and grounds current praxis. Critically, the introduction of a phenomenological frame enriches the construction of ethical praxis by engaging more deeply with our multivalent, multicultural reality.