Secularization as Kenosis

194 | postmodern condition and secularity
make nihilistic ontology meaningful, without either becoming arbitrary or falling back
in metaphysics, is to recognize that it has its source in the Christian religion:
It can rediscover its own authentic meaning as nihilistic ontology only if it recovers
its substantial link, at source, with the Judeo-Christian tradition as the constitutive
tradition of the West. In other words: modern hermeneutic philosophy is born in
Europe not only because here there is a religion of the book that focuses attention on
the phenomenon of interpretation, but also because this religion has at its base the
idea of the incarnation of God, which it conceives as kenosis, as abasement and, in our
translation, as weakening. 93
Secularization is thus not only a relationship between Christianity and modernity, but
in hermeneutics it radicalizes the demythologizing intent of modernity, to an extent
that Vattimo can say that it “leads in contemporary thinking to the dissolution of the
very myth of objectivity.” 94 Secularization and hermeneutics in turn are rooted in Christianity
as the religion of kenosis. Vattimo, thus, sees postmodernism as a more radical
consequence of Christianity and its secular intent. It is significant that the theological
notions that come into play here are not commonly associated with secularization.
Whereas the ‘modern’ secularization theorists emphasized such theological notions as
creation, the rational and instrumental relation to the world as promoting a the contingency
of the world and man’s relation to it, Vattimo hardly discusses these notions. In
his postmodern theory of secularization kenosis, caritas and friendship are central theological
notions. I want to focus on three aspects of the hermeneutics of Christianity in
weak thought: in the first place the notion of kenosis; in the second place on the notion
of caritas as a norm for secularization processes and in the third place on friendship and
the claim that a weakening of religion will result in a less violent culture.
Kenosis
Kenosis is a term that has played a dominant role in recent philosophy of religion. The
term as such is taken from the letter of St. Paul to the Philippians, where Christ is said to
have emptied himself (eauton ekenoosen). With this word the humility of Christ is expressed
and his partaking in the flesh. More specifically it expresses the idea that Christ,
in the flesh, gives up his divinity and the attributes thereof, such as omniscience and
omnipotence. 95 For several postmodern authors this is taken to provide an alternative
for classical theological models that emphasize the highness and sovereignty of Christ. 96
The New Testament idea of kenosis has considerable influence in contemporary religious
religious experience . . . it certainly dissolves the bases of the principal arguments that philosophy has offered
in favor of atheism.” The interpretation of the development of hermeneutics should result in no less than a
‘nihilistic ontology.’ Vattimo, Beyond interpretation, 47.
93 Vattimo, Beyond interpretation, 48.
94 Vattimo, Beyond interpretation, 52.
95 Thomas V. Morris, ‘The Metaphysics of God Incarnate’, in: Michael C. Rea, editor, Oxford Readings in
Philosophical Theology: Volume 1: Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009),
218.
96 Kenosis as a philosophical notion has been employed by protestant authors mainly. Hegel for instance
discusses it as an expression of the idea that “in Christ the transcendence of God became an immanent
process in the world.” In contemporary thought the concept is employed by death-of-God theologian Thomas
Altizer. Graham Ward, ‘Deconstructive Theology’, in: Kevin J. Vanhoozer, editor, The Cambridge Companion
to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 76–91.