ABSTRACT
According to a qualified theological “opinion” (doxa), the alpha and omega of theology, is doxology: The functionless evocation of divine doxa – powerful beauty – for its own sake.1 In Luke 2:4, the doxological invocation of divine doxa is equivalent with her shining over the ones who live in peace. However, in recollecting the history of religion it would be just as easy to claim that religion is the last resort of violence, a “record of the horrors,” of “human sacrifice … the slaughter of children, cannibalism, sensual orgies, abject superstition, hatred as between races, the maintenance of degrading customs, hysteria, bigotry,” or in one phrase, “the last refuge of human savagery?”2 Is it with deep disgust that we must admit that “the name of God” has become equivalent with any number of reasons for war?3 And is it with deep embarrassment that we must be stupefied by the fact that while we might (want to) confess that God becomes flesh, doxa has become orthodoxy – as our orthodoxies are considerably implicit in our religious divisions? How, and in what sense, then, could the doxological arousal of the divine become an evocation of peace? If the only means of “peace in heaven” is the inhabitation of a single, true orthodox realm, its doxology only suggests a subjugation to an orthodox One. Consequently, the equivalent of doxa on earth becomes “war.” The question is this: can we save “the name of God” from war – “in heaven” and “on earth” – by saving divine doxa from orthodoxy?4 Could we, perhaps, resist the ortho-dox One – the only true measure “in heaven” – and instead evoke a para-dox multiplicity as an expression of “peace on earth?”5 Could, maybe, an understanding of divine multiplicity before and beyond any “true orthodox essence” be key to envisioning the overcoming of perpetual generations of religious wars? Could the doxa of such divine love of multiplicity shine over us, instigating a profound sense of peace, that is, the imagination of its real possibility?6
