… in the end, only theologians can be truly atheistic …
—Jacques Lacan
Since its inception with the work of Graham Harman, object-oriented ontology (OOO) has had an uneasy relationship with theology.1 While OOO has been influential in fields as diverse as media studies, literary criticism, ethnography, art criticism, history, biology, and rhetoric, it has been difficult to see how something like an object-oriented theology might be possible. Indeed, until the publication of the book presently before the reader, it has appeared that OOO and theology have been destined to be opposed. Although formulations of OOO differ from one another in how they theorize the being of objects, the dominant strains of object-oriented ontology2 are united in holding that being is composed of objects or substances, that objects exist independent of their relations to other objects, and that objects are withdrawn from one another such that they do not directly relate. As a consequence, variants of OOO have, with varying degrees of explicitness, tended to defend a “flat ontology” in which all objects are treated as existing on equal ontological footing.3 Within the framework of flat ontologies, while one object may enjoy greater power and influence than another object, there is no object that is the sovereign of all the others nor any object that differs in kind from all the others.
These core claims generate the tension between OOO and theology. Historically, Western theology has offered the options of theism, deism, and pantheism. At the risk of being reductive, theism argues for the existence of a personal God that designs and creates the world, is capable of intervening in the world in miraculous ways that violate the laws of physics, that is concerned with the welfare of individual persons, and that is responsive to prayer. By contrast, deism argues that, though God designed the laws of nature and created the universe, he then set “his” creation loose to unfold of its own accord. As a consequence, the deistic God does not respond to prayer nor intervene in miraculous ways. Finally, pantheism argues that God and nature are one and the same such that God is simply the unfolding of nature according to the laws of physics, and each being is both a manifestation of and element in God. Each of these theologies tend to share the thesis that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and infinite. And, with the exception of pantheism, these theologies tend to hold that God is a preeminent being, transcendent to creation and different in kind from other objects.
OOO is inconsistent with the claims of these theological variations. Insofar as OOO argues that being is composed of discrete units that are independent of their relations, it is necessarily at odds with pantheism. Where pantheism argues that all entities are interrelated elements in the being of God, OOO rejects the thesis that all entities are related to one another or that they form a totality. Where theism and deism generally argue that God is a preeminent being, transcendent to all of creation, OOO favors a flat ontology without any transcendent sovereign. In this respect, if God does exist “he” would be just one being among others. However, the point on which OOO and the theologies of theism and deism are most starkly opposed is God’s omniscience and omnipotence. The thesis that all substances are irreducibly withdrawn from one another spells the ruin of any being that would be omniscient and omnipotent. Insofar as this withdrawal entails that all relations between entities are indirect, it follows that no being can have perfect and complete knowledge of another and that no being can completely master another. In affirming the dignity and independent existence of each object, OOO also affirms the essential frailty, weakness, and limitation of each object.
It is in light of the foregoing that Adam Miller’s Speculative Grace is so startling. The theology he proposes in the remarkable pages that follow sidesteps the three options afforded by traditional Western theology while also evading conflict with OOO. Where traditional theology understands grace as an unexpected gift sent to humans by a transcendent God, Miller sets out to show how we might instead understand grace as woven into the very fabric of being. In this regard, Miller’s theology is a theology without a theos. However, this theology should not be understood to be an ordinary atheism where it is claimed that God does not exist. Rather, it experiments with a theology in which God would exist as one object among many, subject to the same resistance and suffering, the same availability as all other objects. Miller’s God is not a transcendent superman or sovereign king, but a “weak” God, a fellow traveler with the world’s objects. In this regard, God remains as open to receiving grace as any other entity.
In what are to my mind some of the finest pages ever written about Latour’s thought, Miller then explores the being of objects, unfolding their nature, how they interact, and how they interrelate. Gradually it comes to light that objects are Janus-faced entities both resistant to other entities and available to other entities. As Latour puts it, no object is wholly reducible to any other object and no object can avoid being partially reducible to any other object. This conception of objects grounds Miller’s conception of grace as a dually structured phenomenon. As Miller will say, objects are characterized by “resistant availability.” My openness to grace depends on my openness to this resistant availability. And if grace is openness to this resistant availability, it follows that the charged term “sin” names a refusal of this grace, a refusal of the weakness and suffering imposed by this resistant availability. I sin when I despise the resistance of other objects and when I refuse my availability to other objects.
Yet as remarkable and invigorating as these proposals are, all would be for naught if Miller did not give an account of why religion gathers and assembles. In a striking aphorism borrowed from Latour, Miller observes that “religion is what breaks our will to go away.” Religion is what breaks our will to simply withdraw and brings us back to the ordinary world at our feet. In the face of the world’s resistance to my will and my availability for suffering, I flee. I sit beside my daughter as she colors and tell myself I’m a good father as I spend time with her. Yet, as I sit there, I turn back to the book I am reading, check updates online, compose articles in my head, and so on. I am there without being there and am therefore refusing to “suffer” her and enter into communion with her. Turning away, I imagine myself a little sovereign, free from the world. Like Aristotle’s unmoved mover, I try to withdraw in order to enjoy a perfect solipsistic sovereignty.
If religion is what breaks my will to go away, then contemporary debates between religion and science have things exactly backwards. Religion is not the work of escaping this world, it is the practice of returning to it. The standard story has it that science investigates the immanent natural world while religion draws us to the transcendent world of God and the beyond. Science, it is said, turns us to this world, while religion prepares us for the next. Under Miller’s Latourian account, by contrast, science is properly understood as an exploration of the transcendent, while religion owns the field of immanence. Science guides our prodigious voyage through the realm of what is remote. Science introduces us to black holes at the center of each galaxy, subatomic particles beneath our threshold of perception, the appearance of things within the wavelengths of infrared and ultraviolet light, and the perceptual universe of the great white shark where the world is sensed in terms of electro-magnetic signatures. Science brings us before the genuinely foreign.
By contrast, religion brings us back to the field of immanence and reveals the nearness of what is often too near to be seen. Like Heidegger’s spectacles that are furthest from us despite resting on the end of our nose,4 the immanence of daily life perpetually threatens to flee and withdraw, becoming invisible, by virtue of being so close. Religion keeps us from fleeing so that we can attend to the resistant availability of the given world. The pews, rituals, stained glass windows, rosary beads, people, prayer books, and so on employed by religion are not mere prostheses for belief. They are tools for practicing an immanence that calls us to gracefully attend to our relations in the here and now. Far from being a flight from the world, religion, where successful, situates us squarely within the world of immanence.
I confess that Miller’s book has shaken me deeply, unsettling my understanding of both theology and religion. In pages that are as long as they are brief, Miller’s approach evades categorization in contemporary debates between the secular and devout while also stepping outside the options that traditional theology affords. Here is something new that I suspect will challenge and upset my own thought for some time. Yet as befits the adventure of faith—a faith that is not a belief, but a work undertaken in the dimension of grace—I still find myself beset by a doubt. If Miller is right, if this is what religion is, why should we call this religion, rather than politics? Is not the gathering that Miller describes what takes place in all genuine politics? And if this is so, why should we retain the charged word “religion,” with all of its connotations of the transcendent, the supernatural, and the church? Could we not say that the church is not the site of religion but rather the site of politics? It is with tremendous gratitude for this unsettling encounter that I address these questions to my friend Adam.