This book is a profound and eagerly anticipated investigation into what
is left of a monotheistic religious spirit--notably, a minimalist faith
that is neither confessional nor credulous. Articulating this faith as
works and as an objectless hope, Nancy deconstructs Christianity in
search of the historical and reflective conditions that provided its
initial energy. Working through Blanchot and Nietzsche, re-reading
Heidegger and Derrida, Nancy turns to the Epistle of Saint James rather
than those of Saint Paul, discerning in it the primitive essence of
Christianity as hope.
The "religion that provided the exit from religion," as he terms
Christianity, consists in the announcement of an end. It is the
announcement that counts, however, rather than any finality. In this
announcement there is a proximity to others and to what was once called
parousia. But parousia is no longer presence; it is no longer the return
of the Messiah. Rather, it is what is near us and does not cease to open
and to close, a presence deferred yet imminent.
In a demystified age where we are left with a vision of a self-enclosed
world--in which humans are no longer mortals facing an immortal being,
but entities whose lives are accompanied by the time of their own
decline--parousia stands as a question. Can we venture the risk of a
decentered perspective, such that the meaning of the world can be found
both inside and outside, within and without our so-immanent world?
The deconstruction of Christianity that Nancy proposes is neither a game
nor a strategy. It is an invitation to imagine a strange faith that
enacts the inadequation of life to itself. Our lives overflow the
self-contained boundaries of their biological and sociological
interpretations. Out of this excess, wells up a fragile, overlooked
meaning that is beyond both confessionalism and humanism.
