Interruption: From Theology to Anthropology—And Back Again?

Abstract

Joel Robbins wishes to renew anthropological theory from a transformative dialogue with theology. There, he looks for actors’ categories which may assist him in anthropologically interpreting his ethnographical data on Christian life. One of these categories is the notion of interruption which he borrows, among others from my theological work, in order to describe the radical conversion of the Urapmin and, more broadly, radical change in religion. In my contribution, I first examine how Robbins uses the category of interruption to enrich his anthropological theory. In a second and third part, I explain how I have conceived of interruption in my theological work and, afterwards, how that concept itself has gained significance from a transformative dialogue with philosophy. Finally, I evaluate Robbins’ use of the category of interruption and engage in conversation with him again about how the interaction between theology and anthropology can be mutually interruptive. The twofold lesson to be drawn from this interdisciplinary dialogue appears to be (a) that our categories, vocabularies and approaches are caught up in a ceaseless game of borrowing and reinterpretation between disciplines and language games and (b) that we—each in our own discipline—have every interest in allowing our own theory formation to be interrupted by dialogue with other disciplines.

1. Introduction

In the introduction to his book Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life, Joel Robbins describes theology “as a potentially cooperative donor of theoretical inspiration for anthropology” (Robbins 2020, p. 6). A little further on, he writes that he wants to start with a theological idea that is unknown in anthropology and does not occur very often in theology itself: “This is the notion that God’s presence in the world, and in the life of believers, takes place as an interruption” (Robbins 2020, p. 27)—a notion that would be central to the theological work of Eberhard Jüngel, Johann Baptist Metz (whom he mistakenly refers to as Christian in that passage), and myself. Robbins says he wants to investigate whether and how this theological category of interruption can assist anthropology in conceiving cultural–religious change without falling into a paradigm of rupture or discontinuity. It goes without saying that I feel addressed here, not only because I am curious about how Robbins uses interruption anthropologically but also because he hopes for a mutually transformative effect of the dialogue between anthropology and theology. “It should not leave the two disciplines involved merely better at doing what they have always done” (Robbins 2020, p. 4).

Robbins does indeed speak of a “transformative relationship between anthropology and theology”. Firstly, such a relationship challenges classical anthropological goals and approaches, thereby enriching anthropological theory formation. He writes: “At the heart of this book is a move toward adopting a range of theological understandings and arguments and exploring how they might be deployed toward the development of anthropological theories that further the understanding of the lives of people anthropologists study” (Robbins 2020, pp. 19–20). At the same time, he hopes that the reverse is true for theology, and that “seeing some of their own concepts and theoretical arguments refracted through the lens of another discipline might be of some value for theologians as well” (Robbins 2020, p. 6). Naturally, I am curious to know what this means for the category of interruption, which—as Robbins rightly points out—occupies a central place in my theological work.

In my contribution, I would therefore like to put this to the test, perhaps in a way that Robbins could never have imagined. After all, the way in which I use interruption as a theological–epistemological and systematic–theological category is itself already informed by a dialogue with non-theological theory formation, in particular with what is commonly referred to today as continental philosophy—a dialogue that I myself understand as transformative for theology, while also hoping that it can also influence the Philo-sophical approach to religion, Christian faith or theology. As far as I am concerned, such dialogue is explicitly theologically motivated: mutatis mutandis, I share Robbins’ conviction—for him, of course, from an anthropological perspective—that this dialogue enables one’s own discipline to do its work better.

Within such a perspective, concepts from one discipline begin to function in another, in order to identify an insight that is not yet present or cannot yet be expressed in the theory formation of the latter. It can be expected, as I read Robbins, that these concepts will also be reinterpreted with new meaning, so that they stimulate thinking in that first discipline as well. At the same time, given the different aims of each discipline, it is not unlikely that some of the original meaning will be lost. This could, of course, provide additional elements for discussion in the mutually transformative dialogue that Robbins is aiming for.1

As mentioned, Robbins’ dialogue with theology is anthropologically motivated. He deliberately wants to introduce ‘actor categories’ because he is convinced that these will enable the anthropology of Christian life to better describe that life. These categories draw upon how Christian life is reflected within Christian communities themselves, in the hope of finding categories with which he can enrich anthropological theory formation, in order to describe Christian life more adequately (Robbins 2020, p. 22). In other words, he draws on the reflexive categories present in his research subject itself, and thus arrives at theology.

Robbins’ view of theology is consistent with one of its classic definitions: ‘faith in search of understanding’ (according to the adage fides quaerens intellectum of the 11th century scholar, Anselm of Canterbury): how can we use reason to better understand what is believed—which ties in with another classic adage: philosophy as the handmaiden of theo-logy (philosophia ancilla theologiae—whereby, according to Immanuel Kant, we cannot simply assume that the handmaiden carries the train, but rather leads the way with a torch). Dialogue with contemporary philosophy has helped theologians throughout the centuries to arrive at that faith understanding, and challenges them to do so today as well. That is the point I want to highlight below when discussing interruption in my own theo-logical approach, because its theological significance also results from a transformative dialogue with contemporary philosophy.

First, however, I will examine how Robbins uses the category of interruption to enrich his anthropological theory. At first glance, it appears that he borrows more from Eberhard Jüngel than from my use of that category. In a second and third part, I explain how I have conceived of interruption, and afterwards how that concept has gained significance from the dialogue with philosophy. Finally, I evaluate Robbins’ use of the category of interruption and engage in conversation with him again about how the interaction between theology and anthropology can be mutually interruptive.

2. Anthropology: Interruption as an Alternative to a Paradigm of Rupture and Discontinuity

“It is my wager that we can grasp [the aspects of Christian life shown in ethnographic data] more fully by turning to theology, the very tradition in which Christian thought has long worked to refine its own understandings of itself, and can thereby build even more robust ethnographic theories of Christian and other kinds of lives, or at least of some aspects of them, than we already have created on the back of our ethnographic work” (Robbins 2020, p. 22). It is from this wager that Robbins invokes the term interruption to describe the religious transformation that the Urapmin, a small community in Papua New Guinea, underwent in his ethnographic study.

In short, around 1977, the previously non-Christian Urapmin community converted en masse to a charismatic form of Christianity, which they themselves describe as their ‘revival’: a collective conversion driven by the Holy Spirit. They had already been introduced to Christianity before, but the ‘1977 revival’ caused them to radically abandon their old way of life (including, for example, specific traditional taboos and gender roles). Because of this change, they resolutely interpret their past and present from a charismatic Christian perspective of sin and grace: “Looking back, the Urapmin say that 1977 was the year the Holy Spirit ‘came down and got us’. […] More importantly, Urapmin will tell you, everyone came to recognise their own sinful natures and the fact that Jesus had ‘bought back’ their sins” (Robbins 2020, pp. 37–38). This enormous religious transformation is then expressed both in a heightened critical-moral self-reflection and in active participation in church practices, Bible study, and so on, in order to track down their own sinfulness and bring their salvation closer through a Christian life.

In the available anthropological theoretical frameworks, Robbins did not immediately find categories to interpret his ethnographic data on the Urapmin revival. Moreover, according to him, anthropology seems to assume that cultural systems and social structures should be studied as phenomena that stand the test of time: change and variation are very often described—and thus downplayed—against the backdrop of a more fundamental continuity. Anthropology is therefore primarily concerned with theories of cultural and social reproduction, especially when it comes to religion, as this is thought to offer the most stubborn resistance to change. Based on this assumption, Robbins originally thought that the conversion of the Urapmin to Christianity should be viewed primarily in the context of their earlier traditional ways of life, but he soon came to the conclusion that “there was no honest way to write about the Urapmin with whom I had lived without putting radical change both as an actors’ category and as a realised fact at the centre of my account” (Robbins 2020, p. 40).

To remedy this, Robbins first drew inspiration from Birgit Meyer, who also had to describe a major religious transformation in her research in Ghana on Ewe migrants who moved from the countryside to the cities and converted to Pentecostalism in the process (Robbins 2020, pp. 40–41, referring to Meyer 1998, 1999). She emphasised in particular that these converts wanted to break with their past, which they experienced and interpreted as demonic after their conversion. Based on her and his own ethnographic research, Robbins therefore developed—as a corrective to ‘continuity thinking’ in anthropology—the categories of discontinuity and rupture to describe how Christians experience and interpret their own religious life. Over time, however, and in dialogue with critics, he became increasingly convinced that these categories of discontinuity and rupture were inadequate because they turned out to be primarily theoretical and no longer actors’ categories: they did not correspond to the way Christians themselves experience and interpret their conversion and their new life (Robbins 2020, p. 42). And that is precisely why he went in search of theological categories and arrived at the term interruption.

Robbins encountered this term in Johann Baptist Metz and his famous dictum that “the shortest definition of religion is interruption,” (Metz 2007, p. 158) but also in the work of Hart (2001), Jüngel (2014), and myself. In his exposition, Robbins fundamentally departs from the way in which Jüngel, in his theological anthropology, uses the term interruption from an ontological perspective to interpret the experience of being/becoming a Christian. For the hermeneutical-theological way in which interruption works in interpreting that life, he also refers to my use of the term.

For Jüngel, Robbins argues, the ‘dangerous’ experience of ‘elemental’ interruption confronts the self with the ‘possibility of non-being’, i.e., with the interruption of the continuity of being. At the same time, this also enables the self to become a new and changed being: “whenever we as selves confront the world with the understandings we bring to it, we are susceptible to a ‘disclosive confrontation’ of something unexpected that constitutes an elemental interruption of the self we first brought to the encounter, an interruption that when it takes the form of learning results in an enhanced continuity” (Robbins 2020, p. 45, in reference to Jüngel 2014, p. 208). For Jüngel, every religious experience is an experience of interruption that leads to a reconsideration of one’s self-understanding and understanding of the world. Such an experience of interruption is a Christian experience when, in that experience, the interruption of God in Jesus Christ is experienced: “People know they can rely on God to interrupt them toward an enhanced continuity, Jüngel argues, because he [sic] has interrupted himself on their behalf” (Robbins 2020, p. 46). Through God’s sacrifice on the cross, God allowed Godself to be interrupted by humanity, which exposed itself to non-being through sin. For Jüngel, this leads to an “experience with experience” of both the threat of non-being and the opening of a new self (i.e., an “enhanced continuity of the self”) (Robbins 2020, p. 45, with reference to Jüngel 2014, p. 208).

From a theological perspective, such an experience of interruption fundamentally is a revelation of God: an encounter with the God who revealed Godself in Jesus Christ. At this point, Robbins also briefly refers to my interpretation of Jesus Christ as the interruption from God, whose suffering, death and resurrection constitute the paradigm of interruption.2 God interrupts the narrative of Jesus that was closed on the cross, thereby making it clear that the narrative of those who live like Jesus cannot be concluded by death. Furthermore, Robbins mentions that, for me, interruption does not simply mean rupture or discontinuity, because what is interrupted continues in a changed way. Interruption, he quotes me as saying, dynamically holds continuity and discontinuity together.3

Robbins then wonders how such a theological category of interruption ‘interrupts’ the current anthropological discussion about the paradigm of discontinuity and rupture in describing Christian life—a question that ties in very well with the way in which I also use interruption as a broader, epistemological category.4

The paradigm of discontinuity and rupture places too much emphasis on the closed past and too little on the fact that, through the experience of interruption, life continues in a new way. For Robbins, the category of interruption therefore better captures the experience of the Urapmin. “The intensity of the threat of non-being and the firmness of Urapmin people’s trust in the Christian God and his word are two aspects of their experience of the revival that the rupture/discontinuity paradigm on its own fails to highlight, and together they put the notion of breaking with the past a bit in the background in favour of an emphasis on the possibility of future salvation” (Robbins 2020, p. 50). It is above all the confidence of Christians in that future that is inherent in that experience of interruption.

For Robbins, it is important that this trust can be expressed in theories about cultural and social change. Moreover, the category of interruption also captures a change in the way Christians look at the past, which is considered closed in the paradigm of discontinuity and rupture: according to Robbins, both Jüngel and Boeve incorporate elements from that past into the new life in a renewed way.5 Robbins himself points to the more reflexive, self-critical way in which the Urapmin view their lives and the possibility of sin after the revival: “living in this kind of self-evaluative fashion is tied up with continuing to live a productively interrupted life” (Robbins 2020, p. 53). At the same time, Robbins indicates that in the experience of the Urapmin, the 1977 revival did not simply stop, but that its interruption occurs again and again: each time anew, the Spirit comes into the church, as well as into the moral self-reflection of the Urapmin.

Robbins sees both elements, the critical-reflexive attitude and the experience that the revival occurs again and again, expressed in Jüngel’s ‘experience with experience’ that accompanies the experience of interruption by God.6

In short: the anthropological benefit for Robbins of the category of interruption is that it allows him to better interpret his ethnographic data, “leading to a recognition of issues like the threat of non-being, trust, and the nature of post-conversion judgement and its relation to matters of continuity and future orientation that only appeared in fragmentary forms in many earlier accounts” (Robbins 2020, p. 55). At the very least, it enables him to describe the Urapmin’s conversion more accurately but perhaps also opens up the possibility of broader anthropological attention to the existential dimension of conversion in Christianity—and thus of shifting the boundaries of classical anthropological theory formation on Christianity. At least that is what he hopes for.

3. Theology: Interruption as an Epistemological and Theological Category

I already indicated that I was quite surprised when Robbins wrote that the theological use of the term interruption could ‘interrupt’ the paradigm of rupture and discontinuity in anthropological theory formation. This statement ties in very well with the way in which I use interruption more generically (epistemologically), as an experience that questions existing patterns and challenges us to relate to that interruption, causing those patterns to shift. In doing so, as Robbins also points out7, I primarily appeal to the category of narrative (partly inspired by the idea, among others of Paul Ricoeur, that identity is narratively structured). Experiences of interruption cause narratives to collide with their boundaries. Closed narratives try to escape that interruption by relativising or demonising its challenging nature. Open narratives deal with that interruption critically and productively, causing the storyline to change and renew itself.

In that context, I developed the proposition in Interrupting Tradition that the interruption of the contemporary context leads to a theology of interruption (Boeve 2003). The fact that, in the second half of the twentieth century in Western Europe, the Christian tradition no longer continues self-evidently from generation to generation due to the modern social processes of secularisation and pluralisation, causes the Christian narrative to collide with its boundaries. These modern processes interrupt the self-evident continuation of the Christian narrative.

Reactions to this from Christianity, including Christian theology, vary initially between rejecting or embracing this interruption. At one end of the continuum, the challenge posed by these modern processes is rejected and the processes themselves are denounced, for example by immediately dismissing secularisation as secularism and pluralisation as relativism: the world has alienated itself from the Christian faith. In the interest of the integrity of its own identity, the Christian faith therefore first must protect itself from the world in order then to call the world to conversion. At the other end of the continuum, these modern processes are embraced, thereby relativising their challenge: secularisation is considered a fortunate opportunity for Christianity, because it enables the Christian faith to rid itself of alienating pre-modern ideas (resulting in a theological conforming to a modern worldview, for example through demythologisation). Moreover, for some, secularisation is not at all foreign to the Christian faith, but even its logical outcome (implying theological recuperation).8

From a theological-methodological perspective, the relationship to the changed context is captured between either discontinuity with the world (the modern context has alienated itself from the Christian faith) or continuity with that same world (Christianity has every interest in reconciling itself with that modern context).9 Theologically, this led to rival movements, situated on the same continuum and distinguished by the methodological importance they attached to theological dialogue with the world, technically captured by the term ‘correlation’. On the one hand, anti-modern, anti-correlation theologians experienced dialogue with the modern world as a threat to the integrity of the Christian faith: they regarded the conversion of the alienated world as their theological mission, rather than the dialogue with that world. On the other hand, modern correlation theologians saw precisely in dialogue with the modern world opportunities to renew the uniqueness and credibility of the Christian faith. After all, there can be no contradiction between what brings liberation and human integrity in the world and what Christians see as the coming of the kingdom of God: there can be no contradiction between what is deeply human and what is authentically Christian. In the Roman Catholic theological world after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), these different, antagonistic theological currents became very visible in the journals Concilium and Communio. The latter specifically aimed at criticising and correcting the overly benevolent dialogue with modernity of the former.10 Representatives of the first journal in the early post-conciliar period were Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx and Johann Baptist Metz. Together with Hans-Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, who was initially an editorial member of Concilium, turned to be the driving force in the founding of Communio.11

Like anthropology, in its own way, theology also appears to have its paradigms of continuity and discontinuity. On theological grounds, I have evaluated the anti-modern paradigm as too conservative, since its commitment to continuity with the tradition results in a discontinuity with the present context: by shielding itself from the world, it misses the opportunity to discover where God is revealing Godself in that world today. The theological-correlationist paradigm of continuity with the context (allowing for elements of discontinuity in the development of tradition), on the other hand, collides into its boundaries when the overlap between the Christian horizon of meaning and the modern context shrinks and disappears. As a result of the processes of detraditionalisation, individualisation and pluralisation, what is deeply human can no longer simply be correlated to (or recuperated by) what is truly Christian. More than before, these processes ensure that the Christian narrative—like any form of identity construction—is confronted with the plurality of other truth claims, and the particularity, historicity and contingency of its own truth claims.

How, then, can we think theologically about the relationship to the context if this cannot be done on the basis of the opposing paradigms of discontinuity and continuity? At this point, the notion of interruption reappears in my argument, and a theology of interruption takes shape on both contextual and theological grounds: interruption indeed holds continuity and discontinuity with the context together in tension.

The contextual grounds I emphasise in a situation of (religious) pluralisation are that the epistemological ‘observer’s perspective’ disappears and all participants on the plural field relate to each other from their own position. Plurality implies otherness, and the confrontation with otherness challenges each participant to relate to it. As already mentioned, the challenge (interruption) of the other can be undone by including the other and relativising it as more of the same, or by demonising and excluding it as a threat. In both reactions, the critical-productive impulse of the interruption is avoided. Accepting the challenge of otherness implies questioning one’s own identity and reinterpreting it from the perspective of the interruption. Interruption therefore does not result in a break or rupture, but neither does the narrative continue as if nothing has happened. From now on, in the way it is told, the narrative bears witness to that interruption.

I also have theological grounds for a theology of interruption. Interruption can be seen as a potential revelation of God in world and history. Then, interruption becomes a theological category—a way of rethinking the relationship between God and world/history. Using a classical theological dictum, interruption turns into a locus theologicus: a place from which God is spoken about, or perhaps better, a place from which God speaks. Interruption here is not a formal category but substantively charged from the Christian narrative tradition, which in turn is reshaped from that interruption. It is, I argue, in specific and contingent histories and events that God reveals Godself, and it is in concrete and particular narratives and interpretations of narratives that witness is given about this—with the open, God-interrupted narrative of Jesus Christ as the paradigm. Where narratives close, when otherness is too quickly included or excluded, it is the God of Jesus Christ who interrupts those narratives. With such a reading key, I propose, the biblical and Christian tradition can be reread as a narrative of constant interruption but also as a narrative of the often difficult ways in which believers and churches deal with that interruption (Boeve 2026, pp. 70–71).

In short: the contextual interruption of Christianity in Europe through secularisation and pluralisation (leading to an awareness of plurality, particularity, historicity and contingency) leads to a theology of interruption: a Christian-theological discourse that, aware of its own particularity and historicity, conceives and interprets God’s involvement with the church and the world or history from the perspective of interruption. In this way, I hope to further develop the dialogical concept of revelation that was initiated in the dogmatic constitution at the Second Vatican Council: it is in God’s concrete dialogue with humankind in world and history that God reveals Godself, with God’s revelation in Jesus Christ as the benchmark; and the category of interruption serves to trace that revelation and grasp its critical-productive impulse for Christian life and thought.12

An example may illustrate pointedly such dynamics of interruption, both with regard to its critical-contextual and constructive-theological potential.13 In a radio interview some years ago for a Flemish radio morning show, a woman spoke of an encounter she had experienced the evening before. She was involved in a church group engaged in multi-cultural community work, and was invited by a Moroccan community in Brussels to celebrate the ‘breaking of the fast’ with them. This community, for its part, had the practice of holding an open house every evening of Ramadan at sundown. The woman recounted that the conversation at the table soon took on a profound sense of meaningfulness, certainly when religious themes such as the importance of ‘fasting’ and the relations between Muslims and Christians were being discussed. It struck her then that in these conversations, for example concerning fasting, it was precisely in the similarities between Islam and Christianity that very profound differences could be noticed. Remarkably, the outcome of this event was not a relativising perspective (‘in the end, it actually all boils down to the same thing’), but instead it became a respectful recognition of difference and identity. Furthermore, the woman went on to describe how, challenged through these conversations with Muslims, the Christians began to question themselves about the seriousness of their own faith: did they, for example, experience their own fasting authentically enough? What is clear from this example is that respect for the identity of one’s own, in this case Christian, narrative and for the otherness of different religions and fundamental life choices can go together. What is more, through this confrontation with a religious other, the encounter made this woman consider more seriously her own Christian identity.

4. Product of a Transformative Dialogue

As mentioned, it is important to convey in this conversation with Robbins’ work that my understanding of interruption as an epistemological, contextual and theological category is itself the product of a ‘transformative dialogue’ with non-theological reflexive sources. Moreover, I explicitly conduct such a dialogue on fundamental theological grounds.

Underlying my approach is the theological conviction, again inspired by Vatican II’s dialogical conception of revelation, that tradition develops through recontextualisation. Because God reveals Godself in the concreteness, particularity and contingency of history, the context intrinsically contributes to the way in which testimony is given about that revelation, in narrative and interpretation. In other words: the context is co-constitutive for the truth claim expressed in tradition. This implies that a particular phase of tradition partly derives its credibility from the way in which it speaks to the context. At the same time, this implies that when that context shifts, the associated tradition phase comes under pressure and is challenged to recontextualise itself: through dialogue with the changed context, it strives to renew the Christian understanding of faith. And, as said, this is based on the conviction that a God who has revealed Godself in dialogue with concrete history continues to do so today. Today, I proposed, the theological category of interruption may assist theology in recontextualising the Christian faith and tradition: it supports theology’s striving after renewed contextual plausibility and theological legitimacy (see, among others, Boeve 2026, chap. 4).

In such recontextualisation, the dialogue between theology and philosophy has always been important. As an expression of the surrounding contextual critical consciousness, and as a non-theological source that is also the ‘other’ of theology, philosophy has first put pressure on theology, critically interrupting outdated or alienating theological understandings of faith; and, on the other hand, it has assisted theology in productively arriving at a new reflexive understanding of Christian faith, confronting that criticism.14 The way in which Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) in the High Middle Ages, characterised by new urbanism, the rise of mendicant orders and the emergence of universities, renewed theology through the dialogue with rediscovered Aristotelianism (and was initially condemned for this), offers an apt illustration thereof (cf. Boeve 2003, pp. 28–32).

It is from such a recontextualising approach that I have entered into a critical-productive dialogue with the hermeneutic, phenomenological, deconstructionist approaches, among others, that are often described in Anglo-Saxon circles as continental philosophy. In particular, the dialogue with Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern linguistic pragmatics inspired me in this regard (see Boeve 2014). On the one hand, I allowed myself to be challenged by his criticism of the grand narratives (including the Christian grand narrative), which, due to their hegemonic structure, have no eye for the other, for what differs from them (in his jargon: for the différend): by developing the idea of Love in an all-encompassing and all-reconciling way, the Christian grand narrative becomes totalitarian, immediately including otherness/difference (because it is already loved) or excluding it (because it is opposed to love). The narrative domesticates all otherness, and this results in victims.15 For Lyotard, it is the task of philosophy to unmask such closed narratives and continually to bear witness to the différend, especially when it threatens to be forgotten, and even when its forgetting is forgotten.

In my theological conversation with Lyotard, I not only embraced his critique of the Christian grand narrative but also explored whether and how his call to bear witness to the différend offers a way of thinking that can also renew theological discourse: the dynamic of Love (God revealing Godself in world and history) then no longer provides the logic for closing the Christian narrative and mastering otherness/difference, but works precisely the opposite: God (Love) reveals itself as the other of the narrative, as that which differs from the narrative, and causes that narrative to collide with its own boundaries. As the différend does in Lyotard’s thinking, God (Love) interrupts when the Christian narrative threatens to close, and invites Christians to allow themselves to be interrupted again and again, and to bear witness to that interruption in the way they tell and live the Christian narrative. Instead of a grand, closed narrative, the Christian narrative then becomes an open narrative of God’s love for humanity and the world.

It is this critical-productive conversation with Lyotard that qualifies the notion of interruption, both epistemologically (the différend that causes closed narratives to collide with their boundaries and challenges them to renew and change) and theologically (a new way of thinking God’s involvement with humanity and the world—and our speaking (witnessing) about it—from the perspective of difference).

To return to the way Robbins uses my notion of interruption: the category that Robbins borrows from me as an actors’ category (which it essentially is) is itself the product of a critical-productive, and therefore transformative, dialogue between theology and contemporary philosophy, in which a philosophical mode of thinking (the witnessing of the différend) invites the theologian to reflect differently on both (epistemological) renewal and (theological) transcendence—and thus to renew and recontextualise the Christian narrative from within, as an open narrative.

5. Interruption in Robbins: An Evaluation

When a theological term is incorporated into an anthropological theory, that term changes status. It no longer only expresses the religious understanding of a religious community or theologian, but becomes a category for describing a particular way of living and thinking. This is also the case when Robbins borrows the term interruption from theology in order to better interpret his ethnographic data.

For Robbins, the power of interruption as an anthropological category of interpretation lies in its ability, as an actors’ category, to describe the dynamics of conversion (or at least the conversion of the Urapmin). Caught in an interplay of discontinuity and continuity, the converted reinterpret the past from the experience of interruption (interpreted as an experience of divine revelation), view their lives in a more reflexive way, and repeatedly have new experiences of interruption. Interruption then refers both to the experience of discontinuity, non-being, and to the possibility of a new, enhanced being, and, moreover, expresses the Christian believer’s confidence that God is committed to that new being in the salvific suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

A small reference to the ‘interruption of anthropological theory formation’ notwithstanding, at first glance, Robbins is not so much concerned with the epistemological application as with the theological concept of interruption. Moreover, he is primarily concerned with describing how interruption renews the Christian life of the interrupted. Hence the virtually unique focus on conversion and how the transformation that results from it manifests itself in the life of the converted. The close connection between interruption and conversion within the Christian tradition deserves further consideration. In fact, many theological accounts of conversion could certainly be read as forms of interruption where an established narrative of life is confronted with a new horizon of meaning and is subsequently reconfigured. A systematic comparison between theological models of conversion and the category of interruption would provide a valuable next step in the critical-productive dialogue between anthropology and theology. The focus of the present article, however, is to explore interruption as an epistemological category within that dialogue, showing how it reveals the dynamics through which disciplines and narratives are challenged, reinterpreted and renewed. Whereas theology in the context of interruption is primarily concerned with conceiving of God’s involvement in humanity and history, the anthropologist uses it to describe the way in which the interrupted human being experiences and lives. At the same time, on closer inspection, the term indeed also functions epistemologically for Robbins: conversion as an experience of interruption causes believers to tell their narrative in a new way, in which the past is reincorporated, and new experiences of interruption continually challenge the narrative to (what I myself describe as) recontextualisation.

When Robbins incorporates interruption into anthropological theory, its specific theological truth claim is—evidently—lost: namely, that for believers, God reveals Godself in the interruption. Robbins uses interruption as an actor’s category to describe that theological claim to truth, not to make it. The division of labour between theology and anthropology is respected here.16 But what that truth claim does and how it changes and marks the lives of Christians (in his case, at least the Urapmin) can be made clear in anthropological theory. Even though Robbins limits interruption to the experience of (radical) conversion, as it emerged in his data on the Urapmin, the dynamics of both its broader theological and epistemological use are taken over. For my part, as mentioned, I use interruption more broadly, epistemologically and theologically, as a key to interpreting not only Christian life and thought, and to rereading the sources but also to analysing the development of tradition and continuing it programmatically.

Finally, there is one more aspect I would like to mention. For Robbins, the way in which I understand interruption as a product of a transformative dialogue with current continental philosophy may also be of further importance: after all, the fruit of that dialogue is a contemporary, philosophical (contextual) and theologically motivated critical religious consciousness. This leads not only to a critique of the Christian grand narrative but also to a renewed way of talking about God in such a way that God talk does not close the narrative, but interrupts it again and again. When Robbins talks about “the confidence the Urapmin display in God’s plan for the renewed continuity of post-conversion life”, he continues with the observation: “I sometimes think it is this Christian confidence in the future that drives some ethnographers away from Christians even to this day, long after the mainstreaming of the anthropology of Christianity has made their religion an acceptable focus of disciplinary study, for they see this confident posture as aggressive or triumphalist, or they worry that believers’ reliance on the Christian God to ensure strengthened continuity in the future is misplaced” (Robbins 2020, p. 51). From my perspective, a theology of interruption warns precisely against such an aggressive or triumphalist confident posture. These are precisely the characteristics of a hegemonic Christian grand narrative that believes it can enforce or assure positions of truth and power by appealing to God, while an interrupting God undermines such attempts. Even though the history of Christianity shows that an open Christian narrative is vulnerable and more than once turns into a grand narrative that creates victims, nevertheless, it is this religious critical consciousness that most profoundly characterises the Christian belief in God, and which, through critical-productive dialogue with contemporary continental philosophy, has found expression in the category of interruption.

6. By Way of Conclusion: A Mutually Transformative Encounter?

I agree with Robbins that a mutually transformative dialogue can only be achieved when we do not merely borrow from each other: introducing the ethnographic method into theology, for example, to study lived religion, or processing theological reflections as ethnographic data in a description of Christian beliefs. Such interaction between theology and anthropology only really works, writes Robbins, as a dialogue “between two theoretically ambitious disciplines with their own varied versions of systematic thinking about how the cosmos, and the human beings who inhabit it, come to be the way that they are and about what might be the best ways for human beings to realise the potentials inherent in the lives that they lead within that cosmos” (Robbins 2020, pp. 5–6).

Whether that quote is shared by all anthropologists is by no means certain. In his Conclusion, Robbins discusses the secular (and even secularist) logic that anthropology as a discipline from its inception shares, and by which anthropologists interpret any reference to God, gods or the divine as products of human action. For theologians, “God is a challenging ‘other’ in a way that God is generally not a challenging other for anthropologists. For the latter, only diverse human ways of life, cultural conceptions, and social arrangements count as challenging sources of really existing otherness” (Robbins 2020, p. 153, in reference to Furani 2019, pp. 18–19). Robbins also notes that the fact that anthropologists today often mention their own religious beliefs (often in the introduction to their work) has no direct impact on the way they practise anthropology within the secular paradigm. Even anthropological research into secularism itself has done little to change this. Neither has “to this point made a real attempt to shake the foundations of anthropology’s secular constitution, at least when it comes to its views on the nature of the spiritual world” (Robbins 2020, p. 160). For Robbins, it is clear that the ‘God question’ in anthropology needs to be reframed and that dialogue with theology can be helpful in this regard. However, the question of whether God exists is not a fruitful starting point of this dialogue, but rather the question of what both disciplines aim to achieve. If theology is “to speak truthfully about God” (Sarah Coakley), then Robbins shares the aphorism with which Bruce Kapferer defines the anthropological discipline: “[a]nthropology is secularism’s doubt” (Robbins 2020, p. 163, referring to Kapferer 2001, p. 342). Playing with the subjects’ and objects’ genitive, Robbins clarifies that anthropology always works from a secular rationalist framework (i.e., it doubts any claim to transcendence), but at the same time investigates phenomena in ways that put pressure on that framework: anthropologists know better than anyone that all forms of thinking are culturally conditioned (and thus also cast doubt on the secularist doubt about transcendence).

The category of interruption taught Robbins to think differently about radical cultural change, not as loss (trauma), but as a confident opening to a new future—something that was hardly conceivable in a classical anthropological paradigm of continuity. Such “theologically motivated transformations in anthropological thought push for new kinds of attention not only to issues of time and change but also to new approaches to such concerns as the social force of hope and of creative action that are much in the air in current disciplinary discussions” (Robbins 2020, p. 165).

From the perspective I developed, Robbins could more systematically use interruption as an epistemological category for the whole of anthropological theory formation in order to conceive of that renewal in anthropology: how a correct interpretation of ethnographic data via actors’ categories interrupts secularist conditioning. Otherness/difference can reveal the closed and reductionist nature of a secularist view of humanity and the world and lead to new ways of speaking that allow that otherness/difference to be part of the discussion. In addition to interruption, the category of recontextualisation may also be useful here. I do wonder, however, whether Robbins makes a sufficient distinction between a secularist bias against any belief in transcendence and a methodical agnosticism espoused by modern science, and therefore also by anthropology. Criticism of the former does not prevent the latter from being constitutive of the discipline of anthropology—in contrast to that of theology.

As far as my own theologising is concerned, I fully share Robbins’ plea for a mutually transformative dialogue, as evidenced by the way in which I myself sought dialogue with philosophy in order to arrive at a renewed theological self-understanding.17 It is worth repeating that the actors’ category of interruption that he uses in his anthropological theology is itself already the product of a transformative dialogue.18

Perhaps that is the final twofold lesson that can be drawn from this dialogue: (a) that our categories, vocabularies and approaches are caught up in a ceaseless game of exchange and reinterpretation between disciplines and language games and (b) that we—each in our own discipline—have every interest in allowing our own theory formation to be interrupted by dialogue with other disciplines.