A Hyperbolic Imagination: Theology and the Rhetoric of Excess

Abstract

“Can we name, between the economy of the gift and the violent magic of sacrifice, another image to do justice to those moments when we discover ourselves through giving to the other? I propose the word ‘squander’. … To squander is to waste, to give against the demands of a metaphysical economics, to act recklessly, disregarding the calm, cool voice of reason. … We squander when we do not care what the systems that be will do with our gifts, when we defy all of the efforts to make our giving reasonable and prudent. But we also squander from an inner strength, a spiritual richness that suggests that we give because we have already been given too much.” From the Christian point of view, everything, indeed everything, ought to serve for upbuilding. The kind of scholarliness and scienticity that ultimately does not build up is precisely thereby unchristian. Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death If we pursue the comparison, the objects of knowledge are not only made manifest by the presence of goodness. Goodness makes them real. Still goodness is not in itself being. It transcends being, exceeding all else in dignity and power. Glaucon had to laugh. My god, hyperbole can go no further than that! Plato, The Republic