What Does It Mean to Be a Christian? The Implications of Badiou’s, Butler’s, and Whitehead’s Views for Understanding the Christian Subject

Abstract

This article explores the implications of Whitehead’s, Butler’s, and Badiou’s views for understanding the Christian subject. Since postmodernists’ declaration of ‘the death of the subject’, the traditional view of the subject as a fixed and self-identical substance no longer suffices. These three thinkers present dynamic and original views of the subject. For Whitehead, the subject emerges out of the process of becoming and, by perishing, contributes to future processes of becoming. Butler claims that subjectivity is performative. For Badiou, the subject is the bearer of a fidelity to an event. With those views in mind, this article argues first, that the Christian subject is the bearer of fidelity to a truth-event of God; second, that Christian subjectivity is performative; and third, that a Christian is one who performs death and, by doing so, contributes to, and brings the novelty into, the world.