Das Interview können Sie hier in Englisch nachlesen.
1. Khegan, what is your research about and how are you dealing with it?
Well, I'm in the initial phase of the research; I've only been in Bamberg since the beginning of April, so I’m still obviously in the nascent phase of the research.The broad topic is in the field of what is called constructive dogmatics or systematic theology, but also interfacing with what would traditionally be called philosophy of religion or philosophical theology.
My focus is on the doctrine of the Trinity, on what I'm calling broadly an “experiential theology”, an account which draws upon particularly this tradition we have stemming from the early church from the writings of Origen of Alexandria but persists to the present, a tradition of what is called “spiritual perception” or the “spiritual senses”. This tradition of spiritual sense perception I aim to interface with discourses in contemporary phenomenology, and potentially also things like the aesthetics of religion and maybe even affect theory, but overall trying to develop an account of the experience of God as trinity.
In short: Can God be experienced as trinity by the believing subject. What is the elementary grammar of the Trinity? What would count as a Trinitarian experience?
Anglican theology
In some of my previous work I've worked on traditions within Anglican theology. So, my previous PhD work was on Rowan Williams especially and, in this project, I'm continuing something of this trajectory. Important for the project is the work of Sarah Coakley. Sarah Coakley is an Anglican theologian and philosopher who very much works on the interfaces between philosophy of religion, systematic theology, and historical theology, drawing upon patristics. She (Sarah Coakley) puts forward a specific account, namely that it is through the believer’s experience of prayer – particularly contemplative prayer – in which they are united to the trinitarian life through the progressive purgation of desire. So yeah Sarah Coakley, at least at this stage in my project, is a central figure. But it will expand beyond her work towards more explicit engagement with aspects of phenomenology, how God is ‘given’, how God's self-revelation is given within God's ‘economic pedagogy’.
God’s Economic Pedagogy
When I say economic, I mean economic in the sense of God's dealings with human beings, not in the sense of financial markets, and so on. I'm talking about the classical distinction between immanent and economic trinity – the divine economy. We also need to attend to how God is given to subjects and to spiritual communities: we have to account for the fact how believers and spiritual practitioners are formed by religious communities, and so they don't exist as isolated subjects, and so the external and communal doxastic practices of communities will form subjects within their awareness as well.
Language
As we know, with Wittgenstein, there is no private language, so languages are forming our ways of speaking about God for conceptualizing God or communally-based language projects, language games – if you want to call it that. However, part of my research is to go beyond the linguistic focus of ‘the linguistic turn’. So, the linguistic turn obviously is overall an important aspect within 20th century philosophy and theology, but I think in recent times we've been made aware more of the overly- linguistic focus of 20th century philosophy. This is why that aspect of phenomenology is also important for the project and maybe things like affect theory, which is often about these pre-cognitive, social quasi-emotions that exist within communal structures, communal life, political and social formations, and so on.
Sensing
The working title of the project is “Sensing the trinity: towards an experiential theology”. Sensing is broader than just a focus on linguistic conception. Sense-making includes the whole embodied experience, but it also implies things like making sense. It’s in the genealogy of this terminology, it's got this ambiguity – all these different overtones that one needs to keep in mind. I'm talking about the intertwining of conceptual and cognitive forms of sense-making, but then also these more implicit, more subconscious, or unconscious processes of sense-making, of how we orientate ourselves within the world, you know? And that's the broad scope of the project.
2. Why this topic?
I've got maybe different streams of influences within me.
On the one hand, I have a deep interest within what we can call, broadly speaking, speculative metaphysical questions. So, I'm not scared of metaphysics or the use of explicitly metaphysical language or dealing with topics like the trinity in terms of thinking of ontology, relational metaphysics or an ontology of relations and so on – questions, broadly speaking, surrounding Trinitarian ontology. These questions interest me on the one side. But I'm also sensitive to the broader aspects of sense-making of how we make sense of the world and through a variety of ways – beyond the intellectual in the narrow sense.
Church Background
My church background is not exactly from within a traditional reformed theological posture, with the strong emphasis on hearing the word, and so on. My family background is more within free church, Pentecostal-charismatic contexts, and the play of lived religious experience, the play of emotion and affect. I think as I've developed, I've wanted to have a theological account or picture which brings together what we see happening within the so-called Third World, the majority world, and the global turns away from mainline traditions to Pentecostalism, or a strong emphasis on pneumatologically experience. So, I suppose one may see this as a kind of some influence on the project. But it's not simple. I wouldn't say it's simplistically to be understood in this way.
I don't know if I want to say it's a specifically Anglican thing, but there is something I think to it. You know, in terms of the thinkers that I'm interested in, there's quite consistently these Anglican thinkers who come to things in this way, broadly, this mediation between Catholicism and Protestantism. It’s a kind of mixture of this influence of Anglican theology and Pentecostalism, but then also what I would say is a kind of Catholic Metaphysic.
It's a mixture of things.
Am Donnerstag, 4.7.2024 (18:15 - 19:45 Uhr) hält Khegan Delport einen Gastvortrag mit dem Thema "A Grammar of Trinitarian Experience? On Sarah Coakley’s Théologie Totale". Der Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache statt. Nehmen Sie gerne Kontakt mit uns auf, wenn Sie den Vortrag hören möchten.
