Memory and Apocalypse
I always enjoy making seemingly random connections between things (and as a completely unrelated sidenote, I really wish I was British so I could spell it connexions, which is just so much more satisfying for some reason). Talking to a friend of mine who is a psychologist (no, Im not crazy) we got on the topic of what he called "Troxler's fade." The fade was discovered by a man with the supervillain-esque name Ignaz Troxler in 1804. The theory refers to a phenomenological or visual/perceptual effect when one focuses too much on a single point, stimulus along the peripheral of your vision begins to fade. So the theory goes, our brains are wired to allow unvarying stimulus to disappear, essentially so we can get on with our lives without getting our poor brains beaten to a pulp by swarms of unrelenting data, and then go crazy. This is a theory analogous to how the brain processes information, and why forms of Autism manifest as they do. Normal brains process information by super-rapidly organizing what is and what is not important to remember. Which is why we are usually better at keeping big picture ideas rather than the minutia of lists. On the other hand Autistic brains to varying degrees lose this "filter," and absorb everything. This generates things like the "Rain Man" effect where you have a hyper-intelligent individual super conscious of minutia, but who has a more difficult time processing things like metaphor or understanding the nuances of social interaction.
At any rate, I havent really thought this through at all but I think there is a curious parallel between the Troxler fade and how Apocalyptic categories affect us. One of the interesting adjectives always used of Apocalyptic is that God "interrupts," our normal life. Or in Barth's terms of his Commentary on Romans, God's Word leaves a "crater" where we can see the negative space of its impact even if we cannot conceptualize the content of the "hole," itself. You can see this theme brilliantly in various ways: again Barth's concept of the Word of God and the dialectical event of Revelation, Bultmann's moment of being confronted and opened to the future by proclamation, Moltmann's earlier theology of Hope that "eschatologized" Barth's word-event (thought actually in the Theology of Hope Moltmann is critical of the category "Apocalyptic," itself), Jüngel in God as the Mystery of the World has an interesting synthesis and development of Barth and Ebeling (and others Im sure) in that the Word-which-is-not-present nonetheless addresses us and pulls us toward the future. In others you can see this theme through the elaboration of ecstasis, that is, the going-outward-from-onesself, again in various more or less successful conceptualizations; in Rahner as the transcendental horizon of consciousness, in Zizioulas the ecstasis occurs in the eucharistic communion, in Pannenberg it occurs through the Spirit as an anthropological phenomenon summarized by the event of Christ. And on and on.
If one can generalize the Troxler fade, we can say it has several analogies to apocalyptic revelation: God in the apocalyptic act reorients and causes a "flash" which breaks the ordinary we have become numb to and which has faded. It does this both by super-ceding what has come before, but also by re-organizing the given and making it New. Thus, we so prone to forget and ignore the old are called again to awareness to the movements of God. Thus apocalypse is not only an "interruption" but an act of memory, a reminder, an anamnesis, and even a repentance, a metanoia or a changing of one's mind. it causes us to see "Easter in ordinary," to shamelessly steal the title of Lash's book. We can see this in the biblical language used: the dialectic between the heavens "being torn open," (as when Christ is baptized) and the heavens always-already "standing open," which is normally unperceived (as in Revelations). The breaking-forth of God's apocalyptic "interruption," is not just a scission forever separating new from old; but it is the forever New which makes New as well: it literally "changes our mind," about the true nature of the ordinary, causing that which has faded to flash forth in newness and its glorious and ordinary weight.
At any rate, I havent really thought this through at all but I think there is a curious parallel between the Troxler fade and how Apocalyptic categories affect us. One of the interesting adjectives always used of Apocalyptic is that God "interrupts," our normal life. Or in Barth's terms of his Commentary on Romans, God's Word leaves a "crater" where we can see the negative space of its impact even if we cannot conceptualize the content of the "hole," itself. You can see this theme brilliantly in various ways: again Barth's concept of the Word of God and the dialectical event of Revelation, Bultmann's moment of being confronted and opened to the future by proclamation, Moltmann's earlier theology of Hope that "eschatologized" Barth's word-event (thought actually in the Theology of Hope Moltmann is critical of the category "Apocalyptic," itself), Jüngel in God as the Mystery of the World has an interesting synthesis and development of Barth and Ebeling (and others Im sure) in that the Word-which-is-not-present nonetheless addresses us and pulls us toward the future. In others you can see this theme through the elaboration of ecstasis, that is, the going-outward-from-onesself, again in various more or less successful conceptualizations; in Rahner as the transcendental horizon of consciousness, in Zizioulas the ecstasis occurs in the eucharistic communion, in Pannenberg it occurs through the Spirit as an anthropological phenomenon summarized by the event of Christ. And on and on.
If one can generalize the Troxler fade, we can say it has several analogies to apocalyptic revelation: God in the apocalyptic act reorients and causes a "flash" which breaks the ordinary we have become numb to and which has faded. It does this both by super-ceding what has come before, but also by re-organizing the given and making it New. Thus, we so prone to forget and ignore the old are called again to awareness to the movements of God. Thus apocalypse is not only an "interruption" but an act of memory, a reminder, an anamnesis, and even a repentance, a metanoia or a changing of one's mind. it causes us to see "Easter in ordinary," to shamelessly steal the title of Lash's book. We can see this in the biblical language used: the dialectic between the heavens "being torn open," (as when Christ is baptized) and the heavens always-already "standing open," which is normally unperceived (as in Revelations). The breaking-forth of God's apocalyptic "interruption," is not just a scission forever separating new from old; but it is the forever New which makes New as well: it literally "changes our mind," about the true nature of the ordinary, causing that which has faded to flash forth in newness and its glorious and ordinary weight.
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