Decentering Humanity in the Judgment of History

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Scott, On the Judgment of History, xvii–xviii.

2 Ibid., xx.

3 Ibid., 87.

4 Ibid., 76.

5 In Scott’s account of the relation between the judgment of history, a desired future, and present action, I find clear resonances with Joseph R. Winters’ account of melancholic hope in Hope Draped in Black. While I do not have space to explore this connection in this essay, I encourage readers who find Scott’s argument compelling to explore Winters’. Ibid., 88.

6 Ibid., 82.

7 Ibid., 87.

8 I hope that it is clear that I do not expect Scott to have taken a theological approach in her reading of history. Rather, theology is simply the discipline through which I encounter her text as a reader. I am confident, however, that this theological response to Scott’s historical argument is true to the spirit of Scott’s fundamentally secular argument and its emphasis on present political possibilities, even as it relates that argument to my own academic field and its ecclesial context.

9 Within Gebara’s framework, humans are more akin to cells within an organism—discernable individuals best understood as parts of that larger body—than independent beings. Gebara, Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation, 53.

10 Ibid., 82.

11 Ibid., 50.

12 On the Judgment of History, specifically, does not seem to reckon with the relevance of ecological devastation to human history.

13 Gebara, Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation, 95–96.

14 This is not an argument for determinism, but for the radical expansion of the basic idea of history’s worth: that what has happened before is relevant to the present and the future.

15 There is another dimension of grace that seems less relevant to my response to Scott’s argument. In The Comforting Whirlwind, Bill McKibben offers a fascinating and freeing reading of Job that stresses the reality that humans are but a small part of creation, dwarfed by a world that has existed long before we came into existence. I would argue that, ultimately, should humanity fail to repent and take responsibility for our sin, grace abounds in the fact that our capacity for destruction pales in comparison to the vastness of creation. Humanity may pass away, violently devouring all creatures within our reach, but eventually we will be gone and creation will persist in all its complexity and potential to sustain life. It may indeed be a powerful sign of grace that humans seem poised to write ourselves out of history before we can attain the ability to spread our devastation to an entire universe of beauty.

16 Scott, On the Judgment of History, 87.