Accommodation in Immanency

Deleuze and Guattari in Dialogue with Reformed Theology

Abstract

This study seeks to answer a fundamental question in contemporary theology: how can we talk about God in a 21st-century materialistic society? The text guides the reader from Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language to Gilles Deleuze’s poststructuralist thinking, showing why modern scientific theories have excluded theology from the sciences. The central thesis of the study is that John Calvin’s teaching of accommodatio offers a solution to the problem. According to the principle of accommodatio, God adapts his self-communication to man in the Incarnation, so that divine transcendence appears as kenosis in immanent human experience. This is not merely a hermeneutical method, but the basis of theology, which urges a rereading of the Bible in tense social issues and an authentic, i.e., biblical and Christocentric, formulation of the Christian message. Furthermore, drawing on Karl Barth’s theology, the study argues that accommodatiobased theology is capable of entering into dialogue with contemporary philosophy without abandoning its biblical roots, thus transcending the limitations of apologetics.